One More Time (7 page)

Six Weeks Later

“D
id you hear
that?”

Adam shushed me, “Shhhhh. Don’t talk so loud or you’ll wake Mom.”

“Is that Dad’s car? I thought he was out of town for a few more days?” I whispered.

“Me too.”

BAM!

Fear shot through me. “That sounded like a gunshot, Adam.”

“It’s coming from inside the house. Stay here, D, and let me check it out.”

“Hurry, Adam!”

BAM! BAM! BAM! “Dillon, I know you’re in there! I told you to get the damn doorbell fixed! I forgot my keeeeeeey!”

The sound of Piper screaming like a loon outside my front door pulled me from my dream.
A dream I knew was seconds away from becoming a nightmare.
Taking a deep breath, I yelled, “Hang on a minute! Let me get some shorts on!” Rolling out of bed, I snagged my shorts off the floor and headed for the bathroom to splash cold water on my face.

“Awww, don’t go and ruin my one chance to see you’re giant…” her voice trailed off into a squeal, followed by a series of bumps and brushes against the door, then a muttered, “I hate spiders.” I couldn’t help but chuckle. The girl was seriously tweaked, but I loved her.

Piper O’Connell was the closest thing to a best friend I had. She and three other friends, Ellie, Reyn and Bobby were kidnapped six weeks ago and almost killed. At the time of the kidnapping, Ellie was a little over eight months pregnant. Once we figured out they had been taken, all hell broke loose. Cas and I had to practically hold down Ellie’s husband, Max and Piper’s man, Gage, while we waited for Garrett to locate them. When we finally got to them, it was bad. Reyn had been shot in the gut by her ex-boyfriend, Zeke and was barely alive. Piper had been shot twice, once in the shoulder by a psycho woman named Selina, who was stalking Gage, and once in the calf by Zeke. She was bleeding profusely and slowly losing consciousness. Ellie managed to shoot and kill Zeke, but that tipped her over the edge and into full blown labor. Thankfully, she delivered a perfectly healthy boy.

Shortly after being released from the hospital, Reyn decided to move to Virginia to live with her parents. Tonight is her going away party and I promised Piper I would help with preparations.

“Hurry, Dillon! This spider is freaking huge!” Piper shouted through the door.

I groggily made my way across the apartment and opened the door. Piper bolted past me and slammed it behind her.

“Damn!” she shouted. As she jumped up and down, frantically rubbing her hands all over her body, I tried not to laugh. “You’ll have to get a can of hairspray and a blowtorch to get rid of that thing,” she panted.

“I’ll get right on that.” She dangerously narrowed her eyes at me and I laughed. My sarcasm clearly was not lost on Piper.

As she followed me into the kitchen for some much needed caffeine, I asked where Gage was.

“At the garage. He had a special order come in and needed to get started on it,” she answered.

“I’m surprised he let you out of the compound.”

Gage had not recovered well from the kidnapping incident. We had all tried to talk to him about it, but it was something he was just going to have to work out in his own time. Guilt can mess with your head, and Gage Blackwell definitely felt all kinds of guilty.

Gage and Piper met in Austin, Texas. At the time they met, Gage was working for a guy named Dooley Shane. While pretending to be a friend and mentor to Gage, Dooley fixated on Piper and began stalking her. He went as far as to send Gage on a bogus job, kidnap Piper, and almost rape her. He then convinced Piper that Gage had been cheating on her throughout their entire relationship. By the time Piper got around to finally explaining everything to us, she and Gage were long over, but not because they didn’t love each other. Shortly after the truth came out, Piper and Gage managed to clear the air and patch things up. That’s when Dooley had his henchmen, Lester, Zeke and Selina kidnap her again. As it turned out, they also took Bobby, Ellie and Reyn. In the end, Selina, Zeke, Dooley and Lester all lost their lives and, in the process, Gage almost lost his girl. I didn’t blame him one bit for being a suffocating assclown.

Piper rolled her eyes and snorted. “Trust me, Gage will be calling you any second now to check up on me.”

I poured two cups of coffee and glanced over at her. She was wearing khaki shorts with a green silky looking blouse. Her strawberry hair was braided into one long braid that hung down her back. She was sitting on the barstool waving her legs back and forth, grinning like a little kid. I could see glimpses of the red puckered scar on her calf, and a sick helpless feeling rolled over me. I knew what guilt felt like. More than that, I was all too aware of how it could fuck up your life… if you let it. Piper may be Gage’s girl, but in a way, she’s mine, too.

“Gage loves you. Give him a break, he almost lost you. He has a right to worry,” I told her.

She let out a frustrated sigh. “I know and I get it. Really, I do. I’m here, though, D. I didn’t die. Everyone keeps tiptoeing around me and it’s driving me nuts. It’s over. Dooley, Selina, Zeke, and Lester are all dead. They can’t hurt me anymore. I want to celebrate this great life I have been given, not sit around thinking about how I almost kicked the bucket. You know?”

Piper’s words reminded me of Isabella. Her sexy-hot voice rolled through my head.
“Ummmm, maybe tonight we could do something moving, but not necessarily sad. Maybe something more or less to celebrate the great life your aunt has lived and the love you have for such an incredible woman.”
Isabella Fisher.
That lying bitch
. Every time I think of her, which is way more than I want, I end up getting angry. Every now and then, though, her boner-inducing voice rolls through my head and, no matter what I do, I can’t shut it out.

“Hey, are you okay?” Piper asked.

For a second I wanted to tell her no. No, I was not okay and hadn’t been for a long time. But instead, I gave her a smile and said, “Couldn’t be better. Give Gage time and he will let up. Just remember, it is all because he loves you. Now, give me five minutes to throw on decent clothes and I’ll be ready to go.” Right as I stepped into the hall, my phone rang. I looked down and saw Gage’s name on the screen.

“See! Told you!” Piper shouted from the kitchen.

Hitting talk, I put the phone to my ear and answered, “Hey Gage. Yes, she’s with me.”

“Can you hang with her for most of the day?” he asked.

I slipped into my room and closed the door. “You know you’re going to have to let up.”

“Yep, but that day is not going to be today. You good or not?” he clipped.

“I told you I was.”

Quietly, he said, “I got the house. I’m telling her tonight or tomorrow morning. I’ll let up once I get us moved in and settled. I just need to know she’s safe.”

“I hear you, man. Go work on your bike and know she’s safe here with me.”

“Thanks, D. I owe you.”

I hung up, got dressed and headed to Dragonfly with Piper to meet with Kurt.

Kurt Greenfield is my partner at Dragonfly. I met him while working for Zane at Whisky’s. He stole me right out from under Zane and made me a manager at his new bar, Dragonfly. To this day, Zane is still pissed about it. At the time, Kurt was dating Joss. Now they are married and expecting their first child.

Kurt, Piper and I spent an hour going over schedules and talking about staff changes. Piper was planning her wedding, so she wasn’t working as much and Reyn was moving. We needed more help behind the bar. Evidently pregnancy and Joss weren’t agreeing. They weren’t telling people about the baby yet, but Kurt told me so I’d understand why he wasn’t around as much. Piper suggested letting Lena and Polly do more bar shifts, which meant we would need to hire more waitresses. No matter how we spun it, we were short staffed. This meant I would have to take on more bar shifts and put performing on the back burner, once again. I needed to either find a regular weekend gig or find someone to take my place in the bar every Saturday night so I could play. My scheduling issues would have to wait though. For the next hour, we worked out the details for Reyn’s going away party.

Once we had everything situated, we headed to lunch. On our way out the door, Piper asked if we could stop by and see Ellie and the baby. I would have told her no before the kidnapping. Ever since then though, things were different.

Ellie Davis popped into my life a few weeks after I discovered Isabella was engaged to that douche bag. Like Isabella, Ellie was a stunningly beautiful woman. The more I got to know her, the more I liked her, but that was just it. I liked her. She was gorgeous and so fucking sweet, but I didn’t feel the crazy chemistry I felt with Isabella. In the end, it didn’t matter because I fucked it all up by stringing both Ellie and Dana along. The worst part was I blamed it all on Ellie. Like Isabella, Ellie chose another man over me. I was pissed at Max for coming back into her life after so many years and expecting her to drop everything to be with him. Even more so, I was shocked when she actually did it. The guy had disappeared without a trace for five years and he brought nothing but trouble with him when he came back. I was sure Ellie was going to kick him to the curb, especially after he admitted he’d been screwing around during their time apart. Did she? Hell no. She let him knock her up and then married his ass.
Shows how much I know.

It took the kidnapping and shooting for me to realize I wasn’t mad at Ellie and Max. I was just jealous. Ellie and I would have never worked out. Not because she wasn’t a great woman, she just wasn’t the woman for me…
and I knew it.

“We don’t have to go by, if it makes you uncomfortable,” Piper said, interrupting my thoughts.

“No, I’m good. I need to talk to Max about something anyway.”

“Can I say something without you getting mad or shutting me down?” she hesitantly asked.

“Shoot.”

“Will you please not bring Dana to the party tonight?”

A few weeks ago, Dana tracked me down at work. She got in my face about how Piper and Gage were getting married and how it was time to take our relationship to the next level. The girl was nuts if she thought I would ever, in a million years, put a ring on her finger. The thought of inviting her tonight hadn’t even crossed my mind. Then again, Piper didn’t know this. Everyone probably assumed I was still sleeping with Dana, when, in fact, I couldn’t stand to be anywhere near her. I gave Piper an eyebrow raise, before returning my attention to the road. She apparently took this as a sign to keep talking.

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, but no one wants to be around her. It’s just…well…she’s a serious bitch, Dillon. No one gets what you see in her. I’ve told you all this before but you need to hear it again.” She slid her hand into mine and squeezed. “Aside from Gage, you are the best guy I know. Good guys deserve good women. She is not a good woman. She is a wretchedly horrible, skanky, hag-assed bitch.”

I couldn’t help but smile at her choice of words. “I love when you candy coat your feelings,” I teased.

She laughed. “Too harsh?”

“Just a little,” I responded, squeezing her hand back.

“Sorry, but it’s true.”

I knew it was true. Dana Harkins was not a nice person. After I went back for Isabella and found her fiancé instead, I drove home and drank myself into a stupor. I called up Dana while I was drunk and told her I wanted to see her. The second she showed up, I came to my senses and asked her to leave. To say she was angry is an understatement. Shortly after that, I met Ellie. Everybody thought I was fooling around with Dana while pursuing Ellie. I wasn’t. In fact, the night Max returned, I was out in the parking lot of Dragonfly telling Dana it was never going to happen with us. Of course, Ellie walked out while Dana was kissing me goodbye and assumed the worst. Dana took that as a sign to keep at me and the rest is history. We pulled into Max and Ellie’s driveway and I turned off the car.

“Are you okay with this?” Piper asked, nodding towards the house.

“I’m great with this.” She gave me a skeptical look and I sighed. “If I wasn’t, I would say so. This isn’t the time or place, but I have been doing a lot of thinking lately. I’ll fill you in later. Suffice it to say, I’m good.” I gave her a big smile and she gave me one right back.

Ellie was standing at the door with baby Mac in her arms. I gave her a hug and him a kiss on his tiny forehead. She smiled and steered me to the backyard where Max was working on the grill. Max greeted me with a handshake and we talked about a truck I had been thinking about buying and the garage for a bit, before Piper and Ellie came out and announced they had made us lunch. Max and I had come a long way over the past year. I wouldn’t call us friends, but we were heading in that direction.

During lunch we discussed everything except the kidnapping. Max was the polar opposite of Gage on that matter. While Gage wanted to dwell, Max wanted to forget. Neither of them seemed to be handling it well, but who was I to judge? Once lunch was over, Max took Mac upstairs for a nap. That’s when Ellie took the opportunity to express her concerns about Max.

“He’s distant with me, but not with Mac, Thank goodness.”

“Gage is suffocating me,” Piper admitted, in a matter-of-fact tone.

These two beautiful women had been through hell and back, but were somehow standing strong. Their men, however, were a different story. The only thing I could do, was try and give them perspective.

“Guys don’t do well with this kind of shit.” They both stared expectantly at me, so I continued. “Gage is guilty, Pi. He thinks you getting kidnapped and shot is his fault because he brought Dooley into your life. He’s afraid if he leaves you alone for any length of time, something bad will happen. This is why he will barely let you out of his sight. Give him time.”

Her eyes welled and she placed her hand protectively over her heart. “He told you this?”

Damn, I hate when she cries
. I reached over and wiped a tear before it spilled over. “He didn’t have to, sweetheart. I just know.” Glancing over at Ellie, I said, “Give Max time as well. He’s scared shitless because he just watched you prematurely deliver his son. He had no time to mentally prepare for this. I’ve heard guys talk about this shit so many times it isn’t funny. The one thing they all agree on, is how hard it is to erase the image of the woman you love squeezing your kid out from the place your mouth and dick have been.”