Nautier and Wilder

by Lora Leigh

  What the hell was Piper doing in New York City?

  Whoever the hell she’d been sneaking out to meet had obviously abducted her, hadn’t they? Piper surely wouldn’t leave the state without letting her brother, Dawg, know she was leaving.

  Or would she?

  Damn her.

  He’d been driving himself insane in his attempt to figure out where she had gone without resorting to official channels or contacts to learn her secrets. She’d left without telling him with whom or where she was going. It was obvious she didn’t want to share the information or the identity of her lover.

  She hadn’t wanted to share it then; she would share it now.

  She would share it or he would be on the phone to Dawg.

  Piper and her sisters didn’t think there was anything worse than having their brother or male cousins pissed. Piper was about to find out there was something far worse.

  There was Jed, and he wasn’t about to let an attack against her go.

  This had nothing to do with protectiveness or control. It had nothing to do with an attempt to dominate her life. What it had to do with was the fact that someone had dared to hurt her, and he would make certain that someone had the favor returned.

  * * *

  Piper stared at the nurse in disgust.

  “You can’t make me stay here,” she informed the middle-aged, kindly looking nurse as the woman stared back at her with concerned hazel eyes.

  Standing at five feet, four inches if she was lucky, her gray-and-brown hair pulled back from her face in a tight braid as the small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes drew in with her frown, the nurse watched her in disapproval.

  “You’ve had a concussion, Ms. Mackay, and I doubt you feel much like walking right now, let alone traveling to the train station. If you’ll just calm down, the doctor will be in soon; he can check you and let you know what damage has been done.”

  “I already know what damage has been done,” she muttered angrily. “Trust me; I can feel every bruise.”

  And she could. Every single bruise, scratch, and jab that had been plowed into her undefended body.

  “I’m certain you can,” the nurse agreed compassionately. “But that concussion could be dangerous. Your brother’s due at any time—”

  “Excuse me?” Piper knew she’d just lost her breath as trepidation began to race through her system.

  Oh, God.

  No.

  Not Dawg. Surely to God no one had actually called Dawg.

  “Your brother Jed.” The nurse smiled again. “His name and phone number was in your day planner, thank goodness.” She moved to the bed and, as Piper stared back at her in shock, actually managed to wrap the blood pressure cuff around her arm. “Your purse was stolen. If it hadn’t been for his name and number in your planner, then we’d have had no idea whom to contact.”

  Her brother Jed, not her brother, Dawg? No doubt Jed had called Dawg. Dawg, Rowdy, and Natches were probably just ahead of his arrival and blowing fire and brimstone. And once they stepped into the hospital, hell would have no fury like the Mackay men pissed off.

  “God, this isn’t good.” Lying back against the hospital bed, Piper closed her eyes wearily. “How long ago did you talk to him? Forget it.” She gave a quick shake of her head. “Doesn’t matter; he could be here in two minutes or in two hours.” Opening her eyes, she levered herself up on the bed. “Where are my clothes?”

  Nurse Dade widened her eyes in surprise. “Ms. Mackay, where your clothes are doesn’t matter,” she informed Piper. “You need to rest.”

  “I’ll find the damned things myself then.” Piper sighed.

  She really didn’t feel like finding anything, especially her clothes, but sometimes a girl just had to do what a girl just had to do, right?

  “Ms. Mackay, you’re in no shape to leave the hospital alone.”

  “Nurse Dade, you really have no idea the forces of nature getting ready to rip through this hospital,” she informed the nurse as dread began to fill her. “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have nothing—and I mean absolutely nothing—on my brothers. Famine, pestilence, war, and disease are a kiddie playground in comparison, and I have no intentions of hanging around for the fallout.”

  Nurse Dade’s eyes widened. “Sweetie, I talked to him myself.” She gave a small, nervous little laugh. “He was as nice as he could be. I think you may have hit your head harder than the doctor thought.”

  Struggling from the bed, Piper ignored the nurse’s disapproving glare as she shuffled to the small cabinet next to the end of the bed.

  Aha, clothes.

  “Ms. Mackay, this isn’t advisable.” The nurse sighed as Piper struggled past the roommate who had been listening in amused interest.

  “It’s not advisable to be here when Dawg Mackay arrives either.”

  “Who is Dawg Mackay?” The nurse was all but laughing at her. “His name is Jed.”

  “You really don’t want to know. Trust me.”

  “You’re going to hurt my feelings, sis. That just wasn’t nice.”

  Piper came to a slow stop no more than a few feet from the bathroom door when Jed stepped slowly into the room.

  His voice was gentle, amused, and patient. The look in his eyes was damned scary, though.

  Scary, that was, if her attacker ever had the misfortune to stare into them.

  She could see murder in those eyes. As Jed took in the bruised, swollen condition of her face, the hesitancy in her stance as she stood before him, then the livid bruises on her arms, the navy blue of his eyes flickered with a deep, black rage.

  Shaking his head slowly, he advanced on her, all lean-hipped, predatory male grace and dark intent.

  “How far behind you is Dawg?” Resignation slumped her shoulders.

  If she had been on a leash before where her brother was concerned, no doubt it would feel like prison even before they left the hospital.

  “Oh, I’d say about twelve hours or so,” he drawled, then leaned close, staring into her wide eyes as he whispered, “He doesn’t know, sweet pea. Want to keep it that way?”

  Piper nodded. Oh, God, she really wanted to keep it that way.

  “Then you’re going to cooperate, right?” he suggested softly.

  Piper nodded again.

  To keep Dawg in the dark?

  Oh, hell, yes, she would cooperate.

  At least to a point.

  After all, she’d hate to mar the Mackay reputation for cooperating only when it suited their own interests.

  Right now it suited every single interest she could think of, though.

  “Good then.” He straightened, his hands settling with airy gentleness just above her shoulders. “Turn around, march right back to that bed, and we’ll just wait for the doctor, shall we?”

  She moved for the bed.

  “That’s a good girl,” he commended her as Nurse Dade smiled with an awestruck girlishness Piper found nauseating.

  Good girl, was she? she thought, sitting back on the bed carefully as she glared up at the smirking, far too self-satisfied Jedediah Booker.

  Oh, she’d just show him what a good girl she wasn’t.

  As soon as the doctor released her, that was.

  SEVEN

  Jed hadn’t prayed in years, but as he drove from the small airfield outside Louisville the next evening, he found himself praying for patience.

  He’d found a chance to question Bret Jordan and his friends Matthew Grace and Olivia Camfield. From their report, they’d heard Piper screaming in the suite next door and had come to investigate. Her door had been opened and a man they described as a “mountain” had been pounding on Piper as though he intended to beat her to death.

/>   He also had the bastard’s description. The three had been amazingly observant and were able to provide several valuable details in regard to the assailant’s appearance. One of his contacts in the city had made a visit to the hotel and questioned the staff before going to the room and doing the job it seemed the police hadn’t, collecting what evidence of the attack had been left.

  And there was the reason for the prayers. Patience wasn’t his strong suit. The second he had Piper safely at home he’d launch his own investigation. God help the bastard who had dared to touch her.

  Once the assailant was found, Jed prayed he could keep from attempting to kill him with his bare hands. From showing the “mountain” what it meant to really hurt.

  “Why didn’t you tell Dawg where I was?” Piper finally deigned to speak to him, something she hadn’t done since they’d left the hospital unless he’d simply left her no other choice.

  “I promised to keep your secrets, Piper; I meant it.” Glancing at her, he drove the truck he’d parked at the airfield the morning before toward Somerset. “I won’t tell Dawg anything I know you’d want me to keep to myself.”

  The flight back had been short, but Jed hadn’t wanted to arrive back in Kentucky until well after midnight. He’d spent the day getting her ready to leave and ensuring someone was investigating her reason for being there and why she had been attacked.

  He hoped—hell, no, he was praying—that Dawg wouldn’t be anywhere near the inn when they arrived.

  She shifted against the leather seats, no doubt trying to find a comfortable position.

  His fingers tightened on the steering wheel as he fought back the anger he was determined she wouldn’t see.

  “And that’s why you didn’t call Dawg?” She obviously didn’t want to believe him.

  “That’s why.”

  Dawg would have charged into New York City with Rowdy, Natches, and no doubt Chaya, Natches’s wife; the chief of Somerset’s police force, Alex Jansen, and Pulaski County sheriff Zeke Mayes; as well as Special Agent Timothy Cranston and Piper’s mother, Mercedes Mackay, ready to kill.

  Dawg wouldn’t have left the city until Timothy had buried her attacker. If that attacker hadn’t been found, then Piper would have returned under such heavy guard she would have been smothered before ever reaching Kentucky again.

  Silence descended between them, one that stretched until they had nearly reached the exit to Somerset.

  “There’s no way to hide the bruises,” Piper stated, her voice low. “Dawg’s going to see them.”

  Yeah, he would; there was no way to hide the damage to her face, though thankfully, her left eye was no longer swollen shut.

  “What are you going to tell him?” Taking the exit to Somerset off the interstate, he knew Piper’s time was definitely running out.

  Dawg had all but haunted Mercedes and Timothy, demanding to know whether Piper had called her mother yet. Elijah, Jed’s partner, had called earlier in the afternoon to report Dawg had contacted several agents at the surrounding airports and had her name run for flights out.

  He’d told her earlier about the conversation he’d overheard between Mercedes and Dawg, as well as the fact that Dawg was questioning everyone he could think to question about her whereabouts.

  “You can’t hide this from him, Piper,” he warned her when she didn’t answer him.

  “I know I can’t,” she answered wearily.

  The tiredness in her tone coincided with that unfamiliar tightness in his chest—something he experienced only with Piper.

  “He’s been beside himself with worry,” he told her. “Christa’s accused him of running headlong into a stroke as he attempts to protect all of you.”

  “If he would just wait until we need protecting.” Frustration immediately tightened her body as she pushed both hands through her shoulder-length black hair before clenching them in the deep waves.

  God, he would kill to feel all that lush, warm silk against his body. Against his thighs as her lips parted and his dick pierced the heated dampness beyond. That particular portion of his body throbbed in painful hunger as the need for her began to grow impossibly.

  Impossibly, because he hadn’t believed he could hunger for her more than he already did.

  Impossibly, because she was hurt, bruised, and no doubt the last thing on her mind was sex. She was definitely exhausted. She’d slept the whole of the flight, waking only as the plane taxied to the private hangar DHS leased.

  “Why won’t he wait until we need him, Jed?” she questioned with hurt anger. “Why can’t he just let us live a little bit?”

  “Because he’s seen the monsters.” Jed knew exactly why. “He knows what’s out there, Piper, and the nightmares haunt him now—the fear of not protecting the four of you, of being off guard and missing a threat, gives him nightmares. That’s why he’s driving himself to a stroke. That’s why he has trouble letting you live your life. Because he knows that in that one moment that you relax your guard, that’s when the monsters strike and attempt to steal everything you love in life.”

  “Did they steal something you love?” she asked.

  How had she guessed there was more to his life than he’d allowed her to see so far?

  “Not quite.” Glancing at her, he saw the need in her eyes—not a sexual need or a physical hunger.

  She needed to see more of him than he’d allowed so far.

  Intimacy. That connection that had the ability to bind two people together or tear them apart.

  “No one knows I have a sister.” He had to force himself to share with her something that even Timothy Cranston was unaware of.

  “You hide your family.” She nodded as though it made sense.

  “Well, my mother hid me from them first,” he admitted with a flicker of amused remembrance. “She didn’t want my father to know about me, didn’t want me to be threatened by his career in covert intelligence or his enemies. Father knew about me, though. When I was old enough, he found me, and drew me in like he does so many others and gave me one task: Protect my sister.”

  He could laugh about it now; at the time, it hadn’t been nearly so funny.

  “You say that as though it were an impossible task,” she observed curiously.

  “You would have to know Mary Elizabeth to be amused,” he said with a grunt. “She taught me a long time ago that you can’t surround those you love in bubble wrap and expect it to work. First they burst the bubbles; then they find an escape route. Once they escape, they don’t tell you where they’re going or why.”

  Piper watched as that crooked little smile she loved touched his hard lips and gleamed in his dark blue eyes.

  “You tried to surround her in bubble wrap then?” she asked. “Guess you learned the hard way, huh? I wish you could teach Dawg and my cousins the fact that it simply isn’t possible to lock us away until it’s time to bury us.”

  “That’s your job, sweetheart.” He sighed as she watched him, her gaze meeting his for the second he glanced at her, yet feeling the effects of the amused heat in his eyes for that tiny moment in time.

  “How is that my job?” She couldn’t imagine teaching Dawg anything. The man gave stubborn a bad name.

  “Most sisters start when they’re babies,” he admitted. “But you’re on the right track. Live, laugh, have fun, and go head-to-head with him whenever you have to. But don’t disappear on him again, Piper. Do it again, and next time I promise I’ll help him find you.”

  “And what makes you think you can find me if Dawg can’t?”

  “Because Dawg doesn’t want to admit you would actually leave the state without telling him,” he pointed out as guilt flayed her once again. “I don’t have that problem. I saw you leave the inn when you snuck out. I heard the car stopping just dow
n the road. I knew why you were doing it, though. I didn’t follow; I didn’t run a check on the car. I went back into my room and stared up at the ceiling the rest of the night, wondering who was the man you left with.”

  The man?

  Piper almost smiled. She could hear the probing question he was doing nothing to hide.

  “It wasn’t a man,” she admitted. “It was the sister of a friend giving me a ride to the Louisville train station. I tried to cover my tracks so Dawg wouldn’t follow me.”

  He nodded once.

  “It didn’t work out so well.” She sighed, completing the thought.

  “No, but I’m going to assume the circumstances were unusual,” he stated.

  “How the hell do I know?” She still didn’t understand why, who, or what. “One minute I’m waiting on a bellhop and a ride to the train station, and the next second I’m being pounded on, then waking in a hospital with a concussion and so many bruises that breathing hurts.”

  There was the faintest memory of a demand. A demand for what, she wasn’t certain. It wasn’t even a memory, not really. It was a confusing collage of something, amid a blast of pain, fear, and her own screams.

  “Did you remember the people next door who rushed in to help you?”

  She didn’t remember the rescue at all.

  “I remember meeting them at the hospital after I woke up.” She answered him, wishing she could hold on to whatever it was her attacker had said in those chaotic moments. She had a feeling if she could just remember . . .

  “They were good boys,” he told her gently. “A lot of young men would have waited, or been too wary of poking their noses in where they weren’t wanted.”

  “Oh, they were wanted.” She breathed out roughly.

  God, what would she have done if they hadn’t poked their noses in?

  Watching the landscape roll by, Piper realized they were only miles from the inn now.

  “Do you think Dawg will be there?”

  He was going to be so hurt, and she knew it. He wouldn’t understand her need to breathe, to have done this alone, even though it hadn’t been the chance she had believed it was.