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Dealing with Mackays would end up driving him into AA at this point.
“You’ll be entertaining him if you hurt her.” The warning didn’t come from a Mackay this time. This time, it came from the one man Graham least expected—Brogan Campbell.
He had short dark red hair and the shadow of a darker beard, intense blue eyes, and savage features. He was a man Graham respected for his strength, but rarely agreed with.
“My days of entertaining the Mackays or their relations ended with that fist Natches planted in my face. As I told him then, that one was free. Another one will cost all of you. Now, if this little meeting is finished, dawn is nearly here and I’m damned tired. Get the hell out of my house or find a bedroom and leave me the hell alone. I really don’t care which.”
They were all tired. Tempers were beginning to fray and patience was wearing thin. Especially with him.
“Yeah, time to go.” Dawg wasn’t moving, though.
His hands gripped the back of the chair a little too tightly as the others rose and began filing out of the room toward the garage, where two SUVs were parked. Once the room was empty of everyone but him and Graham, Dawg stared at Graham with implacable determination.
In that moment, Graham realized he’d been wrong. Natches wasn’t the one to watch out for any longer, unless the threat he represented had the potential to be fatal. In this case, Dawg was the one to keep an eye on.
“Lyrica and I have an agreement,” Dawg said softly, the pale green of his eyes almost colorless now as his gaze met Graham’s. “I stay out of her life and she doesn’t move to Lexington. That’s worked for us so far, because she’s not really one to poke at things, ya know?”
Graham didn’t answer him. Instead, he watched the other man closely, hearing more than what Dawg was saying.
“I looked into your past myself,” Dawg stated then. “Whatever Natches knows, he’s not sharing yet, but I’ll warn you, he’s close to telling me, Rowdy, and Timothy. Once he’s convinced whatever happened will hurt Lyrica, your secret’s out. But he forgets, I’m not one to wait when I want to know something. I’ve known how interested Lyrica was in you from the moment you two met. When you returned to Somerset, I knew something wasn’t right, so I made some calls.”
Graham stared back at him, forcing back the emotion, the searing regret and humiliation.
Dawg’s expression was heavy with compassion and understanding, and that only made things worse.
“You’re a good man, Graham,” Dawg said softly then, releasing the cushioned back of the chair and straightening slowly. “You’re a damned good man, and I don’t want to hate you.” He shook his head wearily. “But that’s my sister, and I guess I love her near as much as I love my own kid. And I’m an overprotective bastard,” he admitted with resigned regret. “So knowing she’ll be sleeping with you doesn’t sit well with me. Not because she doesn’t deserve someone to hold her, but because she chose someone that just doesn’t have it in him to hold her as long and as tight as her sweet heart deserves. And that, my friend, will ensure I hate you, because you’re too fucking stupid to realize how much she does love you, and too damned selfish to just walk the fuck away from her.”
Dawg didn’t wait for an argument, a protest, or an explanation. He turned and moved for the doorway as he rubbed at the back of his neck with the air of a man fighting his first instinct. The instinct that demanded he protect the sister he loved.
“Dawg.” Graham stopped him just before he left the room.
“Yeah, Graham?” He turned back, but he wasn’t expecting Graham to have anything to say that would change his mind about the outcome he could see coming for his sister.
“It’s not selfishness.” Graham had to force the words from his lips.
The doubt on Dawg’s expression had fury lashing at him. A self-fury, one he knew there was no escape from.
“Okay, Graham.” Dawg sighed. “Just remember what I said . . .”
“Goddammit, Dawg,” he snarled as he slapped the liquor glass he’d never filled to the bar. “It’s not fucking selfishness. She’s like a drug I can’t kick. Since the first time I saw her. I didn’t touch her when she was younger, I swear to god I didn’t.”
Dawg looked away momentarily, proving he’d always suspected Graham had dared to touch her during those earlier years.
“She was just eighteen when I met her.” He shook his head as he paced to the wide windows at the side of the room and stared into the summer dawn. “Eighteen.” Shoving his hands into his back pockets, he could see her as she had been that day. “So fucking innocent and filled with such hopes and dreams. I would have shot myself before destroying that. But that was six years ago.” He turned back to Dawg then, knowing there was just no way to explain fully what she did to him. “Six years, Dawg, and I can’t stay away from her anymore. And that’s not selfishness, but I’ll be damned if I know what to call it. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her face some fucking assassin without me there to make damned sure she comes away from this without being hurt.”
Uncomfortable now, resigned to the fact that Lyrica’s brother had every reason in the world to hate him, Graham waited for the legendary Mackay fury to erupt.
Dawg wasn’t known as the least temperamental of the Mackays. When he was younger he was the one who fought the fights Natches often instigated. Right after Rowdy would try to defuse them.
Graham figured he was about to get intimate with another Mackay fist any second now.
Instead, the other man shocked him more than he wanted to admit. Saddened, heavy with regret, Dawg’s gaze flickered with momentary anger before even that died away and he nodded heavily.
“When you figure out why you can’t stay away from her, Graham, maybe you’ll let her, or someone who cares for her, know,” he said softly. “Otherwise, trust me, your soul will know the minute she gives up on your heart. And once she gives up, it will be over for her. Forever. Then it will be too damned late to realize what you’ve lost.”
—
Dawg turned away from the younger man, fighting to hide the satisfaction he was feeling, the knowledge that the other man’s admission had given him.
