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Her laughter escaped, and he swore it sounded just like the impudent, too-stubborn little wretch that caused it.
“Just give me my damned money,” he growled. “I made her laugh for you. You weren’t supposed to laugh with her, dammit.”
But she was laughing, and the sound lightened his heart, even if it was at his expense.
He could only shake his head as she leaned into his chest and he wrapped his arms around her, his lips twitching as he met Duke’s amused gaze.
“I’ll pay the hundred,” Duke promised, almost grinning. “I’ll be damned if it wasn’t worth it.” He chuckled. “Well worth it.”
Natches tipped two fingers to his forehead in acknowledgment before kissing the top of his wife’s head.
He was just good, he told himself, rather proud. Damned good.
But she was wrong. Bliss would be forty-five, maybe older.
He’d make sure of it.
EIGHT
The levity of that evening was forgotten by the time Natches’s two cousins and various family members and children showed up. As the house began to fill, Angel completely understood why Chaya ordered in a stack of pizzas from Janey’s restaurant.
Not that Mackay’s Fine Dining did pizza as a rule, Natches informed her. But Janey’s chef Desmond made some damned good pizza and the circumstances were excuse enough for the chef to come in early and fix them himself.
And the pizzas were damned good. Almost as good as hers, she admitted as she sat at the desk in her suite, ate, and watched the security cameras Natches had set up on the three adjustable monitors he and Duke had installed at the desk.
The cameras gave her an escape from the children, cousins, in-laws, and outlaws, as Chaya called them, that filled the house.
There were so many people packed into the kitchen that Bliss and her three teenage cousins had taken the smaller children and two pizzas downstairs to the basement playroom. Still, the number of adults and competing opinions were too much for Angel.
Finishing the pizza she lifted the whiskey she’d poured herself before sitting down
and sipped at it, her gaze moving to the monitor that displayed the basement as well as a view to one of the hidden night-vision cameras mounted on the other side of the backyard and trained toward the yard’s entrance. She would have expected the camera to be mounted in the yard instead, until Natches explained how easily the wildlife set it off whenever he’d placed it there.
It worked as it was and with the small joystick sitting in front of her she could choose the camera view and turn the camera somewhat if she needed to.
At the moment the girls downstairs held her attention.
Bliss was sitting with Annie, Laken, and Erin, talking as the younger children dozed or watched the cartoon currently playing on the large flat-screen television. Her sister kept her attention on the children, just as the other girls did, but their comfort and easy camaraderie as they talked was readily apparent.
Bliss’s hair was pulled to the top of her head, clipped in place, though several long, loose curls had escaped to hang down her back.
She looked worried, Angel noticed. And a little scared sometimes. Her cousins were clearly concerned, and she knew from what Rowdy, Dawg, and Natches’s sister, Janey, had said, the other girls hadn’t slept well the night before.
“Nightmares,” Janey had sighed.
Pulling her good leg up to prop her foot on the seat of the chair, Angel rubbed at the other leg; the muscle that had taken that knife was aching like a son of a bitch. She had already showered, changed the bandage, and taken her aspirin and antibiotics, but she knew she’d run out of medication before the deep wound was actually better.
For now, it wasn’t infected, just irritated. She’d cleaned it again, then bore the agony of dousing it with alcohol. A last-ditch effort before she’d be forced to have Duke contact his brother, Ethan.
She grinned at the thought of Ethan. He’d pretend fixing her was becoming a job again, probably call her Frankenstein’s Bride because of the scars she carried—and there were a lot of them.
The last bullet she’d taken had nearly taken her life. She remembered that place where she’d slipped into after losing more blood than her body could tolerate. She’d stayed there too long, she thought, frowning, and the dreams she’d had while she was there hadn’t been comfortable.
The fact that she’d had them again several times in the last week was worrisome as well.
Scanning the other camera views she sipped at the whiskey again. There was a time when she would have simply drunk from the bottle and not worried about the job if she drank too much. A time when Tracker and Chance had railed at her, worried about her, and watched her with increasing concern. A time when she’d cussed worse than a sailor, fought like a demon, and stayed well away from polite society whenever they weren’t on a job.
A time when she’d often wondered if she had a tomorrow to look forward to.
