“So you keep tellin’ me.” That smooth southern drawl deepened, causing her to wince. This wasn’t the sexy, lazy drawl. This was the cool, velvet drawl of a man who had no intentions of backing down.
“Do I poke my nose into your garage?” she finally snapped. “Do I tell you how to fix cars or how to deal with customers?”
He lifted his head and stared back at her. “Not yet.”
That shut her up and she hated it. Turning her back on him she propped one hand on her hip as she nibbled at her thumbnail and glared at the covered window.
Despite Cranston’s orders to keep the Mackay cousins out of the investigation, she would have cheerfully told him to shove it if she thought the investigation would proceed better with Natches involved. Unfortunately, she had a feeling she knew exactly where it was headed, and she didn’t need Natches there for that.
She had read his file so many times she had nightmares about the childhood he had endured. His father was ex-Marine and a sorry bastard. Dayle Mackay was a bully, heavily muscled; he had nearly beaten a young Natches to death more than once. Natches’s back still held the scars of the most brutal beating that he had taken, at the age of twenty. The night his father had disowned him, he had beaten Natches to the floor then ripped his back to shreds with a lash. All because Natches had refused to allow his father to strike his sister, Janey Mackay.
“You’ll only complicate matters for me at the moment, Natches. As well as bring Cranston out of the woodwork.” She turned back to him as he lifted his head once again and stared back at her. His forest green eyes were mocking, his smile knowing.
“It’s not happening, Chay.” He closed the files out before leaning back against the couch and watching her with hooded eyes now. “From this moment on, just call me your shadow. Because doing this alone isn’t going to happen.”
“I have the sheriff with me. Most of the people I’m talking to seem to share a dislike for you, Natches. It wouldn’t be conducive to my investigation if you’re there.”
He just smiled. A patient, questioning smile as though he were trying to figure out exactly why she was still arguing with him.
She propped her hands on her h*ps and glared back at him. “Okay, let’s try it this way. You are not accompanying me on those interviews. Period.”
“It makes me hard when you get mean, Chay,” he drawled. “Come over here and sit on my lap while we discuss it.” He patted his knee invitingly and she wanted to kick herself for almost moving toward him.
“You’re just being an ass now, Natches. Stop it and let me do my job. I can be amazingly adept at that when I don’t have to deal with men who think they can do everything better than I can.” She smiled with false sweetness.
“It’s hard to watch your back when you’re concerned with watching where you’re going.” He shrugged. “I watch backs real good. Ask the Marines, they loved me.”
Of course they had, he had been a suicide mission waiting to happen for over four years and probably would have taken another tour if a sniper hadn’t taken out his shoulder.
There was talk that Natches had arranged the hit, that he knew it was coming and managed to deflect the damage. Chaya knew better. Natches didn’t play games. Oh, he may well have known the danger was there and that the shot would be taken. His instincts were so well honed that he had probably felt it coming and, yes, deflected the damage. But it wasn’t arranged. Natches was too honest for that, too in-your-face to ever play those games.
“I don’t need you to watch my back here,” she told him. “That’s the sheriff’s job. You have no place in this assignment, and you don’t need to be involved.”
And he just smiled. Again.
“Damn it, Natches. You’re not even a contract agent on this assignment. I am not letting you butt your nose into it.”
“Are you ready to go pick your stuff up at the hotel this morning? You can pack while you’re waiting on Cranston’s e-mail to come through.”
He was as immovable as the mountains surrounding them. Stubbornness defined his expression and the cool green of his eyes, and had her gritting her teeth to hold back her anger and her desperation.
Was it too much to ask for just a few hours to think? To clear her head enough to make sense of what she had done the night before? Was that too much to ask for? Evidently it was as far as he was concerned.
“You are not returning to the hotel with me. I know how to pack on my own.” There was no getting out of moving in with him, and she knew it. But at the moment, that was as far as she was willing to go. “You can give me that redneck pride and stubborn look until hell freezes over, but I’m a fairly competent agent, Natches. Until Cranston begins sending names that might actually trip some tempers in your fair little county, I’m doing this by the book. Period. And my book says I follow orders. And those orders say no Mackay cousins involved. Period.”
Frustration flickered in his eyes—and an edge of anger—as he rose from the couch, standing to his full, impressive six feet two inches. And he glared at her. Natches’s glaring was sexy as hell, but it was also damned intimidating.
“You don’t know this town or these people,” he argued again. “You don’t know which questions will trip tempers, and from the looks of the previous questions, tempers were more than likely tripped further than what you believe. This isn’t the city, Chay. It’s Kentucky.”
“You make it sound like another planet.” She rolled her eyes at his tone. “They’re still people, Natches.”
“Are they?” he growled. “One of the good ole boys you questioned can shoot a deer from over a half mile out and his hunting rifle is sighted for even farther distances. How much easier would it be to take out one lone little agent?”
“And now you stop bullets, too?” She widened her eyes in mock surprise. “Why, Natches. Why didn’t you tell me sooner that you were freakin’ Superman?”
She watched him grind his teeth, the bunching of his jaw muscles, the flattening of his lips. Yeah, it was sexy as hell, but pretty damned intimidating.
“I was a Marine assassin,” he snarled. “Do you think I won’t feel those sights on you before some stupid bastard takes the shot? I know what it feels like, Chay, and you don’t want me going hunting if something happens to you, because the first son of a bitch I’d look up would be Timothy Cranston.”