“Good news is, that recurring headache is done for you.”

Knight watched him closely. “Any bad news?”

“Mention of the Feds which confused her, though not enough for her to snoop around to find out what it means. She doesn’t much care what her dad did or does outside of the fact she hates all of it. But even though she now knows my end game is to get her clear of that mess, she doesn’t know how that game started. So it’s good she isn’t snooping around because not only have I not figured out how I’m gonna get her clear, I haven’t figured out how to tell her how that game started.”

“Fuck, Nick,” Knight muttered.

“You got any ideas?” Nick asked.

“No, brother,” Knight answered quietly. “Feel for you on that. That’s gonna be an uncomfortable conversation.”

“Unh-hunh,” Nick mumbled.

“Advice, sooner rather than later,” Knight said.

“Right,” Nick mumbled that too. He drew in breath, looked to the door and then looked to his brother. “You wanna meet her?”

Knight’s focus intensified. “Absolutely.”

It was the perfect moment. She knew Knight was coming. She knew why. She had to figure Nick wouldn’t keep him out in the cold. And Knight couldn’t stick around so Olivia didn’t have to be on the spot for long.

The first meet over, the next would go easier.

He slid open the door, and if the sound it made wasn’t enough of a warning, he called out, “Babe, you wanna say a quick hi to Knight before he has to take off?”

If Nick had to guess, he would have said she’d ice over. Stone-cold. Polite, definitely, but distant in her princess way that might be borderline insulting.

He was shocked as shit when she walked from the kitchen toward them, her hands engaged in rubbing a dishtowel to dry them, doing this almost obsessively, her eyes on Knight, the wide hems of her pants too long.

She tripped, fortunately close so when she went flying, he could lunge and catch her before she hit the deck.

The dishtowel floated to the floor as she latched on to him and he brought her up straight and close, her head jerking back to look at him, her face beautiful and horrified.

No stone-cold princess there.

“Shit, fuck,” she whispered.

No stone-cold princess there either.

The laugh he tried unsuccessfully to bite back scraped up his throat over the roof of his mouth to make an amused scratching noise coming out of his nose.

“Brother,” Knight admonished when he heard it.

Nick held on to his woman and she held on to him as they both looked to Knight.

“I…um…hi, hey…um, hello,” she stammered.

And no stone-cold princess there.

Nick’s body started shaking.

She turned and glared at him, unlatching the arm she had wrapped around his back so she could smack his shoulder blade.