Free Siren in Bloom [Texas Sirens 6] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) by Sophie Oak

the door. Excellent. Maybe someone had gone bonkers in the dungeon and needed intense therapy. Yeah, that would help. He opened the door to his office. Kitten stood there, biting her bottom lip, her eyes sliding away from his as though her shoes were suddenly very interesting.
    Kitten. The secretary Julian had foisted off on him. Kitten, who barely managed to answer a phone without crying she was so damn shy.
    “You have a call, Sir.”
    “You don’t have to call me Sir outside the dungeon, Kitten. My name is Leo.” He’d explained it to her before, but she simply continued. She was here because she was Finn’s cousin, the only member of his family he still spoke to, and Julian was a sucker.
    Note, he didn’t hire Kitten to work for him. No, the bastard had foisted the wretchedly shy girl off on Leo. Still, she was a sweet girl.
    “Yes, Sir Leo. You had a call. He knows you. He said he knows you. He could be lying. Kitten doesn’t know. Kitten is not very good at catching lies. Kitten believed it when the Prince of Nigeria wrote me and wanted me to trade checks with him. Did you know he was willing to pay millions of dollars just to get his money out of the country? Kitten thinks Nigeria must be a very dangerous place. Luckily Kitten didn’t have any checks to send him. It was a scam. That’s what Finn told Kitten. Can you believe it?”
    And Kitten had serious self-esteem issues. In the months she’d been at The Club, Leo still hadn’t heard her refer to herself in anything but the third person. “Shocking. Now, who called?”
    She blinked a couple of times and then the light came into her eyes. “Oh, the phone call. Yes. You had a phone call. His name was Steve Holder.”
    Leo did a double take. Seriously? Steve “Madman” Holder was calling him? It had been years and years. God, it had been forever since he’d talked to anyone from the Teams. When he’d walked away from the Navy, he’d cut himself off.
    A vision of Ada assaulted him.
    Fuck, there was a reason he’d left it all behind.
    “I’ll call him back later.” He turned and walked back to his office. He didn’t want to talk to Holder. Holder would bring back a million bad memories, but he did have someone he wanted to talk to. He picked up the phone.
    “Hello?”
    “Hello, dear,” Leo said, his voice filled with warmth for the woman on the other end of the line. Seeing Kitten had made him think of Janine. She was Kitten’s therapist, but she’d been much more to Leo. They’d been a horrible married couple, but they turned out to be pretty damn good friends.
    “Leo, it’s good to hear from you. I was going to call you to let you know Harry and I will be at The Club tonight. I think I have enough of my figure back to feel decent about shoving my body into some PVC. Not so sure about the heels, though. I think pregnancy ruined my feet. How weird is that?” Janine Halloway asked with a laugh. She and her husband had recently had baby number three.
    Janine was happy. Without him. Three years of marriage to him had been enough to throw her into the arms of another man.
    “Wolf is in town,” Leo said.
    There was a long pause. “I’ll be there early.”
    The phone clicked, and he looked at the clock. Hours. She wouldn’t be early enough.
     
    * * * *
     
    Shelley hopped onto the Blue Line going toward Mockingbird Station, her body slightly tired after the long, emotional day. It was crowded, the press of bodies reminding her that it was rush hour, but still a very nice man offered her his seat. She smiled gratefully and took it, placing her laptop bag at her feet and her purse in her lap. She settled in by the window as the train took off.
    Why had she listened to the denizens of Deer Run? Everyone in her tiny hometown had been against her coming to Dallas. They had sworn she’d be raped and killed the minute she entered Dallas County. Apparently that was what happened to small-town women who dared to go to the big city. Well, that or