Sophie Oak - Siren Beloved

Lexi couldn’t imagine it was Bo. He’d been a sweet kid when she’d known him. Even today, he’d treated her little sister with kindness.

Aidan’s hands folded together, and he seemed to be squeezing them tight. “He was unhappy when he realized Dad had left the ranch to me. Bo felt like he deserved it. I never really wanted to ranch when I was younger. I wanted to be a musician. Then I went into the Army and lost a couple of fingers in a fire fight. My hands don’t work the way they used to.”

Ben leaned forward. “So why did your father leave you the ranch?”

Dwight snorted. “Because he had a brain in his head. Bo couldn’t find his ass with a GPS locator.”

“Don’t. He’s just a kid,” Aidan protested.

“He’s twenty-two, Aidan,” Dwight shot back. “He needs to grow up. He needs to get a job.”

“He has a job,” Aidan insisted.

“I’d like to talk about what happened to your squad.” Chase Dawson said the words smoothly, but they dropped with a thud as both Aidan and Dwight paled.

“I don’t see how it has anything to do with this,” Dwight said, sitting back in his chair. “It happened years ago. No need to bring up bad memories.”

Chase shrugged as though it didn’t matter. “I just have a nose for these things.”

“I thought you were investigating the shooting?” Aidan asked. He put a hand to his head. Lexi could see how his eyes tightened as though he was in pain.

“I was,” Chase replied. “I go where the information leads me, and sometimes I simply follow my own instincts.”

“Chase is a brilliant investigator,” Ben explained. “He’s the brains. I’m the beauty.”

Well, that said a lot since they were identical twins. But Lexi could already tell the difference. Ben was charming, while Chase was dark and broody. If she was going to write them, she’d give Chase a single scar on his face to utterly differentiate them. Chase was the one who would get into trouble. He was the one who could hurt someone. She could write them into a romantic suspense novel. They were perfect for it.

“Lexi?” Lucas leaned in. “Are you with us, or on another planet?”

Her mom was looking at her, too. “That’s her working expression. She’s had it since she was a kid. When she was thinking up a story, she would get that far-off look in her face, and I would know to let her alone for a while.”

“She wrote a bit today,” Lucas offered. “She’s probably thinking about that.”

Her mother looked misty, and she suddenly seemed to see Aidan differently. “Are you getting a headache?”

Aidan turned to Abby. “A little one, yes. I get migraines from time to time.”

“Well, given the extent of your injuries in the line of duty, I would say migraines are the least of your problems. Jack mentioned how badly you were hurt. How long did it take for you to walk again?” Abby asked.

Aidan flushed. “The better part of a year.”

“Spinal cord injury?” Her mother’s tone had taken on that nurse practicality. She’d worked in some of the busiest trauma centers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. “How many surgeries?”

“Eight,” Aidan replied.

Lexi felt her stomach turn. He’d had eight surgeries? She’d seen the scars, but he seemed so healthy. With the exception of the weak knee, she hadn’t seen him have a single problem. How much was he compensating to look strong?

“Do you remember the incident that led to your injury?” Chase asked. Those blue eyes were laser-focused on Aidan. Ben sat back, obviously ceding the floor to his brother. “I’ve read the Army’s official report, and I have some questions. Mr. Creely was the only one who survived? He got out of the incident relatively unscathed.”

“He took a knife to the gut. I hardly call that unscathed.” Aidan massaged a place right between his eyes. “I wouldn’t have survived without Dwight.”

Chase looked at his computer screen. “Really? According to the leader of the team that found you, it was the dog barking that led them to you.”

“I stayed,” Dwight said. “I stayed with him. I kept the Iraqi soldiers off us until the G Squad could get to us. And how did you get that report? It’s supposed to be classified.”

Chase leaned forward with a silky smile. He cracked his fingers the way a virtuoso piano player might. “There’s not a lot of security that these fingers can’t get through. I told you. I follow my nose, and I don’t like that report. Maybe it has nothing to do with this. Maybe it does. But all of that is superfluous. The report states clearly that Sergeant Aidan O’Malley remembered nothing of the attack that decimated his squad.”

“I dream about it at night.” Aidan’s voice was low and gravelly. Lexi reached out and placed her hand on his back again. Lucas sat forward.

“Those dreams don’t mean anything. He’s talked to me about them, and they don’t make a lick of sense.” Dwight’s hands were threaded together, red from tightness. “He didn’t dream when he was taking the sleeping pills the doctors prescribed.”

“I told you why I stopped. They make me drowsy even during the day. I can’t live my life like that.” Aidan’s eyes closed.

Dwight pushed back from the table. “Yeah, well, you should have told me when you decided to stop taking them. I would have helped you. Damn it, Aidan. You know I’ve told you everything that happened. Why do you have to push this? You’re going to kill yourself over this, you know it.”

Dwight stalked out of the room.

Aidan watched him go. “Forgive him. He remembers. Sometimes I think he wishes he was in my shoes. Does anyone have an aspirin?”

“Could we get a glass of water, here?” her mother asked. She stood and gestured for Lucas to stand as well. “Lucas, rub his scalp. Aidan, close your eyes and don’t think about it. I think the migraines come when you try to think too hard about that day. I’ve seen this in PTSD patients with memory loss. Let the memory go, and you might be able to avoid the migraine.”

Aidan closed his eyes, but laughed a bit. “That whole ‘don’t think about it’ thing never works. Now I can’t help but think about it.”

Lucas massaged his scalp, eliciting a groan from Aidan. Lucas leaned forward, his voice low, but Lexi could hear. “Think of something nicer. Remember how hot our sub looked tied to the rack? She was so tight, Sir. She practically cut off the circulation in my dick, but I wasn’t about to stop fucking her.”

Lexi felt her eyes go wide, but her mother just shook her head.

“I did not need to hear that, Lucas.” Abby moved back to her table, where Jack was laughing, and Sam was trying to figure out what Lucas had said.

“Hey,” Jack said. “He’s not thinking about what happened to him in Iraq anymore.”

“No,” Aidan said sullenly. “I’m thinking about what didn’t happen to me in the barn.”

“Who had the waffles?” Mandy asked, returning with a tray of food.

“I did!” Olivia screamed. “I had waffles.” She sank back down. “But Aidan can have them if he needs them. He’s not supposed to remember stuff, so he might not have remembered that he wants waffles. I think he’s doing a good job at not remembering, cuz I heard that he forgot to marry my sister.”

Everyone stopped and stared at Olivia who seemed mighty comfortable with all the attention on her.

Aidan laughed, his head falling forward. He looked up, and just for a second, Lexi saw the old Aidan in his eyes, the Aidan who laughed and sang and played the guitar, the Aidan who had loved her so long and so well that she’d never been able to forget him.

“I won’t forget this time, Olivia,” Aidan said with a broad smile. “I promise.”

“You better not,” her mother said with a tight nod.

Lexi’s chest felt tight. She wasn’t sure what was going to win, heartache at what had happened between them, or hope that it might be different this time. She just wished they weren’t having this discussion in front of her mother.

“Are you going to marry my Uncle Lucas, too?” Olivia asked.

“Absolutely,” Aidan replied without hesitation.

Mandy’s tray clattered to the floor, food spilling everywhere.

Lucas merely chuckled and went back to his massage.

Ben and Chase exchanged a glance.

“Gotta love a small town,” Ben said with a grin.

Aidan felt much better as he pulled the truck into the driveway. Ben and Chase Dawson were checking into the only motel in town, as was the whole Barnes-Fleetwood clan. Aidan might have been happier if his future mother-in-law had gone home for the time being, but Olivia had spotted a Ferris wheel. Aidan had completely forgotten that this weekend was the summer fair. They all now had a date to attend the fair later that night.

Lexi had been quiet all through lunch. She’d seemed contemplative rather than irritated with him. He had to be grateful for that.

“How could you tell my parents that you were going to marry me?” Lexi asked quietly, her hands folded over her lap. Aidan’s senses went on high alert. She might be moving out of her contemplative state.

Aidan didn’t miss Lucas’s sharp sigh. It was his way of telling Aidan that he better not fuck this up. “Because I mean it. Because I love you. I’m going to marry you and Lucas.”

“So, you just get to drop back in and take over?” Yep, the irritation was creeping in.

Oh, he’d figured out long ago how to handle this discussion. “I am the Dom, angel. I’m in charge, but Lucas and I will figure this out. We’ll all three of us hold a rational discussion about how to handle the legalities, but I want us together. If you want to legally marry Lucas, then that’s what we’ll do. I love you, Lexi.”

Lucas quietly got out of the car, but Lexi charged after him. She didn’t wait for Aidan to hand her down as she had before. She stomped off, every muscle in her body tense and ready for a fight. Before he could get out of the cab, Lexi had slammed into the house.

Lucas stood at the door, his face a solemn mask. “She won’t go down easy. She’s been through a lot. You have to know that if I didn’t think you were good for her, I wouldn’t be here.”

Aidan’s stomach did a weird flip-flop. “I don’t want you to be here just for her. God, Lucas, I know you don’t believe me, but I’ll prove it to you. I love you. I’m in this for life now. I won’t ever leave.”

A secret smile crinkled his perfect face. “Next time you leave, I’ll hunt you down, Sir. I might allow you to top me, but never think I’m not your equal.”

That was the farthest thing from Aidan’s mind. “Oh, Lucas, I know how good you are. And I’ve never suspected I was your better. I left because I couldn’t handle how the world would view me, but there was another reason I left. I was jealous of you.”

Lucas’s brow furrowed. “What? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. I was the guy the tabloids proclaimed was killing his own father with embarrassment.”

Aidan had seen the articles that described Lucas Cameron’s misspent youth. Lucas had pulled a lot of stunts to get his politician father’s attention. It had landed him on the cover of several tabloids. It had always been hard for Aidan to reconcile that sad boy with the put-together man he’d met. “I didn’t know you then. All I knew was that you had it together. You knew what you wanted and how to get it.”

Lucas snorted. “I wanted Lexi.”

“Yes, and you manipulated both of us into a position where you got what you wanted. What you didn’t count on was the fact that I had issues with my father and brother.”

Lucas’s eyes shuttered. “I don’t like to think of it as manipulation.”

“But you did work to get what you wanted. You wanted Lexi, and you got her.”

“No, I wanted the three of us. Even when you walked out, I truly expected you to come back. I thought you would go blow off some steam, maybe write some angry songs where you brutally murder me, but I thought you would be back.”

Aidan flexed his ruined hand. He couldn’t get it to open all the way, and the muscles ached from even the small movement he’d performed. “Showed you, didn’t I? What you don’t know is that I had a big career setback the day after I left. I had a shot at a recording deal that fell through. My dad heard and gave me a lecture on how I should be doing ‘man’s work.’ I enlisted the next day.”

Lucas’s hand came out, cupping Aidan’s shoulder. “We all do stupid things. You paid for yours. I paid for mine. We need to move on.”

He was right. Aidan needed to move this forward. “I intend to walk into that house and get her underneath me.”