Khan (2 page)

He watched her move around the room. Her
belly was just beginning to poof out. He hadn’t said anything about it because
she seemed a bit touchy about everything. When he’d told her that he’d missed
her, for instance, she’d cried. And when Corrine had handed her a fruit salad
instead of leaf lettuce like they had, she’d cried again. Walker told them she
was all right, just hormonal. He hoped that was all it was.

Walker was watching her too. He looked
so happy that it was all George could do not to stand up and do a jig. And the
fact that they’d brought Khan over with them had him as happy as a lark. He
looked over at Corrine when she tugged on his arm.

“You old fool, you should listen to
them. I don’t know what has gotten into them.” She nodded toward Reed and Marc.
“They fight much more and I’m going to send them to the shed.”

The boys had been arguing about one thing
or another for the better part of a week. He hadn’t been able to get either one
of them to tell him what it was about, but he’d had enough. They were upsetting
their mother. Before he could stand and take charge, Caitlynne did.

She knocked the chair legs out from
under Marc and then stepped on his head. Before Reed could get out of her reach,
she had him down as well. He knew that neither of them would hurt her, but he
was just standing up to tell her to let him take care of it when Khan simply
stood up.

“I’ve only been here for a little over
two hours and you have been biting at each other ever since. What the fuck is
going on?” She pulled a gun out and pointed it at Reed when he started to stand
up. “I’m not in the mood to fuck with you, young man. Either you two tell me or
I’ll start shooting manly parts. I don’t believe those heal all that well from
what I’ve heard.”

“He said that you’re going to keep me
from working with the CIA and that you had no intentions of letting me before
you left here.” Reed sounded more hurt than mad, and she apparently knew it
too.

“So instead of coming to me and asking,
you let him bait you into being pissy at our homecoming? You’re an idiot.” She
lifted her foot off of Marc’s face long enough to look at him then put it back.
“And you. What the fuck? You have nothing better to do than fuck with him? You
want me to find you something to do?”

“No. But…” Marc looked at his brother
then up at her, and George had an idea what was going to spill from his son’s
mouth. “Why does he get a job like that when I don’t?”

She lifted her foot off him and put her
gun away. When she told them both to stand up, she stepped back from them and
crossed her arms over her chest. She was tapping her foot hard, and he knew she
was pissed.

“You want a job. Well, good for you. I
thought you had one. Or is that little investigative thing you got going on not
a job? You sit around your office all day and eat bon-bons?” He shook his head
and glared at her. “Again, why didn’t you come to me and ask?”

“You’ve been away.” Marc looked up at
his brother and then back at the floor. “I’m sorry, but I don’t really have
anything to do. My business pretty much runs itself now, and with the money you
put into my account, I don’t have to stress about every little thing. I’m
bored.”

He had to hand it to her, she was good. When
she started pacing the room, George noticed that his other sons, Dylan and
Sebastian, both sat near Marc and Reed. It seemed that each of them wanted a
job.

“And what the hell am I supposed to do
with four little boys?” Each of them looked ready to protest, but she stopped
them with a raised hand. “You’re boys. Only a boy would sit around and whine
about how he’s got nothing to do. Only little kids would pick at each other
until they got their asses kicked only to start all over pissing another kid
off. You want a job? Then fucking earn it. You think I got mine handed to me? No,
I did not. I had to go to college and work my ass off. You think it was easy
for a woman to get to where I am right now? No, it fucking wasn’t.”

Each of them dropped their heads and
wouldn’t look at her. George glanced over at his other two sons and was happy
to see them laughing. Quietly, but they were laughing. His mate touched his
shoulder.

“She’ll make a great mother. She might
want to clean up her language a bit, but she’ll love them.”

George nodded at Corrine’s observation.

“I can’t wait to hold him.”

George didn’t want to say anything, but
he wanted a granddaughter. He had enough boys. He loved them, but wanted a little
granddaughter to spoil and have hang out with him. He looked over at Corrine
and started to tell her his dreams when Caitlynne spoke again.

“Starting tomorrow morning, each of you
will report to the construction crew on Walker’s land. And if I hear of one
tiny little argument, I will make your lives a living hell for a month.” Marc
started to protest, but stopped. George couldn’t see Caitlynne’s face, but he
was sure she was giving him that brow thing.

He’d seen her do it to Walker. She would
simply raise her pretty eyebrow at him and he’d be bending over backwards to
make her happy. His boys did it as well, but she had a certain power over them
they didn’t quite understand yet. It was the Mom factor.

Every woman had it, and when breeding
like she was, it was something to behold. George watched the boys sit there for
a few minutes longer after Caitlynne moved out of the room. He nearly went
after her when Khan walked up to the boys.

“You made her cry, are you happy?” Each
of them looked to where she’d gone before dropping their heads again. “If I
hear that you did this again, I will hunt each of you down and make you regret
it for the rest of your days. Do I make myself understood?”

They said that they did and nodded. Walker
didn’t even have to speak to them, but looked down on them. Shame was the worst
kind of punishment, and these two had done a number on their brothers. George
sat back on the couch and decided that he was going to go out to the site
himself to see what the boys would do to please their sister-in-law.

Marc watched his brother come toward
him. It wasn’t until he moved to the left to answer a nurse that he noticed
that he brought Caitlynne with him. This was not going to go as well as he’d
hoped. She, of course, came straight at him. And she did not look like she was
happy.

“Where is she?”

He didn’t answer, but nodded to Walker.

“He told me that you were beat to shit
and that your partner was as well. Is this your way of getting out of work
tomorrow?”

He’d forgotten about that. “No. And that
would be today. I was the only person left to go on this and she needed backup.
More than us apparently.”

The city had asked him to investigate
the local trash company. People were complaining about things not being picked
up and trashcans being tossed around the street so that they’d been hit by
other cars. What he’d found tonight was that the company was also entering
garages and taking things.

“They let me take her as a patient. But
as I told you on the phone, we’re leaving day after tomorrow, so you either
have to find another doctor for her or we’ll have to think of something else.” Walker
was pulling on a lab coat and had a stethoscope in his hand as he spoke. “You
might want to consider Doctor Tanner. He’s—”

“She’s going to come home with me.” They
both looked at him wide-eyed. “If he finds her again—and if she stays here, he
will—he said he’d kill her. I like this girl, and I won’t let some asswipe hurt
her again.”

Monica Preston worked for his firm. She’d
not been there long, but she had proven to be a good worker and a great
investigator. Marc had hired her as someone to answer phones and work the
office. He discovered her worth when it only took her fifteen minutes to solve
a problem for a client that they’d been working on for weeks. He’d promoted her
and hadn’t regretted it since.

“Marc, is she your…”

Marc looked at his brother and wondered
what he was talking about. Then it hit him. “No. Christ no. I like her and all,
but no, she’s not my mate.” He glanced toward the room where she was. “But I do
feel protective of her. Very much so. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t let
anything happen to her.

Walker went to see to her, and Marc and
Caitlynne followed him. His breath caught every time he saw her. Christ, her
boyfriend had done a number on her. He was glad he’d been there because he was
able to scare him off, but by the time he’d figured out what was going on, it
had been too late.

Her face was all that he could see of
her right now, but back at the scene, he’d looked her over. Two broken ribs, he
thought, and her fingers had been stomped on. Her left eye was swollen shut and
the other filled with blood. He thought her lower lip was going to need
stitches, but didn’t know for sure because there was so much blood all over
her. He cringed when Caitlynne started barking questions at her.

“Did you know that this man was capable
of doing this to you?”

Monica nodded.

“Then tell me why you’d stay with the
mother fucker. Is this how you get your jollies?”

Monica wasn’t normally an aggressive
person, but she came up off the bed at Caitlynne in a heartbeat. “You have no
idea what you’re talking about. I’ve had five restraining orders against him in
the past four months. I moved here to get away from him. Again. He did this
because he thinks in his twisted fucking mind that I belong to him and goes
into a rage whenever I try to make it so he stays away. You think of some way
to make this stop and I’m all for it.”

She staggered, and Caitlynne grabbed for
her. When Monica cried out in pain, both he and Walker stepped forward. But the
look on her face had them both step back. She was afraid of them.

“Come on. Let’s get you taken care of.” Caitlynne
helped her back into the bed. “I’m sorry for pissing you off, but you seemed to
need it. Now we can get the prick and take care of him. Can you shoot a gun?”

Walker laughed, and so did Marc. The
question had been so calmly asked that it startled Monica. The look on her face
was priceless. She told Caitlynne no, but she’d thought of it. Caitlynne assured
her that she’d teach her how the next time she was in town.

When Monica was safely in the bed,
Caitlynne left the room. When Marc started after her, Walker shook his head and
turned to Monica. It wasn’t until he whispered to him mind that she was okay,
just emotional that he understood how hard this might be on her.

“Is she all right? I didn’t mean to
upset her.”

Walker smiled at Monica as Marc moved to
the little chair next to the bed. “She’s fine. Pregnant, that’s all. She gets
very emotional and she’s not used to it.” Walker asked her to lay back. “Let me
make sure nothing is broken and get you stitched up. Has anyone talked to you
about where you’re going to stay?”

Monica glanced at him and he nodded. “Marc
said I could stay at his house. I know he’s your brother and all, but I won’t
take advantage of his good nature. I just need a place to stay until I can move
on. I can’t bring Tony’s crap into your family.”

The examination took thirty minutes. When
Walker asked him to step out so he could check the rest of her out, Marc went
to find Caitlynne. She was in the lounge making calls. Her ever-present laptop
sat on the little table in front of her. She smiled as she closed the phone
when he walked up.

“I’m doing phone interviews for a
secretary. I hate this shit. I want to be out on the job, not stuck inside
doing crap work. Do you know how many phone calls I got on my honeymoon? Over
five hundred. I’m already hating this.”

He knew she wasn’t and that she’d be
very good at being the director of the CIA. He also knew that she’d already
been able to solve a major crime wave hitting the DC area while she’d been
away. Marc was very proud of his sister-in-law.

“When did she start working for you?” He
told her what he knew about her, knowing that if he didn’t, she’d go and ask
Monica.

“She’s been living here since June,
right about the time you and Walker met. She applied to work for me around that
time too. I’d been looking for someone to answer phones and she fit it. But I
figured out she was a little more than that and hired her as one of my
investigators. She’s that good.”

Caitlynne nodded. “And the man? Her
stalker? What do you know about him? Has he hurt her before since she’s been
working for you?”

Marc started to say no, but thinking on
it, he thought maybe he had. “I believe so, but she’s never said anything. Last
week, she gave me her notice. Said she had to go and take care of a very sick
mother. I never thought anything about it until just now. She was running
again.”

“I would think so. Her parents are
deceased. She has one brother, but he’s not worth much. No other relatives that
I can find. She’s moved a lot over the past fifteen months. And at each place
she lands, she racks up a hospital bill that she can’t afford but makes
payments on. She’s made monthly payments to each place since this started.”

Marc wasn’t surprised that she had so
much information on the girl. “I can’t let her go. I don’t know what it is
about her, but something makes me want to protect her at all costs.” He glanced
at her when she snorted. “It’s kind of the same feeling I have when it comes to
you. Most of the time, I want to strangle you, but there are times when I want
to make sure you’re all right.”