I’d been right; I needed a place on Eastshore Isle, a place to make a difference. And Garrak had been right: The community center wasmyplace. I loved my job, I loved my staff—mostly volunteers now, but our funding was slowly growing, and next year we’d be able to hire more part-timers. The fact that I’d accepted a much lower-than-normal salary in order to use the endowment forupkeep of the center had helped, but Garrak and I didn’t need riches.
We had each other.
Although hewastalking about hiring Brakkor and Korrad’s company to begin building a house on the property he’d purchased months ago. Garrak had teased me that then I could be as loud as I wanted when he fucked me…but I would always point out that he was just as loud, which then usually resulted in him pleasuring me then and there to prove his point.
God, I loved teasing him.
Garrak’s loud yawn interrupted my ramblings, and I chuckled, pushing myself upright. “You ought to sleep.” I patted his chest. “Jet lag is no joke.”
“It was only one time zone,” he grumbled. “And I had to get home as quickly as possible to my Mate.”
Grinning, I dropped a kiss on his brow.
The delayed poker tournament had finally happened in New Orleans this week, and my Mate had won big. Perhaps not the whole pot, but enough that we could live easy for…well, probably for the rest of our lives, when added to his other nest egg. But I knew Garrak would pour that money back into the community center. And Eastshore Isle. And his guys’ future.
Still looking out for everyone.
His palm slid up my side, making me shiver even as the calluses moved around to my bare back. “Have you thought about the LeClair brothers’ offer?”
I had to grin. “For poker lessons? That’s ridiculous.”
“They were impressed by you. As well they should be.”
After all this time, I still went all gooey when he praised me so casually.
He’d returned from the tournament with a message from the LeClair brothers. They absolved me of any blame for my father’s cheating scheme, and vowed that I’d always be welcome in their territory. It was a hell of a relief, but I wasn’t anxious to toss myself back into that underworld.
Since they’d asked me to return to teach them how to spot their tells and become better poker players, I was going tohaveto go back there… Oh well. I could always turn them down—although the offered payment was good—or just send them a letter. If Ididreturn to New Orleans, I knew Garrak would be there.
To protect me.
“If I don’t go back, do we have to return the fifty thousand they sent?”
Garrak’s hum sounded speculative as his touch moved around to my breast, which now hung more or less over him. My nipples responded to his touch, of course.
“I don’t think so. They made it clear it was a gift, an apology for the shit your father pulled.”
The fact that it was the exact amount my father had owed Garrak couldn’t have been a coincidence.
“And…” It was a tough question, and I was distracted by his fingers, but I asked anyhow. “Did they say anything about…him?”
Garrak’s caress stilled, his dark eyes—a fleck of green in the center—staring up at me solemnly. “No. Do you want me to ask?”
There’d been no word from my father since that night in New Orleans. I remembered my fears about what the LeClair brothers were capable of, and I shuddered. “No,” I whispered. I didn’twantto know. “As long as I don’t have to hear from him ever again.”
My Mate squeezed my breast gently. “You’re safe,dkaar.”
Yes.
Yes, I was.
Here with Garrak.
I had a full life, anewlife. A purpose, a Mate, a future.
Thatis what I would focus on, not my past.
I nodded once, firmly. “Then I think for now, my decision is that I don’t want to return to New Orleans.”
