“I didn’t walk away from you because of the sharing,” he said harshly. “You did.”
“Mark and Ty never, at any time brought another woman to their bed, or another man. Would Rowdy and Natches have loved me enough to give up other women? I don’t think so.”
Mark and Ty had never been her lovers. They were each other’s lovers. Sometimes though, when the nights were too dark and the pain followed too closely, they would draw her to their bed much as parents would a child. There, they sheltered her between them and gave her the warmth she needed to hold on to at the time.
His eyes narrowed as his expression turned stony.
“I’m not going to argue with you over this.” She finally shook her head as she glanced at her watch. “The lumber store will be open in half an hour. We should go.”
“I never open.” He shrugged.
“Which is a lousy way to promote a locally owned business,” she informed him. “And I know you know better than that, Dawg. You’re more of a businessman than this. Besides, I have work to do, and I do my best work in the morning.”
“My business.” His smile was tight and hard. “Not yours.”
“As long as I’m getting paid to organize and manage that hellhole of an office, then I have a vested interest in your business,” she told him sweetly. “And holding me hostage here because you don’t like my answers is not going to get you what you want.”
He uncoiled from the table. Despite his size and the obvious power in his body, he moved silently, gracefully. Like a panther on the prowl, his predatory green eyes narrowed and glittering behind pitch-black lashes, his body tense but prepared. As though she would attempt to run from him.
Crista stood her ground instead, her arms crossing over her br**sts as she stared back at him guardedly.
“That store could burn down around its foundations for all I give a f**k,” he sneered, shocking her with the latent fury in his voice. “I keep it to piss off the holier-than-thou relatives who tried so damned hard to take it away from me, period. Its success is due to nothing more than luck.”
And she didn’t believe that. She knew better. He wanted to pretend he hated it, but the stories related to her the day before by the employees showed something totally different.
Dawg did care about that business, but for some reason he refused to admit it.
“It was your father’s business.” She tested the waters gently. “I know your relationship with him wasn’t close, but surely you don’t hate him enough to let the store suffer.”
“I bet he’s spinning in his grave.” Dawg’s smile was tight and vicious. “I’ve hired people from the families he hated the most, and I’ve made certain people he would never give credit to, have it. The fact that that damned place makes money never fails to amaze me.” He shook his head as though he truly couldn’t make sense of it.
Yet, when he had fired the manager that had been cheating him, the current floor manager had told Crista that Dawg practically lived in his office until he had the books and the store straightened out.
He had an instinct for what people needed and what they wanted, and he hired people who could provide it. And every employee hired had been hired by him personally.
“Well, I need your help anyway,” she told him firmly. “Your manager, Layla Matcher, has a pretty good handle on things, but I was going through some of the more recent catalogs gathering dust in the office and noticed you hadn’t ordered for the Christmas season yet. You need to get that in.”
“It’s in.” His lip curled in disgust, self-disgust. She could tell by his expression that admitting it didn
’t set well with him.
“Then I need the order log.” She turned and rinsed their dishes. “We also need to get a stack of files taller than I am filed. The stock boy I sent for the file cabinets yesterday hadn’t arrived by time I left.”
“They’re waiting in the office.” If his voice could have become shorter, it did.
Crista hid her smile as she stacked the dishes in the dishwasher.
“Good; then you check the problem Layla told me was building in the lumberyard behind the store. For some reason, orders were missed with surprising regularlity last week. Several of your best contractors have threatened to use the chain lumberyard rather than Mackay’s because of the mess-up.”
She turned in time to catch the narrowing of his eyes.
“Why didn’t Layla report this when it began?” His lips flattened in irritation.
“Check your cell phone messages.” She shrugged. “She left several texts.”
A heavy grimace tightened his expression then. “I had a problem with the phone last week.”
“There you go then.” She moved across the kitchen where her purse sat on the far counter.
Before she could make it halfway across the room, Dawg caught her arm and turned her firmly back to face him.
“Don’t start trying to run my life, Crista. You’re the one being blackmailed here, not me. There’s only so much I’ll let you get away with.”
She restrained her smile; gloating wasn’t the best way to handle Dawg.
“Keep telling yourself that,” she told him instead. “And while you’re at it, ask yourself the same question I had to answer sometime last night when I was still trying to catch my breath. You wouldn’t blackmail someone you believed was a criminal, Dawg, and we both know it. No more than you would see an innocent person imprisoned. No matter the cost. So what are you doing in this relationship?”
“Getting the f**k of my life,” he snarled.
Her lips did twitch then. “So you are,” she agreed, pulling her arm from his grip before moving back to her purse, then turning and glancing at him over her shoulder. “Now, the question is, what do you really intend to do with it? Or me, as the case may be. Because we’re both smart enough to know that the thing you’re not going to do is turn me over to Homeland Security. Fuck me to death maybe, but you wouldn’t turn me in.”
“Are you betting your life on it?”
“Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “I’m betting my life on it.”
It was a damned good thing her brother had raised her, Crista thought later as they pulled into the parking lot behind the lumber store marked Employees Only. Because Dawg was snarling and growling and being a general pain in the butt just for the hell of it. From her experience with Alex, she could tell the male irritability factor was in full swing here.