Defending Morgan (Mountain Mercenaries #3)(68)

“I know,” Morgan said morosely. “I was just hoping. As much as I’d hate for any of my friends to be behind this, not knowing is worse.”

Arrow didn’t know what to say to make her feel any better, and it frustrated him. Eventually, he simply asked, “Are you okay?”

She scowled and shook her head. “No. I’m not all right. I’m pissed.” Pushing to her feet, Morgan paced in front of Arrow. “It’s not cool that someone’s messing with you. And messing with you means that they’re messing with me. And that sucks! I mean, didn’t they do enough? Whoever did this is demented and sick. They don’t care that they’ve hurt me, want to keep hurting me. How could someone think this is okay? What’s next? Are they going to burn down the apartment? Maybe they’ll put a bomb under your truck and blow us up. Maybe they’ll lie in wait at the grocery store. Or better yet, they’ll grab Allye or Chloe and threaten to do to them what they did to me. When will this end? What did I do that was so horrible to deserve this?”

“Nothing,” Arrow said from right next to her. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It’s getting harder and harder to believe that,” Morgan said, knowing she was seconds from losing it but not caring. “I’m the one who was tortured for a year. I’m the one who they’re still trying to torment. It doesn’t make any sense! I’m just a bee lady. I’ve never hurt anyone that I know about. But I had to do something to someone for them to be so pissed off at me. I just don’t get it!”

“Morgan—”

“No. I’m done. This is crazy. Who do I need to talk to in order to get this to stop? The police? The FBI? This Rex guy? Who?”

“Morgan . . . ,” Arrow tried again.

But she was on a roll. “Maybe I’ll see if I can find someone in the mob. Or maybe I can find a motorcycle club who doesn’t mind offing people. Who do you know that I can talk to? Oooh, I know, I’ll find one of those Mexican drug lords and sic them on the case. They’ll figure it out and—umph!”

Her words were cut off by Arrow putting his shoulder to her belly. He had her over his shoulder before she could finish her thought.

“What are you—Arrow! Put me down!”

“Nope,” he said calmly, and headed for the front door.

Morgan struggled for a moment, then stilled when she felt his hand land on her ass with a smack. “Calm down, beautiful,” he said.

In shock, she shut up . . . and then started grinning. By the time they’d reached the elevator, she was giggling. Maybe she was losing it. “Arrow, I’m not wearing any shoes,” she protested.

“You don’t need shoes,” he told her as he put her on her feet in front of the elevator.

“I don’t have my purse and haven’t even styled my hair.”

“Don’t care. You are in need of some serious nature therapy.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll see,” Arrow said. Then he sobered and said, “I’m going to fix this for you, beautiful. This is not your life, so don’t get used to it.”

“Don’t get used to being able to speak my mind, freak out, and have my gorgeous boyfriend haul me over his shoulder to stop me from said freak-out and have him take me somewhere I know is going to be awesome and beautiful?”

“Do get used to that,” he said with a small smile. “But not the freak-out part. This is going to end. You’ll be safe to do what you want, where you want, with who you want.”

“I know the second two things, but I’m still working on the first,” Morgan told him shyly, and was rewarded by the blinding smile that crossed his face.

The elevator chimed as it opened, and Morgan said, “I really should go back and get my shoes.”

“Nah,” Arrow told her, and pulled her into the elevator. “I’ll carry you.”

“You’re going to get sick of hauling me around.”

“Never,” Arrow vowed.

That felt good. “And I’m not back to my fighting weight.” Morgan patted her belly. “But I’m working on it.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“I should call my mom and get her cookie recipe. She makes these amazing, gooey, sinful s’mores cookies that are to die for.”

“You can ask her when you talk to her in three days,” Arrow said firmly.

Morgan knew she still had a few days to go before she should call her mom again, and she’d been okay with limiting how much they spoke, but it was times like this when she really missed her mom.

“I’m sure she’s sorry for pushing so hard,” Morgan said in a conciliatory tone.

“You promised,” Arrow reminded her.

Morgan huffed out a sigh. She had promised to give her mom some cooling-off time. She’d told her exactly why she was going to limit her calls, and even though Ellie hadn’t been happy, she’d agreed to try to be less aggressive in pushing Morgan to move back to Albuquerque.

“Fine. But you’re going to be sorry once you taste these cookies, because they’re absolutely amazing.”

“That much sugar isn’t good for you,” was Arrow’s response.

Morgan rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”