Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) (20 page)

Kennedy whacked Erin over the head with the younger girl’s sippy cup, which elicited a fresh wave of screams from both girls.

“Stop being a poopy head,” Logan yelled at the same time.

I raised a brow in my father’s direction. “Are you surprised?”

He laughed. “Not in the least.”

“I love them to pieces. But there’s only so much of this I can take. And since I’m the aunt and not the mommy…” I left that hanging, glancing over at Sierra, who looked as harried as I’d ever seen her while she mopped up the bowl of baby cream of wheat that Finn had just gleefully dumped on the floor amidst his older siblings’ dramatics.

“Any chance you wouldn’t mind having Dear Old Dad sleeping on your couch tonight?” he replied.

“I doubt Mom would let you get away with that.”

“Not unless we stowed her away and rescued her with us. I bet we could hide her in the trunk and they wouldn’t notice until we were in the clear.”

“You really think she’ll let you shove her in the trunk?”

He shrugged with a sheepish expression. “I’ve had crazier ideas.”

I laughed. “So can you, though?”

“You can’t get through at least one more day?” Dad asked. He glanced over to where Mom was trying to break the two girls apart. “We barely get to see you anymore.”

“How about I make dinner for just the three of us—you, me, and Mom—on Thursday or Friday? We can have a quiet night in.”

“So you’re not giving in.”

“Nope. This is one of those
Daddy, I need your help
moments you’re always telling me to be sure I ask for.”

“Unfair. This is
not
what I meant.”

“I’m still using it as my excuse.”

He laughed and shook his head, but thirty minutes later, he had the keys to Gray’s SUV in his hand and was ushering me out the front door.

I got in, and he helped me break down my chair and put it in the back. Then he got behind the wheel and started the ignition.

“I need to make a stop before you take me home, though,” I said cautiously. This was definitely going to be the tricky part.

“The police station to see what’s going on with your car?” he replied, backing out.

“No, the pharmacy. The police said they’d call me once they know more, and they’ve had their hands full the last few days with all sorts of other things. I’m sure they’ll get to my case soon-ish.”

Dad made a
hmph
ing sort of sound, but he didn’t question me.

When we went into the pharmacy, he discreetly looked at fiber supplements and other fun grown-up things like that while I waited to speak with a pharmacist. Within ten minutes, my questions had been answered and my prescription for the morning-after pill had been filled. Now I just hoped it would work.

“Do I want to know?” Dad asked once we were back in the SUV.

“No, I’m a hundred and ten percent positive that you don’t.”

“Then I know.”

“Daddy,” I whined.

He threw his hands up in surrender. Good thing we weren’t on the road yet. “It’s your business. Not mine. Just tell me one thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked suspiciously.

He pointed at the prescription bag I’d stashed in my purse. “If that doesn’t work, and you need help, will you please let me help? Doesn’t matter what kind of
help
it is, either. I just want to be there for you.”

Which was precisely the reason I’d asked him to be the one to take me, and not either Mom or Gray. Those two would have insisted they needed to know everything and be involved in every step of the process, when it was none of their darn business and there wasn’t anything they could do, anyway.

I let out a soft chuckle, but I nodded. “If I need help, you’ll be the first to know.” There were a lot of things that could happen, though, which wouldn’t require me needing my father’s help. He just didn’t need to know that part.

He nodded thoughtfully, but then he pulled out onto the road to drive me home. “So what’s your plan for if the police don’t recover your car?” he asked after a moment.

“I already informed the insurance company it was stolen. They’ll replace it.” Granted, I’d have to wait for a new car to be retrofitted for all my modifications, so it wouldn’t happen right away, but I could at least start the process. “There might be somewhere I can rent an accessible vehicle in the meanwhile, and if there’s not, I can get Terri or Eric to give me a ride to work. I’m sure Wade will pick me up for Para-Pythons practice, and probably anything else I ask him to do.” And maybe a bunch of other things I didn’t ask him for, too. We might not have worked out as a couple, but he made for a heck of a friend. “I can bug Gray into taking me to the grocery store sometimes. It’ll give him a good excuse to slip away from Sierra and the kids for a bit of peace if nothing else.”

“So you’ve got a plan…”

“I’m coming up with a plan,” I corrected him. “There are still details to be sorted out, but I
will
sort them out. Have you ever known me to just sit back and flounder around?”

“That’s my girl.” He patted me on the knee.

The rest of the way back to my house, he refrained from bugging me about things he knew better than to think I’d tell him. I texted my landlord to let him know we were on our way and would need the new keys shortly. When we pulled up in front of his house, Dan came out with the keys in hand and passed them through the window.

“You need anything else?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing I can think of. I’ll let you know if that changes.”

Dan nodded. “All right, then. You know I’ll help you out in any way I can. Call me anytime.”

There was already a pickup truck in my driveway, though, so Dad had to park behind it. Wade Miller had his arms crossed and was leaning against the bed of the truck.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded when he came around to help me with my chair.

“Waiting for you.”

I laughed. “I see that. But why?”

“Can’t I just drop by to see you?” he replied. Evading the question. That wasn’t like him.

I raised a brow in question, and he gave me a subtle nod of his head in my father’s direction. So I still didn’t know why Wade was here, but apparently he had no intention of explaining until Dad was gone.

I nodded that I understood. “So we’ll call it a surprise visit, hmm?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Dad took the keys and got the door unlocked, heading inside to take in an armload of my Christmas presents. In no time, Wade had my chair fully assembled, and he set the brake so it wouldn’t roll away when I tried to get into it.

“Wanna explain now?” I asked once Dad disappeared inside my house.

“I don’t know. Maybe you want to explain what happened between you and Nazarenko.”

I blinked, shaking my head. “What do you mean?” How on earth did he know that
anything
had happened with Dima beyond that trip to the coffee shop?

“Just that he’s been calling everyone involved with the Para-Pythons, trying to get your phone number or your address. Said you were with him during the storm and he needed to get in touch with you. But I figured if you wanted him to have your number, you’d have already given it to him. So there must be a reason he doesn’t have it.”

“Oh,” I said, completely taken aback. But then Dad came back out with empty arms.

“You sure you don’t need anything else?” he asked me.

“I’m fine. I promise.”

“And I’ll stick around for a bit to be sure she gets settled,” Wade put in.

Dad shook his hand and then bent over to hug me. “Still think you’re a traitor,” he said before getting back into Gray’s SUV and driving off.

“Traitor?” Wade asked, laughing.

“For abandoning him to suffer through the rest of the week with all of those kids.”

“Mm hmm.” But Wade turned and headed into my house, and I followed him. He shut the door behind me once we were both inside. “So,” he said, taking a seat on my couch. “Nazarenko. What does he want with you, and do you want me to make sure he leaves you alone?”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know what he wants, but I don’t need you to do anything about him.”

“Because I could make it happen. Just say the word.”

“If you mean you’d go threaten him with a gun—”

“Never said a word about
threatening
him,” Wade cut in.

“I notice you’re not arguing the part about the gun.”

“If it would make you feel better, I could arrange for someone else to deal with him.”

I laughed, but not because I doubted him. If anything, he was entirely too serious. “I don’t want anyone to deal with Dima. Not like that, at least.”

“Then how?”

I knew better than to have put a qualifier on what I said around Wade. I shook my head. “I don’t want you to do anything to him.”

He stared at me, and the familiar tic in his jaw started up, but he let it drop. “Why were you with him through the storm?”

“I stopped to get gas and my car got stolen. He was there. He tried to take me to Gray’s house, but the weather got too bad too fast, so we ended up going back to his house until it cleared.”

“Why do I get the sense there’s a whole lot more to the story than you’re telling me?” Wade grumbled.

How on earth had I ended up with so many grouchy, grumbly men in my life? I sighed. “I’m fine, Wade. I’m all in one piece. No harm, no foul.”

“But you didn’t give him your number.”

“I didn’t think he would want or need it. He could have asked.”

“You could’ve offered.”

“But I didn’t. And he didn’t. Did he say why he needed to get in touch with me?” I asked, hoping it was something simple like I’d left behind the toothbrush he’d let me use while I’d been there. It had to be something like that, now that I thought about it. He’d been so ready to be rid of me that he hadn’t even been able to look at me or talk to me, almost, there at the end. So it didn’t matter how much I missed having him moaning and groaning. Whatever we’d had, it was done.

Or it should have been.

Wade stretched out both of his titanium legs and leaned back, settling in. “He won’t say. Just that he needs to get in touch with you. He wouldn’t even back off when I started dropping hints about the things I’d do to him if he hurt you.”

“There are a lot of things you do, Wade Miller, but
dropping hints
is not one of them.”

He smiled, the same sort of devilish smile that had gotten me to fall for him back in the day. “No, I suppose I don’t drop hints, do I?”

I rolled my eyes.

“So what do you want me to do about him?”

That was an excellent question.

“
THE FUCK DID
you do to your face?” Andrew Nash, Drew to the guys and one of my Thunderbirds teammates, demanded the moment I walked into the locker room before our next game.

Half the guys were already in the room, and they all turned to see what he was talking about.

I ran a subconscious hand over my bare jaw. It felt odd to the touch, especially where the scars from the wreck were.