Dawg straightened from his position against the door, stalked to the desk, and flattened his hands on the top of it as he leaned forward. “He will get her killed, Timothy. How do you think your lover, her mother, will feel when she finds out you let her walk smack into the middle of this and didn’t tell me what the hell is going on?”
Timothy shrugged. “If I knew what was going on, I would of course tell her first. That’s her daughter, and Mercedes has an amazing capacity to not just love her children, but also to accept the choices they make.”
“Even if one of those choices gets them killed?” Dawg growled.
“That’s what we’re for.” Timothy sighed then. “To keep that from happening.” His smile was tinged with acceptance and resignation. “Isn’t that what loving them is all about, Dawg? Letting them find out who they are, and doing all we can to protect them as they do?”
“Fuck me.” Dawg growled in resignation as he moved back and let himself fall into the chair behind him. “Just let me kill Campbell myself. That would be so much easier.”
“Can your conscience handle it, then?” Timothy asked.
“Natches’s can,” Dawg suggested. And he was certain it could.
“No doubt,” Timothy agreed. “But we’ll be the ones who will know the truth as she cries. As she haunts the house and wonders what could have been. Is that what we want?”
“She’ll be alive,” Dawg pointed out logically.
“Will she? Are you sure about that?”
Dawg’s lips thinned.
“Would you have been, if something had happened to Christa in that first week after she returned to Somerset?”
No, he wouldn’t have been, Dawg admitted. He would have been a dead man walking.
Rising from the chair, he stared down at the Homeland Security agent. “You know what the hell is going on.” Dawg was damned certain of it. “If anything happens to her, I’ll know whom to discuss it with.”
“All we can do is pray, Dawg,” Timothy said heavily, the fact that he was worried about her clear in his voice as well as his expression.
Dawg would definitely pray.
His uncle Ray used to tell him, Rowdy, and Natches that praying was good, but God liked to help those who helped themselves.
It was time to back up those prayers with a little old-fashioned action.
Mackay style.
Turning, he stomped from the office without waiting for a reply or an argument. Neither would do any good.
She was his sister.
He hadn’t been able to protect her as she was growing up, and he hadn’t been able to ensure that her life was lived with at least a measure of security.
He was making up for lost time, and he’d be damned if he would let Brogan Campbell or Timothy Cranston f**k that up.
* * *
She should have known he would show up at some point.
On second thought, she had known he would show up. She’d actually expected to see him when she’d arrived home.
Stepping from the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel, she closed the door slowly and stared across the room to where he was sprawled in the easy chair sitting next to the patio door.
As she leaned back against the door, he rose slowly to his feet, the blue-gray of his gaze gleaming in the low light burning next to the chair.
He’d obviously had a shower himself. The jeans he’d worn earlier that night had been exchanged for a lighter pair, the white shirt for a short-sleeved lightweight denim, though the boots were absent entirely, his feet bare. And he still looked far too sexy and far too dressed.
And she was far too underdressed in the large towel she’d wrapped around her body. A body that was becoming far too sensitive as the adrenaline still simmering in her system began to come to a rapid boil.
“Why are you here?” she whispered, fighting the pulsing arousal she had yet to cool.
“I wanted to make certain you were okay.” Rising to his feet—her heart began to race furiously—he stalked slowly toward her.
“I’m fine; you can leave now.” She really needed him to leave now. Now, before she made the ultimate mistake of jumping his bones.
His lips tilted in a beginning curve of a smile.
“Are you scared, little rabbit?” The amused rasp of his voice sent heat racing through her lower stomach to clench deep inside her womb.
As he came closer, Eve found her grip tightening the towel where it was tucked above her br**sts, gripping it with desperate fingers. The heat afflicting her womb flushed her face before racing through her body as the velvet slide of her juices eased from her pu**y.
Hell, this wasn’t fair—to want him like this, to ache for a man so much, and to have his touch denied her.
He paused in front of her, his hand lifted, the back of his fingers glancing across the tenderness of her cheek.
“It makes me sick, knowing your pretty face has been bruised because of me. Sandi would have never targeted you if she hadn’t been aware of my interest.” His eyes moved over her face, intent, filled with purpose and regret. “I promise you, though, I’ll make sure you never have to worry about Sandi or anyone she knows, ever again.”
Shrugging nervously, her br**sts rising and falling as she fought to breathe, Eve shook her head slightly. “She just thought she could clear the playing field,” she whispered.
“Bullshit,” he growled, anger licking at his gaze. “She belongs to Donny, and no matter the rumors about their relationship, there are some rules in the touring club, just because so many couples are so often in such close quarters. One of those rules makes her off-limits to any member of the club as long as she and Donny are together, and she knows it. The rumors of her and Donny taking lovers outside their relationship has never been true that I’m aware of anyway. Besides, she’s not the type of woman who draws me, Eve.”
Nervous energy had her mouth drying out, her lips aching for moisture—for his kiss—her tongue peeking out to moisten them. Her br**sts felt too tight and swollen, her breath catching as Brogan’s gaze latched onto the parting of her lips as she fought to draw in air.
“So what type woman does draw you?” she found the breath to ask.
“You draw me, Eve,” he answered immediately, his voice low, deep, as dark as sin and sex itself. “More than you know. More than I should have ever allowed.”