So why was she letting him blackmail her?
She had to fight to keep from laying her palm against her abdomen as they drove from the houseboat to the store. That was why she was letting him blackmail her. Because nothing had been finished when she had left Somerset eight years before. But everything had been lost.
Her dreams. The man she had loved for what seemed most of her life. And the child she had carried from that night.
The miscarriage had destroyed something inside her, something she hadn’t been able to recapture after leaving town. And she had never forgotten Dawg: his touch, his kiss, or the pleasure that had filled every cell of her body.
“You’re making me look bad,” he snapped as he jerked the vehicle into park and turned his head to stare at her over the top of the dark glasses he wore. “I never open.”
“You never hire one of your lovers to work here, either.” She shrugged.
“For a woman who was supposed to stay locked in the office, you managed to filter through a lot of gossip.”
“I’m good at that.” She nodded benignly as she opened the truck door and stepped out of the vehicle, leaving him to snarl and curse behind her as she slammed the door closed.
She was moving around the edge of the building when he finally drew up beside her.
“You’re working on a spanking,” he warned her.
Unfortunately, the idea of that shouldn’t have been titillating.
“Am I?” she asked sweetly. “I hear you’re particularly good at that little disciplinary act. Before I left Somerset, all the girls were talking about it.”
She had to force those words past her lips. Just as she’d had to force back the jealousy at the time.
He grunted. An irritated sound of male displeasure.
Crista shrugged. “You and your cousins aren’t exactly good at hiding your lights under a barrel, so to speak,” she told him, casting him a disapproving glare. “Really, Dawg, it’s a little late to worry about gossip.”
She should have known better than to dare him. She really should have.
Before she could do more than gasp, he had pushed her against the chain-link fence and stole her lips in a kiss that had her system rioting with conflicting emotions.
They weren’t on the houseboat, in his bed. They were in full view, and she was very well aware of what he was doing. Marking her as his. As another woman in the very long line of women who had shared his bed.
“Stop, Dawg.” She tore her lips from his, panting with the effort it cost her.
His hands were on her back, holding her against him, the length of his erection pressing into her lower stomach, as his big body seemed to surround her.
“Don’t push me, Crista.” He stared down at her, his light green eyes practically glowing with an anger held closely in check. “I’ve never given a damn about gossip or others’ opinions of me, and I won’
t care about it now. Remember that when you’re twitching that tight little ass around me and trying to convince yourself what a good guy I might really be underneath it all. I’m a son of a bitch, darlin’, and one you really don’t want to cross.”
No, he was one she wanted to soothe, because she could see the pain in his eyes, in the mockery of his expression. She could see it in the anger he was holding back, despite his words.
“Are you going to hurt me, Dawg?” she asked him then, reaching up to touch his jaw before he jerked away from her.
“Get your ass in the store, goddamn it,” he cursed, stepping back and gripping her arm to lead her to the front doors where Layla was unlocking the employees’ entrance.
She cast them a curious glance, her dark hazel eyes concerned as Dawg approached.
“Good morning, Mr. Mackay. Crista,” she greeted them with an attempt at brightness, despite Dawg’s heavy scowl.
“If you can call me Mr. Mackay, then you can call her Miss Jansen,” Dawg told the manager brusquely as Crista sighed behind him.
“Call him Dawg, Layla. Maybe he’ll stop snarling at us because he had to come in so soon.”
Crista tugged at his grip. “And he’s really not dragging me along behind him like a recalcitrant child. I get off on dominance.”
Layla coughed as she turned her back on them quickly, and Dawg stopped and stared back at her in surprise.
She lifted one brow curiously. “What? I wasn’t supposed to tell?”
They both knew she hated being dragged around like a favorite puppy, and she was certain that was exactly why he made a habit of doing it.
Spanked. He mouthed back at her before turning back to Layla.
Crista smiled serenely back at the other woman as she finished unlocking the door.
“Layla, follow us to the office, I want to know what the hell is going on with the lumberyard. I thought Bedsford had a handle on that?”
“He was working out great, Mr…. uhh Dawg,” she stuttered as she relocked the door, then followed behind them. “He’s been with us ever since he was discharged from the service. I don’t know what happened.”
Crista glanced behind her at the manager, winking as Dawg continued to drag her behind him as he mounted the steps to the office.
“When did it start?”
“Last week.” They paused as Dawg dug the key to the office out of his jeans pocket, still holding onto Crista, and inserted it into lock, turned it, then stopped.
“Dawg?” Crista tried to stare around him. “What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t lock up last night.” His voice was carefully restrained.
“Of course I locked the office before I left.” Crista frowned. “I know I did.”
“I also checked it before I left Mr., umm, Dawg.” Layla cleared her throat again. “I always check the office doors before I close up at night.”
Dawg stepped back, his keys still hanging in the lock.
“Crista, I want you and Layla to go back out front. Use your cell phone and call Natches. I programmed his and Rowdy’s numbers in last night.”
“Why?” Crista could feel the dread rising inside her now.
“Layla, does anyone know you check the offices at night?” Dawg asked then.
“I don’t know, Dawg.” There was an edge of fear in her voice. “Jamie and the boys always go through the store with me at night when they pick me up, just to make sure everything is okay. I check all the office doors then.”
“Get out front and call Natches, Crista.” Dawg turned back to her, his expression closed, dangerous. “Now.”
“Not without you.” Her hands gripped his arm, tugging at him. “You can call him yourself. He’ll come faster if you call him.”
Surprise tightened his features. “I know what I’m doing, Crista.”
“I don’t care.” She wasn’t leaving him here alone. Only God knew what was behind that door.
“You can come with us.”
“Mr. Mackay, we should all go out front. What if whoever was in the store, if anyone was, is waiting outside?”
That had murderous fury lighting in his eyes. Dawg’s gaze sliced to the tall, wide windows of the front of the store as his expression became cold, dangerous.
“Come on.” Thankfully, he turned, moving them down the metal steps and headed for the entrance as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
Punching in Natches’s number, Dawg stalked away from the women.
“It’s early, Dawg,” Natches mumbled into the line.
“Get to the store. Someone was in the office last night. I’m calling the sheriff to dust for prints, but I need someone to watch Crista while I’m taking care of Mayes’s questions. After last night, this could get ugly.”
“Shit!” He could hear Natches moving. “Bastards moved fast.”
“Makes me wonder if the car going up in flames wasn’t more of a distraction than an attempt. Just hurry. I’m calling Sheriff Mayes now. And you know Layla, her husband and sons are going to come down here like a pack of ravening wolves intent on protecting her. I’m going to need help here.”
Natches snickered.
Jamie Matcher and his brood of overgrown sons had come to the store and stayed with Layla every day for the first damned year she had worked for Dawg. And Jamie, all six feet five inches of him, had towered over Dawg and warned him what would happen if his little Layla got smeared with gossip because of games Dawg might want to play in the privacy of his office.
As if he played games in his office. Damnit, he liked a bed for games. The office was work.
Paperwork. Something he didn’t handle well, despite Crista’s certainty.
“Just get your ass down here.” Dawg closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead, anticipating the headache he knew was well on its way.
As he flipped the phone closed and turned back to the two women, he sighed again. Layla was looking decidedly nervous. Crista was defiant and suspicious.
“Layla, call Jamie and the boys,” he told her. “I have to call Sheriff Mayes, and once the call goes out on the radio, Jamie will blow a fuse.”
“He worries, Dawg.” But she was pulling the phone from the case she wore on the slim leather belt that cinched her crisp tan slacks.
“He worries,” Dawg muttered. “I worry.” Then he turned to Crista.
She was leaning against the block wall like she didn’t have a damned care in the world.
Concerned but amused. She was amused at him, and that one was biting his ass. He was blackmailing her, but damned if he didn’t suddenly feel like she had the upper hand.
“Layla, why don’t you and Crista go to the lounge and get some coffee on. The employees will be showing up about the same time the sheriff and the state boys do. If they have their coffee, they might not make too much of a mess investigating this.”
He could hope. But he wasn’t betting the houseboat on it. By the time he got off the phone with Sheriff Mayes, he could feel the headache beginning in his temples.
Good old Ezekiel Mayes. The son of a bitch. Dawg swore he was going to vote against him each election, but he always managed to vote for him. Better the devil you knew…
He stood and stared around the store. It was just as huge now as it was each time he found himself doing this. The first year out of the Marines he had nearly gutted the place. His knee had ached like a son of a bitch that year, but he had nearly tripled the size and added to the layout. Not that he cared one way or the other about the business, he reminded himself. He had been bored.
Fuck that. Even Crista knew better. And he was kidding himself. He had been kidding himself for eight years. The estate his parents had left him was riddled with so much guilt, resentment, and bitterness that sometimes he wished he’d sold it all that first year after their death, while he was in the Marines and worrying his ass off over it.
The house especially. Where he had never lived. His father had finished it after Dawg had bought the Nauti Dawg from an inheritance left to him by his mother’s mother. He had never spent a night in that house until after their deaths.
His father had hated the lumber store, too. But he had kept it anyway. He had always said it was the only thing Dawg was smart enough to actually make a living with. And maybe the old bastard had been right.
He had a knack for it, unlike his knack for warfare. He tended to get his knees blown off there.
The ATF assignment wasn’t a bad one, but the restrictions pissed him off. Answering to other people wasn’t his strong suit.
Unfortunately, Sheriff Mayes liked a lot of answers to his questions.
“What the hell are you involved in, Dawg?” Zeke kept his voice low as they stood back from the state police unit now inspecting his office.
There were no prints, no hint of anything disturbed, though it was impossible for Dawg to tell if anything was missing. He glared at Crista where she stood in the open door of the lounge beneath the office. He hadn’t even recognized his damned office.
