Headed for Trouble (The McKay Family #1) (20 page)

“Sure.” She gave Charles a thin smile. “I did it between talking to the chief of police and my brother earlier. I had a busy afternoon.”

“I knew you didn’t have anything to do with it, Neve,” Moira said, and the words were weary. “That’s why I didn’t even want him bothering you … What?”

Neve hadn’t even thought of it.

Not until she saw the way Brannon’s eyes skipped away from hers and slid to Gideon’s.

Now, though, she couldn’t stop thinking of it.

Closing her eyes, she turned away.

She might have even headed out the door if it hadn’t been for one thing.

Or rather … one person.

Ian Campbell.

He’d somehow circled back around and stood leaning between her and the door, one tennis-shoe-clad foot hooked over the other. Gray eyes rested on hers and then he moved in, murmured, “Don’t give that sorry piece of shite the satisfaction. Unless you went and slashed her fucking tire, you aren’t responsible … and you know it.”

The hard, direct words cut through the noise in her head and she stared at him. Something warm and steady moved through her and it gave her the strength to turn back to face the room.

Neve met Moira’s gaze.

“We need to talk.”

A heavy sigh came from Charles. “I knew it. Neve, whatever trouble you’ve brought with you—”

Gideon lunged after Brannon and caught him around the waist, but he barely stopped him in time. Brannon’s fingers brushed against the lapels of Charles’s suit jacket, and the only thing that kept Brannon from dragging him in was Charles jerking back at the last moment.

“Get out,” Brannon snarled, struggling to break away from Gideon. “Get out now—Gideon, you bastard, get off me and get him out of here. I want him out of my house—
now
. Arrest his ass if he won’t leave.”

“You aren’t sole owner,” Charles said, but he eyed Brannon with a wary gaze.

“You have sixty seconds, Charles,” Moira said, drawing Charles’s gaze to her, “to get out that front door. Otherwise, it won’t be an issue of Gideon arresting you.” She gave him a tight smile. “After all, we are outside the town limits.”

She drew her keys from her pocket and flashed them. “Sixty seconds, Charles, or I push the panic button. The sheriff’s department will be here in roughly five minutes and I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”

“Moira—”

“Forty-five.” Her eyes flashed. “And if you push me, we’ll be discussing your continued employment at the museum.”

Neve counted five seconds before Charles turned. He left, his stiff-legged stride taking him down to the front door. Gideon let Brannon go. “Keep your hot-headed ass in here,” he warned. “I’m going to make sure the uptight prick leaves.”

As all eyes shifted toward Neve, she had to fight the urge to fall back against the door.

Ian stood between her and the door, she remembered, the thought coming to her in an almost absent manner. She’d be falling back against him.

That idea really, really didn’t bother her.

“Neve.”

She blinked, looking across the room to meet Moira’s gaze.

It was, as always, calm and placid, like a lake, undisturbed by even a single ripple.

“I think I want a drink.” Neve moved over toward the fridge. “You might want to have one yourself.”

“I don’t want a drink,” Moira snapped, and the sharpness of her tone had Neve pausing to look back.

Moira sucked in a breath. “I apologize. I just … please. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Here.” Ella Sue lifted a bottle of wine that had been left open to breathe on the counter. She poured Neve a glass and turned it over. “Whatever it is, Neve, please … you know we love you … don’t you? We’ll always love you.”

You can’t escape me, Neve.… I’ll always find you.
She took a small sip of the wine to brace herself and then put it down.

She reached for the hem of her shirt and turned, baring the scar she’d already shown Brannon.

The muscles in his jaw were tight, bunching and clenching as he stood there. After a few seconds, he looked away.

The others just stared—including Ian. She hadn’t even thought to tell him to go.

After a moment, she dropped her shirt.

That shattered the spell. Ella Sue turned away, lifting one hand to her mouth. Moira rushed forward but when she would have caught Neve’s shirt, Neve lifted a hand. “Don’t,” she said, her voice flat.

“Who did that? What the
hell,
Neve?”

She tossed back the rest of her wine. Then, softly, she said, “The man I moved to London with. William.”

*   *   *

She recited it as if by rote—the same way she’d go through her sodding grocery list. Ian stood near the door, thinking he should leave, yet oddly unable to make himself.

There were things she wasn’t telling them, too—he could see that in her eyes—and it infuriated him just as much as the things she
did
say, but what was he to do?

What he wanted to do was hold her. Pick her up, carry her out of here, and hold her, because this was hurting her and it just wasn’t acceptable. But he couldn’t do that. He knew he couldn’t. So he stood there, in silence, as it hurt her, and he let the rage grow inside him.

Nobody spoke.

He thought he might have stopped breathing there for a spell—that might explain why his chest felt tight.

“And that’s it. He’s in the United States. I know he is. For all I know, he’s the one who slashed Moira’s tire, although the thought of William Clyde getting on his knees to do something so … mundane … just doesn’t fit.” She shrugged.

Ian jerked his head up. “What did you say his name was?”

“William.” Neve glanced at him, a soft flush on her cheeks, as though she’d half forgotten he was there. Now her gaze bounced away.

“His last name.” Shoving away from the wall, he moved closer. “His last name. Clyde?”

“Yeah.” Now she eyed him nervously. “Why?”

“And he was a barrister? From London?” Something hot and vicious and raw twisted in his gut as he stared at her.
Let me be wrong … can I be wrong on this?

“Yeah.” She swallowed and backed up a pace.

Ian realized he was crowding her and he made himself stop. “William—is that his first name or his middle, do you know?”

“Ian, back off,” Brannon said, his voice low.

“It…” Neve licked her lips. “It was his middle name. How did you know that? His first name was Samuel.”

“Samuel.”

They said it at the same time.

Ian turned just as Brannon went to grab his arm.

“You know him,” Neve said softly.

“Aye. Yeah,” he muttered, shaking his head. Then he looked up at Brannon. “And you do, too. Sam Clyde, Bran. That piece of shite who tried to get me thrown out of university. Remember him now?”

Brannon stared at him for a long moment and then, as though it was just too hard to hold in place, his hand slid slackly away from Ian’s shoulder. “Sam,” he said, his voice thick.

“What are you two talking about?” Neve asked, her voice tight.

Ian thought he might be sick. There he’d been, wanting to take her away from this pain, to hurt the man who’d caused it … and now …

Was it because of us?

Ian looked at Brannon, but Brannon had turned away, his hands over his face, shoulders slumped.

“It’s been years,” he finally said when it was clear Brannon was in no hurry to talk. “Brannon and me, we’d gone out to this pub. We didn’t normally go there, but we’d heard there would be music, thought we’d try it. Turned out the music was bad and most of the people in there were more interested in looking important. So we left. We heard a scream.”

He stopped then, looking away.

Brannon finally turned back. Ian thought he looked like he’d aged ten years in those few brief moments. “We’d cut through the back,” Brannon said. “We didn’t see anybody, almost just left, but then we … well, we didn’t. There was a car on the far side of the lot. This sick fuck had one of the servers from the pub—I grabbed him, beat the shit out of him. Ian calls the cops, gets the girl out of the car. We give our reports … then nothing. The girl doesn’t want to testify. She doesn’t want to talk to us. That’s fine, we get that. But I’d recognized him. I knew him. He went to school with us—we both had a couple of classes with him.”

“Evil piece of shit,” Ian said. He’d moved away from Neve, staring out the window over the landscaped yards. He wasn’t seeing the flowers or the topiary or the lush green lawns, though. He saw pale flesh, bruised by vicious hands. “Turns out he had a name for himself—not that many people talked. Money made plenty of people forget. His father, uptight prick, came to my door, knocking. Said he could set me up in grand style if I’d just forget the misunderstanding I’d seen. I told him to fuck himself. The next time I saw Sam, I called him out—he was talking to this pretty thing—I don’t even remember her name. She was in a class with us, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah,” Brannon said. “I want a fucking drink. And her name was Alice. She left school a few months later.”

“I humiliated her, calling him out like that. Told everybody in the pub he was a rapist, a piece of shite—nothing but scum. People looked at her…” He stopped, shook his head. “Nothing to do for it now, is there? He came at me and I put him on the floor. A few days later, I’m asked to step out of a class. So is Brannon.”

“His dad tried to get us thrown out of school.” Brannon snorted as he poured himself a glass of whiskey from a decanter on a table next to the couch. “It took him a while to figure out that I wasn’t going anywhere. Neither was Ian. We made that son of a bitch’s life hell.”

There was a soft noise.

“Brannon,” Ian said quietly.

But Neve was already out the door.

“Neve!” Brannon was on his feet like a shot.

“Leave her alone.”

*   *   *

Moira shoved in front of him, torn between rage and misery and guilt.

Because he was there—and useful—when Brannon tried to go around her, she shifted and put herself back in his path and shoved him, putting her temper and strength into it.

It wasn’t a lot, but it caught his attention.

“Moira, damn it!”

“Do you think she wants to talk to you now?”

“I have to—”

“You can’t fix this,” she said softly. “Nobody can. I never had to deal with anybody who laid hands on me, but now…” She had to stop because the rage inside her threatened to take control and she never let anything control her. “It seems like maybe the son of a bitch did it because she’s your baby sister. That just makes it worse. And we can’t fix that.”

“I have to…” Brannon stopped abruptly and just stood there, a look on his face that tore at her. He looked lost and frustrated and furious—the same way she felt.

Moving in, she hugged him. He caught her up against him, squeezing tight enough that her ribs ached, but she didn’t care.

Ella Sue moved in. “Moira.”

Looking at the woman who’d been like a mother to her for twenty years, she saw an echo of everything she felt written across Ella Sue’s lovely, timeless face.

“Go up to her,” Ella Sue said softly. “This isn’t a time for her to be alone.”

“But…”

“She needs somebody. Look … she came home for a reason. She needs to heal and she needs her family. Right now, she needs somebody more than ever.” Ella Sue caught her hand and squeezed. “Who better than her sister?”

A sister who’d been there when she really needed her would probably be a better fit,
Moira thought bitterly.

But she nodded. After all, she was the only sister Neve had.

Silence echoed behind her, seemed to follow her as she made her way through the house.

Nobody responded when she knocked on Neve’s door, but she knew her sister was in there. She almost turned away.

She needs somebody
.

She opened the door.

If she hadn’t done her best to learn how to control her temper for the past two decades, the sight in front of her would have had her screaming in outrage.

Neve glanced at her and then away, carrying the load of clothes in her arms to the bed.

“Leaving already?” Moira asked.

“No.” Neve shrugged. Her arms were slender—almost too thin—but Moira couldn’t overlook the muscle there.

Her sister had somehow become terribly strong in the past few years.

“Most of these clothes either don’t fit or don’t suit me anymore. I’m going to donate them. I need to buy some new stuff, but for now, I just want these out of here.” She paused as she put her load down, stroked a hand across a red silk tank.

“That was one of your favorites,” Moira said. She’d kept the damn clothes because she’d been convinced her sister would come back.

Neve shrugged. “It’s just a shirt.”

“Neve…”

Now she looked up, her pale green eyes vivid, the tears she’d been fighting welling up. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“It’s not…” Moira stopped, floundering.

“It’s not what?” Neve stalked back over to the closet and disappeared inside. A moment later, she appeared with more clothes. “Not my fault?”

“No. It’s not.”

Neve stopped in the middle of the floor, all but quivering as she stood there. Tremors wracked her body and, abruptly, she flung down her armful of clothes. “You think I don’t know that?” she shouted. “I
know
! I did the counseling and I read the pamphlets and I wrote my damn feelings down and I get up in the morning and remind myself of that
all the time
. And I
still
wonder why I stayed … but I never wondered why I
fell
for him.”

She turned and went to move but the clothes tangled around her feet. Sighing, she knelt down, gathering them up.

Moira crossed the floor, kneeling down. She picked up a skinny-strapped black dress, something so short she never would have let Neve out of the house in it. She tossed it over her arm and added another black dress, then another.

“I never wondered … looking back, I knew it was a mistake, and I knew it was wrong, but it made sense,” Neve said, her voice soft. “He made me feel … like I mattered. He was older and experienced, and he seemed like he’d seen and done everything. He just … took me over. And I let him. I didn’t want to fight it. Not until it was too late. And now…”