Beau (In the Company of Snipers Book 18)

by Irish Winters

  “Where?” Maverick barked. Like he cared?

  Beau turned on him then. He’d never seen this side of Maverick before. The man flipped so fast, one minute calm, the next ready to fight, Beau couldn’t keep up. Jesus, he’s just like me. He’s mad, too. Beau looked for telltale scars on Maverick, but he simply didn’t have time for the man or his horses anymore. Beau had a lady to rescue, this time from himself.

  All he said was, “McKenna. I gotta go see McKenna.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  McKenna had never felt more alone. She didn’t dare call her father, not yet. Sanders Fitzgerald deserved to hear from the sane daughter he’d spoken with yesterday, not the rambling, weeping mess she’d turned into since. With her back to the padded headboard, she rocked, lost in the world she’d honestly thought she’d put in her past.

  China had been in with coffee and toast after Beau left, but McKenna didn’t want anything from China, even as nice as she was. And she didn’t want breakfast. No. To purge the ghosts from her life once and for all, McKenna needed one thing, to get back into her apartment. With a gun. That was what she needed, to ensure her one place of safety was clean and clear again, damn it. Not that she’d shoot anyone, but a weapon seemed the only way to confront that vicious Catalina woman. Not that McKenna knew how to shoot, but she could learn.

  She’d been to enough psychologists and counselors to know the only way forward was to confront her fears. Again. Her previous escape from the trauma inflicted by her twisted mother hadn’t been easy. McKenna would NOT relive any of that. She knew what to do.

  Never give in. Never give up. Survive. Survive. Survive, damn it. Even if it took all you had to give. The most important thing a victim could learn was to: Survive!

  As patiently as if she were speaking to her youngest patient, she told her ghosts one more time. “I am a doctor, a pediatrician. I do good work in this town, and people respect me. They should. I might be my mother’s daughter, but I am not my mother. I am a survivor. I am strong. I am smart.”

  But none of her patients were as evil as these, so she started again. “You are not my mother—”

  “Thank you, Jesus.”

  Her head snapped up at the firm, masculine voice. Beau stood there with the door hiding half of his body. Half in the room. Half out. Like a coward. Despite the promises he’d made, he’d left her as easily as her mother did.

  McKenna knew one thing. She didn’t need another ghost. She straightened in the bed, running her fingers through her hair while waves of dizziness from that simple movement swarmed her. Trying not to look as hysterical or as unbalanced as she felt, she stared him down, not feeling particularly kind or gracious or forgiving.

  Big whoop. Beau’s back. Who needs him? Not me. He had his chance. What’s he want now?

  “Did you forget something?” she asked through the glimmer of tears she refused to let fall. She’d never cry in front of this man again. Tears were for people she trusted. To prove it, she got to her feet, crossed her arms over her chest in the universal symbol of defiance, and gave him her chin.

  “Yeah. You.” He dropped something just inside the door. In two long strides, he crossed the room and was standing in front of her. “I forgot taking care of you was more important than hunting that mongrel bitch, Montego. I forgot you’re the most important person in the universe. I forgot my most important job is—you.”

  McKenna stared up at him. “M-me?” she asked, amazed he had the nerve to come right out and say precisely what she needed to hear. But then her stubbornness took over. “I’m not just a job,” she said defiantly. He needed to back off.

  If only she hadn’t sounded like a lost little girl. But oh! How she wanted to climb inside the leather jacket on that hard, male body and never be seen again. He’d held her last night. Would he do it again? She caught herself leaning into him.

  Damn Montego! This was her fault!

  It wasn’t like McKenna to be timid. So scared or so needy. She did do good work in this town. She was a respected physician and a good person, and she didn’t need anyone else in order to be who she was. She—Dr. McKenna Fitzgerald—was good enough all by herself!

  Until Beau said softly, his eyes more black than brown for a change, and full of tenderness, “Yes, you, baby. I came back for you. Only you.”

  “Me?” She asked again, blinking the burgeoning flood of tears away.

  He really did have a beautiful face, his dark hair framing the angles and lines of a masculine sculpture made from the richest caramel marble. So tan. So incredibly perfect. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been clean-shaven. This morning, sexy stubble shadowed his jaw and cheeks, accentuating the slash of his lips.

  If not for the bruises and claw marks Montego had inflicted, he’d be solid male-model material. Yet even marked and defiled, he was still the handsomest, most cantankerous, onerous, stubborn man McKenna had ever met. She swallowed the lump in her throat, afraid to believe someone as hard and brave and courageous as Beau had really came back for her. And he called me baby.

  When he dipped his head to hers and pressed a warm kiss to her forehead, she couldn’t help herself. Her nostrils flared to capture his unique scent, a combination of earth, wind, and fire. Of alfalfa, the great outdoors, and a lingering hint of leather and smoke. My heavens, this man smells like autumn, my favorite time of year.

  “I’m sorry I walked out on you,” he muttered, his tone a silky rumble, “but I’m not real smart. I’m a hard man who’s had to fight every day of his life. I didn’t waste time in boarding schools or college, but if you’ll let me, I will fight for you. I understand if you want me to leave—”

  “No!” she cried as she buried her face in his black shirt and sobbed, her nerves so damned raw and her defenses crumbling at this unexpected apology. “No, no, no,” she told him, her fingers knotted in his collar. Burrowing her shoulders between the zippers of his jacket, her words came between choppy, hard hiccups. “D-don’t l-l-leave me. I c-can’t do this alone.”

  “Do what alone?” he growled as his one good hand smoothed over her shoulder, pulling her in close until he had her wrapped tight under his chin, encased within the steel bands of his arms like he’d never let her go.

  “This,” she said as she trembled, content to breathe in the scent she loved best because it was his. “Live without being afraid of sh-shadows.”

  “Jesus, you’re shaking like a leaf.”

  “I’m sorry,” she squeaked, her eyes brimming as tears leaked into his shirt.

  “You have nothing to be sorry about, so stop apologizing,” he murmured soft and low in her ear. “You want to be afraid, you go ahead and be scared. It’ll pass. You’re the victim here, not the perpetrator. And I’m the fool. I never should’ve walked away from you. I won’t do it again. Breathe for me, baby. Just breathe. You’re having a panic attack like most people who’ve been attacked and tortured. But I’m here now, and you can let it go. Be afraid for as long as you want, because deep down inside, you’re stronger than you think you are. You’ll see. These attacks won’t get the best of you for long. Not Doctor Fitzgerald, and that’s who you are.”

  “It is,” she agreed, “but I hate being the victim. I’ve worked so hard to rise above what happened before, b-b-but now… but now…” Ashamed of stuttering, she nuzzled deeper into the hollow of his neck, needing his sure strength to keep from falling apart. Needing his scent all over her, like a shield. Like a force field that would surely keep Montego at bay.

  “What happened before?” he asked, his lips in her hair.

  Haltingly, McKenna opened her heart and told him what she’d never told anyone else before. About her mother’s bi-polar highs and lows. Her mental illness. The closet. The beatings. The temper tantrums, the wild accusations, and the screaming. The day her dad discovered the truth about his happy little family. McKenna ended with, “I hate being a victim.”

  “Trust me, no one likes being victimized
. That bitch got a piece of me, too,” he told her.

  With that reminder of Montego’s vicious cruelty, McKenna lost control. Was he whining like a weak little girl? No, but... but...

  The torrent she’d been holding back burst like fragile glass against an unmovable rock. Beau held her while she sobbed like a baby. He’d suffered a worse atrocity at Montego’s hand than she had, yet here he was, comforting her, when he should’ve been flat on his back in bed healing.

  “There, there,” he said, his voice soft and sweet and gravelly low. Soothing. He never let go, not for a second. Just let her take what she desperately needed. His firm touch. His heavenly, masculine scent. The power he commanded.

  She’d heard him fight last night. He’d sounded viciously mean battling Catalina, and McKenna needed a powerfully vicious man in her corner. Beau was that man, and somehow, he could put all her broken pieces back together.

  She didn’t know how many hours she’d spent caught in Montego’s wire web. It had seemed like forever, but McKenna knew just how cunningly clever that evil woman was. Not just anyone could defeat Montego. Only someone who truly understood the depravity of her crimes. Only one willing to do what Beau did.

  In my house! Oh, my God, that woman was in my house! While I was naked and talking to my dad and being stupid!

  Another panic attack rattled over McKenna, but she had something to hang onto this time. Her hands had long since slid under Beau’s leather jacket around to his back. Her fingers bumped against the hard leather of his side holsters when she did that, and she was glad for every death-dealing round in the chambers of those pistols. Yes, Beau would keep her safe.

  With her face nestled deep inside that jacket, he held her tight, rocking ever so slightly. At last her tears subsided. McKenna drew in a fortifying breath. By then, his shirt was drenched, and she was thoroughly ashamed. I am not weak!

  “This is all your fault,” she told him petulantly. “You left me. Why’d you have to go and do that?” I was holding it together until then. Honest, I was.

  “Because I’m stupid,” he muttered. “But I learned something about myself today. You need someone in your corner right now, McKenna, and I want that person to be me. Not Maverick or China Carson. Not Alex or anyone else, understood? Just me. You got that?”

  Despite her independent spirit, she nodded, her fingers tight around his neck, her ear pressed against the taut muscles of his chest while he stroked her hair. Compliance wasn’t her normal response, but last night had shaken her feminine paradigms to the foundation. There were predators in the world, sometimes where you least expected them.

  She didn’t doubt she’d be strong enough to—one day—lift her head up high. But never again would she fight a protection order. Never would she think she knew better than experts like Alex. And never, ever would she leave herself as exposed as she had with Montego. I let that witch into my house!

  A shiver lanced her heart. That was wrong. Montego had already been inside her apartment. In her bedroom. Maybe even while I was naked and sipping wine in my bathtub like a Hollywood starlet who runs into the basement, when she already knows there’s a killer with an ax in the house. How stupid am I?

  A shudder roared over McKenna, shaking her like a dog with a rug, at how ugly last night could have gone and how lucky she’d been. Instantly Beau squeezed until she could barely breathe. And that was okay with McKenna. She needed this man with his crude words and his big muscular arms and every last one of his f-bombs. He could swear all he wanted. She needed him, just him.

  But she could do bossy, too. “You really should elevate that hand more,” the doctor within her told him even as she settled down to listen to the strong, male heartbeat under her ear. Was there any better sound in the world? If there was, she didn’t know it. “I want to learn how to defend myself. I want you to teach me gun safety, and I want a gun just like yours, Beau. Maybe a bigger one.”

  He had the nerve to chuckle. The vibration of that deep baritone radiated all the way to her nearly defeated soul. “A really big gun?” he asked, a definite tease in his voice.

  She could tell he was laughing at her. She nodded, the top of her head bumping his chin. “Yes. A really, really big gun. Maybe like the one Dirty Harry used.”

  “Sorry for poking fun at you, ma’am. I don’t mean to, but the first thing they told us in the Army is that our pistols and rifles are weapons, not guns.”

  That doesn’t make sense. A gun is a gun.

  “It’s all semantics, but...” He smoothed his right hand down her arm until he reached her clenched left hand, and then he settled it between their bodies on his—oh, my—cock. “This is a gun. So if you want a really big one, I can certainly oblige.”

  He probably thought he’d embarrassed her by that crude gesture, but McKenna left her hand right where he’d put it. The size of that steel spike in his pants and the way his breath hitched at her touch told her exactly what she needed to know. He was all man, and for the moment, all hers.

  “You’re hired,” she said. He could figure out for what job she meant later.

  “Say it with me,” he said, his tone filled with the same rumbly gentleness she only vaguely remembered from last night when he’d first picked her up and held her. “I might be my mother’s daughter, but I am not my mother. I am a survivor. I am strong. I am smart, and I am beautiful. I have a heart of gold, and I will survive, because I’m like a gingerbread man. I’m not done baking yet. I have a glorious future ahead of me, so stick that up your pipe and smoke it.”

  She repeated her revised mantra, word for word. Well, until she got to the part about her being a gingerbread man. A smile nearly curled the corners of McKenna’s lips. Her, a cookie?

  A tiny chuckle gurgled at the back of her throat. Which was precisely what she needed, a silly distraction to end the vicious loop powered by her demons, the one still spinning inside her brain.

  Funny. Once Beau had shown up, both Aurora and Catalina had vanished like the evil spirits they were. She could breathe again. So she did, filling her lungs with a sense of self-worth, positivity, and his rich, masculine scent while she caressed the big boy in his pants. How’d she get so lucky?

  “Don’t you mean ‘so stick that in your pipe and smoke it?’” she asked as she took another stroke.

  His chin brushed over her hair, his whiskers tugging at the strands. “No, ma’am. I meant precisely what I said. Your mother and that bitch, Montego, can stick what me and you think of them straight up their pipes. They can’t have you.”

  She rubbed her nose into the warm skin of his neck, calmed by his fiercely protective declaration. He’d made it sound like she belonged to him. Which was okay with her. “Thank you for coming back, Beau,” she whispered. “I missed you.”

  “And again, McKenna,” he prompted, his voice gruff and tender at the same time, like a big, bad, cuddly grizzly bear that didn’t know how to accept gratitude or heartfelt feelings.

  To make him happy, she repeated the mantra word for word while she stroked him. “I might be my mother’s daughter, but I am not my mother. I am a survivor. I am strong. I am smart, and I am beautiful. I have a heart of gold and I will survive, because I’m a gingerbread man. I’m not done baking yet. I have a glorious future ahead of me, so stick that up your pipe and smoke it.”

  And let me keep fondling you, because I want this. Soon, she promised herself as she calmed her fingers and stopped petting the tiger in her bed. Now wasn’t the time to jump into anything crazy like romance. But soon...

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Damned if that confounded mantra didn’t creep into Beau’s soul with every reiteration despite McKenna’s gentle fingers strumming his cock. Every gentle stroke of her hand made it hard—yeah, hard—to focus. It was like one of those songs that got stuck in your head, only his soul had translated her words into: ‘I might be my father’s son, but I am not him. I am a survivor. Look at me, damn you. I am stronger, and I am
smarter than you, you bastard. I’m a better man, too.’”

  The more he repeated McKenna’s feel-good formula, the better his heart heard the version of the message meant for him. It helped when she stopped cupping him, not that he wanted her to stop, but neither of them needed to go down on the other, not yet. He let the distraction win—this time—while the message rolled on. ‘I am not my fuckin’ father. He was dead-assed wrong to treat me like he did. I was just a kid. None of what happened to me or mom or AJ was my fault. He’s the sinner, but I survived. Because I am strong. I am smart. I am not your punching bag, you son-of-a-bitch!’

  When McKenna turned soft and mellow in his arms, Beau relaxed. He was still weaker than he’d ever admit, but he had one more job to do before he let his guard down.

  “Wait right here,” he said as he hurried to the head and retrieved a cool, damp washcloth. Scrambling back, he wiped the tears and sweat from her pretty face. “Better?”

  “Yes, thank you. C-come to bed with me? S-stay?”

  Jesus, he hated that quiver in her voice. That was on him. He’d put it there. But that accompanying note of trust swept his better sense away. He tossed the cloth into the head. “You bet. Move over.”

  Carefully, he slipped his good hand out of his jacket, then slid the sleeve down his injured arm to avoid putting pressure on it. After the kind of night he’d lived through, Beau knew he was probably going to lose that finger, but saving McKenna made the loss of a digit worth it.

  After he hung his jacket on a hook behind the door and secured his gear, he slid out of his boots, jeans, and shirt, then climbed alongside McKenna in just his boxers. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t bring a pistol to bed with him.

  Instead of obeying like the docile lamb she wasn’t, McKenna had watched intently, her eyes all over him. Mostly on his back. “What happened to you?”

  Shit. He’d forgotten his number one rule: Keep your shirt on, dumbass. It was out in the open now. He was as exposed as he’d never been. Revealed was more like it.