Rowdy straightened as hurt flashed in Kelly’s eyes as she stared back at the other man. Natches’s tone was bordering snide, and Rowdy was fed up with it.

“Natches, shut the hell up,” he warned softly.

“Why?” Natches asked with apparent joviality. “Hell, Rowdy, I’m taking notes here. Watching you get your dick twisted in a knot like this over her is teaching me what not to do.”

He was going to kill Natches.

“Kelly, ignore that fool,” Dawg drawled then. “He’s just pissed as hell that you’re not twisting his dick, that’s all.”

“And he’s getting ready to get his ass kicked.” Rowdy moved then.

He stalked across the room, ignoring Kelly’s flinch as he pulled her against him, his lips pressing to her forehead as he held her to him, his gaze slicing to Natches in warning.

“We’re just discussing the best place to protect you, baby.” He rubbed his hand down her arm, feeling her tremble against him despite her anger. “No plans are being made without you. I promise.”

“I don’t need to be babied.” She pulled away from him, but the hurt in her voice was easy to hear and Rowdy promised he was going to make Natches pay for that one. “I just thought somehow, plans that included me were my business. Just forget it.”

She turned and stalked from the room as Rowdy turned back to Natches. The minute he heard her moving up the hallway, he jumped for the older man.

“Whoa! Hold on there, boy.” Dawg jumped in front of him, blocking him with his wider body as Rowdy growled in fury. “You know how he gets. Dammit, Rowdy, you start a fight in here and Maria’s gonna kick all our asses.”

“Get the fuck out of my face.” He jabbed his finger over Dawg’s shoulder, glaring back at Natches as his expression darkened with anger. “And so help me God, you treat her like that again and I’ll tear your dick off and feed it to you. You want to be a bastard because you’re not getting what you want, then you take it up with me.”

He knew Natches’s problem, and he knew he should have anticipated it. Dawg and Natches both had waited, just as he had, for Kelly. They had hungered, lusted, expected certain things where her relationship with Rowdy was concerned.

This was his fault. As he jerked away from Dawg, he admitted it was his fault, but he’d be damned if Kelly was going to pay for it with Natches’s surly attitude.

He paced to the bar, pouring a quick drink and kicking it back as he grimaced at the sting. Natches was damned good at pushing buttons, and, Rowdy admitted, Kelly was a sore spot with him. Hell, he should have known years ago that this wasn’t going to work, rather than running from the situation as he had. And he had run. The emotions that damned woman caused to rise inside him threatened his sanity at times.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her.” Natches cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Hell. I didn’t mean anything by it, Rowdy.”

Rowdy lifted his gaze. He was so damned close to fighting Natches that he had to clench his fist to hold onto his control.

“She’s mine, Natches,” he snapped. “I can understand why you’re pissed but if you take it out on her again, you’ll deal with me. You got that?”

“Yeah, I got that.” Natches snorted, though he didn’t sound overly concerned at the prospect. “I’m going to go see if I can find a sign of that bastard while you cool off. Hell, son of a bitch needs to die for fucking shit up like this.”

He stomped from the living room. Seconds later, the door slammed behind him. Rowdy stared back at Dawg then.

“He’ll chill out.” Dawg slapped him on the shoulder as he headed from the room. “You take care of Kelly, and we’ll watch your back. And when Natches’s time comes, we might even watch his.”

NINETEEN

Kelly was furious. The anger that sizzled through her carried her through the afternoon and into that evening.

It was the fear making her angry and she knew it. It was making her crazy. And Rowdy, Dawg, and Natches weren’t helping matters. They were making a target of themselves rather than her, daring a madman to strike out at them. Endangering all their lives, and it scared her to death. And that’s where the anger stemmed. Toward the bastard who thought she should belong to him rather than the man she loved. A monster who wanted to terrorize her because she wasn’t the good girl he had decided she should be.

She snorted at that thought. The fantasies she’d had over the years where those three men were concerned were anything but good. But they were fantasies for her. She liked the fantasies, she liked pretending she was daring enough, cool enough, to control Rowdy and his cousins.

But the truth of the matter was that she was anything but cool, calm, or collected when it came to Rowdy. And as hot as the thought of having all three men focused on her was, as hot as it had been in the boat, something still held her back. Made her wary.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

She whirled around with a gasp, wishing now that she had turned the lights on. Natches was shadowed from the hall light, a dark form leaning against the wide entrance into the room.

“You didn’t hurt my feelings,” she snapped. “You pissed me off.”

He sighed. “I didn’t mean to piss you off either.”

Natches flipped on the light. He grinned at her as she watched him warily.

“Do you remember how Dawg and I rushed to the hospital after you were attacked?” he asked, his voice soft, a bit sad.

And they had. Ray swore the doctors had almost had to call security to get them to leave the hall outside her room.

“I remember.”

He brushed back the long hair from his devilishly handsome face. Natches was a charmer, with the face of a fallen angel and eyes that invited a woman to be bad.

“We knew you were ours even when you were a little girl,” he said reflectively. “Not in the sense we knew it after you grew up, but we claimed you. Watched out for you—”

“I love Rowdy, Natches,” she whispered, halting what she feared was coming. “And don’t try to tell me you love me in the same way, because we both know better.”

His lips tightened. “We’re a set. You’re destroying it, Kelly.”

He stared back at her, his light green eyes wary and somber but she could feel the anger in him. She was changing the rules and he didn’t like it.

“I don’t mean to, Natches,” she whispered. “I can’t be what you want, I can’t do what you need.”

“You knew that was part of it,” he growled. “Everyone knows that’s part of it.”

Kelly tipped her head to the side, watching him. Of the three cousins, Natches had always been the most alone. Dawg had his sister after his parent’s death, as well as Rowdy’s parents. Natches’s parents were cold, almost inhumanly so. Scions of the county, with more money than they needed and less heart than anyone Kelly had ever met. How a brother of Ray’s could have turned out like that, she couldn’t figure.

And Natches had always suffered for it, until he was old enough to leave. Dawg and Rowdy were his family. They were all he really claimed. And though she couldn’t see him as needy, she could see the regret that egged at him, the fierce determination not to lose that connection he had with the other two men.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “What Rowdy does when he leaves me—”

“You think he’s going to leave you?” Mocking laughter filled his voice then. “Hell, Kelly, what do you think we were fighting over when you walked in? Rowdy gave us the ‘hands off.’ He’s gone all white-knight possessive on us for some damned reason, and it has to be because you refused to do it.”

She stared back at him in surprise.

“He did what?”

“You heard me,” he grumbled. “Son of a bitch dared us to touch you. You have his dick tied in so many knots he doesn’t know what he wants.”

Now, that just didn’t sound like Rowdy. Rowdy wasn’t a man who didn’t know what he wanted. And he always meant what he said.

“I didn’t know that was what you were arguing over—”

“Because you’re not the one who would have problems understanding the concept.” Rowdy’s deep, angry voice broke in on the conversation as he stepped into the smaller entrance next to the stairs.

He stared back at Natches, his eyes narrowed, his body corded and tense.

“Hell, back down, Rowdy,” Natches sighed. “I just wanted to apologize for hurting her feelings, not take you on.”

Natches pushed his fingers wearily through his hair. She could feel the sense of resignation moving around him and the sadness of it pricked at her.

Kelly shivered as Rowdy moved next to her, his arm going around her waist, pulling her against the warmth of his body. As he did she caught the look that flashed across Natches’s face. It was so quick that she wondered if she imagined it. Envy, regret.

“I accept your apology, Natches,” she told him softly. “And I’m sorry, this isn’t what I intended.”

Rowdy tensed at her side.

Natches’s grin was crooked, charming, but the sight of it made her chest ache. It was a ruse. Natches wasn’t taking this well, and of the three men, she wondered if perhaps he was the one who needed the sharing the most.

“Time for me to slip out and see if we can catch our evil neighborhood stalker now.” He straightened from the doorway, flexing his shoulders as he turned toward the hallway. “Catch ya’ll later.”

As he disappeared she felt Rowdy’s hands slide through her hair.

“Are you okay?” He tilted her head back, staring down at her with a slight frown.

“I’m not an emotional wreck, Rowdy.” She grimaced at the concern in his eyes. “You’re suddenly treating me with kid gloves and it’s getting on my nerves.”

“What do you mean by that?” His frown darkened as she moved away from him then turned to face him.

“You told Dawg and Natches to keep their hands off me?” She leaned against the center island and crossed her arms beneath her breasts as she stared back at him. “Why?”

His eyes narrowed. “We’ll discuss this later.”

He turned away to the fridge, opening it to grab a beer as she stared back at him in surprise.

“Says who?”

“Me.” He unscrewed the bottle top with a hard jerk of his fingers.

“And you think that perhaps this doesn’t concern me in some way? That maybe I don’t have a say in it?”

“Drop this, Kelly,” he warned her, his voice grating as his eyes flamed back at her. “This isn’t a conversation I’m ready to get involved in where you’re concerned, not right now.”

“Fine. I’ll drop it.” She uncrossed her arms, straightened her shoulders, and lifted her chin defiantly. Drop it? Oh she could drop it all right. “I’ll drop it completely, Rowdy. And you can go to hell at the same time you find yourself someplace else to sleep. If I’m not able to decide for myself whether or not I’ll screw another man, then I’ll be damned if I have the brains to decide if I want to screw you.”

She stalked from the kitchen, fists clenched, her teeth grinding. God, when he had gotten so damned arrogant? So impossible to deal with? She didn’t know when it had happened, but where she was concerned, it could stop now.

When had she become so damned stubborn?

Rowdy watched Kelly as she stalked from the kitchen, then listened to her stomp up the stairs muttering to herself before he moved.

Self-control, he had tried to warn himself. Things weren’t exactly stable right now. Between the stalker, his argument with Natches, and his own revelations about himself, he knew his temper wasn’t exactly calm. But this was just too much.