AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This sucked.
The rebellious resentment that had been brewing inside her for the past year flamed through her senses with a suddenness that made it nearly burst into full-fledged anger.
It simply wasn’t fair. She should have been able to shout this accomplishment far and wide. At the very least she should have been able to race to the boutique where she sold many of the unique clothing designs she created.
She couldn’t even do that.
Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel as she drove out of town and made the turn toward Mackay’s Bed-and-Breakfast Inn.
As the renovated farmhouse came into view, Piper couldn’t help but acknowledge the fact that had it not been for her brother Dawg, then her mother would have died and she and her sisters would have been worse than homeless.
They’d been abandoned by Chandler Mackay long before the Department of Homeland Security had found the small house he’d purchased for her mother when he’d brought her from Guatemala. When they’d been thrown from that home, her mother, Mercedes, had been horribly ill with a lung infection the doctors had been unable to treat.
It was only after Timothy Cranston had brought them to Somerset and introduced them to Dawg that their lives had changed. Dawg had ensured that her mother’s medical care was paid for while Piper and her sisters had found security, and they had all found a family unlike any Piper could have imagined.
There was another side of that coin, though.
With the security, acceptance, and love the Mackays had given her and her family there was the heavy-handed overprotectiveness her brother and male cousins exhibited.
It was so heavy-handed that for the past year she and her sisters—except the eldest, whom Piper actually blamed their present state on—had no hope of actually living outside the stifling watchfulness they were suddenly surrounded with.
Slip out to a lake party and what happened? Before they could finish their first beer either Dawg, their cousins, or one of their cohorts—Sheriff Mayes, Chief of Police Alex Jansen, or some other tough-assed Mackay male friend—was there with an eagle eye.
Forget even considering the unmentioned search she had begun for a lover. She was fated to remain a virgin for the rest of her days, evidently.
At twenty-four, Piper considered herself far too old to have not taken a lover. And as much as she would have loved—loved—to have taken Jedediah Booker to her bed, the last thing she needed was one of her brother’s watchdogs keeping a leash on her.
Pulling into the inn’s parking lot, Piper tried to push back the regret and the hunger she couldn’t keep from building inside her body. The sensitive flesh between her thighs felt swollen, aching for a touch. Her clit actually throbbed, and she knew damned good and well that only a man was going to put out that particular fire.
God help her, she didn’t want a man as restrictive and just as protective as her brother and cousins. She wanted a lover, a friend, and a partner. She didn’t need a keeper.
It was Saturday night.
She had a week to make plans to slip from Somerset and make her way to New York. She was going to have to essentially escape. If that was possible. Because if Dawg had even a suspicion she was leaving town for any reason, then he would have one of his buddies and/or employees or agent-type acquaintances on her ass so fast it would leave road rash on her senses.
That, she didn’t need.
She knew the world she wanted to move within, and she knew for damned sure that neither her brother and cousins nor their overprotective friends would move well within it.
So, how to escape a town where the Mackays had eyes and ears everywhere?
Everywhere.
No doubt it wouldn’t be easy.
It would require a small amount of lying through her teeth.
Piper smiled.
Hell, she could do it.
She was, after all, a Mackay.
TWO
“You are up to something.”
Piper froze at the sound of Jed’s voice as she answered the call on her cell phone.
