by Lora Leigh
The trick would be in convincing Kenni to tell them. Or risk her hatred by telling them himself.
“Let’s wait twenty-four hours,” Jazz suggested. “The two of you head into town, see if you can hear or see anything. Come back here tomorrow night and I’ll arrange for a meeting with Slade and Zack.”
“That’ll work.” Kate nodded, though her expression was still concerned. “Finding out who it is won’t be easy unless she cooperates, though. She hasn’t moved to find out who’s trying to kill her in two years. She might be too scared to know, Jazz.” Sympathy softened her face. “How terrible to believe the very people you trust the most are the ones trying to kill you. Her own cousins striking out at her must have been horrifying.”
She might be too scared to know, but he wasn’t.
“That’s why we’re going to take care of that little thing for her. It’s not a fight she should have to face herself. The fallout will be bad enough.”
CHAPTER 10
How to find a killer when you have no idea of their identity or motives? It was a question Kenni had asked herself for two years now.
Gunny had been investigating her mother’s murder and the Kin as they ran. He’d kept her out of the investigation, though, kept her as closely guarded and hidden as possible. She’d run errands, kept watch when he met with contacts he wasn’t certain of, and drove when he was tired.
When she’d argued he’d just turned the “look” on her: his expression like stone, his brown eyes devoid of emotion. And he’d keep looking at her like that no matter how hard or how long she argued. When she was finished, he would pick up where he left off and she would end up doing exactly what he wanted her to do in the first place.
His stepfather had raised him in the marines and then he’d joined himself even before he’d graduated high school. It was all he’d known until his half sister had found him just a few years before her death.
One look, he told her once, at the delicate woman whose eyes were identical to his and he’d melted. He’d loved the sister he’d never had a chance to know so much that he’d gone AWOL from everything he’d known to save her daughter.
How had he known the danger she was facing, though? What had her mother told him that had him running with her and refusing to contact her family until she was well enough to make the decision herself?
What had he known that kept him running with her, chasing information to identify the person behind her mother’s death?
“It was the bodyguards, Kenni,” he would murmur as he tracked each second of her and her mother’s time in New York. “Cousins. If only your father or brothers can command these men, then who gave the order?”
She hadn’t had an answer for him. And now she didn’t have an answer for herself.
Puppy growls drew her back from the past to the four Rottweiler pups playing at her side where she sat on the smooth stones of the patio the next afternoon.
The runt, fierce and always eager to rumble, was trying to pounce on his sister and steal the squeaky little squirrel he’d decided he was in love with yesterday.
He’d become so possessive over that damned furry toy, she’d started calling him Squirrel. The name had stuck. It was ridiculous, but even more ridiculous was the fact that he’d responded to the name from the beginning.
* * *
“No, Squirrel, leave Aggie alone. She was playing with it first,” Kenni chided the rambunctious male pup as he used his teeth to tug at the only female’s ear with fierce little growls.
A puppy woof, demanding and irritated, was Squirrel’s response as Aggie gripped the toy in her teeth and turned her back on him. “You’re being bad, Squirrel,” Kenni said, wagging a finger at him in disapproval. “Aggie will snap at you again.”
Squirrel gave a puppy growl before batting at her hand then going after the toy again.
Squirrel was only about half the size of the other pups but with enough attitude for three Rottweilers. With one black ear and one brown, the quick little pup tried for the toy again only to have Kenni block him once more.
She couldn’t help but be amused by his determination. If he would just settle down for a minute Aggie would drop the toy and amble away to find something else to play with instead. If he would settle down—it took sheer exhaustion to get him to do such a thing, though.
Sitting curled on the stones next to the four pups as she gave the parents a break in watching them so they could nap, she tried to make sense of the past ten years. But then, she’d been doing that since she hit Loudoun.
She should have fought Gunny harder. She should have made him tell her what he was learning as he learned it. That was, if she’d known when he was learning something. She normally didn’t find out until he was heading toward the next clue. And all those clues seemed to come with another near escape from Kin sent after her.
“We’re changing that pup’s name, right?” Jazz asked from the sliding glass doors where he propped himself against the frame and watched her.
Her stomach got that jittery feeling again, while her thighs tightened against the moisture that began to gather immediately. Damn him. All she could think about whenever she looked at him was what it had been like as he’d taken her.
“He likes his name.” She shrugged. “It suits him.”
Scratching at his jaw, Jazz frowned at the pup in confusion. “He doesn’t look like a squirrel, Kenni.”
Turning to Jazz, the pup woofed, bounding over to him, only to trip over his own feet before reaching his goal. Sprawled out in front of Jazz, canine bemusement evident on his face, Squirrel struggled back to his feet where he then stared up at Jazz in pride, as though he’d done something completely awesome.
“Why hadn’t you named them yet?” she asked as Jazz straightened from the door frame and moved to sit on the stone bench a few feet from her.
Reaching down to pet Aggie when she moved to him quickly, he grinned at Squirrel’s hurried possession of the furry stuffed toy the female abandoned.
“Maybe I was going to let Jessie name them?” he answered, his gaze locking with hers as the use of the word maybe had her eyes rolling in exasperation.
“Maybe? Really, Jazz?” She was probably one of the few people who knew when that maybe began.
“Maybe.” His lips quirked as she saw the memory in his gaze as well.
Maybe was Jazz’s greatest lie.
Maybe I don’t give a damn … That had been his response to Cord when her brother had informed him that Kenni was far too young for him.
He had given a damn. He wouldn’t have touched her and she had known it. At least not then he wouldn’t have.
“I went to talk to Vinny the day you and your mom left for New York.” His eyes turned somber as they darkened for a moment with whatever emotion he was feeling.
“What about?” What could he have possibly had to discuss with her father?
“You.” His eyes locked with hers then. “I asked for his permission to call on you when you returned home.”
She blinked back at him in surprise. How old-fashioned. She would have never guessed he would do such a thing.
Squirrel moved to her side, butting against her in a bid for attention as she felt her heart beginning to race, her hands to shake.
She hated it when her hands shook. It gave her away every time. It revealed how much something meant to her, how important it was to her.
“You were going to call on me?” she asked carefully.
“I wanted to court you, Kenni,” he told her softly. “Your brothers yelled and cursed and threw their fits and the whole time Vinny just stared back at me.” A low, self-deprecating chuckle left his lips. “When Cord, Deacon, and Sawyer finally shut up, he gave me his permission. I was going to be there when you returned. Maybe take you for a drive.” A frown pulled at his brow as gave his head a little shake. “Then you were gone. Just that fast.”
Turning her head away, Kenni had to fight her tears.
He surprised her.
He’d always surprised her, she realized. She never would have imagined Jazz would do something so traditional.
“I had no idea you were even interested.” She’d daydreamed, fantasized, but never thought for a second that any of those fantasies had a chance.
“I had no idea what your father would say,” he returned, his voice soft, his gaze still far too dark. “You were only sixteen. I was twenty-three, but the thought of waiting while some teenage bastard stole your heart seemed a little idiotic to me. But then, I wasn’t aware of how little you trusted me at the time, either. I might have changed my mind if I had known.”
Trust.
“It wasn’t a lack of trust.” Rising to her feet, she brushed the back of her borrowed shorts off before turning and staring out at the pool. “It was the thought of what would happen to you.” Wrapping her arms across her breasts as she fought back the chill invading her, Kenni stared at the water as it trickled along a streambed before falling into the pool. “The first month or so, I didn’t call because I was terrified, and I could tell Gunny simply had no idea why Momma was dead and suddenly I was being hunted. But we knew it was the Kin. You were part of the Kin, and I knew if I called you then you’d call my brothers, my father…” She shivered at the memory of her terror during those days.
“You knew I’d protect you,” he snapped.
Kenni whirled around. “With your life,” she retorted fiercely. “You would have protected me with your life if that was what it took, Jazz. And I couldn’t bear the thought of it.”
“Damned right I would. Then and now!”
“There you go then.” A mocking flip of her hand emphasized her point. “That’s why. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to keep arguing with you about it.”
“No, you’re just going to keep running, aren’t you, Kenni? You’ve run for so long you don’t know anything else,” he accused her, the censure in his voice lashing at her guilt and her temper.
His expression was so arrogant, so knowing, it made her crazy.
“I’ve been in Loudoun for two years, Jazz. How does that constitute running?” The accusation stung, though, whipping at some hidden guilt she couldn’t put her finger on.
A mocking smile twisted his lips. “No, Kenni, Annie Mayes came to Loudoun. Kenni Maddox is still running because she can face dying easier than she can face learning who’s trying to kill her.”
The retort enraged her.
Fingers curling into fists she faced him, knowing it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.
“You are wrong.” Shaking, trembling, she stood in front of him, her finger pointing in his face furiously. “I lived…”
“Well by God I didn’t.” Jazz came off the bench so fast she could only blink up at him, surprised, a part of her suddenly wary at the icy fury revealed in his gaze.
“What…?”
“Look at this place,” he demanded as he grabbed her shoulders, quickly turning her to stare out at the valley she’d envisioned as a teenager. “This house, the property. Every fucking detail I could remember. Everything a sixteen-year-old flirt wanted, I built after they told me you were dead. After you began fucking running without a single thought to the people who loved you, Kenni. Who grieved for you.”
She could hear the emotion in his voice, the grief that roughened it, that tore past the control he exerted on every emotion he kept locked inside his soul.
He had grieved for her.
He had loved her.
Every dream she’d ever had was locked in this man, and that, too, had been taken from her.
Agony exploded in her chest. Her heart felt as though it were shattering all over again at the tortured despair in his voice. At the knowledge that he had cared so much, and she hadn’t even known.
“It wasn’t like that, Jazz…” She felt as though she were dying inside. As though her soul were being ripped from her chest all over again.
“Then what was it like?” Voice rising, he pulled her around to face him again, his hold on her shoulders almost desperate as he glared down at her. “Tell me, Kenni. Tell me what it was like.”
* * *
He hadn’t realized how furious he was, how enraged it made him to know the hell she’d suffered without him to protect her.
“You turned your back on me and on your brothers.” Lowering his head he snarled down at her, seeing the pain as it transformed her face but unable to lie to her, or himself, that it was acceptable. “I grieved, Kenni. I built your home believing you would never see it, that you’d never know just how fucking serious I was about you. And all that time you didn’t even fucking care enough to let me know you were alive.”
“I didn’t know because you didn’t tell me, Jazz,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, filled with pain. “You treated me like a child barely out of diapers that summer. How was I supposed to know?”
“The same way I knew you belonged to me. Then.” Releasing her, he stepped back. Pushing his fingers through his hair, he had to forcibly rein in the need to demand she acknowledge emotions even he couldn’t make sense of. “That was then.” His jaw clenched furiously. “A long fucking time ago, Kenni. It was a damned fantasy, because the young woman I was falling in love with that summer didn’t exist anywhere but in my imagination evidently.”
When she didn’t say anything he turned back to her, his chest tightening at her pale features and the pain reflected in her face.
She didn’t cry. Tears didn’t fill her eyes. She just stared up at him with such misery, such agonized, dawning knowledge in those hazel eyes, that for a second guilt flayed his conscience. Then his anger returned.
Hazel eyes. God, he hated that color. That wasn’t her eye color any more than Annie Mayes was her name. And he hated it. He hated the color and he hated the lie it represented.
“What do you want?” she whispered then. “What do you want me to say, Jazz? I can’t take it back, and I don’t know that I would even if it were possible. I couldn’t risk you…”
She couldn’t risk him? By God, he was going to show her risk.
“Take those contacts out today.” First things first. “Before you do anything else get those damned things out of your eyes. They offend me.”
Confusion flashed across her expression. “They offend you?”
“They offend me, Kenni,” he growled. “I don’t want to see Annie Mayes when I stare back at you or while I’m fucking you. Get rid of them or you’ll wish you had.”
It was all he could do to keep his hands off her, to keep from taking her right there where they stood. God he wanted her—needed her. He was on fire for the touch of her.
“You know I can’t…”
“Annie Mayes doesn’t exist here,” he snapped before she could finish. “No more lying, Kenni. I won’t let you keep pretending you didn’t make the choice to hide from everyone who loved you. Everyone who would have helped you long before now. Keep lying to your brothers if you have to, but you will not lie to me any longer.”
Kenni had only a heartbeat’s warning before his lips came over hers with a hunger and dominant determination she wouldn’t have expected. Powerful, experienced, they moved against hers, parting them and tasting her with his tongue. Like a fire pouring through her senses, he burned away any thought of protest before it had a chance to be born.
Pleasure raced past the agony torturing her, gathering force and swirling through her senses until nothing else mattered. Until only his touch filled her reality, only his hunger sustained her.
Gripping his shoulders, Kenni lifted closer to him. Had it only been the night before that he had first taken her? How had she survived without his touch since? How had she survived without him, period?
Her nails bit into his hard flesh, tested its strength as his callused palm gripped her hip, his fingers flexing against her touch-starved flesh. How had she lived without this? Without the hunger that poured over her whenever he touched her?
“Damn, you’re like a drug I can’t get enough of.�
� His voice rasped with anger and lust as his lips moved to her neck, his fingers caressing from her hip to the side of her breast, trailing waves of fiery pleasure in their path. “I don’t want to get enough of.”
His lips settled at her shoulder, his breathing nearly as hard as hers. She felt his withdrawal, though. Before he ever lifted his head and stared down at her with aching regret.
Brushing his thumb beneath her eye, he trailed it to her lips then slowly eased away from her.
“I have some calls to make,” he breathed out heavily, tension pouring from him in invisible waves. “The next time I see you, Kenni, it better be you I see. Neither of us wants to deal with the fallout if it’s not.”
* * *
Did he really think the fallout scared her? Seriously, what was the worst he could do? What was the worst he would do? Tell her brothers on her?
He wouldn’t, not because of the contacts.
So why was she standing in the bathroom after her shower that evening and staring into the dark-emerald color of her own eyes.
She hadn’t paid attention to her eye color in years. She always wore colored contacts; the natural color was far too incriminating. Maddox green it was called, because the color ran so strong in the Maddox male line that the children were invariably born with it.
Her brothers’ children would no doubt be born with that gemlike eye color, whereas hers, if she lived long enough to have any, likely wouldn’t.
The thought of a child instantly brought to mind the image of an infant, innocent wonder filling brilliant-blue eyes. A thick cap of pitch-black hair, strong features, and the promise of a charming rascal to come. Or feminine features, with a hint of mischief gleaming in the sapphire depths.
Jazz’s child would be marked with the gift of mesmerizing charm and amused wonder, no matter the mother who gave it birth. But should she give him a child, Maddox blood mixed with Lancing Irish traits?
Her heart melted at the very thought of the strong, stubborn, laughing children they could have had. If she and her mother had returned that summer.