Knox looked stunned as hell but finally bent his head and kissed her. “As decisions go, this one might be certifiably insane, and while I’ll be the first to admit to having a history of making hair-trigger decisions, I can definitely say that loving you isn’t one of them. In fact, it’s probably the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”
Tears filling her eyes, she squeezed his hand with a laugh and, without looking at Gage, turned to lead the way past her pack and out of their lives forever when someone stepped in front of them.
“It won’t be just the two of you,” Diego said. “I mean, what kind of friend would I be if I let you guys walk away because you were dumb enough to fall in love? If you’re moving out of Dallas to start a new pack, I’m going with you. Knox promised to help me find my soul mate, even if it does turn out she’s serving a ten-year prison sentence and is married with a kid who hates my guts.”
Rachel had absolutely no idea what that last part meant, but right then, she didn’t care. Still holding on to Knox’s hand, she wrapped her free arm around Diego and hugged him, amazed she was so lucky to have him as a friend.
She headed for the front gate again, this time with Diego in tow, only to pull up when Trey and Zane hurried around to step in front of them. She opened her mouth to tell them to get out of the way when they both announced they were going with them, too.
“Alyssa won’t care where we live as long as we’re together,” Zane said of his mate as they walked.
They made it halfway down the driveway when someone else stopped them. This time it was Gage. Something told her he wasn’t going to announce he was joining them, and she braced herself for another argument.
“If I told you that was all a test to see if you were really serious about Knox, would you believe me?” he asked.
She didn’t buy that for a second but nodded anyway.
His mouth edged up. “Good. Then you passed the test. Now, what do you say we go back to the SWAT compound and figure out how we’re going to make this all work?”
Rachel knew that was as close as she’d ever get to an apology from her alpha, but after giving Knox a questioning look and getting a nod in return, she decided to take what she could get.
She gave her alpha a smile. “That sounds good.”
Chapter 18
“Man, I haven’t played volleyball since high school. I forgot how much fun it is.” Knox flashed her a grin. “I’m guessing this is a regular thing at these cookouts?”
Rachel nodded with a laugh as she and Knox left the sandy volleyball pit hand in hand to grab something to eat. It had taken a little over a month, but her entire pack had finally come to accept Knox—even Brooks. Acceptance had come a lot faster after Diego had explained about thenachtmahrand she’d told everyone how Knox had figured out how to kill it in the fire. Gage casually asking her to bring him to the monthly cookout was a formal acknowledgment of that fact.
Their six-person volleyball team, which included Zane, Trey, Khaki, and Xander, had won three straight matches and would have still been playing if it wasn’t for the mouthwatering aroma of food coming from the line of grills near the main building. Diego was in charge of food today and whatever he was cooking smelled heavenly. From all the spices she was picking up, it was probably Mexican, which Rachel loved.
As they approached the grills, Rachel couldn’t contain the laughter when she realized they were going to have to wait a little bit. Diego was busy serving Tuffie the pit-bull mix and Kat the cat, as well as Leo and Biscuit, two dogs who belonged to other members of the Pack. From the smell, it seemed Diego had given them all unseasoned meat he’d grilled for them. Like always, Kat refused to eat anything off the ground and would only eat her morsels of food off a plate. Rachel had never met a cat so finicky.
Rachel grabbed two oversized, disposable, plastic plates from the stack on the table beside the grill, handing one to Knox as she looked around for Addy, hoping the girl was eating something. She found Addy sitting with Ben at one of the picnic tables at the very end of the line, the two of them eating burgers by themselves. Rachel didn’t like the way the girl was still isolating herself from everyone else, but at least she had Ben—and she was eating. It wasn’t surprising that Addy was still having problems. She and her mom had almost died that night, but that was only the beginning. A few hours after the fire had finally been put out, her father had been captured at the Laredo border crossing, trying to slip into Mexico. He’d been sitting in jail ever since, awaiting trial for attempted murder, collusion, and money laundering. The endless stories in the local papers had reported that Conrad Lloyd had been in bed with the Marshall crime organization for years…literally. Apparently, his payment for helping to launder Marshall’s money was a steady supply of prostitutes. The headlines had been lurid and impossible to miss. There was no doubt Addy had seen them.
If there was any bright spot in this mess, it was that Addy and her mom were closer than ever. With the Marshall trial wrapping up and the man heading to a lifelong stay in prison where he belonged, Jennifer had dropped most of her cases. She and Addy were even taking a two-week vacation to Italy in the summer.
Diego gave her and Knox a grin when they got to the front of the line and finally reached the grills.
“What’ll it be?” he asked. “We have carne asada, Mexican barbecue chicken, and pork-and-chorizo burgers. Oh, and shrimp tacos that I made for our resident pescatarian werewolf.”
If Rachel’s mouth had been watering before, that was nothing compared to now. “Everything sounds so good and smells and looks even better. I’ll take two of everything.”
“Sounds good to me,” Knox said.
Plates piled high, she and Knox grabbed a couple bottles of water and joined Trey, Connor, and Ethan. While most of the admin and logistics personnel from DAPS had been cleared of any involvement with Theo and his deal with Conrad, Ethan was the only field operative to make the cut. He and Knox had become good friends over the past month as Knox worked through the process of taking over the nearly bankrupt and heavily discredited company. Rachel wasn’t so sure it was a good idea, but Knox and Ethan seemed to think they could make it work. Knox was currently working through résumés, knowing he needed people with sterling reputations if he was going to rebuild the company. The most interesting part of his proposed hiring strategy was the recruitment of some werewolves to round out the organization. Rachel thought that was a great idea.
“So, what do you guys make of Mike and Chief Leclair?” Trey asked.
“I am not even going there,” Connor said firmly as he fed a few pieces of meat to Kat, who’d recently joined them at the table. She seemed to hang around him nearly 24/7. It was like the dang animal was in love with him. “That’s just too weird to think about.”
Rachel laughed, glancing over at the picnic table where Mike sat with Leclair, Gage, and his wife, but Mike seemed to only have eyes for their new boss. “As my grandmother used to say, it looks like he’s sweet on her.”
Everyone at their table glanced that way, but it was Trey who seemed to be the thoughtful one. “I never imagined I’d see Mike looking at another woman like that. Not after everything he went through.”
Rachel was about to ask what that meant but was distracted by Knox taking a big bite of burger. Damn, he made enjoying his food look sexy. When she kept gazing at him, he motioned at her to eat, too. She studied her plate, trying to decide what to taste first. Did she go for the chicken marinated in cilantro, jalapeños, and a combo of lime and orange juice; the steak marinated in beer, lime, and garlic; or the burger of pork and chorizo with its generous helping of guacamole? Even the shrimp tacos were in the running, and she wasn’t a big seafood girl.
Decisions. Decisions.
