“Maybe I should just return to my room.” She felt a bit hollow inside now, as though some part of her had just been cruelly ripped from her chest.
He wasn’t saying he loved her. He wasn’t mentioning caring for her. There was no hint of commitment or anything other than the fact that he had been watching her and she had driven him crazy.
“What the hell do you want from me?” she asked as she finished dressing and turned back to him, aching inside with the knowledge that she could be losing what she hadn’t even known she’d so desperately needed.
“I want you to stop being frightened of me, to start with,” he demanded.
“Then don’t pull this crap on me.” Turning on him fully, her arms propped on her hips, Piper confronted him as she had never confronted her brother. “For God’s sake, Jed, I never knew what the hell you’ve wanted from me. You flirted, you smiled, yet you never asked me out or gave me so much as a hint that you wanted more than a one-night stand. Or is that all you wanted?”
Heated anger was brewing inside her, rising to the surface and threatening to break free of the shield she normally kept surrounding it.
“What do you think I wanted?” Dark emotion filled his expression and his eyes, warning her of the thin ice she might be stepping onto.
She’d never heeded the warnings from Jed, though, so why start now?
Why should she even attempt to make excuses to herself, let alone to him, Dawg, or anyone else? she thought furiously as she watched him hit the remote, turning the television off before throwing the remote to the bed.
“You think I’ve driven myself insane trying to hold back, trying to ensure you have the space you need to deal with your brother and decide what you want with me, just to stop with a fucking one-night stand?” Jed growled.
He moved so fast there was no avoiding him.
His hands were on her shoulders first, jerking her to him before one arm wrapped around her waist to hold her against his hard body while his free hand slid into her hair, clenched, and pulled her head back.
“You make me feel like a fucking caveman,” he rasped. Power, hunger, and something much deeper echoed in his voice and gleamed in his eyes. “Son of a bitch, Piper, you make me feel things I’ve never felt before, and I have no idea how to fucking deal with them.”
Her eyes widened.
“What do I make you feel, Jed?”
His lips parted, but what he would have said, she didn’t know.
“How very sweet.”
That voice.
Grating. Harsh.
She knew it. It echoed in her head and slammed through her memories with the force of a sledgehammer.
Jed’s eyes narrowed as he released her, turning as he used one arm to keep her behind him.
It was the nightmare she’d had nightly since the attack in New York. The face she could never remember. The vision of horror and pain she hadn’t been able to escape.
The man was pockmarked, a scar running through the left side of his upper lip and bisecting a weak chin. Thinning dark brown hair and muscular shoulders combined with mean, cold hazel eyes and a gun leveled at Jed’s chest.
“You’re a stupid man.” Jed seemed to sigh, but she could feel the dangerous fury building in his body.
“How do you figure that?” Thin lips curled into a sneer as bulky shoulders shifted beneath a light jacket that strained across them. “I slipped in on you, didn’t I?”
“Did you?” Was that amusement in Jed’s voice?
The other man chuckled. “Why don’t you just move away from the little girlie there,” he suggested. “She can run over to the next room and collect all those jewels she got in New York and bring them back to me. I might let you live if she hurries. And if she brings them all.”
Jed was slowly shaking his head. Piper gripped his waist with one hand as the other balled into a fist and pressed against his back. Fear rose inside her and threatened to steal her breath. An ugly flash of life without Jed slammed through her imagination and left her fighting back tears.
“How do I know you don’t have someone waiting in her room?” Jed asked, as though he hadn’t just been watching the complete emptiness of her suite.
“Doesn’t matter; we’ll both want the same thing,” the man stated, his voice harsh as he advanced another step. “Now, does she go after those jewels or do I kill you? Then her.” A smile twisted his lips as the mocking question passed them. “Or I could just hurt you a little bit to show her I mean business.” He aimed the gun at Jed’s kneecap.
“No need to go that far,” Jed drawled, as though it were all a game. “She can just do as you ask.”
She knew Jed’s voice. She knew the passion-rich sound of hunger in it as well as the icy slide of a warning. And the warning in his tone was unmistakable.
“I thought that might be the case.” The intruder’s smile was a terrifying grimace as he glanced to Jed’s side to peek around at her.
He chuckled with a grating rasp. “It’s nice to see you’ve healed from our last meeting. I’ve always thought it a rather wasted effort to add more damage before the old bruises have healed.”
And he appeared to enjoy the thought of adding those bruises.
He had every intention of killing them. Piper could see it in the pure anticipation in his gaze. Cruelty was inherent in the man’s face, and in her memory of his heavy blows landing against her undefended body.
“Go on, Ms. Mackay,” he ordered her softly, waving the gun toward the door between Jed’s room and her own. “Collect all the jewels now. Miss any and he’ll die.”
“How would I know?” Licking her dry lips, she didn’t have to pretend pure terror; it was there, slapping her in the face. “They’re mixed in with the rest of the stones.”
Evil hazel eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? Mixed in with the other stones?”
“The stones I bought at the craft store.” Forcing the words past her lips, she tried to hold back the quaver in her voice. “I thought they were the fake stones I’d bought.”
For the briefest second surprised disbelief filled the man’s gaze before a cackle of laughter left his lips.
“Son of a bitch.” The laughter was almost a wheeze. “Why am I even surprised? You look about that stupid, bitch.”
Stupid?
The gun still aimed at Jed’s knee was all that kept her mouth shut as she stared back at him.
He might think she was stupid, but she knew he was fucking ugly. She could fake smart if that were true, but there was no way in hell he could fake pretty, she thought mockingly, fighting to hold back her fear.
She wasn’t stupid, though. What she was, was doing everything she could to buy enough time for Jed to figure their way out of this one.
“Well, I suggest you learn how to identify the real stuff and separate it from the fakes really fast,” he suggested, his voice lowering and echoing with cruelty. “You have about four minutes to get that cute little ass back in here before I start putting holes in your man.” He waved the gun at Jed’s knee before lifting it to Jed’s heart and smiling back at her.
Everything inside her was shaking, trembling in fear now, while Jed’s complete stillness had wariness growing inside her.
He was up to something; she could feel it.
She knew Jed. He wasn’t moving; nor was he taunting.
“I’ll just get them all.”
“Make sure you turn the lights out,” Jed suddenly advised her.
Piper paused.
“What fucking lights?” Fury echoed in the gunman’s voice. The lights went out and the darkness exploded around her.
Piper found herself thrown to the floor a breath before the explosive report of a weapon echoed through the room.
Riding close on the sound of the gun’s discharge, shattering glass from the mirror above the dresser began raining down on her, biting sharply against the bare flesh of her arms.
She covered her head until the stinging storm ceased, then scrambled across the room on her hands and knees, glass pricking into her palms and knees as the sound of an enraged fight could be heard ahead of her.
She had to find Jed.
“Stay in place, Piper,” Jed yelled out a second before a hard grunt was heard. “Stay where you are, dammit.”
She pushed herself against the wall as she glared into the darkness, her hand pressing against a large shard of the glass on the floor. Curling her fingers around it, she lifted it, holding it against her just in case she might need it.
A second later a shadow hurled itself toward her as though propelled by some unseen force.
Or Jed’s fist.
The wide body of her assailant—or her would-be killer—slammed into the wall beside her.
Fury surged through Piper at the knowledge of who it was bouncing against the wall. Gripping the glass tighter in her hand, she struck out and buried the arrowed point of the glass into the brute’s back. Or maybe it was his shoulder?
She wasn’t certain which.
The second she slammed it home she tried to move out of his way. The fist was faster than her self-preservation instincts, though. A hard fist in her direction slammed into her shoulder, throwing her off balance and sending her pitching to the floor, her hands scraping against the glass that covered the carpet.
“Dammit, Piper.” Affectionate frustration filled Jed’s voice and covered that underlying well of complete fury she sensed.
She couldn’t see a damned thing, but suddenly Jed was picking her up and throwing them both to the side as the report of the weapon blasted through the room once again.
An animalistic growl left Jed’s throat as he pushed her halfway beneath the bed, then jumped across it.
The gun went off again as raised voices outside the room could be heard. A high-pitched male scream sounded, and then for the space of a few short seconds, there was unbearable silence.
Piper stared across the bed, desperate to see Jed’s shadow moving, to see some kind of movement that she could attribute to him.
Without him, she was lost.
She felt lost.
Terror squeezed her heart like a furious vise and left her breathless as she glared over the bed, determined to see him alive. She had to see him alive.
Her lips parted to call out to him at the same moment the lights flipped on, shocking her senses.
Piper dropped down and beneath the bed, rolling to peep from beneath the bed skirt at the overly large feet suddenly rushing around the room.
“Dammit, Piper.” Hard hands shoved beneath the bed and gripped her wrists, and she glimpsed Jed’s bruised face as he pulled her from beneath the bed and dragged her against the hard width of his chest.
Piper pressed one hand against his heart as she pressed her face into his neck, concentrating on the beating of his heart against her palm.
He was alive.
That was all she could think, all she could allow herself to focus on.
He was alive.
“Hell!” Tim’s voice echoed above her with his characteristic mocking frustration. “Only a Mackay could cause this kind of commotion and still fucking live through it.”
“Hey.” Dawg’s protest was a rasping growl. “I think I resemble that remark.”
“Resent, Dawg,” Rowdy repeated the response he’d been repeating for years. “You’re supposed to resent that remark.”
“I’ll resent it when it stops happening.” Dawg sighed.
Lifting her head from Jed’s shoulder, Piper looked around, her eyes widening.
The large mirror over the dresser was shattered and lying in bits and sharp pieces in front of the oak dresser. The window across the room was missing a wide section and spiderwebbed with long cracks.
The flat-screen television was missing its screen and hung lopsided now, its pieces littering the floor. The chair was upended, along with the bedside table, lamp, and clock. Amid all of it, unconscious or dead—she didn’t care which—the broad form of the man who had attacked her in New York lay sprawled, still and silent.