His Valentine Triplets. Tina Leonard

your baby. She doesn’t want you. Life is ugly from where I’m lying.”

       “Please don’t let me ever be that pitiful,” Jonas said aloud. “If I ever get like him, Sam, you’re in charge of shooting me.”

       Sam took a seat in a wingback chair. “It’s just that he’s been convinced for so long that he was so much smarter than everyone. Bulletproof, like Superman. Only now you’re Superwienie,” he told Rafe. “This is going to complicate the hell out of things, especially when Bode comes to kill you.”

       “I know,” Rafe said. “I think I better go talk to him.”

       “No!” Sam and Jonas exclaimed.

       “Don’t set a foot on that property, Rafe.” Jonas’s tone was grim. “Don’t go see Julie. Don’t upset Bode. We’ll try to hide you as best we can, but we’re not the Secret Service. We’re not nannies, damn it.”

       “Be careful,” Rafe said. “I’m the cook. Mind your manners or you’ll be eating Rice Krispies for days.”

       Sam shook his head. “Look, Plato, Jonas is right. You’re going to have to lie low. If you think Bode wanted to put lead in you for picking on his little girl when we made her recuse, he’s going to send out a team of snipers to take you out once he finds out you’ve knocked up his little lambkins.”

       “I think he should leave town,” Jonas said, as if Rafe wasn’t there. “He could hit the rodeo circuit. The boys’d cover for him. He could fly the plane up to Alaska and do something productive for a change.”

       “Fly fishing’s productive?” Rafe asked. “I’m not going anywhere except over to Julie’s.”

       “No!” Sam said. “Look, freak, you’re in big trouble, even if you’re too dumb to know it. God, all kinds of IQ and not a grain of street smarts.”