Page 24 of Protecting Maggie
Preacher agreed one hundred percent. He’d been an idiot. Blindly courting Maggie as if she was in a normalsituation. But now that he’d stopped to think about it, her situation was anythingbutnormal.
“Are you sure you want to get involved with this woman?” Flash asked. “And I’m not asking to be a dick here. She’s a convicted felon, there will be a lot of things that will be more difficult or impossible for her, or both of you, if you get together.”
Preacher did his best not to lash out at his friend. He was well aware of the consequences Maggie faced in the future because of what happened. She couldn’t vote while she was on probation, it would be more difficult to get loans for everything from cars to homes, and she already knew about the difficulty in finding a job.
But the thought of not seeing her again made his skin crawl.
The thing was, PreacherlikedMaggie. She was funny, kind, and considerate. And she was smart as hell. The more he was around her, the more hewantedto be around her. He’d never met another woman who made him feel that way.
“I’m sure,” he told Flash belatedly.
“Okay, then we need to figure this out,” Kevlar said firmly. “You need to work on getting the name of her ex so we know who we’re dealing with.”
Everyone else nodded in agreement.
That. It was reason number one hundred and sixty-seven why Preacher would give his life for these men if it came down to it. They were loyal to a fault and had no problem throwing down for someone they cared about.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Preacher said, already dreading the conversation he knew he needed to have with Maggie. She wasn’t going to want to talk about her ex. Not only because talking about him would bring up bad memories, but because he honestly believed she was terrified of the man.
“Right. With that settled, everyone get your asses moving. We have four more miles to run before we can turn around and head back to base.”
Everyone groaned but did as they were ordered.
Throughout the rest of the morning, Preacher tried to figure out how he was going to bring up the topic of Maggie’s ex the next time they talked, and by the time they arrived back where they’d parked their vehicles, he was no closer to a viable plan.
But his friends were right. Maggie needed help. And she might not have realized what she was getting into when she’d picked up Remi the other week, but she was about to find out that Preacher and his friends weren’t just pretty faces. They had some amazing connections and wouldn’t hesitate to use them to help someone in need. And Maggie definitely needed someone on her side.
It was weird how much Maggie was looking forward to seeing Shawn tonight. The three times they’d met up in the last week and a half had been really nice. She’d never feltso…excited to be with someone before. Which, ironically, also made her want to be more cautious.
The memory of what Roman had done was fresh in her mind. How could it not be? Sometimes at night, when she was alone, she could still smell the jail cell where she’d spent two long years. The funk that came with so many people living in a small space felt as if it had seeped into her pores.
The thought of making one wrong decision and being sent back there was enough to make her want to hide under her covers and never come out again.
But when she was with Shawn, she wasn’t trying to figure out how and when he was going to screw her over. She could let down her guard and just…be herself. Which was weird in itself, because she was still trying to figure out who the new Maggie Lionetti was. Prison had changed her, as it would anyone. But she didn’t know if it had made her stronger or simply more cynical.
Tonight, Shawn was picking her up and they were going to dinner at a place called Aces Bar and Grill. He’d reassured her that it was laid-back and not a typical pub. Adina had mentioned it as well before she’d been deployed. Bars weren’t Maggie’s thing, but she’d been willing to give it a try.
Now though, she was having second thoughts. When Shawn called earlier, he’d sounded…off. He’d asked if he could come up to her place to talk a little before they’d left for dinner. So of course, she was nervous about what he wanted to talk about. She didn’t think he was going to say he’d changed his mind about wanting to hang out with her, because he’d confirmed their plans to go to dinner afterward. But she couldn’t think of anything else he’d want to discuss with her that would make him sound so serious.
And yet…she could. The big elephant in the room.
Maggie knew more than anyone that being with her wasn’t exactly easy. Her past colored everything she did these days. She never drove over the speed limit, never brought attention to herself when out in public, kept to herself more often than not.
And maybe all of that was too much for Shawn. Maybe he was going to try to let her down easy in regard to them being friends, and was still planning on taking her to dinner as a consolation prize. One last meal together before ditching her.
Maggie’s imagination was spinning out of control, and she was on the verge of calling Shawn and telling him she didn’t want to see or talk to him anymore—out of self-preservation, not because it was what she truly wanted—when her phone rang.
It scared the crap out of her. She forgot she’d turned up the ringer today, so she could hear it while she was working—thankfully, at her new job, she could take calls and answer texts as long as there weren’t any customers in the store. She’d missed a few of Shawn’s messages in the last week, and the feeling of disappointment had hit her surprisingly hard, so she’d done what she could to mitigate missing him again.
Looking down, her stomach rolled when she saw “unknown” on the screen. She wished not for the first time that she could ignore it. That she could send the call to voicemail. But she wanted to be available at all times to her probation officer. The woman wouldn’t report her just for letting a call go to voicemail, but Maggie was desperate to do everything in her power to follow the rules that had been laid out for her when she’d been released from prison. Of course, she had her PO’s office number saved into her cell, but it was always possible she was calling from a different phone.
She couldn’t ignore the call, no matter how much she wanted to or how badly seeing that “unknown” on her screen made her stomach cramp.
Bracing for the worst, Maggie said, “Hello?”
“You’re dating a SEAL?” the man on the other end of the line asked, venom oozing from every word. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Leave me alone, Roman,” Maggie said, getting mad for the first time. It felt good. Usually she simply hung up on him and blocked whatever number he was calling from, but tonight she was done. D. O. N. E.Done. “I think you’ve messed with my life enough. I’ve kept my mouth shut and will continue to do so. But you need to stop calling me.”
