Galen released Meg’s arm and ensured the security system was booted up and the door was locked. “Trouble?”
“Not here.” Theo rounded the couch and stopped just out of reach. He devoured Meg with his gaze, no doubt taking in hertangled hair, her torn dress, and the way she shook like a junkie in need of a fix.Adrenaline letdown. Theo cursed. “I’m sorry, princess.”
Meg crossed her arms over her chest and slid back a step, shying away from him—from them both. “I… I need a minute. A shower. Something.”
Theo gave a short nod. “Take what you need.”
She headed for the bedroom and spun at the last second. “Alone.”
“No shit,” Galen growled. “Go. Take your time.” He considered her too-wide eyes and the way she wrapped her arms around herself. She wouldn’t take comfort from them, not when they were the reason she was in this mess to begin with, but he’d be damned before he let her curl into a ball. He just needed to hit the right button. He made a show of looking her up and down. “We don’t touch walking wounded anyways.”
Her spine went rigid and her hazel eyes icy. “Fuck you.”
There you are.Better she be angry than terrified. He could work with angry. The scared woman in the back of the cab, looking for reassurances that he couldn’t give her—that kind of comfort wasn’t in Galen’s skill set. He preferred the harsh truth to silken lies, and there was no truth he could give Meg that wouldn’t result in her terror.
He stared until she squirmed. “Already did.”
Meg raised a shaking finger. “I swear to god?—”
“Children.” Theo’s voice snapped through the room, a sharp tone that a person ignored to their peril. Meg made a sound perilously close to a snarl, but Theo ignored it. “Go shower or do whatever you need to get your head on straight. You’re fucking terrified and you’re snapping at the biggest dick in the room just to prove that you’re not helpless. It’s wasting time we don’t have.”
“His dick isn’t the biggest,” she muttered.
Galen almost laughed. Even scared out of her damn mind, Meg still had a mouth on her, and hell if he didn’t respect her more for it. “Go shower. The adults are talking.”
She made a sound like an angry teakettle and stalked down the hallway. He waited for the sound of the door slamming, but a soft click was all he got. “Damn.”
Theo stalked into the kitchen and snagged the whiskey bottle. He took a long pull and then passed it over. “Tell me.”
“Two men. I didn’t recognize them, but they claimed Dorian sent them.” Galen drank from the bottle, letting the whiskey burn away the awful feeling in his chest when he’d walked through that door and found Meg tied to a chair with two men standing over her. He’d thought— It didn’t matter what he’d thought. He got there in time. They hadn’t done any lasting damage.
At least not the physical kind.
“She can’t go back.”
Galen stared at the bottle. He tightened his grip and put serious consideration into bashing Theo a few times with it. “You just couldn’t leave her alone, could you? It took them a grand total of three days to figure out she might matter and come after her. Fuck, Theo, this shit is on your head.”
“I know.” Theo watched him. Those blue eyes saw too much, just like always. “And yet I’m not the one who was skulking outside her work. You told me you were meeting a contact.”
Caught.
He opened his mouth, and then abandoned the lie before he gave it voice. “You put her in danger. I was ensuring she stayed safe.”
Theo’s lips quirked, but his eyes went hard. “Lie to yourself if you need to, but don’t you dare lie to me. I know why you were there—the same reason I was a week ago. You couldn’t stay away from her any more than I could.” He bracketed Galen’sthroat with his hand, his thumb caressing Galen’s pulse point. Theo leaned in. “I shouldn’t have paid the tuition with my own name, and I’ll be the first to admit it. But we are both moths to her fucking flame, and you don’t get to play the beleaguered bodyguard—not right now, and not with me. You want her.”
“Yes.” The word felt ripped from him, taken despite his best efforts to stay silent.
Theo’s grip tightened and his gaze dropped to Galen’s mouth. “We can’t stay in New York. They’ll have eyes on her place.”
“They wanted to take her, Theo. There was a van illegally parked near the back door. They might have set her up to answer questions, but they were going to take her.” If they had, Dorian would use her for whatever purpose he had in mind, a lever to get Galen to dance to his tune, and then he’d discard her like yesterday’s trash. Even if he didn’t kill her, there would be scars, and she wouldn’t be Meg anymore.
Theo pressed his forehead to Galen’s, grounding them both. One breath. Two. Three. On the fourth, he stepped back and released him. “You were there in time.”
“I might not have been.” If he’d managed to resist the siren call of Meg’s presence, if he’d had more control, if he’d really gone to meet his local contact instead of doing the skulking Theo accused him of.
“You were there in time,” Theo repeated. He glanced down the hallway to the master bedroom where they could still hear the shower going. “Make the call. I know for a fact you have a passport with her name already set up.”
Caught again. They’d survived this long because they anticipated and played out more scenarios than their enemies did. A month ago Galen had a passport for Meg created. He’d called himself a fool ten times over for doing it, but now it would save them all kinds of trouble with red tape.
