McKenzie, Cooper - Daria's Heroes [Men Out of Uniform 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read Online Free Page A

big, strong men guarding her from the world.
    Then reality crashed down around her. They were doing this for Mrs. Stone. A lot of things would happen over the next few days, not because people cared about her specifically, but because they loved Mrs. Stone and all the good works she had done.
    Once they entered the kitchen, Gage led her to the table in the corner. He pulled out a chair then waited as she stared at it. It took a moment to realize he wanted her to sit down. Once she did, she jolted when he kissed the top of her head before walking away. He had never done that before. What was going on with these two? Was it the shock of the fire? Or was something else going on?
    She did not turn to watch. Instead she stared at the reflection of the room in the window across the table from where she sat. The men embraced, and then Gage laid his forehead on Roman’s shoulder. Roman lifted a hand and wrapped it around the back of Gage’s neck.
    “I’ll fix Daria something to eat while you make up the beds,” Roman said in a soft tone that again carried that thread of power. It made her wonder if she should go up and make her own bed instead of putting Gage out.
    Gage’s response was so soft she was not certain, but thought she heard him say, “Yes, Master.”
    Master? What the fuck?
    In the glass, Roman brushed his lips across Gage’s temple before the bigger man straightened and walked away. After that, Daria’s attention turned to her own reflection.
    She barely recognized the woman with the lush dark brown hair that draped over her left shoulder in a ponytail that ended just below her collarbone. The woman in the window wore just enough makeup on to enhance her big amber-colored eyes and the perfectly proportioned lips. The woman in the reflection looked like a successful, young professional woman or a young mother, not someone whose life once again lay shattered at her feet.
    Even after eight years away from her past, whenever Daria looked into the mirror she still expected to see the angry teenager with the super-short, spiky pink and green hair and three earrings in each ear who wore her anger and too-big clothes like a shield.
    The belligerent attitude and smart-ass mouth she had developed to keep everyone at arm’s length did little other than earn her regular slap-downs by the latest of the parade of men her mother brought into their lives. Her mother did not care how the men treated them as long as they kept buying the beer.
    She had been too drunk to step in when the last one decided he wanted to fuck Daria instead of her mother. Daria objected, and the man ended up in the emergency room needing stitches where she had cut his thigh with a broken beer bottle. Her mother landed in the morgue the next morning from alcohol poisoning. Daria was sent to the county group home to wait for her eighteenth birthday.
    Two weeks after moving into the group home, she met Mrs. Stone. Five minutes later Daria agreed to go home with the elderly woman.
    She never knew what Mrs. Stone had seen that day, but somehow the elderly woman had looked past the wild child exterior to the frightened girl cowering within. Over the next year Mrs. Stone, along with many of her other foster children, helped Daria put the bad stuff of her past to rest while helping her grow to be confident and self-reliant in almost any situation.
    When Daria aged out of the foster care system, Mrs. Stone hired her as her secretary, companion, and then later, her caretaker. Only in the past year had the old woman pushed her toward choosing the next step in her career path. Like numerous others of her foster brothers and sisters, Daria decided to go into a career in public service by training to be a paramedic.
    She jumped when Roman set a plate in front of her. Looking down, she swallowed hard to keep from bursting into tears again. “You remembered,” she whispered.
    “Of course I did, baby girl,” he said with a wink before he retrieved two glasses of