Page 9 of Royal Agenda

Aaron, as per usual, wore cargo shorts and a polo shirt—his company’s logo, Mitchell’s Alligator Rescue, embroidered over his left chest area, and flip-flops. The man had no taste in footwear, though Cocoa didn’t seem to mind.

In the role of dutiful husband, Aaron struggled with a portable table and awning. No doubt Cocoa intended to display the beautiful tarts on the table and offer them to the many grandparents and their small grandchildren playing nearby. Toddlers, as he understood, were children aged three and under. A half dozen of them were on the playground, and twice as many adults were watching them.

Ryker moved to take one side of the table and leveled it for Aaron.

“Thanks.” Aaron locked the legs. He slid the umbrella into the hole in the middle of the table and bent down to clamp it in so it wouldn’t lean to either side. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine, but you are looking shaggy.” Ryker gave him the code that said a possible threat was nearby and they should proceed cautiously.

Aaron was not a member of the SEAL team anymore, having retired a little more than a year ago, but was aware of their protocol. Since his marriage, he’d been less and less available for the team’s casual get-togethers, which was to be expected, and Ryker only disliked him a little because he had found a woman who was much better company than the rest of them.

Aaron stood up and ran his hand through his hair, letting it flop in his eyes. “You have time for a trim?” he asked. Which was code for: Are we leaving or fighting? If he said there was no time, they were fighting. Fighting meant finding a defensible position away from civilians if possible. If he had time, they would proceed to one of their predetermined safe spaces loaded with a stash of weapons and contact the team.

“I do,” he replied. Aaron relaxed only slightly, his eyes scanning for danger.

Cocoa moved the cart under the umbrella and ran her fingers through Aaron’s hair. “I like it longer.” She pecked his cheek. “But if you’re playing one of your military games, I hope you win.” While she was not aware of the secret mission nor Ryker’s true identity, when they married, Aaron filled her in on some of what happened with the SEAL team. He’d often played assassin to help the team train for different scenarios. Cocoa thought they were just reliving their glory days and boys would be boys. They all lived as though they’d retired from the military—even taking on civilian jobs—when, in fact, they were on active duty and very much on guard.

Aaron grinned at her as if she had invented cake and he’d like a slice. “You like my hair, huh?”

With her no-make-up, fresh-faced look, Cocoa was the epitome of innocence, and all that was right in the world. Ryker compared her to the woman in the lobby. They were not opposites–both beautiful women with trim yet strong figures.

He had watched the stranger from the moment Sweetie caught her attention. She was brave, leaning over immediately and running her hands over the alligator as if it was not the scariest creature she had come into contact with in her life. The beaded cord necklace at her throat looked like something she would pick up at a market in Mexico for a few pesos. Yet the dreadlock extensions, cotton shorts, and tee shirt were made from quality material. The extensions especially. She also did not wear makeup, though her eyes had a depth to them that said she had seen parts of the world she would have rather not, or perhaps she had seen the darker side of people and wished she had not.

The image of her hair returned to him, and he contemplated why she wore it up in a bun and how long it would be if she let it down. He had never found the look all that attractive, preferring his women elegant and refined—foxy, as his elderly clients would say. But on her? You could bet your sweet bippy she wore it like a babe.

He really needed to spend more time with people his own age and get out of The Palms once in a while.

“I’m on an early lunch,” Ryker prompted Aaron, who couldn’t stop staring into Cocoa’s ocean-blue eyes. The man was impossibly in love with his woman. For a time, no one on the team believed a lady out there could compete with alligators for Aaron’s attention. Apparently, Cocoa won hands down.

“Let’s go.” Aaron kissed Cocoa goodbye quickly, thank goodness. She set about to make Toddlers and Tarts a huge success, humming as she worked.

Ryker checked as they walked through the lobby to the stairs, but the mystery woman was no longer in sight. It would have been too convenient for her to loiter long enough for Aaron to get a good look at her.

The two men made their way up to the barbershop on the second floor of the main building.

Next door, the salon was in full swing, giving perms, trims, coloring, and blow-outs. The place was a hive of activity every hour of the day. Though, this morning, it seemed especially busy. Elvis Presley crooned over the speakers about what a night he had had, and the ladies chatted loudly past the sound of blow dryers.

Ryker unlocked the door to the barbershop and stepped inside his domain.

Jazz music played low, just loud enough to bring the soulful sounds of a bluesy guitar or saxophone into the air. Sift lighting filled the space–enough and then some to work by, but not the offensive fluorescent lighting that rivaled the sun. Two red, white, and blue barber’s poles trimmed in chrome rotated on either side of the mirror. His black leather chair, with extra padding for his customers with bad hips, waited for Aaron. The scent of sandalwood beard oil hung on the air from his last appointment.

In a place where fifty-three percent of the male population was bald, there was one barber to three hairdressers. In a bold move, he had added a clean shave and beard care to his repertoire and increased appointments by an hour and a half a day. Turns out, men enjoyed being groomed as much as women, even if they did not want to talk about it.

“Are you shaving more than beards?” Aaron asked as Ryker shut the door. He held up a pink bottle of ladies’ shaving cream with a picture of two bare legs on the front.

Ryker swiped it away from him. “Some gentlemen need a little shave up top.” He motioned to his widow’s peak, where men tended to grow islands of hair. He evened things out and kept them from looking like a golf course. “They have sensitive skin.”

Ryker shrugged it. “What’s the situation?” He sat in the chair.

Ryker draped a cape over him. If he did not at least trim Aaron, Cocoa would notice. If there was one thing he had learned over the last year and a half, it was that pretending things were normal helped people believe they were normal.

“There was a woman in the lobby today. She spoke Italian and she pegged me as Isoladian like that.” He snipped his scissors together because he could not snap his fingers while holding them.

Aaron pulled out his phone, which was much more secure than Ryker’s would be if the threat played out. “Did you get a picture?”

Ryker shook his head. “Description: Long, dirty blonde hair in multi-colored dreads. Thin, muscular frame. Blue eyes like,” he paused to think, “You know on the news when they warn us about an incoming hurricane?”

“Yeah?”

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