Natches’s lips quirked at the question. “Have I ever done things any other way, cousin?”

“Hell.”

“He’s going to do things right, or he’ll find me standing beside him.”

Natches jerked around, frowning at Chaya, who didn’t have those files in her hand. But her hand was propped on her hip and her expression was something just this side of pissed off.

“Isn’t that right, Natches?”

He inclined his head smoothly. “I’ll play by the plan,” he promised her.

But he knew Dayle. And he knew Dayle would never play by any kind of rules. This was it and he knew it. When he walked out of that meeting, one way or the other, it was going to be over.

And she didn’t believe a word he was saying.

“Here’s the cell phone.” Alex pulled the phone out of his pocket and handed it across the table. “Cranston’s proud as hell of this little puppy. He said not to break it; it’s the only prototype they’ve managed to complete successfully.”

Natches lifted the phone from the table, flipped it open, and checked it for anything that Dayle could use to identify it as a wire rather than a phone.

“It even makes phone calls,” Chaya told him with a hard smile.

“Cranston has the van parked in town, one agent inside. As soon as he has the location point he can park it within half a mile and still receive clear reception,” Alex informed them. “As far as any listening ears at the hotel could know, he’s raging over Natches’s refusal to join the team or to help Agent Dane complete her mission. He’s making plans to pull out of Somerset once she contacts him.”

“Which will be tonight,” she told them. “I’ll contact Cranston and inform him that he should pick me up in the morning and that I’ll be returning to D.C. with him.”

“That’s when I assume Dayle will make his call.” Natches nodded.

“I’ll need to activate the cell phone to your number rather than using your own cell,” Chaya told him. “We want a recording of it. Calls will transmit with no possible trace outside the half-mile limit.”

“We’ll be ready to move when Cranston gives the order.” Alex nodded to Dawg and Rowdy. “We’ll have everything in place and ready to move.”

“And he’ll have his own watchers,” Natches warned them.

“He has six we’ve identified, and we’ll have men covering them. We’ll allow them to stay in place until the last minute before taking them out.”

It was a damned good plan. Natches nodded to the three men as he curled his arms around Chaya and pulled her back against his chest, one hand against her lower stomach as he stared back at his cousins, his look intent.

They knew. Brief nods assured him they knew. If anything happened to him, then Chaya was to be protected, just as he would have protected one of their wives, one of their children.

They had made that vow long ago and far away. Three boys that should have been brothers, that had wished they were. They had become brothers. And they had made that vow, what belonged to one was the others’ to protect. That simple.

Chaya felt his hand on her stomach and stared at Dawg and Rowdy fiercely. No matter what Natches wanted, he was to be protected. Their gazes flickered to her, then back to Natches, and she hoped, she prayed that the nod they gave was an affirmative to that silent demand.

The Nauti Boys were thick as thieves, it was said. Their loyalty was to each other and to family alone. That bond would protect Natches.

“We’re out of here then.” Alex got to his feet and looked to the back of the boat. “Damn, that water’s fuckin’ cold tonight.”

“And Kelly and Crista have electric blankets and hot coffee waiting on us. That’s the best you’re going to do tonight, Alex,” Dawg informed him.

“Yeah, the two of you curl up with a warm body, and I get stuck with an electric blanket,” he grunted. “I always get the short end of the deal with you boys.”

“Yeah, and we’ll remind you of that one of these days.”

They disappeared along the hallway, silence slowly descending through the houseboat. There wasn’t a splash, a dip of the boat, or a slide of a door to indicate they had left.

“Come sit with me.” Natches drew her to the couch, but rather than sitting, he stretched out on the cushions and drew her into his arms.

“Just sit?”

“Just let me hold you.” He tucked her close, his body warm and hard, strong and secure.

“Stop making this feel like a funeral, Natches. Nothing is going to happen.”

He chuckled at that, then sobered. “You know, Chay, the last time I spoke to him I was twenty. I had cracked ribs, one was broken, my mouth was full of blood, and I could have sworn I was dying. I told him, as Dawg, Rowdy, and Uncle Ray dragged me off of that floor, that the next time I spoke to him, I’d kill him.”

He’d spat his blood on the bastard’s shoes and made a vow, and Dayle had laughed at him. Natches had never forgotten that gloating laugh; he had heard it again tonight.

“And you’re not going to kill him,” she told him.

“Yeah, I am.” Natches smiled as she stiffened in his arms, and at the thought of what he was going to do to Dayle. “Betraying him to DHS will be the same as death for him. It’s the ultimate revenge for me. Because I’ll know, every day, that he’s breathing; we’ll both know I beat him.”

He held that inside him, though he knew clear to his gut that things weren’t going to be that easy. He was a Marine. A sniper. An assassin. He’d always worked alone, without a spotter, sometimes without extraction. Because shit happened after blood was shed, and when shit happened, information came out. He’d learned to go with his gut. To know when to run and when to hang around. And when something wasn’t going to go as planned.

This wasn’t going to go as planned.

And if it all went to hell and back, then he wanted this night. He wanted to hold her, he wanted to talk to her.

His hand slid along her stomach once again.

“If our child is a boy, I want to teach him to play baseball,” he told her softly.

She laughed at that. A soft, amused little sound that had a smile curling at his lips.

“If it’s a girl, you’ll be a tyrant.”

A girl? A frown drew at his brows. A daughter, with her mother’s hair and eyes and, God help him, Mackay blood. He shuddered. “I’ll lock her up until she turns fifty.”

“You will not.” Her hand covered his, her fingers twining those of his other hand as it lay on her thigh.

“I promise you. Till she’s fifty. That girl will be wilder than the wind and harder to control than a green mule.”

She looked up at him, the dim light in the room catching the sparkle in her eyes, the love, the concern, the fears that would ride her until this was finished.

“She’ll be a lady.” The sound of her laughter was almost a giggle, because she knew better, just as he did.

“Wild as the wind,” he argued again.

“And a boy wouldn’t be?” She reached up and touched his face, and that touch, tenderness and warmth combined, was another memory he stored inside him.

“Boys are different,” he told her.

She frowned, just as he knew she would. “How do you figure?”

“Boys are born to be wild.”

“And girls are born to tame the wind,” she said softly. “What are you doing, Natches?”

He knew what she was talking about. Why was he just holding her, just talking, just building memories?

“I’m creating my shield.” He lowered his head and kissed her lips. “You’re my shield, Chay, you just don’t know it. Soft and sweet, born to tame the wind and to tempt my dreams. When I walk into that meeting, I want to carry this with me.”

“Why?”

He was silent for long moments, wondering if there was any way to make her understand.

“So I won’t kill him,” he finally admitted. “Because this memory and all the others will be wrapped around me, and I’ll remember what you’re fighting for and how important keeping him alive really is. You’re the only thing standing between him and death, Chay. Just this, and knowing he’s more important to your fight than he is to mine.”

“Then I’ll be your shield,” she whispered, turning, facing him, embracing him. “Always, Natches, I’ll be your shield.”

TWENTY

He didn’t make love to her that night. He waited until the sun rose and carried her to the bed. There, he stripped her slowly, gently, and gazed at the woman splayed out before him.

Sweetly rounded breasts, her nipples hard and red. Her stomach was smooth, only slightly rounded. There was no sign yet that his child rested there, but he knew it did.

Sweetly curved thighs, and between them, silky bare flesh.

The hours he had spent holding her, kissing her, stroking her, had stoked the fires inside them to a burning simmer. Something Natches had never known before. It was the first time in his life he had ever spent time just holding a woman, just stroking her, just laying velvet kisses wherever he could reach.

He’d been hard for hours. He could have fucked her ten times over in the time he had taken just loving her on that couch. But he wouldn’t have traded it for anything he’d known in the past. Each touch, each kiss, each little laugh, sigh, and whispered love word had bound them closer together.

She had felt it. He felt it. He knew there were silken-wrapped chains in his soul now, and they led back to her. The burn was now a flame though. Natches smiled down at her, wild, wicked hunger raging inside him.

He’d been born as wild as the wind, and like the wind, he had torn through his own life, whipping around it without direction, shearing his own dreams as he moved, until he met Chaya.

And she had been born to tame that wind inside him. Not the man, she made the man wild, made him hungry. But the rage, the burning fury that had driven him before that day in a dry, hot desert, was now tamed, held in the hands of one tender woman.

“Are you going to just stare at me all morning?” She stretched beneath his gaze, her eyes flickering to where he stroked his cock, anticipating, holding back that final moment when he would have to let her go.

“Would you let me?” He smiled, using one finger to trace a line from between her breasts to the silken, soft mound between her thighs.

“If that was what you wanted to do.” She lifted her hands and let her fingers trail along the path he had made. “I didn’t take you for a watcher, Natches. Though I’m sure we could adapt if that’s your kink.”

If that was his kink? He almost laughed; he did smile. God, he loved her. Smart mouth and all.

“What if it is my kink?” He lifted his brows curiously. Not that it was, but he could play with her. That was the joy with Chaya, she enjoyed playing. Even patched and healing in that hospital in Iraq, she had enjoyed playing with him.

“Isn’t it too bad you broke my vibrator then?” She let her fingers whisper over her mound before returning, stroking along the top of the glistening slit.

Hell, he’d come in his own hand at this rate.

“You would have let me watch?” He hadn’t anticipated that.

“Oh, I would have,” she whispered, letting her finger dip into the folds, her hips arching as he watched. “I would have shown you how I survived five years without you. I would have let you watch, and let you hear me crying because I couldn’t reach the same peak you could bring me to. Would you like to see that?”

See her cry? God no.

“I’d finish you, baby,” he promised her. “I’ll let you show me how you do it, then I’d show you how it’s done.” His wicked smile drew a light vein of laughter from her, a twinkle of the same wicked hunger to her eyes.