Ravenous (Steel Brothers Saga 11)

Stupid clichés.

“She won’t leave until Jade has the baby,” Talon continued. “She’s made that clear.”

That gave me about five months.

Five months of what? Pining for her? Trying to stay away from her? Ignoring her?

“Maybe she should go now,” I said, the words hurting my heart. “Once you hire a housekeeper.”

“Not doable. She absolutely won’t leave until Jade has the baby,” Talon said. “They’re best friends, as close as you and Joe are.”

I nodded. What could I say? I wanted to see the birth of Joe’s child as much as Marj wanted to see the birth of Jade’s.

“Are we done here? I have to make a phone call.” I nodded slightly to Joe.

“I think so,” Joe said. “Anything else, guys?”

Ryan and Talon both shook their heads.

“I have a call to make too.” Joe stood and followed me out of the office and out of the house.

“What’s up?” he asked me once we were outside.

“I got another call,” I said. “Some unidentified number, and a male voice said, ‘I’m watching.’”

“Shit.” Joe spat on the ground, which wasn’t like him. “Did you do a search for the number?”

“Not yet. But it’s still on my phone.” I grabbed my phone and pulled up the relevant call. “I’ll text it to you.”

“No, don’t. We still don’t know whether our phones are somehow being monitored. Just let me see it.”

I handed the phone to Joe, and he wrote it down on a small pad of paper he pulled out of his pocket. “Man, this takes me back to elementary school days, before we did everything on computers. I haven’t used handwriting so much in twenty-five years at least.”

“That reminds me,” I said. “I remembered Justin’s last name. Valente.”

He arched his eyebrows. “I’ll be damned. That’s it. How did you remember?”

“It came to me in the hot tub. No lie.”

“Maybe you should take a soak more often.”

“It was a fluke. I was trying to relax, and I kind of drifted into… I don’t know. It wasn’t sleep exactly.”

“Self-hypnosis,” Joe said. “Melanie told me how that happens.”

“Yeah? Well, I tried to duplicate it, but I couldn’t. I was thinking…”

“What?”

“Melanie used guided hypnosis to help Talon recover memories. Do you think—”

“No,” Joe said adamantly. “We have to keep Melanie out of this. I hate lying to her, but this has to remain between the two of us.”

“Yeah, I get that. What if I saw someone else? Another therapist?”

“No,” he said again.

“But the memories are there, Joe. I know they are. I just can’t access them. It’s frustrating as hell.”