Midnight Sins (58 page)

Logan and Crowe slept in positions that

would block all access to the stairs.

There was no way in hell to get from the kitchen

to the stairs or from the stairs to the kitchen, where

her coffeepot awaited.

“Just tell them to move their sorry asses,” Rafe

said lightly as he bounded down the stairs behind her

rather than walking softly as she had.

“They’re sleeping.” She frowned up at him, not

entirely agreeing with the command.

“They were, until Lard Ass stomped down the

stairs,” Crowe groused as he rolled over in the

sleeping bag and jerked the extra-down-filled material

over his head.

It wasn’t exactly cold, but a fire would have been

nice. Before she’d acquired three grown male

bodyguards, she would have had the fire ready to light

and the coffee set to have already been made.

She held back the sigh that would have slipped

past her lips and looked at the clock.

Before she had acquired her bodyguards, she

would have had a job to go to. The fire would have

waited until evening, and then it would have been a

nice glass of wine rather than coffee as she graded

papers.

She was going to have to call the principal,

though her Uncle Eddy had promised to talk to his

other niece himself. Serena Carlyle was Ella’s sister’s

daughter and had taken the post of principal the year

before when the previous principal had retired.

A resident of Aspen, Serena wasn’t influenced by

the barons though. Thank God!

“Someone needs to make coffee,” Logan

grumbled from somewhere inside his sleeping bag.

“Get your lazy ass up,” Rafe ordered as he

stepped into the living room and began stepping over

the bodies. “We have a busy day ahead of us.”

“And what is ahead of you that’s going to be so

busy?” Cami asked as she followed behind him,

albeit picking her way through the living room more

slowly.

She was still incredibly tender, her hip was still

one large bruise, and though the headaches weren’t

as severe or as often as they had been at first, they

were still prone to hit and last for hours at a time.

The bruising to her skull could have resulted in

much, much more serious complications. Thankfully,

the initial concussion and disorientation was the worst

she had suffered.

She could have returned to work, though she

admitted it wouldn’t have been easy. Cami was

guessing she could look forward to spending the rest

of the school year out on leave and when the new fall

season began she doubted she would have a job.

Moving to Aspen was out of the question, she

thought as she stepped into the kitchen, greeted by

the tempting scent of coffee beginning.

“And what are you doing today that’s going to be

so busy?” she asked as she pulled the edges of the

gray sweater she wore snugly around the white cotton

shirt she had tucked into her jeans.

“We have a few errands to run,” Rafe told her as

he moved to the cabinets and, as he had the day

before, began preparing breakfast.

They never asked her to fix breakfast, though

Rafe had acted like a kid in a candy store the morning

she had cooked during their snowbound adventure.

“Logan and I have to check the ranch and my

house before meeting you and Rafe at the

courthouse,” Crowe finished as he too stepped into

the kitchen.

“Meeting us at the courthouse?” She arched a

brow as she looked over to where Rafe was loading

one of her larger skillets with bacon. “And why are we

going to the courthouse?”

“My lawyer and I have a meeting with the county

attorney to discuss Deputy Eisner and his lack of

talent in navigating private drives with a piece of

county equipment.”

She almost winced. “You’ve sued the county?”

“Not yet.” Rafe flashed her a grin over his

shoulder before turning back to the two pounds of

bacon Logan had brought in the day before. “That’s

what we’re discussing.”

Cami lowered her head, shaking it at the

impossible sense of fun that seemed to fill Rafe’s

face.

“You know this is insane, right?” she accused

him. “Rafe, suing the county is only going to piss more

people off.”

“Fuck ’em,” Logan drawled as he moved plates

from the cabinet and handed them to Rafe before

taking Cami’s cup from her hand and filling it with

coffee. “You’re probably the only one in this county

that likes us anyway.”

“Who says I like you?” She arched her brow,

hiding the fact that she did like him.

She had always liked the Callahan cousins, even

when she was younger. Especially when she was

younger, when the cousins had been like fables,

larger than life and used as a bogeyman threat

against little children who refused to behave.

Logan pouted good-naturedly as Crowe grunted

at the response. She noticed he did that a lot. He

didn’t talk much, but he watched, listened, and he

waited. There was always a sense of waiting where

Crowe was concerned, as though he knew something

was about to happen and was determined to be

prepared.

“So I have to go to this meeting why?” She turned

back to Rafe as he moved to the refrigerator and

pulled a dozen eggs from the inside.

He flicked her a look that assured her he meant

for her to go, one way or the other.

She crossed her arms over her breasts, cocked

a hip, and tapped her toe against the floor twice as

she waited.

“Ignoring me isn’t going to get you your way

automatically,” she assured him as he returned to the

sizzling bacon. “I have things to do today myself.”

“And I have no intentions of leaving you here

alone,” he informed her, his tone hardening. “And I

can’t miss this meeting. Eisner deliberately took that

fence out, and he was too damned gleeful about the

results to suit me; now he’s going to pay for it.”

“And you don’t think it would be a good time to

take the high road and let it go?” she asked him.

“Give it a rest, Rafe. No one is going to care if Deputy

Eisner is fired or not, except Eisner. But what they will

do is come together against you, rather than for him.”

Rafe shrugged. “Good luck to them.”

She turned to Crowe, wondering if, as the oldest

cousin, he would at least show a bit more maturity.

“You should stay out of this one,” he told her

instead, his darker voice rumbling more than usual.

“Let Eisner pay for his sins. He’s quick enough to

attempt to make others pay for sins that aren’t theirs.”

“Stay out of it?” She let her brows arch in amused

disbelief. “There’s not the first one of you that could

possibly keep your nose out of my business at this

point, and you have the nerve to tell me to keep mine

out of a part of yours? Or his?” She nodded to Rafe.

“Not as long as he’s sleeping in my bed I won’t.”

Rafe had to turn back to the sizzling bacon to

hide the grin tugging at his lips as Cami turned that

teacher’s attitude on Crowe without a thought.

There were very few people Rafe had ever

known who were willing to stand and stare at his older

cousin as though he were a mischievous schoolboy

stepping out of line.

“I’m not sleeping in your bed, though,” he pointed

out.

“No, you’re sleeping on my living room floor,” she

retorted with false sweetness. “If you don’t like my

opinion, then you’re more than welcome to sleep in

the backyard.”

Logan’s snort of laughter was followed by

another of Crowe’s less than impressed male grunts.

“The backyard is probably more comfortable,”

Crowe informed her. “Unfortunately, not as secure.”

“Yeah, like someone’s going to get past Rafe

while he’s pacing the bedroom floor,” she stated.

Rafe arched his brows at the acidic little

comment. He had no idea she was aware of the fact

that sleep was often a long time coming for him.

He wasn’t exactly pacing the bedroom floor,

though. That would have been counterproductive.

More often than not he was standing by the bedroom

window, silent, still, and watching the shadowed edge

of her back garden carefully.

Crowe had managed to pinpoint the location

where her attacker had come into her yard and

slipped into the window well that hadn’t been as

secure as it should have been.

There had been no prints, just as Archer said

there hadn’t been. But what Crowe had found was that

the back door lock had been broken from the inside,

not the outside. Someone hadn’t wanted it known that

the basement had been used for the entrance point

into the house. That window had been opened from

the inside as well, not from the outside.

Someone she had trusted had opened that

window.

Crowe had locked it back, and now the cousins

were going to see about giving that someone a

chance to slip in and unlock it again.

That meant getting her out of the house without it

appearing as though he had deliberately gotten her

out of the house. The meeting was the perfect

opportunity for that.

Besides that, he knew for a fact that the county

attorney, Wayne Sorenson, would have a much harder

time playing the bastard with Cami sitting there

watching him.

Cami and Wayne Sorenson’s daughter, Amelia,

had been best friends. They had practically grown up

in the same house. Amelia’s mother had been best

friends with Cami’s mother, and the two girls had

been inseparable as children and young adults.

Wayne and Mark hadn’t associated with each

other much, though. Wayne had been younger and

hadn’t seemed to connect with Mark’s aloof bigotry.

“It may not be a good idea to take me to that

meeting with you, Rafe,” Cami advised him as the last

of the breakfast dishes were cleared away more than

an hour later.

She was still limping a bit, the bruise on her hip

obviously bothering her as she shifted in her chair

again, accepting the cup of coffee Logan reached to

her as Crowe finished loading the dishwasher.

She had watched them as though they were

aliens as they cleaned her kitchen. Or as though she

had expected them to leave the mess for her.

“And why is that?” Rafe asked as he rinsed the

skillet he’d used to prepare the meal and turned back

to her.Drying his hands, he watched her as she nibbled

at her thumbnail, a concerned expression on her face

as she watched him.