by Lora Leigh
“He was working out great, Mr…. uhh Dawg,” she stuttered as she relocked the door, then followed behind them. “He’s been with us ever since he was discharged from the service. I don’t know what happened.”
Crista glanced behind her at the manager, winking as Dawg continued to drag her behind him as he mounted the steps to the office.
“When did it start?”
“Last week.” They paused as Dawg dug the key to the office out of his jeans pocket, still holding onto Crista, and inserted it into lock, turned it, then stopped.
“Dawg?” Crista tried to stare around him. “What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t lock up last night.” His voice was carefully restrained.
“Of course I locked the office before I left.” Crista frowned. “I know I did.”
“I also checked it before I left Mr., umm, Dawg.” Layla cleared her throat again. “I always check the office doors before I close up at night.”
Dawg stepped back, his keys still hanging in the lock.
“Crista, I want you and Layla to go back out front. Use your cell phone and call Natches. I programmed his and Rowdy’s numbers in last night.”
“Why?” Crista could feel the dread rising inside her now.
“Layla, does anyone know you check the offices at night?” Dawg asked then.
“I don’t know, Dawg.” There was an edge of fear in her voice. “Jamie and the boys always go through the store with me at night when they pick me up, just to make sure everything is okay. I check all the office doors then.”
“Get out front and call Natches, Crista.” Dawg turned back to her, his expression closed, dangerous. “Now.”
“Not without you.” Her hands gripped his arm, tugging at him. “You can call him yourself. He’ll come faster if you call him.”
Surprise tightened his features. “I know what I’m doing, Crista.”
“I don’t care.” She wasn’t leaving him here alone. Only God knew what was behind that door. “You can come with us.”
“Mr. Mackay, we should all go out front. What if whoever was in the store, if anyone was, is waiting outside?”
That had murderous fury lighting in his eyes. Dawg’s gaze sliced to the tall, wide windows of the front of the store as his expression became cold, dangerous.
“Come on.” Thankfully, he turned, moving them down the metal steps and headed for the entrance as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
Punching in Natches’s number, Dawg stalked away from the women.
“It’s early, Dawg,” Natches mumbled into the line.
“Get to the store. Someone was in the office last night. I’m calling the sheriff to dust for prints, but I need someone to watch Crista while I’m taking care of Mayes’s questions. After last night, this could get ugly.”
“Shit!” He could hear Natches moving. “Bastards moved fast.”
“Makes me wonder if the car going up in flames wasn’t more of a distraction than an attempt. Just hurry. I’m calling Sheriff Mayes now. And you know Layla, her husband and sons are going to come down here like a pack of ravening wolves intent on protecting her. I’m going to need help here.”
Natches snickered.
Jamie Matcher and his brood of overgrown sons had come to the store and stayed with Layla every day for the first damned year she had worked for Dawg. And Jamie, all six feet five inches of him, had towered over Dawg and warned him what would happen if his little Layla got smeared with gossip because of games Dawg might want to play in the privacy of his office.
As if he played games in his office. Damnit, he liked a bed for games. The office was work. Paperwork. Something he didn’t handle well, despite Crista’s certainty.
“Just get your ass down here.” Dawg closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead, anticipating the headache he knew was well on its way.
As he flipped the phone closed and turned back to the two women, he sighed again. Layla was looking decidedly nervous. Crista was defiant and suspicious.
“Layla, call Jamie and the boys,” he told her. “I have to call Sheriff Mayes, and once the call goes out on the radio, Jamie will blow a fuse.”
“He worries, Dawg.” But she was pulling the phone from the case she wore on the slim leather belt that cinched her crisp tan slacks.
“He worries,” Dawg muttered. “I worry.” Then he turned to Crista.
She was leaning against the block wall like she didn’t have a damned care in the world. Concerned but amused. She was amused at him, and that one was biting his ass. He was blackmailing her, but damned if he didn’t suddenly feel like she had the upper hand.
“Layla, why don’t you and Crista go to the lounge and get some coffee on. The employees will be showing up about the same time the sheriff and the state boys do. If they have their coffee, they might not make too much of a mess investigating this.”
He could hope. But he wasn’t betting the houseboat on it. By the time he got off the phone with Sheriff Mayes, he could feel the headache beginning in his temples.
Good old Ezekiel Mayes. The son of a bitch. Dawg swore he was going to vote against him each election, but he always managed to vote for him. Better the devil you knew…
He stood and stared around the store. It was just as huge now as it was each time he found himself doing this. The first year out of the Marines he had nearly gutted the place. His knee had ached like a son of a bitch that year, but he had nearly tripled the size and added to the layout. Not that he cared one way or the other about the business, he reminded himself. He had been bored.
Fuck that. Even Crista knew better. And he was kidding himself. He had been kidding himself for eight years. The estate his parents had left him was riddled with so much guilt, resentment, and bitterness that sometimes he wished he’d sold it all that first year after their death, while he was in the Marines and worrying his ass off over it.
The house especially. Where he had never lived. His father had finished it after Dawg had bought the Nauti Dawg from an inheritance left to him by his mother’s mother. He had never spent a night in that house until after their deaths.
His father had hated the lumber store, too. But he had kept it anyway. He had always said it was the only thing Dawg was smart enough to actually make a living with. And maybe the old bastard had been right.
He had a knack for it, unlike his knack for warfare. He tended to get his knees blown off there. The ATF assignment wasn’t a bad one, but the restrictions pissed him off. Answering to other people wasn’t his strong suit.
Unfortunately, Sheriff Mayes liked a lot of answers to his questions.
“What the hell are you involved in, Dawg?” Zeke kept his voice low as they stood back from the state police unit now inspecting his office.
There were no prints, no hint of anything disturbed, though it was impossible for Dawg to tell if anything was missing. He glared at Crista where she stood in the open door of the lounge beneath the office. He hadn’t even recognized his damned office.
And she smiled.
That smile lit a fire inside him he didn’t even want to understand. A fire-charged electrical arousal and a brooding anger, in equal intensity through his body.
Because he knew she was holding back. Some part of her didn’t yet belong to him, whether it was her honesty or something deeper, he didn’t want to delve into at the moment. But she was holding back. And that just flat pissed him off.
“What the hell is she involved in, then?” Zeke asked.
Dawg glanced at the sheriff before leaning against the floor-to-ceiling shelving that ran the length of the aisle they were in front of.
“Nada,” he answered shortly.
“Your nadas are getting on my nerves,” Zeke warned him.
“It’s going to get on your nerves worse when I campaign for your opponent next election,” Dawg pointed out irritably. “Leave it alone, Zeke.”
“You’re going to get her killed, Dawg,” Zeke said quietly. “Whatever you’re
doing, it’s going to backfire on her.”
“Then you’ll have bloodshed to clean up, Zeke.” Dawg’s smile, he knew, was a shark’s glare. “Anyone even thinks about hurting her, and they’ll die. Expect that. Count on that. Now get the hell out of my way. I have a business to run.”
Unfortunately, Zeke was right. Whatever the hell was going on, someone was intent on not just drawing Crista into it, but of striking out at her.
As Zeke headed back toward the small crowd of investigators and officers, Natches moved up to him.
His cousin’s dark green eyes were like flinty ice in a stone-cold expression.
Dawg crossed his arms over his chest and stared around the crowd intently, making certain no one came close.
“The investigators want to think she deliberately left the door unlocked,” Natches muttered. “The scrapes on the lock are being brushed aside because there are no prints. Someone wants you to think she’s incompetent at the least, using you at the worst.”
Dawg nodded slowly.
“They struck after you were seen arguing with her. After the Rodeo went up in flames. None of it makes any sense or ties in. Threaten her, and you’re only going to cover her closer. So why attempt to search your office?”
“Unless the point was to plant something against her,” Natches said softly. “Thankfully, I was able to get in there with the first investigators. There was a map of the warehouse, the address, and a detailed list of the missiles and their chips, along with about twenty-five thousand in cash in an envelope tucked into the file cabinet. Someone’s setting you up with her.”
“Did you get the envelope?”
Natches nodded slowly. “Taken care of. Security tapes were fuzzed, bad. Both the outside and inside monitors were affected. There was so much static on them there’s no way to tell who it was or what they were doing.”
“They know my system.” His was state-of-the-art with a few additional devices that should have made it impossible for the average thief to bypass.
“They know you,” Natches pointed out. “I’m going to head to town, spread a little trash, and see what happens.”
“What kind of trash?” Dawg stared at his cousin suspiciously.
“Well, you hired a new manager, and look what happened.” Natches nodded to the officers and agents milling around. “What if, after they leave, I overhear you and Crista arguing about it? Maybe she’s called her good friend Mark, and she’s heading back to Virginia. Whoever’s involved with this is trying to lay the money at her feet to keep suspicion off them. If she’s arrested, Dawg, with the pictures they have of the woman resembling her, then any testimony the thieves give that she wasn’t involved won’t matter. She’ll take the rap, and someone else gets away with the money.”
“Do the thieves know for certain it’s not Crista?” Dawg asked then, remembering the interrogation of the men they had arrested. “If they knew, why not take the deal Cranston offered them for the woman? From all reports, she was the mastermind behind this.”
“Maybe they don’t know who she is,” Natches suggested. “They were a few good ole boys contacted because of their knowledge of the military and their ability to pull this deal together. Someone else was the brains.”
“Someone who knows my security system,” Dawg mused.
“Close the store down for the rest of the day. I’ll hang around until everyone has left, check things out, then head to the diner with Rowdy and Kelly. We can get the information that Crista is heading to Virginia where I think it needs to go. Whatever’s going on, that diner seems to be the center of it.”
“Or someone who hangs out there too much.” Dawg nodded.
“Wait till after dark to leave, and when you do, take the back roads to the marina. Stay in the houseboat tomorrow; keep the windows and doors closed and Crista hidden. Let’s give them time to take the bait.”
Dawg nodded. It could work. At the moment, it was the best chance they had at flushing out the culprit.
“Keep me up-to-date,” Dawg ordered. “And watch Cranston. He’s making me nervous.”
The agent was watching Crista too closely at the moment. Standing back, his head tilted to the side and his eyes narrowed on her as she and Layla kept the officers supplied with coffee.
Natches nodded sharply. “I’ll be around the houseboat later tonight and let you know how things are going.”
Dawg nodded again as he watched the crowd. One of his employees had to be involved; there was no doubt. But which one? And why?
He watched them milling around, gossiping, chatting, filled with curiosity. One of them had betrayed him and threatened Crista. Which meant one of them had a death wish.
FIFTEEN
Eight years before, Crista had lived for the moments she could bask in Dawg’s smile. His flirting had turned her heart over, filled her with a wild, reckless joy, and made her dream of being in his arms.
She had ached for him even before she knew what the ache was. His charm, his lazy humor, and that shadow of pain that haunted his eyes drew her. And in her deepest fantasies she eased that shadow away and saw his odd, light green eyes fill with joy.
When she had first realized she was pregnant, she had been furious, resentful. Then the knowledge of that life she held stilled the anger. His child would never know loneliness, never lack for love. She would never see that shadow of hurt in their baby’s eyes. She would love it, protect it. Their baby.
The day she had lost that child something inside her had died, only to be reborn when she returned and realized that that silent draw between her and Dawg was still there.
She had fought it. She had thought she could protect her heart and live on the periphery of his attention, warmed yet protected from the heat she knew could destroy her.
What a fool she had been.
Crista watched Dawg as they finished the office arrangement, going through files, searching for a reason why his office had been breached.
He was silent, angry. Determination sharpened the lines and angles of his face, giving him a warrior’s appearance, a savage aura that turned her on more than it had a right to. He made quick work of hefting the furniture and sliding it into place as Crista cleaned. He helped go through files, helped pack them to the new cabinets and load them, his celadon eyes sharp and intent as he went over every inch of the office to track anything that had been bothered or searched.
As he moved, the sunlight spearing through the wide office windows on the other side of the room worshipped his raven black hair and sun-kissed flesh. It slid over his broad shoulders and emphasized his muscular arms as the short sleeves of his black T-shirt stretched over them.
Jeans molded to his powerful hips and thighs, and those boots he wore made his legs even sexier. Not to mention how the denim of his jeans lovingly cupped his muscular ass.
He was enough to steal a girl’s breath, and Crista admitted to having a lot of breathless moments. And perhaps she had been wrong before when she thought he hadn’t matured from the self-centered determination he had possessed in those days.
Dawg had changed over the years after all. He was harder. Still just as sexy, but more dangerous than he had been before he joined the Marines and definitely more mature.
He had proven that today. Crista had watched as he moved through the office after the sheriff’s men had finished dusting for prints, and the state police had finished their questions.
They could find nothing moved, nothing bothered. The only proof there was that there might have been a breakin was the suspected tampering with the security cameras and the lock on the office door.
And Crista felt sorry for the culprit, because Dawg looked mad enough to draw blood hours later. He had sent the employees home after the police left and locked up behind Layla before leading Crista back into the office.
She stared at him from the other end of the large room as she straightened the lamp on the table by the couch and he stored the last of the files. His eyes were narrowed, his expressi
on brooding as he turned to her.
“Do you realize you just destroyed years of deliberate chaos?” Dawg asked as the last of the files were stored away and she gave the furniture a final buffing with the polish she used. Everything gleamed, even the hardwood floor beneath their feet.
She turned and looked around, realizing how large the office was. There was plenty of room for the other file cabinets she wanted as well as the extra desk Dawg had ordered one of the stock floor boys to put together for her in the morning. A nice miniature version of the huge walnut desk he was using himself.
Deliberate chaos he called it. A slap at the father that would have taken even this from him, if he could have managed to do it without looking like the monster he had been.
“Chaos doesn’t beat success.” She shrugged. “Organization can raise productivity and profits. The way it is, the chain lumber stores are still running ahead of you in profits and customers. We want to pull those customers to Mackay’s.”
He leaned against the file cabinet and regarded her quizzically. “It makes enough money. Even with the court battle Johnny and his mother waged against me those first years, I came out of it a very rich man, Crista.”
“And that’s enough for you?” She knew Dawg better than that.
“It’s more than most have.” That irritable frown was on his face again, the one that encouraged the person he was talking to, to go straight to hell.
Crista shook her head. “It’s not enough for you, Dawg.”
“Says who?” He threw himself in the large leather chair behind his desk and stared back at her broodingly.
Crista rolled her eyes as she stored the polish and rag in the bottom drawer of one of the file cabinets before straightening to face him.
The look on his face was sexy and scary at the same time. Intent, brooding, dominant, and aroused.
“Stop being an ass,” she chided him. “You know you love this store. You pretend you don’t. You want people to think you don’t. But I know better.”
He folded his fingers together over his tight abs as he leaned back and let his gaze rake over her.