by Nancy Gideon
Mia wasn’t lulled by his smooth tone. He was angry at her for making him wait, for making him hide, but she was in no mood to soothe ruffled feathers. She accepted the glass and tossed it back, earning his pained sigh.
“I see you take your wine like you take your men.”
“I take it you’re not here to give etiquette lessons.”
Another exhale. “What would be the point?”
“Then get to yours. I need a shower and my bed.”
“Since you’re not offering to share either of those with me, let’s get to business.”
Yes, business. A sharp pang twisted in Mia’s chest. That’s all that was on the table. She’d been a fool to think otherwise.
What was she waiting for?
She’d had two of them dying to get close to her. Another in reach. She’d been within striking distance of their king on more than one occasion. Why the hesitation? Was she, as her father had said, too weak for acts of personal violence for the sake of her people? Was she too female? He’d called her that not as an insult but as a biological truth. The weaker, more emotional sex and therefore ineffective as a true leader. Was that why she wavered? Because she’d allowed herself to get too attached to her enemies to remember those hands that caressed and claimed her were red with her family’s blood?
She’d sworn vengeance over the graves of her father and uncle. She’d been denied the body of her brother to weep over. Why was she stalling? Because one of them had the most delicious lips and the other made her laugh? They were her enemies! Enemies she’d vowed to destroy in the names of her dead.
“The Terriots are looking for their brother James. Apparently he tried to assassinate their new king,” she told him. “Other than that, I haven’t been able to get inside to find any other motives.”
“All that letting them get inside you for nothing.” He sighed and shook his head.
She ignored that, thinking clearly now. “They don’t trust me. They see me as an enemy. That needs to change so I can get in close. Sex isn’t the answer. They have no respect for that.”
Isaac Thorne was many things. Outsider, schemer, deadly, treacherous. But he’d been her brother Daniel’s closest friend, the one who’d protected him, picked up after him, and now held himself responsible for his death. Both resented Rueben’s hold on the reins of power. He and Mia had come together over those things when nothing else could tempt them to share the same room. He’d planted the first whisper that she, not Rueben, should lead their clan, and he’d vowed to stand behind her until they reached that goal.
She trusted him about as much as she did her feelings around Colin Terriot.
Watching Thorne, seeing the speculative gleam turn his pale eyes to mercurial silver, she leaned forward, eager to hear what brought a slow smile to his face.
“How do you tame feral animals?” he began with cunning relish. “You don’t beat them. You don’t open your home and heart to them. Or your legs.”
Mia’s features hardened. “Go on.”
“You earn their trust by making them indebted to you.”
“How?”
“You take away their pain, their fear, their worries.” His smile grew wide and malicious. “You save their life, darling. You save their life.”
***
“Nice place!”
“Thanks.” His hair still wet from the shower, Colin stepped aside to let his youngest brother enter. He hadn’t expected Kip to respond so quickly to his call and wasn’t prepared to be the bearer of bad news.
Kip wasn’t like the rest of them. He wasn’t cursed with their father’s taint of violence and maladjustment. Maybe it was his youth, or Cale’s protective counsel, but Colin guessed it was the large, solid family unit surrounding the kid like a big hug. One of them should have the chance to live a normal life. And here he was, dragging the boy onboard with the rest of them.
“It’s late. What have you been up to?” he asked, hoping to hear the healthy response of a barely legal and in love male. And at the same time, dreading it.
“What? Are you my conscience now? Do I need a note from Mom to be out after dark in the big, bad city?”
Colin smiled, but his reply was somber. “Would that be a bad thing, knowing someone is watching out for you?”
“You’re not my momma, Col,” Kip reminded good-naturedly, plopping down on the sofa, all floppy hair, mile-long limbs and brilliant grill of teeth. “What were you were doing at my age?”
“Don’t be a smart ass. The city can be dangerous. We’re strangers, and these people aren’t our friends.”
“Duly noted, Dad. If you need to know, and you don’t really, I went to a movie with Phe.”
Ophelia Brady, the sweet young thing he was going to ask him to betray. “She seems nice,” he ventured a bit awkwardly.
“She is nice. I like her. A lot. She’s not like, you know, us,” he ended lamely.
He did know.
Kip studied him with too much insight for his age. “What’s up, Col? You didn’t ask me over to give dating advice, did you?”
“No.” He took a fortifying breath. “I’m going to ask you to do something you’re not going to like. Hell, I don’t like it.” He turned away from that uplifted gaze, trying to frame the request in the least offensive manner.
“Just say it.”
“Okay.” He faced his brother with features as grim as his words. “Babineau is calling in a favor.”
“He did us a solid. Shoot.”
“Just don’t shoot me, okay? That POS who tried to kill our king was working with Jamie and an insider in the city’s police department.” He waited for comprehension to light in his brother’s eyes but Kip shrugged, forcing him to use a killing blow. “The insider is the police commissioner. Warren Brady. Ophelia’s father.”
“And?” His tone chilled to brittle frost.
Colin hit him straight on like an eighteen-wheeler running down Bambi in the center of the road. “We need someone to find out what part he’s playing, and how to stop him.”
Kip nodded slowly, processing the request and firing it back at him with deadly precision. “You want me to use my relationship with Phe to get close to her family so I can spy on them and most likely destroy her life. Is that pretty much it?”
“Yeah.”
He rose slowly, topping his older brother’s 6’2” by several inches. “I’m going to forget you said that to me, and we’re never going to talk about this again.” He started for the door, going stiff and still when Colin caught his arm.
“He’s trying to control and kill our kind. He knew what Lee planned for Cale. He’s putting his foot down on the neck of Savoie’s clan, then he’s coming for us. For your family.”
Kip glared at him, features flushed. “Go to hell.” A hard shove knocked Colin back, but he refused to give more ground.
“Grow up! This is what lives in the big, bad city, and that big bad is coming for us. No little girl’s feelings matter when it comes to our survival. You’re a prince in the House of Terriot. Nothing comes before that. Not ever.”
Their standoff escalated to a flashpoint, broken by the sound of Metallica’s “Of Wolf and Man” announcing Cale on Colin’s phone. He put up a finger to stay his seething brother before answering. “Hey. What’s up?” His tone spiked. “He what? When did this happen? Yeah. Of course. We’ll be there.”
“What?” Kip demanded as Colin put his phone away.
“We’re going home. Flight leaves at 7:45 in the morning.”
“Home? Why?”
Relieved to postpone the ugliness of the moment, Colin calmed his brother’s alarm with a press of his shoulder and a mystified laugh. “We’ve got a new sister-in-law.”
“You’re leaving?” Mia’s reluctance to meet Rico outside the hotel’s restaurant at the absurdly early hour fell away.
“Going home.”
That quickened a leap of alarm. “Just you?”
“All of us. Family thing.”
&nb
sp; They were leaving. Colin was leaving.
Rico paused, catching her look of panic. Her gaze darted about as frantically as her thoughts until he asked, “Are you going to miss me?”
“But you’ll be back, won’t you?” Now she made eye contact, her dark gaze fierce and impatient.
Rico scowled. “Are you asking about me? Or Colin?”
“Don’t be childish.”
“He’ll be back. He never leaves things unfinished.”
Relief weakened Mia’s knees, allowing her to slap playfully at his chest and smile with the genuine fondness she felt for him. “You. Will you be coming back?”
He grinned at that. He really was cute. His hopeful gaze brightened with a sudden shock of inspiration. “You could go along as my date.”
His suggestion stopped her amusement cold. “A Guedry? In your family compound? I don’t think so.”
His smile curled ruefully. “Sorry I asked. Never mind.”
Still wary, she asked, “You want me to go to Tahoe with you?”
“I want you to see where I grew up. I want to spend time with you away from here. No pressure. I’ll get you a room in town, show you around. It’ll be fun.”
Mia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She enunciated very carefully, “You want to take me home to meet the family?”
His big golden eyes widened and blinked. “Oh hell, no.” He quickly backtracked to save the situation. “Why would you want to be surrounded by Terriots? Most of the time I can’t even stand them. Besides, Cale knows you’re a Guedry. He’d never let you go inside our walls.”
“My mistake.”
The snag in her voice tortured his conscience. He took up her hands, holding them lightly. “I really want you to go, to spend time with me.” He shrugged. “Then we’ll see what happens.”
She smiled reluctantly. “What’s the occasion?”
“We’re celebrating my brother Turow’s bonding. There’ll be lots of drinking and probably a fair share of fighting.” He sounded excited by both prospects.
“I can entertain myself,” she assured him. “Unless you’d rather spend all your time drinking and fighting.”
“There are other things I like to do better.” He backed her up away from clear view of those at the buffet line, his hips doing a very explicit roll against her. “I’ll text you with the flight number and have a car there to pick you up in Reno. I can’t wait to show you around. Nothing’s more beautiful than our mountaintop.”
She rubbed his forearms. “I can’t wait to see it.”
And to be the first Guedry to snoop around their boundaries in search of weaknesses, and just maybe find a way inside. Not a terrible job considering how appealing and accommodating Rico could be. But someone wouldn’t be as easily amused by her camping out on their doorstep.
“Don’t say anything to Colin.”
He arched a brow at her concern. “Why would I? He’d just make trouble.”
Trouble she’d be wise to avoid.
The flight was surprisingly full. Wedged between his brothers who seemed to take up all the leg and shoulder room, Colin tried to recover some of that sleep his conscience had denied him the night before. They made it easy, Kip pretending he was some offensive stranger and Rico plugged into his headset with a smirky smile playing about his lips. Colin should have wondered what he was up to. Instead, he closed his eyes, and immediately Kip’s elbow battered his ribs.
“Dude, get off me. You’re snoring.”
He straightened from where he’d been drooling on his brother’s shoulder to a surprise. They were on the ground. Rubbing his eyes, Colin grunted as Rico dropped his carry-on from the overhead onto his lap. Passengers were pushing past in the aisle. Colin’s bleary stare riveted to the swivel of a scandalously tight pair of jeans and the sight of Rico’s palm cupping one rounded cheek for a covert squeeze.
His heart stumbled.
Mia Guedry was on their flight!
In Reno. With his brother.
CHAPTER FOUR
Blinding white snow, right to the bone cold, and air so sharp and pure it razored through the lungs. The wildness of the forest and harsh landscape spoke of who they were. The House of Terriot. Perched high above Lake Tahoe, they’d carved a fortress out of untamed wilderness—isolated, impenetrable and breathtaking all at once. Home.
The ride up to their compound in the family limo was mostly silent as the three sat lost in thoughts of what they’d left and what they returned to. In New Orleans, they’d been visitors, out of place and carefully watched. But when the gates swung open inviting them back inside the walls they’d protected for generations, they were suddenly more. They were princes. Clan rock stars. Envied, feared, desired. Each of them felt the pressure that came with the precious stones in their ears. Because with power came responsibility and a certain cautious distance they’d briefly shrugged off in anonymity.
Kip was dropped off at his mother’s where, Colin noted with a pang, he was immediately surrounded by squealing younger half-siblings. He and Rico continued to the dorm for unmated males.
Colin stood in the doorway to his room, confused by his hesitation to enter. Like several of his brothers, he’d had a wall knocked out to increase his space, allowing for a massive closet, a king bed that had seen more touch-and-goes than most airports, and a huge sound system housing his collection of ’70s and ’80s rock. It held all his adult memories, a place he’d changed clothes and spent nights rarely remembered.
While quickly stowing his travel kit and trading up from rumpled attire to meet with his king and fellow princes, a realization stirred uneasily. He wasn’t glad to be back.
All the prestige, affluence and . . . stuff couldn’t fill the emptiness of this room that had been his prison, locking him away from the only thing he wanted. He had nothing to come home to because this had never been his home.
He took a moment, as he’d promised Cale on the phone call he’d taken in the car, to roust his brother, Turow, whom he’d once tormented and now envied for the smugly satisfied look on his face and sexy mate curled up in his narrow bachelor’s bed.
All Colin had was a cold piece of steel around his finger, a title more burden than blessing, and the knowledge that the two who’d returned with him had something he lacked—those they loved to fill their arms.
Cale wasn’t Bram Terriot, even though Colin once thought the younger cleaved from the elder. Their father had been a scary, tyrannical SOB when he’d ruled their mountaintop, and now, even locked away in a posh hotel room prison in Reno, he warranted a cautious eye. His madness and greed had fractured their clan into those who would bow, and those who would not. Cale wouldn’t, and Colin, Turow, Rico and Kip had stood beside, not behind, him.
His step-brothers gathered in the lower level of the main lodge, the Twelve minus two who’d died and one who’d betrayed them. For a moment, Colin could still see those absent three, Michael with his cheeky grin, Derrick always showing pictures of his young family like you hadn’t seen them in person five minutes before, and James, with his cleverness and thoughtful insights. Though they hadn’t been close, at that moment he missed them like severed limbs for the certainty they’d brought to a world compressed into these wooded acres. He longed for the simplicity of those days when their worries concerned a well-fitted coat, an athletic bed partner and a chance to draw first blood when sparring for bragging rights. Not invasions from other clans. Not traitors within the ranks of family. Not an obsession with a female out of his reach.
Instead of joining Cale, their unlikely, short and scrappy king who sat casually on the bar across the room, Colin hung back, giving him a chin hoisting nod of greeting, then noted a mood shift when Turow appeared.
Much to his surprise, the meeting wasn’t to offer congratulations to their newly-mated brother. Cale had another purpose and dropped it like a bomb.
“One of you in this room is betraying us all.”
Mia wasted no time in her plush hotel room. The minu
te her carry-on was emptied, she locked the door behind her to begin her search for information. A huge family of freakishly private and absolutely gorgeous zillionaires couldn’t have gone unnoticed even in a bustling resort town. She went to the most obvious founts of information first.
Her maid grumbled that when one of them visited the rooms she tended, it was in worse shape than the occasional rocker entourage. “You’d think they were animals!” she’d complained.
She’d thought right.
Her waitress in the coffee shop could only sigh about the size of the tips they left along with their dreamy smiles. The pretty bartender had more to offer. They were infrequent visitors, rarely alone, were flirtatious, obscenely hot, but strange somehow. A little too hot to handle. She laughed as if Mia would find that ridiculous. But she understood all too well.
They were dangerously attractive males. Unlike her, a smart human woman would have the sense to stay away. But some were more mercenary than bright. The hotel call girls were intimately familiar with the Terriots for their generosity, vigor and sometimes kinky requests. They wouldn’t name names or specify the kink. “Bad for business,” she was told.
No one she spoke with knew where they lived. Somewhere around the lake. They showed up in town for the rare, rowdy good time and disappeared. So she spent hours in a rental, traveling the winding, rollercoaster road through state parks, from the California North Shore ski resorts to the lakeside communities of Incline Village on the Nevada side to where the South Shore straddled both states with their casinos. Casinos were the family business, but Mia suspected they didn’t work where they lived, preferring their investments in Reno and Las Vegas and out of their personal sandbox. One thing she realized―anyone going after them on their home turf would be decimated. They’d dug in like badgers and would come out all claws and sharp teeth to defend their own in this fierce, forested countryside.