Protector (Copper Mesa Eagles Book 3) by Roxie Noir, Amelie Hunt Page A

women.
    “He put tuna fish in it,” he explained.
    Ellie just wrinkled her nose slightly, looking nervous, but Jules laughed out loud.
    Seth shrugged.
    “I was trying to make it exotic,” he said. “And I’m not the one who nearly burned his eyebrows off re-lighting the pilot on the heater that winter.”
    “That was pretty exciting,” Garrett admitted.
    He’d singed the inside parts of his eyebrows, and it had taken them forever to grow back in.
    “Remember when Zach nearly set the house on fire when he tried to make a pizza with the plastic wrap still on?” he asked.
    “I swear the kitchen smelled like burnt plastic until last year,” Seth said.
    Jules put Violet down, and she ran in a circle around the adults, then grabbed her dad’s legs from behind and peeked at Garrett and Ellie.
    She really looks like Seth, Garrett thought, a deep pang of sadness stabbing through him.
    I can’t believe I didn’t know he had a kid.
    “Holy shit!” Violet exclaimed.
    Seth looked at Jules, who made a face.
    “Sorry,” she said.

    * * *

    After dinner they sat in the living room. Violet — now wearing pants — played with a small army of dump trucks, backhoes, and stuffed animals as Garrett and Ellie explained everything.
    He left out the part where they kissed on the balcony. Or in the car. That didn’t seem relevant.
    “If they catch you,” Seth said, slowly. “What are they going to do ?”
    “I don’t know,” Garrett said. “I think they just want to stop me from finding out what really happened to mom and dad, since I can’t — uh... I don’t have that gene,” he said, and glanced quickly at Ellie.
    “He won’t tell me what your deal is,” she said. “Apparently you and Zach have some ability that he doesn’t?”
    Seth and Jules looked at each other quickly. Violet hit a dump truck with a teddy bear and laughed.
    “You don’t have that ability?” Jules asked.
    She looked at Garrett, then quickly at Ellie, then at Garrett again.
    Why’s she looking at Ellie? He wondered. Is it because I haven’t told her yet?
    Jules has to know I’d sound crazy. She knows that better than anyone .
    “No,” Garrett said with a shrug.
    “But you know about it?”
    “I’ve known since I was a kid,” he said. “Sometimes I couldn’t sleep and I’d see mom do it in the back yard.”
    Ellie frowned, looking slightly scandalized.
    “It’s not weird,” Garrett assured her.
    “It’s pretty weird,” Jules said.
    “But not like that ,” Garrett said.
    “I wish you’d just tell me,” Ellie said.
    “It needs to be demonstrated,” Jules said.
    “None of you are making this sound less weird,” Ellie said.
    Violet stopped hitting trucks together, picked up a small stuffed dolphin, and walked to Garrett.
    “Hi,” she said.
    “Hi,” Garrett said.
    She handed him the stuffed dolphin, her small face very serious.
    Garrett held it, then looked at the toddler.
    What do I do now? He wondered. He’d never really been around kids before. Did they just go around handing out toys?
    “Thank you,” he finally said.
    Violet walked back to the trucks.
    “That’s her favorite stuffed animal,” Seth said. “Getting to hold it is a pretty high honor.”
    Garrett balanced it carefully on his knee.
    “I’ll take very good care of it,” he said.
    “Zach actually looked into the crash once,” Seth said. “When he was still living here, taking classes over in Blanding. For a long time, he thought it was weird too, but I think he just couldn’t find much, one way or the other.”
    “There’s not a lot to go on,” Ellie said.
    Seth just nodded.
    “This was a math thing he did,” he said. “He thought that where they found the car was all wrong for where they went off the cliff, so he did some tests, or made a model and ran equations, or something, I wasn’t really sure at the time. But he found that they’d have to have been going almost fifty miles an hour to wind up all the way down where they did.