“He jumps from Harleys to pets to soup and cooks, and he thinks I’m nuts?” Evie ladled a mug of soup for Loretta and popped the rolls from the oven.
“You’re contagious.” Loretta sipped contentedly from her mug. “And a good cook. You should get my cook’s allowance, but I should decide what to spend it on. If there’s money for a cook, then there’s enough to take me to Disney World.”
Evie laughed. “You’re a chip off the old block. Bet your dad was good at bargaining.”
At least she had the kid’s respect and a perceptive kid at that. She could live with that. Humming, Evie dished up her own lunch and sat at the counter. She supposed she ought to serve meals in the dining room but clearing the table of debris was too much trouble. And expecting the men to sit down to a formal table would be too much to ask.
The room filled with testosterone as three giant ex-Marines poured through the back door, obediently washing at the sink before filling soup mugs and grabbing rolls.
Jax’s phone rang. Setting down his lunch, he answered it without looking. When his face froze, Evie checked his aura. The red killer flares were back, and his expression hardened into that square-jawed ruthlessness she’d first noticed about him.
“Right. Got it. Will do. Thanks for the warning.” He shoved the phone in his pocket. Without a word of explanation, he snatched another roll and started for the door.
Evie grabbed an overripe peach from the fruit bowl and flung it at his broad back. When he didn’t turn around, Reuben and Roark joined the game, using spoons and salt cellars and anything loose they could fling. Their aim was more deadly.
Jax halted with the back door half open and glared at them. “What?”
“Your aura is not subtle, meathead.” Evie glared back. “You’re feeling murderous. Who warned you about what?”
“Am I going to have to tell everyone about every call I receive if I stay here?” he demanded.
“Your bubble shrinks when you don’t.” Loretta nibbled at her roll and watched him with curiosity.
“I can live with that.” He stormed out.
“No, he can’t,” Evie and Loretta said at the same time.
Without being told, Reuben and Roark shoved rolls in their mouths, picked up their mugs, and carried them after Jax.
Eight
“Oh,for punk’s sake, she has you brainwashed already?” Jax asked in disgust as his friends appeared on the back porch, stuffing their faces, presumably to find out what wasshrinking his bubble. Gah, he’d have to take on Norton’s practice and move into his office just to have a life of his own.
“Food,” Reuben muttered, finishing his mouthful of roll. “Games. Running water. All good.Punk?”
Jax assumed that meant they wanted to appease Evie to stay here. He got that. He didn’t have to like it. He ignored the reference to his new vocabulary—because Evie was brainwashing him on that, and he was a damned hypocrite. But she was right, kids shouldn’t be subjected to the language he’d used in the military.
“We got your back,couillon, so you might as well tell us.” Roark glugged his soup as if he hadn’t eaten in days.
This was what happened when he lived with others. Jax appreciated his sister’s need to be a hermit. People interfered. He was used to doing things alone.
“Look, we need a dividing line here.” He thought furiously, trying to find a way of separating his private life from his business one. Without a real business, that was laughable. “I’m supposed to pay you when you help me out. If I’m sinking my savings into buying a practice, I can’t pay you. You need to be looking for real jobs.”
“Got one.” Reuben poked at his mug of soup with a spoon, inspecting it for inedibles. “Sensible Solutions. We have three more contracts lined up. Newspaper played up Evie’s ghost-talking and us hunting down evidence, so now everyone thinks they got ghosts or cheating uncles. Word spreads. Evie’s like this big happy balloon floating above the town advertising our services. You don’t get what she does because it’s outside the norm. You have to watch her in action.”
Jax had watched Evie in action. She was a loose cannon with a lit fuse that sparkled like a kid’s Fourth of July toy—until she exploded. “I don’t thinkyouget what Evie does. Did you know she’s taken martial arts training? And she’s damned good.” If he hadn’t had the same training—and if she wasn’t half his size—she’d have maimed him for life when she’d thought he threatened Loretta a few months back.
“That bit of a thing?” Roark asked scornfully. “Might be good for keeping the kid in line.”
“Fat lot you know,” Jax said in scorn, thinking of how she’d cut in and out of speeding semis like a race car driver. Loose cannon knew no fear. Which scared the shit out of him.
Therewas a point to ponder when he woke up with nightmares of Evie exploding like an IED. Or vanishing from his life as his parents had done. He was a head case.
“Evie’s not the point,” Reuben argued. “You can’t keep treating us as if you’re still our commanding officer.”
“You never followed orders when Iwasyour officer,” Jax reminded him.
“Well, yeah, because we got brains and know how to use them. Thing is, now we’re all on the same page. We gotta have each other’s backs.” Reuben finished off his roll and looked as if he wanted to go back for more. “If that phone call was someone warning you off, then that affects all of us.”