Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

It was one thing to have his sister and sister-in-law tease him privately, but it was another to air the dirty-laundry of his active-past in front of Moira.

He didn’t want Moira to see him as a player; a man whose dick was one to be verbally bandied about by women he’d slept with. Hell, Welker didn’t even know if that was really a thing, but if it was… Yeah. He was going to have to do some serious damage control, getting that picture out of Moira’s head. Starting by being honest with her about where his private life was at the moment, and about his conflicted feelings toward her.

Conflicted. Welker snorted.

Right. He needed to get his head on straight. Because…what, exactly, did he want from Moira? It was time to examine the facts…as if they hadn’t been rolling around in his head like pinballs over the past several months.

Taking a deep breath, Welker listed her finer attributes, again…

The woman was intriguing.

Her mind was a steel trap, and she wasn’t easily swayed by other’s opinions or edicts. Hell, she was tenacious even in the face of dissent.

She was loyal to a fault; covering her teammates’ backs and never failing to stand up for what was right.

Welker silently acknowledged all that, but probed deeper.

Moira, right from the start, had his attention. Never one to put on fancy airs or join in the team’s shenanigans, she remained who and what she was, unapologetically. That honesty, initially, had drawn him in. He was used to three different types of females: family, the women with whom he got “social”, playing coy head games which he’d learned to navigate successfully in order to get laid, and the officers working for SWAT who were off limits, physically. Welker saw those teammates as…extensions of their male counterparts, joking around until it came time to take care of business.

Moira, however, had always remained just outside that banter.

Welk also gave kudos to Moira’s fixed dedication, which meant when a squad leader was unavailable for one reason or another, Mason often put her in charge of a short-handed unit. Welker always missed her cool head and measured comments when she wasn’t with his unit, and was extremely glad she came back to H-squad.

Come on, Welk , he told himself. Dig .

Those were all great attributes that he’d iterated more than once, but what else was on his mind?

Her…looks, if he were being honest.

They confounded him. He’d oddly been drawn to her plain appearance, appreciating her severe mode of dress and the way she contained her hair. She was like a huge secret waiting to be uncovered, a masterpiece about to be unveiled, or… He snorted. It was like looking at the proverbial bespectacled librarian, and wondering what she’d look like, all messed up.

Welker chuckled to himself.

Hadn’t he gotten the answer to those things this morning?

When Moira had come downstairs dressed in Callie’s workout clothes, her hair flowing gloriously around her shoulders, he’d almost lost his ability to speak. She’d looked…softer, more approachable, and damn, if he hadn’t wanted to walk right over and kiss her.

Kiss her…

Yup. There’d been that. The lip-lock they’d almost shared in his kitchen. The fact that it hadn’t happened was going to stay with him all day. He’d nearly had a taste of Moira, and it appeared, in retrospect, that she hadn’t been about to fight him on it or back away. Had he imagined her approval? Had she been about to take a leap of faith, too?

If she had, how could Welker replicate the events that had led up to their near-kiss, in order to make it happen again?

He had no answer for that. Moira could just as easily punch him in the face as welcome his tentative advances if he attempted anything in the future.

What did he have for time, to ascertain what could be done to egg on the attraction? One week, maybe two, to see if he could lead her into another situation where they could suss things out?

The door to his house opened and Moira walked out, looking…stunning.

Welker bit back a sigh. He didn’t want to retrieve any of her normal clothes from her house. He wanted to see her like this, from now on. He wanted to shop with her, pick out more outfits that would show off her curves, have her put on a dressing-room fashion-show for him and tell her how delectable she looked in whatever she tried on. Maybe it would lead to dressing room sex. That would be a new one for him.

A man could dream.

“Callie and Sabira said they’ll lock up when they leave,” she told Welker.

He nodded from his position, standing at the driver’s door of their new ride which was idling.

Moira opened the passenger side up and snorted. “Really, Welk? A Forester?”

“Hey,” he countered with a grin, glad to get his mind back to reality. “What better way to blend in than with a Subaru that half the state drives?”

Moira couldn’t argue with that, and he knew it. The cars were everywhere in Maine. They were great in the snow.

“Okay. You got me, and you’re right,” she agreed easily. “Nobody’s going to pick this out in a line-up, or expect to see me in the passenger seat.”

“Damn straight. And since you concur,” he offered, “we’ll clean-up your place first, then head into town to buy groceries and whatever clothes and girly stuff you can’t salvage from your house.”

“Girly stuff?” she huffed. “Uh, Welk? I think you’ve got the wrong woman.”

“No. I’ve got the right one,” he dared cheekily.

She ignored that comment.

“I guess I can do shopping.” Moira pulled a sour face, then settled back in her seat, becoming quiet. That was another thing Welk liked about her, and wouldn’t change for anything. The woman didn’t try to fill the air with meaningless conversation.

Their silence was companionable during the drive, and even though her jaw tightened when, in the daylight, they finally spotted the mess in her yard, she didn’t once complain. She simply sighed and got out of the car, giving a head-nod to their teammates who were already there, waiting.

“We didn’t want to presume anything,” Mason began, approaching them as they walked through the detritus. “There might be things we’d throw in the dumpster that you’ll want to salvage.”

Moira looked around with a blank stare, taking in the entirety of the carnage. “Nope. Pitch it all,” she said, succinctly. “I don’t own much that’s worth anything. I…” she bumped a downed birdfeeder with the toe of her boot and blinking, bent to pick it up. It wasn’t in bad shape. A few twists to the metal holder, and it would be fine.

“Okay. Amend that. If any of my birdfeeders are salvageable, we’ll put them aside.”

Interesting . Moira had a thing for birds. Welker would have to make sure her feeders went up around his property where she could see them from her bedroom windows, and the back slider.

Mason raised his voice. “Okay, folks. In case you didn’t hear,” he told the crew, “everything goes except any birdfeeders that can be saved.” He turned to Moira. “Now, as much as it sucks, we need to have a look around inside and see if they took valuables, and what, if anything, we might be able to save.”

Moira scoffed. “Good luck to them if they absconded with shit. The best those cretins could get would be fifty bucks for my second-hand flat-screen upstairs if they haven’t impaled that one, too.”

Welk knew she was talking about the state-of-the-art screen which the MC had destroyed.

“Well then, I suppose that’s good,” Mason accepted agreeably. “Let’s see if there’s anything they messed with in your house that’s worth keeping.”

Moira squared her shoulders, and Welker couldn’t help himself. He placed a comforting hand on the small of her back as they fell into step behind Mason.

She stiffened only slightly, but didn’t turn around to slug him, which Welk took as a plus.

Walking into the house followed by seven of the team who were not engaged outside, Welker wanted to shoot the MC members all over again, this time perhaps winging a few more of them. Moira’s place had been seriously destroyed. The perps had obviously learned well, how to strip a house in a minimum of time, from their forays into Bar Harbor. They’d used the same techniques here to rip through Moira’s walls, tear her appliances from their births, and trash the entire place.

“Well, shit,” Moira groaned, momentary misery on her face. If Welker had to guess, it was her dented and destroyed cookware that had her so devastated.

It was telling that she let her emotions show in front of her SWAT colleagues. But Welker got it. It had to be totally discouraging to see your house turned into a pile of rubble. He didn’t know if he’d be taking it as well as Moira was if this were his place.

“Insurance will cover it,” Welker told Moira for a second time, judiciously not mentioning the shopping part of replacing everything, this time. “And in the meantime, we’ll take pictures, then clean up.”

“Nolan has already documented everything,” Mason stated, talking about one of their tech gurus on the team. “As, I presume, the Sheriff’s Department did, last night.”

Which begged the question…

“Has Sheriff Gladstone called you?” Welker asked Moira.

She shook her head. “I haven’t heard from him.”

Prick , Welker wanted to expound. What kind of workmate didn’t call to check on the well-being of one of their own after such a devastating event. Something wasn’t right.

“Have you talked to the sheriff, Mase?” he asked his boss, who’d also narrowed his eyes at Moira’s answer.

“Once, early this morning after his deputies left. He wasn’t too happy to hear from me before sunrise, waking him up.” Mason looked anything but bothered. “I let him know we’d be out today to clean up.”

“The man had a stick up his ass?”

Mason’s face soured. “Yeah. He seemed to think everything could wait until after the insurance company gets out here, which is bullshit. You know as well as I do, that could take days, and if weather moves in, as predicted, we’re looking at a soaking wet mess. So I shot him down. I reminded him that his deputies took pictures, and suggested he have a copy of their report forwarded to Moira for the adjuster to review. I ended by impressing upon him that we weren’t letting Moira deal with this on her own.”

“And what did he say to that?” Moira questioned, joining the conversation with a skeptical lift of one brow.

“He, uh, said you were a big girl, and could deal.” Mason’s jaw looked ready to grind a mouthful of rocks.

“That sounds like Gladstone,” Moira grunted before purposely dismissing that intel and turning toward her stairs. “I’m going to have a look at my bedroom.”

“Uh, you might want to accompany her, Welk,” Mason bit out, as she placed her foot on the bottom tread. “There’s some…distasteful writing on the walls, and a lot of destruction.”

“Great,” Moira clipped. “A message. As if smashing everything I own isn’t bad enough.”

She took the stairs two at a time with Welker on her heels, and the first thing they saw when they got to the top of the landing, was the bright red paint outside her bedroom.

Narcs die , the messy letters stated.

Moira grunted, then gave a pained chuckle. “Huh. At least that’s only seven letters to scrub off. Imagine if they’d written ‘snitches get stitches’,” she attempted to joke.

Welker nodded. He’d heard the bitterness in her tone.

They stepped over the remains of her bedside table in the hall, and entered her bedroom.

You’ll die, bitch , was written above what was left of her headboard.

They already knew her gutted mattress was out on the lawn, but the boxspring had found an interesting perch. It had been used as a battering ram, sitting half inside and half outside her now smashed, over-sized, double-hung windows, no doubt letting any flying bug in the vicinity have easy access.

As for all Moira’s clothing, it had been amassed in a pile in the center of the room. Welker could see it was everything she owned because the closet was devoid of anything hanging, and her drawers were all emptied and overturned. What soft-goods hadn’t been ripped apart, had red paint poured all over them, and—he sniffed sparingly—had been doused with urine, if his nose didn’t lie.

Clearly, nothing would be salvageable.

Of course, upon closer inspection, the amassed clothing was a plethora of multi-colored sweats, and serviceable, cotton undergarments. Welker didn’t see a single dress in the heap, nor any fancy shoes among the sneakers and boots that had been added to the horrendous butchery.

“Looks like everything here can be added to the dumpster,” Moira stated, pragmatically, but Welk saw her bottom lip twitching slightly, telling him she was more upset than she was letting on. And who wouldn’t be? This was an invasion of her home, her privacy, and the MC had made it as personal as they could.

“I’ll get some more hands up here, and we can start throwing things out the windows,” Welker sighed, because what else could he do? He wanted nothing more than to hug Moira and console her, but he wasn’t sure how she’d take it. He settled for giving her one more comforting pat to her back before he started to turn away, but surprising the hell out of him, she grabbed onto his arm, preventing him from leaving.

“Welk?” Her normally strong voice broke, and before he could even register what was happening, she’d thrown herself against him, her head smushed into his chest, her body shuddering.

Welker didn’t hesitate. He put his arms around her and drew her in tight, lowering his lips to the crown of her head. “I’m here for you, Moira. I’ll help you get through this.”

Her words came out choked where her mouth lay against his flannel. “I know you will, Welker, but…I don’t understand why? I’ve always been…standoffish with you. Why is it that you’re being so nice to me?”

Now might not be the time, but Welker needed Moira to know she was more to him than just a pain-in-the-ass teammate.

“Because you’re special, Moira,” he told her honestly. “You’re always there for everyone, and never ask for anything in return. You’ve been a pillar of strength on the team; whenever there’s conflict, you iron things out without ruffling any feathers. I can’t tell you the number of times when you’re not around that I’ve ask myself, ‘what would Moira do’, when I’m faced with an untenable situation.”

Moira sniffed against his shirt-front. “That’s probably the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me,” she admitted in a small, damp voice.

“Well, get used to it,” Welker said gruffly, not liking that she’d been underappreciated for what he guessed was her entire life. “Because I plan on letting you know a lot more, how much you mean to me…uh, the team,” he quickly amended, not wanting to scare her away. “You deserve it, Moira. You’re a really good person.”

The warmth of the woman in his arms was hitting Welker, hard. Not in his cock, but smack dab in his gut where he’d never experienced it before. There was a connection going on; something he’d never felt while holding any female in the past. Moira was…good. Right.

Going against the calculatedness he’d used a time or two during a clinch, Welker was not inclined to take things any further; to let his hands wander, or to seek out her lips.

Yet.

No. Holding her was enough. He felt like he could do it forever.

Footsteps on the stairs had Moira jumping back from him, and Welker immediately missed the feel of her. Before she turned away, regaining her equilibrium, he saw a number of things in her eyes.

One of them was unshed tears.

Fucking tears. It wrenched at his heart in a way female crying never had before, because he knew how much it took for Moira to trust him with her real emotions.

The second thing he saw, was…desire?

Dare he call it that?

Her brown irises had grown darker, rounder, and the interest in them was apparent. But in a blink, that was all disguised as Moira pulled her armor on again to face whoever was close to entering the room.

Welker had about five seconds to talk, and he wasn’t about to let the opportunity go.

“Moira?”

She faced him, looking…nervous this time.

“Yeah, Welk?” she returned, clearing her throat.

“We’ll be revisiting this thing, once we’re alone.”

She didn’t pretend she was clueless. She simply nodded before her stoic mask slipped down over her face.

Welker would take that as a win.