Page 30 of Protecting Maggie
Preacher wasn’t sure what to say. So he simply nodded once.
Dude returned the gesture, then headed across the room to where his wife, Cheyenne, was standing with Caroline, Remi, Wren, Josie, and Maggie. He wrapped an arm around her waist and leaned down to say something in her ear.
Cheyenne practically melted into her man’s arms. She turned and looked up at him with so much love, it almost made Preacher uncomfortable. She nodded at him, and he stepped away, heading toward Benny, Flash, and Mozart.
Preacher decided he’d given Maggie enough space to get to know the women and men who’d come to meet her. Now his need to be near her was almost overwhelming. He followed in Dude’s footsteps, stopping at her side.
The smile she gave him when he put his hand on the small of her back was almost blinding.
“Hi!” she chirped.
“Hi,” he returned with a small smile.
“You know Cheyenne and Caroline, right?” she asked.
Preacher chuckled. “Yeah.”
“Right, sorry. Of course you do. We were all just talking about how crazy a SEAL’s job is. How one day you could be sent to help with a natural disaster, and the next, you’re having to jump out of a plane miles and miles above the ground so you can infiltrate a hostile country holding hostages, to get them out.”
She wasn’t wrong. “Doesn’t sound like a very interesting conversation to me,” Preacher said, taking a risk and putting his arm around Maggie’s waist. He was thrilled when she leaned against him.
“Are you kidding? It’s fascinating. And I know you can’t talk about your missions, deployments, whatever they’re called, but for the record, I’m so proud of you. What you do is amazing, even if no one knows about it. It’s even more amazingbecauseof that.”
Her words meant the world to Preacher. He’d been thanked before. People thanked him for his service all the time. But somehow the words coming from this woman carried so much more weight.
“And Caroline is a chemist. And Cheyenne’s a nine-one-one operator. Isn’t that cool?”
Her enthusiasm was contagious, and everyone around her had huge smiles on their faces.
The rest of the evening, Preacher stuck by Maggie’s side as she made the rounds to different groups of people.She fit in perfectly with all his friends and was a great conversationalist. She complimented people, listened with all her attention to whoever was speaking, and genuinely seemed interested in whatever was being discussed.
Preacher was comfortable staying on the sidelines, and not only because as a SEAL, he was used to blending into the background. He wasn’t the best in social situations. But with Maggie, he didn’t need to be. He was content to let her take the lead, and he simply stood by her side as she won over every single person in the bar.
She even spoke to some people Preacher didn’t know. She was in her element, and he loved seeing her come out of her shell.
When last call was made, Maggie was still going strong. Most of the SEALs had left, along with their significant others. The only holdouts were Smiley, Summer, and Mozart. The five of them were sitting around a table, chatting amicably.
He was surprised that Smiley had stayed behind after the rest of their teammates left. Even more surprising, he’d just finished opening up to all of them about the woman he’d briefly met in Las Vegas while extricating Josie from the clutches of the bitches who’d kidnapped and attempted to sell her into sexual slavery.
“Let me get this straight,” Maggie said, with the most serious look Preacher had seen on her face all night. “This woman, Bree, had been sold to this asshole by her ex, and while you guys were making sure Josie was safe, she just disappeared?”
Smiley nodded.
“Where did she go? She couldn’t have disappeared into thin air. Did her ex get to her? Did the asshole guy have an accomplice? Was she simply too scared to stay in the truck and wait for you to get back?” Maggie asked.
“I don’t know,” Smiley said with a shrug. “But it’s eating at me. What if shedidget caught by the traffickers again? Is anyone other than me looking for her? Does anyone even know she’s gone? The wondering sucks.”
“Wow. I bet she’s scared,” Summer said.
“What can we do to help?” Maggie asked, putting a hand over Smiley’s.
“Nothing,” he said without hesitation. “There’s not muchtodo.”
“But you said that you’ve been going to Vegas on the weekends trying to find her. Maybe we can come help with that,” she insisted.
Smiley shook his head. “I’ve been going to Vegas every weekend I can spare, but it honestly feels pretty hopeless. It’s not as if she’s still going to be hiding in the bushes in that neighborhood or anything. I was able to track down the apartment where she was living, and it’s empty. Cleaned out.”
“What? Really? By her?” Summer asked.
