Sliding from the Jeep, she set the roof into operation again, waiting as Kandy slid from her truck, closed the door and locked the vehicle before meeting her at the front of the Jeep.
“You’re out late.” Gypsy lifted her brows suggestively as she watched her younger sister.
Kandy was even more delicate than Gypsy. At five four, she sometimes looked far too tiny to even be a McQuade.
“Look who’s talking,” Kandy laughed back a bit nervously, her turquoise eyes gleaming back at Gypsy as they moved toward the downstairs apartment her sister had moved into the year before.
“Not so late for me,” Gypsy murmured as Kandy unlocked the door, then followed her sister into the cool interior.
Flipping on the lights, Kandy instantly dispelled the shadows that filled the roomy, inviting openness of the apartment.
As in Gypsy’s upstairs apartment, the door opened into a wide entryway that flowed into the open kitchen, dining area and living room. The rooms were divided by a long counter, inset with a chef’s dream of a stove and oven.
Fall colors and dark wood gave the apartment an inviting warmth that Gypsy’s didn’t have, while the scent of various baked sweets still filled the interior. Her sister could make a cake that would melt in the mouth and send the senses into orgasmic bliss.
Yet Gypsy knew, despite her parents’ dreams, it wasn’t a life Kandy really wanted for herself.
Unfortunately, Gypsy didn’t think her sister knew what she did want instead.
“Did you check in with your guard dogs tonight?” Kandy set her purse on a table just inside the door as she slid her keys into it and glanced back at Gypsy. “Commander Breaker and his sidekick were convinced you’d been kidnapped, had run off to Fiji with a lover or were lying dead in the desert somewhere when they couldn’t find you.”
Gypsy rolled her eyes as she strode to the bar and sat down on one of the high stools as Kandy moved to the fridge.
“They finally caught up with me at the Crooked Toe,” she drawled. “What is with those two anyway?”
Kandy paused as she set a covered pie dish on the counter and stared back at her sister in surprised amusement. “You haven’t figured it out yet?”
The knowingness of her tone had Gypsy grimacing at her sister’s knowledge that Rule Breaker’s intent was no more than to get her into his bed.
“Don’t start on me, Kandy,” Gypsy ordered her, pointing an accusing finger at her with a fierce glare. “We’re not going there tonight.”
“He wants your body,” Kandy announced, her lashes lowering as she gave her sister a quick wink. “Really bad.”
“He can want on.” She rolled her eyes before folding her arms on the counter and watching as her sister dished up apple pie, set it in the warmer, then moved to make coffee.
Kandy didn’t ask if she wanted it, but then, it was rare for Gypsy to visit with her like this too.
Watching her sister as she moved about the kitchen, Gypsy felt the guilt and grief that filled her whenever she spent much time with the other girl.
Kandy had been ten when Mark had died. She had never known the brother Gypsy had known. The smart, incredibly funny, and always intensely protective young man who had given his sister her freedom while standing by carefully to ensure no one dared to hurt her as she tried out her teenage wings.
Her sister had seen the danger of slipping out, the parties, and the truth that monsters really did exist in the world. And it changed her life almost as much as it had changed the lives of Gypsy, their parents, his best friend, Jason, and Mark’s former fiancée, Thea Lacey.
All of their lives had been scarred because of Gypsy’s carelessness.
They ate the pie and Gypsy drank her coffee as the tension slowly began to build between them, just as it always did.
“Time for me to go to bed,” Gypsy announced as she slid back her saucer and cup and rose from the stool before Kandy’s nervous tension ended up affecting her further. “Catch you in the morning.”
Throwing her sister a quick smile, she turned to head for the door.
“You didn’t ask me why I was out so late tonight, Gypsy.” Kandy’s observation had her pausing and turning back to her.
Blue-green eyes watched her, the delicate, almost elfin features far too serious and, Gypsy realized, maturing when she hadn’t been looking.
Just because she hadn’t questioned Kandy’s whereabouts didn’t mean she wasn’t well aware of where her sister had been. Like Mark, Gypsy took her sister’s safety seriously. Unlike Mark, she didn’t let Kandy know she did; that way, if anyone, especially the Council’s Breeds, was looking for a weakness and found Kandy, they’d be convinced that the younger girl couldn’t force Gypsy into giving her life for her.
Even though she knew she would do for Kandy just as Mark had done for her.