Free Sweet One (Titan Book 8) by Cristin Harber Page B

someone else’s house—right? But nerves were driving Nicola to the point of polishing Jared and Sugar’s beach bungalow. Nic had dusted though the place was speck free and apparently had a force of security-clearance-level housekeepers who would pop in while she and Cash were out and tidy the hell out of the house.
    Only Jared Westin would have a security-clearance brigade of maids.
    But for the moment, puttering around the house with a perfectly clean rag alleviated Nicola’s nerves. It wasn’t that Cash went off to take care of business. Her concern was that he had been gone a very long time after fists had been thrown.
    Nicola had watched the entire show on her phone. Thermal imaging hadn’t shown her the greatest picture, but she liked his approach. She smiled when he dodged swings, cringed when the other guy rolled on top of him, and triumphed when he took down the two men.
    But then he sat there. Why wasn’t he hauling their bound intruders in? He wouldn’t answer her calls. He was obviously on the phone with Titan, so what was the deal?
    Easy answer: those two men had wanted her , and her husband was keeping them at bay.
    Or she was deluded by hormones, and the world didn’t revolve around her; Cash was simply waiting for cops in the land of beach and sun. They likely didn’t have a lot of violent crime in the area, and bike patrol couldn’t pick up two… two what? Stalkers?
    Or maybe they were mobsters. That was her subconscious go-to fear and had been for almost a third of her life.
    She scrubbed the hell out of a nonexistent spot on the kitchen counter. Her calls to Titan were left unanswered as well. Everyone was keeping her out of the loop, and that did nothing to ease her concerns.
    Best-case scenario was that they were a couple of goofs from town who had hit on her a few weeks ago when she was wearing a billowing dress that hid her starting-to-show belly and carrying a bag of groceries that covered her wedding band. But Cash wouldn’t stay out there for hours with a couple of townie bozos. He also would not knock them out and tie them up.
    Worst-case scenario… Nicola folded and refolded the cloth. Her subconscious was in overdrive, screaming, “Oh, crap!” The Gianori family would be the worst-case scenario. They’d dictated her life for years, and why weren’t they her first thought, her every thought? Shit.
    She picked up the phone and called Cash. No answer.
    She dialed Titan. No answer.
    Fuck it. She texted her husband.
     
    It’s them, isn’t it? Gianori?
     
    Nicola put the phone down and stared, willing it to ring, and the screen lit up less than a minute later. If it were the mob, why wouldn’t they just kill her? Why spend days scouting her? So maybe it was just random kids who were a little too nosy. Nothing made sense.
    “Hey.” His strained voice was all the answer she needed.
    “Shit.” That tone of voice said there was nothing local or accidental about the men Cash had in his custody. He had called only when she had figured it out. Gianori.
    “We’re handling it, sweet girl. Take it easy.”
    “I don’t want you to handle it for me. I want you to tell me what’s going on so that we handle it together. I’ve handled them for years on my own!”
    “Nicola, baby.” Cash’s voice was low and calm but not enough to soothe her. “Parker has eyes on the house. If anything was to change, if a crab was to scuttle its ass too close to the house, he’d be on the phone with you in a hot second, and you’d know about it. But for now, give me a minute.”
    “You’re sitting in the sand dunes with two mobsters waiting on what?”
    “A pickup from a friendly.”
    Her head dropped into her hand. “How long will you be gone?”
    “I’m not going anywhere. Just them, and then I’m headed back to you.”
    Oh… “Then what do we do? Where there’s one Gianori, there’s more.”
    “My vote is to napalm their houses and car-bomb any survivors. Taste of their own