Bran went still. “You knew.”
He shot out his hands then, jerking Gideon up against him.
“You knew!” Brannon roared.
“You need to calm down!” Gideon said. “One final warning.”
Brannon’s only response was a snarled, “Fuck you!”
It took more effort—and muscle—than Gideon would have liked. Brannon was a big, and determined, son of a bitch and the two of them had spent more than a little time squaring off with a pair of boxing gloves. But Gideon hadn’t spent four years walking the sands in Afghanistan just to have his ass handed to him by the richest, if somewhat pissed-off, boy in town.
It took a lot of sweat, and a lot of creative maneuvering, but he managed to get Brannon pinned. Breathing hard, he shoved his knee into Brannon’s back. “Is this what she needs?”
“Get off me!” Brannon snarled, scrabbling against Gideon’s hold, but Gideon had his arm, caught and twisted up, rendering him almost immobile.
“I will—when you decide to put your head in front of your gut.” Dipping lower, he put his mouth close to Brannon’s ear. “You think I don’t want him dead, too? But look at her. She needs her family, man. She needs you … and she needs you here.”
“You miserable piece of shit.” Brannon launched into a litany of other insults, most of which Gideon had heard before. He ended with, “I ought to rip off that badge of yours and make you choke on it.”
“Okay. You ready to talk now?”
Brannon took a deep breath and then his big body shuddered. “Fine.”
Gideon eased slowly, braced—ready. “You know, if you take a swing at me, I’m not going to blame you—and I’ll still arrest your ass.”
As Brannon came to his feet, he curled a lip in Gideon’s direction. “I’ll wait until you’re not wearing the badge.” He paused and then turned his head, met Gideon’s eyes dead-on. “If he comes after her, no force on this earth will get in my way—you’d better not try.”
Gideon didn’t reply.
He didn’t see the point.
* * *
Ian knew his friend and he knew him well.
Brannon was in a mood fit to kill, and that wasn’t just a figure of speech. Very little could set Brannon off like that.
Judging by the white set of Neve’s face, he had a bad feeling in his gut that he wouldn’t like it.
Neve stood off to the side, shaken and pale, and he was torn between going to her and seeing what was wrong with Brannon. When Gideon went to Brannon it made the decision for him, and he cut toward Neve, ignoring the growing crowd that had come out of the pub or gathered on the sidewalk.
Neve flinched when he went to touch her, so he lowered his hand.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
She glanced at him, looking dazed. “I’m fine.” Her gaze barely lingered on him before she shifted her focus back to her brother.
Alright? Fuck me. No, you sod, she’s not alright. Ian could see it, in the fine tremor in her shoulders and the rigid way she held herself. But he didn’t know what to do or what to say.
Somebody came rushing toward her and that made it easy, though. This was something he could do. He recognized the woman and her dog, but couldn’t remember the name. Even as she tried to rush toward Neve, he blocked her. “Neve needs some peace right yet, if you would,” he said, using his body as a buffer between her and those who were trying to edge closer.
After a moment, he caught Neve’s arm and urged her closer to Gideon and Brannon.
She didn’t resist.
But she didn’t look at him, either.
He would have even thought she was unaware of him, if he hadn’t heard the faint Thank you a moment later.
* * *
What Neve wanted more than anything was to curl in on herself and get away from the stares. She’d almost asked Ian if they could disappear into the pub, but she’d still have to come out again, still have to see everybody.
Instead, she let herself stand close, close enough to feel his heat and his strength.
As a child, she’d thrived on attention—it wasn’t so much that it had made her happy, but she’d been the baby of a loving, chaotic family and she’d just come to expect it. Then after the wreck and the deaths of her parents, her world had flipped on its end. Brannon and Moira had both been shoved into maturing practically overnight, Brannon forced to take care of himself while Moira tried to take on both the roles of business leader, as the head of the board in the McKay family business, and parent, caring for Neve. The attention had just … disappeared.
For a while, Neve had thought if she was good, that would make it all better. But no matter how good she was, nobody had time for her anymore. Ella Sue had doted on her, but Ella Sue wasn’t there when the nightmares chased her screaming into the hall at two A.M., and Ella Sue wasn’t there when she sat shivering on the floor outside the bedroom where her parents had once slept. Moira had locked the door and hidden the key so Neve could no longer go inside.
It was purely accidental, but Neve eventually realized that being bad got her more attention. She’d been tired after too many nights of just a couple of hours of sleep, and at breakfast one morning she’d knocked Moira’s coffee over, covering Moira’s college assignments, something she was showing somebody at McKay, and a paper Brannon had been working on. Both of them tore into her and she’d started to cry.
For the first time in weeks, they’d stopped what they were doing and hugged her, talked to her—Moira was late leaving and Brannon said he’d drive her to school.
Being bad got her more attention than being good ever did and Neve set out to be very, very bad. Or, at least, she made them think she was, because the older she got, the more it took to get them to talk to her. She hung out with the wrong kids, she got caught with kids who were smoking and drinking—it didn’t matter that Neve was never found drinking or smoking. Just being with them was enough.
But a few years down the road, she figured out how unwelcome some of the attention was, especially once guys like Joel Fletcher began assuming she’d do plenty of things—just because Neve was, after all, nothing but trouble.
One night Joel had trapped her up against the brand-new car Brannon and Moira had given her—once she promised she’d get her act together and get through summer school Joel had damn near ripped her dress off and she’d decided maybe she was done being known as Trouble. She’d gotten away from him, and when he tried to grab her again, she’d picked up a tree branch and brained him with it. As he lay there bleeding, she told him if he ever touched her again, he’d be sorry for it.
That was the week after she turned sixteen. She decided being bad wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and she’d stopped seeking attention. The change didn’t do much to impress her brother and sister—and, yes, that had added to the depression she’d been dealing with since the death of her parents, although Neve hadn’t recognized it at the time. What she had figured out was one crucial thing—she wanted out. She wanted away from Treasure, away from her brother and sister, just … out.
She wasn’t totally able to escape notice—a McKay couldn’t live in McKay’s Treasure and not have people know who you were. And you couldn’t go by the nickname Trouble and not have people expect just that from you, either.
She coasted through the next few years, graduating a year late, thanks to being held back her freshman year, but she did it—she got out, and she actually aced her last two years of high school.
In New York, she’d thought maybe she didn’t mind attention so much—after all, she’d been able to use her looks and what she realized now had been a natural ability to charm people to luck her way into capturing the eye of the right people in the fashion industry. It had been short-lived, though, thanks to the collision course fate had put her on with William.
Those years with William had been a brutal, ugly, humiliating lesson.
She was happiest now when she knew people weren’t giving her the side eye.
Ian was a solid presence at her side, and probably the only reason she didn’t curl in on herself and slink away, try to hide.
A voice raised and she looked up, saw Brannon striding toward the car. She darted a quick look at Ian, managed a smile.
He didn’t return it, just stroked a hand down her back.
She moved toward the car, but before she could open the door, Ian was there, beating her to that simple task, and she ducked inside without a word.
Brannon viciously jerked open the driver’s side and climbed in.
Ian closed the door, and as the silence wrapped around, she cleared her throat.
“Brannon…”
“You don’t want to talk to me right now,” he said, his voice deceptively calm.
“Look, if you would calm down for a minute—”
She wanted to swallow the words the moment they left her mouth.
He threw the car into reverse so hard, the tires squealed. She caught sight of Ian’s somber face before she looked back at Brannon.
Her brother looked grim, his jaw tight as he whipped the car out of the parking slot and slammed it into gear. But his voice was level—calm—as he said, “You want me to be calm?”
Panic chittered in her head, an insane little monster.
She flinched at the controlled violence she sensed inside him—and immediately hated herself. He swore and drove his fist against the dashboard. Something cracked.
“You want me to be calm,” he said, his voice harsh—and it cracked. “I’m trying damn hard to be calm here, Neve. But it’s a struggle. My baby sister was on the other side of the world, being abused—had some monster slice her up—and I never knew. But sure. I’ll be calm.”
She swiped her hands down the front of her jeans and looked out the window.
It probably wasn’t the time to tell him that she’d been writing.
The mystery of the missing letters, the backpack—and just why all the letters had been sent back was something that would have to be covered at a time when she felt a little less fragile.
“I don’t understand,” he said quietly.
She closed her eyes.
“Why didn’t you just come home?”
“I’m here now. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
When he didn’t say anything, she dared to open her eyes, chanced a look at him. He glanced her way at just that moment.
He reached over, the movement slow, tentative.
She held still.
His hand brushed her cheek. Then he nodded.
“You think that’s going to work as an answer for Moira?”
“For now,” she murmured. “It’s going to have to.”
Brannon blew out a deep, harsh breath and then returned his hands to the steering wheel. He gripped it tightly, squeezed it hard enough that she heard another crack. “Neve, I’m trying to level out here, but I’m giving you one warning—if that son of a bitch wants to find himself a walking, talking corpse, it’s a done deal, the minute I find out he crossed even a foot over the town line—hell, the Mississippi state line.”
* * *
William Clyde idled in his car at the stop sign just outside of the small town of McKay’s Treasure.
If the investigator he’d hired had been competent, William could have saved time and been waiting here for Neve when she’d gotten to town. It should have been clear to any clod with a brain that she was heading here, but it had taken until she’d already reached the town before his man had confirmed it.
Incompetents and idiots—that’s how to describe the Yanks he’d met.
Eyeing the town sign, he lifted a brow at the date noted on it.
FOUNDED 1852.
Perhaps in America that was considered impressive.
Did this town even have a dot on the map? He tried to understand the faint note of pride he’d always detected in Neve’s voice when she’d talked about home as he drove down the main thoroughfare.
He’d yet to find a single reason.
The place might be quaint, if that was what appealed, but there were prettier villages in England. Someone crossed the road ahead of him, shirtless, carrying a bucket in one hand. The man glanced at him and nodded with a smile.
William just stared at him. The man’s fat belly hung over the waist of ratty blue jeans and his skin was leathery and dark.
A pickup truck came rolling across the intersection as William slowed at a stop sign. The driver laid on the horn and William whipped his head just in time to see the driver waving at a passerby.
As he pulled through the intersection, somebody laid on their brakes. William shoved a hand out the window and flipped him off.
The driver stared at him and then shoved his head out the window and proceeded to bellow after William as he drove away.
Inbred idiots.
And he’d have to tolerate the lot of them for the time it took for him to deal with Neve.
For now, he needed to find a hotel.
He activated the GPS and then swore as the bloody thing told him the nearest acceptable hotel was forty minutes away. Forty minutes! Whipping his car into the parking lot of a store, he sat there, squeezing the steering wheel for a moment.
He picked up the green silk scarf from the passenger seat and rubbed it against his cheek, forcing himself to think.
He’d find a place here. That’s all there was to it.
The sign at the front of the lot caught his eye. It displayed a fat little pig and below the porcine creature read the words:
PIGGLY WIGGLY.
It was a bloody grocery store.
“She should fall on her knees and thank me for saving her from this place,” William said.
Despite the air-conditioning, he could feel the heat of the sun through the windows, and it just added to the overall insult of being here. He’d been patient, he thought. Patient, perhaps even forgiving, considering all the trouble she’d put him through.
Considering the utter humiliation she’d put him through.
But the longer this took, the less patient he would be.
He’d told her once he’d always find her.
It didn’t matter if she tried to run from him now—or fifty years from now.
Neve McKay was his.
* * *
“What do you think that was about?”
Ian had no idea, but he was both concerned and fed up. He didn’t know exactly what he was angry at, but there was definitely something, he knew that well enough.
That he had no target just yet wasn’t a problem for him.
He brooded over it as he stood in the door of the pub, arms crossed over his chest. More than a little concern—for both of the McKays—brewed inside him. Neve had been afraid. Upset. Sad. He didn’t know what bothered him the most, the misery or the fear.
Morgan Wade, one of his assistant managers, stood behind him, her tray propped on her hip and a puzzled frown on her face.
“It’s Neve,” a snide voice replied.
Both Ian and Morgan followed the sound of the voice. Ian had to fight to keep his face blank.
He hated that he’d taken an instant dislike to her when they’d met some years back but the fact of it was, Shayla Hardee made it hard to like her. She gossiped loudly, she shoved her oversized breasts against him every chance she had, and more than once, he’d had to avoid her bloody hands when she decided to see for herself if Scotsmen really did wear anything under their kilts.
She’d followed him into his office after the last time she’d done it, and he’d been of a mind to call the police and have her ass hauled off out of his pub.
He should have, too, because her husband walked in just as she decided to throw her arms around him and plant her mouth on hi
s. It was like having an ashtray shoved into his mouth, too.
He’d immediately removed himself from that situation, and informed her just how unpleasant it had been while he was at it.
Shayla hadn’t had much use for him ever since and he was pleased with that. He would have ignored her comment altogether if Morgan could have just done the same. “Yes. That was Neve. Thank you, Shayla, for pointing out the obvious.” She gave the other woman a saccharine smile that had Shayla going red.
“I meant it could be anything. For all we know, Neve went and got herself involved in … in…” She paused, pressing her lips together as she searched for something suitably outrageous. When she smiled at them, Ian couldn’t help but notice she’d gotten lipstick on her teeth. “She probably got messed up with drug dealers or prostitutes while she was up in New York. You never know what kind of people they have up there.”
“Drug dealers or prostitutes.” Morgan stared at her. “In New York.”
“Of course.” Shayla flapped a hand. “Everybody knows that kind of trash is all over the place up there. We don’t take with that kind of thing down here.”
Morgan caught her tongue between her teeth and then she said, “Wow. I guess I misheard what you and Rog did for your anniversary when y’all went to NOLA then.”
Shayla turned pink, her mouth falling open.
Morgan cheerfully continued. “Yeah, I was talking to some of the girls at the salon when I was getting a manicure and I overheard that you and Rog ended up having a few too many and when you woke up, there was some chick asking where her money was. But, hey, I must have misheard. We don’t take with that down here, right?”
Shayla threw her half-empty glass of wine in Morgan’s face—or would have, but Morgan ducked.
It ended up all down the front of Ian’s shirt.
He sighed, torn between laughing and kicking Shayla out of his pub—once and for all. Plucking his shirt from his chest, he looked down and then up. Shayla stood in front of him, her chest heaving, threatening the decency of the halter top she’d worn. “You disgusting little—”
“Enough,” Ian said, cutting her off.
Headed for Trouble (The McKay Family #1) Page 11