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He’d killed Johnny Grace. The cousin he’d been raised with, the one who had attempted to kill Christa and would have killed Dawg. Natches had put his rifle sights between the man’s eyes and he’d felt no remorse pulling the trigger.
“Look at your past, at Dawg’s and Rowdy’s, and tell me that you didn’t deserve to be loved.”
“Hell no, we didn’t deserve it. Not then we didn’t,” he growled back at her. “And what we have wasn’t handed to us, either, Lyrica. We had to change to be able to have the hearts we share, and if Graham Brock thinks he can have you without facing one of us, then he can think again.” He moved to her quickly, gripped her shoulders, and stared down at her with the merciless lack of remorse she imagined was in his eyes when he killed his cousin. “I love you, girl. I see you and I see the child that owns every beat of my heart. The one I’d go into hell fighting for, and I’ll be damned if I’ll betray my instincts on this. If I do, I may as well tell every man who ever meets her that would hurt her to go ahead and do just that. Graham knows the score, and I have no doubt if I beat the hell out of him, you’ll hate me. For a while. But at least you’ll by god hate me with a whole, beating heart rather than half a one or, god forbid, from a casket. Remember that one.”
With that he turned and moved quickly from the room, his footsteps heavy, his warning ringing in her head.
“No one said a Mackay was easy to talk to.”
Lyrica swung around to face Rowdy as he stepped through the back door, his handsome face creased in concern as he stared at her quietly.
Rubbing at the chill that raced over her arms, she stared back at the cousin they always said was the logical one. The one who could be reasoned with. Today, none of them knew the meaning of the word “reason.”
“He’s irrational,” she whispered, shaking her head. “All of you are.”
His lips quirked into a gentle, understanding smile.
“Not irrational, simply determined to protect family.” Moving to the counter, he poured a cup of coffee from the heated coffeepot and sipped at it before leaning against the counter and watching her with the solemn concern he seemed to approach every problem with.
“How can you agree with this, Rowdy? It’s wrong.”
He turned to face her slowly.
Sunlight slanted through the window at his back, striking at his black hair and his forest green eyes, warming the white short-sleeved shirt he wore tucked into belted jeans.
“Whether or not I agree with him is beside the point.” He shrugged. “I understand how he feels, though.”
“Am I wrong, Rowdy?” The logical one, Rowdy rarely let his own personal opinion of someone cloud his actions. “Do I see a good man where something else exists?”
“I believe Graham’s a good man, Lyrica,” he finally said. “I believe he’s an honorable man. But a man’s lust is rarely driven by his honor. And a man like Graham has buried the kind of vulnerability that would let him love a good woman, so deep he doesn’t even believe it exists anymore. The question then becomes, does he want you enough to revive it? Because that’s the only way he’ll have you without all three of us coming down on him like a nuclear explosion the first time someone calls you one of his bimbos.”
She flinched at the reminder that she and Kye weren’t the only ones who noticed the women, or the type of women, Graham went through so casually.
Maybe she did need to move just far enough away that the Mackays couldn’t oversee every move she made or every man she became interested in.
“You know, if you were like your sisters, dating regularly, doing all the crazy shit they’ve gotten into over the years, maybe Natches wouldn’t be so extreme,” he told her gently. “But you don’t. You sneak in a party here and there, knowing you’re going to be dragged out, but that’s about it. It’s never serious for you. And Graham Brock is the only man you’ve ever focused on. That scares us. Because we know Graham, and we know that even good men are capable of bad things.”
“And all three of you evidently lost touch with reality a long damned time ago,” she told him roughly. “My life or who I sleep with is nobody’s damned business.”
His face hardened. “And that’s where you’re wrong. You’re a Mackay, Lyrica. Whether you like it or not you’ll always be a Mackay. And trust me, trouble and Mackays go hand in hand, to the point that we’ll never, at any time, turn our backs if you’re getting involved with a man who has the same ability to find danger as we’ve always had. If you want to have a nice, quiet, sane affair then find a nice, quiet, sane man to have it with and I promise you, I’ll stand in
front of Dawg and Natches myself to make certain you can have it in peace.”
An instant, instinctive response came over her. Her lips thinned; her eyes narrowed.
“Why, Rowdy,” she drawled, “where would the fun be in that?”
Turning on her heel, she pulled the back door open and stalked from the house, outrage trembling through her body. Her cousin watched her with thoughtful focus until she disappeared.
Rowdy listened, heard her Jeep start and, seconds later, pull from the drive.
He snagged another coffee cup from the cabinet and poured it full before lifting it and carrying it with his own to the breakfast table that sat on the other end of the kitchen.
Natches didn’t disappoint him. He was there within seconds of Rowdy taking his seat, from where he watched nature at its finest just outside the window as a doe and her spotted fawn bounded through the forest.
“She’s too damned stubborn,” Natches growled as he jerked a chair out and straddled it furiously. “If we’re not careful, she could end up devastated.”
Rowdy turned and gave his cousin a firm look. “Keep Trudy retired.”
