Page 9 of Begin Again, Part 2

Eden turned back to her friends. The worry on their faces mirrored hers. With a small shrug of her slim shoulders, she admitted defeat. "Tell the truth. That's all I can do at this point."

"Gosh, Edie!" Cassandra swore violently under her breath, setting off her hooter when she slammed her hand on the steering wheel.

The cars on the curb sparked to life instantly, their headlights blinking awake. Dogs barked in the distance, alerting each other of the shit storm about to go down in the dinky blue house on the corner of Alice Lane, as Liam's security detail rushed to the Jeep to check on the commotion. A tall, sandy-haired man with a scar between his eyebrows so deep it seemed to be a part of his frown, rapped his fingers on Lydia's side while his two colleagues stood guard.

She rolled down her window and snapped, "what?"

"Evening, ladies," he drawled in a husky voice while he did a quick sweep of the car, momentarily blinding them with the glare of his flashlight. Eden recognised him from Anderson Logistics. His name was James, the head of Liam's security team.

"Dude, get that shit off my face!" Lydia blocked the light with her hand.

"Apologies, ma'am," he said, and returned to his colleagues, waving at them to stand down.

"Paradise confirmed. All clear," he announced into his comms piece.

"Paradise what?" Sienna gawked at Eden, wide-eyed. "Better yet, why does Liam need so much security?"

Eden smiled. It was a long story for another day, over ten bottles of wine.

Despite assuring her friends she'd be okay and could easily handle Liam, they insisted on coming with her. There was no way they'd leave her alone with Liam's men carrying guns.

"They don't carry guns," Eden said. She'd never seen them with guns, and Gibby had confirmed they don't, explaining they would have already failed at their job if they had to pull out weapons.

They all tumbled out of the car, with Eden almost tripping over the head of security.

"Please take me to Mr Anderson's car," she told him quietly as she studied his face. He didn't look so deadly now, maybe because he wasn't pointing a flashlight at her face.

"He's inside, ma'am," James said, his eyes never staying too long in one place, constantly sussing out possible threats.

"What do you mean inside?" Eden asked in a small voice. "You mean inside one of those cars, right?"

She closed her eyes, silently praying her suspicions were wrong. But her heart slamming hard in her rib cage, trying to drown out the small voice of intuition screaming from deep in her gut, told her otherwise.

"No, ma'am." James shook his head, his gaze staying on her long enough to blow her world wide open with his announcement, "he's inside the house."

"Oh, shit! Hell no!" Her friends lost their heads, tripping over each other as they ran to the front door.

Eden stayed behind with James, demanding answers, an explanation or a hint of the alert level of the shit storm she was in. But Liam's head of security wasn't at liberty to reveal anything.

Dissatisfied with his lack of cooperation, Eden stormed off, almost bursting into tears of relief when she walked into her living room and found her friends crowded around the couch, gawking at a passed-out Liam snoring peacefully.

She glared at his sleeping form, properly pissed off with him for making himself so comfortable on her new couch. But the traitor in her, the one ruled by her heart and not her head, wanted to reach down and brush his tousled hair away from his face.

Brenda rushed in from her bedroom, wearing a worried expression on her face as she clasped her hands in front of her. "I'm sorry, Eden, he just came in before I could even stop him. He kept saying something about being home at last before he passed out."

"Brenda, we've talked about this. No strangers in the house," Eden said with as much patience as she could muster.

"But he's not a stranger. He's Aiden's—"

Eden quickly covered her mouth with her hand before she could say the words. "Don't say it!"

"How did you even know, anyway?" Lydia turned away briefly from the couch to glance at the nanny.

"I figured it out when he dropped Eden off that one time after her bender. He looks like Aiden," Brenda whispered, still wringing her hands, her round eyes shining with worry. "Anyway, I didn't have the heart to drag him out of here."

"Did he see Aiden?" Eden asked, her heart soaring out of control again as she held her breath, waiting to hear her fate.

Brenda shook her head, her silk bonnet sliding off her head. She fixed it up quick, smiling sheepishly. "He was already sleeping when his father arrived."

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