the dumbass country boy.
“You got any beer in this hellhole?”
Cam’s face was mottled up in a mask of pain. He cupped his
crotch, but he nodded toward the fridge. “It tastes like piss, but it’s cold.”
Rafe grabbed two beers and helped Cam to the couch.
“You’re a fucking bastard.” Cam groaned as he gingerly lowered
himself to the cushions.
“Yeah, because you’re so damn upstanding.” Rafe’s jaw was still
throbbing as he propped his feet on Cam’s wobbly coffee table. He
took a long drink of the beer. Cam was right. It tasted like piss.
“I don’t try to come off as Captain America.”
Rafe rolled his eyes. “Well, at least I don’t try to be the tough guy
every minute of the day. Look, I really was concerned about you. I
don’t want you going off the deep end again.”
Cam was too obsessive. Now that Rafe was looking around the
tiny apartment, he was even more concerned. There were printouts
stacked to precarious heights. The only books in the place seemed to
be about coding, and all over were handwritten lines of code. They
seemed to be written in a weird foreign language. Cam had always
been the guy who sank into a case. He needed someone to pull him
out, and Rafe hadn’t been there.
“That was the best year of my life,” Cam said quietly.
Rafe knew exactly what he meant. That year before Laura had left
had meant the world to him, too. It had started as a joke. They had
dared the gorgeous blonde profiler to date both of them. She had told
them she didn’t have the time. They would have to date her together.
Lost in Bliss
23
They had gone to a movie and then a bar. The three of them had
sat and talked until they were kicked out. It had only gotten awkward
when they dropped her off. No one had gotten a kiss that night. And
then they had settled into a friendship.
Months had passed, and she had somehow become the center of
their worlds. Rafe had been unwilling to push her to choose because
she seemed to care about Cam so much. Cam had come alive. His
thick, protective shell had cracked. Rafe had felt like a better person
for knowing her.
And they had fucked up everything in a twenty-four-hour period.
“I have to see her again.” Rafe had to stand in front of her, if only
to beg her forgiveness.
“Do you still want her?”
“More than I want my next breath.”
A long sigh came from Cam. “I want her, too. I’ve tried dating.
I’ve been so mad at Laura that I’ve tried to fuck her out of my heart. I just feel…god, this is stupid. I feel dirty after I sleep with someone
else.”
“It’s not stupid, man. I feel the same way.” His dick had
languished in limbo for the last eight months. He belonged to Laura.
It was wrong to sleep with someone else.
“What the hell are we going to do? She walked away from us.
Even if, by some miracle, we can make her want us again, she didn’t
want to choose.”
“Okay, so we don’t make her choose.”
Cam sat up. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“If we want to have a chance with her, if we want to get her to
forgive us, we’re going to have to give her everything she wants.”
“Everything? I thought what we did that night was perverted.
That’s what you said to me the next morning.”
“Well, we fucked the same girl at the same time. I think that’s a
little perverted by anyone’s standards.” Rafe let that sit for a minute.
“But it was also hot. I liked watching. I think we can make it work.
24
Sophie Oak
We can share her. People do it. Somewhere.” Rafe let his head fall
back. Damn, he’d missed Cam. “I think I have a plan on how to get
her to accept us, well, force her to accept us. Though it will probably
make her really mad. We’ll have to hang out in that little town of hers
for a while. And it totally takes us off the case.”
“I’m okay with that. Laura’s the important thing here.”
Cam was right. They had put the case above her feelings before. It
was time the case took a backseat.
“So we’re going to Bliss. What a name.” Rafe tipped back his
beer. “You know, we’re going to have to be aggressive. We’re going
to have to go after her hard and fast and together.”
Cam settled back. “That might not go over so well in a small
town.”
“So what? You aren’t a guy who minds a little scandal.”
“Nope. But I didn’t mind being the bad boy of the Bureau, either.
It might bother you.”
“She’s worth it.” Rafe wasn’t going to let some societal taboo
keep him from Laura. Never again. Five years without her had taught
him what he really wanted. He’d spent years feeling incomplete. He
couldn’t go the rest of his life without knowing where she was, and he
was pretty sure that once he found her, he would do whatever it took
to stay in her life. If he had to share her with his best friend, then that was what he would do.
An hour later everything was in place, including his airline ticket
and a rental car. Within twenty-four hours, they would be in Bliss.
Rafe just hoped Bliss was ready for a little scandal.
* * * *
Deep in the night, he watched. It was easy to blend into this
particular part of the city. All he had to do was look hungry.
That wasn’t hard. He was always hungry.
Lost in Bliss
25
That little meal he’d had the week before hadn’t even begun to
take the edge off what he needed. The whore had gone down far too
easily. A few taps and she’d knelt at his feet. The fight she’d put up
had been halfhearted, as though she hadn’t really minded dying.
Oh, she’d minded the pain. She’d howled, but even that had been
sad compared to…
When he closed his eyes, he saw her blonde beauty stretched out
on his rack. He saw her eyes filled with rage. She wouldn’t have gone
down easy. He could have played his game with her for days and
never gotten bored.
Oh, the plans he’d had for her until the clever little bitch had
managed to escape.
She’d won that session. She wouldn’t win again.
He’d known all he had to do was follow the idiot men. They
would do the work for him. The rabbit had run, but she couldn’t hide
forever.
Now all his plans were coming together. It was fate. He hadn’t
actually meant for the feds to find his latest kill, but he wasn’t upset about it either. It would throw them off.
He adjusted the device in his ear as he took another long drink of
the green tea he’d placed in a forty-ounce beer container. There he
was. Just another bum looking to get drunk on a Thursday night. He
pulled the hood over his head despite the heat.
He’d listened in on Cameron Briggs’s completely worthless life
for years. Now he finally had something to show for it.
Bliss, Colorado.
He got up, and by the time he reached his car three blocks away,
r /> he’d shed his bum persona. No one would know him now.
He’d found his little rabbit. It was time to go hunting again.
26
Sophie Oak
Chapter Two
Laura Niles looked at herself in the mirror. She had to admit the
peach color Brooke Harper had selected for the bridesmaids’ dresses
looked nice.
“I don’t think there’s enough fabric in the world,” a sad voice said
beside her.
Laura looked over at Callie Hollister-Wright. She was almost
eight months pregnant, and she was lovely to Laura’s eyes, but she
was also very, very large. “You look beautiful. Brooke just needs to
let it out a little bit.”
Callie sniffled as she looked at herself in the mirror. She hadn’t
been able to zip up the back of her dress. “Maybe I should let
someone else take my place. Brooke can’t keep letting the dress out.”
“Yes, I can,” Brooke said with a vibrant smile. “For what Stef’s
paying me, I will happily let that sucker out twice during the
ceremony if I have to.”
Brooke patted Laura on the shoulder. She leaned in. “I need to
take up your hem, but I’d like to get Callie done first. Do you mind?”
Callie needed to be off her feet. Laura took a step back. “Not at
all. I don’t have to be at work today. I’ll sit down with Nell and Holly.
You let me know if I can help.”
Laura couldn’t miss the way Callie gave her a once-over as she
stepped away. She could guess what Callie was thinking. Callie was
wishing she had Laura’s body. How could Laura tell her that she
would change bodies with her in an instant? She would do it without
ever missing her own body because despite her perfect size-six figure,
she would never be round and full like Callie was now. She would
Lost in Bliss
27
never complain about swallowing a beach ball or how she waddled or
how often the baby growing inside her kicked. She could never be
pregnant, and Callie couldn’t know how that made her ache inside.
“I think it is so nice of you to write that man,” Nell was saying as
Laura made her way from the makeshift dressing room through the
souvenir aisle. Laura walked into the teeny-tiny tea room at the
Trading Post that overlooked Main Street.
“Well, I figured he must be a little lonely. He’s in a foreign
country after all,” Holly said, taking a sip of tea as she looked over a letter.
Laura banished her sad thoughts and felt a smile crinkle her lips.
Holly was such a bullshitter. “Are you seriously trying to pass off
your prison love letters as some community service project? Nell, she
and Alexei have been trading flirty letters. She’s not trying to save his soul.”
Nell looked up and smiled that ridiculously brilliant smile of hers.
Whenever Laura got in a bad mood, all she had to do was get Nell to
smile to force one of her own. Nell genuinely believed all the crap she
pushed. She believed in the good of man. She believed in saving the
Earth. Nell believed, and Laura thought it was a lovely thing. “Well, it wasn’t like Alexei did something terrible. I mean the ‘killing people’
thing was awful and all, but have you heard about what the Russian
mob does? It’s horrible. And they don’t recycle.”
“And it’s not prison love,” Holly said with a prim little sigh. “It’s
witness protection friendship. He’s in witness protection while the
trial is going on. I have no idea if it’s going to go anywhere once the
trial is over. It’s just friendship. With a little flirting. I don’t know if he’s flirting. I still can’t tell half the things he says to me. He doesn’t write English any better than he speaks it. Like this—‘Holly, you are
very cold woman. I wish to see you once more to spend the times with
you, not to do hooking thing, but to talk, to know the real womens
inside you.’ Seriously? I think he might think I’m a cold-blooded
prostitute with multiple personality disorder.”
28
Sophie Oak
Laura let her head fall back, the giggle coming from a place deep
inside her. It was easy to let go of the pains of the past when she was
surrounded by her friends. “Oh, I don’t think so, sweetie. Let me
translate for you. He thinks you’re a very cool woman. He wants to
spend time with you, but not to hook up. He wants to know who you
are inside. He’s crazy about you.”
Holly flushed, her skin turning almost as red as her hair. “I doubt
that. I’m almost forty. I have a teenager.”
Nell reached across the table, her hand rubbing over Holly’s.
“You’re a wonderful woman, Holly. Any man would be lucky to be
with you.”
“Speaking of men,” Laura said, reaching for the sugar, “has the
doc finally gotten past the stuttering stage?”
Doctor Caleb Burke had been circling around Holly like a socially
awkward shark.
Holly folded the letter and put it in her purse. She let her head sink
down to her hand. “Well, he manages to start sentences, but then he
always just asks for coffee. I don’t know what to do with him.
Everyone says he likes me, but he never talks to me. It makes me sad.
I have one man who can’t get two words out around me and another
who barely speaks my language. I’m going to die alone.”
“Nope,” Laura said to her best friend. “I’ll be right there with
you.”
Nell and Holly both sat forward.
“Did the stud turn out to be a dud?” Holly asked.
Nell shook her head Holly’s way. “He has a mind, Holly. It’s not
a good thing to sexually objectify the man.”
The man in question chose just that moment to walk across the
street. Wolf Meyer was a stud. Nell was just flat wrong. There was no
way to not sexually objectify that hot hunk of man. The former Navy
SEAL stood long and lean in his jeans and a T-shirt that hugged his
strong body. His hair was dark, but there was very little of it. He
looked like a military man.
Lost in Bliss
29
And he was coming this way. Laura gave him a little wave
through the window. They had gone out on exactly two dates. She’d
kissed him once before she had realized it just wouldn’t work. There
was no spark between them beyond friendship, but Wolf Meyer was a
good man to know.
“God, that man is just hot as hell.” Nell’s mouth hung open. She
slapped her hands across it as if she could push the words back in.
“Please don’t tell Henry I said that.”
“Your secret’s safe with us, Nell.” Holly winked at Laura.
It was always nice when Nell slipped a bit and proved she was
wholly human. “He’s a yummy man, Nell. It just didn’t work out.”
It hadn’t worked out between Wolf and her for several reasons.
Though they had a lot in common, they still felt more like friends than
lovers, but Laura feared the reasons went far deeper for her. It hadn’t
worked out because he wasn’t Cameron Briggs or Rafael Kincaid.
How could those two men still affect her all these years later? She’d
told
herself time and time again that she was over them, so why had
she been unable to get them out of her head? Why had she seen them
when Wolf Meyer had leaned over her and bent his head for a kiss?
“Ladies,” Wolf said, the word rolling off his tongue with lazy
charm.
“Hi,” Holly managed to squeak.
Nell just waved and took a long drink of her tea.
“What’s up with you, Wolf?” Laura asked.
“Well, I was actually looking for you.”
“OMG! The dress is gorgeous. Brooke is a genius!” Jen Waters’s
voice rang out as she opened the door to the Trading Post and glided
in with Rachel Harper in tow. There was a sling around Rachel’s
body, and a fat baby face peeked out. Paige Harper was the sweetest
thing Laura had seen in forever.
But her momma did not look amused. “Nell, we need to have a
talk.”
30
Sophie Oak
Nell smiled up, seeming to not see Rachel’s narrowed eyes or the
flat set of her mouth. “I would love to talk to you, Rachel.”
“What the hell are you doing? Midwifery? Seriously?”
Nell opened her arms as though ready to embrace anything that
came her way. “Yes. I decided to study the ancient art of midwifery
since it seems we’re having a baby boom in Bliss. I’ve tried to talk to
everyone about population control, but I’ve given this a lot of thought.
I’m fine with you and Max and Rye having little Paige there. And
Callie is having her baby with two men. If you all weren’t in
polyamorous relationships, you might have had more children. So, I
think I should help bring this new generation of human beings into the
world as naturally as possible.”
Rachel kept one hand on her daughter as she stalked Nell. “Look,
Callie is one of my closest friends in the world. She is one of the
sweetest human beings I have ever met.”
Nell nodded, her dark hair shaking. “I agree. Callie has a beautiful
soul. Her aura is so pure. The shaman I’ve been learning from says a
pure aura is so important.”
Beside her, Wolf snorted and then sat down, his huge body
perched precariously on the delicate chair. “You’re learning to deliver