by Lora Leigh
There was another side of that coin, though.
With the security, acceptance, and love the Mackays had given her and her family there was the heavy-handed overprotectiveness her brother and male cousins exhibited.
It was so heavy-handed that for the past year she and her sisters—except the eldest, whom Piper actually blamed their present state on—had no hope of actually living outside the stifling watchfulness they were suddenly surrounded with.
Slip out to a lake party and what happened? Before they could finish their first beer either Dawg, their cousins, or one of their cohorts—Sheriff Mayes, Chief of Police Alex Jansen, or some other tough-assed Mackay male friend—was there with an eagle eye.
Forget even considering the unmentioned search she had begun for a lover. She was fated to remain a virgin for the rest of her days, evidently.
At twenty-four, Piper considered herself far too old to have not taken a lover. And as much as she would have loved—loved—to have taken Jedediah Booker to her bed, the last thing she needed was one of her brother’s watchdogs keeping a leash on her.
Pulling into the inn’s parking lot, Piper tried to push back the regret and the hunger she couldn’t keep from building inside her body. The sensitive flesh between her thighs felt swollen, aching for a touch. Her clit actually throbbed, and she knew damned good and well that only a man was going to put out that particular fire.
God help her, she didn’t want a man as restrictive and just as protective as her brother and cousins. She wanted a lover, a friend, and a partner. She didn’t need a keeper.
It was Saturday night.
She had a week to make plans to slip from Somerset and make her way to New York. She was going to have to essentially escape. If that was possible. Because if Dawg had even a suspicion she was leaving town for any reason, then he would have one of his buddies and/or employees or agent-type acquaintances on her ass so fast it would leave road rash on her senses.
That, she didn’t need.
She knew the world she wanted to move within, and she knew for damned sure that neither her brother and cousins nor their overprotective friends would move well within it.
So, how to escape a town where the Mackays had eyes and ears everywhere?
Everywhere.
No doubt it wouldn’t be easy.
It would require a small amount of lying through her teeth.
Piper smiled.
Hell, she could do it.
She was, after all, a Mackay.
TWO
“You are up to something.”
Piper froze at the sound of Jed’s voice as she answered the call on her cell phone.
Lowering the smart phone, she glared at the number.
Piedmont’s Pizza.
“Since when did you begin using the phones at pizza houses?” Mockery filled her voice and she knew it.
A chuckle rasped across her senses. Even through the phone lines it had the power to weaken her knees.
“For some unknown reason my caller ID refuses to behave properly,” he drawled. “Perhaps they had the number before me.”
Yeah. Okay. She’d let him get away with it, but she was highly dubious of the explanation.
“What do you want?” She tried for a vein of irritation in her voice, but she couldn’t help the fact that she was pleased he’d called.
And she shouldn’t be. He was bad news and she knew it, especially where her determination to hold on to the secret of her upcoming trip was concerned.
She’d wanted to tell him so badly—him more than anyone else, she was beginning to think.
“I want to know what you’re up to, of course.” His voice lowered, the question carrying an interesting sexual connotation.
Or did she just want to imagine there was something sexual there?
“What do you think I’m up to?” she countered, rather than denying the statement.
He was like her brother: He’d never believe an instant denial. It was their mind-set or something. They knew the sound of a denial in truth and in deception. And Piper wasn’t much of a liar.
She much preferred simple evasion.
“What do I think you’re up to?” Amusement filled his voice.
The sound of it had a smile tugging at her lips.
“Yeah, what do you think I’m up to?” she repeated. “Surely you have an opinion on what it could be.”
He was fun to talk to; she’d known that years ago, after he’d first taken up residence at the inn.
“Sweetheart, when it comes to a Mackay, it could be anything and everything,” he drawled.
“You’re talking about my sisters, not me,” she surmised playfully, though her tone was completely serious. “I’m the quiet Mackay, remember?”
She almost gave in to a light laugh at his disbelieving snort. “Quiet one? Nah, you’re just the sneaky one.”
She shook her head at him as she began folding her silk-and-lace panties and bras and placing them in the small suitcase.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed asleep?” she asked as she noticed the time was well after midnight. “I thought you worked on Mondays?”
“Inspections tomorrow,” he told her. “My foreman and the job supervisor know what they’re doing. I think I’ll take the day off.”
Oh, great. Just what she needed: Jedediah suspicious and possibly keeping an eye on her.
“The job is near completion then?” His company, along with several others, was building the new industrial office park and warehouses outside of town. Jed’s family’s company, Booker and Son’s Construction, had won the bid to build several of the huge industrial buildings.
“About halfway,” he answered her. “You get to put up with me another couple of years whether you like it or not.”
“I think Mom has adopted you,” Piper reflected as she carefully folded one of the frilly skirts and its matching bag that she’d made into the luggage next. “You’ve been here since the inn opened.”
“Yeah, and she gave us a hell of a deal for the long term,” he agreed.
“I’ll tell her to consider raising the rent,” she threatened, holding back her own laughter as his chuckle echoed across the line.
“I think she wants to adopt me and Elijah,” Jed teased her. “She likes us.”
“Not after Brogan took Eve out of the house,” she informed him. “She’s still not happy over that one.”
Neither were Dawg and their cousins, Piper thought. As a matter of fact, “irate” was a mild description of how they felt about it.
Mercedes Mackay was taking it particularly hard, though. Letting her daughter go hadn’t been easy for Mercedes, despite the fact that she dearly loved the man Eve was currently living with.
“We’re not related to the bastard,” he said with a grunt.
“Aren’t you?” she questioned him lightly. “You could have fooled me. You, Elijah, and Brogan play a good game, Jed, but I’m starting to wonder if you’re not brothers or something. The three of you are definitely cut from the same cloth.”
“Meaning?” Now, wasn’t that tone just slightly arrogant?
“Dominant, domineering, stubborn, intractable, opinionated—shall I go on?”
“Hell,” he muttered, though she caught the slight vein of amusement in his tone. “I was just hoping for a little sex, Piper, not a complete assassination of my character here.”
“Phone sex? Why, Jed, I’m a good girl,” she exclaimed as though scandalized. “I can’t believe you’d call me for such a thing.” Her voice dropped. Piper let it become breathy as she allowed herself to remember his kiss, his touch. “It’s none of your business if I’m lying here playing with just the most amazing little toy.”
His surprised little exclamation had satisfaction curling her lips.
“Shame on you, Jedediah Booker,” she chastised him, barely holding back her laughter. “My momma would be heartbroken to know what a dirty dog you are. Just simply heartbroken.”
“What kind of toy?” The growl in his voice had her stomach tightening. “Come on, Piper; just tell me what it is. What are you doing with it?”
The wicked, sensual, sexual pitch of his voice made her wish she were playing with a toy.
“Why, that’s just none of your business, Mr. Booker,” she informed him with all the sweet Southern-belle charm she could inject into her tone. “I guess you’ll just have to find some other way of satisfying your curiosity.”
“I can pick the lock on your door,” he told her then. “I’ll steal the damned thing.”
“Even if it’s you I’m thinking of when I use it?”
She disconnected the call.
Tightening her thighs as her clit pulsed in time with the throb of need in her vagina, Piper covered her face and fought back the highly unwise action of answering the phone again as it buzzed repeatedly.
This was dangerous.
Jed was far too dangerous.
She might be as bold and just as damned adventurous as any Mackay, but Piper liked to think that unlike her older sister, she also had enough common sense to keep from jumping into the fire.
Nope, the frying pan suited her just fine.
Pulling in a deep breath, she finished packing the suitcase and garment bag she’d chosen to take to New York with her.
She would catch the train in Louisville, and once she got to New York City she’d rent a car.
She didn’t much care for driving in Manhattan, but sometimes a girl just had to do what a girl had to do. If she dared to rent a car in Somerset or in Louisville, then the chances were far too great that Dawg would find out. He had too many friends in far too many places. And she knew firsthand that he was on a first-name basis with every reputable car-rental agency in a five-county radius.
That meant just getting to New York City without her brother or her family learning she’d left would be chancy enough.
Luckily, there was one friend she could depend on.
She couldn’t tell her mother, her sisters, Tim, her brother or cousins, or her nearby friends or neighbors—she sighed at the thought of it—but she’d managed to make a few friends among the tourists who traveled through Somerset each summer and stopped at the small boutique her designs sold in. Once they sold, it wasn’t unusual for the buyers to contact her, interested in other unique wardrobe items. From those buyers, she had made several friends.
Those tourists didn’t live in Kentucky, and they had no idea how powerful her brother thought he was. A quick call to one of them, Amy Seavers, had resulted in a fake ID and a train ticket, as well as a ride to the train station.
She was all set and ready to go. All she had to do was slip out with her bags and be waiting at the designated location when Amy’s sister, Gypsy, arrived.
Blowing out a hard breath, Piper glanced at the patio doors, her heart beating hard and fast with the thought that Jed didn’t make idle threats. There was no doubt in her mind that he knew exactly how to pick the locks on her doors. There was no doubt he would pick them if he were in the right mood.
She rather doubted he’d learned that trick in the construction business. Just as she doubted her sister’s fiancé, Brogan Campbell, was slipping into the upper story of the inn in the middle of the night because he missed anyone there.
Hell, no. Those nights Piper had watched the shadowed figure easily pull himself to the second-floor balcony and slip through the glass doors that led to Tim’s office, she’d known exactly why he was there.
Timothy liked to tell anyone and everyone who dared to ask that he was retired. Learn the definition of the word, he’d growled at the lawyer who’d shown up several weeks before in regard to the deaths of several suspected homeland terrorists the summer before.
Piper had heard the words “Eve” . . . “kidnapping” . . . “boat,” and “Campbell” just before he dared to say, “Special Agent Cranston.”
She bit back a smile at the thought of how quickly Tim had cut him down and informed him in no uncertain terms that retirement was a glorious thing.
Retirement, her ass. Timothy, or Tim as she and her sisters often called him, was about as retired as Dawg and her cousins were. Just retired enough to be able to claim they weren’t involved in anything, but involved enough to ensure they all knew exactly what was going on in their little corner of the world.
Closing the cases quickly, Piper moved to the closet and stored them out of sight, just in case Jed decided to make a midnight visit.
If he saw her bags and realized they were packed, he would immediately demand to know where she was going. Once he knew . . . hell, she may as well take out an ad.
There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Jed would tell Dawg just as fast as he could make the call. Then Dawg and her cousins would arrive and insist on accompanying her.
If she allowed it to happen.
There wasn’t a chance in hell she would allow it, she thought wearily. The very thought of it was enough to send a shudder racing through her body.
She closed the door and moved toward the bed, then came to a hard stop.
Swinging around, Piper moved to the door that led to the sitting room of the suite and swung it open as her heart began pounding with enough force that she swore she could feel it in her throat.
And there he stood.
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and leaned against the doorframe that connected the sitting room with the bedroom.
“What the hell are you doing here?” It was all she could do to fight back her amusement as well as the surge of sexual intensity sweeping through her.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt.
The broad, muscled expanse of his chest was bare. A light covering of dark blond curls feathered over the dark flesh and arrowed into the snug band of his jeans. And he was aroused.
Standing in the middle of her sitting room, bare chested and barefoot, he stared back at her with pure sensual intent burning in his dark, navy blue eyes.
“You’re dressed,” he accused her, his voice rough as he paced closer to her. “I thought you were naked and playing with toys.”
“No, you didn’t.” Piper could feel herself trembling from the force of the need racing through her. “That’s just an excuse, Jed.”
“Yeah, it’s just an excuse,” he agreed as he stopped before her. “An excuse for this.”
She hadn’t expected it to happen so fast—that his lips would be on hers, his fingers curving around the back of her neck, holding her in place as his lips took possession of hers.
She hadn’t expected she would weaken so fast. That her nails would dig instantly into his shoulders, that she would lean into him, against him, so eager for him that her body was quivering in excitement.
What the hell was this? What was he doing to her?
Then thought became impossible. Any possible chance of a denial evaporated as pleasure began to build with a fiery force.
Oh, hell, yes.
Desperate to get closer to him, she wrapped her arms around his neck as he lifted her against him, holding her close in his arms as he lifted her from her feet.
She was weightless.
Gravity couldn’t touch her, and neither could the reality of common sense.
“Whoa. Oh, hell, no!”
Piper found herself suddenly spun around, released, and pushed protectively behind Jed in a move so powerful she knew she’d never figure out how he managed it. But one minute she was in his arms
kissing him for everything she was worth, and the next second she was pushing past him to confront her big brother.
The big lug.
He was staring at them as though he had never witnessed such a thing.
“Forget what a couple kissing looks like?” she snapped as he suddenly lost that surprised look and turned a glare on Jed instead.
Moving to Jed’s side rather than behind him, Piper crossed her arms over her breasts and stared back at Dawg furiously. “When are you going to learn to knock at the doors to our suites rather than barging in, Dawg Mackay?” she demanded. “I could have been naked or something.”
“In the living area?” he demanded, outraged. “And I’ve never knocked, dammit. You have a bedroom for this crap anyway.”
“It’s my suite,” she informed him. “I could be naked in either room if I want to be. And why should I have to do everything private in my bedroom? I had the door locked. I did not tell you to unlock it. Try knocking.”
He didn’t even look at her. He was too busy glowering at Jed.
Neither man blinked.
“I was going to say good night,” he snarled, finally sparing a short glance her way before turning back to Jed with a killing look.
“Good night, then.” She waited for him to leave.
Jed was glaring at Dawg just as fiercely as Dawg was glaring at Jed, and she was getting tired of it.
Dawg’s disapproval was clear.
Piper sighed in irritation.
“Both of you get the hell out of my room,” she suddenly ordered, anger beginning to flare inside her. “Get out. Go away. Leave me the hell alone.”
She had a ride to catch, and she had no intention of missing it. Especially not so she could babysit two grown men who were suddenly acting like two dogs over a bone.
Jed turned his glare on her. “We weren’t finished.”
“The hell you weren’t,” Dawg answered for her.
