“Xan, I gotta make a call. Think you can handle this one solo?”
“Look who you’re talking to. Of course I can. I can handle anything.” Xander was known for many things. Modesty wasn’t one of them. “Go take your call, but hurry it up. I want to chat up this lovely bird who keeps shagging me with her eyes.”
“This might shock you,” Aiden replied as he made his way to the back office, “but your sex life isn’t my top priority.”
“Neither is yours. You need to stop fucking around and tell—”
“Shut it, Xan.” Closing the office door behind him muffled most of the noise from the bar. “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.”
He turned off his comm-link and pulled it from his ear to dangle over his shoulder. Aiden hated these calls. They reminded him of things he tried to forget. Like the current double life he was leading.
After a couple of rings, a male voice answered. “Hey, O’Brien.”
“How’s it goin’, Jax?”
“It’s been better, man. Between stress from work and planning a wedding, V’s a little more high-strung-OCD than normal. Add in worrying about her little sister, and I’m strongly considering putting an ad in the classifieds for an old priest and a young priest, Exorcist style.”
Aiden grinned and leaned his hips back on the edge of the paper-covered desk. “So you’re hoping an update will help soothe the beast, is that it?”
“I’m willing to try anything at this point, but I figured I’d call you before the newspaper. So what’s going on in Alligator Alley? Tell me you two eloped and are making babies on a beach somewhere.”
“I thought you wanted good news.”
“Are you kidding? That’d be awesome news. Then we’d be brothers through marriage and we could build the first Irish-Hawaiian team in MMA. Just think how cool our banner would be. Our logo could be a pineapple with a shamrock cut out of it.”
Aiden dragged a hand over his face. He’d almost forgotten how exhausting Jax could be. To outsiders, Jax seemed deceptively calm and laid back, but those lucky enough to call him friend knew the guy had boundless energy that he put into three things: fighting, surfing, and his relationship with Kat’s older sister, Vanessa. Beyond that, Jax was the kind of man you could count on when the shit hit the fan.
Which was why Aiden was in his current situation. He owed Jax. A lot.
He didn’t know the specifics of Kat’s situation except that she’d asked Vanessa for help with something major before disappearing from her last known place of residence. They’d hired a PI, who’d managed to locate her in Alabaster, but Vanessa wasn’t convinced she wasn’t still in trouble of some sort. That’s when he’d gotten the call from Jax, asking him to head down to Louisiana for a couple weeks to see what Kat was up to and if she was okay.
But a couple weeks was going on three months of watching out for Kat, whether she liked it or not. He periodically reported in to Jax or Vanessa to maintain the ruse that he’d stayed for them and not for reasons of his own he didn’t care to examine.
Aiden shoved his hand into his jeans pocket. “I wish I could help, but there’s nothin’ new to report here. Same old, same old, you know?”
“Well, I guess that’s better than the alternative of finding out she’s still in trouble,” Jax said. “Listen, I also wanted to tell you that I’m taking V on a cruise tomorrow. We’ll be gone two weeks. She needs to unplug and unwind before she has a total meltdown. I’m concerned for Kat, too, but my first priority is my fiancée and I’m confident you can handle everything out there until we get back.”
Aiden nodded. “She’s been out here for six months without any issues. Odds of anything happening are practically nil, so just worry about your girl. I got things over here.”
“Thanks, man.”
“So the big day’s coming up, isn’t it?”
Jax’s heavy sigh came through the tiny speaker loud and clear. “I’m not sure. She’s already canceled it and changed the date twice. This cruise was actually supposed to be our honeymoon. She keeps pushing the wedding back with excuses about work or not having things ready, but I know better than that.”
“I didn’t peg her for a cold feet kind of girl.”
“It’s not about that, brah. She keeps hoping Kat will answer her calls and agree to come to the ceremony.”