Page 51 of Lone Star

She nodded. “Makes sense. What do you know about Reese?”

“Reese?” He sounded surprised. “Ghost picked him up about a year ago. He and his sister had gotten away from another club. Colorado, I think? He does what you ask. Very polite. Fairly spooky. Why?”

“Last time I talked to Cass, she couldn’t stop talking about the, and I quote, ‘actual book hero who saved her life.’” She grinned afterward, and then grinned wider when she saw Albie’s horrified expression.

“No,” he said.

“Did you honestly expect a pretty boy with blue eyes to drop out of the ceiling on top of a girl from our family and himnotto seem like a book hero? We have a type.”

“No,” he repeated. “No, no,no.”

Michelle laughed, and it was the best she’d felt in days.

“My sister is a child,” he said firmly. “She thinks boys have cooties.”

“She’s sixteen,” Michelle said. “Not a child, and definitely not allergic to cooties.”

“Chelle, please shut up,” he said sweetly, and softened it with a press of his shoulder to hers.

Eden had gone to get a beer, and managed to make sipping it look elegant. “Somewhere we could go to talk?” she asked. From what Michelle remembered, she’d never been one for delaying tough business for the sake of social propriety.

Michelle nodded. “Yeah. I have an office.”

When she turned to take TJ back, Albie hugged him closer and said, “Nope. I’ve got him.”

TJ seemed quite content to play with Albie’s hair, so Michelle left them to it, leading Eden down the hall to the office that had once belonged to Candy, and which now mostly belonged to her.

Axelle came, too. She was the last one in, closed the door, and then perched on the arm of the small leather sofa, like she was uncertain of her welcome.

“Axelle and I work as a unit,” Eden said, and Michelle noticed Axelle’s brows go up, briefly. “We have different skills, and we approach problems from different angles, so it makes for a much more thorough investigation.”

Axelle’s mouth twitched into a tiny smile.

“Charlie will talk to the boys, I know,” Eden continued, crossing her legs. She sat in Candy’s usual chair, upright and prim and serious. “But I wanted to hear it from you, first, before any of the details get muddled by…” She waved toward the door. “Man shit.”

Michelle couldn’t help a grin, though a surprised one. “There will be an abundance of man shit, I promise you.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” she said, feeling at a loss. “Honestly, I called Charlie in a panic. It was very much ‘please come’ and not a lot of rational thought.”

“We’ve all been there, darling,” Eden said, and the endearment was said in a matter-of-fact way, rather than a syrupy or affectionate one; Michelle found it bracing, and comforting. She’d always liked Eden. “There’s no shame is asking for help. From what Charlie tells me, it’s been terrible.”

“It has,” Michelle said. She took a shaky breath and spilled out the whole story.

Eden and Axelle both produced notepads and took notes throughout, gazes flicking from their paper to her face, serious, listening intently.

“You did that?” Axelle asked, when she got to the part about flipping the truck. She sounded impressed. “You ever practice something like that before?”

Michelle resisted the urge to fidget beneath the scrutiny. “No.”

“She asks because she’s something of an expert in that area,” Eden said. “Later, she’ll probably ask you how you did it.”

Axelle grinned. “What do you drive? I saw a Challenger out front when we came in.”

“That’s mine.”

“Hemi?”

“It was insisted upon.”

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