Donny definitely looked worried now, while Sandi paled fearfully.

Natches’s name was synonymous with the bogeyman since the day he had been forced to kill his own cousin Johnny Grace nearly eight years before.

“I told you, I don’t want Mackays for enemies,” Donny repeated as he pulled at the loose neckline of his T-shirt as though it were choking him.

Sneering at the two in disgust, Dawg pushed past them and moved to the bar, intending on following Eve. Instead, he was brought to a stop as John stepped from behind the bar before he could reach it.

“Sierra’s talking to her,” John told him, his voice low. “I’ll make sure she gets home tonight. Sometimes, as my wife says, a woman just needs another woman to talk to.”

There was no loosening the muscles at the back of his neck, but Dawg tried. Reaching around to rub at his nape in frustration, he blew out a hard breath.

“Call me if she needs me,” he finally said in irritation before shaking his head helplessly. “Hell, John. How do you survive hurting a sister?”

Because he had hurt her, and he knew it. By making her swear to go against her own instincts and stay away from Brogan, he had a feeling he’d hurt her more than he suspected.

“You let them forgive you and you go on.” John finally smiled back at him in compassion. “That’s all you really can do.”

Clapping him on the shoulder, John turned and went back behind the bar to give the bartenders a hand.

Let her forgive him?

He turned and headed to the exit. He would love to let her forgive him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t so certain he deserved it.

FIVE

John’s wife, Sierra, was striding furiously through the hall leading to the bar as Eve pushed through it, intent on collecting her purse and leaving. Sierra must have left the bar while she was at the table with the bachelorettes.

Before Sandi had made a fool of her.

Eve didn’t want to cry. She hated crying. But as Sierra stopped several feet ahead of her and stared back at her in disbelief, she could feel her throat tightening with the hated dampness.

“I’m sorry, Sierra,” she whispered, pushing her hands into the pockets of her jeans as she blinked quickly to hold the moisture back. “I’m just getting my purse. I promise not to try to return.”

She knew the rules.

As she had stared into Dawg’s eyes after jumping back from where she’d held Sandi to the floor, shame had surged through her.

She hadn’t thought about the rules on fighting then. Not until she’d seen Sierra and the fury glittering in her brown eyes.

Shame burned like a cinder in her chest.

When there was a fight anywhere on bar property, then both fighters were banned. The rule made sense. She really could have walked away, but once Sandi had dared to not just insult her mother, but to also use that sissy-bitch move and backhand her, it had been over with.

Besides, jealousy had been eating her alive.

Sandi had been able to sit next to Brogan. To laugh with him. To talk to him without censure, while Eve was restrained by a promise she couldn’t break.

“Don’t you dare apologize to me, Eve Mackay,” Sierra demanded furiously.

The tears fell.

Sierra was a friend, and now she wasn’t going to forgive her.

“The fighting rule only applies when I say it does,” Sierra continued, moving to her quickly, surprising—actually shocking—Eve as she wrapped her arms around her. “And that rule does not apply to employees whom little bitches like that decide to torment all night.”

“What?” Eve shook her head as Sierra drew back, her hands still gripping Eve’s shoulders and staring into her face in concern. “I don’t have to leave?”

“As if,” Sierra said gently, shaking her head. “Eve, that rule rarely applies to employees anyway. Once you get a couple of hundred bodies in one place, drinking and deciding they’re more deserving than others, the first person customers take their attitude out on is the waitresses. That’s why we have bouncers, and that’s why we provide the girls with self-defense classes if they ask for them. Besides, I saw that bitch and her boyfriend watching you, obviously plotting each jibe before it was made.”

Eve sniffed, blinking again as she finally forced back the tears.

“I should have ignored her. Or just gone home.”

“Come on; we need a glass of wine,” Sierra decided as she turned and headed back up the hall. “And you need an ice pack for your cheek. The bitch must have been wearing a ring, because you have a hell of a scratch across it.”

Eve lifted the back of her hand to her cheek, then pulled it back to see the smear of blood across it. She couldn’t even feel it.

Following Sierra to the office in the back of the building, she sat down on the comfortable leather couch as Sierra went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of wine.

It took her a moment to pull the cork and pour two glasses. Once she did she handed Eve one before taking a seat in the chair across from her, her expression worried as she stared at Eve’s face.

“Are you sure you don’t want some ice?” she asked, sitting forward in the chair and crossing a leg over the opposite knee to prop her arm on it.

“No.” Eve shook her head before sipping at the cold wine. “I’ll be fine.”

“You surprised me.” Sierra grinned. “When I saw how they were taunting you I told Kota to send you back here before I left the bar. I didn’t think you’d do anything about it, and I didn’t want you having to deal with that viperous bitch while you were helping me and John out of a hard spot. She attacked before Kota could tell you. I cheered when I saw you go after her on the security monitor.”

“I should have just escaped back here.” Eve sighed. “I promised Momma when we moved here that I would stop fighting. All of us did. We were wild as hell before moving here. At least one of us managed to get into a fistfight just about every day.”

Life hadn’t been easy before Dawg had taken them in.

“There’s only so much you can take.” Sierra shrugged. “Besides, she was too jealous to let it go. You’ve managed to snag a man just about every woman in four counties has been after for years. Congratulations, by the way.”

“I haven’t captured anyone,” Eve denied.

Only in her dreams, in her deepest fantasies.

“The hell you haven’t,” Sierra said in disbelief. “Eve, that man can’t take his eyes off you. Surely you can see that?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want him.” Eve set her glass on the table before covering her face with her hands for long moments.

Her cheek throbbed. She could feel her busted lip now, the bruise where the inner flesh had been knocked into her teeth.

Her heart was still racing, the adrenaline that had pumped into her system still searching for release.

“God, this situation is going to give me a migraine.” She sighed, lowering her hands and staring back at Sierra miserably. “It’s impossible, Sierra. For whatever reason, Brogan is the one man Dawg can’t abide, and I understand why he feels the way he feels. I just can’t believe Brogan would betray anyone, though, let alone his country.”

Sierra frowned back at her. “Brogan? A traitor?” She shook her head slowly. “I’ve heard the rumors, of course, but that’s just not Brogan.”

“Exactly.” Eve flipped her hand out, palm up, before using both hands to rub at her face in frustration. Lowering them again, she picked up the glass of wine, then set it back down. She had to drive home, and the wine would go straight to her head.

“So how do you intend to fight the fact that both of you want each other like crazy?” Sierra asked. “He watches you like a starving man watches dinner.”