Page 46 of Reckless Love

What am I going to do?

Chapter Sixteen

Stephen

The main office for Tucker Securities is in downtown Tucker’s Town, right in the heart of the country’s only city. Owen and I often meet at his mansion for a drink outside the city limits when a job finishes to debrief, so it feels a bit ominous to be called to the head office.

When I arrive, Owen’s middle-aged secretary, Shelly, tells me that Owen’s had a personal emergency and is running late, but she lets me into his office.

Personal emergencies have been happening a lot—his focus is divided, and while I understand why, it annoys me. I’ve just bought into the Bellerive division, and if he lets the international component wither because he’s too busy babysitting his best friend, that’s a huge financial problem.

Owen’s bread and butter is his ability to get specialized Tucker Security employees into the nooks and crannies of the inner circles of extremely wealthy clients. His former special ops military experience coupled with the Tucker name, which is synonymous worldwide with wealth and privilege, have served him well as he’s built Tucker Securities. If he drops the ball now, we’re all fucked.

Given how I’ve behaved with Ava the last few weeks—including last night at Café Plutus when I couldn’t stop looking at her, alone for most of the night on what turned out to be her anniversary—I haven’t got much room to criticize anyone.

The little Raul values her makes a ball of rage form in my gut any time I’m confronted with his behavior. The things I would have given before I left for Ava to be my wife, for Landon to be my kid…

My moral leg to stand on is pretty fucking wobbly to be pointing to other people’s shortcomings. So I won’t be calling Owen out even if I should. I don’t need him taking too close a look at my behavior. We might be partners in the Bellerive division, but we’re far from equals.

“Sorry,” Owen says, breezing into his oversized office and circling his desk to fall back into his rolling leather chair. “I keep getting dropped in the shit.”

I purse my lips to keep them buttoned.

“I know,” he says, holding up a hand. “I know.” He sighs. “I’m working long hours so my bucket of shit doesn’t become our bucket of shit, trust me.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“I understand how this looks.”

“We’re still short-staffed.” I can’t help pointing it out.

“I’ve got about five former military recruits lined up. None of this straight-from-high school bullshit anymore.”

“The immigration laws make it tough.”

“Tough but not impossible. There are Bellerive people with dual citizenships all over the world—just gotta track them and entice them into the fold. My brother, Weston, is running some fancy, probably illegal computer program to find those people for us. Then I’m doing outreach. We won’t be so strapped forever. Going local created a higher demand than I expected. People have taken our security presence as some sort of status symbol.”

“Seems accurate.” It’s a pattern that Owen probably could have predicted if he was on the outside of all the wealthy bullshit. One person does something and then the rest rush to it like lemmings. It’s one of the things I used to love the most about Ava—she never followed the crowd.

Though she was sometimes leading it over the cliff.

I run a hand down my face at the memories of some of the scrapes she got herself into back then. It wasn’t all bad, though. Ava’s half the reason her sister-in-law, Ember, created Ember Whitten handbags. Now, they’re all the rage on and off the island. And she’s clearly put that same drive behind Reckless.

“Other than Marlo, who I sanctioned and sent back to boot camp, how’d the Santos contract go?” Owen asks, clicking open a document on his computer and turning his screen, so I can see while he types. All of his notes are shared with me regarding local contracts.

“We had those overnight kids, who I recommended sending back to training.”

“I fired those dipshits,” Owen says. “You can’t train stupid. Sleeping and playing video games is the height of stupidity.”

I can’t disagree with him there. They had seemed really fucking young to be together on a high-profile assignment. In the past, we’d talked about pairing rookies with established security, but we just don’t have the numbers.

“Ava didn’t give you too many problems? I’ve heard she’s settled down.”

Settled down. Something about that phrase in relation to Ava feels wrong. There’s still a hint of her former wildness around the edges, as though she’s kept herself on a leash. Or maybe he has. Though I don’t understand why she’d allow it. I never made any attempts to settle her down, except at the end when I suggested we get married.

The memory of that conversation makes me flush with embarrassment.

“She was fine. She’s a good mom and, by all accounts, a good boss at work. Public and private sentiment, at least where Ava is concerned, seems to be favorable.”