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Natches stared back at Dawg silently, his expression still, calm.
“I’ll watch things from the Wet Dreams,” he finally said softly, referring to his own houseboat, the Nauti Wet Dreams. “The Rodeo, I think, was more of a warning. Otherwise, it would have gone up with the first turn of the key. Someone wants the money, and they’re warning her that they’re not letting it go.
We need to go to Cranston, pull him in on this. Show her picture to the players and see how they react. ”
“I don’t trust Cranston that far,” Dawg muttered.
“You don’t trust anyone that far, but Cranston has a good grasp of how things work. We don’t tell him Crista was at the warehouse. We explain about the Rodeo, our suspicions that Crista might resemble the money-girl, and go from there. ”
“And if they identify Crista?” Dawg asked dangerously. “Cranston could decide to go with what he can arrest and forget the rest. ”
Natches shook his head. “He’s too good for that, Dawg. He’ll want to use it, and we can use the team this way. Let’s see how it works. What do we have to lose? We’re her alibi, remember? Who can fight it?”
The shower shut off upstairs. Dawg turned his head and gave the stairs a long, hard look.
“Talk to Cranston,” he said. “We’ll see where it goes. ”
He was walking a damned tightrope, and he knew it. If the players arrested at the warehouse the other night identified Crista as their go-between, then all the suspicion would fall on Crista.
“Cranston’s smarter than to believe it would be this easy,” Natches assured him as he headed for the door. “I’ll head in first thing in the morning to talk to him. I’ll flash the pictures to our boys in the cells and see what we get. We could get lucky, and they won’t recognize her. ”
Dawg grunted at that. “Don’t bet on it. ”
He let Natches out of the houseboat and locked the door behind him before resetting the alarms and heading for the stairs.
Crista was up there. Showered, soft, and warm. And he hoped ready to give him the answers he needed. Because the thought of her living with one man had rage eating into his soul. Surprisingly, the thought of her living with two men, sharing in a relationship that his women had always shared with him and his cousins, was like an acid to his soul.
Because Dawg couldn’t imagine sharing her, not eight years ago and definitely not now.
He headed to the stairs, moving up them with slow anticipation as his body tightened with the thought of her wearing the clothes he had bought her, the lacy panties he had picked out or the brief pajamas he had imagined seeing her in. The image was tightening through him with the same force as the knowledge of her lovers.
Her lovers.
God help him if that was what she needed now. Once, the thought of sharing her with his cousins would have had his cock pounding in glee. Now, he had to shake back the jealousy, fight to hold back his outrage that she would leave him for not just one man but two.
She had taken from others what she had refused to consider taking from him? He had always thought she had run because of his reputation, because of her fear of the ménages. To find out she had run straight into another one had his temper riding a thin, sharp line.
When he entered the upper-level bedroom, he came to a hard stop.
She was sitting on the bed, wearing one of his large shirts rather than her new pj’s, slowly spreading some kind of lotion over her legs, which looked silky, rounded, and too damned tempting to believe.
For a moment, memory flashed through his head. Those silky legs spread, his mouth buried between them. His senses erupted with the remembered taste of silky, sweet feminine cream and hot, rich, satiny flesh. He could remember being as drunk on her as he was on the whiskey, as her fingers clenched in his hair and she whispered. His teeth clenched. She was a vocal lover. Begging, pleading, urging him on.
She set aside the lotion, her hands gripping the shirt where it covered her abdomen and glancing down at it as she rose nervously to her feet.
Oh, baby, it would pay for you to be nervous, he thought with a mix of lust and anger. Because there were so many wild, wicked things he intended to do with that hot little body.
“You have lousy taste in pajamas. ” She finally glared up at him. “There’s not enough material to them to cover a postage stamp, let alone me. ”
He glanced over at the chair where some of the articles lay. The snug boy short panties and camisole tops would have covered more flesh than he liked, actually.
It wasn’t the pajamas he wanted to discuss, though.
“Tell me something, Crista. ” He began unbuttoning his shirt. “When did you intend to tell me that you didn’t have just one lover but two? Lessing and his friend Ty Grayson?”
Her gaze flickered, her eyes narrowing back at him as the buttons released from his shirt and his flesh sensitized with the need to touch her.
Then, a slender brow arched tauntingly. “Why would I tell you anything, Dawg? It was none of your business. And that’s beside the fact that they weren’t my lovers. I simply lived with them. ”
