Natches glanced toward the stairs then. For a second, regret sliced across his features, then his ever-present mocking smile was back on his face.
“One-man woman, huh?” he asked, though from his look, it was more a statement.
Dawg stared back at him, seeing the flash of loneliness, of knowledge that filled his cousin’s dark, forest green eyes.
“She’s not as agreeable to being my woman as I would wish, though.” Dawg raked his fingers heavily through his hair as he glanced at the stairs again. “I blackmailed her.”
He glanced back at Natches in time to see his cousin shaking his head.
“I knew you were going to do something dumb like that.” He chuckled, though the sound carried little amusement. “Good luck on that one. I just stopped by to drop these off.” He dropped Crista’s keys on the counter. “And to tell you Cranston wants our final reports in his office by the end of the day. Oral and written. He’s still a little upset over losing the woman. But he seems certain the men he captured will talk.”
“They probably will.” But who would they identify?
If Crista had been led there, then it was for a reason. The thieves would spill their guts in a heartbeat, either way.
“I don’t know.” Natches shrugged. “I followed them to the van when they were loading them up.
All Cranston got from them were vague looks when he was questioning them. They might not know.”
Dawg stared at him in complete disbelief.
“Hey, we can hope,” Natches snickered, holding his hands up in surrender before straightening from the bar and heading for the door. “I came in the back, I’ll leave through the front. Give the gossips something to crow about. While you’re having fun, I’ll see what I can find out, see who’s too interested in the setup you have going on here. I don’t like this a damned bit, Dawg, I’ll tell you. She shouldn’t have been there tonight. It’s a setup.”
Dawg couldn’t agree with him more. “Let me know what you find out.”
As Natches left, Dawg relocked the doors behind him and reset the alarms. But he didn’t immediately follow Crista to the bedroom on the upper deck. He stared around the lower level instead, seeing more than the crisp, clean lines of the interior and the nice furnishings.
He’d been living on the Nauti Dawg for years. Only through the coldest months did he leave the marina and stay in the small apartment he had above the lumber store. He rarely stayed at the underground home his father had built before his death.
He sat down slowly on the couch, leaned back, and breathed out wearily. God, he was exhausted. Tired and horny and conflicted. It was a hell of a state to be in at three o’clock in the morning.
His silent laughter was bitter and mocking. Hell, he was turning into the bastard his father had always predicted he was. Maybe he was more like his grandfather, Nate August, than he wanted to admit. The son of a bitch had left three bastard sons and a daughter in Somerset before returning to his Texas home more than fifty years before. Of the four children, Dawg’s father and his uncles and aunt, only Ray Mackay, Rowdy’s father, had shown any sort of decency to his wife or his children. His aunt didn’t count. She worshipped the ground her son, Johnny, walked on, but many suspected she had driven her husband, Ralph, to his grave.
Dawg rubbed at the ache in his knee, feeling every steel pin that held the joint and kneecap together. The weather was getting ready to turn damp; he could predict it within days now. And he’d been on his leg too damned long. He was riding close to twenty-four hours without sleep, and Cranston wanted him in to give his final report.
And upstairs, Crista was waiting in his bedroom. Pissed off and probably feeling just as betrayed as she had every right to feel.
He should just let her go. He owed her that much. But he couldn’t do it. Everything inside him howled in protest at the thought of letting her go. He had a hold on her now, a way to keep her in his bed if nothing else. A chance to figure out why she had haunted him for eight f**king years.
She wasn’t the only woman he had f**ked in his life that he couldn’t remember. For a few years there, there had been more than a few. But she was the only woman who had ever lingered in his head to the point that the thought of her nearly drove him insane.
Seducing her wasn’t going to be easy. He didn’t just want her body; he wanted more, and he was man enough to admit to it. Just f**king her would never be enough. He needed to capture the elusive sense of something more that was so much a part of her.
He rubbed his jaw as he considered that one. Hell, he had never courted a woman a day in his life, especially not one he knew he could f**k. He could walk upstairs to that bedroom and within a few hot kisses, have her ready and willing. For the moment.
But she would resent it. She would eventually hate him for it, and that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted her sweet smiles, her soft touches. He wanted her to be his lover, not just a bedmate.
He’d never really had a lover.
Dawg frowned at that. He was thirty-two years old, yet he had never had a steady lover, a woman he wanted in his bed for more than a night or two. And he couldn’t figure out why.
Oh, he had considered it once. Eight f**king years ago. When he had been trying to get Crista into his bed, he had known then that he wanted more than a few nights with her. A few weeks, a few months, maybe.
Something tightened in his chest at the thought, something akin to regret, a knowledge that even a few months might not be enough.
One step at a time, he thought tiredly. Tonight, he’d just sleep with her. Just hold her. See how that went. That was something else he had never done, just held a woman through the night and felt the warmth of her against him.
Rowdy swore that some nights, it was better than sex, just having Kelly next to him, soft and sweet.
Would it be like that with Crista?
He glanced back at the stairs, his mind filling with the memory of her sweet scent, the warmth of her delicate body. Maybe, for one f**king night in his life, he could sleep without dreaming, if he were holding her.
He pushed himself to his feet and moved through the houseboat. He checked the windows, the back deck door, and the security alarms before moving up the stairs. When he stepped into the bedroom, he stopped in surprise.
He expected her to be awake and ready to shoot him. She had been madder than hell when she flew up that metal staircase. Instead, she was curled beneath the blankets of his king-sized bed, the covers pulled up to her nose, sleeping like a baby.