Baddest Bad Boys (26 page)

“Easy,” Mac muttered near her ear. “Easy, sweetheart.”

Stunned by seeing Reid McNeil in this impossible place, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Couldn’t move.

She felt Mac’s breath on her ear, then the first drops of rain on her cheeks, sharp as ice pellets. “McNeil?” Mac whispered, his gaze locked on the man on the path.

She managed a nod. Reid turned, rotated slowly, and looked around as if to get his bearings. Her hands clenched on her knees, froze there. “He’s got a gun.” The words came out on a hiss.

“I know.” Mac took her hand. “Let’s go. I need to get you to more cover.” Still crouching, he pulled her deeper into the bush, his movements low, fluid, and furtive.

Tommi’s movements were awkward and stiff. The uneven ground, broken branches, fallen logs, and lethally slippery leaves made it impossible for her to find her stride.

Her foot caught on a fallen branch, and she fell, hard and headfirst into a rotting, moss-covered stump. Her forehead scraped along a protruding branch and blood trickled down beside her ear.

Mac dropped to his knees at her side. “You okay? Can you get up? You have to get up, Tommi.”

He grasped her arms, tugged her to her feet.

Too late.

“Well now, isn’t this convenient.” Reid stepped out from behind a tree, raised the rifle, and leveled it at Tommi. He looked around at the dense bush, amused. “I won’t even have to bury the bodies.”

Beside her, Mac shifted his weight. Reid immediately swung the rifle barrel toward him. “Drop it. Now.” Reid’s face was as hard and relentless as the rain now growing in force and dripping in pellet-sized drops from the branches over their heads.

Mac’s eyes blazed with a deadly determination. She saw him tighten his grip on his rifle. “I don’t think so, McNeil. I prefer the odds with this in my hand.”

Reid swung his rifle back toward Tommi.

She sucked in a breath, paralyzed by the sight of the evil black hole at the point of the barrel—the thought of dying. “You don’t have any odds.” Reid curled his lip. “Drop it or you watch the lady chew on a bullet.”

Mac, his face taut, dropped the gun.

Reid trained his rifle on Mac. “Actually, while I was walking in here, I decided I’d do you first.” He cast a glance at Tommi. “I never did get to fuck this bitch. I figure, out here, why not?” He slanted Mac a filthy look. “Trouble is, I don’t think you’d sit still to watch.” He lifted the gun barrel, centered it on Mac’s chest.

“No!” Tommi went for the gun—Mac’s death in Reid’s hands. She almost made it…

A searing pain shot across her shoulder, and she heard Mac yell, “You son of a bitch!” Then a crunch of bone on bone, before she crumpled to the sodden moss at her feet. She tried to get up, fell again…everything colorless, hazy…dark.

Have to help Mac.

 

She forced her eyes open—seconds later? Minutes later? She tried to pull herself to her knees. Blood dripped onto the moss like red rain. From her…face? Shoulder?

“Mac!” She couldn’t see through the blood on her face, her eyes. She brushed at it, desperate now. “Mac, where are you?”

“I’m here, Tommi. Right here.”

Then his hands were on her, all over her, stroking, probing, holding. “God, if you weren’t hurt, I’d kill you myself. That was crazy!” His voice was low, angry and thick with concern. He tore away her jacket sleeve, looked at her arm, and let out a long, harsh breath. “Just a graze—but bleeding like hell.” He picked her up, cradled her in his arms.

“Reid?” she croaked, barely finding her voice.

“Out cold. His head collided with my rifle butt. He’s belted to a tree.” He shifted her to a more comfortable position against his broad chest. “To hell with him. He can rot there, until the cops get here. I’m taking you back to the lodge.” He kissed her bloodied forehead. “But you’ll have to come clean, sweetheart, about the embezzling. You won’t have a choice.”

She nodded her still-spinning head. “No choice,” she parroted and passed out against his shoulder.

 

A cop who looked no older than eighteen arrived by boat within the hour—Mac had advised him against attempting the flooded road. Mac led him along the forest path to where he’d left McNeil, propped up and lashed tight to a cedar. The young cop was briskly efficient. With Mac’s help, he handcuffed the cursing, threatening McNeil in the stern of his patrol boat, and in minutes was back at the lodge to take Tommi’s statement.

“Tommasea Violetta. Interesting name.” He closed his notebook. “Never heard it before.”

Tommi figured, given his age, there were lots of names he hadn’t heard before. Propped up on Mac’s bed, a bandage on her forehead and her arm wrapped and resting on her stomach, she smiled at him. “I think they were trying to make up for the Smith.”

He nodded, his expression serious. “Doctor Kenning will be along shortly to take a look at that, although it looks as if you were a lucky young lady. Just took a patch of skin off, is all.”

Tommi’s smile deepened at being called a “lucky young lady” by someone who probably did his first shave a month ago.

A few minutes later, she heard his patrol boat roar away from Mac’s dock, presumably with a trussed-up Reid McNeil in the stern.

Tommi put her head back and closed her eyes, gingerly touched the bump under the bandage on her forehead.

A big, warm hand closed over hers. She opened her eyes when Mac’s weight settled on the bed beside her. “You’ll probably get one hell of a shiner.” He propped a knee on the bed and played with the hand he held in his lap.

“Thank God for M.A.C.” Her quip didn’t make her less afraid to look at him and see what was in his eyes. Their time together was over. With Reid gone, there was no reason to stay. From here on, it was all about good-byes. At that thought her chest seemed to fill with lead.

“Why did you do it? Put yourself at risk like that?” His voice was low, troubled. “What in hell were you thinking? I could have lost you.” His eyes were angry, confused, and filled with something she couldn’t identify…fear?

She glanced aside, looked for the words that so needed to be said. Words harder to give than your body. “I did it because…I couldn’t imagine waking up in a world without you in it.” Her eyes were dry, her chest thick, cluttered with nameless emotions.

Silence.

Mac’s throat worked as if he were swallowing stones. Finally, he lifted her hand to his mouth, kissed her knuckles, and said, “About the sex…”

Tommi’s heart tumbled, and her throat closed. It was always about the sex.

“What’s between us has gone past that.” His eyes lightened, and he smiled at her in a way he never had before. “Truth is, Smith, I fell for you the second I laid eyes on you. Trouble was, I was thirteen, you were eighteen, and there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could do about it.”

She held her breath. “And now?”

“Now I can.” He let go of her hand and braced himself over her, a hand on each side of her hips. The same position he’d taken when he’d come to her after her bad dream. “I don’t want this to end. I don’t want us to end. I want to take what’s between us and build on it. You okay with that?”

Tommi’s heart didn’t make it to her mouth, but she’d swear it lodged halfway up her throat. She shut her eyes against the tears, the ache of relief. I’m such a sap for this man. “I’m very much okay with that.”

“There’s something else that needs to be said.” His expression darkened. “I should have trusted you, Tommi. Should have trusted—what I felt for you.” He stopped. “When you stepped in front of me today, my whole goddamn life shut down. I kept thinking, what if I lost you—when I’d just found you.”

“Then don’t think.” She touched his chin. “Just kiss me, Mac. Just kiss me.”

He gestured toward her bandaged arm. “I’ll hurt you.”

She shook her head, used her good arm to pull him toward her. “Hold me, Mac, hold me forever and love me”—she stopped, the words, so long withheld, poised on her tongue—“the way I love you.”

Before he could answer, she brought his mouth to hers. He took her in his arms loosely with aching care, deepened the kiss.

Tommi gave herself up to the magic of his mouth, the warmth of his body, while deep inside a smile bloomed.

She had secrets. Precious secrets.

She wondered what Mac would think when she told him he was the first man she’d ever loved—and today was the first time she’d ever said, I love you.

DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

Cate Noble

1

Max DeLuca exited the private elevator and stalked across the dimly lit salon of the corporate penthouse in Boston. It was after midnight, but he didn’t turn on any additional lights. Ellie was in the guest suite and he didn’t want to wake her.

Or did he?

He stopped short, nostrils flaring at the faint, lingering scent of feminine cologne. The simmering irritation that had bedeviled him since leaving Rome twelve hours ago disappeared. In its place was a more primitive sensation: a raw, aching, heat that left him as aroused as he was furious.

Oh, there were a lot of things he wanted to do to his sister-in-law—former sister-in-law—but all demanded her full attention. For now, sleeping beauty was safe.

Scowling, he detoured toward the bar. It was just as well she wasn’t awake. He was in a foul mood, had been spoiling for a fight all day, for reasons that weren’t completely attributable to Ellie.

Which wasn’t to say he didn’t have good cause to be pissed right now. When it came to Ellie—

He cut off the thought. The past was like quicksand. Waiting at the first mental misstep, it sucked the weak under. “Do yourself a favor—focus on the business at hand,” he muttered.

And the matter at hand was, literally, business. Max wanted Ellie to sign an agreement that would extend the terms of his late half-brother’s will. The deal would grant him continued control of her stock holdings in his company. From a purely financial perspective, his proposal was sound. In the three years since Stefan’s death, Max’s strategic business partnerships had more than doubled the size of DeLuca Shipping International. Ratifying the new contracts was a fairly routine matter that should have been settled months ago.

Unfortunately, nothing between Ellie and him had ever been routine. Their respective attorneys had locked horns from the start. Then the press picked up the story, adding a Machiavellian twist. At that point Ellie withdrew from negotiations, remaining virtually incommunicado for weeks.

Until two days ago, that is. Then she’d sent an e-mail to Max’s personal account. Her message had been cryptic:

 

I want to propose a private deal.

A deal that will satisfy both of us.

 

His curiosity had gone ballistic. So had his libido. He’d been willing to promise anything to get her back to the table, but she eschewed discussing specific details, insisting instead on a private, face-to-face meeting: just the two of us.

Because her mind-blowing e-mail had provoked a seemingly relentless hard-on, he had considered sending a surrogate here tonight. Except he worried that move would tick her off and derail discussions permanently.

Funny how all those concerns had faded during his flight. A little dose of fury—a lot, actually—had done the trick. Maybe too well. Before he met with Ellie he needed to chill, think things through.

He dumped his briefcase in a leather chair and reached across the bar. The carved ebony decanter held his favorite anger-management tonic: an exceptionally rare, forty-year-old, single-malt Scotch. He poured two fingers, neat, then made it three. He’d earned it.

Before taking a sip, he mockingly tipped the glass toward the line of ancestral portraits on the wall. Yet another family tradition Max had no intention of continuing.

After six generations of patriarchal excess and legendary debauchery, DeLuca Shipping International had been flirting with bankruptcy when Max unexpectedly inherited the reins seven years ago. He’d single-handedly turned the tides, rebuilding the company from the bottom up. They owed him a nod. Especially his half-brother.

Max rubbed the scar above his left eye. The guilt he’d carried about Stefan’s death had faded during the court battles that had erupted over his brother’s estate. Stefan had mimicked their father in all the wrong ways, including literally keeping a different woman in every port—and an unsuspecting wife at home. If Max were in a more generous mood, he’d feel sorry for Ellie. Except it wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to warn her. You’re marrying the wrong man…

Feeling restless, he carried his drink out onto the terrace. The high-rise overlooked the twinkling lights of Boston harbor, typically one of his favorite views. But tonight it was the horizon that held his attention. Fierce lightning backlit mile-high thunderclouds, a glorious preview of the storm still at sea. The sweltering July night, perfect for the building squall, seemed to mirror his mood.