“Oh, Mac. Yes,” she sighed as his lashes lifted, his gray eyes dark, gleaming with lust and emotion as his tongue reach out, licked, laved, then his lips surrounded the little bud for another exotic kiss.

“I’m going to come,” she moaned, her hands on his head, holding him to her. “I’m going to come so hard, Mac.”

“Come for me, baby,” he growled.

“Lick me, Mac. Harder. Suck my clit harder.” She arched her hips to him. “Oh, God, your lips are so good. Your tongue is so good. Oh, God, I’m going to—” She gasped as he pressed two long fingers inside her, thrusting demandingly, not bother to work his fingers inside her, burning her instead with a fierce, quick thrust. “Come—”

She shook violently. Pleasure tore through her, exploded inside and out as she screamed and bucked, and then for the first time she heard the explosions vibrate from outside the house.

In the next second she was trying to figure out why the world was spinning around her. Why Mac was cursing and she was crouched between the counters on the floor rather than feeling her husband’s cock driving inside her.

“Stay down!” he yelled as she heard another explosion.

Gunshots.

Shock whipped through her.

“Jethro’s out there!” she cried hoarsely, her horrified gaze meeting Mac’s.

“You stay put.” His finger was in her face, his expression fierce as he suddenly dragged her along the floor, moving her into the washroom, then the inner small bathroom.

“In here.” He pressed a gun in her hand, his expression so savage he terrified her. “Leave this room and I promise you, I’ll tan your bottom. Do you understand me?”

She nodded fiercely.

“Jethro,” she whispered. “Hurry, Mac. Please hurry.”

A reluctant smile tugged at his lips as his gaze suddenly gleamed not just with fury over the attack but with an inner satisfaction.

“I’ll be right back, sweetheart. Stay put for me, baby. I’d lose my soul if I lost you.”

“Right here,” she promised, then cried out in fear as another shot sounded.

Mac slammed the door, and Keiley heard nothing after that.

Mac stopped long enough to pull the Glock he kept hidden in the pantry closet free. He checked the extra cartridges as he ran through the kitchen, jerked the door open, then jumped and rolled across the patio until he came to rest behind the thick shrubbery growing at the corner.

He scanned the yard before moving, staying behind the carefully planted ornamental trees, thick shrubbery, and decorative cement pieces.

He came up behind Keiley’s favorite cement gargoyle, a huge black monstrosity nearly as tall as he was, thick, heavy wings outspread.

He scanned the area again, grimacing when he saw the shadowed outline of his friend beneath the thick spruce tree growing at the boundary of the yard.

Damn, why hadn’t he thought to get radios?

“Jethro,” he called out when he saw Pappy slinking from beneath the other side of the tree. “You okay, man?”

Jethro moved as the dog, evidently smarter than its human counterparts, kept its belly to the ground as it made its way along the edge of the yard and begun coming up to the house behind the same border of cover Mac was using.

Following Jethro’s hand signals, his gaze moved past the barns and stables to the hill rising above the house on the other side.

Squinting, he tracked the land, seeing nothing but the soft breeze playing through the trees.

“I have you covered!” he yelled back, keeping his eyes on the area. “Work your way in.”

He watched, his eyes piercing the thick woods, but he couldn’t see a damned thing. Long minutes later he shifted his gaze away enough to catch Jethro moving to his side.

His shoulder was bloody, a thick furrow slicing across the bicep.

“You okay?”

“Bastard winged me,” Jethro cursed. “I was able to spot where the first shots came from, but after that I lost him.”

“Get ready. We need to get in the house.” Mac was tense, worry for Keiley obliterating everything else.

“I’ll go first, then cover you.” Jethro started to move when Mac gripped his shoulder and pulled him back.

“You’re already hit. I’ll go first.”

“Like hell. The last thing Kei needs is a bloody husband. A bloody third is another damned thing.”

He heard the shade of bitterness in his friend’s voice but let him go, his eyes on the hill until Jethro made it across the patio.

With his weapon raised, Jethro covered Mac’s quick sprint across the open portion of the patio before they both moved hastily into the house.

Mac closed the door, reset the alarm, then moved quickly to the bathroom door.

“Keiley?”

The knob turned. Mac stopped the opening of the door in time to keep her from seeing a bloody Jethro.

“Jethro’s fine. Lock yourself back in while we check the house.”

Her face was pale, her eyes dark in the paper-whiteness as she nodded quickly and hurriedly reclosed and locked the door.

“The alarm was off while we were outside. We check the house first.”

Jethro nodded quickly, wiping a smear of blood over his forehead before moving in front of Mac. Blood stained the short sleeve of his shirt and had run along his arm. Jethro wiped his hand on his pants, smearing more blood, before they began canvassing the house.

Mac grimaced at the thought of Keiley seeing the wound or the mess it was making. It wasn’t life-threatening, just damned messy, and sure to upset her.

“I’m getting tired of this bastard!” Jethro snapped as they finished the upstairs and began making their way back down. “He’s pissing me off, Mac. He was after you. There’s not a doubt.”

“I came in early from checking the place,” Mac murmured as he glimpsed Pappy lying in the foyer.

The dog had slid into the house between him and Jethro, so quickly and quietly that Mac had only distantly noticed the move.

“What happened out there?” he asked.

“I saw Pappy huddled under the trees. He didn’t come when I called to him, so I went to see if he had been hurt. The shot caught me about middleways across the yard. By the time I found cover I was closer to the treeline and out of the line of sight than I was to the house.”

“Rifle or handgun?”

“Handgun. I’m betting a rifle will be next.”

Mac shook his head. “He would have used a rifle first time. He wants to keep the odds even.”

“Hell of an observation,” Jethro grunted as they entered the foyer and Mac moved quickly back to the bathroom.

“Fact. Based on the files of the victims. He kept his playing field even. It’s a test. To win he has to play fair. You should have come back into the house before checking anything.”

He caught Jethro’s grimace. “She needed you worse than I did.”

“She wasn’t being shot at,” Mac pointed out logically. “And there was no danger of her leaving because of a realization that hurts none of us. I could have dealt with that later.”

Jethro caught his arm as he started to move through the foyer.

“You should have discussed this with me first,” he snapped, his eyes narrowing angrily.

Mac grinned with an edge of mockery. “You already loved her, Jethro. You think I missed it before we left Virginia? Do you think I didn’t hear it in your voice every time you got around to asking about her whenever you called?”

“I was handling it.” Jethro’s expression was tight now.

“Handling it so well you haven’t shared a woman since we left town?”

“I was handling it.” His voice lowered in warning. “I wasn’t in love with her, Mac, until you began playing your little games.”

Mac sighed at that. “Sometimes you have to go with your gut, Jethro, I keep trying to tell you that. You’ll hit an investigation with both feet forward and your gut all but getting you killed. When it comes to women, you act like you’re using a damned manual until you get them into the bed. You won’t find love that way.”

“I wasn’t looking for love.”

“No, you weren’t. You’d already found it. Unfortunately, someone else beat you to her first.”

“If I wanted her that bad I would have done something about it.”

Mac shook his head. “You’re a lousy liar, my friend.”

“Stop bitching, Mac, you’re starting to sound like someone’s father,” Jethro growled.

“As long as I don’t sound like mine,” he snarled, pausing once again at the bathroom door and tapping at it lightly. “It’s safe, Keiley.”

The door opened slowly. Her eyes went quickly over Mac, then turned to Jethro. She swayed, any color she could have possessed leeching from her face as she stared at the blood.

“It’s just a flesh wound.” Jethro started in surprise at the horror that washed over her. “It’s okay.”

“Just a flesh wound?” she snapped, lifting her gaze to meet his. “For God’s sake! You’re bleeding all over my house. At least try to act concerned.”

19

Keiley stood in front of Jethro as he sat at the kitchen table, the first aid supplies laid out on the table as she cleaned the wound on his arm.

“You need to go to the doctor,” she said fiercely. “You need stitches.”

He was as stubborn as Mac. He had refused to go to the hospital or to allow her to call the paramedics.

“Slap a bandage on it and stop fussing over it,” he had ordered uncomfortably, as though her concern made him edgy.

And it probably was. He kept shifting in his seat worse than a kid eager to get back outside and play. Or a grown man determined to rejoin a fight.

“You’re not Superman.”

“I’m not bleeding to death, either.”

She looked in his face then, her lips trembling at the tenderness of his expression, the gentle light in his blue eyes as he reached up and cupped her cheek.

“You and Mac are driving me insane, you know,” she informed him, attempting to chastise him for his recklessness. “I’m not a doctor or a nurse, and patching up grown men who should have enough sense to see one makes me irritable.”

“I wouldn’t want to make you irritable,” he assured her, his voice filled with a hesitant gentleness.

Jethro didn’t have the first clue about how to handle the emotions that were raging between them. Not that Keiley claimed to know how to handle it herself, but Jethro’s attempts to get a handle on them were endearing. And, unfortunately, only made her own seem stronger.

If his expression of male confusion and wariness was anything to go by, he was still struggling to hold them back, despite Mac’s awareness of them. And that made her wonder how he would eventually handle the other emotions that could end up cropping into this relationship Mac had orchestrated. Especially the emotions she knew Mac would have a hard time dealing with.

“Are you a jealous man?” she finally asked, feeling her fears of the future edging into her voice.

“I would kill any man but Mac who dared to touch you.” He sighed, his thumb touching her lips as they trembled again. “He was wrong, though, when he said I was half in love with you before he won your heart. I wasn’t. I already loved you fully, Kei.”

“Don’t say that.” She tried to keep her voice firm, her emotions under control. “The two of you ask too much of a woman.”

“Yeah. We do,” he finally agreed, his gaze hooded, intense. She had always felt that Jethro, like Mac, saw too deep into her soul.

Mac was sneakier than Jethro, though. He hid that dangerous part of himself behind layers of control and charming smiles. A person could sense the danger lurking beneath his quiet exterior, but as with all illusions it eased beneath the carefully controlled façade he presented.