Page 18 of Her Guarded Hero

Then there was the way that Dex was getting in Wyatt’s face about how he had ended things with his last conquest. Dex was on a mission to baby-sit the Western Hemisphere, and now Dalton was in his sites, and he didn’t like it. He could hear the low hum of vibration over in the seat. Now who was calling? At least his teammate never called more than once a day, so this time it had to be someone different.

When he pulled into the parking lot of the lodge, he stopped the car and snagged the phone off the seat. He looked at the display and white-hot rage exploded through his body.

“Motherfucker!”

He slammed his elbow into the driver’s side window, the loud crack was music to his ears.

“You bitch. You absolute bitch!” He stared longer at the number on the phone. Five years ago, he’d deleted the old woman’s number off his phone, and anyone else connected to Lacey. It hadn’t done him a damn bit of good. He’d thrown that old phone into the Pacific Ocean and gotten a new one. One that he gave to a select number of people. Very few people connected to the time before. Yet here he was looking at the number of his dead wife’s mother on the five-year anniversary of his daughter’s birthday. The death that Lacey had caused. What the fuck was Norma calling him for?

Flop sweat coated the back of his neck as he stared at the phone like it was emanating the stench of two-day-old road kill. The whole purpose of him coming to Tahoe, a place that had the deep, dark blue water of the lake and the rich green of the pines that it in no way reminded him of that San Diego road where his drunken wife had taken their precious child and hurtled them into the side of a rock. Now his former mother-in-law was calling?

He drew back his arm to slam it into the cracked window again but stopped himself.

“Get your shit together.” He told himself.

The phone in his hand vibrated. Bile surged before his vision cleared enough to see that it was Zed Zaragoza calling. He let it go to voicemail. Zed didn’t leave one. Seconds later a text came through.

QUIT SCREENING YOUR CALLS AND PICK-UP.

Dalton grunted. It was the closest he could get to a laugh. The phone vibrated again, and he picked it up.

“What do you want?”

“Is Tahoe cold? It’s beautiful here in Virginia.” Zed sounded jovial. It was kind of scary.

“What do you want?” Dalton said again.

“You’re not going to let me even try to kiss you before I go in for the kill?” Zed asked.

“I’m tired. It’s cold. I don’t have time for bullshit. What do you want?”

He heard the big man sigh. “You’ve been pinging my radar for the last forty-eight. Then five minutes ago I knew something big had happened and I had to call. It wasn’t something that said I needed to call Dex and call in reinforcements, but I knew I needed to check in.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Did he really need this tonight? First there’d been Norma who should be buried in the past, and now Zed. The big SEAL from Virginia had always been pretty empathetic for women and his friend Hunter, but now he was behaving totally out of character and calling him out of the blue. Dalton didn’t need this shit.

“I’m not going to spill my guts,” Dalton spit out bitterly.

“Remember one thing Sullivan, I’m the belligerent bastard out of the two of us, don’t try to usurp my role.” Zed’s tone was mellow.

“Seriously, what makes you think you needed to call?”

Zed didn’t answer. Then Dalton remembered a conversation he’d never really taken seriously. Hunter had said that Zed had some kind of sixth sense about things. Still, why would it relate to Dalton?

“You still there, or did you hang up on me?” Zed asked mildly. “I’ll just call again.”

“Don’t you have a pregnant fiancé? Last I heard she was having morning, afternoon and evening sickness, shouldn’t you be with her?”

“She’s figured out that she can eat peaches, fettucine alfredo and Kool-Aid for dinner, it’s her new favorite and she can keep it down, so she’s sleeping. Anyway, it’s midnight here. So, spill your guts.”

Every instinct inside him rebelled, then cool air wafted in from the broken window of his truck, and Dalton realized he needed to vent about Norma. He didn’t want to go into everything, but Norma, yeah, he needed to spew out that poison.

“My former mother-in-law called.”

There was a pause. “Former is a different word than ex,” Zed finally commented.

“My wife is dead. Didn’t Hunter ever tell you?”