“What?”
“The D word,” Natches bit out. “Take it back, Alex. You little bastard, don’t make me kill you.”
Alex laughed. “Scared, Natches?”
“Shaking in my fucking boots,” Natches whispered, slowly moving again, heading for his motorcycle.
“Oh Lord, I’m shaking in my fucking boots.”
“I swear, Janey, I think either your computer has been hacked or someone managed to get into it.”
Rogue stepped back from the desk, a cup of coffee in hand as Janey disconnected the call with Alex.
She looked at the security system next to the door of the office thoughtfully. She knew Alex had tweaked the security, said it would be harder to bypass now. Someone had gotten into her apartment easily enough; it would be entirely possible that the stalker had gotten into her office.
“This is going to turn into a headache.” She sighed as Rogue brought her coffee over to the seating area
and lounged back in the very same chair Alex had taken her in the night before.
She was so glad she had thought to use cleaner on the leather furniture. She could just imagine her horror if Natches had sat in it before she cleaned it. Oh Lord. Her head was a mess. Alex had messed her up bad last night and she wasn’t recovering very well.
“I can see you’re enjoying cohabitation with the luscious soldier you’re hiding upstairs.” Rogue grinned, glancing at her neck. “You did a good job masking it. Almost.”
Janey rested her elbows on her knees and pushed her fingers through her hair in irritation. “Thanks, Rogue,” she muttered.
“Come on, Janey. It’s cute.” She laughed. “But I hear his is even better. A real branding.”
Janey groaned. “Stop. He’s on his way over here. He’ll know we’ve been talking about him if you keep this up.”
“He reads minds?” Rogue’s brow arched.
“Probably.” She restrained a shiver. Last night, he’d sure read hers. He’d taken what she’d given him and built on it until it blew her mind. Now here she was, a mindless waste without a hope of repairing the damage before he walked through the door.
“Gossips are going crazy, my friend,” Rogue drawled. “No one’s figured out who’s doing you yet. It’s killing them.”
“The gossips are always going crazy over something.” Janey shook her head and stared back at Rogue.
Long red gold curls seethed from the crown of her head and flowed down her back. Dressed in jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved T-shirt, she looked like a wild, untamed pixie.
“Yeah, but this gossip is getting weird.” Rogue shook her head in confusion. “I’d have expected that little manager of yours, Hoyt, to be accused of it, but no one breathes his name.”
“Hoyt?” she gasped. “Hoyt’s a sweetheart. Everyone loves him. Besides, he’s too young for me.”
“He’s your age, Janey.” Rogue laughed. “You’re just too fixated on that whole older-man thing.”
No, she was fixated on Alex. That was her problem.
She groaned in frustration. “I should have stayed in California.”
“And miss all the fun here?” Rogue laughed. “Really, Janey, that’s so selfish of you, wanting your privacy and peace over our entertainment. Alex should spank you.”
She flushed to the roots of her hair as Rogue squealed in glee.
“Oh my God, has he spanked you?”
“No!” She glared at her friend. “Leave me alone. You’re too bad, Rogue.”
“You liar.” Rogue laughed, amusement sparkling in her violet eyes. “He spanked you, didn’t he?”
Did those few little slaps last night count? Oh hell yes they did, because she wanted more.
“He didn’t spank me. Now stop. This is embarrassing.”
“Only because you never had a real friend before.” Rogue waved her comment away as she propped her feet on the glass coffee table and wagged her brows suggestively. “You should give me all the deets, you know. That way, I can look bored and uninterested when all the good juicy gossip pours in. I can be a mystery, and let everyone think I know absolutely more than they do, which I will. It ups my standing in the little demi-community I live within.”
The demi-community, as Rogue called it, consisted of bikers and misfits, criminals and troublemakers.
Somehow, Rogue knew all of them.
“I think you can manage to make them believe you know even when you don’t,” Janey pointed out. “You don’t need deets.”
“But deets make it much more fun.” Rogue sighed heavily. “Oh well, since you refuse to accommodate me . . . Do you think Alex will bring that sexy sheriff with him?” She lifted her brows suggestively.
“I’d guess he’ll bring Natches with him if you saw his motorcycle in Alex’s driveway this morning.”
“Yes. I did. All that testosterone in one place.” Rogue gave a false shiver of pleasure. “It’s enough to make a woman have naughty thoughts.”
“Try living with all that testosterone.” Janey sighed. “You’ll change your mind fast.”
“No doubt.” Rogue cocked her head and listened as Janey heard the deep throb of a Harley pulling into the back lot. “Sounds like that testosterone is about to invade your office.”
“They fight,” Janey muttered. “They’re making me crazy.”
“Like two little boys over a toy.” Rogue’s laughter was light and compassionate. “Poor Janey. All that love and she doesn’t know what to do with it.”
Janey gave her a sharp look. Rogue grimaced and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that’s all my bitterness coming out. Ignore me.”
It wasn’t the first time Rogue had made a remark, or given that explanation for it. Rogue had her
“daddy,” who sent her presents, gifts, and pretty clothes. And he left her in Somerset to face the hell Nadine Grace had built for her when Rogue first arrived in town, as a teacher of all things.
Lena Rogue Walker had come into town as a high school teacher, and her first day on the job, Nadine Grace had invaded her schoolroom, along with the principal, demanding to know if Rogue was related to the Walkers that lived near the county line. Rumored moonshiners, a hard-drinking, rough-living lot that Johnny Grace had once tried to steal from.
Unfortunately, Rogue had been related to them. Her father was one of them, though he had left before the trouble with Johnny, and made a small fortune in electronics and the stock market.
What happened in the months after that had become Rogue’s personal nightmare, and still had the power to leave her shaking in fear, Janey knew.
Maybe it was the reason they were drawn to each other as friends. A similar hell. Nightmarish visions they couldn’t always separate in their dreams, and couldn’t forget while they were awake.
Whatever the reason, they had survived, and despite the other woman’s harder edge, Janey was coming to trust her as the only true friend she’d ever had.
Rising to her feet, Janey smoothed her hands down the sides of her jeans and straightened the snug T-shirt she wore before opening the door.
Right on time. Natches and Alex walked into the office. Both were scowling and neither seemed in a pleasant mood.
“Rogue, how did I know the two of you would end up hooking up?” Natches grinned when he saw the other woman. “Come here and give us a hug, sugar.”
Rogue was out of her chair and squealing like a little girl. “Oh boy, when the hags in town hear you gave me a hug, they’re going to be so green.”
She all but jumped into his arms as he laughed at her. When he set her back on her feet, he wagged his finger at her. “No gossip. Chaya will kick my ass.”
“You’ll love every minute of it.” Rogue wrinkled her nose as she turned away and lifted her bag from the coffee table, before turning to Alex. “Hey, stud, someone either hacked her ’puter or they manually inserted a bad boy virus that’s fucking with her. It’s beyond me.”
Alex paused at the desk and turned to Janey, his expression tight and controlled. “You called her first?”
Janey shrugged. “She was coming over this morning anyway.”
The look in his eye assured her that he wasn’t pleased that she hadn’t called him first.
“Looks like Rogue kept your chair warm for you, Alex.” Natches poked at him with a gleeful laugh.
“I am so out of here.” Rogue laughed as she turned to Janey and shook her head in sympathy. “Good luck, girlfriend. I don’t think I envy you after all.”
The door closed behind her as Janey watched Alex and Natches. Tension was riding high between the two men, and it had the power to make the back of her neck tingle.
“What’s going on?” she asked her brother.
Natches ran his hand over the back of his neck as he turned to Alex, glaring at him.
Janey felt like shaking her head as Alex stared back at her brother coolly.
Alex shook his head as he came around the desk, pulled a folded envelope from the pocket at the side of his duffel bag, and handed it to her as he pulled his jacket off.
Staring at the two men suspiciously, she lifted the envelope. “What’s this?”
“Someone left Natches a picture of us,” Alex told her quietly. “The night I went up to your apartment with you. They snapped a picture from the empty second-story room in the building across the street.”
The abandoned store across the street. Okay, this shouldn’t be too bad. A picture of them. They had kissed, but nothing else.
She glanced at Natches’s closed face before drawing the photo free from the envelope. She stared at it silently.
Oh, that didn’t look good. Her lips twitched at the sight of the hold Alex had on her. It was dominant, powerful. She lifted her eyes to him. “You’re still walking. Chaya must have a good influence on Natches.”
Alex grunted at that. “Read the letter.”
She was pulling the letter free. She blinked at the words and then lifted her gaze back to him and drawled, “I’m so naughty. Should I be spanked? Or killed?”
Natches’s muttered curse almost had her smiling, but the tight knot of fear growing in her stomach wouldn’t allow for it.
She tossed the papers to the table and pushed her fingers through her hair as she sat back on the couch and breathed out roughly.
“So what do we do now?”
“You come back to the boat,” Natches bit out.
“And endanger your wife and child?” she asked him.
He stared back at her in disbelief. “Excuse me here, Janey? Mackay Marina. Smack-dab in the middle of the Mackay dock? I don’t hardly think so. No one would dare try to strike out at you there, and we’d catch whoever was watching you.”
“Well, let’s see,” she mused. “There’s the drive to work. And back. Back is the kicker. Sometimes I don’t leave this office until after one. Then there’s the fact I have to be here early for deliveries. Speaking of which, I hope you have some cash on you. Desmond’s fresh vegetables are due any minute, and I don’t have my computer running for the check printout.” She looked at Alex as he stared back at her, his expression brooding. “Is it running?”
“Not yet.” His smile was hard.
Janey looked at the computer and back to him with a sigh.
“I need some money, Natches. I have several deliveries coming in this morning and no way to pay for them.”
Alex moved to the computer as her brother glared at her.
“Moving from here isn’t an option,” she told him firmly. “We’ve discussed this.”
He sat down in the chair across from her. Thank God it wasn’t the one Alex had done her in.