Cranston sighed heavily. “The doctors aren’t certain, but she’s refused to see the specialists she’s been referred to.”
“Why?”
Cranston’s jaw tightened, a muscle ticking at the side furiously. “No insurance and no money, Rowdy. I told you, once Homeland Security found that Cayman account two years ago, they’ve had to live on what she had saved and the money she made working three jobs. She refused to let the girls work. The girls weren’t even aware Mercedes was no longer receiving the money until DHS showed up at the house and threw them out.”
Rowdy started to say more, but the sight of three concerned women moving quickly across the parking lot had a grimace pulling at his lips before he turned to his cousins. “Shopping trip’s over,” he announced, nodding toward their wives as they moved purposefully for the office.
“Where the hell were they?” Natches rubbed his jaw in confusion.
“My guess, close enough to see why the hell we tried to push them into going shopping this morning.” Rowdy sighed. “We’re getting out of practice, boys.”
“I thought someone was calling a doctor.” The little powerhouse who had interrupted the meeting earlier stood from where she had been kneeling next to her mother.
“Zoey, enough,” Mercedes chastised her. “Where are your manners?”
“They promised, Momma.” Pleading with her eyes, clearly afraid for her mother’s health.
“I sent the text,” Rowdy promised her. “His nurse just texted back.”
He handed the girl the phone.
“Half an hour.” She murmured the nurse’s reply before handing the phone back to him and staring up at him with eyes the same pale, intense green of Dawg’s, yet in this child’s eyes lurked a deep, haunting fear he knew he’d see in his nightmares.
Her celadon eyes were surrounded by a wealth of long, heavy black lashes, he noticed. She was a beauty already, and keeping the wild hearts and even wilder men away from her for the rest of her life wouldn’t be easy, Rowdy thought in resignation.
And there was no doubt she was a Mackay.
If he had seen any of the four girls on the street at any time, he would have known he was looking at the daughter of a Mackay. The dark looks were simply unmistakable.
As Rowdy pushed the phone back into the holster at his side, the door to the office was pushed inward and three concerned, though borderline furious Mackay wives were moving into the room.
Kelly, whose gentle features had matured in the past five years since her daughter’s birth, though she still looked far too young for her husband Rowdy’s experienced features.
Chaya, Natches’s wife, whose brows were drawn into a frown, her brown eyes going between Eve, Piper, Lyrica, and Zoey in suspicion before dropping to Mercedes Mackay.
But Dawg’s wife, Christa, was stark pale, so white-faced Dawg moved for her instantly.
“No, no, no, no.” He shook his head desperately as her eyes began to fill with tears. “Oh, hell, no, baby. Sisters. They’re my sisters, not my kids. I swear. Sisters, Christa.”
Her gaze moved to him slowly, reluctantly. She frowned deeply, though her face was still stark white as she slowly shook her head.
“This is all Timothy’s fault.” He glared at Timothy before pointing his finger at the not-so-fat little bastard as Timothy stared back at him in confusion.
“What’s my fault?” Timothy glared back at him, obviously offended by the accusation.
The four girls and their mother were staring at him as though he had dropped into the room from outer space, while Rowdy and Natches simply watched him warily.
Christa swallowed tightly. “I don’t think they’re your daughters,” she whispered.
“Then what’s wrong?” he demanded. “You’re as white as a damned sheet.”
She shook her head and turned back to the four girls again. “Oh, my God, Dawg, what did Chandler Mackay do? They could be, your twins,” she whispered. “As though they were cloned from you.”
“Oh, God, just shoot me now,” Zoey spat in disgust.
“Momma, I don’t think I can ever forgive you.” Eve sighed.
“At least it’s him we looked cloned from and not one of the other two,” Lyrica said with a grunt. “That would have sucked.”
“It still sucks,” Piper assured her younger sister.
“Brats,” Rowdy murmured, though there was no heat in his tone; he actually seemed rather amused.
“Brats? Try bitches.” Natches grunted, his gaze carefully shuttered, though Dawg could detect the amusement. “And that little one works at it, too.”
“But not very hard.” Zoey slid him an arch, cool look. “If I had, trust me, you’d know it.”
The girl’s comment had Kelly’s, Christa’s, and Chaya’s gazes moving then to Timothy. Then they shifted instantly to the woman stretched out on the couch.
Hell, Dawg thought, this woman didn’t look old enough to be the mother of the four obvious hellions staring back at the Mackay wives.
“Natches, sweetheart, what’s Cranston doing here?” Chaya, one of Cranston’s former agents, stepped to her husband and let him pull her close to his side.
As she did so, Kelly stepped to Rowdy, while Christa moved to Dawg’s side and gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek. It was the look on his face, Rowdy thought, that look of blank devastation in his gaze that had Christa bestowing a kiss to assure him there was nothing for him to worry about.“It would appear we’ve added to the family,” Natches told his wife softly. “Meet Dawg’s sisters. I’m certain they’ll introduce themselves as soon as Doc gets here to check out their mother.”
Timothy wiped Mercedes’s face again. Rowdy could have sworn the leprechaun’s hand was shaking.
“What did you do, Mercedes?” he asked her gently. “Didn’t you rest last night?”
Mercedes’s lush lips almost tilted into a smile. “What do you think, Tim?” she asked, forcing her eyes open.
Tim?
No one, but no one, had ever been allowed to call Timothy Cranston “Tim.”
“I think you were up all night pacing and worrying.” He sighed. “I told you there was nothing to worry about.”
“Is there not?” she asked him sorrowfully. “Chandler’s son is suddenly besieged by four young females he knew nothing of, and a sick mother to boot? Ah, Tim, do you not know human nature far better than this?”
“I know the Mackays far better than this,” he assured her, praying he was right. “And the Mackays do not turn their backs on family.”
The look he slid them assured the Mackays that they’d better not start now.
“Is Doc on his way, then?” Christa asked Dawg as his hand tightened on her hip, his need to draw her closer evident.
“Half hour, his nurse said.”
“Twenty minutes then.” She nodded.
Dawg watched the young woman; hell, she had four grown daughters and she was younger than he was. He watched her, watched her daughters, and in their eyes he saw pure, raw fear.
“Cranston, what do the doctors who have suggested a specialist say could be wrong with her?” Dawg asked; the low rasp of the tone wasn’t lost on the former agent.
Cranston swallowed tightly, the action at first almost unnoticed. But the slight flinch of his facial muscles wasn’t missed by Dawg.
“They think she could have an advanced form of chemical poisoning that’s slowly weakening her lungs. One of the jobs she had was at an industrial chemical processing plant that’s since been shut down for its unsafe working conditions.” Clearing his throat of obvious emotion, he lifted his gaze to Dawg’s, and no one missed the plea in his eyes. “The treatments she needs are expensive—”
“Timothy, no.” Pride was evident in Mercedes’s weak voice as she laid her hand on his arm. “Let’s not talk of this. Let the girls and their brother talk.”
“Mercedes, I won’t let you lie here and suffer,” he snarled, his voice hoarse and filled with emotion. “Not anymore.”
Timothy Cranston was in love.
Dawg lifted his gaze from Cranston, only to realize the four girls were watching him suspiciously, fearfully. There wasn’t one of them who didn’t expect him to turn them away.
“Doc’s here,” Christa stated as a vehicle pulled up in front of the door. “He’s early. He must have already left the office.”
Dawg nodded. “Let’s get your mother taken care of,” he told the girls. “Once we have her checked out, we’ll talk.” His gaze dropped to Cranston’s again before lifting back to the girls. “But have no doubt: You’re family. And we stick by family.”
“One of you killed your cousin,” the eldest stated. “I heard one of the agents talking about it after we arrived at Tim’s. Is that how you take care of family?”
She might have resembled Dawg enough to be his kid, but it was Natches’s emerald eyes she stared at him from.
“Eve.” Her mother gasped, obviously shocked by her daughter’s rudeness.
Dawg just gave Eve a mocking smile as his hand tightened at Christa’s hip once again. “Only those who betray us and have a gun trained on the someone we love,” he assured her. “Then, Eve, trust me, it didn’t matter who he was then; Johnny was dead.”
Eve’s nostrils flared before she finally relaxed enough to simply nod her head.
“Mackays don’t betray one another.” Cranston tore his gaze from their mother long enough to stare back at each girl with a glint of steel in his eyes. “Remember that, girls. You stand for who you are, what you are, and for family. That’s what your mother’s taught you, and that’s what you live by.”
“Only if you stand for us first,” Lyrica spoke up warily.
Dawg nodded. “Understandable. And we’ll show you our good faith.” He glanced to Natches and Rowdy. Each of his cousins nodded in turn. “We’ll take care of you and your mother, because you’re family, and that’s what families do. Whatever treatments your mother needs, whatever care, she’ll have it. Just as you’ll return to school and do your part.”
“In return for what?” the other girl asked suspiciously.
“In return for being part of the family,” Dawg growled back at her. “I just told you that. Loyalty begins somewhere, and I’ll make that first step. From here on out it’s up to you. But betray us or yourselves, hurt us, yourselves, or another of the family, and you’ll risk all of it. Come to us, talk to us, and we’ll help you the best way we can. But you don’t lie to us, you don’t cheat us, and you don’t dare betray one of us.”
What the hell was he supposed to do with four sisters?
Each girl nodded before the door opened, heralding the doctor and his nurse. Within an hour an ambulance arrived and, with Cranston riding with her, whisked Mercedes Mackay to the hospital and left four clearly suspicious, frightened, and exhausted young women in his keeping.
And Dawg would soon learn, along with Rowdy and Natches, just what they might have to face in another decade or so.
With their own daughters.
ONE
It was after two in the morning before Eve Mackay stepped into her bedroom and closed the door behind her quietly. Staring around the small suite, it was damned hard to believe how her life had changed in five short years. From destitution to security. From paralyzing fear of what the future would bring, to looking forward to each day as it arrived.
From losing the meager roof over their heads to partial ownership in the business her mother now owned.
Luckily, her room was on the more private side of the large house her mother had turned into Mackay’s Bed-and-breakfast Inn. The two-story sprawling farmhouse had been completely renovated and redecorated with the private residence on the second floor, the eight guest suites, large chef’s kitchen, and open television and game room on the main floor.