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“What about Eve, Dawg?” Natches asked again.
Dawg knew he wasn’t repeating his earlier question, but that earlier question was all Dawg could consider.
Would Eve forgive him?
Dawg’s lips tightened. Shaking his head, he strode to the dual-cab pickup he’d driven in, and stepped into the driver’s seat without answering.
He didn’t have an answer because he simply didn’t know.
What did he know?
If it were him, he knew he wouldn’t forgive—no matter the reason, the explanation, or the circumstances. He wouldn’t want platitudes and promises of protection. He’d want the trust and the ability to choose his own path and his own protection. And he knew Eve was often far too much like him and his cousins, just as the other girls were.
There was a chance, a very good chance, that she might never forgive any of them.
SIXTEEN
A week later, Eve entered the backyard of Ray and Maria Mackay’s farmhouse and stared around at the gathering of family, relations, and scattered friends.
This year there were nearly a hundred family members who had confirmed attendance at the Mackay family reunion, and it looked as though every one of them had shown up.
The reunion was a yearly endeavor Ray and Maria—Grandpa Ray and Grandma Maria—had begun insisting on the year Rowdy and Kelly had become engaged. As he had explained it to his son and nephews, as children came, they would need traditions. And his “boys”—who comprised his own son as well as his two nephews—well, their children deserved a far better life than their father had had.
Not that Rowdy’s life had been too hard, as Eve heard it. He’d had Ray, and then, once Ray had married Maria, he’d had a mother. The stories she’d heard of Rowdy’s mother had never been pleasant, but there was no doubt Maria had loved Ray’s son.
Just as Ray had taken her daughter, Kelly, in and loved her.
Eve had always found it amusing that Rowdy and Kelly had lived in the same house for so many years and then ended up married.
But Grandpa Ray had bragged that his boy, his Rowdy, hadn’t been base or without honor. When his son had realized he was feeling things for Kelly, Rowdy had moved out. And even before he’d realized he was falling in love with her, Rowdy had made certain he’d taken care of her, his father bragged.
Once Rowdy and Kelly became engaged, Ray had begun the family reunions, even though the first “reunions” were only him, Maria, Kelly, Rowdy, Dawg, and Natches.
He said kids needed traditions. They needed to know and understand family.
Christmas, New Year’s, church on Easter morning, then the egg hunt before dinner once the girls had been born. Ray made certain each holiday was celebrated for the meaning it was intended by the family, with the family. And every June, there was the Mackay family reunion.
That Saturday, Eve had no choice but to slow down, take a day off, and show up at Grandpa and Grandma’s farm. The reunion had begun as a meal, and had turned into a daylong circus as years had gone by.
It was a day Eve and her family looked forward to every year. And each year it had only grown. With Dayle Mackay, Nadine and her son, Johnny Grace’s, deaths eight years before, the separation of Ray, Dawg, Rowdy, and Natches from their relations had ended. Now, all the Mackay relations and their families had begun showing up. Among them were the Augusts from Madison, Texas—Cade, Brock, and Sam August—along with their wives and children.
The Mackays and their extended families were just as interesting and just as complicated as Eve had always imagined they were as she grew up. Living in northern Texas, so far away from the brother and cousins her father had told her mother about, Eve had often hungered for news of them. She’d built them up in her mind instead, and at times she could honestly say she hadn’t done them justice.
Grandpa Ray and Grandma Maria, as they insisted they be called, were the grandparents Eve and her sisters had always dreamed of having. From day one, they had accepted Mercedes Mackay and her daughters with such warmth and acceptance that it often seemed her family had come home when they stepped foot in Kentucky.
That first family reunion, Eve and her family had cried. They had never been to such an event; they had never known family. All they’d ever known was one another. Having that tradition and then so many others as well had been a dream come true for them.
And having not just one big brother, but three, had always been so incredible to Eve. Rowdy and Natches never accepted being described or introduced as her cousins. They were her brothers, too, they promised.
Yeah, she had family now, and for the first time, Eve had no idea what to do with them. They were just as intimidating and as controlling as Timothy was rumored to be. They were just sneakier about it than Timothy.
Eve herself had never seen Timothy playing those games with her or her family. Of course, the Mackay sisters had never done anything to cause him to need to investigate them, or for him to have to maneuver them into protecting themselves.
For five years Eve had lived in a dream world that she was now terrified was no more than a lie.
Dawg loved her and her family; she knew that. But he was manipulating and controlling her, and she was suddenly afraid he had been controlling them all along. Especially her, where Brogan was concerned.
As she wandered through the backyard, stopping to talk to cousins, friends, and various Mackay relations, she looked around for Dawg, Rowdy, and Natches.
