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  Propping her hands on her hips, she turned a fierce stare on both of them.

  “Get out of my room,” she snapped again. “If I have to ask one more time I’m calling Mom and Tim and you can deal with them.”

  “That little bastard Timothy doesn’t scare me in the least,” Dawg informed her, his celadon gaze sparking with anger.

  “Well, Mom does scare you,” she reminded him. “And trust me, if she knew what was going on right now she’d have both your heads.”

  They both grimaced and began retreating.

  Jed moved for the connecting door as Dawg backed to the door that led to the hall. As each door closed Piper moved to it quickly and locked it securely.

  Good God, how the hell was she supposed to slip out of the house and out of the state with this mess going on?

  One thing was for damned sure: if she’d had second thoughts about how her brother or even Jed would act if one of them were to go with her, then she had her answer now.

  They’d act just as they were: like two Neanderthals with nothing better to do than beat their chests and roar out their aggressions.

  Not what she needed this week.

  Oh, God, she didn’t need it this week.

  The week she was going to find the dreams she’d worked for all her life.

  * * *

  She was slipping out, making her way across the darkness of the porch, two traveling bags in hand.

  Jedediah lowered his head for a second before lifting his gaze and forcing himself to watch her make her way from the inn. Curling his fingers into fists, he held back the urge to follow her. To stop her.

  If he stopped her, he’d be no better than her brother or her cousins. They were doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons, but that didn’t make it bearable for the impulsive, bright, beautiful little star they were smothering.

  Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned against the heavily leafed tree he hid beneath and just watched her. There was no need to follow her. She wasn’t headed to a party, a friend’s house for a night out, or even one of the local bars.

  He’d known that when he’d talked to her on the phone as he’d watched her through the closed-circuit wireless camera that had been installed in the bedroom when her sister occupied it. It hadn’t been removed when Eve had moved out.

  As he had watched her pack he had known she was heading out of town.

  With a friend? Most likely a lover, he thought wearily, wondering at the sense of possessiveness tightening his gut.

  Hell, he’d waited too long to secure her to him, left it too late. He’d sensed that as he watched her packing earlier.

  He was always careful when checking on her. He never interfered, never looked in on her when there was a chance of embarrassing her if she found out he was watching.

  Sometimes, he just wanted to see her. See her relaxed, sleeping, or amused. Sometimes, he just wanted to make certain she was safe, nothing more. He’d seen her packing, though, and he’d been unable to resist calling her, hoping she’d confide in him. Hoping that talking to him, remembering the pleasure they’d shared, would change her mind if she was heading out to stay with a lover.

  It hadn’t.

  She disappeared around the side of the house.

  Lowering his head, he stayed in place. He didn’t dare move, even under the pretense of returning to his own room. Because he knew he wouldn’t make it there.

  Hell, no, he’d end up following her, and he’d make her hate him when he couldn’t help himself and persuaded her to stay. Persuaded her in a way that would ensure her pleasure—and her hatred.

  Fuck, it was hard letting her go.

  Rubbing at the ache in his chest, frowning at the tightness there, he wondered at the feeling he’d identified years before as a premonition, a warning of danger.

  Who or what could be in danger?

  Maybe it was better that Piper was leaving for a few days after all. Her sister had nearly died the year before because she was too close to his partner, Brogan Campbell.

  God help anyone who dared to threaten Piper Mackay. He would kill. Perhaps not for the first time, though it would definitely be the first time he’d killed over a woman.

  She was worth killing for.

  She was worth dying for.

  The brilliance that was Piper Mackay couldn’t be contained. She was wild and free, bright and burning, and there were already too many men determined to tame that fire. To lock it in. To take the freedom she fought so valiantly for.

  He refused to become one of them.

  Jed forced himself to move, to walk slowly and easily across the stretch of lawn that led to the inn and the suite he had taken next to Piper’s.

  She was gone and he had no choice but to let her go.

  That didn’t mean he liked it.

  It sure as hell didn’t mean it was easy.

  THREE

  Amy’s sister, Gypsy Seavers, was waiting exactly where Piper had directed her to the day before.

  The small clearing just past the inn was far enough away that if the other woman had turned her lights off before pulling in, then there was no way in hell Tim could possibly see them. Yet it was close enough for her to jog to, even carrying the two bags she had brought with her.

  “Trunk’s open.” Gypsy’s voice came from the other side of the vehicle as Piper moved for the car.

  By the time she reached the trunk, Amy’s sister was standing next to it, lifting it for her as Piper threw her bags in. She took a good look at Gypsy’s face in the trunk’s light. Just to be certain she was who she was supposed to be, Piper told herself, realizing some of Dawg’s lectures on safety might have actually stuck in her mind.

  The second Piper moved back from the trunk, Gypsy had it closed and was moving around her to the driver’s side.

  “Ready to roll?” the other woman asked, glancing back as Piper watched her.

  “Ready to roll.” A quick nod and Piper was opening the passenger door and sliding inside quickly before pulling it closed.

  Gypsy’s door didn’t so much as squeak as she closed it and restarted the vehicle.

  She resembled Amy, Piper decided as the car pulled back out onto the main road and headed toward town.

  The same amber or caramel hair, streaked with much lighter strands by the sun. She was slender, compact, and the jeans and racer-back T-shirt she wore showing off her lightly tanned, well-toned upper body made her appear smaller and more fragile than her diminutive five-foot-four frame already did.

  “Amy and I were betting you wouldn’t make it out after she told me who your brother and cousins were.” Gypsy flashed her a quick, rueful grin. “I don’t know if I would have followed through after I learned Natches Mackay was your cousin if I hadn’t already promised.”

  Piper stiffened, turning to stare back at Gypsy warily. Great, she knew Natches. Piper wasn’t even going to bother asking how yet. Only one question was uppermost in her mind. “Did you contact him?”

  “Natches?” Flicking her a questioning look, Gypsy efficiently navigated the curvy mountain road that led to the interstate.

  “Yeah.” Piper could feel that sense of freedom slowly disintegrating.

  “Not hardly.” Gypsy grimaced. “Picking you up might piss him off at me, but calling him and letting him know would only add a shadow of distrust to my name if he ever actually meets me.”

  Neither the resignation in Gypsy’s voice, nor her explanation, made sense.

  “What do you mean?” Piper shook her head. “Wouldn’t it be the other way? He wouldn’t trust you if he learned you had helped me? Wouldn’t he trust you more if you contacted him?”

  “Doesn’t work that way.” The other woman rejected the s
uggestion, her expression still a bit stiff, with an air of secretiveness. “I promised I’d help you before I knew who your cousin was. You don’t appear to be in any trouble, and my own sources verified how protective your brother and cousins are. If I called him without cause, no matter how much he would love to know where you are and who you’re with, then he’d count that as a betrayal of confidence. I’d be deemed untrustworthy, unless you were in trouble.” She threw Piper a quick, amused look. “Are you in trouble?”

  “No trouble,” Piper promised her, breathing out a sigh of relief. “I just don’t need company, you know?”

  She hoped Gypsy understood. Just as she hoped the other woman didn’t call Natches later.

  “Sometimes a girl just has to do what a girl has to do. And sometimes she just has to do it alone,” Gypsy agreed as the lights from the dash emphasized the unsmiling expression she wore.

  “Exactly,” Piper stated. “The New York fashion scene isn’t a place where any of them would get along well. It would be like placing a herd of bulls in a roomful of china. Forget the china shop. They would raze the shop and head for the warehouse.”

  Gypsy gave a small, surprised laugh at the description before her amusement was quickly pulled back.

  “I’ve heard that about Natche.” She gave a light laugh. “He was a legend in Afghanistan while he was there. One of the best damned snipers the Marines had, and better at covert intelligence than he had any right to be.”

  Yeah, that sounded like Natches.

  “How do you know him?” Piper asked. “Are you with Homeland Security, too?” That would be just her luck.

  “Not hardly.” Gypsy’s lips tilted into a crooked smile. “I was with the Marines myself. Many of Natches’s missions in Afghanistan and Iran are used as training points now.”

  Piper had heard Tim mention that several times, while Natches seemed rather proud of it.

  “What are you going to do when they find out you’re gone, then?” Gypsy asked as Piper stared into the darkness and wondered what the trip would have been like with Jed.

  “Hopefully, they won’t find out,” she stated irritably. “Because, trust me, New York City would never be the same if those three showed up there.”

  She shuddered to even imagine the chaos the Mackay cousins could still manage to create.

  “Best-laid plans and all that,” Gypsy pointed out. “Surely you have a plan, just in case?”

  “I’m a Mackay; what do you think?” She grinned back at her friend’s sister.

  “I think you have one,” Gypsy reflected. “But I think you’re not so sure of it, and I think you’re really afraid it won’t work.”

  “And what makes you think that?” Unfortunately, she was right.

  “Six years in the military. The last two in the investigative side of the military police. I can hear it in your voice, and I can see it in your face. You’re a piss-poor liar, aren’t you, Piper Mackay?”

  “Unfortunately, that’s far too close to the truth,” Piper agreed.

  It didn’t surprise her to learn Gypsy Seavers was some sort of investigator. She had that air of secretiveness and quiet watchfulness. “I left Mom a note. She’ll find it in the morning, and I begged her not to say anything. And for the first time in my life I lied to my mother. I told her I needed to get away from the male portion of the family and I was staying with friends.” She grimaced at the lie. “What she’ll actually end up doing is anyone’s guess.”

  “And how long do you think it will take for your brother and cousins to find you?” Rueful amusement reflected in Gypsy’s voice.

  They would find her far too soon if she didn’t get very lucky.

  “Let’s hope it takes a while,” Piper suggested, terribly afraid that if she wasn’t very, very lucky, then her brother and cousins would find her far too quickly.

  * * *

  “What the hell do you mean, she’s not here?” Dawg rubbed his hand along the back of his neck in irritation as he faced Mercedes the next morning, barely holding back a glare. He needed to talk to Piper about what had happened the night before. Catching her with Jed Booker had reminded him all over again of what had happened with Eve the summer before. He didn’t want another sister in danger because of her association with one of Timothy’s agents. He also didn’t want her endangered because she was trying to hide it from him. And he definitely didn’t want to piss Mercedes off as he tried to find out where the hell she had gone.

  Timothy, the quarrelsome little bastard, got all kinds of out of sorts if he managed to upset Mercedes over her “babies.” But he’d be damned if those sisters of his weren’t going to drive him to drink.

  Their antics were making him seriously consider a nunnery for his daughter.

  “Dawg, give her a break,” Mercedes ordered, though her voice was calm as she moved around the kitchen and cleaned up from that morning’s breakfast preparations. “You’ve hounded her, Lyrica, and Zoey for almost a year now. Everywhere they go, everything they do, and everyone they talk to is reported back to you so you can fuss at them over their friends, potential dates, and acquaintances. I warned you last year they were going to get sick of it. Piper just got fed up with it first.”

  Her arms crossed over her breasts as she stared up at him, her expression tight with defensiveness as her determination to stand in his way became more than apparent.

  “And you know why I’ve done it,” he reminded her. “Hell, I remember a time when you were all for it.”

  Now that those stubborn, independent young women were crying on “mommy’s” shoulder, she was backtracking from the protective atmosphere just as quickly as she had agreed to it.

  “A year ago.” One hand propped on her rounded hip as she faced him with fiery dark eyes. “When there was a chance she was actually in danger. Even you admit there’s nothing going on now, no one is watching you or the girls, nor is there any apparent backlash from what happened last summer. I believe, Dawg, you can’t let yourself accustom to life without that danger. It’s not fair to make the girls live such a life as well.”

  He was not going to allow her to draw him into this argument, not after having this exact confrontation with Christa after returning home the night before, furious at finding Jed in Piper’s room, and Piper in Jed’s arms. His own wife had been quick to rip a strip of his hide, first for not knocking, and second for daring to butt his nose into his sisters’ sex lives again.

  He did not want to know his sisters had sex.

  He especially didn’t want to know who they were having sex with.

  “Where’s she at, Mercedes?” He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of this argument. They’d already been down that road far too many times.

  “I’m not telling you.” Pure stubbornness pulled at her expression.

  As much as those girls looked like they could belong to him or his cousins, Rowdy and Natches, he had to admit there were times, like this, when he realized they looked just like their mother.

  “Then I’ll have Alex put out an APB on her,” he warned, trepidation beginning to tighten the back of his neck.

  Hell, he hadn’t expected levelheaded Piper to be the one to test her safety first.

  “No. You will not. Attempt it. Dare to take this from her, Dawg Mackay, and I promise you neither I, my daughters, nor Timothy will ever allow you to forget it.”

  He turned away from her, rubbed at the back of his neck, and grimaced in frustration.

  “I don’t feel good about this,” he muttered as he turned back to her. “Mercedes, I don’t feel good about this at all.”

  The anger beginning to brighten her brown eyes dimmed, but he could see the concern in them as well.

  “I don’t like it myself,” she admitted quietly. “She didn’t tell me where she was going,
Dawg; I found out by accident. All she told me was that she had to get away. She slipped out in the dead of night because she trusted none of us to allow her the freedom she hungers for. Let her have her freedom, before we smother her to death.”

  “A freedom that has the potential to get her killed?” he asked her wearily. “I understand the need, Mercedes, more than you know. But you know what nearly happened to Eve last summer. If someone targets one of the other girls in retaliation, and there’s no one there to protect them, what do we do then?”

  “We pray that doesn’t happen,” she whispered as the concern in her gaze threatened to turn to pure fear. “But you also have to understand, Dawg: Piper’s not a liar; nor is she one to make decisions such as this rashly. She was driven to it.”

  He had driven her to it. He could hear the accusation in her tone.

  Christa had warned him more than once that the girls were going to rebel against his protection and begin making decisions that would only endanger them. He hadn’t believed they would do so without first confronting him.

  His sisters were fighters; they weren’t cowards.

  “How can you be certain she’s safe?” he finally asked her worriedly.

  “I can’t, Dawg.” Her smile was gentle, compassionate. “All I can do is pray that if she’s in trouble she’ll call me. That and trust in the man Timothy has watching her.” She winked at him. “Watching her, Dawg. Allowing her to do what she has to do, what she wants to do, while an impartial third person stands ready to protect her rather than standing between her and what she needs. That’s the difference.”

  He shook his head, worry tearing at him as he stared down at her, wishing, just as he had over the past six years, that he’d been able to protect Mercedes and the sisters he’d grown to love so much from his father’s cruelties before he had died.

  He hadn’t known about them. No one had known about them but Chandler Mackay, and Chandler had done nothing to ensure their protection should anything happen to him.

  “They’ll still get hurt.” That was part of what he couldn’t bear. “If not physically, then otherwise. They’re too trusting, Mercedes, and too innocent. If we don’t watch out for them—”