"I need you to be clear and I need some time. I don’t understand what you’re saying. You’re being vague." Yes, she wanted to be loved, take care of, desired, protected, cherished, and worshiped. Everything he verbally offered. But that didn't necessarily need to involve a diamond ring. In fact, marrying again frightened the hell out of her. Though he never actually used the word marriage. But it clearly hung there. Out in the open. Like a lead weight. Oh, God, she felt herself about to hyperventilate.
"Shit," Grant spat. He jumped up from the chair, rushed from the room, and returned with a cold bottle of water. "Breathe, Mackenzie."
Opening the bottle of water, he knelt down in front of her and tilted it back into her mouth. "It's all right, sweetheart."
It wasn't all right. Never, in thirty-two years, had she ever had a panic attack. Tears fell from her eyes. Not tears of panic or sadness or horror. Tears from her body releasing an onset of anxiety it fought against.
Mackenzie looked at the devastatingly handsome man kneeling before her. A man with wealth, intelligence, charisma, and obviously a desire to find a woman to shower her with every ounce of himself.
But he wasn't the man who moved her. Unfortunately, the one who did, she knew would lead her down a path of destruction.
20
“Fucker’s gone off the grid,” Derk growled, his mood less than tolerable. He’d been a bear for the past week with no end in sight to his sour attitude.
For weeks, he and Smith tried to get their hands on the slippery Murphy traitor, but the man, who owed Mr. M more money than God himself, managed to evade them. Which wasn’t good. C.D. Maler was deadly. One of the most lethal managers in the Murphy organization, which was why he’d been placed in charge of the area by the boss. When it came to shady, the man wore it like a badge, and he’d use whatever unscrupulous tools necessary to run business. Because the man was missing and unpredictable, Murphy placed his wife and kids under a massive protection lockdown.
“He knows we’re on his tail,” Smith quietly added.
“No shit.”
As he stared at the lifeless home, located on the outskirts of the city, from the driver’s seat of his truck parked in a neighbor’s driveway, he felt Smith’s hard gaze burn right through him.
“Why don’t you just suck it up and go to her,” Smith said snidely. “Or else get over her. Either way, get yourself together. You’re slipping.”
“Fuck you, Smith,” he barked.
“No, fuck you, Derk.”
Quick, like a couple of rattlesnakes, handguns were pulled by both men and pointed directly at one another’s skull.
“You really want to do this?” Smith asked too calmly. Derk recognized the look in the man’s eyes and the easy tone. He knew it all too well. He saw the same gaze every day staring back at him in the mirror. The look of a man who remained dead behind the eyes. A man with nothing to live for other than getting up each morning and going to work. A man who’d take a bullet to the head just to put one in his best friend, who was acting like a royal jackass.
Derk’s self-destructiveness over the past week rivaled the time in his late teens after his parents’ deaths when he embraced a death wish. Heavy drinking, fights, hell, he even played a nice little game of Russian roulette one time. Well, more accurately, he played with a hit he’d been paid to make. Normally he didn’t play with his prey. There was always the off chance the target could fight their way out of a situation.
“Is she worth this?” Smith whispered.
“Fuck you.”
“I don’t swing that way.”
Their weapons remained steady on each other. Neither backing down.
“Why don’t you buck up and go to her?” Smith again suggested.
Yeah, cause that’d be considered the reasonable thing to do.
“I won’t beg for a woman,” he ground out.
“But you’ll drive yourself insane over one?” Smith cocked a brow. “Instead of going to her, fixing your fucked up head, and maybe end up spending every night balls deep inside of her—if you two can get over yourselves? That makes sense.”
“I hate you.”
“Take a number, Derk.” Smith put his weapon away and stared back out the window. “I’m not in the mood to put a bullet into your head.” He paused. “Today, anyway.”
Derk slowly placed his pistol into the back of his jeans. “As if you could get the jump on me.”
“In the state you’re in. It’s a given of when, not if.”
Derk ran a hand through his hair. Fuck if Smith wasn’t right. He was a total basket case. For good measure and much needed release, he put his fist into the dashboard of his truck.