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Now if she could just live long enough to enjoy it.
TWELVE
“What now?” With a towel wrapped around her, her damp hair lying along her shoulders, Piper stepped from the bathroom after showering, the reality of the danger facing her threatening to overwhelm her optimism.
The chest-tightening panic was returning, waiting, preparing her for Jed to walk away. . . .
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bsp; Like her father had walked away and left her, her mother, and her sisters unprotected and alone. Just as she was afraid Tim and Dawg would walk away.
Was that why everything inside her shut down whenever she and Dawg moved toward a confrontation? To prepare her heart, to steel herself against the abandonment?
“We wait and see,” he answered, the towel he’d wrapped around his waist earlier still in place.
He hadn’t dressed.
Heated need for his touch was threatening to weaken her need for answers as she watched him toss their dirty clothes into the hamper next to the bathroom door.
“Since when do you sit around and wait on anyone or anything, Jed?” she asked, frowning at the feeling that there was much more going on than simply waiting. “What are you and my brother up to?”
Tightening in response to some imperceptible feeling of dread, her heart began to beat at a sluggish pace.
The impending panic was a result of the look on his face, the darkening of his navy gaze that made his eyes appear almost black.
“We’re not just waiting; we’re watching,” he finally stated, his expression hardening just enough to warn her that she was going to hear something she didn’t want to hear.
“What are you watching?”
“Your room. ” Jed paced to the television, retrieved the remote, and hit the power button.
Watching the screen, she was surprised as he reached behind the unit, and a second later, the split view of the screen showed both her bedroom as well as her sitting room.
“Brogan had the cameras installed just after he started sleeping with Eve,” he revealed. “He was afraid his or Dawg’s enemies would attempt to strike out at her, or take her from him. There were cameras in her room, and GPS on her car and her cell phone. ”
The cameras had been there since before Brogan and Eve moved from the inn? And they were still there?
“I was supposed to move them,” he told her. “And I was going to until I learned you were taking her room after she moved in with Brogan. ”
“So you’ve watched me when I didn’t know you were?”
Controlling her? Maneuvering her?
Was he so much different than she had begun to believe he was?
“Only once or twice. ” Broad shoulders shrugged as he watched her carefully. “The night you were packing to leave for New York. ”
Holding the towel close to her breasts, she sat up, watching the view on the television, wondering what she should feel.
Was the need to deny that he would do such a thing to control her normal? Was she simply trying to make excuses for him?
“Why?” she whispered. “Why were you watching me?”
He rubbed at the back of his neck, frustration tightening his face. “I worried about you. I wanted to see you. Hell, Piper, you’ve made me fucking crazy since I’ve moved in here, as you’ve tempted me, then run from me. There were days I wasn’t certain I could keep from playing the caveman I knew you were waiting for me to reveal lurking inside me. ”
Biting her lip, she glanced to the screen again.
“So why show me now?”
