Defending Harlow (Mountain Mercenaries #4)(67)

The others agreed that it was time to go, and Harlow noticed that Lowell didn’t protest. She wondered if he’d missed the cuddle time as much as she did.

“We’ll just let ourselves out,” Gray said dryly when Black didn’t stand up to see them to the door.

“You do that,” he said.

Everyone laughed and said their goodbyes. The women promised to be in touch soon, as they’d exchanged numbers.

“I’ll lock the door behind me,” Ro said.

“’Preciate it,” Black told him.

Then it was just the two of them. Harlow didn’t move from her spot on top of Lowell. If anything, she melted into him further.

“Have fun tonight?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“You sound surprised,” Lowell observed.

“It’s just . . . they’re all so down-to-earth. I never in a million years thought I would be drinking with Morgan Byrd. I mean, I watched that show where she was interviewed, and if that happened to me, I’d probably still be in a mental hospital trying to deal with the shit she went through.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Lowell said.

“You don’t know that,” Harlow protested.

“I do. You’ve got an amazing core of strength inside you. It doesn’t come to the surface very often, because you don’t need it, but every time one of those assholes around the shelter says shit to you, or does something, your first thought is for others. You want to know how Loretta’s dealing with it. If the kids heard. If the women saw. I have no doubt whatsoever that you can more than deal with whatever comes your way.”

“Thanks,” Harlow whispered.

“You sound tired.”

“For some reason, I got up at five thirty this morning. Maybe from my phone alerting me to a good-morning text,” Harlow quipped, then yawned.

He immediately followed suit and yawned as well.

She giggled. “I guess yawns really are contagious.”

“Yup. Why don’t you close your eyes for a while?” he asked.

“I should be going. I know you have stuff to do tomorrow.”

“Just for a while,” he cajoled. “I’ll wake you up in a bit and take you home. I just don’t feel like I’ve gotten to spend any time with you tonight.”

“We’ve been together practically all day,” she told him.

“But I’ve had to share you.”

“Wow. That was a really nice thing to say.”

“Hmmm,” he muttered. “I love my friends, but I was looking forward to hanging out with you all night. Instead, I got the third degree and had to share the steaks I bought with them.”

“But we got brownies in return,” Harlow teased.

“So you’d take brownies over my exclusive company?” he asked.

“No.” Harlow sat up and looked him in the eye. “I’ve had a wonderful time with you the last several days. From the hot-air balloon to watching you play Barbie dolls with Jody, to seeing you laugh and joke with your friends, to getting to know the other women. But sitting here like this, with just you, is the icing on the cake.”

He brought a hand up to her neck and urged her to rest on his shoulder once more. “Close your eyes. What’d you call it? Rest your eyeballs? We’ll get up in a bit.”

“Okay.” There was literally no other response she could give.



Nolan Woolf watched the man leave the shelter and sneered. Over the last week, he’d started sitting up on the third floor of the building next to the shelter, watching who came and went. He’d learned the men’s routines easily. They weren’t trying to conceal themselves or what they were doing.

If Loretta Royster thought hiring bodyguards would keep her precious building safe, she was mistaken.

Wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead, Nolan scowled as the man walked down the sidewalk toward the parking lot. He had a computer bag over his shoulder and looked like he was on a mission to get somewhere. To do something. To look up something.

Nolan felt his chance was slipping away. Loretta still hadn’t responded to any offers to buy the building. Why she was stalling, considering the harassment, he didn’t know. But it didn’t matter . . .

He’d put his other plan in motion. And he’d been reassured that action had already been taken. That the accusations had been taken seriously and were being investigated.

The government didn’t take kindly to people misappropriating funds earmarked for community services.

Why he hadn’t made the anonymous complaint earlier, he didn’t know.

Without money, Loretta Royster wouldn’t be able to stay in business. She’d have to take the offers to buy her property seriously. And when the time was right, Nolan would make one last bid, just a little higher than the rest, just to make sure she chose him. He could offer more than the building was worth, but that would just make him look suspicious. Especially if the bodyguards who’d been lurking around managed to look too deeply.

She should’ve just accepted his bid for the building; then he wouldn’t have had to resort to all the subterfuge, and her reputation wouldn’t be on the cusp of ruin.





Chapter Nineteen

After lunch the next day, Harlow stepped into Loretta’s third-floor office and shut the door behind her. It was a cozy space with a window that overlooked the alley on the back side of the building. There were bookshelves on one wall, full of books and odds and ends, a window seat beneath the window, and a large, wooden desk along another wall.