Bad Girl Bill (Atlantic Divide) Read online

  He also needed to build up some of the muscle tone he had lost on his last mission when he’d been holed up for so long in the Afghan hills. He was almost as skinny as he had been when he was a teenager. The food hadn’t exactly been plentiful or nutritious in the last few months. So he needed to eat…lots. And exercise, even more. He turned his head toward the kitchen window. Perhaps Bill could help with that too.

  He felt relaxed and content by the time she came out ten minutes later smelling like a spring morning, her hair damp, and her skin dewy and fresh. She wore a pair of black jeans that hugged her hips and sat just below her navel. Her plain black T-shirt showed about two inches of her midriff when she moved.

  His eyes were drawn to her belly piercing, and his mouth went dry, the gut wrenching he felt this time went from the center of his loins all the way through his body, spreading through his chest like a virus. He didn’t think he could take any more. He certainly couldn’t get back on the damned Harley with her again. Where the hell was he supposed to put his hands this time?

  She picked up his empty glass and returned it to the kitchen.

  “All set?” She drawled in her smooth, lazy voice “We’ll take the Jeep, I want the dogs to come along. They’ve been on their own a long time today.” She spoke as though she had read his mind.

  She sauntered past him, and her cool scent wafted around him.

  “Did you just have a shower?”

  “Sure I did.”

  “You could have offered me one.” He sulked. Jesus, he was desperate for a cool down.

  “What and have you mess my towels up? We’ll be at your sister’s soon; you can have one there. I gave you a cold drink, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, I noticed you didn’t have one.”

  Her wicked smile kicked up a notch. “Hell no, I wouldn’t drink that shit, it’ll kill you. Way too much sugar.”

  “Well, you didn’t exactly give me a choice,” he mumbled, irritated by her cheerfulness.

  “Jeez, don’t be so ungrateful. I’m taking you to see your family, aren’t I? How hospitable do I have to be?”

  He could think how hospitable he wanted her to be…he had visions of her writhing hot and naked underneath him, their skin slicked with sweat…but he kept his mouth shut and followed her to her beat-up Jeep.

  Chapter 2

  She parked next to a shiny, new, black Ferrari, watched his face with idle curiosity as he admired its sleek lines.

  “This can’t be Jack’s. I know sheriffs don’t earn that much. If they do, I’m joining up.” She smirked at him as the front door opened, and Kate rushed out with Gemma in her arms.

  “Michael,” she squealed as he enfolded her in a bear hug, they smothered each other in kisses and squeezed the baby between them until she started to object. In a completely natural move, Michael took the baby from his sister and tucked the little one in the crook of his arm as they stared with fascination at each other.

  “She’s beautiful…takes after you. I don’t believe Jack played a part in making her. He’s too damned ugly to have had anything to do with her.” Putting his forehead to Kate’s, their hair blended into one while he grinned down at her. “Well done, sweetheart.”

  Bill leaned on the Ferrari with the dogs at her feet. She was reluctant to draw attention to herself while the family reunion was taking place. She felt as though she was intruding, but was too uncomfortable to walk past and disturb them.

  She watched Michael, his head leaning against Kate’s. His smile was wide and unselfconscious, and his eyes glowed. The way he handled the kid, he probably had a few of his own. Shame.

  He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and as he cradled his niece, she felt a sharp tug deep inside for something she’d never expected to want, a yearning so primal it stopped her breath and made her look away.

  As she cast her eyes up, she caught sight of her brother Mac at the front door, all long-limbed and lithe, his six-foot-five-inch frame leaning against the door post, his arms crossed over his enormous chest, his black eyes narrowed as he studied her.

  Mac had always been able to read her thoughts. He’d been mother, father, and brother to her, but she hoped to God he couldn’t read them now. They were too confused for her to pin down; she needed a little time to think. Trouble with Mac, he was a very good observer of people. It was his business to be, and he would know right away there was something going on here. She didn’t know what it was herself at the moment, but she sure as hell could feel her body vibrate in reaction to Michael’s presence.

  *

  Michael noticed the mountain of a man whose hawk-like eyes watched close, flicked to Bill and back again. His expression never changed, nor his stance, but Michael knew a testosterone challenge when he saw one. He’d worked long enough in the company of men in the toughest of situations to know when there was a top dog around.

  Disappointment formed a hard knot in his stomach as he watched this man with the face of a fallen angel wait for the very woman he himself had lusted after for the past couple of hours. The fact he was disappointed disturbed him, but Bill turned out to be an enigma he’d been looking forward to unraveling.

  Unfortunately for him, it appeared she was already taken. As she caught the giant’s eye, she didn’t hesitate. With a laugh of delight, she threw herself in his arms and clapped him on his back as though he was choking, a little more direction it could have resulted in the Heimlich maneuver. In turn, he gave her a bear hug and scrubbed the top of her head with his knuckles.

  “I think you’ve grown again, kid,” the mountain grumbled.

  “Ha, it’s only been six months since I last saw you, and I stopped growing at the age of sixteen. How long are you here for this time?”

  “Only two weeks, and then I’m back on location.”

  The mountain put her down. Michael felt the guy’s hard, black eyes pierce his soul as he stretched out a hand the size of a ham.

  “And you must be Michael. Good to meet you.”

  “My brother, Mac…” Bill stopped midsentence as the two men moved.

  He reached his hand to meet Mac halfway and almost lost it as it was engulfed in Mac’s huge, firm grip.

  Michael assessed brother and sister, his eyes flicked quick and efficient across their faces. The hard knot in his stomach unclenched, slid back to a more comfortable zone, his mouth tipped up at one side as he took the time to note the stark similarity between them. How had he missed that? They could have been twins. Apart from the size difference, where Bill was tall and willowy, Mac looked like a Native American warrior of old, with a body most men dreamed of and most women would crawl over hot coals to get to.

  Their hair was the exact same dense, midnight shade, both had eyes black as the Devil with thick, sooty-black eyelashes and long, straight noses.

  “I can see that. You come from a handsome family there, Bill. Real handsome.” He repeated her choice of words from earlier, smiled to himself as he did. Michael turned his attention to Mac, flexed his hand a little from the hard handshake. Testosterone was overrated when there were far better things to talk about than comparing muscle tone. He nodded toward the Ferrari.

  “Yours?” With the baby still held secure in the crook of his arm, happy to blow dribble bubbles, they spent the next hour discussing the attributes of the car. Kate wandered back inside the house, and he noticed Bill hesitate for a long moment before she followed her.

  * * * *

  Fascinating though the Ferrari was, she’d needed to remove herself from the blond. He made her itch for something, and she hadn’t a clue what that was.

  It was as though they’d had an invasion from a different planet. Michael burst through the door with his younger sister, Lydia, plastered against his left side, Lydia’s daughter, Rosie wrapped around his neck like a limpet, and Rosie’s twin brother Aaron clung to his right leg like the little monkey he was.

  As Kate joined them for kisses and hugs, Bill stood back and admired the genes that had giv
en this family their good looks. She smiled at Sam, her cousin and Lydia’s new husband, as she watched him handle Kate’s new baby like a pro, obviously comfortable in the kid-zone.

  Personally, she didn’t think she was too good with kids, although as Rosie and Aaron hurtled across the kitchen and flung themselves at her, it occurred to her they seemed to like her good enough. She had no idea why; she didn’t consider herself a kid kind of person, could never see the appeal of tantrums and snotty noses.

  There was something about these two though, she thought as she hung Aaron upside down by his ankle and tickled his belly till he squealed like a piglet. She’d never seen them have a tantrum, and she’d never noticed snotty noses either. It seemed she could always make them laugh. It was quite easy really. You just needed to get down to their level, she thought as she lowered herself to the floor on her hands and knees and let Rosie climb all over her back. Rosie clung tight, her plump, little arms squeezing so hard she almost choked the life out of Bill.

  “Rosie, loosen up, honey.” Her voice came out of her restricted throat like a Donald Duck impression. As the kids shrieked with delight, she emphasized the sound deliberately. “Rosie. You’re choking me. Let me go.” Rosie laughed harder and clung on tighter, and Bill thought the adults would probably rescue her once she blacked out and lay comatose on the floor at their feet. They wouldn’t let her die, and they’d probably be able to resuscitate her in time.

  Rosie’s slight weight was plucked from her back as Jack swooped in to the rescue.

  “Hey, I managed to get away,” he said as he cuddled his niece and gave his wife a kiss on the mouth.

  Bill staggered to her feet, dragged in air, and hoped no one noticed she’d nearly been the victim of kindergarten-induced asphyxiation. No such luck. The blond guy watched from across the other side of the kitchen, his mouth quirked up at one side. How he’d managed to get a cup of coffee in his hand quite so quick, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t think she’d passed out, but maybe he lived in a different time zone. Perhaps she’d simply been occupied longer than she’d realized. Not that she really liked kids.

  At ease in Kate and Jack’s house, Bill opened the fridge and took out beers to hand them around to the guys in the room as Kate opened a bottle of white wine and poured a glass each for herself and Lydia. Bill elected to drink beer straight from the bottle just like the boys, like she always had.

  As Kate shooed everyone out from under her feet into the garden, the kids headed straight for the play area and the four men followed. Torn for a moment, Bill hesitated. As a rule she would have gone with the boys. This time, she decided to hang around inside with Kate and Lydia. She needed to step back from the strange sensation she got around their brother. Although the truth was, she had started to enjoy female companionship for the first time in her life. She felt clumsy and uncouth around these two dainty, little women, but unlike the local girls, they never tried to make her feel inferior. They accepted her for what she was.

  She loved her cousins Jack and Sam and their new families, but she felt like a fish out of water when they were all together. She’d never marched to the same tune. Not that they drew attention to the fact, but she felt it.

  Dressed in uniform and on duty with Jack, she was confident and sure of herself. There wasn’t a single incident she couldn’t deal with professionally, not a moment’s hesitation if she needed to see an old boy across the road, arrest someone, draw her gun, or shoot a criminal. In a domestic situation, she was shit.

  On an intellectual level, she knew it came from years of being around the girls she grew up with who wanted to befriend her because she had five older brothers. From the age of eight, the older girls used to come around and pretend they liked her and when the boys weren’t watching they’d be mean bitches. So she never made friends and wished desperately she was a boy. After all, she dressed like them in their hand-me-down clothes, acted like them, drank like them, and swore like them. Swore better than them.

  Not that she swore in front of Kate and Lydia. Well she tried not to. Although Kate, being a doctor, knew how to turn the air blue herself on occasion, but Bill had never heard a bad word come out of Lydia’s mouth.

  She looked at them both now as they sipped their wine and prepared dinner, chatting companionably. She knew they included her in their chatter, but she realized she’d ignored them, absorbed in her own thoughts. She rubbed her hands on her jeans legs and glanced around to see if anything needed doing.

  Kate had stacked piles of carrots, potatoes, and broccoli along one side of the counter, enough to feed the small army currently outside. Bill stepped forward, palmed a short, sharp knife, and automatically started to deal with the vegetables. It occurred to her this was how it had been the last few times she had eaten with them. Kate left her to it. Bill was the fastest dispatcher of vegetables in the house, including the boys. She could unzip a potato, chop it, and have it in the pan boiling it to death before you could sneeze. Knife handling was a talent of hers. When strength mattered in an all-boy household and you were the youngest, weakest, and female, you needed to develop a talent they could all admire, and fast.

  Taking a slug of her beer, she glanced at the two ladies.

  “Thanks for bringing Michael over, Bill. Jack thought he was going to be caught up with the mayor a lot longer than he was.” Kate smiled at her, and Bill tilted her beer bottle at her in acknowledgement, and then turned and started in on the vegetables again.

  “That’s okay. I just hope nobody saw him hanging off the back of my Harley. Otherwise he’s going to catch some crap from the boys.”

  The knife flew across the chopping board, rapidly sliced the carrots as Bill smiled to herself.

  “Really, why’s that?” Lydia asked.

  Bill swept the carrots into the pan, put the knife down, and turned to face them.

  “It’s a wonder he got on my bike. I tell you, I’ve never known anyone so scared. He hung on so tight, I thought he’d squeeze the life out of me…” Her laughter stumbled to a halt when she caught Lydia’s sideways glance at Kate.

  “What?” She narrowed her eyes, pinned the women with a stare. “Tell me.”

  “Well…” Lydia began, looking for support from her sister, but getting none as Kate leaned back against the kitchen unit, took a slow sip of her wine, and calmly met Bill’s eyes.

  “Michael’s had his own motorbike since he was eighteen. He has a Ducati back home.”

  Bill felt her eyes bug out of her head as she clapped a hand over her mouth. Breath raced through her nose as she stared in disbelief at the women in front of her. She couldn’t believe what she heard. There was no way. Why the hell would he have made out he was frightened? She blinked, remembered his arms tight around her. Blinked again.

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  His sisters stared back at her, puzzled looks on their faces. She drew in another heavy breath, and every moment of that bike ride flashed through head. She didn’t think she could breathe. Every movement he made, his legs had squeezed a little too tight. “Dear God.” His arms had clung. “He made me think he was scared. He…” She imitated his arms wrapped around her. Kate and Lydia stared, speechless, “…held on real tight.”

  “Oops,” Kate murmured, “I think you might be mistaken. He knows what he’s doing on a bike.”

  She thought of his hot, hard erection pressed into her, and her face flamed with the memory. Possibly not the best thing to discuss with his sisters.

  “No mistake, he made some real strange noises, like…” She remembered the grunts, the groans. “Holy shit.” She gasped. “He suckered me. I know he’s your brother, but…he enjoyed it, the dirty, rotten, lecherous…”

  Furious, she glared first at one sister, and then the other. Lydia appeared a little concerned, Kate was trying not to laugh, but they both watched her.

  “They sent me in for more beer.” Michael smiled as he swung through the doorway, all signs of a stutter had evaporated. “Hey, what�
��s going on?” he asked as he glanced around the room.

  Kate grabbed a four-pack out of the fridge with one hand and Lydia’s arm with the other and backed her out of the kitchen, as she sniggered over her shoulder.

  “We’ll see to the beers. I think Bill might want a word.”

  Michael walked toward her, a confused look on his face, but she hadn’t moved. She could still feel her eyes almost popping out of her head as she stared at him, one hand covered her mouth as she tried not to scream at him.

  “Are you all right?”

  She moved across the room at him fast, her fist came in with a neat uppercut, under his ribs, and as he doubled over, she stomped with all her might on his foot. While he howled with pain, she moved in to knee him in the balls, and lucky for him he was fast enough as he blocked her knee with his thigh.

  The movement jarred both of them, but it didn’t stop her as she came at him again, and her fist shot toward his chin. He blocked it, enveloped it in his hand, and with a swift movement, had her backed against the opposite wall using her straight arm as his defense, his hands held her fists, his body pinned hers.

  “What the hell is this about?” he demanded as he looked into her raging-hot face, his own was cold, his eyes deep and dangerous.

  “Your sisters just told me you’re a biker,” she hissed into his face. “You messed with me, you made me think you were scared on the back of my bike, and all the time you just wanted a cheap grope.” She panted.

  He went utterly still. He stared at her for a long moment before he answered.

  “I did not mess with you. You never asked if I’d been on the back of a bike before. I did not want a cheap grope, nor did I get one,” he enunciated, clear and precise. It wasn’t an apology, merely a statement of facts. “I only put my arms around you when we got to the dirt track, so I didn’t get flung off your bike.”

  She heaved a breath, pushed her face close to his. “You liar, you pressed yourself up against me; I felt you rub up against my butt.” His eyebrows shot up, green eyes surprised. “You squeezed your thighs around me.” Her face was in his, eye to eye, furious, and she watched close as his gaze dipped to her lips.