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A frown creased his brow as those penetrating brown eyes stared back at her, seeing too much, she feared, and perhaps not enough.
“And don’t look at me like I’m a bug under a damned microscope either,” she demanded, fists clenching at her sides. “I don’t need your approval of me and I damned sure don’t need you judging me. I’m here to make certain Bliss is safe. No more. No less.”
Make Chaya pay for the past? She didn’t want to make Chaya pay for anything. She’d wanted her mother to come for her and Jenny. She’d wanted to go home and be safe again. When she’d lost all hope of that, she’d just wanted to forget. And that was exactly what she’d done for far too many years. She’d just forgotten.
“And what about your mother?” he demanded.
“What about her?” She wished to hell everyone would stop with the “her mother” crap. She was tired of hearing it, tired of having it thrown in her face as though the past were somehow her fault. “What the hell is your problem anyway and how am I suddenly any of your business? Mister, you need to get a damned life and stay out of others’ business.”
Men like him should be locked up somewhere.
“You refuse to acknowledge her,” he accused her then. “You’re breaking her heart.”
“Oh God, give me a motherf—” She bit off the word, breathed in deep, and tried again. “Just stop, okay? This is none of your business. I’m none of your business. Once this is over, I’ll be gone. . . .”
He laughed at that.
Angel clamped her lips closed, her breathing harsh as she fought the cauldron of emotions she didn’t want to let free.
Like Pandora’s box, once that door was opened, it would never close again, she feared.
“You really think you’ll just disappear on her, and the Mackays will give you a cheerful wave good-bye?” The smile on his face was frighteningly knowing. “Girl, Duke will be the least of your problems if you try that one. Natches will surround you with so much protection you won’t be able to breathe without smelling a Mackay invading your personal space.”
Yeah, she was ready to put her faith in that one. Natches was a true family man, she’d give him that, but she wasn’t his daughter; she was just the grown-up child his wife hadn’t wanted. Once he realized that, he’d let her go easily enough.
It would hurt when Duke walked away, though, she knew that. When he wasn’t in her bed, wasn’t touching her, holding her . . . That one would cut deep. Deeper than she’d imagined until the night before.
“I don’t have time for this.” She tried again to extricate herself from the confrontation she could feel rising inside her. “And you don’t want me to make time for it. Because as intimidating as I’m sure you can be, mister, I can be a pure bitch on speed if you piss me off enough. And neither one of us needs that, right? We sure as hell don’t need Bliss or anyone else walking in on it, now do we? I for one would prefer not to take that chance.”
And she didn’t want to let the bitch out to play; she really didn’t. She’d put that person behind her years ago. That scared, broken young woman who couldn’t accept her past or find a future to look forward to. The drinking, cursing, and fights hadn’t quelled the fury; they had only made it worse.
“Yeah, you weren’t a nice person when you were younger,” he agreed. “Dirty little gutter fighter, weren’t you?”
It was the “dirty” that got her. Angel felt herself tense. The memory of how Chaya had looked at her the day Bliss was nearly abducted, as though she were something dirty, sliced through her defenses.
“Oh, I was,” she assured him before she could stop herself. “A real war-whore. Ask anyone.” She spread one hand out as though to encompass the room. “Sold myself to the highest bidder, I’ve been told. Anything else you need me to agree to, Mr. Cranston, or are we finished now?”
They had better be finished. She could feel herself unraveling, feel the memories of the past as well as the present rising to push against her determination to rein in the impulses that used to see her searching for a bottle of whiskey and a fistfight. And she’d been far too young for either. A child. A child whose mother had left her, deserted her, and forced her to learn to kill.
“How much would it cost a person to convince you to put aside the war-whore and become a daughter for a change?”
Angel felt the breath slam from her lungs, felt an agony so deep, so white-hot, it instantly seared her insides with blistering pain. Her throat tight
ened until she wondered if she was going to choke on the emotions spilling through her, threatening to break her.
“Good-bye, Mr. Cranston. . . .” She moved for the hall and tried to escape.
“I’ll pay it. A hundred thousand? Two?” He rose from the chair, watching her with cool interest, his expression unconcerned, uncaring.
She turned back to him slowly, pain shredding her insides as she faced this too-perceptive, too-cunning little old man. “I held my sister in my arms as she died. Her blood stained my hands, and her screams live in my nightmares. I walked the streets of Baghdad that night,” she whispered. “And I cried for my mother. I was a daughter then. Now I’m just the war-whore,” she sneered. “And you can’t come up with enough money to buy me for anything. Or anyone. What you can do is fucking go to hell and leave me alone before you really piss me off.”
She didn’t move for the hall again. She turned back to the door and, jerking it open, escaped outside, where the remembered scent of betrayal and blood wasn’t nearly so thick, so wretched. Where she could breathe without the need for more than her mother had wanted to give her, more than Duke could give her, tormenting her soul.
• • •
Duke stepped into the kitchen slowly, aware of Natches and Chaya behind him, thanking God they’d found a way to convince Bliss to remain downstairs when Natches had seen Timothy and Angel in the kitchen on the security monitor. The fact that the two were involved in a confrontation hadn’t been missed by any of them.
“If she doesn’t kill you first, I’m going to,” Duke warned the older man as he took his seat slowly, his expression marked with grief.
