Wicked Lies

by Lora Leigh

  “No, Cord.” Her tone was firm, firm enough that she had her brothers looking at one another as though seeking answers. “I’m fine here. For now.”

  “And when this is over?” Deacon asked then, shooting Jazz a dark look. “When it’s safe to go home, will you go? Or are you going to wait until he’s finished with you? Until he’s convinced you what great and wonderful friends the two of you can be while everyone’s laughing at you behind your back?”

  “Enough.” Jazz stepped forward, placing himself at Kenni’s back, ready to get her the hell out of there as both Slade and Zack moved to the ends of the table, bracketing the Maddox brothers. “Get the hell out of here, Deacon, before I end up pissing her off and teaching you a few manners.”

  Deacon’s bark of sarcastic laughter loosened the leash Jazz normally kept on his temper. “Manners? Like yours, Lancing? The kind where you keep your damned mouth shut and don’t tell us our sister is alive?” he snapped. “You should have contacted us immediately.”

  “Cord you should leave now,” Jazz drawled with icy fury, lifting his hands to Kenni’s shoulders as she started toward her brother, fists clenched, fine tremors racing over her body. “And get Deacon the hell out of my house until you can convince him to have a civil tongue while he’s in it.”

  Deacon was getting madder by the minute, Jazz realized, and he didn’t need that right now. Hell, Kenni didn’t need that right now.

  “You’re making a mistake, Kenni.” Deacon focused on his sister, his brows lowering as the anger raging through him darkened his gaze and hardened his expression. “You’ve been in Loudoun long enough to know what they say about his women.”

  “And what would that be, Maddox?” Jazz pushed Kenni behind him and stepped closer to the other man. “Go on, push some damned stupid insult out of your mouth about a single woman I’ve been linked to. Be that stupid man, so I have the excuse I need to kick your damned ass.”

  “Stop this.” Kenni managed to push herself ahead of him again, moving to place herself between the two of them before Jazz pulled her back. “Deacon, this is enough. Right now.”

  The tension in her voice, the hurt was enough to send adrenaline pulsing through him. She’d been hurt enough in the past ten years; he’d be damned if he’d let her brothers hurt her further.

  “Kenni, come on. Ten years and the man has never had a serious relationship.” His bark of laughter was cutting. “Does that sound like a man you want to bet your heart on?”

  “I bet my heart on him when I was sixteen and the three of you told me to stay away from him or you’d break his bones,” she cried out then, surprising Jazz with that bit of information. “I didn’t listen to you then, Deacon. I went to Poppy instead, and from what I’ve heard, he reined your asses in.” Jerking from Jazz she stepped closer to her brothers, outrage and anger trembling through her. “Say one more nasty word to or about Jazz and I promise you, when I do go to Poppy, I’ll tell why I won’t be moving in, coming to visit him, or attending any holiday meal or party thrown in his home. Because my brothers are too possessive and too damned superior to accept that I have enough common sense to make a decision for myself, despite the fact that I did play a rather large part in keeping my own ass alive for ten years.”

  She didn’t yell, she didn’t have to. The minute she mentioned going to her father the three men backed down with their proverbial tails tucked and stayed there.

  “Don’t punish me,” Sawyer muttered, giving Deacon a hard push to the door. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Poppy didn’t care ten years ago if you were part of it or not. You let him open his big dumb mouth so you were just as culpable. Has his opinion on that changed?” she questioned them harshly, but even Jazz knew the answer to that one. Poppy hadn’t changed one whit.

  “Not hardly,” Cord muttered, stomping to the back door before turning back to Jazz with a killing stare. “Don’t let anything happen to her, Jazz. Nothing.”

  Jazz crossed his arms over his chest and met Cord’s glare with one just as antagonistic. “Anyone will have to go through me, Marcus, and Essie to get to her,” he informed her brother. “And you know yourself, trying to get through me isn’t something that’s considered advisable.”

  “The problem is, there’s a lot of things about you that aren’t considered advisable. Especially when it comes to women,” Deacon snorted though he was already on his way out the door.

  Tightening his jaw, Jazz forced himself not to follow the Maddox brother out the door and teach him the manners he’d obviously forgotten over the years. Instead, he turned back to Kenni.

  Once again she lifted the pack containing her laptop and the DVR and headed for the doorway.

  “Kenni, are you okay?” There was something about her expression, her eyes, that bothered him, that made his chest ache.

  She did things to him no one ever had, made him feel things he hadn’t realized he’d never felt before, and none of it made sense.

  “I’m fine, Jazz.” the assurance did nothing to relieve the tension building in his senses. “I’m just tired. I’d like to take a nap, I think.”

  He glanced at Slade and Zack as they, too, watched her, the curious concern in their expressions mirroring his own.

  Hell, what had he done?

  As she disappeared through the hall on the other side of the television room, he turned back to Slade.

  “What did I do?” Hell if he knew, but damned if he didn’t feel guilty all the same.

  Slade just shook his head.

  “Some things a man has to learn on his own, Jazz,” he finally chuckled as he headed for the back door. “I think I’ll go take a nap myself. I swear, you two are enough to make a man tired. Real tired.”

  Glancing at Zack, Jazz lifted his brow questioningly. The other man just shrugged as though to say it was hard damned telling when it came to Slade.

  And that was the damned truth.

  CHAPTER 16

  He found her in the bedroom, the balcony doors now closed as she stood to the side and looked out on the edge of the valley as it met the slope of the mountain rising over it.

  “Deacon and Sawyer left,” she said as he moved across the room to stand several feet from her. “Cord’s still out there, though, just above that table rock that looks out on the pool.” Somber knowledge filled her gaze. “He thinks I didn’t see him slip into the tree line.”

  Evidently her brother didn’t have a lot of faith in his ability to protect her or in her ability to survive.

  “Well, there go my plans for skinny-dipping.”

  The look she gave him was one of exaggerated disbelief. “Then you weren’t intending to do so anyway. You wouldn’t let Cord stop you.”

  His brow lifted. Shooting her a grin, he inclined his head in acknowledgment. “That’s true,” he agreed. “But if you want to skinny-dip, sweetheart, I’ll make sure it happens for you.”

  He’d made certain she had her house, the gazebo with the bed in it, the pool, and everything else she’d mentioned she would have on the property if it were hers and he’d never imagined for a moment she’d enjoy it in any way.

  “Yes, you would,” she whispered, and in her eyes he could see the knowledge of the same memories that drifted through his mind. “God, Jazz, you confuse me.”

  Of course he did. In the ten years she’d been running she’d known very little warmth or gentleness. It had been all about survival, about living one more day.

  And Kenni was a survivor. As much as he hated it, as much as it enraged him that she’d been forced to learn the skills to survive, still, he respected the strength he saw in her.

  It challenged him, though. It made him want to see how far he could push her personally, how deep that vein of independence and defiance went when it came to her lover.

  “Because I’d make Cord lurk somewhere else so you could go skinny-dipping?” He lifted a brow curiously. “That’s more self-preservation, sweetheart. You know I’d have to go and get me some
of that.” He nodded toward her with a wicked lift of his brows. “And that’s not something we’d want him to witness.”

  She shook her head to that and he almost grinned. Of course, that gleam of future retaliation he saw in her eyes was something he was going to look forward to.

  Moving away from the curtained doors, she stared around the bedroom for a long moment before turning back to him.

  “What are we going to do now?” she asked, running her hands through her hair and staring back at him with narrowed eyes.

  “What do you want to do now?” he asked in return. “No doubt whoever went through the house was watching it after they left. That’s what I would do anyway. They’ll know who you’re with and where you are. Cord knows that as well, that’s one of the reasons he wanted to hustle you back home, where he believes you’ll be more secure.”

  She was shaking her head even before he finished. She knew that wasn’t her best bet.

  No one had ever accused her of being a dummy. Confused perhaps, too damned stubborn and independent definitely. But she was smart. She always had been.

  “That would be the worst thing I could do,” she murmured before moving to her pack, lifting it to the bed, and loosening the leather flap while frowning thoughtfully.

  “We’ve pushed and now someone’s messing up.” Leaning against the dresser behind him, he watched her unpack the clothes she’d had hidden somewhere. “We just need to push a little more.”

  “A little more push could find us in a sniper’s sight,” she warned him. “That’s not a pleasant place to be.”

  And she would know. She’d been there more than once.

  He had to take a careful hold of his control, something he could feel slipping, tugging at his determination to use caution now.

  The hell she’d endured for the past ten years was pissing him off more by the day. Facing her brothers had been incredibly difficult as well. So difficult she’d immediately distanced herself, pulling back and placing an invisible mental shield between herself and the three men she’d adored as a young girl.

  “We’re not going to figure it out right now,” he warned her, coming to that realization himself. “What we can do, though, is see about getting something to eat and maybe going through the information you’ve pulled together so far.” Straightening and dropping his arms from his chest, he gave her a hard look. “You shouldn’t have waited to let me see the files and pictures you have, Kenni. You should have let me know you had the information.”

  “There’s a lot of things I probably should have done over the years, Jazz,” she stated wearily, moving past him. “Add that one to it.”

  Catching her arm Jazz pulled her to a stop and smiled down at her, carefully restraining the need to let the impulses rising inside him free.

  “Are you learning from your mistakes, though?”

  “Who said I made a mistake?” Soft, challenging, the dare in her voice had his body hardening as though he hadn’t just taken her a few hours before.

  Catching her free wrist before she could avoid him and securing it behind her back with the other, he stared down at her. The wildness reflected in her deep, emerald-green eyes was a match for the core of wildness that burned inside him.

  Hell, he knew she was a match for him, in every way. He had a feeling she was too concerned with protecting those she loved than she was with understanding the emotions she didn’t know how to deal with.

  “I said you made one, cupcake.” The assurance slipped past his lips before he could call it back, the need to force the emotions she kept so carefully contained, free, nearly overwhelming.

  But that need had only been growing since the day he’d met her. Since he’d stared into hazel eyes and seen fear and mystery that were so much a part of her.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Cupcake? Really, Jazz?”

  “Soft, sweet, and so very edible,” he assured her, his voice lowering as her lips parted, her subconscious sensuality peeking out, tempting him.

  Lips trembling, her gaze flickered from his, though her body softened further. The contradictions in her would keep him guessing for years.

  If he could keep her with him.

  “Now, we have two choices considering you haven’t eaten today. Dinner, or that bed over there with me between your thighs, riding us both to exhaustion. That won’t take long for you, I’m guessing.”

  Shadows were already gathering beneath her eyes and her face was paler than it had been that morning. Her expression was strained with tension, with tiredness.

  “Dinner,” she snapped.

  When she pulled against his hold again he let her go, slowly.

  The need to touch her, to have her, was like a hunger he couldn’t sate now. The need to take care of her was just as strong, he was realizing. To ensure she was safe, protected. Nothing else mattered, not even the lust that dug sharp little claws into his balls.

  “Dinner,” he agreed, stepping back from her before running his fingers restlessly through his hair. “Definitely dinner.”

  “How long before it’s going to slip, Jazz?” she asked, carefully moving several feet out of his reach.

  “Before what slips?” If he didn’t get out of the bedroom and away from that bed, the image of her beneath him out of his mind, then there was no way she’d get dinner first.

  “Whatever you’re holding back,” she retorted as though she knew what the hell she was talking about. “What are you hiding, Jazz, and how much longer can you actually keep it hidden?”

  “You better hope I keep it hidden until I figure out how to leash it,” he warned her. “Because trust me, darlin’, that’s an animal you just don’t want to deal with right now. Not at all. Now, let’s go see about dinner.” He strode to the doorway before turning back to her. “Should I lay out a steak for that asshole brother of yours?”

  Her eyes narrowed, lips thinning at the mockery in his tone.

  “Might as well,” she answered him, her sugary politeness when combined with the dare in her eyes almost more than he could resist.

  “I’ll do that then.” Nodding shortly, he left the bedroom and the woman.

  He really needed to feed her first. She was going to need her strength.

  * * *

  Who did he think he was fooling?

  After eight years on the run with Gunny and meeting countless military types, she’d learned to recognize what one marine’s outspoken girlfriend had called a vein of pure dominance in a class A sex machine.

  The explanation that went with it had left her blushing for days. Now Kenni could well understand why the girlfriend had seemed so very smug.

  That particular girlfriend hadn’t been dealing with more than just the sex machine, though, while she was, Kenni thought morosely. She was dealing with a protective sex machine, something she’d never imagined coming up against.

  The fact that he’d been incredibly aroused wasn’t lost on her, either. She’d escaped, probably in the nick of time, though she didn’t doubt for a moment it was because he’d let her go.

  Moving into the kitchen behind him she watched his back carefully, left the gate opened just enough for Squirrel to slip in behind her, then moved to the table where she sat down. Lifting the puppy to her lap, she was amazed at how heavy he was, and the fact that hiding him wasn’t really going to happen. He was too intent on giving puppy kisses to her cheek whenever she couldn’t avoid him.

  “That pup is going to think he’s allowed out here,” Jazz warned her as he moved to the back door.

  “So?”

  “So, it’s not fair to the rest of them, and if the rest of them are out here then we’ll have a mess you do not want to clean up, I promise.” Before she could answer the charge he was out the back door, his deep voice booming. “Maddox, get your ass in here if you want a steak.”

  Kenni winced. No doubt his voice had echoed all across the valley. She could almost see Cord’s irritated expression. If he was trying to actually catch someone who may be
watching, those hopes had just been dashed to hell and back.

  “There, he was invited.” The door slapped closed behind him.

  “It was your idea to invite him.” Shrugging, she watched him with narrowed eyes as Squirrel finally curled up on her lap and settled down.

  “I was being facetious,” he informed her, his voice and his expression bland as he moved to the refrigerator.

  He was not. He knew damned good and well Cord would have gone nuts when Jazz began grilling the steaks. Jazz wanted to irritate him with the bellowing invitation, nothing more. Come to think of it, those two had never really been able to get along despite the fact that she knew they were friends.

  Kind of friends anyway.

  “That’s what you get for being facetious,” she informed him as though he were serious. “Perhaps next time you’ll forget the facetiousness.”

  He tossed the steaks to the counter as the back door opened with a firm push.

  “Lancing, you have a big mouth,” he snapped.

  Jazz pretended to ignore him. Washing his hands quickly, he turned back to the steaks and began tearing them out of their white paper.

  Her brother pulled a chair from beneath the table and sprawled out in it before his hooded gaze slid in her direction.

  “You have one of those damned pups at the table, don’t you?” he asked as he crossed his arms over his chest, tucked his chin lower, and just stared back at her.

  “Don’t start, Cord. The pup isn’t hurting you.” He’d never let her have any fun, she remembered now. “Besides, Jazz knows where it’s at so you’re not really snitching.”

  “I don’t snitch,” he muttered as Squirrel began moving about restlessly at the sound of his voice.

  She was definitely going to have to teach the dogs to bite Maddox men when they were being asses.

  “Then leopards really do change their spots and Santa will be arriving via Jazz’s fireplace this year.” She shrugged before rising and moving to the gate, where she put Squirrel back in the television room.

  “That fat bastard comes down my fireplace and I’ll shoot him,” Jazz snorted.