The Wild Charge (Dartmoor Book 9)

Twenty

Ten a.m. the next morning saw them stationed at baggage claim at McGhee Tyson airport. Tenny had gum, and he cracked it loudly in between obnoxiously perfect bubbles that never popped too soon and wound up stuck to his chin. He really was good at everything, the little shit.

Fox twisted another look toward him over his shoulder, where he and Reese stood propped against a tiled support pillar like light and dark bookends. Tenny had his arms folded, breathing with slightly flared nostrils – agitated. Reese stood loose and placid as a still pond in winter.

Fox nearly grinned when he recalled what Reese had said to him earlier, outside the clubhouse, when they were collecting a van. I think he's nervous about meeting them. Just a murmur, his expression unusually animated. Then, even quieter, I told him not to be jealous, but it didn't work.

Jealous? Fox was baffled. Even more baffled to have been spoken to about emotions by Reese of all people. Either those two were a wonderful, or a hideous influence on one another – jury was still out.

What are you hens clucking about? Tenny had snapped, and they'd broken apart.

Fox still didn't understand why he'd be jealous - he'd made faces yesterday at mention of Raven's arrival but that was just his normal asshole schtick – but there was no mistaking the tense looks Tenny kept skating sideways at an oblivious Reese, who scanned the baggage claim with a more relaxed version of his usual attentiveness.

Walsh's phone pinged, and Fox twisted back around to find his other brother smirking over the screen. "That's Ghost. He wants us to pat Maddox down before we let him on property."

Fox snorted. "The old man's getting paranoid."

Walsh's smirk faded as he typed a reply and slipped his phone away. "Aren't you?" he asked, single brow lifting.

Yes. But he had been long before Ghost arrived there, or Walsh either, for that matter. He shrugged.

Walsh leaned in close enough to ask, "What's wrong with our littlest brother?"

"No clue. Reese said something about him being jealous."

"This is a fine welcoming party," a familiar voice called out, far too loud for baggage claim. Heads turned, and Fox took a moment to be amused by the way men's jaws physically dropped when they spotted his sister striding toward them, then he turned to the woman herself.

Raven shlubbed around her flat in Chanel sweatsuits and slippers, but out in public, she was always on. Today she wore a clinging, chocolate-colored dress and matching ankle boots with spike heels, a Burberry trench hanging open over it, tasseled scarf artfully loose around her shoulders. Gucci sunglasses and not a hair out of place, manicured hands with taupe nails towing her wheeled carry-on. She walked like she still worked the runway, the clip of her bootheels drawing every eye, her smile pleased.

Fox secretly thought that her presence, her carriage, her pride, all the things that had made her an elite model, and now a forceful presence in the business, were Devin's genes shining through. That cockiness, that ability to work any room, and any situation to her advantage. He'd never told her this; probably she'd thought it herself, when she caught sight of her own blue eyes in the mirror.

Behind her, Cassandra – slighter, younger, fresh-faced and unpolished – skipped in excitement, head swiveling every direction so she nearly trod on the back of Raven's shoes with her chunky Docs. She wore striped leggings under black cut-offs, and an oversized hoodie splashed with a print of a K-pop group Fox was too old to know the name of. Her hair had gotten longer since he'd seen her last, her face leaner: she was starting to look like a young woman and not the kid he'd always seen her as; it was a bit shocking, a bit worrying.