into as fully evil a villain as Teague seemed to think.
Alex knew he deserved recrimination. But Amelia had forgiven him. Why wouldn’t Teague do the same?
Alex put his hand to his heart. “I swear it won’t happen again.”
“Damn straight. I won’t let you treat her like that.”
This was morphing from weird to surreal. Why was Teague suddenly her self-appointed champion? He and his sister had managed to work things out—like they always did. Without any commandment to do so from Sir Teague, Defender of Womankind.
He’d had enough. “Stop pushing.”
“Oh, like you’ve done every second since we got here?” Teague shot back.
What the hell was that? Was Teague mad at him about something else entirely? Using this situation with Amelia to get it off his chest? “Do you have a problem?”
“Pretty sure I made myself clear. My problem’s with how you pushed Amelia around.”
“Anyone else?”
Teague shoved his hands in his back pockets. Stared up at the sun for a bit, cracking his neck. “Yeah. You’re pushing all of us around.”
“I’m pushing, sure. But I’m pushing myself just as hard. You know that.”
“I know that you put in the hours and effort. I also know that you’re on some sort of messed-up power trip, ordering us around.”
“What?” Had Teague lost his mind? Too many artillery explosions overhead during his tours scrambled things in there? “You think that’s fun for me? I hate telling you all what to do.”
“Right. You hate it as much as you hate diving into a cool pool on a hot day.”
“Dude. Seriously. We’re all used to having fun together. Hanging out, joking around. Forcing us into checklists and work schedules isn’t fun. Not one bit. You know why? Because I can tell you guys hate it, and me, when I do.”
“Then ease up.” Teague barked out the order.
Alex braced his hands on his thighs. Stretched out his back and sighed. He understood where the request came from. But the why didn’t matter. This was one of the times when you just accepted that life would be hard, miserable, thoroughly suck for the next three months.
You buckled down. Gritted your teeth.
Kept going.
“I can’t let up, T.” Alex let his genuine regret color his voice. “Especially not now. Not with our deadline suddenly leapfrogged forward.”
“Sure you can. Drop the dictator routine. It’s that simple.”
No. It wasn’t. Not if they wanted this business up and running. It was that simple. “If I don’t push, if I don’t tell you what to do when, then who will?” Alex spread his arms wide as he ended on a near-yell.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“We don’t have the luxury of multiple attempts and wasted time while we ‘figure things out.’” How did this man who’d suffused himself in military life for over a decade, following a chain of command and meticulous planning for every engagement, suddenly feel it was okay to be so loose?
“What you’re doing, how you’re acting, led to what happened with Amelia. I won’t stand for it, Alex. Something has to change.”
What bug had crawled up Teague’s butt about his sister? “Yeah. Change is right. Thanks to Amelia, we have to ramp up our efforts even more.”
“No,” Teague said flatly. “We’ll bust our asses, but you need to dial it back.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want us to fail.”
“So what if we do?” Teague huffed out a breath. Then he stomped forward to poke Alex on his sternum. “In my last job, if you screwed up, people died. Use that for some perspective.”
Then he marched back into the main building.
Without Alex explaining that if they failed, there was no plan B.
No backup.
No nest egg to use to restart somewhere else.
And no chance that Alex would be able to protect his friends from the fallout…
Chapter Seventeen
Sydney thumbed through her iPod while waiting for Everleigh.
Yes, she was fitting back into Chestertown a million times better than anticipated.
No, that did not mean she was okay with the local music stations. There wasn’t much choice here in the radio no-man’s-land of the Eastern Shore. And the stations that did come in were…bland. Vanilla. They made elevator music sound revolutionary.
The upside to constantly traveling the world? Sydney had amassed her own substantial music library. But she’d tried to be fair. Give the locals a try, just like she did everywhere she went.
Of course, she was more than a little biased against the station with the DJ who kept sharing her engagement and dating stories. But his constant engagement updates provided an extra layer of believability to the story for