Free RYDER: A Standalone Military Romance (Blake Security Book 1) by Celina McKane

sweet tea, I asked her, “Granny, will you please turn on your phone and answer it when I call?” She only gave me a non-committal shrug. Sometimes I wondered if my grandfather had been a saint. I’ll just bet she was hell on wheels when she was younger. Resigned to not getting a straight answer about that, I said, “Has Ol’ Sly been leaving you alone?”
    She laughed and said, “I spect that depends on your idea of bein’ left alone.”
    Laughing cautiously I said, “What does that mean, Granny?”
    “He come round from time ta time.”
    “And when he comes around, you come inside, right?”
    “That depend on what I got ta do round here.”
    “Granny, that gator is gonna turn on you one of these days.”
    She waved an old palm at me and said, “Eat, cher .” I rolled my eyes and took another bite. “Ain’t no gator gonna wanna eat all dis ol’ white meat. I spoke ta Blake.”
    She was a master at changing the subject too, but this one I was interested in.
    “When was this?”
    “Before he left ta Cali, he come by. We had some gumbo and talked a while.”
    “How did that go?”
    “He’s fighting some demons, cher . He has to do that in his own way, and all we can do is be here for him when he wants us.”
    It was unlike my Granny to take such a passive stance. Knowing there was more to it, I said, “What kind of good gris-gris did you send him away with?”
    A gris-gris is a spell, and Granny has hundreds of them. She believes in the old Creole magic her ancestors claimed to possess, and even though Blake doesn’t, I’d be willing to bet he took whatever she gave him and didn’t argue. Nobody argued with Granny.
    She grinned and said, “Jus a lil’ dime to wear around his neck and ward off the evil spirits.”
    I laughed simply at the thought of my giant, grumpy friend wearing a dime with a hole drilled through it on a string around his neck. I was surprised that Granny hadn’t just given him a mirror to put outside his front door. She has one outside of hers, and I have one outside of mine to appease her.
    According to Creole legend, M’su Diable (the devil) is very vain and so enchanted with his own appearance that a mirror outside the door will distract him so much he’ll forget to go inside.
    Granny and I spent the rest of my visit talking about some work I was planning on doing to her house as soon as I got a break from work and her telling me all of the community gossip. I got back to the mansion just in time to send Leif home and find Alicia getting the baby ready for bed. Celia was dressed in a pair of fuzzy pink pajamas, and Alicia was holding her to her chest and rocking her to sleep. She had her eyes closed, too, and a pretty smile on her face.
    I stood at the door for a few minutes watching them. There was no denying the love Alicia had for that baby. If she had any connection to these kidnappers, I was sure that she didn’t know it. I couldn’t imagine her ever doing anything to hurt Celia or anyone else for that matter. She was one of those people who seemed to be made for motherhood. I wasn’t sure why that affected me so deeply. I’d not only never had a mother I’d never even considered having kids.
                  I tore myself away and slipped across the hall quietly to my own room. The Bransons had both been out when I came in, and for that I was grateful. I wasn’t necessarily eager to see either one of them. Matt was still angry about Blake being in L.A. to speak with Belinda, the baby mama, and Julia just rubbed me wrong all the way around. The less contact I had with either of them, the better, I thought.
    I left word at the front gate when I came through that I was back if they needed me, and when I got to my room, I tuned my radio into the station they were using for private communication. I lay down on the bed and stretched out. This was one of the least physically challenging cases I’d ever had, but mentally, I was exhausted.
    It was worse not