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Somewhere in the darkness of night, she had to have lost her ever-loving mind. And finding it again didn’t appear to be an assignment Natches was going to allow her.
“Look, you have the information, the interview files, and the recordings,” she told him the next morning as the first rays of the sun began to peek over the tops of the mountains. “I need to return to my hotel room—”
“And check out,” he interrupted her, his voice controlled, mild, as he went through the files she had transferred to his laptop. “You’ll move into the apartment with me. Dawg and Rowdy should have the door fixed by now. ”
She inhaled deeply. “That’s not going to work right now, Natches. ”
He lifted his head slowly. It was a curiously dangerous movementthe way he did it. The calculated restraint in it had her holding back the shiver that would have worked up her spine.
“Why? Because you won’t have a chance to rebuild all those nifty little defenses you keep between us?” he asked, his mocking smile grating on her temper.
“Because I won’t have the investigation compromised any more than it has been already,” she told him. “I’m sharing information with you despite direct orders to the contrary. Do you have any idea how many years Cranston could put me behind bars for that?”
He merely grunted at that and turned back to the file.
“I’m meeting Mayes in just a few hours. I need clean clothes, and I have my own notes to put together as soon as Cranston sends the new list of interviewees this morning. I can’t do that with you breathing over my shoulder. ”
“You might as well give it up now,” he murmured. “You’re not driving back to that hotel alone and you’re not staying there alone. You don’t want to stay at the apartment, that’s fine. I’ll stay at the hotel. ”
He said it absently, his eyes narrowed on the laptop screen, as though simply because it was his decision then it was a foregone conclusion that it was happening.
“Natches, you seem to be forgetting something here,” she told him coldly. “This is my investigation and my job. I don’t need your help doing it. ”
“So you keep tellin’ me. ” That smooth southern drawl deepened, causing her to wince. This wasn’t the sexy, lazy drawl. This was the cool, velvet drawl of a man who had no intentions of backing down.
“Do I poke my nose into your garage?” she finally snapped. “Do I tell you how to fix cars or how to deal with customers?”
He lifted his head and stared back at her. “Not yet. ”
That shut her up and she hated it. Turning her back on him she propped one hand on her hip as she nibbled at her thumbnail and glared at the covered window.
Despite Cranston’s orders to keep the Mackay cousins out of the investigation, she would have cheerfully told him to shove it if she thought the investigation would proceed better with Natches involved. Unfortunately, she had a feeling she knew exactly where it was headed, and she didn’t need Natches there for that.
She had read his file so many times she had nightmares about the childhood he had endured. His father was ex-Marine and a sorry bastard. Dayle Mackay was a bully, heavily muscled; he had nearly beaten a young Natches to death more than once. Natches’s back still held the scars of the most brutal beating that he had taken, at the age of twenty. The night his father had disowned him, he had beaten Natches to the floor then ripped his back to shreds with a lash. All because Natches had refused to allow his father to strike his sister, Janey Mackay.
“You’ll only complicate matters for me at the moment, Natches. As well as bring Cranston out of the woodwork. ” She turned back to him as he lifted his head once again and stared back at her. His forest green eyes were mocking, his smile knowing.
“It’s not happening, Chay. ” He closed the files out before leaning back against the couch and watching her with hooded eyes now. “From this moment on, just call me your shadow. Because doing this alone isn’t going to happen. ”
“I have the sheriff with me. Most of the people I’m talking to seem to share a dislike for you, Natches. It wouldn’t be conducive to my investigation if you’re there. ”
He just smiled. A patient, questioning smile as though he were trying to figure out exactly why she was still arguing with him.
She propped her hands on her hips and glared back at him. “Okay, let’s try it this way. You are not accompanying me on those interviews. Period. ”
“It makes me hard when you get mean, Chay,” he drawled. “Come over here and sit on my lap while we discuss it. ” He patted his knee invitingly and she wanted to kick herself for almost moving toward him.
“You’re just being an ass now, Natches. Stop it and let me do my job. I can be amazingly adept at that when I don’t have to deal with men who think they can do everything better than I can. ” She smiled with false sweetness.
“It’s hard to watch your back when you’re concerned with watching where you’re going. ” He shrugged. “I watch backs real good. Ask the Marines, they loved me. ”
Of course they had, he had been a suicide mission waiting to happen for over four years and probably would have taken another tour if a sniper hadn’t taken out his shoulder.
There was talk that Natches had arranged the hit, that he knew it was coming and managed to deflect the damage. Chaya knew better. Natches didn’t play games. Oh, he may well have known the danger was there and that the shot would be taken. His instincts were so well honed that he had probably felt it coming and, yes, deflected the damage. But it wasn’t arranged. Natches was too honest for that, too in-your-face to ever play those games.
“I don’t need you to watch my back here,” she told him. “That’s the sheriff’s job. You have no place in this assignment, and you don’t need to be involved. ”
And he just smiled. Again.
