“You can’t teach her how to cook, Christa.” Angel paused next to the counter, looked from the stove to Chaya. “But she can definitely teach you how to burn the kitchen down without trying.”
“Let me try.” Christa laughed, obviously well aware of the fact that Chaya couldn’t cook.
The look Chaya shot her was a warning. “Be nice,” she warned Angel, her voice low.
Ah, the tales she could tell, Angel thought, almost amused at the wariness in Chaya’s expression.
“I’m always nice,” she assured the woman she’d once called her mother. “Notice, I’m not saying anything. I’m leaving.”
Tipping her fingers to her forehead in salute, she turned and left the house. There, she’d spoken to her. Duke and Natches could stop bitching at her now.
She made her way outside, around the grounds, and checked the position of the men Natches had hidden in the forests around the house. She could feel the scopes of their weapons on her as they watched her make her way along the natural, heavily vined border fence that grew around the yard surrounding the house.
There were two SEALs, Seth and Saul August; Natches’s sniper protégé Harley Matthews; and Natches’s adopted son, Declan Mackay, keeping watch on the property surrounding the house. If anyone made it past those four, as well as the two Mackay cousins “from the other side of the mountain,” as Natches phrased it, and him and Duke, then they were all in trouble.
Four other Mackay cousins were still canvassing the county searching for the attempted abductors with Rowdy and Dawg leading the two teams after dropping their wives and daughters at Natches’s.
The teenagers were in the basement with their video games, television, and various entertainments; Chaya, Christa, and Kelly were at the kitchen table with their coffee and mother discussions; and Angel was doing everything she could to avoid all of them.
Especially Chaya.
God, it hurt being here with her mother, facing the past and the wounded parts of her heart that she’d never been able to fully heal.
And she had to deal with Duke as well after last night.
That man was driving her insane. If ever one had been created for the sole purpose of both irritating and arousing a woman to the point of no return, then it was Duke. And for five years he’d made it his sole purpose in life to drive her crazy.
And no doubt before Bliss’s abductors were found, she’d be certifiably insane.
Making her rounds of the yards, ensuring there were no anomalies and everything was the same as it had been the evening before, she made her way back to the house.
Rather than going in through the kitchen entrance, she used the sliding doors into the suite instead. She’d done her good deed for the day that morning and she was fresh out of additional ones at the moment.
Shaking her head at the thought, Angel moved to the desk and the laptop connected to the three monitors. She pulled up the traffic cam program she’d installed the night before and typed in the command to access the city’s camera system. She and Tracker had been working on the program for years, perfecting it, ensuring it couldn’t be tracked or traced.
Within minutes she had the program searching for the blue van that one of the marina’s security cameras had recorded the day Bliss was nearly taken. If they were smart the men that attempted to grab the teenager had already gotten rid of the vehicle. Sometimes, though, intelligence wasn’t always the deciding factor. Simple oversight had been the cause of many a criminal’s apprehension.
Now that the tracking program was running, she was left with the option of pacing the suite or joining Chaya and her mommy-friends in the kitchen.
She was certain she preferred staring at the walls for a few hours instead. She remembered the looks Dawg’s and Rowdy’s wives had given her, those pity-filled looks mothers gave orphaned, refugee children, and she didn’t think she could stand that for an extended period.
Watching the laptop screen shifting between different camera views as it searched for the blue van, she wondered how many other citizens or Mackay family members were doing the same thing.
She grinned at the thought. No doubt someone was, but they didn’t have her and Tracker’s program to work with.
Still, it wouldn’t work fast.
“Hiding?” Amused and knowing, Duke’s drawl had her turning to the door, her eyes narrowing on him.
“Working,” she assured him. Yeah, she was going to admit to hiding. Was he insane?
She watched as he strolled into the bedroom, all hot, hard, and sexy in jeans and a T-shirt, something she’d rarely seen him in when he worked with the team. The black mission pants and protective shirts were always their best gear and almost a requirement in some areas where the terrain was rougher.
Today, worn denim and white cotton were paired with well-worn leather boots and a wide leather belt. Lean, hard-bodied, a bad boy image that would make any woman swoon, he sauntered into the bedroom. Green eyes gleamed with amusement as he watched her, making her body heat with arousal. Damn him. He should at least have to put some effort into turning her on so fast.
“Working, huh?” he murmured, knowing damned good and well she was escaping, too. “Chaya, Christa, and Kelly were wondering where you disappeared to. I think they were hoping to talk to you for a while.”
She gave a little roll of her eyes before rising from the desk and shooting him a quelling glance.
“Don’t involve yourself in me and Chaya, Duke,” she warned him as his arms went over his chest in a classic male-dominance stance. “We’re going to disagree if you try, and we’ll just end up angry with each other.”
His brow arched just enough to piss her off, because she knew what that meant. He really didn’t care if he pissed her off.
“And you think you can get to know your mother. . . .”
“I told you not to call her that.” Her hand slammed to her hip as it cocked to the side and she glared back at him furiously.
“Stop ignoring her, Angel,” he all but ordered.
He was ordering her? As though she were a child to be directed?
“I spoke to her this morning,” she objected. “I was nice.”
“You reminded her she couldn’t cook,” he argued. “That’s not talking to her, Angel, and you know it.”
What the hell did he expect from her?
“You go spend time with her if it means so damned much to you, because I’m sick to death of you pushing her down my throat and vice versa. The door swings both ways, Duke.” Chaya was making no more of an effort to get to know Angel than perhaps Angel was making to get to know her, she knew. At least she had tried, though, Angel assured herself.
“One of you is going to have to give in.” Irritation flashed in his eyes.
“Who’s the mother? Who’s the child?” she asked sweetly. “Isn’t she supposed to be the adult in the situation?” Okay, so it was damned childish of her to act that way, but she was sick of being forced to defend her right to be angry.
She had every right to feel betrayed.
She had been betrayed.
“And when it begins affecting your ability to protect Bliss?” he asked softly, drawing closer to her. “What will you do then?”
Was it affecting her to that point?
At present, Bliss and her cousins were in the basement. She knew they were still in the basement; she knew the men guarding the property were in place. Was there something she should be doing that she wasn’t? Or something she’d missed?
“I’ll have to reassess the situation then.” She frowned, wondering what he was getting at.
“You’re not sleeping well, you’re beginning to look pale, and that bothers me. Whatever’s keeping you awake at night is going to begin affecting your ability to do the job.” He moved to her, his hand reaching out to touch her cheek, to brush back the hair that had fallen
from the braid to her forehead.
Angel pulled back from him and shot him a glare.
“Nothing is affecting my ability to do my job,” she informed him. “I’d know if it were. And Chaya Mackay sure as hell isn’t affecting it. And you were the one that kept me awake all night. Now if that’s all you wanted”—she extended her hand toward the door in an angry gesture that he could leave now—“I have things to do.”
The amusement flashed back in his expression.
“Are you trying to dismiss me, Angel?” The vein of laughter in his voice was infuriating. “Have you ever known that to work?”
“A two-by-four wouldn’t work with you,” she muttered, turning her back on him to return to the laptop.
She should have known better. Turning one’s back on Duke was never a good idea.
Before she could counter him, he gripped her arm, swung her around to him, and secured her to him with the other arm, his head lowered, taking advantage of the gasp that parted her lips.
Angel froze.
Pleasure exploded through her brain. Just that fast, just that effectively, he stole her ability to fight, to challenge him, to think, by covering her lips with his and parting them with the heated stroke of his tongue.
He wasn’t asking permission to kiss her. He wasn’t being in the least polite about it, and that fact alone should have enraged her. But this was Duke. His kiss, his touch, the easy possession of her senses was something her body was beginning to crave.
It was something she was beginning to crave.
Her fingers fisted in the material of the shirt covering his wide chest, her body melted against him, and her senses began to riot with sensation. And all he was doing was kissing her. His lips moving over hers, sipping at them, little nips and hot licks of his tongue. And she was mesmerized.
She should be trying to kick his ass; instead, she was trying to sink inside his skin, to get as close as possible.
Just as quickly as he grabbed her to him, he released her. Again. They were both breathing hard, and Angel swore she was on the verge of swaying.
“What was that for?” she all but panted, staring up at him surprised and a little confused that he’d released her so quickly.
In the past days, grabbing her for a kiss had meant far more than just a kiss.
“For distracting me,” he muttered, shooting her a brooding look.
For distracting him?
The man was crazy. That was all there was to it. And before long he was going to make her crazy. Or crazier.
She had to admit the situation as it stood wasn’t doing much for her sanity. Being in Chaya’s life was never what she expected, and she sure hadn’t imagined being in her home.
The fact that Duke and Natches had forced Chaya to acknowledge her was a pain in her side, too, and she admitted it. The woman shouldn’t have had to be forced to accept Angel; she should have known, shouldn’t she? When Angel stood before her, silently begging her, every hope and dream she’d ever had of her mother pouring through her, shouldn’t she have recognized her daughter?
“For distracting you?” she asked him carefully.
“Natches caught me outside and tore my ass because you’re ignoring Chaya.” There was the faintest look of disappointment in his expression. “You should give her a chance, Angel.”
“Should I really?” The sarcasm in her tone really wasn’t deliberate. “And is this what you think or what Natches Mackay told you to think?”
“I think it was a mutual decision.” The grin that quirked his lips was going to get him kicked.
Confidence oozed from him in waves and dominant male power was so much a part of him that it tended to completely irk her feminine independence.
“You and Natches can shove your mutuality,” she informed him, walking past him into the sitting area then to the kitchenette and coffee maker.
There was a time when she would have told him in exacting and explicit detail exactly what she thought of his and Natches’s mutual decision. A time when the filth she spewed from her mouth would have made a sailor wince.
Now the words refused to pass her lips, the memory of the times when they had nearly causing her to cringe.
She hadn’t been a nice person then. She wasn’t exactly a nice person now, but at least she’d managed to clean her language up for the most part.
“What do you think you’re going to do when all this is over?” he asked as he followed her. “Ride off into the sunset and continue on your merry way?”
Popping a pod into the coffee maker and closing it in, she slid a cup beneath the spout and waited.
“Think ignoring me is going to change the question?” Just because his tone was lower didn’t change the determination in it.
He wanted his answers and she knew him. He’d get them even if it meant pissing her off to the point that she exploded and threw the answers at him.
“When it’s over, I’ll leave.” There was no point in lying, and for some reason he always knew whenever she tried. “There’s no reason for me to stay here.”
Chaya would prefer she leave, she knew that. No matter what Duke thought, the other woman was uncomfortable with her in the house. She was uncomfortable with her around Bliss. There was no place here for Angel Calloway, just as there had been no place in Chaya’s life for the child Beth Dane.
“What about Bliss? Don’t you think it’ll hurt her?” The question was one that haunted her. It had haunted her even before she’d made the decision not to return when she’d been preparing to leave.
“At first,” she agreed. “At first she might be hurt. She’s young, though, and she doesn’t know the truth. As long as she doesn’t know, she’ll be fine.”
Chaya had made the right decision in keeping the truth from Bliss. This way, when Angel left, Bliss wouldn’t feel deserted. Friends could come and go, but sisters should be forever. Right?
“And you think it’s just going to happen, just like that?” Curious, as smooth as honey, his tone wasn’t in the least confrontational.
Angel could feel her irritation growing with his, despite the cooler tone.
“It’s going to happen just like that,” she assured him as she removed the cup and placed it on the counter to spoon sugar and dry creamer into it.
Dessert. Duke had once told her she didn’t drink coffee, she drank coffee-flavored dessert. She stared into the lightened liquid, the steam rolling off it, and tried to tell herself it really was going to be just that easy. She would make certain it was just that easy.
“You want me to tell you what’s going to happen?” The knowing tone of his voice had her turning to him slowly.
Leaning against the wall, his thumbs hooked in the front of his belt, he watched her with a brooding intensity she didn’t know how to counter.
“Not particularly.” She was certain it would only piss her off.
A grin tipped his lips as he lowered his head and shook it as though in disappointment.
Damn him. She knew she was going to hate whatever was getting ready to come out of his mouth.
“If you actually manage to get out of the county, you’ll find your ass covered by a Mackay twenty-four-seven. If I don’t make certain of it, Natches will. And I’m betting the second Chaya realizes that you think you’re leaving, she’ll make certain you rethink that little decision.”
And wasn’t he so confident?
Angel smirked, just as confident that leaving wouldn’t blip Chaya’s little radar.
“Keep believing that.” Lifting the coffee, she sipped at the heated brew and assured herself again that she had nothing to worry about as she stared back at him. “While you’re at it, see if you can’t get your pseudo-daddy Natches to find someone to make a grocery run for me. I prefer fresh vegetables over canned, and if I’m going to be feeding those August twins, and Harley, and De
clan every day, then we need red meat. I’ll make sure you have the list. If you’ll excuse me, I need to run those gossiping women out of the kitchen so I can put a stew on.”
She’d rather deal with Chaya, Christa, and Kelly than with Duke in this mood. She could tell by the expression on his face that he was getting ready to really start pissing her off.
A smug grin formed at his lips as he straightened from his slouched stance against the wall and took the few steps needed to where she stood in front of the counter.
He towered over her, but not in a way that made her feel threatened or in the least intimidated. She felt . . . secure.
Damn him.
She hated the way her body responded to him, her senses coming alive in ways they never had before.
Placing his hands on each side of her, he leaned over her, his head lowering until his lips were less than an inch from hers.
“Once a Mackay puts claim to you, baby, you’re marked.”
The kiss stopped any argument she might have had. Another of those soul-searing, rock-her-to-her-soul kisses that left her brains scrambled and her common sense nonexistent.
When he released her, he didn’t wait around for her to find her bearings once again. No doubt, he knew better. Instead, he was out the patio doors leading to the pool, that cocky male swagger holding her attention until he closed the door behind him.
And she was able to breathe enough to clear her head and wonder just who in the hell he thought had marked her.
No Mackay owned her.
Did he?
ELEVEN
She should have left town with Tracker and Chance, Angel told herself the next afternoon when she stepped into the kitchen through the back door and came to a slow stop, eyes narrowing on the man who sat at the kitchen table.
He looked like the leprechaun he’d once been called, though she’d heard Mercedes Mackay had actually managed to tidy his once-scruffy appearance. Timothy Cranston was a legend in certain circles, and another of those men Tracker had avoided over the years. Intelligent, a natural manipulator, and an expert gamesman, he had run his little corner of military intelligence and then DHS like each mission was a personal chess game.