Mastered By The Mavericks(46)

"All of it," he repeated along the way. "This girl needs to learn she can trust us-with everything."                       
       
           



       

Rhett felt himself cut loose a grin. "Well, damn. That actually makes sense."

Rebel chuckled. "You sound surprised."

"I am. I didn't think either one of us was thinking straight about her right now."

"Still not quite sure I am, brother." Reb paused at the door to the  guest bedroom she was using. "But putting her needs first seems like a  good place to start."

Temptation or not, Rhett refused to let that go unanswered. He reached  over, delivering a sturdy clap to his friend's shoulder. "I agree, man."

Just like that, thank fuck, it was over. He'd gotten through it without wanting to go too much further with the affection.

Too much further …

Stow it, asshole. Deep.

Rhett twisted the doorknob then quietly swung in the bedroom's door. "Sweet peach?" he called softly. "You awake?"

Rebel rolled his eyes while striding past him. Once the guy got to the  bed, he hitched up on it, curling one knee in. "Brynna." He tenderized  the charge at once. "Minette, Rhett and I would like to speak with you."

There was no response from the woman beneath the covers.

Low blow though it was, Rhett let a chuckle fly.

"Brynna? Mon chou?"

Still not a move. Not a groan, a sigh, or a rustle.

Rhett moved to the foot of the bed, laughing a little harder.

With a glare over his shoulder, Rebel slid farther up the mattress.  Rolled over and curled around Brynn, completing the sensual spoon by  slinking his arms around her waist.

Before his whole body seized and jerked.

"Moon?" Rhett scowled. "What the-"

Shock choked back the rest. As Rebel swept the coverlet high then hurled  it off the bed-exposing the pillows mounded together to create the  effect of a slumbering body. On the pillow where Brynna's head should  have been, there was a note scrawled on the back of a crumpled rehearsal  schedule, probably yanked from her purse-which, along with her  cosmetics and hair products, was also gone.

She wasted no time getting to the point-escalating Reb's low growl to an enraged bellow.

She's my best friend.

I had to do something.

I'm sorry.

Rhett added his own snarl to that-but did it while whirling out the door  and back down the hall to the office. He plummeted back into a chair  and jammed on his headset before issuing a furious vow beneath his  breath. "She has no idea what sorry is yet."

By the time Rebel joined him again, he'd hailed El, who answered from  Vegas like a fairy flying on Ecstasy. "Howdy, Texas! What's up?"

"Cut the crap, El." Rebel glowered at the note in his hand that might as  well have been the thorn in his paw. "She did this with your help, damn  it. Unless you want to consider two best friends chained in Adler's  magic lab of wonders, you'll spill."

A long pause. El's pissy huff. "She told me you'd do this. That you'd be impossible bullies, and try to intimidate me into-"

"Everything, El. Now."





Chapter Fourteen





‡


Brynn's cell buzzed on the SUV's passenger seat. Again.

It was El. Again.

She ignored it. Again.

She jolted as the air vibrated with a heavy thwop-thwop-thwop. Forced  herself to breathe deep, telling herself it was only another media  helicopter, not Rhett and Rebel about to fast-rope from a Blackhawk and  torch through the rental car's roof. But the fact that the scenario was  in the realm of possibility for those two? Another shiver was fully  justified-as well as a glance up at the sky, just to confirm the media  chopper theory.

She'd just tucked her head back inside the car when the phone buzzed  again. Cockroach-crawled across the cushion at her. A new shudder. Damn  if she didn't wish for the thing to just turn into a real roach.

Did she want to know what the auto redialing was about?

Rhetorical question. The way things were going today, she wouldn't  flinch if El was calling about a flash flood on the river, or even a  swarm of locusts on its way to munch down on Austin. But not answering  meant the thing was going to buzz through every mile between here and  the old Verge building.

With a dreading huff, she scooped up the phone. "What?"

El whooshed out a breath. "Damn it. You picked up."

"Excuse me? You've been calling like Crazy Cory."

Surely that would loosen El a little. Cory had been a charming fan who'd  talked El into a few fun dates, only to turn semi-stalker and earn his  name on a restraining order. Their Crazy Cory jokes had stuck even after  the guy decided to move to Florida, suddenly switching his obsession to  a new Latina pop star who lived there.                       
       
           



       

But El's tension only notched higher. "Where are you? Damn it. You can't  be done yet-unless Adler and Royce didn't buy your act, and left you  out at the gate."

"Not in these hose, they won't." She ran a hand up her calves, just to  be sure the seams still extended up the back, to the point where they  clipped into garters against her thighs. When packing this "nice girl  with the secret naughty side" outfit back at home, she'd gone for the  garters and stockings out of ruthless instinct, thinking only about what  might capture Adler's attention if she had to resort to this tactic.  Now that push had come to shove, she wished the demure stockings had  gone in, too. She felt obscenely exposed, despite the boy short panties  still covering every inch of her privates beneath her pinstriped pencil  skirt. Maybe that had something to do with her white button-front shirt,  open down to the fourth button, giving an ample peek at the white lace  of her cami-bra beneath-and the flesh filling it out.

"What does that mean?" El pressed. "And where the hell are you?"

She lifted her head and looked around, almost laughing from bemusement. "Just leaving the motel."

"What?"

She yanked the phone away from her ear. "El, I get enough screeching from your cat."

The line filled with a girl growl that was just as bad. "How are you still there? Why are you still there?"

"Well, I wasn't sitting here redoing my nails." She couldn't help the  defensive burst. "The traffic was bumper-to-bumper on the road for at  least an hour after I checked in." Then transformed into the  slinky-heeled, va-va-voom-haired vixen who was going to charm anything  she wanted from Homer Adler-including access to the room where he was  keeping her best friend. "I think I heard someone say that they're  screening the new Tarantino film this afternoon."

"The new-" A sharp smack cracked through the line, confirming her friend  still excelled at the fine art of face-palming. "I can't freaking  believe this."

"The next time Zo gets herself kidnapped, I'll just ask her to steer  clear of the SXSW dates, okay?" Out of convenience, she used the acronym  for South by Southwest, the monster-sized alternative film and cultural  festival that took over Austin every March. Her view across the motel  parking lot alone included a pink-mohawked woman walking a trio of  similarly-coifed wolfhounds, a guy dressed as Dracula on top and Wolfman  on the bottom, and a dreadlocked couple toting a pair of mobile  keyboards, singing Wrecking Ball in perfect harmony.

"Just confirm you're able to get out of there now. As in, right now." At  first, El's tone just seemed irritable. But after three major dance  show tours with the woman, Brynn knew the nuances of irritation in her  friend. This wasn't one of them.

She trembled again. Hard. Then finally muttered, "Shit."

"Ummm, yep. That about hits the nail on the head."

"So they just found out?" She cut to the chase. The particulars of how  Rhett and Rebel had grilled El didn't matter. She hadn't even asked her  friend to keep any confidences, knowing the guys would use any means  they could-probably even a threat to El's screechy cat-to make her spill  about Brynn's logistics. Putting El in that position wasn't fair. She'd  only asked El to buy her some time by scrambling the tracking chips on  her phone and the SUV. Her mistake had been misjudging how much time  that would take, figuring the guys would've let her "sleep" for at least  three hours before bothering her in the guest room.

"That's the million-dollar question." El's confession wasn't the  thumbs-up Brynn was looking for. "Especially because I don't really know  the answer."

Brynn frowned while powering up the car. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that those men are devious sonofabitches."

Tell me something I don't know. Only by yanking a page out of that very  book had she'd been able to get out of that ranch without them knowing: a  stunt she'd regretted and validated as soon as concocting it. Did she  like sneaking off to pour herself into this get-up, knowing she would  walk into the lion's den by herself in it? Had she enjoyed deceiving the  men who'd been brave enough to show her their truth, despite the  terrifying new ground it had been for them? And had she wanted to slip  out that door, away from them-and the place where they'd made her feel  so good, so right, so complete about herself?