Page 32 of No Fear
“Yeah, Skylar’s friend. Your… whatever she is. I need to talk to you about her.”
“Why?”
“I think she might know…” Lincoln cursed on his end of the phone and then someone shouted his name, “Damn it, I gotta go boys. I’ll swing by when I get back to town and we can hash it all out. Talk soon.”
The line went dead and Remy cursed, “Son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, you can say that again.” Colt tossed the phone on the check-in counter and grimaced, “Lincoln wants to talk to you about Rachel? That can’t be good.”
“No. It can’t.”
“Where you think he is that he said he’s out of town?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. All I care about is keeping Rachel safe and if he isn’t going to help me, I’ve got to figure something else out.”
“She’s working next door with Skylar. She’s perfectly safe. Nobody’s gonna mess with her at the salon. Whatever is going on, let her work. Let her have some semblance of a normal day and if we’re lucky, maybe she’ll open up and tell Sky what’s going on. If not, no harm done and we’ve killed a couple of hours until Lincoln gets back to town.”
“Easier said than done.” Remy complained.
“I know.” Colt smirked, “Trust me I know. Once you admit you’d be shit without her, it’s damn hard to let her out of your sight isn’t it?”
Remy nodded in agreement. If there was one thing that he knew both of his brothers understood, it was a need to protect their women. Cash and Colt would give their lives for Jemma and Skylar. Just because he hadn’t had a lifetime to get to know Rachel, to be her friend or pine over her, didn’t make what he felt any less powerful.
She was his and he would protect her.
Chapter Seven
Rachel could feel Skylar watching her. It was that same overprotective, almost motherly stare of caution and concern. She’d been getting it all day, or rather since the day Skylar hired her. But right now, today, the look was too much. She felt like she was about to crack wide open and all of her secrets would come pouring out. She’d held it together all day but this, right here, it was too much.
Too much trust. Too much love. Just… too much.
“Stop looking at me like that. You’re freaking me out.” She bit her bottom lip, her hands shaking.
“Yeah, stop freaking her out, Skylar. The girls holding a pair of clippers to my head and I don’t wanna end up with a reverse Mohawk.”
Despite her nerves, Rachel smiled at the client sitting in the salon chair in front of her. Though, technically, she supposed calling him a client was a stretch. He certainly wasn’t her client and the idea of accidentally cutting all of his hair off and making him bald only made her nerves worse.
Bentley Bomar was Remy’s cousin. He was Lincoln’s younger brother. He was Skylar’s temporary bodyguard and he washerguinea pig.
Rachel held the buzzing clippers away from him when she saw him shoot Skylar a skeptical look in the mirror. She expected him to get up and run the other direction considering she was very clearly having a breakdown and she was wielding a weapon near his head. But Bentley didn’t move. He simply grinned up at her reassuringly when he caught her eye and shrugged.
“I could totally pull off a reverse Mohawk.”
Rachel laughed because yeah, he probably could. He was a Bomar and like every single other one she’d met, he was absolutely gorgeous. Like his brothers and cousins, he was tall and muscular, blue-eyed and tattooed, but unlike them, he always seemed to be smiling. Always. He was the only Bomar boy that had never made her shiver with fear, which she thought was probably how he had gotten stuck with his current assignment.
That thought ruined her momentary smile and she dropped her eyes.
Bentley had started hanging out at the salon after Colt was attacked. Skylar had told her the boys didn’t feel comfortable leaving their women unprotected with the person responsible still out there somewhere, running around free.
The fact that Rachel now knew who that person most likely was made her sick to her stomach.
She could put a stop to all of it, right here and right now. All she had to do was open her mouth and tell them what she’d learned last night. All she needed to say was that she’d overheard her brother meeting with some very unsavory characters to discuss plans to hit the Bomars where it hurt.
But no matter how many times the words found their way to the tip of her tongue today, she’d stopped herself from saying them and she didn’t know why.
She couldn’t explain her completely unfounded allegiance to a man that had hurt her more times than she could count. He didn’t deserve it. He deserved whatever punishment the Bomars felt like dishing out. But of course, as soon as she thought that, she thought about how Craig would no doubt end up in an unmarked grave and how he was the last family member she had. She thought about how she hadn’t actually heard Craig say anything about the attacks on Colt or his shop. She didn’t know for sure that he’d been responsible for hurting the man her only friend loved. And she couldn’t sentence him to certain death if she wasn’t sure, could she?
“Rach?”
