Nauti Temptress

“What are you going to do?” he asked gently.



What was she supposed to do?



She shrugged, wiping at her tears again. “I’m really mad at you, too,” she informed him, her voice hoarse from the tears she’d shed. “I’m not a baby, Dawg. You could have told me, and I would have stayed away from him.”



“Would you have?” Gentle amusement filled his voice. “You knew him so well you didn’t know he was working something?”



“Of course I did.” Indignation filled the tears. “I knew he was working something, but I thought he was doing the surveillance.”



“What surveillance?” Drawing back, Dawg stared at her in surprise as she wiped at her tears again.



“The surveillance on Judge Kiser.” She sniffed again.



“Who has surveillance on Judge Kiser?” He frowned, obviously either unaware of the surveillance or trying to hide his knowledge of it.



“I don’t know who does.” She shook her head. “It’s not like they introduce themselves, Dawg.”



“How do you know about it then?” he demanded instead, frowning back at her.



Maybe he didn’t know about it.



“I heard Jed outside the other night.” She had to smile at the thought of it. “You can’t convince these city boys how sound travels at night, can you? He was around the side of the house talking on his cell phone about the surveillance on Judge Kiser. Do you think it has anything to do with his connections to the Freedom League?”



“He’s connected to the Freedom League?” Dawg was trying to hide his shock.



“Damn, Dawg, I thought you knew everything that was going on.” She actually managed a laugh.



Dawg shook his head. “How’s Kiser connected to the Freedom League?”



She actually sat back and stared at him in surprise. “You really don’t know about this, do you?”



“I really didn’t know about this,” he agreed, disbelief echoing in his voice.



“Oh, well, maybe you’d better check into it.” She smiled back at him, though it was short, and she knew it.



Turning her gaze to her lap once again, she watched as she twisted her fingers together.



“I wish I could fix this,” she whispered, her tears finally no longer falling. “I wish I could go back and understand things better. I would fix it.”



“How would you do that?” he asked softly.



“I would have stayed away from him,” she insisted, looking up to meet the somber compassion in his gaze. “It was my fault, Dawg. It wasn’t his.”



The shake of his head was followed by his strong arms wrapping around her as he pulled her to his hard chest. “It wasn’t your fault either, little sister. It wasn’t your fault either.”



Dawg stared across the living room, glaring at the wall, fighting to hold back the anger brewing inside him. He’d grown, he realized. Christa had actually managed to mature him a little bit, because he wasn’t storming out to kill the little bastard. He was still sitting here, comforting his sister and considering the best way to handle the situation.



His best bet, though, was to kill the little bastard.



Or at least beat the shit out of him.



Unfortunately, he had a very bad feeling he was going to have to settle for a forcible discussion with Mr. Campbell.



A very forcible discussion.



SEVENTEEN



Entering the inn through the front entrance the next day, something she rarely did, Eve started toward the stairs that led to the main residence, and her mother’s rooms.



“Eve, sweetie, did you need something?” Her mother stepped from the kitchen into the dining room and called out to her.



Stepping back, Eve turned and entered the dining room, moving to her mother.



“Are you busy, Momma?”



Of course, her mother was always busy. Mercedes Mackay wasn’t a person who could tolerate sitting still for long periods of time. Unless she was asleep.



“Of course not, I was just making pies for dessert tomorrow. Come into the kitchen.”



She almost laughed. Her mother didn’t consider baking pies a chore?



Stepping into the kitchen, Eve moved to the counter in front of the wide center aisle in the middle of the kitchen floor and pulled a stool from beneath the attached counter.



Taking her seat, she watched as her mother rolled the pie dough carefully, Eve’s mouth already watering for the taste of the flaky crust she knew would emerge once her mother was finished.



“Is everything okay, Eve?” Mercedes paused in her pie prep, her gaze intent on her daughter’s face. “Are you okay, baby?”



“I’m fine.” She nodded as she drew her hands from the counter and clasped them underneath it.



“No, you’re not,” her mother guessed. “If you were, you wouldn’t be hiding your fists under the counter, and your eyes wouldn’t look like bruised emeralds.”



Eve blinked back the emotion threatening to fill the eyes that were already betraying her with the tears that never seemed far away.



“And now you’re on the verge of tears.” More than a little concerned now, Mercedes set the pie dough to the side, washed her hands quickly at the small sink in the counter before drying them and moving to where her daughter sat on the other side. Pulling herself to the bar stool beside Eve, she drew Eve’s fists from beneath the counter. They were so tight her knuckles were white. Running her hand gently over them, Mercedes watched Eve silently for long moments.



When the words started pouring from Eve, she couldn’t stop them. All the things she couldn’t tell Dawg while they talked spilled out to her mother: the pain, that sense of being so fully connected to Brogan that no one else in the world existed, the sure and certain knowledge that he cared for her, cared for her deeply, and Eve’s certainty that he would turn her away.



“It’s like he was determined to push me away, even as he pulled me to him,” she grieved, her heart so heavy in her chest that the physical ache was draining. “I don’t know what to do, Momma,” she whispered, staring back at her mother almost pleadingly. “I don’t know how to just let him go. I don’t know how to give up, because he already owns so much of me, I don’t know whether my heart would survive just giving up.”



Yet she didn’t know what else to do. Brogan had been gone for over a week now, and though Jed and Eli were still in town, they were rarely in their suites either.



Mercedes listened, her heart breaking for her daughter and for Brogan.



He was a good man. She knew he was. Her Tim thought very highly of him, and Tim was an excellent judge of character. But just because he was a good man didn’t make him a man who knew how to care for a precious heart given to him.



“Do you think you’re pregnant, Eve?” Mercedes asked then.



“Well, now, Momma, I’ve never been pregnant, so I don’t really know,” Eve exclaimed in frustration. “How do you know?”



Mercedes’s eyes darkened with concern, though there was a glimmer of excitement in the depths, Eve noticed. “You can feel it, Eve. From the first day, if you’re still and just think of the child that could be growing inside you, you find you can just feel your child.” Reaching out, she cupped Eve’s cheek with her palm. “I knew the moment I conceived you,” she whispered. “Chandler had left that morning, and there I sat in the house without him, terrified of being alone in a strange country, unable to understand the people’s language or their ways, and I was so very frightened.” The memory of those years haunted her mother, Eve knew.



“I was sitting there at the kitchen table watching the sun rise, spreading its warmth across the canyons and buttes, reaching out for the house. It slipped through the windows, edged over the floor, and I watched as it inched a trail across the kitchen, coming nearer each moment.” She laughed. “One ray was very adventurous. It slipped over my bare foot, moved up my leg. . . .” Her mother touched her stomach as though remembering that moment. “The moment it reached me here”—moving her hands, she pressed her fingers to her abdomen, her face lighting in joy as though she had returned to that moment—“I felt you then,” she whispered. “My first. There was this warmth, like the sun had sunk inside me to touch you. And I knew I would no longer be alone. My child would be with me, and she would fill my heart.”



Eve marveled at the expression on her mother’s face and the love that seemed to transform every inch of it.



“But, Momma,” she whispered. “He raped you. Over and over again, in his attempt to force you to breed sons.”



“But I didn’t have sons, did I?” Mercedes reminded her with tender emphasis. “I had my beautiful, beautiful daughters, and through all these years they have sustained me.”



“You could have gone to school, Momma,” Eve protested. “A real school.”



“I could have been returned to Guatemala, just as Chandler threatened to do, but I was not,” her mother pointed out before clasping both her hands and staring into her daughter’s eyes. “Love him if you must; release him if you must, because you cannot hold one who does not feel the death of all he is inside, without you. If he does not feel that way at the thought of losing you, then you do not need him, precious. You deserve far better. If you carry his child, then treasure it; give it all the love you will find exists inside you the day your baby is born. But”—holding Eve’s hands tighter as she leaned closer, her momma sharpened her gaze, making it harder—“do not let him steal your soul, Eve. He can hold your heart and your woman’s spirit, but if you let him steal your soul, then you and your babe will only suffer for the loss. Your sense of adventure, your independence, and your love of the world you’ve created for yourself are yours alone. No one can take this from you if you do not allow it.”



Eve stared back at her mother in confusion. “What do you mean?” But she had a feeling she understood completely.



“Ah, Eve, you know what I mean,” she whispered. “You are letting this man steal your soul and it should not be his to own, unless he gives his in return. As long as you have that part of you, you will always have the will to ensure that he never breaks you, or breaks the joy you find with your child.”



Eve’s lips trembled for a moment before she found herself suddenly dry-eyed, that core of strength that had always sustained her finally awakening again with a vengeance.



“I can live without him,” she agreed.



Her mother’s fingers trailed over her cheek as an approving smile shaped her lips and filled her golden brown eyes. “You will weep often,” her mother assured her. “You will rage and you will cry and you will ask God why. But you will always find yourself again, and you will never sell your soul to a man who cannot love you. If he cannot love you with all his heart and all his spirit as well, then you are better off without him.”



Eve nodded. Reaching out, she wrapped her arms around her mother and held on tight. “I love you, Momma,” she whispered.



“And I love you, my Eve,” her mother swore, hugging her just as fiercely. “And if you carry his child and he does not wish to be a part of your lives, then your sisters and I will surround you and that precious babe with all the love you could ever need. I promise you this.”



Eve nodded against her mother’s shoulder as a single tear escaped.



The last one, she knew. The last one for the child she had been until that final maturity had occurred in Brogan’s arms. One last tear for what might not be, and what she may not ever be able to fix.



She could love him, and she did love him.



But she would never again lose herself for fear of his walking away.



Or for fear of his taking her heart with him.



* * *