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“Piss a woman off and she’ll reveal far more than she would otherwise,” Timothy said, the low tone emphasized by the lined weariness of his expression. “God.” He wiped his hands down his face before he shook his head. A tight, sharp movement, as though he was trying to shake what she’d said from his memories. “I read the report. I saw the hell she lived in. Seeing it in her eyes . . .” He broke off and breathed in deeply. “She doesn’t hate.” He stared back at Chaya now. “She hurts. And she’s terrified of hurting more.”
“Timothy, you’re a menace,” Chaya bit out between clenched teeth, the anger in her expression in no way matching the anger Duke felt roiling through her. “A goddamned menace.”
• • •
Duke wondered if he should have pushed Angel as hard as he had since bringing her to Natches and Chaya’s home. The shadows in her eyes were darker and her expression more solemn than he’d ever seen it. The days spent treading warily around her mother and holding in the anger he knew burned inside her were killing her. Hence the reason he’d tried to push her in Chaya’s direction. What Timothy had done was strip her to the bone, though, he realized that evening.
Angel wasn’t one to restrain the anger. Other emotions, yes, but the anger she tended to give free rein. It was the only thing men understood, she’d once snapped when Tracker had dared to call her down for it.
So it was more than a little surprising that she’d not just restrained it, but managed to hide it from everyone in the house, except him, after Timothy left.
He knew her. He knew her better than he’d once realized. He knew what the stormy gray of her eyes meant, and the emotions threatening to swamp her when the color softened, lightening to that of a dove’s wing.
Today, though, the color was neither that of a storm cloud nor that of a dove’s wing. Her eyes were an in-between color that warned him she was hurting inside and had no idea if she was angry over it or not.
Standing in the doorway after dinner, he watched her on the patio as she lifted the bottle of expensive Irish whiskey to her lips and sipped at it. She rarely bothered with a glass and she hadn’t drunk enough to do more than relax in over three years.
She’d showered, changed into one of his shirts. Her pretty, tanned legs shimmered beneath the tails of the garment, several buttons still undone, the edges falling away from her legs. The dark gray shirt emphasized her peach-toned flesh and delicate build and clearly showed the bandage on her leg that he had yet to ask her about.
A knife wound, Tracker had told him when he called, demanding to know what she’d done to herself. A bastard determined to kill the little girl he’d abducted had taken exception to Angel’s determined efforts to keep him from his goal. Angel’s prowess with a knife was exceptional, but she had the girl to worry about and she’d been distracted. His knife had buried in her thigh even as she’d cut his throat.
Tracker had sewn the wound up and he was a damned fine medic, but nowhere near as good as Ethan.
The leg didn’t seem to be giving her problems, so he hadn’t called Ethan to the house. Yet.
For the past five years, Angel had been a magnet for near-fatal wounds. She’d nearly died more than once and Ethan swore she had a death wish.
She lifted the bottle to her lips and tipped her head back, taking another drink of the whiskey.
His shaft throbbed, so engorged with lust it was pathetic. There was just something about watching Angel enjoy that whiskey that made him hard as hell. Made him want to grab her to him and ride her through the night.
Tonight, the drink was being enjoyed along with one of the thin, fragrant cigarros her foster grandfather hand-rolled and doled out with miserly impatience. Sprawled back in the cushioned swing suspended from the crossbeam roof of the enclosed patio, one leg bent, the other stretched out, eyes closed, she gave the appearance of complete immersion in the liquor and tobacco.
He knew her, though. She was strung as tight as Uncle Ray’s banjo and ready to explode into action.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked softly.
Leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, he wondered how she managed to keep all those emotions so tightly contained all the time.
Tonight, they were beating at her, though, and he knew it. It was the knowledge that the quieter Angel became, and the more somber her expression, the greater her inner turmoil. Being in the house with her mother, feeling that Chaya hadn’t wanted her as a child and didn’t want her now as an adult, was breaking something inside her.
And that was killing him as well.
“Nothing to talk about,” she mumbled, never shifting position or opening her eyes. “Besides, talking to you just makes me crazy.”
“That’s why you’re doing something you only do when you’re upset? Because you’re not upset?” He didn’t bother to hide the mockery in his tone. “Come on, baby, I know you better.”
The tension increased at the statement.
“Yes, you do.” Her eyes opened, the gleam of anger unhidden as she focused on him. “Because you spent five years spying on me.”
He chuckled at the accusation. “I’m an investigator, that’s what I do. But Natches really wasn’t too serious about it until you showed up in Somerset again nearly two years ago. I didn’t have enough info to give him and I wasn’t going to give him fairy tales. Or hurt you worse than I knew you already hurt.”
Yeah, he had known. The nightmares the night they’d pulled her from the debris of that hospital had bred the suspicion, but he was just supposed to ensure the team wasn’t a threat to the Mackays, not dig into their pasts. And for the first time, he hadn’t wanted to dig.
There had been no escaping the need, though. That was why he and Ethan had joined the team, why they’d gathered the information needed to start peeling back the layers of a woman that some of the hardest men Duke knew hesitated to confront.
“I wanted to kill you when I learned you were a Mackay,” she whispered before lifting that bottle to her lips again. “And I wanted to kill Cranston this morning.”
