Headed for Trouble (The McKay Family #1) (22 page)

He’d been alone and he’d heard the screams.

He’d run after the source of them and he’d found them.

It was no girl from the pub, but Neve. And Sam Clyde was bent over her, laughing in that taunting, cruel way of his as he cut into her soft flesh. “See how soft she is, Ian? See how easy it is to make her bleed?”

The words had been directed at Ian.

Because Neve had lain lifeless on the busted and broken pavement.

Now, standing under a brutally hot shower, he tried to scrub the memory of it out of him. It felt like it was imprinted on his skin and nothing would make him clean.

Clyde had gone after her because of what they’d done.

Ian didn’t need any kind of proof to see that connection.

Hands braced on the tile wall, he fought to clear the rage from his mind.

He wanted that sod dead.

Wanted it almost as much as he wanted his next breath.

Wanted it almost as much as he wanted to feel Neve against him.

*   *   *

Brannon didn’t sleep worth shit.

He woke up with a stream of thoughts already burning through his mind, and they were all tied into one thing.

Neve.

Neve … and what he’d done.

When the phone rang, he wasn’t surprised to see his older sister’s number. He wasn’t surprised, but he didn’t really want to talk to her, either.

When he ignored the first call, she sent him a text.

Answer the damn phone or I’ll just show up there.

Two seconds later came another text.

Jackass
.

So when she called again, he answered, still brooding over everything that had happened last night.

“What?” he asked, not bothering to be polite. Moira wouldn’t expect it anyway.

This was his fault.

“It’s my fault.”

He scowled at the phone. “What?”

“What do you mean,
what
? Neve…” Moira’s voice trailed off. “I did a lousy job with her, Brannon. I didn’t give her anything she needed—things she wanted maybe, but what she needed?”

“It’s not your fault,” he said, a leaden weight in his gut. There was no mistaking it in his mind.
He
was responsible. Now that Ian had brought him to mind, Brannon couldn’t get the smug face of Sam Clyde out of his head.

He’d run into the son of a bitch the last time he’d been in London. Not long before he’d had lunch with Neve. That smug look on his face …

Shaking his head, he pushed that aside. “It’s not your fault, Moira.”

“Yes, it is.” Her voice was rough. “You know what she told me last night? She just wanted to be needed. I never made her feel needed, Brannon. She ended up with some sadistic piece of shit because I didn’t take good enough care of her.”

“Fuck.” Brannon wanted to hit something.

What had they been talking about in there? He’d wanted to go up there, bang on her damn door until she opened, tell her how sorry he was, do what he could to fix this—but how did you fix the unfixable?

He didn’t even know how to talk to her now. A gulf of years and angry words separated them. “Look, it’s not your fault. He wouldn’t have gone after her if it wasn’t for me. Me and Ian.”

Moira’s softly drawn breath had shame skittering down his spine.

And then she said, “We can’t do this. Listen to us—we’re blaming ourselves. How much time has she wasted blaming herself? He’s the one who did it. We can feel guilty and we’ve got plenty we did wrong, but what we need to do is find a way to help her.”

Easier said than done. But he tried to force his thoughts away from the mental ass-kicking he’d been giving himself, tried to focus on the here and now. When it came time to deal with Sam—and it would, he knew—then he’d deal with him, piece by piece if he had to.

But for now …

“So how do we help her?” he asked, as he strode from his bathroom into the brightly lit bedroom. Two years ago, this area had been closed-up, dusty, and not habitable for anything but the mice that had been chewing up the walls. The building, just down from the pub, had once been beautiful, but the previous owners hadn’t been able to take care of it and then they’d refused to sell it.

“I don’t know,” Moira said, her voice distant.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Brannon stared off into the distance, not seeing the rehabbed condo he’d worked on for close to a year. He didn’t see the custom flooring or the exposed brick walls he’d paid an arm and a leg to have cleaned.

He didn’t see any of the condo that had been custom-designed to suit him. It was exactly as he’d wanted it.

Brannon McKay usually got what he wanted, but just then he didn’t know how to make it happen.

He needed to make things better for his sister, but how did he do that?

“What has she been doing the past few years?” he asked softly.

“I honestly don’t know. Why?”

“Just wondering,” he murmured. “Look, we’ll figure this out. We’ll … we’ll take care of her.”

“I don’t think she needs to be taken care of anymore, Bran,” Moira said softly. “She took care of herself for a good long while. I think she just needs … us.”

“Yeah.” He sighed and shoved a hand back through his wet hair. “I’ll be back out to Ferry sometime soon.”

“I’ll see you then. Bran? I love you.”

“Love you, too,” he murmured, disconnecting the call. He tossed the cell down on the bed and still, his mind worked.

Life was nothing but a series of puzzles and what he needed to do was figure out the right sort of solution for this puzzle. No, he couldn’t fix what had happened and he couldn’t undo what had happened to Neve.

She’d come home to heal—that was what Ella Sue thought, and Ella Sue was right. That was just the way things worked. The sun came up in the morning, the sun set in the evening, and Ella Sue was always right. But Neve wasn’t going to heal sitting around the house and hiding.

So maybe he had an idea for her.

Digging up some boxers, he dropped the towel. As he did so, he glanced over to the bank of windows, more out of habit than anything else. His heart gave one hard, brutal beat against the wall of his chest and then it started to race. Hannah Parker sat on the narrow balcony just outside her apartment. And she was staring right at him.

Their gazes locked.

She lifted a brow as she sipped from her coffee cup.

The bold stare made it almost impossible for him to look away. Hannah just didn’t look away, didn’t back away, didn’t back down.

She was a pain in the ass and he wished she didn’t get under his skin.

Holding her gaze, he pulled the boxers on. She continued to watch. His skin continued to burn and heat drained from his head, straight down. He doubted she could see that clearly from across the street, but he turned anyway.

The last thing he needed to do was let her know she’d just given him the hard-on from hell.

*   *   *

It was almost cute, Hannah thought, the way he turned tail and ran. Except he didn’t really
run
.

He strolled.

And it wasn’t like he made it clear she’d embarrassed him or anything, either.

He just … Pursing her lips, she stared into her coffee as she pondered their non-interaction.

It had been going on for forever.

He’d wake up and she’d catch a glimpse of that beyond fantastic body.

Then he’d see her and, like it was the first time it had happened, he’d look surprised, then aggravated.

All the man had to do was close the damn curtains.

He never did.

She was glad, but at the same time, it was frustrating, because every time it happened, it made her want to do stupid things. Like catch him on the street when she saw him walking, ask him to join her for a cup of coffee, a drink at Treasure Island—or just for the rest of her life.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Hannah closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of her chair. If she was smart, she’d quit thinking about him like that. But she wasn’t smart, clearly, because she’d been crazy about him for as long as she’d known him and he was as oblivious to her now as he’d always been.

Her brooding was cut short by the shrill ring of her phone, but one look at the number—or lack of—told her that she would have been happier brooding. She would have been happier in bed, or at work, or getting a root canal …

“Hello,” she said wearily.

“You need to keep your nose out my fucking business, you crazy bitch!”

“Lloyd, nice to hear from you again,” she drawled. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the small recorder she’d taken to carrying. She forgot it half the time, but today just wasn’t Lloyd’s lucky day. She hit record and angled the phone away enough that the microphone would pick up his rants.

“You stupid, fat, nosy feminazi. You are going to tell me where in the hell my wife is. You’re going to stop with this shit you’re feeding her!” His voice started to raise. “You’re going to stop being a fucking
cunt
or I’m going to come up there one night and cut you up, you hear me?”

She cut him off. “What I’m going to do is turn this recording over to the cops,
Lloyd Thomas Hanson
. Then I’m going to call your P.O. and set up a meeting with him and play it for him. And the next time I see you—”

“You fucking
bitch
—”

She hung up. Her hands were shaking, but she refused to acknowledge it.

The pig was a coward, nothing but a coward. She wasn’t going to waste her time being afraid of him.

However, he’d just added an annoyance to her day. Now she had to see a cop before she went into work.

*   *   *

In under fifteen minutes, Brannon had left his place and was on the road, the top of the car down, wind whipping his hair back from his face, and the music blasting.

The brutal music and the fast drive didn’t do anything for his temper.

In his mind, he had a half-dozen arguments laid out for what he wanted to ask Neve, and he was prepared to abandon all of them if he had even one hint that he was off base.

Because that bruised look in her eyes had his heart tripping, he made a side stop to the bakery.

Neve had always had an awful sweet tooth. It was pitiful, he guessed. Here he was, offering the equivalent of a week’s worth of sugar in an effort to do anything to bring a smile to her face.

He grabbed himself a coffee and something slathered in chocolate and filled with cream, putting the box on the floorboard. The coffee he wedged between his thighs, and once he was on the road, he managed to dig out his donut, shoving the bag into the side pocket so the wind didn’t snatch it.

He managed to clear his mind for a few minutes, thanks to the sugar rush and the beautiful stretch of road between town and the home where he’d grown up. It probably made him a shallow, materialistic son of a bitch, but there wasn’t much in life that gave him the kind of thrill he got speeding down this stretch of road, the Bugatti clinging to the pavement, hugging each curve.

He might have even managed to arrive with something like a smile if it hadn’t been for the sudden glare lights, the peal siren that all but blasted out his ears and the honking of a horn.

“Son of a
bitch
!” he snarled, looking over to see Gideon glaring at him from the lane next to him. The
wrong
lane. Gideon pointed at the side of the road and Brannon shot a look at the speedometer.

“Fuck.”

With a groan, he pulled over and managed to cram the rest of the donut down his throat as he waited for Gideon.

“You stupid asshole, you were pushing ninety,” Gideon snapped. “It’s fifty-five miles an hour here. How many tickets do I have to write you?”

Instead of answering right away, Brannon lifted his coffee and took a sip. It had cooled to the point where it only burned his tongue instead of scorching off the skin. As he pondered Gideon’s question, he caught sight of the other man coming up behind them.

The face was familiar, but it took a few minutes to place him. Griffin Parker. Hannah’s cousin, if he remembered right. He’d moved here from Tuscaloosa and he was watching every second with a wide grin.

“I think the count is up to three this year,” Brannon said once he’d thought it through. “That’s down from last year.”

Gideon didn’t look amused. “If you keep this up,” he said slowly, “I’m going to throw your ass in jail just for the hell of it.”

Brannon opened his mouth, a hundred smart-ass remarks on his tongue. But he caught sight of the temper—real temper—in Gideon’s eyes. Anybody who hadn’t been a friend wouldn’t have seen it. But then again, anybody who hadn’t been a friend wouldn’t have had Gideon all but snarling and swearing at him, either.

“I’ll get the ticket paid,” he said. “I always do.”

“That’s not the fucking point.” Gideon dragged a hand through his hair. “Has it ever occurred to you that someday you might cause a wreck? Or that you might actually wreck one of these candy cars you love so much and kill yourself?”

For a split second, the
candy car
comment made Brannon just stare. He’d had this thing custom-built. He had his hands all over it and it could do things that police cruisers could only dream of.

As though Gideon read every thought, he leaned in. “The car cost more than my house,” he said bluntly, “and I don’t fucking care. The tickets you rack up could probably fund some kid’s college. And you never miss the money. I don’t care. You’re breaking the law, you don’t give a shit, and more, you don’t even seem to give a fuck that you could end up dead one of these days. Maybe you don’t recall, but this is the same stretch of road where I had to pull your baby sister from the twisted mess that was left of your parents’ car. Maybe that doesn’t concern you.”

Now the full force of the fury in Gideon’s voice punched through. “Well,
I
care. I buried enough friends when I served my time in the army. And I sure as hell don’t want to be the one telling Moira that your stupidity got you killed.”

Gideon’s temper tugged at Brannon’s. But he wasn’t stupid. Gideon was right on more than one front. Brannon definitely had been breaking the law, paying the tickets or not, and, no, he didn’t usually give a shit. He drove fast. He was careful.