Nauti and Wild

by Lora Leigh

  The biscuit was well gnawed, gooey at the tip, and the smile the little girl aimed up at her stole her heart.

  “Do you have goodies, sweetheart?” Sierra whispered as she leaned close, her arms crossed on her knees as the little girl chortled up at her. “I bet it tastes very good.”

  It was offered again, this time more solemnly.

  With a grin, Sierra leaned close, pretended to take a bite, then grabbed a quick little kiss from a chubby cheek.

  And the child was well satisfied. She laughed, held on to Sierra’s knee, and turned back to her mother as though she had just undertaken a miraculous feat and jabbered a string of unintelligible words with lots of “ma-ma” mixed in.

  “And that little charmer is Janey and Alex’s, Erin Jansen. She’s the baby of the family. Behind her is Natches and Chaya’s daughter, Bliss.” Bliss looked back at her solemnly, as though she were considering every nuance of the moment before she went back to the toy she was playing with. “In the yellow dress is Dawg and Christa’s little tomboy, Laken.” The baby playing with the little toy truck. Sierra couldn’t help but grin. “And the lazy one over there sleeping is Rowdy and Kelly’s, Annette.” Rosy cheeks, black hair, and a perfect little baby face, Annette was snoozing through all the commotion from a padded spot at her mother’s feet. “And here’s Faisal and Timothy Cranston. Faisal is Natches and Chaya’s adopted son, and Timothy is the pest no one can seem to get rid of.”

  Sierra smiled back at the young man of Middle Eastern heritage, who looked perhaps twenty-three or -four years old, but it was Timothy Cranston that held her gaze the longest.

  He looked rumpled, his thinning hair mussed, his brown eyes somber and intense yet shaded with a hint of mockery. He was older, she guessed late forties, and the lines at his mouth, forehead, and lips bespoke a man who had known far too much grief.

  “Mr. Cranston, it’s nice to meet you.” He reminded her of her father.

  Timothy’s head tipped to the side as a small smile played about his lips. Stepping carefully over babies, diaper bags, and toys, he offered his hand.

  The handshake was gentle, his gaze respectful.

  “John’s mentioned you a time or two,” he stated. “He didn’t tell us how pretty you are.”

  Erin jabbered again in excitement before Sierra could reply, her arms reaching up as her animated little face creased into one huge smile.

  “And there’s my girl.” Cranston’s voice softened, became filled with emotion as he picked the little girl up off her feet and cuddled her against his chest. “Unca Timmy missed you, sweetie.”

  Unca Timmy?

  Sierra looked around and saw the looks the others were giving him.

  “You’d have to know Cranston to understand,” John chuckled. “You’ll figure it out.”

  She rather doubted it, but she let the memories soak in rather than fighting them. The women were a friendly bunch, talking easily about far more than babies. The conversations shifted until she found herself locked into a lively political debate as she noticed John and the others slipping out to the deck then up the outside staircase.

  “Ignore them,” Kelly, her blue eyes shimmering with laughter, advised her. “They always escape when we all get together.”

  “Unless there’s food involved.” Chaya rolled her expressive, dark gray eyes as Christa laughed over the comment.

  “John says he’s known you most of your life,” Chaya commented. “He’s told us your favorite food, favorite drink, favorite movie, and how you came by those bruises. Tell me, Ms. Lucas, are you using our John for safety then running out on him, or do you have something more permanent in mind?”

  Sierra blinked back at her. The woman looked like an interrogator now rather than a mother, a friend, or a wife.

  “Perhaps that’s a question you should ask John,” she stated as she stared back at the other woman directly. “Funny, the only proposal I’ve ever heard come from his lips was for another woman.”

  “And I understand you took care of that one right quickly,” Chaya pointed out as the other women looked on in amusement.

  “She was cheating on him.” Sierra narrowed her eyes at the other woman. “Do you have a problem with me, Mrs. Mackay?”

  “Only if you intend on breaking John’s heart,” Chaya informed her.

  “Then, we may all have a problem with that,” Kelly chimed in.

  “And if he breaks mine instead?” she asked. “Excuse me, ladies, but I truly don’t think you have anything to worry about where John’s concerned. He’s a really big boy, and trust me, he takes care of himself very well.”

  She wondered at these new friends of John’s even as she wondered if anyone had cared when he had broken her heart.

  “We would care if your heart was broken as well, Sierra,” Christa stated then, drawing Sierra’s attention. “We know John, though. We know how he’s spoken of you over the past year, and we know you’re important to him. Forgive us for being protective.”

  Sierra stared back at her and for a moment wished she had friends such as these four women. Women who might have understood, who might have supported her those months when losing John had hurt so much.

  “I have no designs on your friend,” she told them all clearly. “He’s the one that left Boston, not me. Now, I think it might be a rather good idea if we change the subject.”

  John eased away from the open doorway and glanced back at the men who had followed him down from the top deck, intending to move to the office by the quickest route of straight through the room.

  Instead, he turned, moved quickly to the side of the houseboat, and made his way to the back.

  Son of a bitch, he’d heard the pain in her voice and he hated it, just as he was certain the others had heard as well. He was coming to the conclusion that something more than he remembered had definitely happened that night in Boston when she had come to his apartment.

  He knew Sierra. He knew her like he had never known another woman, and he knew a simple case of him passing out on her wouldn’t have produced this result.

  “Boy, you have something to fix with that girl,” Timothy muttered as John pushed open the glass sliding doors off the back deck.

  “Let it go, Cranston,” he ordered.

  “We’re going to back him this time, John,” Dawg stated, his deep voice quiet, intense. “That girl sounded as lost as a whipped puppy, and you know that’s not going over real well.”

  The four men behind him were protective, especially of women. As John understood it, they always had been, even during their wild, often lascivious pasts.

  “Let’s concentrate on finding out who the hell is trying to kill her, then I can concentrate on making damned sure I don’t lose her,” he growled as he turned back to the other six. “Can you give me that much?”

  They stared back at him with varying degrees of suspicion.

  “We’ll give you that time, JW,” Cranston drawled. “And if she runs back to Boston in tears, then we’ll see just how hard we can kick your damned ass.”

  John didn’t doubt that in the least.

  “Here’s what we have,” Dawg stepped in. “There were definitely prints on the shoreline, though someone tried to brush them out. By the position our watcher was sitting in, they were watching your boat, and they were there for a while. One set of prints, definitely male, I’d say about a size ten maybe eleven, it was hard to be sure with the deliberate attempt to erase them.”

  “Ms. Genoa is still in town as well,” Timothy informed him. “She was going into the Mackay Café for lunch as I headed here.”

  “She’s been there every day for the past four days,” Faisal broke in, his tone hushed. “She asks questions about John Walker and if he has a lover, who his friends are, though many simply shrug, and others tell her to ask him herself.” Faisal was likely one of those “others” if his mocking smile was anything to go by.

  “No one knows you have anyone on the boat with you, that I can tell,” Rowdy to
ld him. “There’s no gossip about it at the marina. Most people here really don’t give a damn, but I doubt they’d lie if asked, if they have seen her.”

  John shook his head. “She’s been inside so far. The doctor should be here later this afternoon to check her out, then maybe it would be a good idea to pull out for a while.”

  “Not yet.” Natches shook his head then. “Dawg and Christa are keeping Bliss for me tonight, Chaya and I are going to do a little midnight hunting. Just keep her inside, keep the curtains pulled, and we’ll do the rest.”

  “I hate this.” He pushed his fingers restlessly through his hair. “I want to catch the bastard myself, but damn if I want to leave her alone long enough to do it.”

  He would trust the other men to look after her at any time, but he knew Sierra would start asking questions if they did. And he didn’t want the fight that would come with it. He had a very bad feeling she would head straight back to Boston if she knew the trouble had followed her there.

  “Let us take care of this, John,” Natches stated, his voice hard. “If things start to look dangerous, we’ll reassess then. Right now, we’re just watching. Agreed?”

  At any other time, John would have never trusted that statement from a wild-assed Mackay, but he knew since they’d found the women who held their hearts, each of them was more careful.

  He nodded slowly.

  “And while we’re all watching your back, why not see what you can do to hold on to that girl,” Dawg ordered him in a slow, lazy drawl. “She suits you, John. She suits you real good.”

  And she did. That was something John knew all too well. Sierra suited him far too much.

  NINE

  She had always suited him.

  John watched Sierra with the wives and children of the friends who were more like brothers to him. He’d always fought that knowledge, and now, he simply couldn’t understand why. He’d wasted so many years of his life running from the one woman he knew now was meant to be his world, and he didn’t even know why.

  A bachelor’s self-preservation perhaps. It was damned hard to acknowledge that a woman can strip your soul down to its base level, but she could rebuild it as well.

  As the boat emptied of the chaotic Mackay clan and friends, John acknowledged the things he hadn’t wanted to face before the night Sierra had forced the breakup of his engagement to Marlena.

  He almost grinned at the thought. She had no idea that she’d done him a great favor that night, and it had taken him a while to realize it, too, he admitted.

  It hadn’t been the loss of Marlena that had affected him so severely, though. It had been the realization that Sierra would risk their friendship, risk everything basically, to save him from a marriage doomed to failure.

  He had known that night. That unacknowledged part of himself he had hidden from for so long had known that not just his bachelor days were over, but his heart was caught. And it was caught by a tiny bit of a woman who had been a part of his life for as long as she had been alive.

  Securing the houseboat, doors locked, drapes drawn closed, he made his way to the bedroom, where Sierra had already retired.

  Stepping into the large, open room, he was caught by the quiet pain in her face as she sat in the recliner next to the wide, securely draped windows, and stared at the dark material.

  “If I weren’t here, you’d have the curtains back and the windows open,” she said softly. “The breeze from the lake would drift inside and you’d be at peace.”

  “I’m at peace now, Sierra. It’s not open windows or a breeze that brings that peace, baby. It’s what’s inside a man or a woman’s soul.”

  And how the hell had he ever realized that?

  “You’ll never move back to Boston, will you?” she whispered, her gray eyes lifting, her somber expression filled with a particular sadness. “When this is finished, you’ll stay here. This is your home now.”

  “It’s my home now,” he agreed as he moved across the room and took a seat in the chair that sat facing her. “But I’ll visit.”

  Her lips tightened as a small, almost hidden flinch crossed her expression.

  “I never truly thought you’d stay away forever,” she said. “I thought you’d come back. That one day, someone would tell me you had moved back into your penthouse, that you were back in the office. That you were home.” She rubbed at the fingernails of one hand with the pads of the fingers of the other. “That’s not going to happen, is it?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I’d never be happy there again, Sierra,” he told her. “I was never happy there before, I just didn’t know it. You were never happy there, either.”

  She looked up at him in surprise. “It’s home, John. I was raised there.”

  “Were you happy there, Sierra?” He leaned closer. “Do you have friends there?” He placed his fingers over her lips as she started to protest. “Who did you go to when I left? Who did you go to, Sierra, when I passed out on you just after penetrating you?”

  She paled.

  John had suspected, but he hadn’t wanted to admit he’d been such a complete fucking fool.

  He cupped her face gently. “I was completely drunk.”

  She swallowed tightly and the distress in her pretty eyes tore at his heart.

  Pushing the wild blue-back ringlets back from her face, John saw the indecision, the fears.

  “What did I do to you that night, Sierra?” he asked gently. “Did I hurt you?”

  “Physically?” Her lips thinned. “No, John, you didn’t hurt me.”

  But he didn’t remember, and she wondered if he would even believe she had been a virgin.

  She didn’t want to talk to him right now. There was too much inside her, too many emotions she didn’t want to deal with tonight.

  “Why are you keeping all the curtains closed?” She changed the subject, stared around the room then back at John as she fought the questions in his eyes.

  “Perhaps I’d prefer no one sees or hears the pleasure I give you.” His lips curled in amusement.

  Shaking her head, she stared around again. “We don’t have sex twenty-four-seven, John.”

  She wanted the truth. She sensed it, she could feel it, just as she sensed the fact that he had disappeared with his friends that afternoon for a reason.

  He watched her thoughtfully for several long moments as Sierra wondered if he would continue to try to lie to her.

  “I think the boat is being watched. I want to keep you hidden for a few more days until we figure out exactly who is watching and why.”

  The knowledge, though she expected it, was still a shock to her. She stared back at him, fighting the sense of impending panic trying to rise inside her.

  Someone was watching the boat, and had been only since her arrival.

  “It wasn’t just a random crime, was it?”

  The attack had been planned. That meant someone specifically wanted to hurt her.

  “This is my fault, Sierra,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Your fault.” She shook her head in confusion. “How can this be your fault?”

  “I think you were targeted because of me. Someone wanted to get back at me.”

  She blinked at him. Get back at him?

  “Who would want to get back at you?” She shook her head in confusion. “And why use me? John, do you realize how little sense that makes?”

  She couldn’t imagine any reason why anyone would think she could be used to strike back at John.

  For a moment, she watched the banked fury in John’s gaze and realized he wasn’t joking. He meant what he was saying.

  “John, that’s insane.” She shook her head at the thought of it. “There’s no reason anyone would believe I could be used against you.”

  “Except Marlena.”

  Marlena? “But a man attacked me.”

  “A man I suspect she hired or was associated with,” he stated. “Your attack has been investigated by a former agent of the Department of
Homeland Security as well as Father. What was learned is that Marlena is connected to an organized crime family, Sierra. A very distant relation, but one all the same. Her marriage to me would have allowed her the chance to move up in that family. A renowned attorney, the Walker money, the backing of a highly respectable law firm. She was banking on that marriage for more than one reason.”

  There had always been rumors that the Genoa family was related to organized crime, but it had never been proven.

  “Her father never seemed like a criminal,” she whispered.

  John’s lips twisted with an edge of rueful amusement. “James Genoa is as honest as the day can be long, Sierra. That doesn’t mean the rest of the family is, and it doesn’t mean that Marlena isn’t determined to recover the status she had before her father’s losses several years before.”

  What the hell was going on?

  Rising to her feet, Sierra paced across the room, staring at the draped windows, feeling closed in, feeling that same anger rising inside her as she realized that, once again, Marlena was winning. She had won the first time when she managed to get John’s ring on her finger, the second time when John had taken Sierra and hadn’t even remembered it.

  She was winning now. She was winning because Sierra wouldn’t have the chance to gain his heart. By the time this was over, he would be eager to rid himself of the trouble she brought to his life.

  “Wonderful.” Mockery filled her, surprising even herself with the depth of it. “Just what the hell I needed—Marlena Genoa screwing up my damned summer.” She almost laughed. She would have laughed, but even mockery could fire enough amusement for that. “You know, John, for as long as I’ve known her, she’s been a pain in my ass!”

  John stared back at Sierra in surprise. This wasn’t exactly the response he’d expected. And he’d be damned if he’d ever seen Sierra quite this angry. Or this strong.

  There was no fear, there were no tears.

  “I thought it was a random crime.” She threw her hands up as she turned back to him. “I couldn’t imagine what I had done, or why it was happening to me. I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t figure out how I had been careless enough to allow myself to be targeted, you know?”