by Lora Leigh
And Max could do it. The woman was a dynamo. She could widen her green eyes with naive innocence and play the clueless Southern belle with just the right touch of realism.
False realism, but it worked.
"See what you can find out for me, Max." Mac nodded as Keiley glanced over at him.
"And don't say anything about the stalker. I'd like to keep this quiet if we can."
That was all it took. Maxine might give the appearance of flightiness, of cluelessness, but it hid a mind as sharp as a razor and a loyalty as deep as the oceans.
"Of course we'll keep it quiet." Max stared at Mac as though he had lost his mind.
"You think I want Delia Staten to get her hands on this information? She would find the bastard and help him out."
"Max," Joe chastised gently.
"You know it's the truth," Max pouted back at her husband. "And Keiley knows it as well. Delia would do anything for a chance to get in Mac's bed." She turned to Mac.
"Why didn't you just give her some before you left town fifteen years ago instead of leaving her in suspense?"
Joe lowered his head and shook it, helpless as his shoulders shook in silent laughter.
Mac stared back at her with brooding mockery. "And how would that have helped me?"
"Well." Max waved her hand blithely. "We all know how inexperienced eighteen-year-old jackasses are. She would have never looked at you twice when you came back."
"Max," Joe groaned in protest.
'Joe, you're lucky someone didn't steal your wife away before you ever moved back here and rescued the rest of the male population," Mac laughed.
"I'm lucky someone didn't kill her," Joe grunted, though his expression was filled with pride, his eyes alight with love when he looked at her. "Come on, wildcat. Let's do as Mac suggests and get out of here."
"You have to be at tomorrow night's meeting," Max all but ordered Keiley, rising from her chair and pinning her with an eagle stare. "Other people will end up coming out here to check on you if you don't. I was just elected as the advanced strike."
Keiley looked back at her in surprise.
"Honey, you have friends here." Max shook her head at Keiley's surprise. "More friends than you know. I've had five phone calls since you missed that meeting, and one came from the old dragon lady Victoria Staten herself. And trust me, she doesn't normally call and check on anyone."
"I'll be there," Keiley promised, rising to her feet as Max moved around the table.
"And you take care yourself."
As their goodbyes were said and Keiley accepted a fierce hug from her friend, she stood back while Mac led the couple to the door and walked to the car with them.
Behind her, she felt Jethro, far enough away for decency's sake, near enough to remind her of the warmth and strength of his body.
"I'm going to have to go to that damned meeting," she muttered. "I really don't want to have put up with Delia Staten this week."
She was still too raw, too aware of the truth behind the gossip. She would have much preferred to hide in the house and pretend that the world outside had ceased to exist.
"You can't hide forever."
Keiley swung around, meeting his dark blue eyes, seeing the fall of his black hair over his brow and the wicked, sensual dip of his thick lashes over his brilliant eyes.
She pushed her hands into the pockets of her shorts before moving around him and heading back to the kitchen. "I'm not in the mood to argue with you. I've already been there with Mac and once a day is enough."
"Keiley, am I hurting you?"
She turned back to him quickly. He stood framed in the doorway, watching her with an assessing gaze, his expression cool, almost forbidding.
"Do you want to hurt me, Jethro?"
"I don't want to hurt you. If it's hurting you, I'll leave."
"You're not hurting me." Confusing her. Making her question herself. But it wasn't pain. She wondered if the pain would come if he left, though.
"I need to go back to work." She shook her head as he stepped closer. "I just need to get away from you and Mac. Just for a little while. Just—just for a while."
Chapter 16
The next day Keiley sat in the garage, stretched out on the old sofa she and Mac had discarded the year before, and worked on the data program she was still tweaking on Mac's laptop.
She could have worked more much effectively in her office, but Mac refused to allow her to work there alone, and he and Jethro were busy "sparring." It looked more like they were busy trying to kill each other.
Wearing only a few pads at elbows and knees and lightly padded headgear, they went at each other with fists, kicks, and heavy male grunts in the center of the thick mat Mac had unrolled across the cement floor.
She winced as Mac landed a hard blow to Jethro's gut, then closed her eyes as Jethro landed a double-fisted blow to Mac's back that nearly took him to the floor.
That had been going at it for over an hour, with neither man appearing to get the best of the other. Mac was more muscular. The heavy farmwork he did on a daily basis had given him a solid, thickly muscled physique. Jethro was as tall, but not nearly as broad or physically strong. He made up for it with speed and adaptability. Not to mention striking with carefully aimed blows for the weakest parts of Mac's body.
She had a feeling she wouldn't have to worry about sex because1 they would be too sore to move.
They had been at this off and on for two days now. Pushing each other, daring, challenging, taking out their aggressions in what they called "preparation" until they could take them out on the stalker who had decided to begin e-mailing with fanatic intensity.
The smug dares he had issued to Mac and Jethro were insane. Declaring both men incompetent, unable to protect her. That she needed a man better able to secure her welfare because obviously Mac couldn't. Making his knowledge of the building relationship between her and the two men clearly apparent.
In the past two days, there had been over six e-mails, and even now Jethro's tracking program was working its way through the bouncing Internet signal the stalker was using to send them.
The e-mail account was from an anonymous mailbox, and the origin of it was ghosting through Internet hosts all over the globe. And while Jethro attempted to track him, his e-mails were escalating in anger to the point that he was now berating Mac and Jethro about their sexual relationship with her.
At that thought she sobered, trying to push back the niggling discomfort moving inside her. Not that having sex with the two men together was bothering her; that part she thought she was handling reasonably well. What had begun rippling through her with nervous intent was the awareness that something more than sex was growing between her and Jethro, though.
In the past days she grown aware of a thread of feelings an emotion that had first begun between her and Mac during those first weeks of courtship. It was growing between her and Jethro now, though it didn't seem to be detracting from the bond she had with Mac.
She was certain Mac couldn't want this to happen. Could he? He had always seemed so possessive of her, so determined to keep other men from encroaching on her attention, that he was suddenly confusing her.
He was throwing her and Jethro together, giving the other man every chance to touch her however he liked, even to the point that often Mac found his release with his hand or buried in her mouth rather than within her body.
Shaking her head, she turned her attention back to the final adjustments she was making to the program Mac was using to scan the Internet, forums, and chat boards for the stalker. Key words were tweaked with regularity, and the processing ability of the program was now working with one hundred and ten percent efficiency and speed.
It wasn't going to make its round of scans overnight, but it would do it much faster now than it had before.
As she set the program to run in the background of the laptop she looked up as Mac and Jethro collapsed, panting,
onto the mat, obviously calling a draw once again.
"You two are going to kill each other," she told them as she set the computer aside and rose to her feet. "You're exhausting me just watching you."
They turned their heads to stare at her for a long moment before groaning and turning away once again.
Keiley leaned back on the sofa and watched them with a smile. "How much longer are you two going to go on like this before you realize you're equally matched?"
"Not true," Jethro muttered. "I'm faster than he is."
"Bullshit," Mac groaned. "I'm stronger."
"Yeah yeah yeah, and you're both mean as a junkyard dog and twice as cunning. Now get your butts to the shower so I can fix lunch. I'm hungry and I'm tired of watching the two of you beat each other up."
She absently ruffled the fur of the rather large Pappy as he laid his head on her lap now that the laptop was moved to the side. "You're even making Pappy tired."
Mac turned his head again to stare at the dog with narrowed eyes. "Damned mutt. He's never going to go back outside, is he?"
"Probably not." She smiled back at him consolingly. He preferred having pets outside rather than in the house. "Content yourself with the fact that he seems housebroken."
Mac grunted at that before levering himself upright and watching as Jethro did the same.
"You should have never let that damned dog in the house," he growled.
Jethro just shook his head. He hadn't said much in the past few days, brooding over his computer instead and conducting several net meetings with agents in the Bureau's D.C.
office.
Keiley stood on her feet. Pappy rose as well, trotting behind her as she headed for the door. "Go shower," she told the men.
The dog pushed in front of her, moving through the short hallway ahead of her as she entered the house, his ears cocked as though listening for anything unusual.
Keiley was aware of the small pistol resting in the pocket of the dress she was wearing today and the knowledge that she couldn't be too careful now, even in her own home.
"Hold up there." Mac caught her arm as she neared the entrance to the living room and moved ahead of her.
His weapon was in his hand, and as she glanced behind her at Jethro, she saw that he carried one as well.
"This house is rigged with so many damned alarms and booby traps now that I'm afraid of being caught in one myself," she snorted. "I doubt anyone is going to slip in."
They sure as hell weren't slipping into her bedroom anytime soon. Mac and Jethro had nailed planks of plywood over the French doors until the new doors could arrive within the next few days.
"Let's just make certain," he murmured as Jethro moved around them and they began a careful, quiet search of the house.
Keiley just shook her head at them, though she followed along quietly until they were back in the kitchen.
"I have to go take care of the stock," Mac said as he gathered clean clothes from the washroom and headed for the shower attached to the washroom. "I won't be gone long.
Keep her in line, Jethro."
Keiley turned carefully to Jethro, lifting her brow mockingly.
"I'll do my best." Amusement laced his voice, but little of it reached his eyes.
Dragging out a cooking pot, Keiley set it on the stove before moving to the refrigerator and pulling out the small roast she had placed in the fridge to defrost the afternoon before and vegetables free of the crisper drawer.
As Mac showered, Keiley cut the roast into chunks before tossing them in the pot, covering them with water, and setting them back on the burner.
That taken care of, she set about cutting and chopping the vegetables for the vegetable soup she had planned to fix.
"You're a good cook," Jethro suddenly announced from behind her, causing her to glance quickly over her shoulder.
He was staring at her broodingly, much the way Mac looked when he was debating a problem.
"Thanks."
"Did your mother teach you how to cook?"
Keiley paused in preparing the vegetables, staring down at the celery she was destringing before a sad smile tugged at her lips.
"Mom was an excellent cook."
She had been. The perfect homemaker, a good wife and mother until her life had gone to hell.
"You look like her," he stated then.
Keiley froze before turning to face him slowly.
"I ran a check on you when I saw how fast Mac was falling in love with you." There was no apology in his expression, just that brooding, questioning gaze.
"Great," she muttered. "Thanks for letting me know." It was information she could have done without.
"You rose above their mistakes." He leaned back against the wall lazily, though his expression didn't change. "It must have been hard, though."
"What must have been hard? Not embezzling when I had the chance? Staying away from the liquor when things got hard? Sorry, Jethro, but it was no chore at all." She sliced the celery with brutal strokes. "It was actually pretty damned easy."
"You were eighteen when your mother committed suicide. Your father died of a heart attack a year later, in prison. From what I learned, the community you lived in pretty much ostracized you."
Yes. They had. They had talked and gossiped and made her life hell by turning their backs on her and whispering whenever they saw her.
"I survived."
"Beautifully," he said calmly.
"What's the point behind this, Jethro?" She laid the knife down carefully before turning to him and meeting his gaze directly. "Do you torture your lovers for the hell of it, or is it an added bonus?
His gaze flared. Brilliant pinpoints of glittering arousal suddenly filled it as his eyes raked over her body.
'Are you my lover?"
Keiley blinked back at him in surprise. There was a darkness in his tone that had her stepping back, a fierce, sudden vein of possessiveness in his voice.
"I'm Mac's wife," she whispered. "But I would assume what's been going on here in the past few days makes me your lover as well. For now."
His lips quirked with a hard edge. "Yes, for now."
The tension emanating from him was thick enough to make her catch her breath.
"What about you?" She tilted her head curiously. "What would you call it?"
"Disastrous," he suddenly stated, raking his fingers through his hair and pulling free the elastic band that had held it behind his neck. It framed his face now, laying longer than Mac's, and giving his expression a harder, more savage appearance.
"I'll agree with you there." She turned back to the vegetables, willing her heart to slow down, her pulse to stop choking her with the fierce, hard throbs she could feel at her throat.
"Then why are you allowing it?" he suddenly snarled. "You're sleeping with your husband's best friend. You're not even cheating, Keiley. You're letting him pawn you out like a favorite shirt."
"God damn you!" She rounded on him, the knife still gripped in her hand, fury racing through her now. "If you don't like it, then pack your shit up and leave. I didn't ask you to come here. I didn't ask you or Mac to begin this debacle, and I'll be damned if either of you will punish me for it."
His curse was blistering as he turned away from her and paced across the room. "You didn't deserve that. I'm sorry."
"No, I didn't," she snapped back. "And you can shove your apology. If it can come out of your damned mouth, then you can stand by it."
He swung around on her. "I apologize."
"I don't want your apology," she informed him in disgust. "Let me give you a clue here, Jethro. The same one I gave Mac years ago. Just because you're here, just because you're sharing my bed, does not give you the right to spill trash out of your mouth and excuse it with an apology. Make that mistake again and you'll leave."
His eyes narrowed. "Will I now?"
"Oh hell yes, you will," she informed him. "All that he-man alpha
stuff is real arousing. It's even cute sometimes. But you can take your attitude somewhere else, because I'll be damned if I'll put up with it."
And she meant it. Jethro stared at the anger in her eyes, the flush mounting her cheeks, and he would have smiled if she weren't holding that knife like a weapon rather than a tool.
His gaze flickered to it. "Are you going to use that?"
"Don't put it past her." Mac stepped into the room, his gray eyes gleaming with amusement but also a hint of anger. "What did you do to piss her off?"
"Nothing." Keiley turned and began attacking the vegetables, as Jethro suspected she wanted to attack his head.
"I said something stupid," he answered for her. "She seems unwilling to accept my apology."
He started back at Mac, meeting his friend's eyes, knowing he had done Keiley an injustice even as those earlier words had slipped past his lips.
"She's bad for that." Mac shrugged. "She tossed me out of my own apartment at two o'clock in the morning before we even started sleeping together."
Jethro watched as Mac eased over to her, his arm going around her, his lips at her ear as he whispered something that had a snort of a laugh erupting as she pushed him away with a look filled with exasperation and amusement.
"Get out of here," she ordered. 'And take him with you." She pointed the knife over her shoulder at Jethro.
"He stays," Mac informed her, his voice firm. "I'm not leaving you here alone."
She glared over her shoulder at him. "There might be bloodshed."
'Just be sure to leave him in fighting shape." Mac shrugged. "If he's dumb enough to tempt a woman wielding a knife, then he deserves everything after that."
But he cast Jethro a warning look. Jethro folded his arms over his chest and stared back at him coolly before frowning at the knowing grin Mac finally gave him.
"I'll let you two fight it out, then." He patted Keiley's butt, jumping quickly out of the way as she slapped at his hand.
Still chuckling, he pulled his shirt on, buttoned it, and tucked it quickly into his jeans before pulling on his boots.