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He strode to her quickly, slid his hand behind her neck, and before she could stop him, lowered his head to cover her lips with his. And drag her into that sensual, heated vortex of arousal that she had no defenses against.
And just as quickly, he released her.
“Be good today, and be nice to Chaya. Natches is becoming upset because you keep ignoring her.” The demand was made as he strode from the room and left the suite by way of the patio doors in the kitchenette.
She didn’t have a chance to argue, and she wondered if she would have known how to argue if she’d had the chance.
Be nice to Chaya.
Hell, she thought she was being nice. She was staying the hell away from her; that was as nice as she knew how to be right now.
Shaking her head at the demand, she left the suite. Rather than following Duke, she used the house entrance instead and turned into the kitchen, where Chaya and the other cousins’ wives as well as Mercedes, Dawg’s stepmother, had gathered.
“Angel, good morning to you.” Mercedes was the first to see her.
Her smile was warm, welcoming, just as the others’ were as they repeated the greeting.
“Did you sleep well?” Chaya asked from where she stood on the other side of the stove, where she’d been watching Christa slowly simmering something in a skillet.
“You can’t teach her how to cook, Christa.” Angel paused next to the counter, looked from the stove to Chaya. “But she can definitely teach you how to burn the kitchen down without trying.”
“Let me try.” Christa laughed, obviously well aware of the fact that Chaya couldn’t cook.
The look Chaya shot her was a warning. “Be nice,” she warned Angel, her voice low.
Ah, the tales she could tell, Angel thought, almost amused at the wariness in Chaya’s expression.
“I’m always nice,” she assured the woman she’d once called her mother. “Notice, I’m not saying anything. I’m leaving.”
Tipping her fingers to her forehead in salute, she turned and left the house. There, she’d spoken to her. Duke and Natches could stop bitching at her now.
She made her way outside, around the grounds, and checked the position of the men Natches had hidden in the forests around the house. She could feel the scopes of their weapons on her as they watched her make her way along the natural, heavily vined border fence that grew around the yard surrounding the house.
There were two SEALs, Seth and Saul August; Natches’s sniper protégé Harley Matthews; and Natches’s adopted son, Declan Mackay, keeping watch on the property surrounding the house. If anyone made it past those four, as well as the two Mackay cousins “from the other side of the mountain,” as Natches phrased it, and him and Duke, then they were all in trouble.
Four other Mackay cousins were still canvassing the county searching for the attempted abductors with Rowdy and Dawg leading the two teams after dropping their wives and daughters at Natches’s.
The teenagers were in the basement with their video games, television, and various entertainments; Chaya, Christa, and Kelly were at the kitchen table with their coffee and mother discussions; and Angel was doing everything she could to avoid all of them.
Especially Chaya.
God, it hurt being here with her mother, facing the past and the wounded parts of her heart that she’d never been able to fully heal.
And she had to deal with Duke as well after last night.
That man was driving her insane. If ever one had been created for the sole purpose of both irritating and arousing a woman to the point of no return, then it was Duke. And for five years he’d made it his sole purpose in life to drive her crazy.
And no doubt before Bliss’s abductors were found, she’d be certifiably insane.
Making her rounds of the yards, ensuring there were no anomalies and everything was the same as it had been the evening before, she made her way back to the house.
Rather than going in through the kitchen entrance, she used the sliding doors into the suite instead. She’d done her good deed for the day that morning and she was fresh out of additional ones at the moment.
Shaking her head at the thought, Angel moved to the desk and the laptop connected to the three monitors. She pulled up the traffic cam program she’d installed the night before and typed in the command to access the city’s camera system. She and Tracker had been working on the program for years, perfecting it, ensuring it couldn’t be tracked or traced.
Within minutes she had the program searching for the blue van that one of the marina’s security cameras had recorded the day Bliss was nearly taken. If they were smart the men that attempted to grab the teenager had already gotten rid of the vehicle. Sometimes, though, intelligence wasn’t always the deciding factor. Simple oversight had been the cause of many a criminal’s apprehension.
Now that the tracking program was running, she was left with the option of pacing the suite or joining Chaya and her mommy-friends in the kitchen.
