Sandi suddenly reached out, gripping her arm as Eve tried to walk away. Eve felt the other woman’s nails dig into her arm, breaking skin. A haze of fury rose in her mind, obliterating common sense. The dull ache throbbing at both temples was forgotten as the blood began to rush to her head, fueling the fury rising inside her.
“You might carry the Mackay name, but you’re still a no-name little bastard with a tramp for a mother. Brogan doesn’t need the likes of you, bitch. You’re not part of his world, and he has no desire to be part of yours.”
Eve jerked her arm back, feeling the raking talons of the other woman’s nails in a distant, hazy part of her consciousness.
Others were watching. She could feel their eyes, their judgment.
She wasn’t going to do this here. She hadn’t fought in years. She had promised her momma she wouldn’t fight unless she had no other choice.
“Get out of my way,” she rasped, the need to fight throbbing in her voice. “Or I promise you’ll regret it.”
“Gonna sic Dawg on me, are you?” Sandi laughed insultingly. “He’s so pussy-whipped now he can’t find his ass from a hole in the ground, let alone drag his fist out of his wife’s snatch. He can’t help you.”
Oh, God, the other woman was asking for it. She was begging for it.
Why, oh, why had she made that promise to her momma that she wouldn’t fight unless she had to? Was she crazy?
She thought she’d try one more time. “Dawg taught me to swat overblown barflies all by my lonesome. If you don’t stop fucking buzzing at me, then you’re going to find out exactly how he taught me to do it.”
As she saw Brogan and Dawg, followed by John, converging on them, she turned to move away again. God, when had Dawg gotten there?
Eve started to turn, Sandi’s arm went back, then flew forward, and she backhanded Eve with enough force to throw her into a customer’s back and nearly slam his head to the table.
Eve felt her lip split, but not with a sense of pain.
A haze of red descended over her vision as adrenaline crashed through her with a force she had never felt before. Before she could consider her actions, Eve turned, her fist jabbing into Sandi’s face.
Right between the eyes.
As the other woman went backward, Eve was on her. She followed her to the floor, her knee slamming into the other woman’s chest, holding her in place as she wrapped one hand around her throat and squeezed.
“Stay still, bitch!” she snarled when Sandi went to claw at her face.
To reinforce the order, Eve tightened her hold on the other woman’s neck, her fingers digging into Sandi’s windpipe and not letting up until she dropped her hands.
“Insult my mother, my sisters, my brother, or my cousins again—touch me again, bitch, and I’ll break your fucking nose. Then I’ll damned well ensure those lovely dentures you have screwed into your head require major surgery to repair. Are we clear?”
She could feel the crowd around them.
She could hear them.
Distantly.
She could hear Dawg and Brogan yelling at her. They were cursing, trying to get through the crowd to her, just as the bouncers were.
She was finished with the little piece of trash, though.
Jumping back in a smooth, well-practiced move she still worked at often, Eve landed on her feet just as Dawg and Brogan broke through the crowd across from her.
Her gaze met her brother’s—was that disappointment she saw in his eyes? No doubt it was. This was no way to ensure her reputation, her sisters’ and her mother’s, or his.
Adrenaline was still coursing through her veins, the urge, the hunger to fight flooding her system in such excess that when her gaze locked with Brogan’s, it was all she could do not to grab him and stake her claim immediately.
Yet she couldn’t.
Tremors were shaking her from the inside out. It wasn’t right. She had waited all her life for this, for the knowledge that there was a man out there who could ignite these fires inside her, and now she couldn’t have him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking between the two men.
She didn’t even know which of them she was apologizing to: Dawg, for wanting the one man he couldn’t tolerate knowing she was with, or Brogan, the only man her blood raced for, her clit throbbed for.
Or perhaps it was for herself, because she knew it wasn’t the promise she had made Dawg that she was going to end up breaking.
It was the promise she had made to herself.
The promise that at no time would she ever show her brother—the man who had given to her and her family so unselfishly—the least amount of disrespect.
Because she knew the chance of her finding herself in Brogan’s bed was growing by the day.
* * *
What was he doing to his sister?
The agony burning in her eyes, the color of Natches’s and similar to the emotions reflected in their cousin’s gaze during those horrendous years he and Rowdy had been certain he would turn up dead, radiated in her gaze. Her face was stark white, blood staining her lip and cheek, the upper curve of one breast, and across her arm.
As she turned and raced from the crowd staring at her in shock, she made the turn around the bar and disappeared into the back rooms, Dawg blew out a hard breath.
Then he turned on Brogan, stopping the other man when he would have followed her by stepping in front of him.
“You’ve done enough,” he rasped, seeing in Brogan’s gaze the same swirling emotions, needs, and hungers that he had seen in Eve’s. Like Eve’s emerald green, the blue-gray color shifted with emotion and fury and a need Dawg knew went soul-deep. He knew because it was the same lashing emotions that had burned in his eyes when he’d thought he would lose his Christa.
“She needs me.” The certainty in the other man’s voice only sent rage crashing through him.
“She doesn’t need you,” Dawg retorted furiously. “She doesn’t need a traitor, Campbell. She needs a man with honor. Not one willing to trade his soul and his country for a dollar.”
It had taken Dawg months to accept that Brogan Campbell was the man described in the reports he’d had pulled up on him. Months of investigation and reaching out to contacts in the highest and lowest levels of the covert world.
Because he’d actually liked him.
Because he remembered the boy Brogan had been when he’d lived in Somerset so many years before, before he joined the Marines, and hadn’t wanted to believe the fires that burned in him had turned so dark.
“You don’t know me, Mackay.” Brogan was all but nose-to-nose with him. “You don’t know who I am, what I am, or where my honor lies, and don’t fucking pretend to.”
He pushed past Dawg, stalking toward the bar before one of the other two men staying at the Mackay Inn stepped in front of him. Jedediah Booker spoke hurriedly, his voice too low for Dawg to catch the words.
Brogan tensed, a curse slipping from his lips before he turned back toward Dawg, then strode past him and headed for the bar’s exit.
Now, what the hell was that all about?
When Dawg would have left himself, Donny along with Eve’s tormentor, Sandi, began to move past him as well.
Dawg stepped into their path.
He knew these two. Donny and Sandi were usually not much trouble. The girl had always had a mouth on her, but never one so vicious as to cause anyone to attack her. And never had he seen Sandi deliberately go after another woman as she had Eve.
“You looking to make enemies, Donny?” he asked the other man carefully as he glanced at Sandi, disgust welling inside him at the memory of what this woman had pushed his sister into.
“You know I’m not, Dawg.” Donny sighed, shaking his head in regret. “This was just a misunderstanding, man.”
“I see her around my sister again and you’ll pay for it,” Dawg informed him. “And you know I can do it, Donny. That is, if I can beat Natches to it.”
Donny definit
ely looked worried now, while Sandi paled fearfully.
Natches’s name was synonymous with the bogeyman since the day he had been forced to kill his own cousin Johnny Grace nearly eight years before.
“I told you, I don’t want Mackays for enemies,” Donny repeated as he pulled at the loose neckline of his T-shirt as though it were choking him.
Sneering at the two in disgust, Dawg pushed past them and moved to the bar, intending on following Eve. Instead, he was brought to a stop as John stepped from behind the bar before he could reach it.
“Sierra’s talking to her,” John told him, his voice low. “I’ll make sure she gets home tonight. Sometimes, as my wife says, a woman just needs another woman to talk to.”
There was no loosening the muscles at the back of his neck, but Dawg tried. Reaching around to rub at his nape in frustration, he blew out a hard breath.
“Call me if she needs me,” he finally said in irritation before shaking his head helplessly. “Hell, John. How do you survive hurting a sister?”
Because he had hurt her, and he knew it. By making her swear to go against her own instincts and stay away from Brogan, he had a feeling he’d hurt her more than he suspected.
“You let them forgive you and you go on.” John finally smiled back at him in compassion. “That’s all you really can do.”
Clapping him on the shoulder, John turned and went back behind the bar to give the bartenders a hand.
Let her forgive him?
He turned and headed to the exit. He would love to let her forgive him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t so certain he deserved it.
FIVE
John’s wife, Sierra, was striding furiously through the hall leading to the bar as Eve pushed through it, intent on collecting her purse and leaving. Sierra must have left the bar while she was at the table with the bachelorettes.
Before Sandi had made a fool of her.
Eve didn’t want to cry. She hated crying. But as Sierra stopped several feet ahead of her and stared back at her in disbelief, she could feel her throat tightening with the hated dampness.
“I’m sorry, Sierra,” she whispered, pushing her hands into the pockets of her jeans as she blinked quickly to hold the moisture back. “I’m just getting my purse. I promise not to try to return.”
She knew the rules.
As she had stared into Dawg’s eyes after jumping back from where she’d held Sandi to the floor, shame had surged through her.
She hadn’t thought about the rules on fighting then. Not until she’d seen Sierra and the fury glittering in her brown eyes.
Shame burned like a cinder in her chest.
When there was a fight anywhere on bar property, then both fighters were banned. The rule made sense. She really could have walked away, but once Sandi had dared to not just insult her mother, but to also use that sissy-bitch move and backhand her, it had been over with.
Besides, jealousy had been eating her alive.
Sandi had been able to sit next to Brogan. To laugh with him. To talk to him without censure, while Eve was restrained by a promise she couldn’t break.
“Don’t you dare apologize to me, Eve Mackay,” Sierra demanded furiously.
The tears fell.
Sierra was a friend, and now she wasn’t going to forgive her.
“The fighting rule only applies when I say it does,” Sierra continued, moving to her quickly, surprising—actually shocking—Eve as she wrapped her arms around her. “And that rule does not apply to employees whom little bitches like that decide to torment all night.”
“What?” Eve shook her head as Sierra drew back, her hands still gripping Eve’s shoulders and staring into her face in concern. “I don’t have to leave?”
“As if,” Sierra said gently, shaking her head. “Eve, that rule rarely applies to employees anyway. Once you get a couple of hundred bodies in one place, drinking and deciding they’re more deserving than others, the first person customers take their attitude out on is the waitresses. That’s why we have bouncers, and that’s why we provide the girls with self-defense classes if they ask for them. Besides, I saw that bitch and her boyfriend watching you, obviously plotting each jibe before it was made.”
Eve sniffed, blinking again as she finally forced back the tears.
“I should have ignored her. Or just gone home.”
“Come on; we need a glass of wine,” Sierra decided as she turned and headed back up the hall. “And you need an ice pack for your cheek. The bitch must have been wearing a ring, because you have a hell of a scratch across it.”
Eve lifted the back of her hand to her cheek, then pulled it back to see the smear of blood across it. She couldn’t even feel it.
Following Sierra to the office in the back of the building, she sat down on the comfortable leather couch as Sierra went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of wine.
It took her a moment to pull the cork and pour two glasses. Once she did she handed Eve one before taking a seat in the chair across from her, her expression worried as she stared at Eve’s face.
“Are you sure you don’t want some ice?” she asked, sitting forward in the chair and crossing a leg over the opposite knee to prop her arm on it.
“No.” Eve shook her head before sipping at the cold wine. “I’ll be fine.”
“You surprised me.” Sierra grinned. “When I saw how they were taunting you I told Kota to send you back here before I left the bar. I didn’t think you’d do anything about it, and I didn’t want you having to deal with that viperous bitch while you were helping me and John out of a hard spot. She attacked before Kota could tell you. I cheered when I saw you go after her on the security monitor.”
“I should have just escaped back here.” Eve sighed. “I promised Momma when we moved here that I would stop fighting. All of us did. We were wild as hell before moving here. At least one of us managed to get into a fistfight just about every day.”
Life hadn’t been easy before Dawg had taken them in.
“There’s only so much you can take.” Sierra shrugged. “Besides, she was too jealous to let it go. You’ve managed to snag a man just about every woman in four counties has been after for years. Congratulations, by the way.”
“I haven’t captured anyone,” Eve denied.
Only in her dreams, in her deepest fantasies.
“The hell you haven’t,” Sierra said in disbelief. “Eve, that man can’t take his eyes off you. Surely you can see that?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want him.” Eve set her glass on the table before covering her face with her hands for long moments.
Her cheek throbbed. She could feel her busted lip now, the bruise where the inner flesh had been knocked into her teeth.
Her heart was still racing, the adrenaline that had pumped into her system still searching for release.
“God, this situation is going to give me a migraine.” She sighed, lowering her hands and staring back at Sierra miserably. “It’s impossible, Sierra. For whatever reason, Brogan is the one man Dawg can’t abide, and I understand why he feels the way he feels. I just can’t believe Brogan would betray anyone, though, let alone his country.”
Sierra frowned back at her. “Brogan? A traitor?” She shook her head slowly. “I’ve heard the rumors, of course, but that’s just not Brogan.”
“Exactly.” Eve flipped her hand out, palm up, before using both hands to rub at her face in frustration. Lowering them again, she picked up the glass of wine, then set it back down. She had to drive home, and the wine would go straight to her head.
“So how do you intend to fight the fact that both of you want each other like crazy?” Sierra asked. “He watches you like a starving man watches dinner.”
“I promised Dawg I would stay away from him,” she told Sierra miserably, her throat tightening with emotion again. “He’s never asked me for anything, Sierra, until now. And he asked me to stay away from Brogan.”
“I’m sorry, Eve,” she whispered sympatheti
cally. “But really, Dawg had no right to ask that of you.”
Eve shook her head. “He told us when we first came here that all he asked was that we never betray ourselves or our family. As far as he’s concerned, Brogan has betrayed his country, and to believe in him, to be with him, means I’m tarred with the same brush. To Dawg, that’s betraying not just myself, but my family, my friends, and the nation. And to Dawg, that’s the worst thing I could do.”
It had all been said lovingly, of course. And Dawg had hated saying it to her; she had seen that. But that was how he felt.
“But you don’t believe he betrayed his country,” Sierra stated.
Eve shook her head. “No, I don’t. I can’t believe he would do anything so vile, Sierra. He’s arrogant, proud as hell, and so damned stubborn he probably makes people want to shoot him. But I can’t see him betraying his country.”
“And you’re in love with him,” Sierra said softly. “Aren’t you?”
Eve sighed wearily. “I don’t know. I know I can’t stand the thought of denying myself something I want this badly. But I also know that if that’s the problem, then he’ll break my heart. There’s no doubt in my mind he will. And in turn, I’ll break my brother’s heart.”
Brogan might not mean to. He may hate it, but it wouldn’t stop it from happening.
“Do you think you can keep that promise, then?” Sierra asked her.
Eve gave a bitter laugh. “Dawg saved us, Sierra. And I hate myself. I hate myself until I’m sick to my stomach with the fact that the one thing he asked of me seems to be the very thing I can’t give him. And he deserves so much more.”
* * *
Dawg hadn’t meant to eavesdrop.
He’d been in the parking lot when Timothy had come around the side of the bar and called him back, bringing him through the side entrance to meet with him and John. What the hell Timothy was doing there, he hadn’t yet figured out.
He’d heard Eve’s voice as they passed the partially closed door, and stopped just to make sure she was okay.
Now, as he heard the pain in her voice, aching regret filled his chest, he felt like a traitor himself. Hell, he hadn’t meant to hurt her, or to make her feel as though she had disappointed him.