“Did anyone else come in contact with the substance?” Aidan asked as Danny struggled against the wave of exhaustion pulling him down.
“Tink…Tinkerbelle…” Danny managed to get out before everything slipped away, leaving him to dream about beautiful green eyes that would no doubt haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Who the hell is Tinkerbelle?” Aidan asked with a frown as he checked Danny’s pulse.
“My guess would be the cute little neighbor living across the hallway that he’s been tormenting for the past two months,” Jared said with a satisfied sigh and a grin as he pushed away from the wall.
Aidan shook his head with a good-natured laugh as he stood and pulled the covers up, tucking his older brother in and reminding Jared of all those times he’d seen Danny look after his younger brothers and sister. Before Danny ran off to join the Marines, he’d been a great big brother, kind and loyal, but he’d also been an arrogant little bastard.
He loved Danny, had always had a soft spot for the kid, but he’d never been blind to the kid’s faults. Things had always come easily to Danny, too easily, girls, grades, friends…life, and it had led him to believe that it would always be that way. Danny never had to work at anything when he was a kid, never had to try. Things came too easily to him until that fateful night when he’d raided his father’s fridge and drank himself into oblivion.
Watching Danny’s downfall had been difficult, but even then, he’d known that it was for the best. The kid had always had a game plan for his life, college, med school, a partnership at his father’s practice, and eventually the perfect family. Every time Danny had talked about the future, his parents had nodded approvingly while the rest of the family had simply accepted it as Danny’s due, everyone but him.
Jared never said anything, but he’d never been able to picture Danny as a doctor. His younger brother, Aidan? Absolutely, but never Danny. Danny needed something more in life, something challenging, something that allowed him to grow up and figure his shit out. The Marines had given that to Danny and more.
When he’d discovered that Danny ran off and joined the Marines, he’d been scared shitless right along with the rest of his family. They hadn’t been able to drive to Alabama fast enough, terrified that something was going to happen to the kid before they managed to kick his ass for scaring the shit out of them. Once they’d made their way onto the base, they’d been prepared to drag him home and smack some sense into him, but everything changed when they’d spotted Danny, covered in mud, his hair shorn off, and that cocky expression on his face finally gone as his CO got in his face and tore him a new one.
They’d stood near a row of Humvees, waiting for Danny to talk back, to mouth off, to walk away and give up as the officer screamed in his face, but to their surprise, Danny took it. When the officer ordered him to drop to the ground and give him a hundred pushups, he did it without hesitation. By the time Danny got back in line, looking alone and suddenly terrified, they were turning around and walking away. Ethan had remained for another minute, watching as his eldest son was shoved back to the ground and forced to knock out another hundred pushups. Walking away from him was probably one of the hardest things that they’d ever done, but it had been exactly what Danny needed. The Marines had made a man out of Danny. They’d shown him the real world and taught him the value of work, dedication, and what it meant to be a good man.
“Is this the woman that Trevor and Jason think he’s going to marry?” his nephew asked, throwing his brother a questioning look.
“Only one way to find out,” Jared said, already heading for the door, more than a little curious about his future niece.
Chapter 8
“No, I’ll definitely be in tomorrow,” Jodi said, struggling to ignore the constant itching that only seemed to be getting worse with every passing minute.
“Do you want me to double-check the supplies for the kid’s craft group?” Jenna, a volunteer who was covering for her at the library, asked as Jodi shifted the phone to her other ear so that she could bend down and take a peek in the oven to make sure the cookies were baking evenly.
“We should have everything but the glitter. Dan is supposed to drop that off along with the glue tomorrow, so we’ll be all set by Thursday morning. Besides,” Jodi said, pausing to shut off the oven timer and don a pair of sturdy oven mittens, quickly pulling out the hot cookie sheets from the oven and replacing them with the pans she’d had waiting on the kitchen table, “we’re shutting the library down for the summer. I’d rather use up everything that we already have so that we don’t have to worry about finding a place to store it.”
“That’s what I figured,” Jenna said as Jodi carefully placed the hot pans on the counter to cool.
“Could you please tell Mr. Jennings that I’m working from home today,” Jodi asked, once again thankful that she had a job that allowed her to work from home when needed, and today she definitely needed to work from home.
Actually, what she really needed to do was go to the hospital and have the hive that seemed to be getting worse looked at, but she didn’t have health insurance at the moment. Then again, if it got any worse, she wasn’t going to have much of a choice in the matter. She’d have to suck it up, go down to the walk-in clinic and agree to a payment plan that she couldn’t afford, which, of course, was the reason why she’d been cooking ever since the jerk across the hallway dropped abandoned her, Jodi thought, biting back a sigh as she looked around the kitchen overrun with cakes, brownies, cookies, breads, and casseroles.
Her refrigerator was already overflowing with food and she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do with all of it. She’d tried calling the guys, hoping they’d come relieve her of some of this food, but for some strange reason, none of them were answering their phones. She’d briefly considered packing all the food in the car and bringing it down to the police station, but she’d quickly dismissed that idea. She really wasn’t in the mood to explain why she looked like she had the plague.
“He already knows and he said that was fine. I hope you feel better, Jodi.”
“Thank you, Jenna. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She hoped she would, at least. But as she hung up the phone and contemplated taking another hot shower, she wasn’t sure that was going to be possible. Trying to ignore the need to itch every last square inch of her body, Jodi picked up her spatula and began the task of placing the warm cookies on wax paper to cool when someone knocked on her door.
Sighing with relief and hoping that she could talk whoever it was at the door into running to the pharmacy and buying her some calamine lotion, she quickly headed to the door and opened it, only to frown in confusion when she met the curious gazes of two incredibly handsome men. The youngest one looked down at her, looking a little lost, while the older man, an incredibly handsome older man that looked vaguely familiar, grinned hugely down at her.
“Tinkerbelle?” the younger man said, sounding unsure as she turned to glare up at him. She opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind when both men tilted their heads, sniffed the air, and groaned.
“God, something smells good,” the younger man said with a wistful smile that may have distracted her from his Tinkerbelle comment.
“Are we interrupting something?” the older man asked, sharing a look with the younger man that she couldn’t quite figure out.
“No,” Jodi said, shaking her head as she crossed her arms in a desperate attempt to stop herself from scratching. “I felt like cooking.”
“I see,” the older man said, his expression suddenly smug. “You enjoy cooking?”
“Yes,” Jodi said, eying the two men standing in front of her. “Umm, can I help you?”
