Page 81 of Serve ’N’ Protect

Matt snorted. “This from a guy who’s never dated the same woman more than twice?”

“Funny, asshole.” Kade flipped Matt the bird, and they all laughed. “Seriously, be lucky that the only thing standing between you two is you. You’ve given up on yourself.”

Markus’s phone vibrated again, this time with a text message. The text was from Kelly and contained three words: Steven is dead.

He stared at the phone, feeling an unexpected and weird sense of loss. Not at the loss of Steven, but of the love and respect from his father that there was no chance of ever getting now. Even in death, the man could still take something Markus needed.

“Bad news?” Matt tipped his head to the phone still in Markus’s hand.

“Steven died. Cancer.” His friends all knew who Steven was. They just didn’t know all the gory details.

“Sorry, man,” Kade said.

“We know you guys weren’t close,” Matt added. “Anyway…sorry.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Aside from Kelly, the only other person on the planet who knew why they’d never been close was Cassidy. She knew he was a psychological hot mess, and she loved him anyway. Guess that’s what love did. Made you accept people for who and what they were, with no repercussions and no put-downs.

As he sat there on the couch listening to the crackling fire, he wanted and needed to be with Cassidy so badly he physically ached.

Steven had stolen something from him. His guts and the possibility of ever being truly happy. Learning that the man was dead had the effect on Markus of someone severing the emotional cord that had always pulled him beneath his father’s evil umbrella.

With a calm he didn’t feel, Markus set his beer on the end table and stood. It was four o’clock. By the time he got to Leonardtown it would be dark. “Ghost.” His dog leaped to his feet, waking Sheba and Smoke, who raised their heads in question. “We’ve got someplace we need to be.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Cassidy sat at the kitchen counter, leaning on her elbows with her chin in her hands. The sun had long since disappeared below the horizon, casting everything in her parents’ backyard in a depressingly gloomy light. Fitting, in a way, because that’s exactly how she felt. Gloomy and depressed.

Mom and Dad, along with every other member of her family, had taken the news of her attempted murder as expected. They’d gone apeshit, which played right into Trooper Collins’s suggestion that she not be alone for a while. Her folks had insisted she stay with them. At first, it had seemed like a reasonable suggestion. Only now she was beginning to feel like a prisoner and her family were the wardens. They’d actually charted out a schedule, rotating in and out of the house so that someone would be with her at all times.

She dug her fingers into her forehead. Giving up her independence was a step in the wrong direction. Backward. Worse, being stuck here left her mind with too much free time to think.

Everyone was still stumped as to who would want to kill her. As he had the night of the burglary, Hugh had another alibi, and there couldn’t possibly be a connection to Markus’s assailant because that man was in jail. She hadn’t even brought it up during questioning by the police.

Trooper Collins and Detective Chang, one of the detectives who’d helped after the burglary, had peppered her with question after question, but no matter how much Cassidy racked her brain, she could think of no reason why anyone would want to hurt her. Let alone kill me. It was still impossible to believe it was really true. Now she knew how Markus must have felt having to hide out from someone trying to murder him.

Her dad had surprised her by bugging her to call Markus to let him know what was going on. Wouldn’t that have just made her day. Nope. A clean break was the only cure for heartbreak.

She shut her eyes tightly. If only her heart would stop squeezing with anguish every time she thought his name, which was pretty much every hour on the hour.

The throbbing numbness she’d felt the night he’d left was still there, just not throbbing quite so much anymore. After that, the most difficult thing had been explaining to her family that she and Markus had broken up. Funny, but her dad had been the most disappointed out of everyone. Reluctantly, and through a running river of tears, she’d somehow managed to succinctly explain to her dad that Markus would never be capable of being what she wanted.

She’d stopped there, not wanting to get into how he was too emotionally scarred to be what she needed. But dammit, she still wanted him.

Stop.

He probably hadn’t been cleared yet by the Secret Service doctor, so where was he, and what was he doing?

Stop it! Stop doing this to yourself!

Argghh. She smacked her hand on the hard granite surface, determined to get him out of her mind and get back to work.

Cassidy sifted through the piles of Teedle Tech documents she’d carefully reorganized. After the dust had settled, her brothers had accompanied her back to her own house so she could pack a large suitcase with enough clothes to last a week, her laptop, and two boxes of documents.

Loud music followed by even louder singing came from the open basement door. Her mom was doing laundry and reorganizing the rows and rows of storage shelves lining the basement walls. Frank Sinatra crooned “The Way You Look Tonight.” Her mom sang, although it was closer to bellowing, right along with him, knowing every word by heart, as she did with most of Frank’s songs. Cassidy was convinced her mother loved Sinatra almost as much as she loved her dad.

Turning back to her laptop, she opened up her email. Excitement coursed through her at the sight of an email from Teedle Tech. She clicked open the message, assuming it had to be the new password she’d requested for the password-protected files. When she read the message, her heart sank. This was merely a courtesy notification that the company was closed for the next three days, until after New Year’s.

Great. Not. That meant yet another delay getting the paycheck she so sorely needed to get her porch steps repaired.