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“Well now, that was just before someone decided to try to kill you, right?” Kye burst out, her hands gripping the arms of the chair so tight her fingers paled. “This is one of those exceptions to the rules. I told him if he had to seduce you to protect you, then I’d rather you be his lover than see you dead.”
Lyrica blinked back at her, her stomach tightening at the reminder that dead had become a possibility earlier.
“How do you get this stuff into your head?” she groaned. “First I’m part of a power play by your brother to take the Mackay throne or some crap; now you’re throwing me in your brother’s bed because you think it’s the only way to save me.” She shook her head at Kye’s machinations. “Really, you need to find a hobby, because you drive the rest of the world crazy.”
Kye gave a disgusted little snort at the thought. “Hobbies are for people without purpose. I have a purpose—”
“Directing the lives of those around you?” Lyrica charged as she gripped the blankets beneath her in desperate fingers rather than trying to strangle her friend. “Kye, I love you like a sister, but I don’t need any help where your brother is concerned.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Kye drawled in amusement. “He’s been so hot for you for years that it’s all he could do to keep from jumping your bones at any given time. Why do you think he started the bimbo squad? He had to find someone to take the edge off all that lust until he could figure out how to keep your brother and cousins from killing him once he got you into his bed.”
Lyrica stared at her friend in disbelief for several long seconds.
Finally, she forced herself to her feet, keeping a wary eye on the other girl, and walked stiffly to Graham’s closet.
“I need a shower,” she finally muttered. “Maybe I need to clean the dirt out of my ears from that wreck or something. Because I can’t be hearing you right.”
“Leave Graham’s clothes alone,” Kye suddenly hissed, moving so fast she was blocking her way before Lyrica could open the door to the huge walk-in closet. “It’s only going to make him think you’re willing to give in to him easily. Bad mistake. Stay right here; I’ll go get you something.”
Kye moved from the bedroom before Lyrica could pro
test or agree. Lyrica could only shake her head.
Moving into the closet, she chose a soft, long-sleeved button-up shirt in dark gray. She’d seen him wear that one before. The incredible softness of the material had skimmed over the powerful muscles of his upper body and made her mouth water.
Taking it from the hanger, she stepped from the closet and closed the door behind her before making her way to the shower.
Déjà vu struck her with frightening awareness as she stepped beneath the heated water a moment later.
The sense that fate was determined to replay the danger against her until she realized she couldn’t escape wasn’t lost on her.
As hot water sluiced over her bruised flesh, a heavy sigh left her lips. Terror was just a thought away; that bleak, overwhelming certainty that she would never be free of the threat facing her tightened at her chest.
Why?
What had she done?
The same questions were going through her mind that had played through it before, and the same lack of answers faced her.
Perhaps this time, though, the answers would be found. There was no way to convince anyone, let alone her, that this was an accident.
As she showered, she replayed the night in her mind. The call to her mother and the overwhelming sense that something was wrong. Her mother had sounded nervous, frightened perhaps, but had refused to talk to her about it. Eve and Piper were there with Mercedes, but they had seemed hesitant to talk to her as well.
Between the guests of the inn and her sisters, she hadn’t felt her mother was in danger, but she had felt as though her mother, as well as her sisters, was hiding something from her. That feeling had convinced her to make the drive to the inn.
Once she’d left her apartment she’d called again, frowning as the voice mail picked up. She’d left a message that she was on her way, but no one had called her back.
God, had anyone even told her mother what had happened?
Graham had talked to Dawg in the car, she remembered. The shock and fear were slowly easing and allowing her to remember the accident with more clarity.
Dawg would have called Timothy, if Alex hadn’t. The woman who had helped her from the Jeep had said she’d called an ambulance. The report of the hit-and-run would have gone through Alex’s office. But how had Graham learned of it so quickly?
And who had arrived in the Corvette just behind him?
As she washed her hair and carefully soaped her body, the confusing details began to mount. As Graham’s car had raced around the curve, the young woman who had stopped to help her had moved to the front of the car. And though she hadn’t realized it then, Lyrica now clearly remembered the hardened expression on the woman’s face as she stood as though braced for danger. Just as she remembered the brief glimpse of the weapon emerging from behind the woman’s back until familiarity had flickered in her expression.
Lyrica hadn’t had a chance to get to know the young woman who had moved into the apartment beside hers just before life had exploded. And she sure as hell hadn’t known the man who had arrived behind Graham, though her neighbor seemed to know him well, just as Graham had known the woman—Angel, he’d called her.
