“Just get in the truck.” He didn’t wait for her to follow the harshly worded order. Dawg gripped her waist and lifted her in before crowding in beside her and forcing her to climb over the console to the passenger seat.
As she faced forward and stared through the windshield, she was faced with her poor little burned Rodeo. She had loved that little SUV.
The engine flared to life. As it did, Crista glanced over to see Dawg’s hands wrapped around the steering wheel with a white-knuckled, furious grip.
“Is Lessing who you left here with?” His voice was cold, furious.
“Yes.” She kept her voice soft, kept it calm.
Mark and Ty had come from Virginia that week eight years ago to inform Alex, their former Special Forces commander, why they were discharged from the Army. She had left with them when they returned home. It was supposed to have been a temporary thing. Instead, they had all become friends, family in a strange kind of way, and she hadn’t moved out until returning home the year before.
“You left me for another man?”
She stayed silent, despite the shaking in the pit of her stomach. She could lie to the sheriff but not to Dawg, not about this. The words would choke her to death.
“Crista, so help me God, you better answer me now.” His voice was a graveled, curt sound that had her flinching imperceptibly.
“I didn’t leave you for another man,” she finally answered evenly.
She had left him because of two other men, the men he had been intent on sharing her with. Then she had left town because she couldn’t bear the hollow pain that burned inside her months later.
“But you went with another man?” His voice was harsher, if possible.
“I left Somerset with Mark. I moved in with Mark. I lived with him for seven years. Is that what you want to know?
He turned his head toward her, his eyes glittering back at her with burning male lust and anger.
“No. What I want to know is, did you sleep with the son of a bitch?”
She drew in a slow, deep breath. “I slept with him often.”
Three hours later, Dawg pulled Crista inside the dimly lit houseboat where Natches waited silently, jerked the door closed, and locked it, before tossing the handful of plastic shopping bags filled with clothes to the couch.
His fingers were latched around her wrist, where he had learned fast to keep them as he forced her through the store and chose the clothing himself.
There were some panties in there that had his dick throbbing at the thought of pulling them from her body. Lacy little push-up bras, skimpy little pj’s, some low-rise jeans and high-rise shirts that were guaranteed to make his blood boil if he caught another man staring at her.
As he released her, Natches uncurled his body from the deep shadows in the corner of the room, rising from the recliner and watching them expectantly.
“What is he doing here?” She flicked Natches an irritated glare.
She was irritated, and he was still so damned mad he was wearing his back teeth down.
“He,” Natches drawled, “is being a Good Samaritan. I brought the rest of your thirsty plants.” He indicated the freshly watered greenery sitting on the dining table. “And your personal stuff.” He grinned as though proud of himself. “I knew Dawg was buying you new clothes, so I didn’t bother with those.”
Dawg watched Crista carefully. He could see the mad washing over her expression, the light flush that stained her cheeks, and the glitter of it in her eyes.
“Of course you didn’t bother,” she muttered through her teeth. At least Dawg wasn’t the only one gritting his molars. “Wouldn’t it just suck to spoil Dawg’s fun?”
“Hell yeah.” Natches breathed as though relieved that she understood some complicated dilemma.
“We’re real careful not to spoil Dawg’s fun. That could get bloody.”
As Crista swung around, Dawg ducked his head, hiding a grin that tugged involuntarily at his lips.
Natches could play the fool better than anyone Dawg knew. He could be playful, teasing, almost innocent. As long as one didn’t make the mistake of staring into the cold depths of his frozen green eyes.
As Dawg glanced down, he got a generous view of her well-rounded br**sts heaving beneath her T-shirt and her fists clenching at her side.
“You have your clothes.” He jerked his head to the bags. “You can take a shower now and change. I’ll order something to eat.”
“Shove it,” she snapped.
“Don’t tempt me, sugar girl.” Tension fairly snapped through him, he was so damned on edge, so horny and pissed off that he didn’t know if he could trust himself to keep his hands off her or not.
“Because shoving it is something I could do real easy right now.”
He watched her eyes widen in shock and surprise before the glitter of anger increased.
“You are not intimidating me, Dawg,” she retorted.
And she looked serious.
Dawg grinned. A slow, easy curve of his lips as he let his hands move to his belt, jerking the slack through his belt loops and pulling at the buckle. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. Dawg watched as her gaze jerked to Natches before she grabbed the bags and ran like a rabbit that just caught sight of the wicked wolf.
Natches was chuckling as she sprinted up the curving stairs, never pausing to look back.
“Man, she should have gotten a clue with the smile,” Natches snorted as he turned back, his gaze smug as Dawg readjusted his belt.
Amusement lingered in Natches’s expression, but there was regret lurking in his eyes.
Dawg knew where the regret stemmed from. He wouldn’t be sharing in this relationship between Crista and Dawg. As fiery, as problematic and irritating as it was shaping up to be, he would be on the outside looking in. And that was a helluva place to be.
Dawg shook his head. “What did you see after we left?”
Natches pushed his fingers through his shoulder length, straight black hair as a grimace contorted his rough hewn features.
“I saw Johnny. He was watching you and Crista like a beady-eyed little snake from the corner as you drove off. You could see his brain just calculating ways to use this. The little twit. Other than that, all I saw were the customers from the diner. There were no unknowns.”
No unknowns. No one unfamiliar.
“Where could they have hidden?” Dawg wondered curiously, mentally laying out the area in his head.