She glimpsed the shadow of a man hidden within the dark copse of trees that grew to the water’s edge. And she had to walk past him. Dammit, her luck was starting to suck. It was completely ridiculous that Jazz could affect her to this extent. That he could captivate her senses to the point that she was completely unaware this man had slipped up behind them.
“I’m going home,” she muttered. “Remind me to stay away from lake parties in the future.”
Neither man answered, though she could feel Jazz’s eyes on her as she stomped past the hulking intruder, following the path to the well-lit parking area where she’d left her small tan sedan.
Within seconds the motor was humming. She backed quickly from her parking spot and headed for the exit to the main road.
She was going to have to stay away from Jazz for a long time. Long enough to rebuild her defenses and find a way to make certain this never, ever happened again.
She was in Loudoun to finish a game that had begun ten years before. One so deadly, so filled with evil purpose that it had destroyed everything she cared for. She was safe nowhere. No one was safe caring for her, or attempting to protect her. And now there was no way in hell she could actually be honest with Jazz. How could she catch a killer if all she could think about was touching Jazz, and how he would touch her?
Maybe it was better that way. She was so completely alone that her enemies had no one to use against her, or take from her. She had to be alone to face the enemy from a position of strength, she reminded herself. Loved ones were a weakness. Caring was a weakness. And Kenni had already learned the punishment for caring far more than she could bear.
Another lesson just might destroy her.
Now she had to figure out how to complete what she hadn’t been able to complete in two years.
Find a killer.
At this rate, she might manage that task before she was a senior citizen. She doubted it, though …
CHAPTER 2
Well, didn’t it just figure, Jazz thought as Annie escaped, resigned to the fact that this night had just been screwed to hell and back. And just his damned luck.
He would never figure out why she’d been tracking him so often for the past few months at this rate. It wasn’t just here at the weekend gatherings. He knew she’d been watching him in town as well, not that he’d ever glimpsed her doing so.
It was that feeling. A feeling he attributed directly to her.
Besides, seducing her was damned hard this way. She was so busy watching him or trying to follow him, catching her face-to-face was becoming more and more difficult. When he did manage it, she was so wary that she ran as soon as she found an excuse.
He’d been trying to get the little schoolteacher in his arms and in his bed for next to two years now. Fat lot of good it had done him. The minute he had her melting against him Cord Maddox showed up like a harbinger of doom.
He should have expected it. Cord always showed up at the most inopportune times.
“Pretty girl,” Cord remarked as he stepped farther from the shadows, his gaze moving slowly from the direction of the parking lot. “What do you know about her?”
What the hell did he care?
Jazz’s brows arched. “What should I know about her?”
Cord didn’t ask useless questions. The fact that he was supposedly there to do Jazz a favor only made him more wary of Cord’s interest.
Emerald eyes sliced to Jazz, thoughtful, suspicious. The ex–Navy SEAL didn’t have a whole lot of trust in him. Hell, Jazz had always sworn Cord and his brothers had been born distrustful.
“What do you want, Cord?” Running his hand along the back of his neck, Jazz rubbed at the tense muscles there. Dammit, he had a bad feeling about this.
“Can we talk inside?” Cord nodded to the RV. “It’s important.”
“Must be for you to show up at a gathering,” Jazz bit out as he pushed his fingers through his hair, turned on his heel, and made his way to the narrow door on the back side of the RV.
Moving into the home on wheels his gaze swept over the area, subconsciously prepared for intruders while hoping no one was dumb enough to piss him off tonight. It wouldn’t go well for them.
“The gatherings hold too many memories, Jazz, you know that,” Cord remarked as they moved to the front of the RV.
Opening the fridge and pulling free two bottles of beer, he tossed one to Colt while opening his own.
For the Maddox family, the memories the gatherings held were all about one bright, flirty young woman-child they’d gathered around to watch out for. Cord’s baby sister had begun attending the gatherings when she was thirteen. Each of her three older brothers, often her parents, and a multitude of cousins turned out as well to make certain she was protected.
The Maddox Princess.
She would often laugh at her big brothers and their friends for their protectiveness, Jazz remembered. She’d slip away from them when it seemed there was no way possible to do so. She would do it just to make them crazy as they searched for her. Just to show the big bad Navy SEALs that they weren’t all that, she’d claim.
God, how many times had she convinced him to help her even when he’d known better?
Far too many, he remembered. And each time Cord, Deacon, or Sawyer Maddox had planted a fist in Jazz’s face for his efforts. Never once had Jazz not considered it worth it just to watch her effectively escape three men trained to keep her in sight.
God help him, he still fucking missed her, still ached so deep inside that the sensation was a constant companion, a constant reminder to never let it happen again.
Finishing his beer in one long drink Jazz tossed the bottle to the trash, uncaring of the reverberation of sound that crashed through the RV.
Cord didn’t flinch; he barely blinked, though his gaze sliced to the can and held there for long moments as though considering the move.
“Yeah,” he breathed out, the sound both saddened and resigned. “Damned hard to forget that summer, isn’t it?”
Impossible. Especially with Cord or one of his brothers reminding him of her every chance they had. Damn them. It had been long enough, far too long.
“Just get to the fucking point,” Jazz snapped. “I don’t have all night to waste.”
Cord just stared back at him, the somber memories in his eyes more than Jazz wanted to confront.
“Tell me, Jazz,” he asked then. “If I hadn’t threatened to kill you over her that summer, if I’d given you the go-ahead to court her, would you have been with her when she left?”
He would have shadowed her like a fucking lovesick dog, desperate to be by her side. But that weight was one Cord didn’t need to carry. He carried enough guilt as it was.
His jaw clenched. “I don’t want to talk about this, Cord. It’s ten years old, let it go.”
“Answer me.” The banked fury in Cord’s voice didn’t intimidate him, it simply emphasized the importance of the question.
He’d asked himself that question far too often and the answer always pissed him right off.
“That was her and her mother’s trip. I wouldn’t have gone with her unless she’d asked and your mother agreed. And that’s assuming she’d even wanted anything to do with me.”
It was their girl time.
He’d have stayed close, but he would have never interfered. Hell, he’d nearly done it anyway. That one was his fault.
“She would have asked.” Grief still lined Cord’s face. “And she would have had you, Jazz.” He ran his hand over his face wearily then. “She would have had you.”
Ten years. Almost ten years to the day that Cord’s mother and sister had died, supposedly in a fiery explosion that swept the upper floors of their hotel.
“Why are you here, Cord?” he finally asked. “What the hell do you want that’s so damned important that you came here tonight?”