by Lora Leigh
Skye had two hours’ babysitting duty. Then rather than staying for the party, she was seriously considering heading back home and perhaps playing with the cameras some more until daylight.
She’d accidentally fallen asleep through the night as she watched the cameras the night before, and not just her neck was paying for it.
The nightmares that had visited her through the night had seemed stronger than ever, the memories always more graphic than the reality of the operation and always spiraling out of control until she became the victim and the pain and fear began overwhelming her.
Moving through the large room to acquaint herself with the kids, she noticed the teenagers there to keep the younger kids entertained. The high school’s program for extra credit for the students volunteering had been a wonderful idea. But there were times when the teenagers were more involved with one another than the jobs they had taken on.
Moving through the large room to the kitchen prep area where two of the teenagers were currently standing next to the counter, more involved with themselves than their jobs, Skye resisted the urge to shake her head at them.
There were currently six young girls from the school’s home economics group and three varsity basketball players looking for that extra credit.
Johnny Ridgemore, the captain of the basketball team, and Callie Brock, the president of the Future Homemakers of America, were more involved with their conversation than the kids whom they were assigned.
“Do you need that extra credit you get for performance this weekend, Johnny?” Skye asked the teenager as she moved up to them.
Just showing up wasn’t enough to earn that credit; the teens had to actually have performance points to get that extra credit.
Johnny turned to her, though Callie’s expression was frankly thankful, as though being there with Johnny wasn’t her preference.
Johnny’s pale blue eyes gleamed with irritation as he stared back at Skye, his expression turning insultingly mocking as he faced her with a bravado and youthful arrogance that she simply wouldn’t deal well with.
“Yeah. So?”
“So, Callie’s not six to twelve years old,” Skye reminded him.
Sneering at Skye, he turned back to Callie. “You can call me Daddy anytime, babe.”
Callie flushed in embarrassment and the look she shot Skye was faintly relieved, until she moved to leave.
It was then that Skye realized Johnny was holding on to Callie’s wrist, and if the look of the grip was anything to go by, then her wrist was going to be bruised.
“Let her go, Johnny,” Skye warned him.
Johnny let the girl go before swinging back to Skye, his head bending until he was almost nose to nose with her. “Look, bitch, do you know who I’m related to?” His lips twisted in snide disbelief.
“Johnny, I really don’t give a damn who you’re related to,” Skye assured him coolly. “All I care about is that you do what’re supposed to to earn that extra credit. Now, I can give you a nice report for my two hours on duty, or I can fill out a complaint against you instead. You choose.”
“My uncle’s the county attorney,” Johnny snapped at her then. “No Callahan whore tells me what to do.”
Skye could feel the boy preparing himself, gathering his courage to actually do to her as he’d done to Callie and attempt to intimidate her with strength.
Oh, she was just waiting.
“Do you hear me?” he snarled, his lips pulling back from his teeth.
“Let’s see if the Callahans can’t convince you then.”
As Johnny was lifting his hand to push her away, Skye was tensing, preparing. He was eighteen. He was responsible for his own actions. But it was Logan who laid his hand on Johnny’s shoulder, while the boy winced and paled.
Not that Skye could tell Logan was doing anything but laying his hand there as though in camaraderie as Logan lowered his head to the boy’s ear.
“I think you want to apologize to the lady,” Logan suggested, his voice low as he used his body to block anyone from seeing what was going on.
“Sorry, Ms. O’Brien,” Johnny said in a voice strained but with only a hint of anger. The boy looked directly between her eyes rather than meeting her gaze in any semblance of respect.
“Thank you, Johnny,” she said softly, as though she actually had some hope that he understood the lesson Logan was trying to teach him.
But she doubted it. She doubted it very seriously. She could see it in his eyes, and she could see it in his expression.
When Logan let Johnny go, he stepped far enough away that he believed Logan couldn’t jerk him back before he turned back to them.
“I don’t give a damn what you write on that report,” he told her, and she could see the rage burning in his expression. “And I don’t give a damn about this fucking place either.”
As he glanced at Logan, a sudden spark of fear gleamed in Johnny’s eyes for just a second before he turned and hurried to the exit, leaving so quickly that the door slammed closed behind him.
“He’s nothing like his mother or his uncle,” Skye said softly as she felt Logan move behind her.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Logan said behind her. “I remember when Wayne wasn’t much different. When it comes to Callahans, you’ll learn, Skye, any respect they show is only skin deep.”
“I don’t believe that.” She couldn’t let herself believe it. “I know a lot of people are still wary of pissing off the barons, but their ranches aren’t the main source of income any longer. The county is growing, and it’s growing with people who aren’t as dependent on the Corbins, Raffertys, or Robertses any longer.”
“Doesn’t matter, Skye,” Logan told her cynically. “But that kid is going to be a problem. A problem I’ll take care of if he gets in your damn face again.”
Logan couldn’t believe the sudden, overwhelming rage that had nearly taken him over as he’d seen that kid in her face, heard him call her a Callahan whore.
Logan wasn’t having it.
The fine citizens of Corbin County had treated the Callahans like trash since their parents had died, but before that they’d fucking known better.
“How much longer do you have here?” He nodded to the room, all the while ignoring the little girl tugging at the knee of his jeans.
“Hour and a half.” Skye’s lips twitched as she reached out and petted Bella’s happy face as he stared down at the little girl. “Ignoring her isn’t going to work any more than ignoring Bella did.”
Logan frowned at her.
He was right.
When Skye and that damned pup had stood before him that first night looking so fucking hopeful, he’d known it.
First the dog, then a woman, and now a kid.
Kids didn’t belong in a Callahan’s life; their parents had proven that. The parents had died and then the kids were left with very little to protect them.
“We need to talk,” he told Skye as Bella tried to jump out of his arms again to get to the kid.
“Yes, we do,” Skye agreed, then glanced at the child again.
She was staring up at the puppy as though she were a very special gift just for her.
“My daddy is ’lergic,” the little girl whispered up at Skye, her big brown eyes as bright as new pennies as she watched Bella. “Can I jus’ look at him better?”
Skye lifted her gaze to Logan. “She just wants to see her better,” she whispered.
He just wanted to run for cover. “It’s a kid,” he growled, then watched as Skye gave a little exasperated roll of her eyes.
“And Bella is just a puppy. Puppies and kids go together, Logan. Don’t you know that?”
She was ready to laugh at him. He could see it in her eyes.
She was going to start laughing at him and then he was going to end up kissing her again.
Son of a bitch.
“Jus’ for a minute?” the little girl asked in a whisper that would have melted stone.
Then he made the mistake
of looking down at the child.
Just as he’d made the mistake of kissing Skye that first time.
Big brown eyes. Puppy dog eyes. They matched Bella’s.
The kid was all but jumping up and down in excitement as he bent to her and let her pet the pup.
Her little hands were trembling like a leaf in a storm from excitement. Little chubby hands that petted the dog as though she were glass that could break at any minute.
Hell.
Hell because Logan could almost see Skye with such a precious, precocious little girl. She’d have Skye’s dark hair and his shade of green—
Oh hell now.
He cleared his throat as he rose slowly. “Time for me to go.”
He had to ignore the little girl’s disappointed gaze, but he felt like the lowest bastard in the world when tears filled her eyes.
It was time to get the hell out of Dodge was what it was time for. Time to get away from the kids who could break a man’s heart with their love for a puppy and a woman who stared at Logan with stars, puppy dogs, and kids in her eyes.
Skye’s laughter was soft, knowing, as he rubbed at the back of his neck, then turned and left.
Yeah, they had to talk.
They had to straighten a hell of a lot out.
He had to get her the hell out of Corbin County, but he had a feeling that wasn’t going to happen.
Moving from the community center, Logan made his way to a sheltered spot at the side of the building where he let Bella down in the grass and, keeping a firm hold on her leash, let her sniff and play for a few minutes.
And he watched. He watched the darkness and the fine people of Corbin County as they milled around the town square, chatted, and laughed.
He’d never really been a part of the socials. He’d rarely attended them once he was old enough to tell Rafe’s uncle he wanted nothing to do with them.
First Logan had gone off by himself; then Crowe and Rafer had followed. They weren’t accepted there, even as kids, not really. And other than the summer Rafer had been Jaymi Flannigan’s lover, they hadn’t attended the socials as adults either.
Logan had a feeling he would be attending more often now, though. Especially after that little punk had dared to call Skye a whore.
Oh, Logan knew Johnny Ridgemore, just as he knew Johnny’s parents and his uncle. The Ridgemores had once been friends of Logan’s parents, Sam and Mina. Chloe Ridgemore and Mina Rafferty had been so close that Chloe had slipped away and stood up for Mina when she eloped with Sam Callahan.
Within a year, Chloe had deserted her friend. Within two years, Chloe wouldn’t even talk to Mina when she saw her on the street.
In the weeks before Logan’s parents had been killed, he remembered Chloe slipping over to the house on Rafferty Lane, though. And he remembered his mother’s tears after Chloe left.
There were pieces to the puzzle that he was only now remembering. Little things brought those hidden memories back.
Little things like Amelia Sorenson just before Cami was attacked leaving her a note that said they had to talk.
That note had caused Cami to leave the basement of her house unlocked so Amelia could slip in as she had done when they were children.
But it hadn’t been Amelia who had slipped in. It had been a killer. The man they had believed was the Sweetrock Slasher.
But, just as with Thomas Jones, Lowry Berry was nothing more than a plant, Logan believed.
Rubbing at the back of his neck again, he stared around the shadowed night, his gaze narrow, his senses on red alert.
Crowe had felt the same sensation, that warning tingle that someone was watching and that someone was filled with pure malicious intent.
An intent Logan intended to do something about.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
At least he didn’t completely leave, Skye consoled herself nearly four hours later when the next volunteer finally arrived. As Skye stepped from the community center, it was to find Logan and Bella waiting for her.
He was leaning against the porch support, looking entirely too lickable and entirely too dominantly male.
There was something about him that was different as he stood there, staring out at the crowd with the tiny pug curled at his feet, her head on the foot of his sneaker as she slept.
He was definitely attracting some attention. More than a few of the attendees were watching him. Some with animosity; others, the feminine group, well, it wasn’t animosity in their eyes, that was for sure.
That flare of jealousy snapping inside Skye had her lips tightening as he picked the sleeping pup up and began walking with her.
“Anything you wanted to do before we leave?” he asked as Skye paused beside him.
“Not tonight.” She shook her head.
“Sounds good.”
He didn’t ask for a reason or an explanation, which surprised her. Most men she’d known in the past would have pouted like a ten-year-old because she refused to say what she was doing. The point would be that she wasn’t doing what they expected, therefore, something was wrong.
Cradling Bella in the crook of one arm, he placed the palm of the other between Skye’s shoulders.
“This way,” he murmured, directing her away from the park to the next street rather than going straight through the square.
Crossing the street to the next, he then headed up the back alley.
For the moment, that tingle at the back of her neck eased away. Whoever was watching, following, had lost sight of them.
“You feel it too,” she said softly. “The eyes watching.”
“The sign of a natural soldier,” he murmured. “You’re accomplished as well. You’re not the only one over the months who was tracking a neighbor. You lost me several times.”
The times she had been en route to the doctor in Denver.
Her lips twitched. “That was you when I made the trips to Denver.”
He cut through a private yard and used the cement walk that passed between homes.
“Wayne Sorenson came into the Center a while after you left,” she told him as they kept mostly to the darker parts of the sidewalk. “He apologized for Johnny and promised something would be done to punish him.”
“Yeah, that’s what he told me, too.” There wasn’t a lot of belief in his tone.
She shoved her hands in her pockets as they crossed one of the deserted streets.
“You don’t seem confident he will.”
“Sorenson usually says what’s on his mind and means what he says,” he stated. “His sister is another matter, though, and she flat dotes on Johnny. She’d never allow him to be punished for striking out at a Callahan or a woman suspected to be tied to them.”
“Don’t you ever want more than this, Logan?” Her heart broke when she thought of the lives they’d lived, as well as the lonely, desolate lives they were trying to live now.
Their lovers were killed as soon as a monster could find them. And Marietta had proven, unlike in the past, one-night stands were no longer safe. “Who wouldn’t want more, Skye? It’s not like we woke up one day and decided we wanted to be targeted by the murdering bastard.” Laying his hand on the small of her back, he led her quickly through a narrow street that led to the next block.
“I know,” she said softly, easing a little closer to him as they cut into the next alley, then, rather than proceeding to the next block, turned instead into the back street and walked along the darker edge of the rough road.
Moving his hand to her hip, he pulled her closer against his side, causing tears to prick at her eyes.
She wanted to be closer to him. Wanted to feel as though the fury he’d directed at her when he’d learned who she was wouldn’t permanently sever the fragile bonds she’d felt building between them.
As they reached the end of the back street, Logan turned again, led her to the corner, across the street, then up another alley.
She wasn’t certain how she felt about all these shadowed, dark alleys,
but the tingles and the roiling in her stomach she sometimes got when she headed for danger were absent.
“Why do you even stay here?” she finally asked. “Is the inheritance so important for you that you would die for it?”
At first, she thought he wouldn’t answer her.
“While I was in the military, I tried to convince myself I didn’t miss this place,” Logan said as the darkness of yet another back street enclosed them. “We haven’t had a moment’s peace in this place, Skye, but for some reason, it’s home.”
“Even though both Callahan and your mothers’ sides of the families have disowned you?” And it was the truth. For over twenty years they’d been ignored and persecuted by family members from all branches of their family trees.
“Hell, it’s a small town,” he sighed. “The barons control their livelihoods, the food they put on their tables, and the peace they gain in their lives. They haven’t had a choice but to follow their examples.”
That wasn’t a good enough excuse for her.
“I saw several people coming up to speak to you while you were waiting for me outside. You should have spit in their faces.”
That’s what she would have loved to see, but a part of her knew she wouldn’t have done it herself, and neither would he.
He did give a brief chuckle though there was little amusement in it.
“They’re just being nosy and trying to figure out if we really are killers or innocent bastards. Though we were innocent orphans when our parents died, and they didn’t give a shit then either.”
How very sad, and how very true.
“I would have stood beside you, Logan,” she said then, the pain of the knowledge of the life he had lived slicing at her heart. “I wouldn’t have turned my back on you.”
“Yeah, I know.” His hand moved from her hip to wrap around her shoulders and tugged her even closer. “And that’s what terrifies me, Skye. I know you would.” Silence filled the night once again, until he led her through another back street. This one’s street sign was missing where she’d noticed no others were.
