Bailey, Debbie - Stephanie's Homecoming [Men of Kinsey 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (21 page)

“Oh shut up, Turk. There was no way I was going to leave, so what’s done is done.” Stephanie smiled and walked to stand beside Kane.

Reaching his good arm out to her, he pulled her closer to the bed and tried to get her to lie down with him.

“C’mon baby, lie down with me and keep me warm. I’m a wounded warrior here, and I need some lovin’ from my woman.” Turk indicated to Kane to put the bars on the side of the bed down so that he could get Stephanie closer.

“I think you need some more rest, Turk, so why don’t you close your eyes and go back to sleep. I’ll be right over there on the couch, okay?” she told him.

“Like hell you will. Get your pretty, little ass up her and snuggle with me. I want to feel you close to me, Steph, please.” Turk didn’t care if he sounded like he was begging, because if that’s what it took to get her on the bed with him, then he’d do it. He needed to feel her close to him. He started to try and sit up, hoping that he could convince her that he wasn’t that bad.

“Okay, okay…I’ll lie down with you. Just stay still and lie back down on the bed. The doctors had to put quite a few sutures in your shoulder, and you don’t want to be messing up their handiwork, now do you?”

Turk reclined back on the bed as Kane helped Steph to get into a comfortable position beside him. She lay there resting her cheek on his chest, listening to him breathe in and out, and within minutes was asleep again.

“Did you get the bitch, Kane?” Turk asked quietly, stroking down Steph’s arm. Her skin was like silk, and just the feel of it made him hard.

“Everyone is out looking for her, but so far no luck,” Kane said.

“Brian and I were thinking that maybe she’d stay quiet now until her parents got back and then turn herself in with her dad’s pricey lawyer in tow.” Kane watched Steph sleep and couldn’t help but reach out and touch her.

“Just get me the fuck out of this place, Kane. You know how I hate hospitals. People come to them to get patched up or die. They don’t come to get better. There’s always the stench of death in places like this.”

“I’ll go talk to the nurse and see what she says, but maybe you should try and get some more sleep. They’re not going to let you out of here until the doctor does his once-over and gives the okay, so enjoy having that beautiful woman all to yourself to snuggle for a couple hours,” Kane said, laughing quietly as he grabbed Brian by the arm and dragged him out of the room.

Turk lay there just breathing in the scent that was pure Stephanie. She was so tiny compared to him and Kane, and the thought of her taking a bullet from Jenny made his stomach turn. Kissing the top of her head, he closed his eyes and pulled her tighter against him. Sleep came a lot easier with her beside him.

Chapter 12

When they pulled up in front of the house, Kane snarled under his breath at the sight of the two detectives waiting for them. He’d been lucky and managed to hold them off overnight, but it looked like his luck had just run out, and they were all going to have to have a sit-down with them.

“Hey, gentlemen, I told you as soon as we were able, we’d call and give our statements,” he said as he walked to the front door to open it.

“I know, Mr. Bryson, but we can’t wait any longer. We need the three of you to tell us what the hell happened out there. Ryder Kinsey gave us his statement, but it just doesn’t make sense,” the young detective said.

“What is your name, detective?” Kane asked.

“Oh, sorry, sir, I’m detective Mark Cullen, and this is my partner, Asher Haynes. We’re not trying to yank your chain or anything, we just need to understand why this”—he quickly flipped through his notebook—“this Jenny Black would shoot Mr. Delray. From what I understand there is no romantic, financial, or any personal connection between the two, other than you and Ms. Morrison.”

Stephanie stomped up to the detective, and, poking her finger in his chest, she started to rail at the man.

“The only connection
is
Kane and I, that’s true, but Jenny Black is a certifiable, crazy-ass bitch who thinks that Kane is her fiancé and that they’re going to be married and live happily ever after. Ten years ago she went so far as to arrange for me to walk in on her and Kane when she was half naked, making me believe they’d slept together. I left town after that, but now I’m back, and she’s gone completely off the deep end. Kane belongs to me, he always has, and he always will. Turk is also mine, but Jenny isn’t fixated on him and also sees him as a threat to her crazy plan.” Taking a deep breath, she continued to explain the whole story to the young detective, poking him in the chest repeatedly.

Kane stood back and watched their woman at work. Damn, she was a sight when she got her hackles up and went into protection mode.

He looked over at a smiling Turk, who hadn’t even gotten out of the truck and was just sitting there watching the show.

“Detective Cullen, Jenny has gone so far as to start planning a wedding for her and Kane and this is even after he’s told her he wants nothing to do with her and to leave him alone. Yesterday she tried to run Turk and me off the road with her car, and when that didn’t work, she shot him. Now go do your fucking job and find and arrest her before she has a chance to hurt anyone else.” Stepping right up into the detective’s face, she said very quietly, “Because if she hurts one of my men again, I won’t feel a thing when I hunt her down myself and put a bullet in her brain. Trust me, detective, if I see her before you do, you won’t have to worry about a trial.”

Stephanie quickly turned away from the detective and walked back to the truck and into Turk’s waiting arms.

Detective Cullen pivoted to face Kane, saying, “I could have her arrested for threats, you know.”

Kane slowly walked to stand in front of the man, towering over him by at least five inches, and he looked down and sneered at him and said, “Just try it and see how long you last in this town. I’ll have you transferred so fast to some pissant place in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere. She’s only protecting her family, and you know it.”

Clearing his throat, the young man took a step back and smiled. “I know, I know, but she can’t go around threatening people, even if they do deserve it.”

The older detective, who hadn’t said a word up until now, moved to pull his partner away.

“All we need is your official statements, Kane, and then we’ll leave you all alone,” he said.

“Let me get Turk in the house and settled, and then we’ll sit down and tell you everything. Rambette, over there”—he nodded and smiled at the house where Stephanie had just gone to—“has already told you a lot of the history behind it, but I know you guys need to know the details of yesterday. Can you come back in an hour? That gives us all a chance to shower and get Turk settled.”

The older detective nodded and headed over to the car, almost pulling the younger man behind him.

* * * *

Mark Cullen pulled away from his partner and stalked angrily to their waiting car.

“What the fuck was that, Asher? We need to get those statements, and the longer we wait, the more their memories are going to fade.”

Mark was a great cop. He had a solid reputation within the law enforcement community as well as the street gangs. He was a stickler when it came to making sure the law treated everyone equally. He’d gone to law school but hadn’t yet taken his bar exam. He loved being a cop, but sometimes it pissed him off at some of the inequalities in the law that how, just by having money and power, some people were able to skirt the law.

“Do you have any idea who those two men are, Mark?” Asher asked him as they got in the car.

“Yeah, they’re witnesses in a shooting who you just let out of talking to us,” the young man snapped back.

“Don’t be an ass. That’s Kane Bryson, one of the owners of Club Kinsey. You know, the club we want to join. And the other man is Garth Delray, who is a well-respected, retired intelligence officer from the Marines. He’s been decorated for bravery numerous times, and his memory is one of the reasons he was nabbed by intelligence in the first place. So don’t worry about him remembering anything about yesterday, because from what I’ve heard through my federal contact, he can’t forget things.”

Sitting behind the wheel of the car, Mark sat absorbing what his partner had just told him. They’d decided to try and get a membership in Club Kinsey after they discovered, during a night of way too much drinking, that they both were Doms who liked to share their partners and were looking for a submissive. Since that night they’d shared a lot of women and enjoyed every minute of it, but they had yet to find that special someone who was right for both of them.

“Shit, we’re never going to get a membership now. Why the hell did you let me go on and on and behave like such an ass, if you knew who they were?” Mark had heard so much about Club Kinsey and knew that they could find the perfect sub for them through there.

“I didn’t put it together right away, that’s why,” Asher said. “Look, I’m sure that Kane won’t hold that against you. He’s a businessman, and as long as you keep it low-key from now on, we should be okay. I hope.”

Mark looked at his friend then started the car heading back to the precinct to see how the hunt for Jenny was progressing. Hopefully, when they came back in an hour or so, Kane might have forgotten what an ass he’d been.
Ah hell, didn’t Asher say something about Turk never forgetting anything.

* * * *

After settling Turk into bed and making sure he was comfortable, Stephanie followed Kane back downstairs to the kitchen.

“He looks so pale, Kane, are you sure he’s gonna be all right?” she asked.

“He lost a lot of blood, baby, but with what they gave him at the hospital, and with some good solid rest, he’ll be back to his old self in no time. You just wait and see. I bet by tomorrow he’s trying to talk you into bed with him.” Kane pulled her into his arms and kissed the top of her head.

This was one of the best places to be. In the arms of one of her men, she felt safe and secure, as if nothing on earth could hurt her. But it wasn’t her who had gotten hurt, it was one of them, and all because she came back to Kinsey. Maybe she should go away for a little while until they could find Jenny. If she thought she was gone, then she wouldn’t try to hurt either of them again, but she had promised Kane she wouldn’t run again, and that was a promise that she was going to keep.

“Kane, I’m scared,” she said into his chest. “I don’t want anyone else hurt because of me. Maybe if I headed back to the city…”

Before she could finish, Kane growled, “No.”

“Listen to me for just a minute, will you. I’m not running away, but if Jenny thinks that I’m gone from your life, maybe she’ll stop.”

She was trying to be strong, but the thought of anything else happening to one of her men was breaking her heart. The tears from the adrenaline rush of yesterday, which she’d held at bay since Turk had been shot, started to flow down her cheeks.

“What if next time she points a gun at you? I couldn’t stand to lose either of you, don’t you understand that?” She sniffed.

“One of the reasons for coming back here was to see you. I know it’s dumb, but buying the paper just gave me an excuse, I think. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love the paper, but even without it I think I would have come back eventually. I couldn’t stop loving you no matter how hard I tried, and having this lunatic running around shooting the people I love makes me want to take the danger far away. And that danger, right now, is me.”

Stephanie just held onto Kane and cried. She hadn’t shed many tears since she left all those years ago. In the beginning, she always managed to keep herself busy so she wouldn’t have to feel the pain of Kane’s betrayal. And as time passed, it just became easier to not feel anything at all.

But now, even a hint of losing either one of these wonderful men was enough to have her falling apart.

“I’m sorry, Kane, I shouldn’t have come back.” Stephanie sniffed and stepped away from him.