Sophie Oak - Sirens in Bliss

Shelley was at the Talbot mansion, likely sipping champagne and eating a spectacularly catered meal, and they got cold cuts Mel had picked up at the Stop ‘n’ Shop and a sea of naked dudes.

“He forgot the bread,” Chase Dawson said, walking up to them. He was in the altogether and it didn’t look like he minded. “But there’s something called tonic and Ben is already shit-faced. He only had one drink. I promised Nat I would be the designated driver, thank god. I think it might have affected Ben’s brain. If one of us is going to be brain damaged, it should really be the himbo.”

Chase was eating what looked to be a rolled up slice of ham. Ben walked up beside him, a loopy grin on his face.

“Hey, we’re all naked. And there are pork rinds. I thought they would be disgusting, but after a couple of drinks, they’re really good. Salty. It’s nice.”

Yep, Ben had some of the tonic. Mel made it himself. It was really a kind of rotgut whiskey. He was surprised more people hadn’t gone blind from it, but Mel’s tonic was a sort of rite of passage in Bliss.

Wolf was just going to settle for a beer. He kind of thought his bride would be pissed if he had to have his stomach pumped before he walked down the aisle.

“This place is completely bat-shit crazy.” Leo was looking around like there was some magical exit he could go through. “I spent the afternoon talking to Max Harper, and I swear he would be my next project except for one small problem. He’s completely happy. He’s a lunatic who’s managed to find a way to get married and have a kid. It was disturbing. And then he got a phone call and he said something about a kidnapping. I’m worried he’s actually going to hurt someone. Should I call the police?”

“Harper? The one with the twin?” Chase asked.

Ben huffed a little. “They’re weird. They finish each other’s sentences and stuff. It’s annoying. Hey, are you going into the weird teepee thingee? I crawled into it, but it was really hot.”

Leo shook his head. “No. We’re not going in there.” He turned to Wolf, a desperate look on his face. “Tell me he didn’t.”

“Yep, I think he set up a sweat lodge for us. What did you expect, man? Did you expect Mel to hire a couple of strippers? He wouldn’t. Apparently stripping as a profession is high on the alien preference list. Nope. We’re stuck with naked Mel and an ancient Native American tradition.”

“Huh. That’s funny.” Ben started laughing. Wolf had no idea what he was laughing at. Ben kept up his giggles as he started to stumble off toward the volleyball court saying something about finding a beach.

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t kill himself,” Chase said with a smile. “I’ll also probably take a couple of videos. I like trashed Ben. He’s fun.”

He followed his brother.

“Why didn’t we go to Vegas?”

“Because Shelley wanted a big wedding and this is the only time Ma is ever going to get to watch her sons get married. Because we make sacrifices for family and that is a very good lesson to learn right before our wedding day.”

Leo’s shoulders slumped. “Where do I change?”

“Into what, brother?”

“Fine. Where do I leave my clothes?”

“Oh, they’re free and easy up on the mountain. Anywhere you like. I think there are some lockers in the gym. Dude, you do not want to use those facilities without a towel, I’m telling you.”

Leo turned, a worried look on his face. “We need to talk.”

Thank god. Wolf had been worried Leo wouldn’t talk about it. “About the fact that dear old dad’s been calling?”

Leo’s eyes closed briefly. “Has he called you, too?”

Wolf shook his head. “No. You left your computer on. I used it to book our movie tickets a couple of weeks back. So what does the fucker want?”

Their father had left long before Wolf was capable of really remembering him. Wolf had been a toddler when their father had walked out. As far as he could tell, the man hadn’t actually divorced their ma, just disappeared one day.

“What do you think he wants?” Leo asked, his voice deeply sarcastic.

“A renewed and loving bond with his sons?” Yeah, he could be sarcastic, too.

“Money.”

That was pretty much what Wolf had expected. “How does he expect to get it?”

“Blackmail, naturally.”

That didn’t make sense. “What’s he got on us?”

“Nothing on us. He’s threatening to call Ma.”

Fuck. A whole lot of their mother’s history was wrapped up in her firm belief that their father never actually existed and that both he and Leo were the result of her alien abductions and the aliens’ love of the deep probe. “How do you think she would handle seeing him?”

“Look, Ma is great, but I worry a little in this case.”

“Because all the shit with that man is what broke her in the first place?” He didn’t want to call the man “dad.”

“I just think Ma has some carefully constructed walls that allow her to be happy, and I would hate to see them fracture.”

“So where is the bastard?” He could take care of this small problem. There were numerous places to hide bodies in Southern Colorado. And he hadn’t killed anyone lately. It had been a long dry spell.

“So you can murder him and hide the body?” Leo asked, proving his brother knew him pretty damn well.

“It’s a solution to the problem.” A nasty thought struck. “You didn’t already give him money, did you?”

“Of course not. I’m not going to either. I threatened the fuck out of him if he didn’t leave. Harper actually helped with that. The man is apparently really inventive when it comes to threats. And he’s not skittish about threatening another dude’s junk.”

Wolf could believe that of Max. “But he’s not going away. He needs something, and he figured out we can give it to him. Why the fuck now?”

“I suspect he looked us up, or he’s been keeping tabs on us.”

“How much did he ask for?”

“We didn’t get that far.” Leo ran a hand through his hair. “Has she ever talked to you about what happened?”

Wolf snorted a little. “Oh, so many times. I’ve heard far more than I want to about probing. Apparently I came out so big because she got a double shot of Reticulan Gray DNA. Why do I have to be from the creepy looking grays?”

Leo’s eyes rolled. “I was talking about what really happened.”

“Oh, yeah. All I got out of her was probings.”

“All right.” Leo turned away. “I thought he would look like us. We don’t look a lot like Ma. I guess I always thought if I ever met the bastard, that he would look something like me. But he was short and looks like he was probably a blond before he went gray.”

Wolf was happy he didn’t look anything like the fucker. He was also happy he didn’t look anything like the Reticulan Grays. “You know there’s one person she might have talked to.”

Leo’s shoulders slumped. “Damn it. We’re going to have to go into the sweat lodge, aren’t we? Is there any way Mel’s fully clothed?”

“No way in hell.” They couldn’t possibly be that lucky.

Leo shuddered and began making his way toward the main building. His brother wasn’t as comfortable with walking around in the altogether as he was. Wolf glanced around. Julian was fully dressed, but Finn was playing naked horseshoes with a very comfy-with-himself Sam Fleetwood.

Wolf felt his eyes widen as he watched Max and Rye carrying a passed-out Stef Talbot across the lawn. “Hey, did he have too much tonic? Should we call Caleb? Because I’m worried that it could actually make a person blind.”

Caleb walked out from behind the trees, a rifle resting against his shoulder. “He’s fine. Pissed off, but fine. But hey, he’s going to wake up as Jen’s sex slave, so it will all work out in the end. It’s a damn fine day, Meyer. Damn fine.”

“He’s going to kill us,” Rye was complaining.

“Probably,” Max agreed. He smiled at Wolf. “Hey, Wolf. Your brother is cool. He’s writing a book about me.”

“Dumbass,” Rye shot back. “His brother is a psychologist. He’s writing a book about how fucked up you are.”

“Yeah, and I’m the hero.”

Rye groaned. “Move it. He’s heavy. Hey, where are we going to stuff him? Paige’s car seat is in my back. I don’t think I like the idea of a naked dude riding on Paige’s car seat.”

“No way, brother,” Max said. “No naked dudes get to touch our baby girl. We can dump him in the flatbed. Do you think anyone’s got some rope so we can tie him down? Oh, and we should totally take some pictures.”

Rye brightened. “I think someone in this group can help us out with some rope.”

Max and Rye carried Stef away.

Stef was totally going to kill them.

“This place is fucked up, man. I think that dude got sniped.” Chase was suddenly standing beside him, watching as Stef Talbot’s limp body got carried away.

Chase was deeply worried about snipers. He was sure they were everywhere. Wolf needed to let him know the possibility was small. “I think it was tranq darts. Caleb likes to shoot people but he doesn’t actually kill them.”

“A sniping is a sniping, brother.” Chase had his quirks. He also had his extreme talents.

And one of them was finding out any information a man could possibly need. “Hey, could you do a quick job for me?”

Chase perked up. “Sure. Ben passed out in the volleyball pit. I made sure he could breathe and shit, but I am so not reapplying his sunscreen. His ass is going to be bright red for that wedding tomorrow. I’ll be surprised if he can sit in the pew. Nat is going to be pissed.”

Wolf was going to have to drag Ben’s naked ass into the shade. Why had someone thought this was a good idea? “I need you to find out everything you can on Robert Meyer.”

Chase’s eyebrow quirked up. “Your dad? I already have a file.”

There was only one reason Chase would already have a file on Robert Meyer. “Julian. Of course.”

“Of course. Julian doesn’t do the whole ‘wait until people trust me enough’ thing. He just finds shit out and holds the info until such time as he needs it. Are you sure you want to find that asshole?”

“No. I don’t.” Wolf sighed. “The trouble is he seems to have found us.”

Aidan, Lexi, and Lucas

All around her Shelley’s bridal shower continued, everyone looking politely away as though they hadn’t seen the tense scene that had played out in front of them. They pretended they hadn’t watched as Lexi’s marriage took a nose dive. Lexi wished she could take the last few minutes back.

Lexi was utterly miserable as she stared at the place where Lucas and Aidan had tried to get her attention. She’d been in the middle of listening to a deal to turn her books into audiobooks and it had been hard to hear her agent. The cell reception wasn’t the greatest out here.

Of course it was probably perfect compared to the reception that would be waiting for her when she got back to the ranch. She glanced around and everyone was going on with their lives. There were women all over the beautifully decorated lawn sipping champagne and margaritas and talking with friends.

When was the last time Lexi had simply sat down and talked about anything but business? When she got together with Jessica, they talked about upcoming conventions. She had made friends in Dallas with some writers and she loved to talk to them, but they inevitably spent their long phone conversations helping each other with plots and problems with their characters.

She used to talk to Lucas about things like that, but somewhere along the way she’d lost touch even though he was only in the next room.

And now she was a jealous hag because she’d watched Lucas talking to their host, and just for a minute, his whole face had lit up and he’d been her Lucas again, smiling and charming and witty, and that smile had not been for her.

Her heart had tightened, and she’d been ready to march straight up to Lucas and ask him what the hell he was doing smiling at another woman when his wife was standing not a hundred feet away.

And she’d forced herself to stop because she really didn’t have that right anymore. She sure as hell didn’t have the right to complain about Lucas’s lack of attention when she didn’t have a minute to spare for either of her husbands.

Why couldn’t they understand? Aidan had shot her a look of pure anger when she’d shooed him off. Contracts were important. She had to make as much money as she could. If things went poorly, they would need every dime to fight to save the ranch. That land had been in Aidan’s family for a hundred years. She couldn’t let them lose it. It was her children’s legacy.