Quick & Dangerous, page 20
Skyler took a sip of her wine. It was still painful talking about her mother. She’d never said goodbye. Never had a service for her, never got any closure. The wound was still very open and raw. She wasn’t sure if it’d ever close and heal properly.
“That’s because I erased it all, but she was a nurse,” she finally said. “After Pierre Rubio killed her, I wiped her existence from the earth. Mainly to protect her brother, my Uncle Ambrose, and any other family I may or may not have out there that the cartel could use to hurt me.”
All three of her brothers halted mid-chew.
What had she said?
“A nurse?” Gavin asked.
Skyler nodded. “Yeah, why?”
“Because my mother was a nurse.”
Was?
He must have caught her surprised expression. “My mother died when I was seventeen.”
Oh no.
She swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
Gavin’s mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t crinkle much. “Thanks.”
“My mother was a nurse, too,” Warren added, his strong Aussie accent still making Skyler do a double-take. It was so weird that two of her brothers spoke like she did, but one had this strong—what she would ordinarily consider sexy—accent.
“Mine too,” Tate said. “Though she retired and finally moved here. Grandchildren were the deciding factor.”
“My mother retired too,” Warren said. “Moved to Canada and married Silver’s dad.”
Skyler shook her head. “Wait, what?”
Warren’s smile was mischievous. “I married my stepsister. You gonna judge?”
Silver swatted him on the chest. “Shut up.” She rolled her eyes, then rested her gaze on Skyler. “It’s not like that. He’s my stepdad. And yes, he married Warren’s mother, but … ”
“We’re step-siblings,” Warren said again. This was obviously an ongoing thing between them. “That’s what we are. Doesn’t bother me, but stop lying, Silver. You know what I do to bad girls who lie.” He winked at Rob and then his brothers.
Silver groaned, her eyes softening in sympathy when she looked at Skyler. “Don’t traumatize your sister.”
“Ah, she’s got to get used to it. She’s stuck with us now,” Gavin said across the table.
“That she is,” Tate agreed.
“Might be nice if you eased her into your idiosyncrasies, though,” added Parker, Tate’s wife.
“Naw, she’s tough. She can take it.” Gavin grinned. “Kind of weird all our mothers were nurses though, huh?”
That was strange.
“Where did your mothers meet … ”
Could she say Dad?
She’d called him Dad, but had any of them known him well enough to call him that?
“Randall?” Tate asked. “At the hospital. He went to the ER for something. I think maybe a neck injury.”
“Hospital too,” Warren said with a nod.
“Yep,” Gavin confirmed.
“So Randall McAllister liked to pick women up at the hospital, date them, marry them, knock them up and then leave them?” Tate said with little to no emotion in his tone.
Gavin and Warren both nodded.
“When did he leave your mom?” Gavin asked.
She swallowed. Would it be easier on her if she lied? Told them he’d left when she was four or five? Or should she be honest and let them know that she’d grown up with her father? That he’d raised her with her mother until the day he died?
“He raised you, didn’t he?” Warren asked.
She nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Tate said. “At least he had the decency to stick around and raise one of us.”
“You think he’s got any more kids out there?” Gavin asked, focusing his eyes on Skyler. “I mean, you’re the only one who remembers him. He left before any of us could remember him. If he made any mention of other kids, of families, we wouldn’t know. But you might.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t know about you three.”
“Fair enough,” Gavin said with a shrug. “I just keep thinking that there is such a big age gap between Tate and me that I wouldn’t put it past our old man to have another kid in that time. You know?”
“But he had forty million he split four ways,” Warren added.
“Uh … ” Skyler’s eyes narrowed. “He had more than that.”
“What?” all three brothers asked, silverware clattering to their plates and mouths hanging open in shock.
“My copy of the estate said forty million, which he divided four ways.” Tate’s eyes bugged out. “That’s all it said. I figured he had other kids if he divided everything so equally, so that’s when I started hunting for you guys.”
“Mine says forty, too,” Gavin said.
Warren nodded.
“Mine said fifty million,” Skyler said softly.
“Divided five ways?” Tate asked.
“It didn’t say. It just said fifty million. Of which I received ten.”
“Did your mother get any?” Tate asked.
She shook her head. “She got the house and his pension, but our copy of the estate never said where the other forty million went. And his estate lawyer, who was also his executor, wasn’t allowed to tell us.” They never did understand why her mother didn’t get any money left to her. It’d devastated her when Randall had died. But now it made sense. Still didn’t take the sting away, though.
Had their marriage even been legal?
“This is all so insane.” Warren’s wife, Silver, rubbed her belly. “I mean, did your father not want you to find each other? Why was he so secretive about it all?”
Tate shook his head. “We’ll probably never know. All we can be thankful for is that we found each other.”
“And now we might have another sibling out there,” Warren said. “Most likely between Tate and Gavin.”
“That would make the most amount of sense,” Tate said.
Warren’s hand joined his wife’s hand on her round belly. “This is crazy. More siblings.”
Gavin squeezed his wife’s hand on top of the table. “More family.”
“I’ll start looking into things in the morning,” Tate said, cutting into his steak again. “See what we can dig up.”
“Well, here’s hoping it’s another sister,” Parker said, raising her water glass. “Because Skyler could use all the help she can get dealing with you three.”
Skyler dabbed at her mouth with a cloth napkin, then sat back in her chair, taking in her suddenly enormous, busy, and loud family.
These people were her family.
She had a family.
Yesterday she had nobody, and today she had brothers and sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews. She went from none to over a dozen in a matter of seconds. Her head spun with how surreal it all was. She was about to say something, not entirely sure what, but something akin to “this is nuts,” when slight pressure on her thigh made her look down.
“Oh, hello,” she said with a chuckle. The little girl threw her arms in the air and said a squeaky but demanding “up.” Not one to piss off a toddler or make more enemies, Skyler obliged, perching the little monkey on her lap.
“Allie’s not shy,” Heather said with a laugh. “If your lap is free, she’s on it.”
Skyler leaned forward and smelled the little girl’s head. Her throat grew tight from how sweet it all was. The moment, the act, the child. This was what having a family was all about—togetherness. Closing her eyes briefly and squeezing the little girl tight, she let the moment settle in her heart. Slowly, she opened her eyes only to find everyone around the table watching her with small, serene smiles.
“Allie also has that effect on people,” Gavin said quietly.
Skyler cleared her throat. “So this is Allie.” Her eyes roamed the table to the other children, who were either eating nicely, playing with their food or blowing bubbles in their water glasses. “And let me get this straight, there on the end is Ellie, right?”
Tate nodded. “My oldest.”
“And then Heidi?”
Tate nodded again.
“Garon is the redhead.”
“Good memory,” Parker added. She’d given up trying to feed Garon in his high chair and instead held him on her lap with one hand and a banana in the other for him to drool all over.
“And then, Warren, your kids are Ava and Marcus?”
Warren nodded. “Yep, and the bun in the oven doesn’t have a name yet.”
Tate snorted. “Ours either.”
Skyler’s eyes went wide. “Wow. So many nieces and nephews.”
Tate grinned. “As it should be. We were all raised as only children, no siblings, no cousins. We can’t let that continue with the next generation of McAllisters. We have a legacy, and we need to create lots of little heirs to pass it down to.”
Both Gavin and Warren nodded.
“I also want to give my children something I never had,” Gavin said solemnly. Skyler lifted an eyebrow, encouraging him to go on. “A father to help keep them on the right path.”
Tate and Warren both nodded and grunted in agreement.
Skyler felt bad she’d had her dad for most of her childhood, but her brothers had missed out. She couldn’t imagine growing up without him. As busy as he’d been, she loved him. He’d been a good dad … to her. How could he have been so awful to her brothers and so wonderful to her? She just didn’t get it. She obviously didn’t know her father at all.
“What about you?” Heather asked, taking a sip of her water. “You want kids?”
For some reason, Skyler’s eyes fell on Rob next to her. But he was busy on his phone, his eyes narrowed into a pensive scowl and his mouth in a deep frown. What was so important he needed to be on his phone during the middle of dinner? Was he just staring at his phone to avoid looking at her? To avoid participating in the conversation? Had the mention of kids freaked him out? Or was he just not a fan of her brothers so much so that he had no problem being rude?
Her face grew warm, and to keep herself from reading too much into anything, she ran her hand over Allie’s sweet head and pulled her eyes away from Rob’s hand blocking his phone. The little girl’s dark hair was angel-wing soft and curled around Skyler’s fingers.
“Hmm?” Parker probed. “Kids?”
Skyler swallowed. “Maybe one day. I’ve never really been around kids much. Can’t say I have that maternal instinct to know if I’d be a good mother or not.”
“That’s about to change,” Gavin said with a snort. “You can be on babysitting duty any time you want.”
Skyler leaned forward and smelled Allie’s head again. “Sounds perfect.”
“So, you going to stick around for a while, Rob?” Tate asked, tipping back his beer and leaning over to put a hand on his wife’s thigh.
Rob’s eyes were still glued to the screen. “Huh?” He still didn’t bother to look up.
Skyler cleared her throat, causing him to finally lift his head.
“Sorry,” he murmured, asking for forgiveness around the table with those soft brown eyes of his.
“Everything okay?” Gavin asked, hoisting Garon, Tate’s youngest, up onto his lap and helping him take a sip of his water.
“Um … ” Rob’s eyes darted back and forth between the brothers and then to Skyler.
“What’s wrong?” Tate all but demanded.
Rob shook his head, his eyes darting back down to his phone. “Nothing.”
“Doesn’t seem like nothing,” Warren said, standing up, grabbing his son from his wife’s lap and wandering over to where Rob and Skyler sat. “Just so you know, we have a no phones at the dinner table policy. You should really put it away. Here, get to know the kids. This one’s Marcus.”
Warren made to put baby Marcus into Rob’s lap, but before he could, Rob stood up. Pure fear splashed across his face, and color stained his cheeks. “No. I can’t.”
Just then his phone started to ring, and with a sigh of relief that everyone in the room seemed to notice, he was answering it and booking it out the door faster than The Flash, his ear glued to the screen and his voice too low for anyone to hear.
“He always like this?” Warren asked Skyler, concern coloring his tone as well as his bright blue eyes.
Skyler shook her head absently. Her eyes were pinned on the doorway Rob had just exited out of.
What was wrong?
Murmurs of frustration and confusion around the table interrupted her thoughts until she was forced to get up from her own chair and leave the noise, leave the questions. She had enough of her own questions giving her a headache; she couldn’t handle all the ones from this new, crazy family she’d just been tossed into.
“Okay, I can be out of here by tonight, probably,” Rob said into the phone. “Tomorrow morning at the latest.” His big back was to her as he stared out the window in an empty ballroom. Tate’s luxury resort was laid out before them. Luscious turquoise pools, a tennis court, swaying palms, and sand so white, so pristine you’d think it was snow. “Get a team together. Call Blaze, Ash, Colt, Wark, Callaghan, Deck, and Ryke. See if any of them can spare some time and feel like taking out a sick fucker. We’ll need at least six. Eight would be better.” He hammered his fist on the window making it rattle. “Fuck, man, I know, but I think she’ll be safe here with her family. I have to put an end to them.”
Merde. He was going after them.
Swallowing the nerves that had crept up her throat and formed a big hard ball, Skyler approached Rob from the side. She knew better than to approach him from behind without warning. Obviously baby Marcus had been a trigger. She saw that in his eyes, as did everyone else. How many other triggers did he have? Would he share them all with her? Had he shared them with anyone?
“I’ll rent a house as soon as we get off the phone and send you the address. We’ll meet there … yeah, good idea. They’ll be able to supply us with what we need … no, we’re going in hard. Finish ’em.”
Skyler’s pulse thundered in her ears as she processed what Rob was talking about.
He was leaving.
He was leaving her.
When she knew he’d spotted her out of the corner of his eye, she rested her hand on his shoulder. It flexed beneath her fingers. She dug her nails into the fabric, feeling the heat of his skin, his blood pulse beneath her touch.
“’Kay, gotta go,” he said, turning to face her. “I’ll email you the details.” Then he hung up and gave her a look that broke her heart. The heart that had just fallen in love with him.
“You’re leaving.” It wasn’t a question.
He nodded.
“For how long?”
“What do you mean for how long?”
What the hell did he mean?
“How long will you be gone?” she reiterated, her lip trembling as hot tears burned the back of her eyes. Pain throbbed in her jaw from holding back how badly she wanted to pound her fists again his chest and cry.
“I don’t know,” he said dismissively, shaking her off. Her heart ached from his reaction to her touch. As if she were a bothersome mosquito, and not the woman he’d made love to just a few hours ago. A woman whose touch he couldn’t get enough off. “I have a new assignment, and then I’m heading home. So I guess I’ll be gone for good?”
It felt like someone had just delivered the mother of all roundhouse kicks to her gut.
“You’re going home to Texas?”
He lifted one shoulder and stuffed his phone into his back pocket. “Yeah. My dad needs help on the ranch, and my mom is scheduled for hip surgery in a few months, so … ”
Liar.
She figured he’d head back to the dining room with her family and finish dinner, but instead he made his way out of the building and down the path to his villa. She followed him, though the farther they got down the path, the less she felt invited.
He opened the door with his key card and barely held the door open for her. She watched him stuff his backpack with clothes and toiletries, laid out on the bed that still had disheveled sheets from their earlier lovemaking. Was he really going to leave her? For good? Forever?
“You’re leaving now?”
He nodded but didn’t stop packing. “I’ll see if I can get a flight out tonight, otherwise grab whatever I can either here or on a nearby island tomorrow.”
She sniffled but hid it with a fake cough. His coldness was throwing her off. It wasn’t like him at all. At least not what she knew of him. Was he trying to hurt her? Because he was succeeding.
She stared at the pillow on the bed where her head had been just hours ago. Where he’d kissed every square inch of her body, stared into her eyes and made her forget the last several years as a nomad on the run for her life. He made her have hopes for the future, hopes for a new life, one filled with stability and safety, family and friends, and most of all, love.
“Why do you have to leave so soon?” She took a hesitant step toward him, though she no longer felt welcome in his personal space. He stiffened, as if bracing for her touch. That hurt more than when she’d been knocked unconscious by one of Rubio’s goons. She felt like a burden and somebody who was wasting his time as he tried to pack.
“Shit to do,” he said with a huff of impatience. He hadn’t bothered to look at her, but she couldn’t tell if it was on purpose or simply because he was so focused on packing. Maybe she didn’t really know him as well as she thought. Maybe he wasn’t the caring, thoughtful, more-in-tune-with-what-she-needed-than-she-was man she thought he was.
She’d been a mission.
A job.
A job with perks.
A job with benefits.
But at the end of the day, at the end of it all, she’d been just that … a job.
Emotion raked the back of her throat, and she had to spin away to blot at her eyes and stop the sob from choking her.
It had all been in her head.
The conversations, the intimacy, the feelings, the falling.
It had all been her and only her.
She’d been the one falling, while he’d been the one working.
Oh, what a fool she’d been.
