He spun around and looked at the man in the mirror, glaring at him. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
As much as he wanted Becs, as desperate as he was to sate the ache growing more intense by the day, he knew he couldn’t. Or, at the very least, he shouldn’t. Becs deserved better. She deserved a man who could give her his full attention. He wished he could be that man, but until he tracked down the bastard who brutally murdered his wife, Evan didn’t have it in him.
And maybe if he kept replaying that ridiculously shitty excuse over and over in his mind, it would be true.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the complete truth. He had it in him. He’d never met a woman he wanted more than he wanted Becs. He was drawn to everything about her, and though he would never admit it out loud, Becs was everything Gayle hadn’t been.
It was cruel to think of his dead wife that way. As though she hadn’t been enough. She had. Maybe their marriage wasn’t perfect, but they’d been kids when they first got together. They’d ridden that wave from high school all the way until…
Evan opened the bathroom door, forcing himself to leave. He didn’t want to stand in Becs’s house and think about how his marriage had been going to shit long before his wife was kidnapped and murdered by a fucking serial killer. He didn’t want to think about how Gayle had been preparing to file for divorce because she couldn’t take much more of him. Or so she’d told him.
And he definitely didn’t want to think about how easy it would be to put the past in the past and give himself over to the possibility of a future with Becs.
Evan didn’t get to have a happily ever after. He didn’t get to move on.
Not until he found the bastard who took Sophia’s mother from her. Not until he put that fucker six feet under.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Reese spent the morning cleaning out hisemail, trying his best to remain cool and collected. It would’ve been easy to panic now that they were down to two days before the wedding. It had taken every ounce of control he possessed to maintain his composure when JJ was going through the list that morning over breakfast.
It was as though every time they checked something off, she added something else. It made him understand why some people chose to go down to the courthouse and just call it good. Planning a wedding was a ridiculously tedious process. Thank God they had JJ to handle the majority of it, and they only had to take care of the individual tasks she assigned them.
Tux fittings.
Bachelor parties.
Cake tastings.
Considering all that was going into this grand affair, they’d had very little to do. Reese had done a few extra things on the side, contributing to specific details he knew Brantley wouldn’t care to deal with, like selecting the floral arrangements because those made for good pictures—or so his mother had told him. He’d also approved the final design for the invitations and gave his input on what the wedding party—basically, Z and JJ—would wear.
Although he would’ve preferred to stop there, Reese had caved to JJ’s requests to have Tesha be their ring bearer. He’d picked out the pillow that the rings would be tied to so that Tesha could deliver them to Z for the ceremony.
Speaking of rings.
Reese got up and headed for Brantley’s office. It was empty because Brantley was over at the barn with Baz going over the potential new hires. Although Brantley had adamantly told Baz he wanted no part of the hiring process, he’d conceded to Baz’s request for a quick review of each candidate. Since Reese had handled that task during their first round of hiring two years ago, he’d gladly taken a step back this time.
He went to the safe that stood in the corner and keyed in the code to open it. He waited for the green light to flash. When it did, he turned the handle and pulled the heavy door open.
This was one of two large safes they had in the house. The other was downstairs in the hall closet just outside their bedroom door. Both held a number of weapons—shotguns, extra handguns, extra magazines, and a cache of ammunition. While stocked well, they didn’t hold a candle to the weapons storage locker they’d put in the barn. Before they’d joined alliances with Sniper 1 Security, they hadn’t needed it, but RT and Z had insisted they put one in and keep it stocked for every agent in their employ, ensuring they had what they needed regardless of the assignment they were undergoing.
Reese shifted some of the ammunition on the top shelf, looking for the rings.
He frowned when he couldn’t find them.
He searched for another minute, then closed and locked the safe before heading downstairs. He went to the other safe, wondering if he’d heard Brantley wrong. This one had a biometric lock and took far less time to open. Once he did, he rummaged through the contents but still didn’t find the rings.
He locked it back up, then headed for the kitchen. He was well on his way to emptying the third drawer he was searching when the back door opened.
“Whatcha lookin’ for?” Brantley asked, coming inside with Tesha darting in before him.
“Where are they?”
Brantley closed the door. “Where are what??”
“The rings. You said they were in the safe.” He looked up. “I didn’t find them.”
Brantley’s lips pursed, and Reese knew instantly that Brantley had lied to him.
