I interrupted him, “Please don’t call me again, Dane.”

“Emme, honey—”

“Ever.”

Then I hung up.

I stood there staring at my phone in my hand trying to figure out what I was feeling.

Outside of feeling totally stupid that I said yes to a date, continued to date and let that man in my bed, I realized I didn’t feel much of anything else. Other than the fact I was relieved I didn’t have to break up with him face-to-face and could do it over the phone during his one phone call after being arrested.

That was weird, insane and made me feel creepy.

But at least it was done.

“Emme?”

I turned my head and saw Faye standing there, watching me closely.

“Hey,” I replied. “You need more tea?”

“Who was that?” she asked, still watching me closely.

“No one,” I answered. “Tea?” I dipped my head to the mug she was still carrying.

She got closer. “Chace can’t say much but I kinda know what’s going on.”

I didn’t speak.

She continued, “That, well, we all, since the kitchen is right off the living room, we all heard it so I know that wasn’t no one.”

They all heard it because they were all listening. Not a surprise or annoying. I figured that was law for girl posses.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s over. I’m good.”

She got even closer and her crystal blue eyes (that were seriously pretty) didn’t leave mine.

“He’s calling,” she said quietly, maybe so the other girls wouldn’t hear, maybe seeing to my state of mind. “You should tell Deck.”

No way. Jacob got bossily serious about Dane and didn’t want to discuss him anymore. I was just getting to know him as Jacob, the man who gave me orgasms during sex, but I knew enough to know he’d lose his mind if he knew Dane used his one phone call to call me.

Not to mention, Krystal was right. I was my own woman who’d taken care of myself for a long time. This wasn’t a big deal. I could deal with the little deal it was, and I didn’t need to drag Jacob into an issue with my recently ex-boyfriend he didn’t like to talk about.

“Really, Faye,” I told her. “It’s all good.”

She got even closer, reached out and took my hand.

“Okay, this is going to seem weird. I don’t know you, but those women in there, I know their stories and I have my own. I know that things happen. And some of them aren’t good things. And I know the men attached to those women, what kind of men they are, having one myself. And last, I know Deck. I know the way I saw him holding you and looking at you when we walked up to your house. I know in the time I’ve known him I’ve never seen him look or hold another woman like that.”

That felt really, really good. Like, blow my mind, make me want to run around singing and dancing, or better, finding Jacob and kissing him hard kind of good.

She kept talking.

“So I know two things. One, it’s important he knows everything that might be going down around you just on the off chance it might turn bad so he can stop it from doing that before it starts. And two, a man calls his woman, it is not good to keep it from him, because that’s sure to turn bad.”

It was then I was seeing the wisdom of doing what I could to amass a girl posse who knew how to deal with “uber-alphas” because they could share their wisdom.

And because it felt nice she cared enough to take the time to advise me.

But bottom line, she wasn’t wrong.

This county had seen serial killers, innocent men being framed for murders and women being buried alive.

Heck, the guy who owned the yard before Dad had murdered a bunch of people and successfully conspired to murder another guy. If town lore could be believed, Nina and Max were involved in this in a bad way, with Nina nearly being a victim and Max rescuing her seconds before that happened. Though, I’d never asked Max about it, seeing as, “So, is it true your ex-friend, the ex–lumberyard owner almost killed your wife?” wasn’t idle chitchat.

Now a gang of thieves that were worse than your average everyday thieves had run amuck throughout the county. And I’d been dating one. One who called me from jail after getting arrested for running amuck.

Perhaps I should tell Jacob that Dane had called.

“I’ll go tell Jacob,” I decided.

“Good thinking,” Faye replied on a smile and a hand squeeze.

I squeezed her hand back and realized this might be my shot at having genuine, real, true friends close to home (and a lot of them, shocker!). They’d given all the signs and even if I was the latecomer, they still were letting me in.

I liked that.

I let her hand go, put the phone down, walked through my house and up two flights of stairs to the opening that led to my attic.

There were stairs folded down. There were also two dozen huge rolls of insulation lining the hall. And at the end of the hall, a massive pile of old insulation that didn’t look nice, fluffy, pink and clean like the new stuff.

I actually felt my heating bills decreasing, and the warmth wash through me that Jacob was doing that for me, as I called up the stairs, “Jacob? Honey?”

“Yeah?” he called back.

“Can I talk to you a sec?”

“Can it wait a minute, babe?”

“Well, not really!” I yelled.

Five seconds passed and I saw his head appear in the opening, leather-gloved fingers curling around the side.

It was then I noted, even just seeing his head and fingers encased in work gloves, or maybe because his fingers were encased in work gloves, Jacob Decker was all kinds of hot.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Can you come down?”

His eyes moved over my face.

Then his head disappeared but his whole body appeared as he climbed down the ladder.

There it was. Proof. Jacob Decker was all kinds of hot and it wasn’t about the work gloves.

He had magnificent thighs. They were thick. Pure muscle.

This was a good thought to hold on to (and a good visual to have) while I waited and watched him reach the bottom and turn to me.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Dane used his one phone call to call me,” I answered.

After I said that, I took a step back.

This was because his face turned to stone but his hazel eyes started glittering in a way that freaked me right out. It was a look I’d never seen. It was weirdly sexy. It was also totally scary.

Then he thundered, “Chace!”