“That fat bastard comes down my fireplace and I’ll shoot him,” Jazz snorted.

“No kidding.” Of course Cord was in complete agreement.

“He wouldn’t come see you two anyway,” she promised them blithely. “You’re on the bad list.”

“Well, doesn’t that just break my little heart,” Cord stated with a definite lack of any such pain.

At one time, when she was younger, she would have told him he had to have a heart first. All in the spirit of sniping back at him. She couldn’t do that now. All their hearts had been laid bare and left to wither.

Now she just rolled her eyes at him, unwilling to continue the game that had begun farther back than she could remember.

“Mom would have told us the kitchen table was the wrong place for ill words and insults,” he said gently as he leaned forward to rest his arms against the tabletop. “But she would be laughing at us right along with Pop, wouldn’t she?”

Kenni shook her head. She couldn’t talk about her parents, not yet. She’d lost not just her mother that night, but Poppy and her brothers as well. She’d lost far too much to be able to discuss it until she knew that what was left, would be safe.

“You can’t hide forever, Kenni,” he warned her then, his voice resonating with tenderness, with heartache. “You can try, but it’s not in your nature to isolate yourself to the point that you can’t love or be loved in return.”

“I’ve been hiding for ten years.” Turning her head back to him she stared into his eyes, hoping he could see her determination as easily as she could see the arrogance in his face.

“Did you?” he asked softly. “No, baby sister, you weren’t hiding, you were running—but you weren’t alone. Once Gunny was gone, though, you came home to those you loved and who loved you, knowing damned good and well one of us would realize who was hiding behind the colored contacts and hair dye.”

Had she?

Was that what she’d been doing, endangering them with her subconscious need for them?

“Kenni…”

“Cord, shut the fuck up and give her some space or take your ass back up that mountain.” Jazz’s hand descended on the table in a flat-handed blow that had her flinching violently.

Jerking her gaze from her brother, she stared up at the savage lines of his profile and the menacing look on his face.

Cord sat back slowly, his gaze on Jazz, narrowed and thoughtful for several heartbeats.

“You can’t protect her feelings while trying to save her life, Jazz,” he breathed out roughly. “You know it just doesn’t work that way.”

Jazz’s head lowered, the menace on his face turning to outright intent backed by icy fury. “Test me again,” he dared her brother. “Go ahead, Cord, keep testing me and I’ll test my fist against your head. You understand?”

“Jazz,” she whispered, hoping to dampen the air of violence beginning to pulse through the room.

“You understand me, Cord?” Jazz pushed, his voice only deepening, growing darker.

Two heartbeats later Cord nodded slowly, his lips quirking in acknowledgment that Jazz had won this round. For the moment. “I understand, Jazz,” he assured him. “Now why don’t you stop playing Kenni’s shield and fix those steaks. You always were too damned testy when you were hungry.”

The tension eased enough that she could breathe without the horrifying fear that these two men were going to try to kill each other across the kitchen table.

But the question Cord had raised still whispered through her mind, poking at her, prodding at her conscience. She’d told herself she’d come back to Loudoun to find the person who had killed her mother and destroyed her own life. Finding that person was beyond her abilities without help, though. Without the help of someone who knew and understood the Kin. And more than once she’d wondered how she was going to face another day without her family and the man she loved.

The question now was, how would she face another day if she got one of them killed?

*   *   *

The steaks were grilled and eaten in silence, the anger coursing through Jazz finding no outlet, no way of discharging the tension thundering through him. And that was a first for him.

He’d learned how to control the fury that raged through his too-big body in his early teens when expending it meant possibly hurting someone without intending to.

The tricks he’d learned in those early years and had depended upon into adulthood weren’t working now. Cord was pushing Kenni, trying to force from her what even Jazz refused to attempt to force from her. Cord would batter down the shield she’d placed between herself and those she loved. Jazz wanted her to release it willingly. Taking her heart wasn’t what he wanted. There would be no satisfaction in stealing it, none in forcing her to give it to him. He wanted her to release it willingly. She had to come to him because she ached for him as desperately as he ached for her, because she couldn’t face the next day without him.

Fuck.

He was in love with her.

He nearly dropped the wire brush he was using on the grill as the knowledge seeped into his senses.

He loved her. He’d loved her when she was sixteen and too damned young for the man he was becoming and he loved her even more now. Loved her until she was buried in his heart so deep that she filled his soul.

And there was a chance she would never release the distance she’d placed between herself and losing anyone she loved. The distance that ensured she held back the part of herself that would die with those she loved, if they died for her.

Pulling two beers from the cooler on the other side of the grill, he sat down on the bench built into the deck and unscrewed the cap with a violent jerk of his wrist. Tipping it to his lips he drained the bottle, tossed it to the trash, and opened a second with the same quick, angry twist.

Son of a bitch, he was going to kill the bastard who did this to her. To them. The gentle heart she’d once had wouldn’t have known reserve or limits. She would have loved him without a thought to protecting any part of herself or holding anything back.

He’d lost that. Before he’d ever had it, he’d lost it.

“Babying her isn’t going to fix her, Jazz.” Cord moved slowly along the deck from the kitchen, a bottle of liquor in one hand, two glasses in the other.

“That’s my best whiskey, Maddox,” he sighed.

Cord snorted at the comment. “You think I was going to pick up that rotgut shit you keep for folks you don’t like?” Sitting down heavily a few feet from him, the other man placed the glasses on the bench and filled them halfway before sliding Jazz’s closer and placing the bottle between them. “Have a real drink, maybe it’ll help clear your head.”

“Or break yours,” Jazz suggested instead. That actually seemed like a better alternative.

Cord chuckled. “Hell man, I think you’ve forgotten how damned stubborn that girl has always been. If she decided she was going to do something, then she did it. She wanted to learn to hunt when she was fucking five.” Amazement still filled the other man, Jazz realized. “Five, Jazz. This pretty little princess who dressed in frills, lace, and ruffles, and she wanted to learn how to hunt.” He shook his head. “The first time she tried to follow me she was wearing sneakers, striped tights, a black ruffled skirt, and some tiger-print little velvet jacket mom bought her for a party. I could hear her coming for a mile and she thought she was being quiet.” Cord tossed back the drink and poured another. “She had her first buck that fall, even helped dress and skin it. She declared the whole process ‘gross’ and went back to her lace and ruffles until she was twelve and wanted to make sure she hadn’t forgotten how to do it.” His gaze met Jazz’s, amusement lurking behind the pain that filled the green eyes. “She had her first buck before I did and before I got to her she’d nearly completed field-dressing it.” He shook his head. “Dad had to teach her how to fish when she was three or four. Then when she was thirteen she was going to win that beauty pageant, remember?”