Heedless (The Hellbound Brotherhood #4) - Shannon McKenna Page 0,81

least I’m in good company.” Her eyes flicked to Nate. “It makes all the difference in the world.”

“Well, yay for your positive attitude,” Mace said sourly, but he might have saved his breath, because Elisa wasn’t listening. She was looking at Nate. Nate was looking back. Neither of them knew that he was there. They only saw each other.

Damn. It’s not like he hadn’t seen this coming from miles away, but for fuck’s sake. Nate, too? Right fucking now?

“Get in the car,” he grumbled. “I want some distance from this place.”

“Don’t we need to talk to the police?” Elisa asked.

“I’m sure you will, and at great length,” Mace said. “But at the moment, we’re probably being watched, knowing Kimball. And you guys need to get looked over by a doctor. The cops can talk to you afterward. To their hearts’ content.”

“Are we going to Josh?” Elisa’s big golden eyes fixed on his with startling intensity. “You’ll take me to him?”

“Straight to Josh,” Mace assured her. “Granger Valley Hospital, here we come.”

Elisa slid into the back of the SUV, right into Nate’s embrace. He draped his good arm around her and clamped her up against his body like he was afraid someone was going to rip her away from him.

Thought, to be fair, someone had just tried.

Well, damn. It was good that Elisa’s most pressing security problem had been resolved, but the one she’d exchanged it for might be even worse.

She didn’t seem too worried, judging from her starry-eyed look as she—oh, for the love of fuck. Seriously? They were kissing? Here?

He just didn’t get it. Love and passion was great, yeah. Sex was awesome. They’d find no argument from him about that universal and self-evident truth. Getting laid rocked. That said, now was not the time to dive into the bottomless pit of amour and wallow in it. And both his brothers and their respective ladies were doing that right now. Now Nate, who might as well be his brother after all these years, and who ought to fucking well know better, had fallen into the same trap.

Boom, boom, boom. Tumbling one by one, like overripe fruit.

He didn’t begrudge Nate his good luck at finally getting the woman that he wanted. God knows, the guy had worked for it. Paid for it, too.

For that matter, all of them had paid. Kimball wouldn’t let himself be manipulated a second time. They would never get that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to draw him into a trap again. But he didn’t begrudge Nate his crazy gambit. Elisa’s life was unquestionably worth it. Everyone would agree with him on that.

Still, they’d stirred up Kimball’s hornet nest. They’d beaten on it with a great big stick. They’d ratcheted up his revenge vibe to its highest frequency yet. And Eric was still thousands of miles away on his romantic fucking honeymoon, and Anton and Fi were rolling around whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears. Now Nate and Elisa were lip-locked, in the back of the car. Right after all that apocalyptic bullshit had come down on their heads. The fuck?

He needed all hands on deck. He needed one hundred percent of everyone’s energy and attention, and he wasn’t getting it, not by a country mile. With all this pink-tinted love-fog in the air, it fell to him to be the lone, solitary grown-up on duty.

That had never been his role. His brothers had always occupied that job, at least when it came to dealing with Shaw’s Crossing. It did not come naturally to him.

It made him feel tense and alone.

26

Shaw’s Crossing, two weeks later…

Elisa stepped back from the painting on the wall and studied it while she mixed a lighter shade of pale yellow to highlight the heart of the flower.

The painting covered the whole wall. Four meters by three, and she’d covered the whole thing with panels of stretched canvas. The room was a mess of drop cloths and stepladders and frames for stretching canvas.

So far, she’d only painted the center panel. The rest were covered with preliminary sketches, and the drafting table behind her was heaped with discarded ideas. It was all still evolving, every minute she worked on it.

What was coming out onto the canvas continued to surprise her. She no longer even tried to control it. As soon as she got to work, something took over and painted through her, for hours on end. She forgot to eat and sleep sometimes.

The image was a huge well of darkness full of barely perceptible monsters.