Unbridled and Unjustified [The Double Rider Men's Club 11] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (2 page)

Her friend nodded and backed away from the door. Ava entered and set about making fried chicken, whipped potatoes, corn pudding, and buttermilk biscuits. Good comfort food always made her feel better.

She placed the shotgun upright in the hall closet behind some coats, and then she locked the door and put the key around her neck. Hopefully, Mr. White wouldn’t be able to send anyone else out to bother them for a few days. She’d have to think of a better way to hide Marisol and her son for the next unwanted visit. Putting them in the basement or the other hiding place in the den wasn’t foolproof.

Almost a month ago, she’d seen Marisol limping slowly along the side of a back road, holding the hand of her five-year-old son Javier. After being beaten to within an inch of her life by her drunken, abusive husband, Marisol left him sleeping, took their son, and ran away. Luck had been on Marisol’s side in the form of several rides from kindly strangers, even in a day and age where hitchhiking wasn’t the best way to travel. Not like it ever had been. But she’d made it a fair distance away from her husband by the time Ava found her.

Still black and blue from the last beating, Marisol gratefully accepted a ride. Ava brought them to her home. She’d been working to turn this fortuitously picked-up-for-a-song house into a bed-and-breakfast. Starting over herself, Ava found a kinship with Marisol. She hired the grateful woman to help her finish fixing the place up.

Together, they cleared out junk, cleaned endlessly, and readied the seven bedrooms for a grand opening planned a couple of months away. The crew she’d hired to rewire the house had to tear into every wall in the old place to update the electrical circuits to contemporary standards. Then new drywall, mud, and spackle had been reapplied. It was pricey, but worth it in Ava’s eyes. She wanted to do this right, so she spared no expense.

The late spring had been very temperate and cooperative thus far, allowing much more progress than she’d expected. The construction crew working on the interior had finished early and left just after lunch. The painters were due next week. After that, Ava figured she needed only a few more finishing touches, and of course all the bedroom furniture, to eventually make a fairly decent living with this venture. A business she’d never expected to look forward to.

Marisol being in her life helped her as she licked her own wounds after a dismal relationship failure a year ago. At least her ex hadn’t been beating the shit out of her. Instead, she’d been completely blindsided one day when she discovered her fiancé in bed with his bimbo-blonde, big-breasted secretary. Her ex hadn’t even pulled his cock out of his mistress when Ava discovered them panting and groaning loudly in their master bedroom. If fact, he’d acted like he was annoyed that she’d interrupted his afternoon fuck. He’d frowned darkly over one sweaty shoulder as his hips had continued to thrust. “What are you doing here? I thought you had an economics class.” He promptly groaned in that certain way that he did as he climaxed. He then collapsed on top of his current bedmate.

Shocked that she was so calm in the wake of her world crumbling around her ears, Ava had cleared her throat and returned, “It was canceled. Meanwhile, you’re sleeping with your secretary? How cliché.” Her first thought had been she needed to keep from crying, but that turned out to be easy. She was livid over his lack of remorse over being caught. Infuriated that he had the audacity to
finish up
fucking his secretary before turning to deal with her, Ava found her spine had stiffened in the wake of his bad behavior.

“I’m his business assistant,” the bimbo corrected her from beneath her ex’s body.

“Thanks for the clarification,” Ava said with a snarl. And with that enlightenment, there was not a shred of sadness left. Fury raced through her veins. She turned and walked away. He’d put clothes on and found her in the kitchen.

Further discussion, after his self-named “business assistant” left the apartment, only yielded more pain when she found out the affair had been going on almost as long as she and her ex been together.

Ava had been so busy killing herself getting a business degree and working three part-time jobs to survive and to pay for school, she’d apparently overlooked what a shithead the man she lived with was.

Truthfully, it hadn’t been such a huge loss once she considered their lackluster history, but she’d kicked herself over being fooled for so long. Until she’d walked in on them, she hadn’t ever suspected he was a cheater. And in true
shithead
fashion, he promptly blamed
her
for being too busy to satisfy his needs. Perhaps he’d had a point. But she decided fairly quickly that she deserved better than a rat bastard cheater for a fiancé.

Unable to afford the apartment they lived in on her own, Ava had moved into an inexpensive hotel later that afternoon. Her hard-won diploma had eventually been sent to a US Post Office box nearby. She continued working her three part-time jobs to save enough to gain some collateral. She’d then secured a loan a few months later to live her dream and open a bed-and-breakfast out of state.

Returning to the place she’d grown up in had been a lesson in healing for her soul. Ava searched for and found this perfect house, paying practically nothing for it. The place had good bones and merely needed tender loving care to bring it back to full beauty.

The bulk of the money she’d borrowed went into modernization. She’d hired a local crew to help her with the structural aspects of the remodel. They’d removed the old walls in the place all the way down to the studs. She’d then had the entire house rewired and upgraded to the standards of the current century. The company had then sent another crew out to drywall everything, and the painters would arrive next week. She was so close to realizing her newfound dream she could almost taste it.

After their early supper, Marisol bathed Javier, read him a story, and put him to bed. She joined Ava on the front porch for sweet tea and quiet conversation. They’d done this each and every night. It was a custom Ava always intended to do. At the end of the day, unless harsh weather prevented it, she planned to be on this front porch after dinner and before bed to relax and reflect on her day. She called it quiet time. It was therapeutic and well needed during this lengthy and involved project. She figured it would always be a welcome treat or something to look forward to on challenging days.

With the summer almost here, the sun stayed out later and later each night. They were about to retire inside when Marisol stiffened like some new threat was about to surface. She lifted a hand and pointed to the distant road. “Someone is coming,” she said with disheartening fear in her hushed tone.

Ava looked over one shoulder. Now what? In the distance was the telltale dust trail of a new vehicle approaching her property. There was a slim possibility that it was headed toward the old Drummond place ten miles farther down the road, but since only Mr. Drummond lived there and she’d never ever seen anyone visit him in the entire year she’d been in this house, it was unlikely. As a matter of fact, the road dead-ended right at the sagging front porch of her neighbor’s rickety house. The tree-lined dirt road to his lonely, neglected place was a darkened, scary proposition even during broad daylight.

“Do you think Mr. White already sent those agents with a warrant?” Marisol blanched nearly white and backed up a step from the doorway to the shadows of the entry hall.

“I doubt it. There couldn’t have been enough time. But I’ve been wrong before.” She figured they’d find out in about three minutes. Turning to her friend, Ava said, “Go on now. Get Javier and hurry inside the secret compartment below the den window seat in the back of the house, where I showed you. I’ll stall whoever it is for a few minutes. Be very quiet. It’s hidden, but not soundproof. If they have a warrant, I have to let them search the house. And I’d hate for them to find you hiding.”

In the next second, Marisol was gone. Ava opened the screen door, retrieved the heavy gun from the hall closet with her key, and then pulled the front door completely closed and prepared to reload her weapon as she waited on the porch.

Shotgun weighing heavy against her arm for the second time today, Ava cracked the weapon open, pulled the fired shell out and grabbed another from her sweater pocket. By the time her gun was reloaded, a new vehicle had slowly entered the circle drive. It was a huge black SUV, just like she’d expect from a government agency.
Damn them
. Why couldn’t they leave Marisol and her son alone?

Someone
anonymous
had apparently seen Marisol with her one day shopping in town and assumed she was an illegal alien. According to Mr. White, the
anonymous
source had called the sheriff, and ICE was being notified. To hear him tell it, the government was about ready to break her door down. It had been a continual threat, increasing in the past couple of weeks.

Ava was fairly certain Mr. White was to blame. Also a self-proclaimed deputized citizen of the nearby town, he’d not only made the nuisance call, he’d also come out to her place twice now to throw his weight around and would most likely continue to be a pain in her backside until this was resolved.

Through it all, Ava had promised to keep Marisol and her son safe. While they lived under her roof, she would. Even if every member of all the combined law enforcement agencies in the country came knocking on her door. And they better have a warrant if they wanted inside.

Ava took in a deep quiet breath, held it for a count of three, and then exhaled, readying herself for whatever was about to happen next.

Both front doors of the huge black SUV opened at the same time, and two very large men stepped out onto her recently paved driveway.

Shit
. They looked exactly like government agents, too.

Mr. White certainly hadn’t wasted any time ratting her out to the authorities again. She watched them carefully, thinking they didn’t seem like they were in any hurry to approach.

The two men were both well over six feet tall in her estimation. One with dark hair and the other blond, each man was very, very attractive. Chiseled square jaws, clean shaven, but with a day’s growth already darkening their chins, and with muscles galore from shoulders to thighs. In fact, the two hunks could have been models for the annual Mr. Hottie G-Man calendar. Perhaps they already were.

Chiding herself for the fanciful notion, Ava stiffened her resolve and remained where she was. Centered on her porch at the top of the stairs that she’d whitewashed herself, clutching a shotgun she wouldn’t have the nerve to fire at a living person, and wishing she didn’t feel like she was about to lose such a hard-fought battle to keep a frightened woman and her child safe, Ava waited for them to come to her.

She watched as each of them stretched beside their respective sides of the vehicle. Had they come a long way? They looked good, but handsome or not, they were going to do an about-face and leave, or the birds would scatter out of the trees for a second time today when she put another shotgun blast into the air. Unless they had a warrant. She dearly hoped they did not.

Each man also closed their vehicle door exactly at the same time as if they’d choreographed it in advance. She thought they hadn’t seen her yet. They hadn’t reacted in any way to a pissed-off woman waiting impatiently and holding a weapon. She watched from her porch, still as a statue, for them to get closer. With the shotgun loaded for bear, Ava tightened her hands around the barrel and grip.

The two approached together, walking straight and true to the bottom step of her porch.

“Are you the owner of this house?” the dark-haired one asked. His deep voice sent a shiver from her nipples to her pussy.
Damn
. She hadn’t had such vivid lust for a man in quite a long spell. She was a bit out of practice. Her libido piped up with a sincere desire to hear him speak again.

He was a bit taller than the blond, but that wasn’t saying much. They were both giants. His overall expression seemed to say,
Don’t fuck with me
. And he hadn’t once glanced at her gun. He kept his focus on her face. More specifically, he looked into her eyes.

Could he see to the depths of her soul? She mentally shook her head and tried to focus on the problem at hand. She wasn’t going to trust him just because she suddenly had the hots for an attractive stranger. She fixed her gaze on his icy, light blue-gray eyes, too. His mesmerizing stare relaxed her. She needed to find some backbone and get rid of these two intruders.

Deciding not to answer his question regarding the ownership of her home, she said, “If you all are selling something, I’m not interested. You can just turn around, and go back the way you came.”
Lie. Lie. Lie.
She’d buy his entire stock and beg for more, if he merely spoke again.

The blond cracked the briefest of smiles when she said the words
selling something
.

The dark-haired man simply looked further annoyed. “My name is Declan Westfall. I’m a private investigator working in connection with a federal agency on an immigration case. This is my partner Troy Markham.” The other man nodded once politely.

Damn it all to hell
. Marisol wasn’t an immigration case. She was hiding from a drunken, wife-beating bastard. Marisol wasn’t sure what action her husband had taken in the wake of her sudden absence. Was she listed as a missing person? Or had her husband filed a complaint against her for taking their son away? Either way, if a federal case were opened to investigate her, Ava feared Marisol’s husband would find her and Javier very easily. The truth would keep her in the states, but her husband would have her again.