Ultimate Sins (23 page)

“Yeah, he wouldn't fuck you.” Dwight's dirty finger poked at her shoulder, nearly knocking off her feet and no doubt leaving a bruise.

“That hurt, Dwight,” she said sharply, wondering how three men who were so damned laid-back and serious when they were sober could get so ignorant when they were drunk.

“Oh, I'm sorry.” Dwight jumped back, his expression at first contrite before it creased in sudden thought and turned belligerent. “Who cares it hurt? That dumb-ass daddy of yours killed our aunt. I think you owe us.”

Great, just what she needed, for a brain cell to actually spark and attempt to work as it drowned in booze.

“Yeah, you owe us,” Dillon informed her, stumbling just a bit as they began moving in on her. “He killed our aunt. Raped her and cut her heart out. I think we gotta rape you now, and cut out your heart.”

The heart in question began racing in fear as she stared at them, backing up as they moved in closer. They were too drunk to be predictable. The fact that they wouldn't mean to hurt would be zero comfort if they actually managed to do so.

“Yeah, get us some of that.” David grinned with drunkenness. “And then get her heart. We'll split her heart, too.”

“David, I would never hurt you.” She focused on the brother considered to be the easiest of the three to get along with. “And I didn't hurt your aunt. Why would you hurt me?”

“'Cause your daddy hurt us,” David answered her somberly, so intently Amelia found herself suddenly, horribly afraid they could indeed carry out their threats. “He killed our aunt, Amelia, and you know we loved her.”

Their aunt had indeed loved them. She had helped raise them, spoiled them, and mothered them when their own parents had taken very little time for them.

The three brothers moved for her as one then, reaching for her, trapping her as she attempted to turn and run. They surrounded her, the scent of alcohol, old sweat, and anger overwhelming her senses. The people she had once fought to protect now longer cared if she was protected.

Amelia parted her lips to scream, praying someone heard her.

The sound came out as a squeak.

Between one breath and the next the three men were suddenly thrown back, tossed like mannequins in a demon's grip as Crowe's snarl rumbled in his chest like some damn animal.

Thick black lashes surrounded eyes that were now more amber than brown as rage contorted the savage features of his face, made the hard planes and angles sharper, more defined.

And Rory wasn't exactly standing still.

The security agent didn't just throw the largest of the three brothers back, but caught him before he fell and shook him like a helpless pup.

Of course, Dwight was whimpering like a helpless pup, which rather helped the image along a bit.

Nothing was private in Sweetrock, either. Customers were pouring out of the pub like rats from a sinking ship. Where no one had so much as poked their heads out of the door as the three brothers surrounded Amelia, now the sight of Crowe and Rory tossing them around like oversized toys had the entire bar emptying out to observe the confrontation.

Some were cheering at Crowe and Rory to “Do it again,” while others were encouraging the Carter brothers to get up and fight like men.

Amelia wondered if it were possible to find a rock to hide under as the bar patrons hooted and hollered, no doubt hoping to see bloodshed.

“What the hell is going on?” It was Archer, stepping from the entrance to the town square, no doubt drawn by the brothers' drunken cries as Crowe and Rory advanced on them now. His fiancée, Anna, stood behind him in confusion, her gaze catching Amelia's as she quickly gave a hissed, “What the hell happened?”

“You don't want to know,” Amelia sighed, the answer more or less working for both of them.

“The hell he doesn't,” Crowe refuted, her hope that he would ignore the question shot to hell as he glowered at her with pure male outrage.

Moving from the Carters, he reached her in two long strides, glaring down at her with such anger that she couldn't help but wince as he turned to Archer. “Let me guess. The two of you were meeting here with her and those fucking entertainers she was so desperate to see yesterday?”

Archer frowned before glancing at Amelia, then Anna. “I was under the impression we were meeting both of you. Anna?”

Crowe and Archer both turned to Anna just as Amelia tried to shoot her friend a warning look.

Anna was no one's dummy.

Her eyes widened innocently. “I honestly didn't think to ask.”

Bullshit. Amelia almost smiled.

Anna had been suspicious. She had actually asked, and Amelia had stated that she was certain she wouldn't be alone. It wasn't as though Crowe ever gave her five minutes of peace. If she couldn't have slipped from the house then she would have brought him along. Him and the hulking-shouldered agents who refused to give her so much as a sliver of an opening between them to see the streets she had yet to plan the decorations for.

Crowe grunted at the answer.

“Look, I'm already here, just let me finish this so I can—”

“Forget it.” Crowe gripped her arm as she turned toward Anna. “I'll be damned…” He stared at his empty hand in surprise as Amelia suddenly ducked, twisted, and managed to escape his grip in a move it had taken John less than three days to teach her when he'd first moved into Wayne's house with her.

“Amelia.” Growling her name, he stared back at her in warning now. “I'll be damned if you're going to be rewarded for scaring the shit out of me. Those entertainers can go to hell for all I care, and you can get your ass back to the house.”

In what tiny particle of his mind had he decided that he could make decisions for her? That he could order her around like a ten-year-old?

She stared at him in complete amazement as the realization dawned that Crowe didn't see her as an adult so much as the eighteen-year-old she had been seven years before, looking for adventure despite the danger it represented.

“I'm not your damned kid and I'm sure as hell no teenager you can drag back to the damned house for not keeping curfew.” She was shaking with fury. “How dare you, Crowe Callahan. How fucking dare you decide what I can and cannot do, and what the hell makes you think you can tell me what I will and will not do?” She turned on Archer, outraged as he frowned back at both of them. “You are not to allow him to drag me out of here,
Sheriff
Tobias,” she ordered him, determined to regain at least a measure of her independence. “If he does, then you better do something about it.”

More than two dozen of the bar's customers were suddenly silent, their gazes trained on her, drunk, sober, and in between, soaking up every word and no doubt making mental lists of who they would call first. She was certain several were taking videos with their smartphones.

Just what she needed, her own little page of notoriety on Facebook.

“I warned you,” Rory muttered behind her, obviously to Crowe.

“What did you do to her?” Anna hissed at her brother.

Archer lifted his gaze heavenward as he tilted the dun-colored hat back on his head. “I say my prayers,” Archer sighed. “I go to church when I can and I even take old women to the grocery store when they need me to. And this is the thanks I get.”

“And I voted for you,” Amelia snapped back. “Now make him leave me alone while I do the job I came here to do, or next time I'll vote for old Charlie Weaver if he runs again.”

Archer frowned down at her. “Charlie Weaver's in the rest home now, Amelia. You can't vote for him.”

Crossing her arms over her breasts, she could feel her teeth grinding as frustration threatened to overwhelm her.

“I swear, Archer, I'll campaign so hard for your competition that you'll think I'm related to them if you don't get me to that meeting and get me to it now.”

“I'm going to paddle your ass,” Crowe muttered as though dazed, or astounded, behind her.

“Just listen to him.” She stepped closer to Archer, throwing her hand back at Crowe as the crowd began to press closer around them. “He's threatening bodily harm now, Archer. I'm about to demand police protection.”

“Police protection?” Archer questioned softly before his gaze suddenly sliced up and over her shoulder toward the crowd.

“Police protection,” she repeated, her tone low despite the determination filling her. “I'm certain you heard him threaten me. Shouldn't you be arresting him or something?”

It was all Archer could to do to keep from laughing in her face. Amelia found herself having to fight her own smug smile as she propped her hands on her hips and faced him with a forced glare.

Okay, so she wasn't as pissed as she had been moments earlier. No doubt the dazed astonishment in Crowe's voice as he threatened to paddle her had something to do with that.

“Police protection,” Archer sighed, staring out behind her as he slowly shook his head. “Some days, I wish I could
give
this job to old man Weaver.” He stared back down at her. “This is one of those days.”

“Nice little fantasy,” she commiserated in a less-than-sympathetic tone. “Now, if you don't mind, I believe I have several entertainers waiting for me in the conference wing of the Community Center, and you and Anna promised to help re-measure those two grottoes before I leave.” She glanced over at Crowe, a shiver working up her spine at the focused glare he directed at her.

“We
will
discuss this later,” he promised her as the crowd behind them, no doubt bored at this point, began breaking up and turning back toward the bar.

A careless shrug was her only answer as she directed a speaking look back to the sheriff. She didn't dare let herself do more than glimpse Anna from the corner of her eyes. Her friend, and Crowe's sister, was obviously fighting giggles as well as the urge to agitate the situation further.

“Fine.” Archer rubbed at the back of his neck as he glanced at Crowe, then behind her—likely at Rory, she thought—before turning his gaze back to her, a grin tugging at his lips. “And you used to be such a quiet little thing, Amelia.”

The amusement evaporated instantly. “Yeah, and that did me a lot of good, too, didn't it, Archer?”

The situation itself might have amused her for a moment, but the underlying reason for her escape from her own home still stood. She wasn't a child, and she wasn't going to allow Crowe to treat her like one any longer just because she was his ticket to catching Wayne and making him pay for the hell he'd put the Callahans through.

She understood his need for vengeance. She understood his belief that only through her would he find the chance he needed to capture Wayne. But keeping her locked out of sight wasn't going to help his cause.

She wasn't in danger of Wayne aiming a rifle in her direction, lining her up in a set of rifle sights. The man believed he was her father and had no intention of shooting her, and he was a lousy shot to boot. No, Wayne wouldn't take such an easy route. He wanted to punish her and, through her, punish Crowe.

Before he ever killed her, Wayne would make sure she wished she'd never been born.

 

CHAPTER 13

Crowe was dangerously silent.

Shadowing her through the meetings with the entertainers and the subsequent walk around the band gazebo and dance square, he didn't say a word other than to speak into the earbud link he wore to direct Rory Malone once they left the Community Center and walked to the square.

The comedian Amelia had signed for the late-summer act was one of the more popular national figures in the field. His handsome face, fit body, and deliberately outrageous one-liners had her and Anna in gales of laughter more than once; Archer chuckled and shook his head at the entertainer's ability to find a joke in damned near everything.

He was even brave enough to poke fun at Crowe's silence and dangerously intent expression as Amelia explained a few of the themes that would be carried into the grottoes surrounding the square.

“Strong silent type, is he?” he murmured at Amelia's ear as she pulled a small notebook from her leather jacket to make a list of not just the comedian's requirements but also new ideas for decorations to coordinate with his acts.

“Strong definitely,” Amelia admitted, glancing at Crowe from beneath her lashes as his expression tightened, his lips a tight, hard line as the comedian leaned close to speak to her.

“Jealous type?” he asked.

“I'm sure he could be,” Amelia admitted as she refrained from smiling in amusement at the deliberate questions.

“Ah. So, does the strong jealous type guard you, or…” He trailed off before grinning wickedly. “Does he guard your body?”

Her brow lifted slowly. “I and my body are pretty much one and the same,” she informed him.

“And here I had so hoped I could run away with your mind,” he snorted.

Amelia couldn't help but laugh.

“Seriously, are you lovers?” he asked her, the deliberate jokes and amusing asides absent as he glanced between them.

“Would it matter either way to your show?” she asked curiously, wondering why he cared.

“Well, if you're not, then I could petition for the position myself,” he admitted with a slow grin. “If he is, then I may reconsider…”

“That might be a very good idea.”

The sound of Crowe's voice behind them had them both jumping and turning to face him.

Shooting him a disapproving glance, Amelia turned away from him deliberately.

“I think I've listed everything you mentioned needing for your opening act, as well the shorter shows during the band's breaks on Saturday night,” she told him. “Is there anything else I need to know?”

She refused to allow Crowe to intimidate her, and despite his wariness the performer evidently wasn't above teasing wild animals as well.