Nash opened the door and gestured for me to enter first. Piper met me at the door, proudly carrying a small, stuffed police dog in her mouth.
“That one’s new,” I noted, leaning down to ruffle her wiry fur.
“Saw it on Amazon,” Nash said, shutting the door and hanging his keys on the hook.
“Are you ever not hard?” I asked, noting the obvious situation in his pants.
His grin was downright evil when he reached for me. “You have a choice.”
“Explain.”
“Either I go down on you here against the door or in the bedroom.” His hands were already reaching for the hem of my dress.
“Wait. Wait. Wait.”
To his credit, he stopped immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“As much as I really, really want to take your new, smooth face for a test drive…” I shook my head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. But I think we need to talk.”
Nash’s lips quirked. “Just what the hell did they put in that wine?”
I shoved my hands into my hair. “Obviously, I’ve been abducted by aliens and replaced with a not-very-convincing clone. But we’ve been too busy orgasming to talk.”
“About what?”
“About the plan to take down Hugo. I was serious when I said I wanted in. And as much as I want in your pants again and again, this is important. Important enough not to let you distract me with your magic penis.”
His eyes went from a blazing intensity to amused. “You’re one of a kind, Angel.”
“Uh-uh, Studly Do-Right. No distracting me with compliments. Rally the troops while I take Piper out.”
“Now?”
I grabbed Piper’s leash from the hook. “Yes. Now,” I said firmly.
I returned from my walk around the block with Piper and a nagging guilty conscience. “Nash? Before everyone gets here, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Nash was hanging Duncan Hugo’s photo on the whiteboard he’d set up next to the table. “What’s wrong?”
I was pretty sure I’d done the right thing, but I had a feeling he might not see it that way. “Okay. So in school after the whole heart-stopping thing, I didn’t really fit in. And besides work, I never really belonged socially.”
He was watching me intently now.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m new at this. I’m new to whatever is going on between us. I’m new to having friends like Naomi and Sloane.”
Nash’s eyes closed slowly and then reopened. He rubbed the spot between his eyebrows. “What did you do, Angelina?”
“Just hear me out,” I began. But I was interrupted by a loud knock. Piper went scrambling for Nash.
“It’s nine o’clock on a school night,” Knox complained as I let him in.
“I’ll take Words by the Domesticated Knox Morgan for two hundred, Alex,” I quipped. I was just shutting the door when Lucian appeared in it. “How the hell did you get here so fast?” I asked him.
“I worked remotely from here today.”
“You worked remotely in a suit?”
“Nice earrings,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes in suspicion. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“Because of that.” He nodded over my shoulder at Nash, who was offering his brother a beer and smiling while doing it. “Don’t fuck it up.”
He crossed to his friends and I closed the door feeling guilty. “So, guys. Before we start, I should probably tell you all—”
I was interrupted by another knock.
Lucian stopped trying to coax Piper out from behind Nash’s legs and frowned. “Is that Graham?”
“We know you’re in there.” Sloane’s voice carried from the other side of the door.
Nash headed for me and the door.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” I said, grabbing his arm.
He looked through the peephole and then shot me a “you didn’t” look.
“I did,” I confessed.
“Did what?” Knox asked, crossing his arms.
“This,” Nash said, opening the door to Naomi, Sloane, and Mrs. Tweedy.
“Okay. To clarify, I didn’t text Mrs. Tweedy,” I said.
Knox looked concerned. Lucian looked ready to commit murder. And Nash, well, Nash looked at me and rolled his eyes.
“Daisy, baby, what the fuck are you doin’ here?” Knox demanded, closing the distance between them.
She crossed her arms over her pretty violet sweater. “Lina texted us.”
Sloane, dressed in plaid pajama joggers and a matching top, put her hands on her hips. “You penises aren’t shutting us out of whatever the hell this is.”
“I’m just here ’cause it looked like a party from my peephole. I brought booze,” Mrs. Tweedy announced, holding up a bottle of bourbon.
I winced as three grumpy, male gazes landed on me.
“Angelina,” Nash began.
I held up my hands. “Hear me out. This involves all of us in one way or another except for Mrs. Tweedy. And Naomi and Sloane deserve to know what’s going on. The more heads we can put together on this, the more eyes and ears we have around town, the better prepared we’ll be.”
The men continued to glare at me.
“No one knows this town and what goes on in it better than Sloane. And Naomi earned her way here by being a target. She shouldn’t be kept in the dark. The more she knows, the safer she can be and the better she can protect Waylay,” I insisted.
“You’re not leaving me out of whatever this is. If it has anything to do with my sister or her shitty ex, I deserve to know what’s going on,” Naomi insisted to Knox.
“You don’t need to worry about this, Daze,” he assured her, gripping her gently by the biceps. “I’ve got this. I’ve got you and Way. You need to trust me to take care of this.”
Naomi’s face softened momentarily before going grumpy again. “And you need to trust me. I’m not a child. I deserve full disclosure and open lines of communication.”
Sloane hooked her thumb in Naomi’s direction. “Yeah. What she said.”
“This has nothing to do with you. When are you going to learn to mind your own business?” Lucian said, addressing Sloane in a tone so icy I almost shivered.
Well, at least the big guy was pissed at someone besides me for once.
Sloane, however, appeared to be immune to the Rollins freeze. “Shut it, Satan. If it involves my town and people I care about, it involves me. I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.”
The stare off began and I wondered whose neck would get tired first, given their height difference.
Nash strode over and took me by the wrist. “Excuse us for a second,” he announced and dragged me into the bedroom. He shut the door, pushed me against it, and then boxed me in with his palms on either side of my head. “Explain.”
“You seem mad. Maybe we should talk later?”
“We’ll talk now, Angel.”
“They had a right to know.”
“Explain why you talked to them before you talked to me.”
“Honestly?”
“Let’s try that for a change,” he said dryly.