Gypsy almost sighed.
That was a very subtle hint that her mother thought her hair needed trimming and her nails might need some work. Greta McQuade was very particular about appearance when it came to McQuade Image Solutions. She slid an unobtrusive look to her nails.
Okay, she might need a manicure.
“And the meeting with Director Wyatt and his commander is this evening, don’t forget.” Her mother was sounding more worried now than she had moments before. “I’ll call Connie and see if she can’t get both of us in within the next few hours myself.”
Connie loved her mother.
The beautician had nearly gone bankrupt several years before, and it had been Greta McQuade who had used a few favors, worked a little magic, and within six months, Connie’s salon couldn’t keep up with the influx of appointments being requested. Gypsy had no doubt in her mind that Connie would schedule them within the next two hours.
“Just let me know,” Gypsy replied in resignation.
She couldn’t refuse the job, couldn’t let her parents down like that. And from the small, satisfied smile on Jason’s face, he knew it.
“Gypsy.” Her father’s quiet voice had her turning to him, his somber features warning her of what was to come now. And it was a discussion she simply couldn’t face.
“Can we talk later, Dad?” She was not in the mood for another lecture.
“No, we can’t.” His firm tone had her tensing as she watched him warily, aware of Jason’s frown as he sat forward slowly at the sound of Hans’s sharp tone.
“I want to know what you’re doing,” he told her, his former excitement suddenly gone as he went from business owner to father in less than a heartbeat.
She gave him a deliberately confused look. “Doing?” Lifting her hands in a gesture of uncertainty, she gave her head a little shake. “I’m not doing anything. Mom said she was going to contact Connie. I need to go home, shower and figure out what I’m going to wear to this meeting and get ready for it.”
The disapproval in his gaze had shame burning a hole in her stomach lining. Because most of that was a lie as well as a carefully worded reminder that a fight would only spoil this meeting for all of them.
“You were at one of the border bars last night. Director Wyatt mentioned it while we were talking this morning,” he reminded her. “How does it look when our finest image consultant, our daughter, is a regular at one of the most disreputable bars in the state? Have you forgotten we fired one of your cousins for just such a thing?”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Milly was a tramp. She was screwing her way through the bars as well as drinking her way through them. Neither of which I’m doing. Stop worrying.”
“That bar is dangerous, Gypsy.” Her mother had slid her hands from the table to hide them. To hide her clenched fingers, Gypsy knew. It was her mother’s way of coping and staying calm.
“That bar is fine—”
“That’s what your brother said about that same damned bar a week before you were attacked and he was killed. He thought he could mix with that crowd and survive. He didn’t survive it, and I’ll be damned if I want to bury another of my children,” her father burst out, causing her to freeze instantly.
She couldn’t speak. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. For a moment, one bleak, horrifying moment, the memories almost overwhelmed her, almost broke her once again.
She made herself meet her mother’s gaze and flinched, barely able to hold back a pain-filled cry at the accusation in that look.
In her father’s, there was immeasurable pain.
She couldn’t speak. She tried to. She tried to excuse herself, to apologize, but all she could do was see her father’s face as it was when he arrived in the desert that night.
Bleak. As tearstained as her mother’s. Standing next to the medic transport where her brother’s body had been placed. They had both looked at her, then stopped and looked back at Mark before her mother had collapsed and her father had tried to deal with her loss as well as his own.
Gypsy had stood there, alone, until Jonas Wyatt and Lawe Justice had come to either side of her, their warmth holding back the icy desert night.
“I told you,” she whispered as she felt Jonas staring down at the top of her head. “Who could want me . . .”
Turning, she rushed from the office, ignoring her mother’s protest, her father’s demand that she come back to the office.
From the corner of her eye she glimpsed Jason rising quickly from the table and her younger sister at the front counter, head down, her expression saddened.
Of course Kandy had heard the last of that conversation.
The door hadn’t been closed.
Rushing past her, Gypsy jerked the door open and strode into the brilliant heat and sunshine that enveloped Window Rock before moving quickly to where she’d parked her Jeep across the street in front of the store.
She wasn’t going to discuss her brother, or listen to another of her parents’ attempts to excuse what had happened. They tried, she gave them credit. They tried so hard to pretend that it wasn’t her fault that their son, their only son, had been killed because of their elder daughter. And for the most part, she let them. But more and more often her father was berating her for her evening activities, concern and suspicion filling his gaze each time he did so.
He didn’t know what she was doing. She knew he and her mother suspected she was drinking too much, perhaps worried she was into more than just a few beers. After all, what more could they expect? Her determination to go to a party at fifteen had been the reason her brother was murdered by Coyote Breeds. The reason all their lives had been torn apart.
She couldn’t reassure them. She couldn’t tell them what she was doing. But she wouldn’t have, even if she could. Let them think she was far less than what she was; it would only protect them if the unthinkable happened and the Breeds or the Unknown’s enemies ever suspected her.
And protecting them was all that mattered.
Which was why she intended to have a nice little conversation with Commander Rule Breaker concerning his part in the contract her parents believed they were being offered.
He needed to understand, now, before it went any further. There wasn’t a chance in hell that she was going to become his lover. Losing her virginity meant losing her last link to her brother, and she didn’t think she could bear the guilt of it if she did so.
She’d lived so many years alone, without allowing anyone close enough to her to be harmed that she had no idea how to let anyone in anymore.
Even Khileen, once her best friend, rarely attempted to continue their friendship anymore. The Coyote Breed females Ashley and Emma had come closest to her, and nearly losing Ashley had given her more nightmares than she wanted to consider.
She didn’t need anyone—
She couldn’t finish the thought.
She escaped instead and assured herself she was strong enough to do this. She could resist Commander Breaker and any desire he filled her with.
Yet the taste of chocolate and peppermint lingered in her senses and left her craving more of the Breed’s kiss.
Craving it enough that she began to worry . . .
CHAPTER 7
She found Rule several hours later, after missing the appointment with Connie and her mother, spending precious time hunting him down rather than preparing for that damned meeting.
He was on duty, she’d been told by several sources, no doubt in town someplace overseeing the enforcers under his command.
She found his Dragoon parked behind a small stand of cottonwood trees outside town where the new division headquarters were rumored to be located.
Not that he was alone.