Mackie's Men (12 page)

“So, just so I have this right. The three of you were discussing me, and my worthiness as a fourth in this strange ménage of lovers?” Nods came her way from the three men. “You have decided that I am an ideal candidate because I have a stupid trait of trying to protect those who I consider vulnerable at the time, like Eric and his family. Yes, I can see the reasoning, but I am not buying the attraction. I have so many scars that I don’t even own a swimsuit. The last doctor I saw referred me to a plastic surgeon to take care of the unsightly appearance of my scars.” These guys were definitely a few bricks short of a wall. She figured it was time to leave this house of crazies before she started drinking the tainted water. She stood and Darryl stood at the same time. Shit, she was good, she could kick ass when she had to, but he wasn’t your average bad guy.

“I think I need to think about this before I give you an answer. I have a job in case you didn’t remember. Senator Downs depends on me to keep her safe, and the General would have a few words to say if you tried to shanghai me into leaving her. Why don’t I just catch a cab back to the Senator’s residence, and I will give you a call in a few days?”

The heads shaking told her that her bid to escape them wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d hoped. She was again surprised when Darryl pulled the button up dress shirt apart scattering buttons, and his tie was yanked down and pulled off over his head. The material gave way easily under his thick hands. What arrested her attention was the scars decorating his chest and stomach. He began unbuckling his belt and opened his pants allowing them to drop to his ankles. His legs were bulging with muscles, but the wide scars running over his skin made her want to soothe his pain. He turned around and she saw that the beautiful tattoos she’d admired in the photographs were actually incorporated with the flow of the scars. The dark purples and pinks of the injuries were not masked, they had been used as enhancements to the scenes.

Nothing on earth could have stopped her from reaching out to touch his skin. She traced the scars and followed the patterns until she got to the small of his back. She knew those scars, she knew what had caused them. She had two smaller marks like those above her hips. Someone had burned him with a metal object and allowed it to stay on his flesh, branding him for all time. She didn’t think about it, she bent down and placed a kiss on each two inch long brand. He shivered, and she straightened. Her hand found its way to his shoulder and pulled him around to face her again.

“I am so sorry that you had to go through that. You carry the marks of a warrior, and I cannot believe how beautiful you are, scars and all.” Her hands pulled him close, hugging him as if she could take away the hellish pain she knew he had endured.

Liam spoke up behind them. “You see the beauty even as horrific as his injuries were. Why would we see anything less than beauty and courage when we saw yours? John carries burn scars on his legs, and the only reason I don’t have them is that I flew a plane during my stint in the Air Force. Should we love them less for the scars that they wear?”

Darryl held her close for a few minutes, and let his arms loosen. She stepped back and sat in the chair she’d left. He pulled his pants up, and had to tuck his semi hard cock in before zipping and fastening the closures. He hadn’t expected her reaction, and knowing that she didn’t find his body ugly, warmed him deep inside.

“At least you didn’t run screaming when you saw me almost naked. Does seeing me and my imperfections answer your question about your scars?”

Mackie nodded her head. She was in trouble and she knew it. If the men were bi-sexual, then she could even see where one woman would be a good fit. Her past in security, and… Damn, they had her pegged, and she was starting to believe what they were saying.

“Okay, so I join your family here, what exactly are you getting at? I’ll be a target for this traitor and lucky me I can kill a man in two moves with four fingers? Before you say anything, I am not agreeing, I am asking for more specifics so I can make an informed decision to at least part of your plan.”

Liam answered her. “I was excited to see you at the reception, and knew that I had to call you. The meeting room wasn’t in my plans, but now we have proof that one of the four men is the leak, or mastermind, we still aren’t certain. It’s my fault that you’ve been seen with Darryl. But none of it was planned until the last minute. We’ll have security feed from the pub to get identities for the people that came after Darryl tonight.

“I had planned to ease you into the idea of being with the three of us. None of us wanted to blurt the entire thing out like this, for Christ’s sake. The attraction thing can tie in with the discovery of the spy. The biggest hurdles we faced with you are now explained and out in the open. As for the idea of you going back to work with the Senator, that’s not going to be possible.”

She gave him a puzzled look and he sighed. “Mackie, think about it. We are after a major Government contract. You working for the Senator, and being seen with one of Klinger’s employees could cause the Senator to lose credibility. You have worked for her and protected the woman for years. If you go back to work for her, questions will be asked. As it is, we can either pull it off as a case of you coming to work for us, or you can publicly be a love interest and allow people to speculate as to which one of us you are interested in.”

John interrupted and offered his opinion. “We need to talk to the Senator and the General before we move on any of this. He is already aware that we have a breach, but no one outside this room knows how damaging the breach could potentially be. My research hasn’t been spoken of outside of the three of us, and the four people in that meeting.”

Mackie had a thought, what if? “What if this game of divide and cause chaos is the reason for these attempts? I’ve wondered why the gunmen never came back to the scene to finish the job and make sure Eric was dead. Are you having some power struggle at Klinger? If anything was leaked to the media, such as the attempts on your lives, wouldn’t your Board of Directors demand all of the technology be secured in a place where the company could access it, in case of one of you possibly dying or being taken as a hostage?”

Liam took up the thread of her thoughts. “That way every scrap of technology and all research would be in one place to make it easier to steal.” He looked at Darryl. “That’s why they want you out of the picture, you must be getting close to the guilty party, and without you, we would be forced to hire a security firm from outside of the company. Your people wouldn’t tell them a thing even if you were dead without you leaving standing orders. They would talk to me, but again, the Board will want more say-so in security, and it would be very easy to hire a company by bid, you know what cheap bastards most of them are. Dangle a cut rate slick presentation, and they are like piranha on a wounded water buffalo.”

Mackie yawned. It had been a long day, and she needed to sleep. “Guys, I need to go back to the house and get some shuteye. You’ve given me a lot to think about tonight, and I need to sort it all out in my brain before I decide exactly what I am going to do.”

The looks on their faces were priceless. Liam appeared frustrated, Darryl looked disappointed, and John, well John looked resigned. He was shaking his head, and finally said.

“Mackie, what about the words ‘bad guys want a hostage or to kill someone’ don’t you understand? You were seen with Darryl tonight, correct? Tell us, how many times have you been targeted like Darryl has been? And while you’re at it, tell us how many times you’ve been taken as a hostage and tortured in the process. How many times have you been shot, stabbed, confined or whatever, because of your job or association with other people? There’s no way you will leave this house until morning. We just found you, and I’m not losing you because you accepted a date.”

Liam nodded and Darryl shrugged, “He’s right, sugar, you can’t leave from here when they saw you enter the pub and disappeared like that. We can take you back in the morning, and no one will think a thing of it.”

That reminded her of something she wanted to know. “Speaking of disappearing, how did you know about the passageway between the buildings? That was a slick trick.”

John gave her the explanation. “I bought most of the block for investment purposes, it was originally built in the early nineteen hundreds, and used by the boot leggers, and I have been told the brotherhood spent a lot of time in those passageways waiting for the Feds to leave the speakeasy, so they could resume business as usual. There’s actually a small room in an off shoot that still has the old chairs and a radio. I left it exactly as I found it because it was such a cool thing to discover. We were exploring and renovating the back rooms of the pub when Liam fell through the wall.

“Incidentally, he fell on his ass and when he told you that he hasn’t got any scars, he’s lying. The right cheek of his ass was punctured in four spots. It looks like a thick toothed Vampire bit him on the ass."

She couldn’t believe he said that with a straight face. “A thick toothed Vampire? Really? So he has dimples on his butt? I bet that’s cute in the locker room.” She laughed, she couldn’t help herself, and looked toward Liam, who was in turn glaring at John.

“Guys, I appreciate your concern, I really do, but I’m a big girl, and can take care of myself. If Dorian shot the intruder, won’t they decide that you are expecting trouble, so wouldn’t they back up and regroup?”

Again John was shaking his head, and Darryl closed his eyes, and his head went back with his face toward the ceiling. John stood and walked over to where she sat. “Come on, let’s get you situated in a bedroom, and we’ll all take you back in the morning.”

She gave in and followed him through the house and up an ornate wooden staircase. There was a door at the top of the staircase that had a sign “Water Closet” and she smiled at the old-fashioned touches that had been left in the beautiful old home. The original lamps hanging on the wall lighting the corridor had been electrified, and low wattage bulbs caused the old-fashioned yellow glow on the dark wooden paneling. There was a flowered runner down the hallway with beautiful hardwood showing on the sides, and the doorknobs were gilded brass. She loved it.

“You have a beautiful home. I love the old-fashioned elements that you have kept, so many people nowadays would have torn out the paneling and ruined the beauty and craftsmanship of an era when quality was valued.”

John smiled and opened the door next to him. “This will be your room, and I hope you like it.” The room was large as far as modern bedrooms would go. The bed was huge, brass with porcelain balls breaking the shiny surface. The old wooden dressers and free standing dress closets gave her a case of envy that she’d never owned such a home to house beautiful objects like them.

John interrupted her thoughts. “We converted the fireplaces in each room from coal to natural gas, and through here,” he opened a smaller door, “is a shared bathroom with the room next door. It isn’t fancy, but we tried to keep the period as true as possible.

He approached her and took her hands in his. “I know it’s a lot for you to take in, the inadvertent way that we put your life with ours, the fact that we find you beautiful and sexy enough to make us all agree on convincing you to complete our family.” He raised one hand and ran his fingers slowly from her jaw to her ear, and filtered his splayed fingers through her hair.

His palm held her cheek and she felt herself leaning toward him. She gave into the impulse and laid her lips over his. He let her initiate the kiss and took over when her tongue retreated from his lip. His tongue slid over hers and he sucked on her tongue with a rough moan. She pulled back, and he didn’t force the issue, but the way he stared into her eyes with longing made her step back another step.

“Thank you for letting me stay, I love your house, and,” she raised her hand to her lips. There was no graceful way to tell a man who had just kissed her that she wanted to lie down on that bed and pull him on top of her. She did what any self preserving woman would do, she turned and walked into the bathroom. Instead, she said to him, “Goodnight, John,” as she shut the door and leaned against it with her head lowered.

Dammit, Mackie, you are acting so out of character that it isn’t funny. What the hell? Are you really thinking about their proposition? Are you nuts?
She continued to think about the men and the things they’d said tonight. The conspiracy threat to the Klinger Corporation took a back seat to the personal aspect of the clusterfuck that had started out as a simple dinner date.

She was too tired to worry about it tonight, she would deal with it in the morning. Falling asleep with pictures of three handsome men in her head wasn’t a bad thing. The thought caused a smile as she adjusted in the bed and closed her eyes.