“Yeah, Caroline.”
“I’m…” He let out a breath. “Yeah. I am. As much as I tried not to be.”
Spencer sat back in his chair. “Because you can’t put her in your happy bubble of bliss, right?”
Zander frowned. “My what?”
“The bubble of bliss. That place you keep everyone in Autre. Except for Michael and Theo.”
Zander saw no point in denying it. “Yeah.”
“Your brothers and cousins could handle it. They’re not stupid.”
“We’ve been over this.”
“Yeah. And I get your points and I won’t step over the line. They’re your people and your territory. But I think you underestimate them.”
Zander and Spencer had talked about this before. More than once. “Michael and Theo agree with me.”
“Michael’s as protective of them as you are,” Spencer agreed with a nod. “Theo just doesn’t want them getting in his way.”
Zander gave a short laugh. That wasn’t untrue. But Theo also had a pretty big wall up around his heart since losing his brother. He just didn’t want people getting too close emotionally now.
“They could handle it,” he agreed. “Of course. They’d want to help us fight off all the darkness and trouble. They’d be happy to stand up to anyone threatening our town and our people. They all feel the same way about the anger and hatred and greed and power. They’d want to keep it out. But that puts them in danger. We’ve got this.”
“And as long as they know nothing about it, you can keep them from getting involved.”
“Right. But once they know there’s a threat, they’d jump right in. The same way they do with hurricane rescue and recovery. The same way they do with the animals coming to the park, or the people who come in needing someplace to land and feel secure. Hell, my family adopted Griffin and Donovan the minute they hit town. Even if Jordan hadn’t married Fletcher, she would have been part of the family. Michael’s family is as much a part of the Landry clan as those of us with the same last name. Knox and Fiona are the same. It doesn’t matter who you are, if you need food or friends or family—or all three at once—you get it. I can’t give them even a whiff of something bad going on.”
“But Caroline already has that whiff. She knows that even when things look sunny and happy and solid, there’s dark underneath. You don’t have to worry about that scaring her off.”
Zander nodded. “Yeah.”
“So…”
“It’s pretty great,” he admitted. “I always thought I’d want a woman I was involved with happily…”
“Blissful. The word’s blissful, man,” Spencer told him.
Zander rolled his eyes. “Fine. Blissful. I’d want her living the happy, sunny, blissful life, feeling safe and secure and ignorant of the…crap. The dark and ugly stuff. But Caro…”
“She doesn’t need that.”
“No.”
“And she must be pretty good at what she does,” Spencer went on. “I mean, she has helped take down some guys doing some bad shit. She’s clearly smart, patient, and careful.”
Zander nodded slowly. That was all true. Caroline had been persistent and passionate, but she hadn’t been reckless.
“Someone you can be yourself with, share your secrets with, but not worry about,” Spencer said. “Sounds perfect.”
Yeah, it really did.
Caroline knew all about the dark side of even the prettiest things, including that Autre wasn’t always the happy haven it seemed. But that hadn’t done anything except make her want to highlight the good—okay blissful—moments up on the wall at Ellie’s and push him to keep working on this case. And she’d stayed out of the way. When Spencer had gotten to town, she’d left them alone to work. Tonight, when it had made sense that she needed to stay out of sight, she’d agreed to hang out at Trahan’s.
Zander let that sink in. He’d never expected to meet someone like Caroline. He’d purposely been avoiding getting involved with anyone, not believing that a woman who knew crime and corruption personally could be sweet, generous, good-hearted, and careful.
He could have gotten involved with someone in law enforcement. There were plenty of amazing, kickass, smart, beautiful cops and agents and lawyers that he could have dated. But…he glanced over to where Max was still at the bar, seemingly unconcerned with anything going on around her, but only two feet away from one of the most powerful men in New Orleans…he would have worried about her all the time. Not because those women weren’t highly trained and great at their jobs, but just because shit happened. Every day. He had a circle he worked with simply because he couldn’t do it all alone, but he only got close to a very select few. And yeah, he worried about them. Thank God Spencer, Theo, Michael, and Wyatt were damned good at their jobs.
And he’d never been willing to expand that very tight circle.
Then again, he hadn’t met Caroline Holland yet.
Zander took a deep breath. “You think we’re about done here?” he asked.
Spencer nodded. “Unfortunately.”
The two men at the bar had moved to a table across the room to join their friends who had finally arrived.
A couple minutes later, Max closed her crossword puzzle book and slid from her barstool. She slipped from the room by another door, making it possible the men wouldn’t even have noticed her leaving.
“Well, I guess I’m gonna text her. See what she’s got.” He sounded very put out.
“Sounds good. I’ve got a date to get to.”
“Everything okay?”
Caroline tuned back into the conversation and realized Logan was addressing her. She'd been paying more attention to her phone than she had to the book club for the past half hour. “I'm really sorry,” she said with a grimace. “That's very rude of me.”
“No problem. We know this wasn’t how you planned to spend your evening.”
She gave them a sincere smile. “It's just one of my friends. She's having some issues with the guy she's out with tonight.”
That wasn't exactly untrue. Max was having some issues with the men she, Spencer, and Zander had followed to Octavia’s. Her main issue was that she was getting very little information about or from the men.
Apparently, the other two men had finally shown up and they’d all been taken to their table for dinner and were now outside of range for her to hear their conversation. She had texted Caroline a photo of the men and she didn't recognize any of them as men that spent time with her father.
“I'm just going to step outside and call her real quick,” Caroline said. “I just want to be sure she's okay.”
“Sure. Just stick close to the front. Okay?” Matt asked.
Caroline nodded. “Of course.”
She slipped outside the front doors of Trahan’s. There was a short line of people waiting for a table and she walked to the end and stepped around the corner of the building but positioned herself in front of one of the windows so Matt wouldn't worry.
However, instead of calling Max, she texted her brother.