The Reed Security Relationship Manual: A Reed Security Romance - Giulia Lagomarsino (best book club books of all time TXT) 📗

all stared her down. She shuffled slightly, clearing her throat uncomfortably. “I mean, we totally had things under control. At no time was anyone in danger.”

“You mean, aside from when you crashed in the ditch,” I reminded her.

“Well, sure. But you should have seen Cara with that grenade launcher. Whoever was in that SUV never saw it coming, and look, now he’s dead as a doornail,” Claire said proudly.

“Actually, I did see it coming,” Cole spoke up. “Which is why I’m alive, and not dead as a doornail in the truck.”

All the girls slowly turned and looked at the truck that firefighters were now trying to extinguish, and then back to Cole.

Cara half pointed to the truck. “You were…”

“Yeah,” Cole nodded.

She laughed uncomfortably. “Oops?”

“You know, she even sounds like Sinner when she says it,” Rocco said beside me. “Oops, I just blew up a truck,” he shrugged.

“Yep,” Sinner grinned. “That’s my girl. Taking out the bad guys at almost nine months pregnant. You feeling okay, Lollipop?”

“Just peachy,” Cara grinned. “I did that whole tuck and duck thing you taught me. It worked really well. I hardly felt any impact from the crash.”

“See? Killer,” Sinner nodded to us, like we should all be so proud of our wives blowing people up.

“Yeah, let’s forget the fact that she almost killed her brother’s best friend,” Cole muttered.

“I don’t know,” Sean said, tilting his head to the side. “Would a best friend allow his friend’s sister to attend a sex conference without telling him?”

“It wasn’t a sex conference,” Emma said quickly. “It’s not like we were discussing positions and girth. Not that that wouldn’t be fun. I would so attend something like that.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you’re going anywhere for a while,” Burg said, placing a possessive hand around her waist.

“But why did you try and ‘take them out’ when you could have just called us?”

“And be locked up for all eternity?” Ivy shrieked. “I’m just saying, normal women don’t have to arm themselves to go out of town. Normal women don’t have to stay in an underground bunker during security drills.” She took a step toward me and poked me in the chest. I stared down at her finger for a second before flicking my eyes back to her face. “Normal women don’t have alert buttons! We’re not eighty years old! This is all on you guys.”

My mouth gaped at that. I wasn’t sure what to say, because it was true. I didn’t really have an argument or any way to counter what she just said.

Rocco though, he was never one to keep his mouth shut. “We have alert buttons because of you! Women are always getting into trouble, and then it’s the rest of us that have to clean up your messes. Look at Brooke. She took a bat to her boyfriend’s car and then took me hostage!”

“Still not something to brag about,” Burg muttered.

“No, it doesn’t matter. Whether I was or wasn’t a willing captive isn’t the point. The point is that our women are a shit load of trouble, and since we can’t babysit them all the time, we have those pesky alert buttons.” He stepped forward and jabbed her in the chest. My eyes went wide, fearing she was about to snap his finger off. “You’re the reason we have the damn rulebook.”

I swallowed hard, staring at the stare-off. I couldn’t drag my eyes away if I wanted. Was he really poking the bear? He was insane, but I also wanted to applaud him at the same time. He was standing up to her like he wasn’t afraid of getting his balls yanked off. She wasn’t even his woman.

Ivy glared back at him. “Well, since we’re all so much trouble, maybe we’ll take our home-cooked meals, laundry services, waiting-on-your-every-need services, oh, and our sexual services, and we’ll sleep in the bunker!”

She stomped past me, the other five girls following confidently behind her. Though Cara did look back at Sinner apologetically. I turned back to Rocco and slapped him upside the head. “Are you trying to ruin all our lives?”

“What? I just said what we were all thinking.”

“And there was a reason we don’t say that shit! Christ, have you been listening at all to what we’ve been saying. This is why we need the relationship manual,” I said slowly and clearly. Walking away, I muttered to myself. “I’m gonna end up with another pressure trigger under my bed.”

Chapter Fourteen

Cazzo

After another shitty day at work, I was exhausted and just wanted to sink into my chair with a beer and watch a war documentary. It seemed like we never really got a break at work anymore. Hell, even when there were no jobs, something always went wrong. Take today, for instance. It was a normal day, if you consider sitting around making a relationship manual normal, until the alarms sounded at work.

When we heard that sound, my heart almost stopped. It had been months of nearly no excitement at all, and then suddenly, our worlds were falling out from under us. Granted, when I showed up at the scene of the accident and saw dildos all over the road, I was a little shocked. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but that sure as hell wasn’t it.

But when Cap realized that Cole was in the truck that was on fire, I knew our lives were about to change. The biggest problem we had was that our women all thought they were invincible. Hell, even when Blake first came to town when she was running from Parker, their first thoughts weren’t to call us and have us deal with her. No, they hid her at Lindsey’s bed and breakfast. Something about girl power, and my woman was right there along with everyone else, joining in the fight to conceal her identity.

Luckily, Vanessa was on the lower end of the crazy scale. She didn’t get nearly as involved with the women’s antics as some of the others. Like Claire,