Controlled Burn (Blackbridge Security 8)
Kason and Kayleigh have watched Mystery Man Medano open that safe probably a hundred times, and they’re so engrossed watching it over and over, that they both miss Finn’s arrival to the office.
“Hey,” Finn says, walking toward me as if I’m his single focus, but he stops short of kissing me, giving me an awkward pat on the back like a weirdo before stepping away. “What are they watching?”
His accent drifts through the air, reaching the kids. Kason snaps his eyes up first, nearly shoving the laptop to the floor in his bid to get off the sofa. Thankfully, Kayleigh catches it before I’d be forced to buy Wren a new one. I get the idea that I wouldn’t get away with a purchasing a regular three hundred dollar one from Target to make up for it.
“Finn! You met the Mystery Man?” Kason asks, running up and stopping so close to Finn’s legs that he has to hold his head way back to look in the man’s eyes.
“I did.”
The unpleasantness playing in Finn’s eyes tells me that it wasn’t the best meeting.
“I saw you on the video!” Kason says. “You’re a movie star now!”
“I guess so,” Finn agrees, winking at me when he notices me smiling at their interaction.
“Did you see what was inside?”
“I didn’t stick around for that part.”
“Come look,” Kason says, and I nearly fall when my son grabs Finn’s hand and all but drags him across the room.
“It was just some papers,” Kayleigh says, ruining the surprise.
Kason sneers at her but doesn’t hesitate to turn the laptop so Finn can watch himself find the combination on the safe and quickly, without flare, open the thing up.
“Just paperwork?” Finn asks, a satisfied grin on his face.
“Stocks and bonds dating back before World War I,” Wren clarifies.
“No shi—really?” Finn quickly corrects, his eyes darting to me in apology.
I want to laugh, to tell him that Jude terrified Knox with death talk and Kit handed out a grenade, but I’m stuck watching the man who Wren all but said didn’t like kids, wondering if that’s the case, why is he smiling at my kids, as they tell him the details of the video despite him being there for most of it, with patience.
Chapter 28
Finnegan
“If you’re waiting for me to tell you you’re the greatest thing on the internet, it’s not going to happen,” I mutter, walking around my condo, picking up toys.
“That wouldn’t even help, but feel free to express those opinions,” Wren says with glee.
“I need for you to make it stop.”
“I can’t. You saw what happened with Flynn and Remington. Plus, if you didn’t want the attention, why did you lift your shirt on camera?”
“It was hot as fuck in that basement, asshole,” I snarl. “I was wiping sweat away. I didn’t even realize I did it until I watched that stupid video.”
“Now you’re an internet sensation. Deacon and Pam should be the ones angry, not you. They’re the ones having to wade through another wave of calls for ridiculous jobs. You wouldn’t believe the women calling about you cracking their safes, and I won’t go into detail the mentions of cobweb removal.”
“I know you have the ability to wipe #BlackbridgeSpecial from the internet.”
It’s been a week since I opened that damn safe, and it took all of three hours of it going live for shit to hit the fan.
“I can’t do it. Don’t you think I’ve been asked by several people already?”
I huff my disappointment, knowing that if Wren was able to rid the internet of the stupid hashtag, Deacon would’ve insisted he do it long before now. There’s busy and then there’s too busy. We topped too busy months ago, and things haven’t slowed down since.
“Plus, I have bigger things to worry about.”
“Yeah? And what could you possibly be worried about?”
“Do you know how hard it is to convince Whitney to have kids?”
This information stops me dead in my tracks on the way to the boys’ room to put away a bucket of Legos.
“I didn’t know you were even thinking of having kids.”
“That’s the whole point. I got fucking baby fever out of nowhere. One minute, I’m making Kayleigh hot cocoa at the office and the next, I have thoughts like having one of these little things all the time doesn’t seem so bad. By the time I made it home, I was in full daddy mode and not like my normal call me daddy mode, like real, let’s have a fucking baby daddy mode.”
“That sounds complicated.”
“Not really. The convincing has been fun. Now we have to wait for the birth control to be out of her system, but I tell you man, I’m going to fill her—”
“No,” I snap. “I don’t want to hear about you filling anything up. I have to go.”
I end the call just as I hear Kendall’s key in the front door lock, and I can’t imagine what I look like, standing in the middle of the hall with a scowl on my face, holding a bucket of toys.