Tempted & Taken (Men of Haven #4)(113)

Trevor piped up. “I can ask one of the girls to stay with you if you want.”

“No, I can handle it.”

Zeke gave her a knowing look, pulled a card out of his billfold, and handed it over. “You need help, call. We’ll get her where she needs to be.”

As in to an ER, or a place that had a minimum thirty-day stay? God knew, she’d begged her sister to at least try an AA meeting, but Callie and their dad had cornered all the stubborn genes for the family.

Her hybrid hummed up beside them and Zeke stepped away. “Lay her down in the back, Trev.”

The bouncer hopped out of the driver’s seat and opened up the back door for Trevor, who’d given up steering Callie and opted for carrying her to the car.

Jace moved in close and lowered his voice. “She get like this a lot?”

The men situated her sister in the back seat.

“Yeah.” God, she was tired of this routine. She’d give just about anything to surrender, curl up into a little ball and let someone else handle Callie’s tricks for a day or two.

Jace splayed his hand along the small of her back and urged her forward as a big, mean-looking bike with even nastier sounding pipes rolled up behind her car. “Danny’s gonna follow you home and help you get Sleeping Beauty settled in for the night.”

“I don’t think—”

“If your sister passes out, can you get her in the house on your own?”

“No.”

“Then stop thinking and let us handle this,” Jace said. “Danny so much as breathes funny, you call the number on Zeke’s card and we’ll deal with it.”

Another good point. After everything they’d done for her tonight, the odds of any of them having bad intentions were pretty slim. And her dog would leave even a big guy like Danny a heaping bloody mess if Viv so much as snapped a finger.

He opened the car door and she slid behind the wheel, fastening her seat belt in a bit of a daze. “Thank you. For everything.”

“Just doing what decent people do.” He started to shut her door and stopped. Leaning slightly into her space, he seemed to listen for something, glanced at the stereo display, then eased back. He studied her car, Callie curled up in the back seat, then Viv. His gaze lingered on her hair and he ran a few fingers through the curly strands. “Like it better down. Kinda wild.”

Her heart tripped, and the last bit of logic left in her brain poofed to nothing. She clenched the steering wheel and swallowed, grateful to find her mouth wasn’t hanging open.

He winked and stepped back. “Take care, sugar.”

The car door thumped shut, muting out everything but the quiet strains of Shinedown and Callie’s muffled snore.

She put the car in Drive and forced her eyes to aim straight ahead. She wouldn’t look back. He might’ve nudged her long-dead sex drive out of a coma, but he was bad news. Everything about him screamed danger and headstrong alpha, and she’d sworn she wouldn’t have that kind of life for herself. One look in the back seat showed where that landed a person.

Still, making a right turn onto Highway 75 for her town house in Uptown instead of circling the block for another peek was tempting as hell.