Claiming Sarah (Ace Security #5)(54)

Silence met her statement.

“That’s it?” Felicity asked after a moment.

Sarah stared at her in confusion. “Uh . . . yeah? Should I be doing something else?”

“How about getting a gun? And a knife? And thinking up a plan just in case this guy gets you?”

“Cole’s been teaching me self-defense,” Sarah said quietly.

“Look, I don’t want to scare you, but that might not be enough. Trust me, I know,” Felicity said, her words slurring slightly because of the amount of alcohol she’d drunk.

“Leese,” Grace warned.

“What? No!” Felicity exclaimed. “I like her. She’s nice. Nice! You saw her earlier when she went up to the bar to get drinks. That skank ho cut her off and flashed her tits at the bartender, and Sarah didn’t even get pissed. She just waited her turn. Who waits their turn at a bar? No one! That’s who. You shove your money under the bartender’s nose so he’ll wait on you. Then when that other chick looked down her nose at her, she didn’t say anything. Not one word! The last thing I want is some crazy guy who thinks he’s in love getting his hands on her. She needs to arm herself! Be ready to go all whoop-ass on him if she has to.”

Sarah put a hand on Felicity’s tattoo-covered arm to try to calm her down. “Felicity, it’s okay.”

“It’s not!” the other woman insisted. “It’s scary as hell, and I don’t want you to go through that. When Joseph took me, I wasn’t as prepared as I should’ve been. He could’ve shot me in the head! And if his even-crazier father hadn’t shown up when he did, I would’ve been dead. And it wasn’t just me. He took Nate!”

“Leese!” Grace said more forcefully, but Felicity ignored her. She turned and grabbed hold of Sarah’s arm, her fingers digging into her skin. “Because of me, he almost ruined my best friend’s life by taking her baby. What if this Owen guy tries to get to you through Cole? Or burns our gym down? Or tries to kidnap one of the babies again? You have to be ready. You have to have a plan!”

Sarah wasn’t sure if Felicity was being a bitch on purpose—until she saw the tears in her eyes. This badass woman was extremely distraught over what Owen might do to Sarah and maybe even to others.

Sarah started to panic. Felicity was right. She couldn’t handle it if Owen did something to someone else because of her. “Oh my God,” she whispered and turned to Grace. “I don’t want your babies to be taken.” Then she looked at Alexis. “And you were already almost buried alive once, it can’t happen again.” She stared over at Bailey. “And you and Joel . . . you almost died of ass-fix-ee-tion . . . or whatever . . .” She waved her hand in the air as she butchered the word. Then she poked Felicity in the shoulder. “And I don’t want you to be shot in the head!”

“Everyone, just calm down,” Bailey, the only sober one, demanded. “No one is getting kidnapped, buried, smothered, or shot.”

“You don’t know that!” Sarah said in a high-pitched, stressed-out voice. “Today it’s nice presents and love notes. Tomorrow Owen could hate me and all my friends. And you guys are my friends. I haven’t even had friends before! I don’t want to lose you!”

“You aren’t going to lose us,” Bailey started, before Alexis got up off her chair and came over to where Sarah was sitting at the bar-height table. She threw her arm around her and leaned heavily into her side.

“You’re one of us,” Alexis said seriously, even though her words were slurred. “Grace only had Felicity for a friend because her awful parents were super awful. I was too rich to have friends. Bailey was a former gang leader’s girlfriend, and everyone was scared of her, and Felicity didn’t allow herself to have friends other than Grace and Cole because she was scared of her stalker. We’re like the anti-friend friends. And since you’re with Cole, and he’s Felicity’s best friend, and she’s Grace’s best friend, and Grace is my sister-in-law, and Bailey is common-law married to my man’s brother . . . you’re now one of us!”

Sarah couldn’t even follow Alexis’s drunken reasoning, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was being invited into the inner circle of this amazing group of women. “I accept!” she blurted.

Everyone cheered except for Bailey. She rolled her eyes, but smiled and held up her water glass as Alexis proposed a toast.

“To Sarah! The nice one!”

“To Sarah!” everyone echoed.

Sarah’s eyes filled with tears.

“No crying!” Grace ordered, pointing her finger at Sarah. “If you cry, I’ll cry. And if I cry, Logan will be worried, and he won’t make love to me in my slutty new black dress!”

Felicity laughed. “As if!” she exclaimed, obviously having gotten herself under control. “There’s no chance in hell he won’t attack you the second you walk through the door.”

“Our guys love our LBDs,” Alexis added.

“And when we get tipsy!” Grace added.

“Tipsy?” Bailey muttered. “Try trashed.”

“Don’t be a hater,” Alexis said as she stumbled back around the table to her chair and hoisted herself onto it. “Just because you’ve got a bun in the oven and can’t imbibe with us doesn’t mean you have to rain on our parade.”