Page 21 of Cole
“You keep kissing my sister and I’m going to have to marry you two on the plane,” muttered Cole, his eyes still closed.
“Sorry, brother but I don’t plan to ever stop kissing your sister. I plan on making her my wife.”
“You might want to remember that you have to go through our father, grandfather, great-grandfather and worse than all of those, our mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Plus my uncles, cousins, and great-uncles.”
“I’m aware,” smiled Angus.
“Your funeral, brother. I’ll stick up for you. I’d appreciate a little more male energy in the family.”
“Go to sleep, Cole. And there’s more than enough male energy in our family,” smiled Bailey. He opened his eyes, looking around.
“Where’s Hala?”
“She went to shower and change her clothes again. I think she wants to make a good impression when we land,” smiled Bailey. That brought a huge smile to Cole’s face. Henodded, laying back against the pillow and closing his eyes again.
Bailey smiled, then her smile faded as she looked at Angus.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“What’s going to happen with her grandfather? Will he really come for her?”
“If he does, he’d better pray that Allah takes him quickly.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“So, we’ve got Cole bringing back the woman who rescued him, whose grandfather happens to be one of the most sinister warlords in the region. We’ve got Bailey, somehow madly in love with Angus, twenty years her senior, and he’d like to come back to work for us. Is that about right?” asked Luke.
“That’s right,” smirked Eric. “You know, if we just appointed new leaders, we could wash our hands of this one.”
“I know,” nodded Luke. “I asked the team to vote and they refused. They said they wanted us to assign the new leadership, just like our parents did. Every single person said it didn’t matter, they would follow whoever was selected. I’d say that says a lot about the crew we have.”
“There are a lot of good men, and women, to choose from,” said Hex.
“Let’s list our top ten,” said Cam.
“Jak, Gator and Ham come to mind immediately for me,” said Luke. They all nodded, jotting down the names.
“The Jordans, Patrick and Christopher,” said Eric. “I would also say Tobias and Rush.”
“That’s seven already,” said Hex. “I was thinking about Moose, Dan, and Conor.”
“Okay, that’s ten. How do we narrow that list? They’re all fucking amazing. We’ve got five SEALs, three Rangers, and two Delta. We spread that out pretty well,” chuckled Luke. “Now how do we narrow down the ten?”
“Maybe we don’t,” said Hex. Cam, Eric, and Luke looked at him. “Listen, we all agreed that sometimes just having four seniors wasn’t enough. We were pulled in a lot of differentdirections. Maybe ten is the right number, considering the business. Their skills are more varied, their abilities covering everything the team needs.”
“That’s a good idea but,” said Cam, “ten might be problematic when it comes to agreeing on things.”
“I don’t think so,” said Eric. “Our men have never argued about making decisions or what decisions to make. If they wanted to, they could divide the leadership duties by the types of cases they take. But the key is, we let them make those decisions. It’s not ours to make.” Luke nodded, tapping a text to the ten men and calling them in.
Fifteen minutes later, all ten were seated around the table staring at their four seniors.
“Everything okay, Luke?” asked Ham nervously. “Last I heard the osprey would be landing in about an hour. Has something happened?”
“Everything is good with them, Ham. We wanted to speak to the ten of you about something else. As you know, we’re going to take over Gray Wolf Legacy. That means new leadership has to happen here.”
“Okay,” said Patrick, staring at the others in the room.
“We, the four of us, thought that the ten of you would make great new leaders,” said Cam.
