“Good night, Willa.”
He snapped out the light and fell silent. Suddenly, the darkness and the walls seemed to close in on her. She was a little girl tied to the mast again. She was a woman tied to that bed in that fetid shack.
He’d come, saved her.
Saved her baby.
No matter how she tried, she couldn’t seem to get over that.
“McKade?”
“Change your mind about sex?”
“Is that all you think of?”
“When I’ve got a thousand bucks of my money on the line and a girl like you in my bed—”
“I’m beginning to think your bark’s worse than your bite.”
“I’ve got a helluva bite. I promise you’ll love it.” His voice was a soft, sensual rumble. “Just say the word and I’ll nibble you all over.”
“Would you quit!”
When he fell silent, the shadows in the room seemed to darken. When she’d been a little girl, her aunt had told her the witches lived in the closet and they’d get her if she got out of bed.
Willa had thought the witches had yellow eyes and long black fingernails. On a shudder, she closed her eyes. Terrifying darkness enveloped her. Instead of witches she saw Brand. Her eyes snapped open.
Willa got out of bed and scrambled across the floor to McKade’s chair. Her hands climbed his jeans, fingernails clawing the denim. Huddling at his feet, she seized his long fingers and held on tightly. His long, brown fingers closed over hers.
He drew a breath. So did she.
“I’m scared of the dark.”
“You’ve been through a lot.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
So, she told him about her parents, about the accident, about the two days and nights before she was saved.
“I was dehydrated and sunburned, but most of all, ever since, I’ve been terrified of the dark. Tonight when I was alone in that shack, it was like that storm. I had lost everything…all my illusions. The shack was so dark. I—I could hear things crawling. I—I couldn’t have stayed there two days…and two nights…wondering what would happen to me.…I would have gone really mad, died of fear. I know I would have. You came. You saved me.”
He stood up. Slowly, he pulled her up with him. He said nothing, he just held her, and never had rougher hands felt more gentle. After a long time, he lifted her into his arms and carried her back to the bed where he tucked her under the crisp sheets.
When he rose to go, she blindly circled his neck with her arms and held on. “Move your chair closer.”
His fingers tightened on hers. “Be careful what you ask for.” His eyes blazed.
She let him go.
When he’d scooted the wooden legs across the floor and sat down, she fell asleep almost instantly. This time, because she knew he was there to keep her demons and her aunt’s witches at bay, her dreams were pleasant.
6
“I’m going to kill me a bastard.”
Willa’s eyes slitted open. Blearily, she fought to focus on the blaze of pink splashed on the far wall. Through the screen of her dense lashes, she saw that the fake leather chair beside the bed was empty.
McKade. He was gone. He’d left her. But her fuzzy thoughts were brain chatter, delivering no emotional punch. Then she heard more chatter. No, raised voices from the next room!
“You can’t tell me what to do, you bastard. You’re nothing to me. Nothing.”
“Ditto, you histrionic, self-destructive…punk.”
“You’d give anything to be me, to be his real son.…”
“You’re wrong.” But McKade’s voice was soft, and strangely hoarse.
“You don’t like being our bastard, do you?”
“If you shot him, you sorry sonofabitch, and talked to the press about me, my name might get in the papers.”
“Your precious name? What a laugh.”
For an instant, Willa was back in the shack. The redheaded man, no boy, the redheaded boy with the scary eyes was waving his gun and acting crazy. He was here, threatening McKade of all people.
No. She was dreaming.
“You’re going home, Little Red,” McKade said in that firm, irritating, grimly condescending tone she resented every bit as much as this kid did—at least when Mr. Macho directed it at her. “Home to New Mexico.” McKade paused. “You’re going to behave and keep your filthy mouth shut.”
“Save your high-and-mighty act for someone who doesn’t know about your mother—”
You tell him, kid, Willa thought.
McKade must have launched his big body at the brat. Willa heard the rumble of heavy furniture, the crack of bone and sinew and then what sounded like both men rolling and fighting on the floor.
The kid had a gun.
Don’t shoot the big lug. Please, don’t shoot him.
Was that her or Mrs. Connor, pleading for Mc-Kade’s life?
“Hold your tongue, you sonofabitch!”
Despite the life-and-death drama in the next room as well as the squabble in her own heart, Willa awoke slowly, the way she liked to, drifting through pink clouds.
“Don’t shoot me.” The kid’s voice this time.
Oh, goody, McKade had the gun. He wasn’t going to get all shot to pieces this nice pink morning. Not that she cared.
Then a lamp crashed.
Oh, please don’t do murder.
Muffled male curses and scuffling sounds broke through her muzzy consciousness, and she began to fret about McKade again. Oh, dear. Why couldn’t they just cool it? Men were so difficult, such attention-getters. And they were making a horrendous mess that some poor woman would have to clean up.
“Bastard.”
“You crazy, sonofa…”
She knew that tone. McKade was getting mad. Really mad. A fearsome, yet thrilling vision of a huge powerful street warrior, holding a broken beer bottle, towering over her, ready to do battle for her, rose in her mind’s eye.
“What the hell did you think you were doing? A gun? In Mexico?”
Shrill hysterical laughter. The boy’s. Then his whining voice. “What do I have to lose?” He sounded desperate.
There was a great clump. They must’ve hurled each other to the floor again. Bodies rolled. She heard grunts, fists slugging flesh again.
And then silence.
McKade? Was he hurt?
More likely, the boy was dead.
They’d put McKade behind bars.
Curiosity, not concern for McKade, got the best of her. She pulled sheets and blankets around her and rushed into the living room. McKade was sprawled on top of the skinny redhead. The two men’s entwined bodies lay beside a toppled chair, a fallen lamp and shards of glittering glass. Not that either of them were cut. McKade, his silver eyes wild with the lust of battle, was stretching a hand toward the gun that lay six inches beyond his reach.