Got it Bad

by Christi Barth

  Ryan held up two fingers. “No prison. And we stay together. Those were my terms when I went to WITSEC and asked for protection. They gave their word. It’s all going down today. The raid on McGinty’s crew. And the three of us disappearing forever.”

  Forever? Talk about dramatic overkill. Ryan always did like to tell stories. Kieran looked out at the enormous, overwhelming blue of Lake Michigan. The lake that had anchored his whole life. They weren’t leaving Chicago. No way.

  He pushed off Ryan’s hand. “Wait a minute. You mean we’ll be holed up in some boring safehouse in the suburbs for a few weeks while you get questioned.”

  “No.” And Delaney actually looked at him with pity—fucking pity!—as she continued. “That’s only step one. The Irish Mob is bigger than McGinty, bigger than Chicago.”

  Frank glanced out the window, then deliberately turned his back on the view. “It won’t ever be safe for us to come back here. Or ever be Mullaneys again. But that’s just a fucking name, right? We’ll be together, wherever we end up. Whoever we end up.”

  He was right. Nothing else mattered but sticking with his brothers. The rest was just details. Really fucking weird and impossible details, but still. Practically immaterial compared to the Mullaneys being side by side.

  Kieran couldn’t process any of this. Like . . . how big of criminals were his brothers?

  What did they do?

  What would they do now?

  Even with traffic at a crawl, he knew they were too far down Lakeshore Drive to see Northwestern anymore. Still, Kieran craned his neck out the back window, trying to get one more peek of the law school. Because it was all he knew. All he’d planned and worked toward for years.

  Stretching out her arm, Delaney said, “Hand over your wallet.”

  When a woman with a gun down her pants issued a command, Kieran obeyed. He gave it to her, but kept his hand on top, so his fingers brushed the inside of her wrist. That electric charge of awareness tingled in him again. Then she pulled out everything but the cash and gave it back, tucking his ID and credit cards into her bag.

  “Right now is the moment your life as Kieran Mullaney ends. Officially.”

  Well, shit.

  Chapter One

  Maguire House, Bandon, OR

  June 10

  Kellan Maguire knew better than to ask a favor of his brothers without offering something in return. Oh, no doubt that Rafe and Flynn would go to hell and back for him—that’d been proven over their last seven months spent crisscrossing the country.

  They’d get planted in a town, be given new identities and jobs and a home (all on the government dime), and they’d . . . stick it out until they invariably fucked up. Stir and repeat.

  Bandon, they’d been warned, was their last chance. Make it work here or they were out of WITSEC. On their own . . . with what was left of the Chicago Mob eager to find them.

  So, yeah, they were on their best behavior here in this tiny spot between ocean, sand, and forest. Kellan’s concerted effort at being good was at cooking. Because, eventually, his mad kitchen skills would impress the pants—and panties—right off some hot chick. For now, it’d hopefully get the perma-frown off Flynn’s grumpy face.

  He slid a steaming plate of eggs and toast in front of Rafe, then added the oversized mug of coffee with a sprig of cranberries painted on it. They hadn’t gotten to pick out anything in this house the government dumped them in and it was all cutesy, with carved wooden plaques on the walls and placemats shaped like pine trees.

  But hey, it was better than a jail cell or a pine box six feet under, which apparently were their only other alternatives. Or so Rafe and Flynn claimed.

  Kellan didn’t buy it. But then, how could he buy a story spun by the two people he trusted most in the world who’d evidently spent half their lives lying to him?

  “What’s this? It’s not Saturday.” Rafe tilted his head sideways, instantly suspicious.

  Or maybe that was just Kellan’s knee-jerk reflex to the man he’d learned had been the number two guy in the mob. The “fixer.” Whatever that meant. Kellan hadn’t asked much, because he still, after seven long months of turning it around in his head, wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know the scope of the crimes his brothers had committed.

  He turned a plate upside down over the rest of the eggs and sat down, straddling the ladderback chair across from Rafe. “True that. Impressive calendar-reading skills, bro. Or is it that if it’s Thursday, it must be a make out with Mollie night?”

  “Don’t be a douche about my girl.” He scraped butter across the toast. “And don’t begrudge me hot sex just because the only action you see is in the shower with your own hand.”

  “You know I’m jealous as hell. Doc Mollie’s too good for you.” Kellan was thrilled the pretty hometown doctor had fallen for his older brother. He really just begrudged the missed opportunity for a metric shit-ton of jokes about a doctor and lawyer hooking up.

  Wrong.

  Almost lawyer. That was still hard for Kellan to swallow. That he’d spent all the time, slaved for all those years, to never do anything with that knowledge.

  He shook it off. Which is what he always did because his brothers were all he had left. It wasn’t like he could bitch and rant to them about, well, them and their nefarious pasts. Kellan lifted his own mug in a toast. “Plus, everyone knows I’m the handsome brother.”

  Rafe snorted. “Funny stuff. Especially this early in the morning. Everyone knows that I got the looks, Flynn got the charm, and you got the brains.”

  “I’ll take two out of three, now that Flynn and his charm have permanently parted ways. He’s had a cactus up his ass for months.”

  With a long sigh, Rafe said, “It’s too damn early to talk about Flynn’s moodiness. Try me again in, oh, twenty years from never on that one.” He dug into his eggs. “Why’d you make me breakfast?”

  The Maguires didn’t play games with each other. Or so he’d always thought. Kellan launched right into it. “I want to borrow your car this afternoon.”

  “Why?”

  He was tempted to channel his twelve-year-old self and say why not? But law school had taught him the finer points of logical argument over plain old stubborn pissyness. Especially when the whole truth was that he wanted to ask their WITSEC handler for a gun.

  Which needed to stay a secret from his overprotective oldest brother.

  “Why does it matter? When we agreed to share one car between the three of us, we agreed we’d each get equal time. Frankly, you’ve been hogging it.”

  Rafe stabbed the air with his fork. “Don’t start with me. We live in a town the size of a burp. We barely drive as it is. If you haven’t been taking your third of the time in it, that’s not on me.”

  Riiiight. They both knew damn well that Rafe had gone from zero to defensive in the blink of an eye because he mostly used the car as a makeout spot with his girlfriend, Mollie.

  She lived with her grandmother and teenaged nephew. Rafe shared this house with Kellan and Flynn, so privacy for the couple was damn hard to come by. Kellan took pity on them once a week and hung out with Flynn while he bartended at the Gorse. Still, who wanted to wait a whole week to have sex?

  Gritting his teeth, Kellan forced a smile. “Well, I’m asking for it today.”

  “Don’t you have to work?”

  Work. That was a laugh. Total drudgery was more like it. No, total brain death. “There’s a health inspection at the cranberry plant, so most of us were given the afternoon off.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Clearly he hadn’t put enough cheese in the eggs to distract Rafe from giving him the third fucking degree. Kellan smiled again. Sipped at his kick-ass coffee. And lied through his teeth. Since apparently lying was how this family rolled.

  “I just need some time with the wind in my face. You’ve got the beautiful doc as an outlet. Let me drive up the coast for a few hours. I’ll bring it back washed and detailed.” Their shared car happen
ed to be Rafe’s dream car—a 1970 Camaro with T-Tops. Kellan knew that giving it some TLC would guarantee Rafe’s assent.

  “Fine. But if you’re going to take it, stay gone past dinner.”

  “You’re going to cook for Mollie?”

  “I’ll heat things up. Just not in the kitchen.” And then Rafe flashed a wolfish, smug smile.

  Lucky bastard.

  Kellan would give, well, a lot to be heating up the sheets, but he only wanted the one woman he couldn’t have. The woman he’d kissed once on a sun-dappled November day.

  The woman he’d get to see this afternoon.

  Delaney was always happy to meet with her protectees. Her job wasn’t simply to keep them safe. It was also making sure that they were settled and content. That often entailed many sessions of listening, helping them to come to terms with accepting their new lives. She enjoyed being their sounding board. Giving people a safe space to rant could make all the difference.

  Today’s visit with Kellan Maguire, however, promised to be equal parts enjoyable and horrible. That was true of any and every interaction with him, let alone a meeting without the buffer of his brothers. Because she’d gone and committed the worst mistake possible for a marshal.

  She’d fallen for her protectee.

  Oh, not in a let’s run away together idiotic way. No man was worth giving up her career. Delaney had made that vow to herself by the ripe old age of ten. Watching her mother demean herself, lose jobs and self-respect and ultimately, her life, all to keep the love of a man? That had been one heck of a deeply ingrained lesson.

  This thing with Kellan was more of a nagging awareness. Like when you felt a pimple coming up, beneath the skin. One you couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything about, but was all hot and inflamed to the touch.

  So she sat in the car after parking for another minute, steeling herself against his charm. Delaney stared at the pink walls and bright blue awning of the walk-up coffee shop and bit back a grimace. It looked more like a cotton candy kiosk at a Six Flags park. Undoubtedly Kellan, with his typical Maguire overdeveloped masculinity, would assume Delaney was punishing him with this cutesy, girly location for their meet.

  Which made no sense, since he was the sole non-criminal Maguire brother. The one who hadn’t gotten them kicked out of any towns.

  On the other hand, he did flirt with her harder than a soldier just back from a six-month deployment. Which forced Delaney to work very hard to make it appear that his flirting annoyed her.

  Which invariably just made him do it more.

  Even though, every time, she was actually annoyed at her inner reaction to his flirting. As well as not being able to give in and enjoy it.

  It made Delaney remember those two minutes of perfect kissing they’d shared. Maybe it was the shock of how right he’d felt when they met. Maybe it was all tied up with how those had been the last moments of his life as Kieran Mullaney, and she’d been breaking every rule to engage with him like that. But she couldn’t stop thinking about kissing Kellan.

  Kissing him again.

  Not like that would ever happen.

  She tightened her ponytail and swung out of the car. Then she tugged up the scoop neck of her yellow sundress. Because she could literally feel his gaze burning into her breasts from across the parking lot.

  Even that imagined heat seared straight through to her core.

  Damn it. Talking to Kellan, staying ahead of him by at least two steps, required all of her focus. Delaney dragged her gaze off his muscled legs dusted with dark hair, past the biceps straining against the sleeves of his tee, and back to the pink walls of the coffeeshop. Mission accomplished. Nothing sexy about a building that looked like Oompa Loompas might charge out of it, waving donuts.

  She waved at him, a wide smile breaking across her face. Time to play the part. The chance that anyone had followed her from the U.S. Marshals Field Office in Eugene to the long-term hotel where she’d changed, and would recognize Kellan, and then would rat out his location to the Chicago mob? Infinitesimal.

  But she didn’t take chances, no matter how small, with the lives of her protectees. So Delaney would play the part of his girlfriend. It was why she’d worn such a short, flirty dress. All part of her undercover look.

  Nothing to do with wanting to see Kellan’s ice-blue eyes smolder as they raked up the length of her bare legs.

  Nope.

  Delaney locked her mental chastity belt. Almost heard the snick as the walls around her heart locked into place. Then she rushed across the last twenty feet separating them to throw her arms around him in a tight hug.

  The man was a flirting machine. He was no dummy when it came to taking advantage of a moment. Kellan cinched his arms around her waist, lifted her, and twirled to make her hang on even tighter. He even used the opportunity to sniff at her hair. Right under her ear lobe, which chased chills across her neck.

  “Hello, Sunshine.”

  Delaney tilted her head back to look at him adoringly. She licked lips slick with an orange gloss. “I’m undercover, Kellan. Don’t be an idiot, and don’t you dare cop a feel.”

  The only way to resist him was to go over-the-top in the opposite direction. Every time he extended the most miniscule olive branch, she brought a wood chipper to the table.

  Kellan seized the advantage. Widened the spread of his fingers to sit just below the curve of her breast. Then he put his mouth right at her ear and breathed warm air over it until she shivered. “I’m not fully versed in Oregon dating rituals. But where I come from? Most coffee dates—”

  “You know full well this is only supposed to look like a date,” she said, cutting him off. “You asked to meet me privately. To discuss something mysteriously official.” Wondering what that might be had kept her mind spinning through the possibilities all night.

  With perhaps a two-minute break to spin through the possibilities of what it’d be like to have him in bed next to her.

  “Non-official marshal business coffee dates,” he continued, “aren’t full contact. Gotta ask if you’re using this whole undercover thing as an excuse to grope me.” Kellan moved to breathe on her neck, and goose bumps popped up immediately. “Not that I object to being used as a sex object. I just want to know the parameters.” Then he put her down right away. Probably because they’d danced this dance enough for him to realize she was one more comment away from connecting her knee to someplace painful.

  A woman had to keep up appearances, after all.

  Delaney wanted to linger on the suggestion of using his toned and tanned body as a sex object. That want, that temptation, pushed her to respond in a clipped, cold tone. Because pushing him away was her emotional Kevlar. The only protection she had from his charm. His sexy-as-sin smarts.

  “You want parameters?” she snapped. “Coffee. Walk and talk. That’s it.”

  “I know you take your coffee with one sugar and an obscene amount of milk. But since you’re undercover and all, I’m going to get you a girly, sugary Frappuccino drink that matches that sweet concoction of a dress.”

  So he had noticed the dress. Delaney’s feminine wiles did a fist pump.

  It took no time to get their strawberry-swirled fraps. Kellan deliberately put the plastic cup in her left hand, then interlaced his fingers with her right hand. “This is a fun change from meeting in the sheriff’s office.”

  “Fun is relative. Do you have any idea how much a thigh holster chafes under this dress?”

  “I don’t, actually.” Flashing a quick wink, he added, “But I will volunteer to kiss it and make it better.”

  “Kellan. Seriously.” Delaney tugged her hand free and flashed him the absolute opposite of a wink—a side-eye so sharp it had corners. “When will you stop flirting with me as if you actually have a shot?”

  “We had a shot. It went well. I’m just lobbying for round two.”

  The almost-lawyer nailed all the facts. Which made it such a shame that she had to push back with the cold, hard truth. The
facts that she used as a shield.

  Despite said facts doing nothing to snuff out the connection that had sparked between them that autumn day.

  “For the hundredth time, even if I wanted to date you, which I do not, marshals are not allowed to have relationships with their protectees. I’d lose my job. You and your brothers would be kicked out of the WITSEC program. Can you really stand there and say that sleeping with you would be worth losing my job?”

  “Yes.” He raised his drink to cut off her protest. “I’ve never once backed down from a challenge, Marshal. Four-point-oh average through high school, college, and law school. When I put my mind to something, I excel at it. So, yeah, it isn’t hubris to say that it’d be well worth your while to at least give me a shot.”

  “That’s never going to happen. What I would like to happen is to stop having you eye-fuck me every time we’re in the same room.”

  “Stop looking so eye-fuckable and I will.”

  Biting back a grin, Delaney led him to the edge of the busy road. The constant roar of cars guaranteed that nobody who pulled in for a midafternoon hit of java would overhear their conversation. “Tell me why I had to drive an hour from Eugene to meet you.”

  “As I said on the phone, I’d like to ask you for a favor.”

  “As a representative of the U.S. Government, I already pay your rent, your cost of living, and a not shabby monthly stipend. What more could you possibly want from me?” This time she was the one who whipped up a hand to stop him from talking. “And keep it clean.”

  Kellan turned to face her, so she could see the sudden solemnness in his eyes, the humorless set of his mouth. “I’d like you to help me obtain a gun. Then I’d like you to work with me at a gun range until I’m skilled enough to hit anything.”

  That came out of left field. “Why do you want a gun?”

  “What do you think I want it for—to hold up convenience stores?” After a short, savage pull at his drink, he snapped, “For protection.”

  “That’s my job,” Delaney whipped back. Kellan had crossed a line. He’d tiptoed up to it dozens of times with his sexual innuendo. But he’d finally leapt across it by insulting her competency. His apparent lack of faith in her after all these months stung.