“Enough.” Jazz stepped forward, placing himself at Kenni’s back, ready to get her the hell out of there as both Slade and Zack moved to the ends of the table, bracketing the Maddox brothers. “Get the hell out of here, Deacon, before I end up pissing her off and teaching you a few manners.”
Deacon’s bark of sarcastic laughter loosened the leash Jazz normally kept on his temper. “Manners? Like yours, Lancing? The kind where you keep your damned mouth shut and don’t tell us our sister is alive?” he snapped. “You should have contacted us immediately.”
“Cord you should leave now,” Jazz drawled with icy fury, lifting his hands to Kenni’s shoulders as she started toward her brother, fists clenched, fine tremors racing over her body. “And get Deacon the hell out of my house until you can convince him to have a civil tongue while he’s in it.”
Deacon was getting madder by the minute, Jazz realized, and he didn’t need that right now. Hell, Kenni didn’t need that right now.
“You’re making a mistake, Kenni.” Deacon focused on his sister, his brows lowering as the anger raging through him darkened his gaze and hardened his expression. “You’ve been in Loudoun long enough to know what they say about his women.”
“And what would that be, Maddox?” Jazz pushed Kenni behind him and stepped closer to the other man. “Go on, push some damned stupid insult out of your mouth about a single woman I’ve been linked to. Be that stupid man, so I have the excuse I need to kick your damned ass.”
“Stop this.” Kenni managed to push herself ahead of him again, moving to place herself between the two of them before Jazz pulled her back. “Deacon, this is enough. Right now.”
The tension in her voice, the hurt was enough to send adrenaline pulsing through him. She’d been hurt enough in the past ten years; he’d be damned if he’d let her brothers hurt her further.
“Kenni, come on. Ten years and the man has never had a serious relationship.” His bark of laughter was cutting. “Does that sound like a man you want to bet your heart on?”
“I bet my heart on him when I was sixteen and the three of you told me to stay away from him or you’d break his bones,” she cried out then, surprising Jazz with that bit of information. “I didn’t listen to you then, Deacon. I went to Poppy instead, and from what I’ve heard, he reined your asses in.” Jerking from Jazz she stepped closer to her brothers, outrage and anger trembling through her. “Say one more nasty word to or about Jazz and I promise you, when I do go to Poppy, I’ll tell why I won’t be moving in, coming to visit him, or attending any holiday meal or party thrown in his home. Because my brothers are too possessive and too damned superior to accept that I have enough common sense to make a decision for myself, despite the fact that I did play a rather large part in keeping my own ass alive for ten years.”
She didn’t yell, she didn’t have to. The minute she mentioned going to her father the three men backed down with their proverbial tails tucked and stayed there.
“Don’t punish me,” Sawyer muttered, giving Deacon a hard push to the door. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Poppy didn’t care ten years ago if you were part of it or not. You let him open his big dumb mouth so you were just as culpable. Has his opinion on that changed?” she questioned them harshly, but even Jazz knew the answer to that one. Poppy hadn’t changed one whit.
“Not hardly,” Cord muttered, stomping to the back door before turning back to Jazz with a killing stare. “Don’t let anything happen to her, Jazz. Nothing.”
Jazz crossed his arms over his chest and met Cord’s glare with one just as antagonistic. “Anyone will have to go through me, Marcus, and Essie to get to her,” he informed her brother. “And you know yourself, trying to get through me isn’t something that’s considered advisable.”
“The problem is, there’s a lot of things about you that aren’t considered advisable. Especially when it comes to women,” Deacon snorted though he was already on his way out the door.
Tightening his jaw, Jazz forced himself not to follow the Maddox brother out the door and teach him the manners he’d obviously forgotten over the years. Instead, he turned back to Kenni.
Once again she lifted the pack containing her laptop and the DVR and headed for the doorway.
“Kenni, are you okay?” There was something about her expression, her eyes, that bothered him, that made his chest ache.
She did things to him no one ever had, made him feel things he hadn’t realized he’d never felt before, and none of it made sense.
“I’m fine, Jazz.” the assurance did nothing to relieve the tension building in his senses. “I’m just tired. I’d like to take a nap, I think.”
He glanced at Slade and Zack as they, too, watched her, the curious concern in their expressions mirroring his own.
Hell, what had he done?
As she disappeared through the hall on the other side of the television room, he turned back to Slade.
“What did I do?” Hell if he knew, but damned if he didn’t feel guilty all the same.
Slade just shook his head.
“Some things a man has to learn on his own, Jazz,” he finally chuckled as he headed for the back door. “I think I’ll go take a nap myself. I swear, you two are enough to make a man tired. Real tired.”
Glancing at Zack, Jazz lifted his brow questioningly. The other man just shrugged as though to say it was hard damned telling when it came to Slade.
And that was the damned truth.
CHAPTER 16
He found her in the bedroom, the balcony doors now closed as she stood to the side and looked out on the edge of the valley as it met the slope of the mountain rising over it.
“Deacon and Sawyer left,” she said as he moved across the room to stand several feet from her. “Cord’s still out there, though, just above that table rock that looks out on the pool.” Somber knowledge filled her gaze. “He thinks I didn’t see him slip into the tree line.”
Evidently her brother didn’t have a lot of faith in his ability to protect her or in her ability to survive.
“Well, there go my plans for skinny-dipping.”
The look she gave him was one of exaggerated disbelief. “Then you weren’t intending to do so anyway. You wouldn’t let Cord stop you.”
His brow lifted. Shooting her a grin, he inclined his head in acknowledgment. “That’s true,” he agreed. “But if you want to skinny-dip, sweetheart, I’ll make sure it happens for you.”
He’d made certain she had her house, the gazebo with the bed in it, the pool, and everything else she’d mentioned she would have on the property if it were hers and he’d never imagined for a moment she’d enjoy it in any way.
“Yes, you would,” she whispered, and in her eyes he could see the knowledge of the same memories that drifted through his mind. “God, Jazz, you confuse me.”
Of course he did. In the ten years she’d been running she’d known very little warmth or gentleness. It had been all about survival, about living one more day.
And Kenni was a survivor. As much as he hated it, as much as it enraged him that she’d been forced to learn the skills to survive, still, he respected the strength he saw in her.
It challenged him, though. It made him want to see how far he could push her personally, how deep that vein of independence and defiance went when it came to her lover.
“Because I’d make Cord lurk somewhere else so you could go skinny-dipping?” He lifted a brow curiously. “That’s more self-preservation, sweetheart. You know I’d have to go and get me some of that.” He nodded toward her with a wicked lift of his brows. “And that’s not something we’d want him to witness.”