“He suspects someone he knows I’ll try to protect, or he wouldn’t have sent you.” He snorted. “And that one, I have to admit, has me as confused as hell. Because Timothy knows me, too, and he knows there’s few people here that I’d protect.”
“No one you would protect could be involved,” she argued. “Rowdy, Dawg, Ray, or their wives? For God’s sake, I know for a fact they aren’t under suspicion. Do you think I didn’t do my own damned homework? Do you think I would let him try to crucify someone I believe is innocent?”
“Timothy wouldn’t try to crucify someone who’s innocent.” Natches shook his head as he stared at her from across the room.
He looked dangerous, too controlled, too suspicious.
“Timothy’s a lot of things,” he continued, “but he doesn’t do witch hunts. Whoever he suspects, you can bet they’re guilty, he just needs the proof of it. And he’ll sacrifice anyone or anything for that proof, Chaya. Even you.”
He had already sacrificed her, and she knew it. He couldn’t have guessed that Natches would give a damn about her if his cousins turned against her. And it appeared that was exactly what was happening.
And perhaps Natches wasn’t standing by her. He was angry, she knew that. Suspicious.
She turned away from him and moved to the sliding doors, staring beyond them to the nearly deserted boathouses. Summer was over. There were very few year-round residents here. And she didn’t blame them. It was colder than hell on the water.
“Dawg, Rowdy, and Ray aren’t under suspicion. Neither is Crista. I have Timothy’s word on it,” she told him quietly. “According to him, he doesn’t want you involved in this because you draw too much notice and you’re too temperamental where the Mackays are concerned. The questions he has me asking involve family, connections between Chandler Mackay, Nadine, and Johnny Grace. I record the answers and send the recordings via FTP back to him.”
She didn’t know what Timothy was looking for, and she was beginning to wonder if it even mattered. Timothy knew who he was after by now. The questions had begun changing, taking a new direction, leading her straight into the heart of too many family secrets. At this point, he was merely playing a delicate little game designed to catch his quarry faster.
“I want to see the names and the questions before you leave each morning.”
She swung around. “I have direct orders that you’re not to see anything.” And she followed orders. The agency had been her life for the past five years. It had held her together when nothing else could have.
He smiled.
Chaya felt her stomach tighten as he moved across the room. Clothes did not hide the shift or power of the muscle lurking beneath them, nor did it hide the sheer arrogance of the male animal she was now facing.
“I said, I will see the names and the questions before you leave my bed each morning,” he growled, his eyes darkening, his expression forbidding, and for the first time in ten years, Chaya faced a force that had her swallowing back her nerves.
“Or what?”
“Oh, Chay, sweetheart,” he crooned. “Now we just don’t wanna go there, do we? We wanna wake up in that big bed of mine, nice and warm every morning, and work this out together. Because, if we’re not working this out together, then we’re going to be fighting. Yelling. At odds. Out of sorts. And if we’re out of sorts, then bad things might start happening. I might follow you into these places where you’re questioning folks. I might make things rather hard.”
She stared back at him in confusion. “Why? I swear, your family is not involved in this.”
“Something more important than family is involved here,” he said then.
“What?” She threw her hands up in disbelief, amazed that Natches could find anything more important than family. From what she had seen since coming to Somerset, he wouldn’t just die for them, he killed for them. “What could be more important to you than your cousins or your uncle?”
“You.”
She blinked up at him, and she swore she felt the very air around them become thicker, still, heavy with tension.
“You don’t mean that.” She shook her head slowly. He had to be lying to her. He loved his family, he was loyal to them, loyal enough that he would lie to her.
It broke her heart, but she accepted it. She had no other choice.
“You don’t have to lie to me,” she whispered, moving around him as she put her hand to her brow and eased her palm over the perspiration forming there. “I know you have priorities.”
“I’m glad you do. And I thought you knew, Chay, I don’t bother to lie to anyone. Wastes too much of my damned time.”
She held her hand up while keeping her back turned to him. She couldn’t handle this. If he needed this bad enough to lie to her, then fine. He could have it. It wasn’t enough to tip Timothy off, and she knew Natches was going to do whatever the hell he wanted to do anyway.
“You can see the list and the questions,” she whispered, picking up her briefcase before turning to face him. “I’ll meet you at the hotel in the morning.”
A sharp laugh left his throat. “Bullshit. You’re not leaving me. Not again, Chaya. I’ll tie you to the damned bed at night.”
“And I’m not going to stand here and let you lie to me to protect your family.” Something was building in her, shimmering like a bloodred cloud in front of her vision as she watched his eyes go from dark to light, watched moss green go brilliant green, like a forest in spring.
“You actually believe I’d lie to you like that?” He glowered back at her. “Baby, I don’t have to lie to you to get that list, those questions, or anything else I need out of you. All I have to do is get you beneath me.”
And it snapped in her head then. Chaya felt herself almost sway in shock. He hadn’t used a condom last night or the night before. He had been bare, his se**n spurting inside her, sending her crashing into another wave of release even as a part of her mind had whispered the warning. Each time, and her emotions had been in such disarray that she had ignored the implications.
She wasn’t protected.
“Not without a condom you won’t be.” Her head snapped up, her vision clearing as fear surged through her. “And not without the truth between us.”