by Lora Leigh
"I know you love Mac heart and soul. But I know you care about me. In time, I think, you could love me, Kei. And I would die for that love."
"Love is possessive, Jethro," she said desperately. "If I let this continue, I couldn't share you. The day would come when you found someone you could really love. What happens to me then? If I love you just as deeply, just as possessively, as I love Mac?"
His hands tightened on her hips as his expression turned feral with hunger. "You could love me like that, Kei?" He asked, his voice guttural. "Could you love me like that?"
"What do you two think you are doing to me?" she cried, struggling from his lap. "One of you should be jealous."
"Why? Mac wouldn't have invited me here if there were a chance that he would regret your loving me. Both of us, Kei, we grew up alone, shadowed by the actions of others.
We found a connection as friends, a bonding as we shared our lovers. I know the man he is, and he knows the man I am. It has nothing to do with sexual feelings for each other and everything to do with needing something more out of a relationship than other people do. Of knowing each other so well that there was never a chance that we would love separate women."
And strangely, that made sense.
"Mac's controlled. He thinks before he acts. He never makes a move without knowing the consequences," he continued. "He knew what he was doing."
She closed her eyes and let her head rest on his shoulder, hiding the tear that fell from her eyes as her arms tightened around his neck.
If one of them, just one of them, had acted jealous of her, if one of them had seemed hesitant about this relationship, she could have denied both of them.
But they were two parts of a whole. Separate, yet complete when they were together.
When they were with her. And she felt complete. That edge of darker eroticism that she had known rode inside her was sated with it.
"I could love you, so easily, just as intensely as I love Mac."
She felt him tighten to the breaking point, his arms contracting around her back.
"But be certain of this, Jethro." Her eyes opened, snared instantly by Mac's gaze as he stood in the doorway. "Be very certain this is what the two of you want. Because heartbreak isn't something I deal with well."
Mac's lips tilted, his head inclining in acceptance as Jethro buried his head against her neck, a shudder racing through him.
"Copter's coming in," Mac said then. "The director was in Raleigh and he came in with the two agents we requested."
"Hell," Jethro breathed against her neck, bestowing a kiss so gentle there that it brought tears to her eyes. "Come on, sweetness. It looks like I'm not going to get what I need right now."
He lifted her easily from his lap, setting her back before dragging himself to his feet.
His face was pale, his eyes standing out like gems behind his dark lashes.
"You need to rest at least, Jethro," she sighed. "That was a pretty bad wound. It needs stitches."
"I don't like stitches." He shook his head as he lifted his weapon from the table and tucked it in the back of his jeans.
She turned to Mac for help, only to get a narrowed warning of his eyes and a subtle shake of his head.
"Fine. Fall flat on your face. See if I care." She turned to the stove and surveyed the roast she had turned back on. "I'm canceling the meeting tonight. It's too late to try to go anyway. We'll have the soup for supper and see if we can't get some sleep tonight."
She could feel her system dragging, reminding her that the last few days had been filled with too much darkness, too much danger.
"We'll make the meeting," Mac informed her. "You go get your shower and get ready.
I'll meet with the director and Jethro can stay upstairs with you. The only way to draw this bastard out is to go out."
"And let him take potshots at us?" she asked angrily. She couldn't believe he would dare suggest anything so dangerous.
"The sheriff is on his way, too, Kei. There's no way to keep this under wraps now. I'd rather answer the questions in town than to have everyone we know descend upon us like a pack of gossiping old women. Now go get dressed."
"Don't use that commanding tone of voice with me, Mac. I have supper on. I am not going out."
Their gazes clashed.
"Fine," he said softly. "But think about this. Delia Staten will show up with her mother-in-law. Victoria, despite her daughter-in-law's faults, always thought very well of me. If they arrive here, God only knows how long they'll stay. We'll have a steady stream of visitors for days. Is that what you want?"
"Tell them to go home," she gritted out.
His brow arched. "Think that will work, do you?"
"I hate it when you're so damned logical." She felt like stomping her foot. "Don't answer the damned door. Let Jethro answer it."
Mac winced.
"Yeah, I'll just shoot them," Jethro muttered. "What's a little more bloodshed?"
She turned back on him, beginning to feel defeated, closed in.
"You would not."
"No, but I don't have a whole lot of tact," he informed her. "I'll tell them to get fucked quite succinctly without even thinking of the consequences. Is that what you want?"
"I want you two to be sensible." She felt like pulling her hair. She contented herself with clenching her fists at her side.
"We are being sensible. Now go shower. I'll put the food up here while I talk to the director. Jethro can give his report when you come back down. And don't take all day.
We need to get out of here and get this done."
"This is stupid," she muttered.
"The sooner we get it done and over with, the quicker we can get home and try to get some sleep. The extra agents will take up watch outside tonight and tomorrow and give us a chance to rest. Then, we go hunting."
"How?" She didn't like the sound of that.
"Very discreetly," he said firmly. "We'll discuss it later. Now go."
"Now go," she muttered. "It's occurring to me, Mac, that you have a streak of stubbornness that is starting to piss me off."
She caught the surprised look Jethro gave Mac. Veiled, rife with male amusement and a hint of surprise.
"She's just figuring this out?" he asked Mac. "Hell, you've been spoiling her, Mac."
"And I've done so with great joy." Mac's expression became heavy with sensuality then, the effect of it tightening her womb despite the frustration and fear of the situation she found herself in.
"So keep spoiling me and fix this."
"I am fixing it." His expression assured her that it wasn't going to be fixed her way.
"Get ready for that meeting, because you're not missing it. You have an hour and then you're walking out of here, under your steam or mine, take your pick."
Her eyes narrowed on him. "That marriage license didn't make you my boss, Mac."
"No, in this situation that marriage license makes me more than your boss, Keiley. And you will do whatever it takes to keep you safe. Do you understand me?"
"This meeting has nothing to do with safety."
"Do you understand me?" His voice hardened, as did his expression.
She could argue all she wanted, but Keiley knew in that instant that if she wasn't ready to go in an hour, Mac wouldn't be above carrying her out of the house kicking and screaming.
"You're impossible," she snapped. "When this is over, we're having a talk about this sudden inclination to give orders, Mac."
'As long as you wait until it's over." His eyes gleamed with sudden male appreciation and approval. "I'll be waiting down here for you." Mac turned to Jethro then. "The director will want to talk to you before we leave, so don't delay up there to avoid it."
In other words, no sex. Keiley rolled her eyes and gave both men a cool, firm look.
"He'll be available," she promised her husband.
Keiley stared back at Jethro's suddenly closed expression
and ached at what he had told her earlier. The boy that had been tossed out like so much garbage, shuffled through the system, and ignored until Mac befriended him.
"Come on darlin', let's get you ready for that meeting." Jethro held his hand out to her as Mac watched his friend in concern.
And Keiley understood that concern. Jethro's face was pale, his gaze too bright, too unsettled.
"He needs to rest, Mac," she told her husband fiercely. "He was shot."
"I was nicked and I'm fine." Jethro's voice became graveled, darker. "You're going to that meeting Keiley. Mac's right, this is the best way to deal with this small-town bullshit. Face them and tell them to fuck off before they have a chance to blindside you."
She stared at him in surprise as his jaw suddenly clenched and he gave his head a brief, hard shake.
"Let's do this, Kei. Then when we get home, I'll rest. I promise." He was making an obvious effort to restrain his impatience and his anger.
Keiley glanced at Mac, seeing the heaviness in his gaze, the worry as he watched his friend.
Damn him, he deserved to worry. By bringing Jethro into this relationship as he had he was awakening demons that the other man had obviously forced into hiding.
"You're damned right you'll rest," she muttered as she took his hand and let him lead her from the kitchen. "Or I'll knock you out."
He didn't answer. Instead, his hand moved from hers, allowing it to settle in the middle of her back as they moved up the stairs. She could feel the heaviness of his emotions, a weariness that had her glancing at him nervously.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he blew out roughly as they entered the bedroom.
"I never imagined you would hurt me, Jethro," she sighed. "But you're hurt—"
His head lifted, his gaze spearing into her, silencing her. She could see so much more now that they were no longer with Mac. Arrogance, definitely. There were no two men more arrogant than Jethro and Mac could be. But she saw more. Years of loneliness, of aching dissatisfaction.
He reached out and touched her cheek gently, his calloused fingertips stroking her flesh almost in regret.
"I wish I knew how to show you what I feel," he whispered then. "How to touch you so you know how deeply you touch me, Kei. How to know the right words to make you understand the gift you give me."
Her lips parted in surprise. "Jethro—"
He laid his fingers against her lips.
"From the moment I saw you, suddenly I wasn't a ragged five-year-old anymore. I didn't feel the disassociation I had to force on myself to endure living with strangers, all the while knowing there were those who shared my blood, who my parents trusted to watch over me if anything happened to me. The ice that had grown inside me over the years melted the night I met you, and I haven't known what to do with the emotions you made me feel."
"What are you saying?" she whispered in horror. "You had family? And they left you alone?"
"Family." The bitter curve of his lips was anything but amused. "Family sticks together. These people were related by blood. My father's brother. My mother's mother.
They signed the papers that turned a five-year-old still covered in his parents' blood over to the state. I attended my parents' funeral with my social worker, while those exalted family members wept over my parents' caskets."
Jethro pulled his hand back from her, raking it through his hair as he turned away from her. Hell, he wasn't a kid anymore. Those years were long behind him. But the moment he saw Keiley more than three years ago they had risen inside him again with a force that had terrified him.
As a child he had forced himself to disassociate from his emotions. To watch and analyze others'. To understand what drove them rather than to participate in their emotions or their lives.
When he met Mac, the other man had forced him to view life with a bit more participation. He pushed, he manipulated, and he bribed Jethro with the tender emotions of the lovers they shared. But not until Keiley had he actually been forced to love.
"What happened, Jethro?" He stiffened as he felt her behind him, felt her arms wrap around his waist as she laid her head against his back.
"My father had a brain tumor. It was affecting his emotions, his perceptions of reality.
No one knew how bad it was until the day he killed his wife and then himself." He frowned, remembering his parents with a clarity that often raged inside him.
His mother, Lucia, had been gorgeous. Long black hair, laughing blue eyes, and a smile that lit up the world. His father had been tall, strong, invincible, until the day he turned a gun on both his wife and himself.
He heard himself talking, whispering the words to Keiley, but the memories held him.
He had been secure. Happy. He had lived in the big brick home on a hill and his father had been building him a tree house when his world collapsed around him.
"And when they were gone, everything was gone." He was finished, frowning at the lack of emotion he detected in his own voice. It should have been raging with emotion. It should have been an animal's snarl of rage for all he felt as he let himself remember. "My parents had discussed what would happen if anything happened to them. Their will gave my uncle care and custody of me and anything they had. The state took the house for taxes and debts. But everyone I shared blood with washed their hands of me and let the state take me as well."
"Everyone?" She heard the pain in his voice. "There was no one?"
"No one." He turned, easing from her hold as he breathed in heavily. "I survived, though. I stopped caring." He stared back at her then. "I made myself stop caring. I couldn't afford to hate, to hope, or to love. I wiped them out of my mind and I set about surviving from one foster home to another. Until I graduated and went to college." His lips edged into a grin then. "Then I met Mac. Mac doesn't do anything by half measures, and I think the fact that I refused to feel just irked the hell out of him."
He sat down, feeling an edge of weariness creeping over him. Then he reached out, amazed at how easily Keiley moved to his lap, allowing him to hold her, holding him in return.
"Mac can be like that," she said gently, her head at his shoulder as he buried his hand in her hair and held her to him.
The soft weight of her, the warmth of her, it speared into his soul like sunlight.
"Then came Keiley," he whispered. "I took one look at you and felt the last of my defenses melting away. I couldn't speak to you. I couldn't go near you. You terrified the hell out of me, so I guided Mac to you."
Because he had known Mac would complete her more than he ever could. She had the shadows of lost dreams in her eyes, and a wariness he knew he would only make worse.
A wariness Mac could heal.
"I thought he would call me within a few weeks. A few months.
'Hey Jethro,' he'd say, 'come on over and play.'" He felt his expression twist at the memory of the loss he had felt when that call hadn't come. "Instead, he called and told me he was marrying you."
"And you just accepted it?"
"Yeah. I did." He nodded, heavily. "Because I love you both, Kei. Mac is my only true family, and you were my heart. You two suited each other."
"You were too scared."
Trust Keiley to get to the heart of the matter.
"The big tough agent was too scared of a girl to even speak to her." Her voice resonated with the beginning heat of anger.
"Yeah, he was." He could grin now, though it hurt. "You scared the hell out of me.
Because you made me feel. With those big hazel eyes and that wary smile. Mac though, he knew how to fix what hurt you, whereas I would have pushed and hurt you worse. A part of me knew I just had to wait. Mac and I—we balance each other out. We're both scarred, Keiley, but you heal us. I always knew you would heal us."
"I'm possessive, Jethro," she said then. "I'm so scared you're going to realize this isn't what you really want. That you need your own woman, one you don't have to share. Your own family."
"I have my family." His arms tightened around her. "You and Mac are my family, Kei.
You made me feel things I swore I would never feel. You made me dream of warmth and forever. Don't take it away now, not if it's in you to love me."
Keiley heard the reservation in his voice then, the automatic defense against rejection and wanted to weep. God help her, what she was going to do with him and Mac? They were breaking every rule ever created for a relationship and making her think it could work.
"Come on, you have to shower." He lifted her to her feet, rising behind her as he pushed her toward the bathroom. "Get in there. Or you'll be late.
She turned back to him instead. "I—"
He laid his fingers on her lips. "You just needed to know the why of it, Keiley. Don't make any decisions. Don't worry about any of it. Decisions can wait, but sometimes, they come easier later if the understanding is there. I just wanted you to understand."
Understand that everyone he should have been able to trust in as a child had betrayed him. As they had Mac. As she had been betrayed.
"Damn, we make a hell of a trio," she sighed. "I think dysfunction is going to be our middle name."
A grunt of a laugh surprised him. She made him laugh. She made him smile. She made him forget the shadows that had followed him the better part of his life.
"I love you, Kei," he said softly then, watching the somberness that filled her gaze. "If you can't love me, I'll live. But nothing will change what I feel for you. And only for you.
Now get that shower before the director demands my presence. Mac and I don't have a problem sharing you between us, but if that bastard sees you naked and soft I might have to kill him."
He pushed her gently toward the bathroom. "Go on sweetheart. Remember, decisions are for later. For now, we have the ogre of the Bureau to face."
Chapter 20
"Director Williams, you remember my wife, Keiley." Mac held his hand out to her as she stepped closer.
