She moved from the grotto, aware of him following behind her, silent, a dark shadow keeping pace with her as she moved quickly back to the house.

Stepping inside the glass doors and hurrying through the living room, she suddenly came to a hard, surprised stop. Behind her, she heard Brogan curse, and she would have seconded the explicit word if it weren’t for the fact that she knew it was a word her brother was attempting to erase from his vocabulary.

And there he stood, along with Rowdy and Natches, all three men staring at Brogan with an animosity that would be impossible to miss.

“I’m fairly certain you were told that I was fine, Dawg.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and glared back at the three men.

“I was told,” he growled.

“You didn’t believe it?”

“Physically,” he offered, “I believed you were fine.”

“Then can I ask why you’re here? Tell me, have you decided to take it upon yourself to make some decisions for me that have absolutely nothing to do with you, as well?” she asked sarcastically.

“Told you so,” Rowdy muttered aside to Dawg as he lifted his hand and covered his mouth.

“Shut up, Rowdy,” Dawg ordered, his gaze still locked with hers.

“I told you so, too,” Natches offered.

Dawg didn’t bother to give the same order to his younger cousin.

“I’ll tell the four of you what.” She included Brogan in the offer. “You can stay here and beat one another to a bruised pulp, scream, yell, curse, or whatever, and I’ll just get my things and roll.” She looked over at Natches. “You were smart enough to drive yourself, right?”

“Yeah,” he answered warily as he hooked his thumbs in the belt cinching his lean hips. “Why?”

“You owe me,” she reminded him. “I want your ride.”

“Ah, hell, now, come on, Eve.” He frowned, protesting the order as he glanced at the other three. “I don’t like their company.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate Dawg and Rowdy.

“You’re not leaving, Eve,” Brogan stated behind her.

She turned slowly, drew in a hard, deep breath, and met the anger burning in his gaze. “You don’t want to do this,” she told him softly. “I won’t be manipulated, ordered, or deceived, Brogan. If you learned anything about me in the past two and a half years, then you know that.”

Fury burned in his eyes, but his lips thinned as he only continued to glare at her.

Turning to her brother once again, she stared at him until his gaze flickered. No one, but no one could make Dawg flinch when he believed he was completely in the right.

“This is none of your business,” she told him. “I’m not six; nor am I sixteen. I’m a grown woman and I can make a grown woman’s decisions.”

“Can you?” His arms went across his chest as his brows lowered broodingly. “Even if he’s a damned criminal?”

“Even if I’m wrong about the fact that everything inside me tells me he’s not a criminal,” she amended, “I can’t live my life by your instincts and your rules, Dawg. I have to live by my own.”

“You made me a promise, Eve,” he reminded her. “I thought you understood the stakes.”

“Are you going to disown me, Dawg?” she asked curiously. “You once said we’d get along fine as long as I didn’t betray family, country, or myself. I haven’t betrayed any of the three. But you skirted the line when you manipulated a promise from me that you knew I’d never be able to keep.”

Rowdy and Natches both turned a look of disgust on their cousin.

“Man, you know Christa’s gonna find out,” Natches warned him.

“Not if you keep your fat mouth shut,” he growled.

Natches frowned and turned to Eve. “Is my mouth fat?” He was suddenly fingering his lips as though worried before turning on Dawg. “I’m going to give you a fat lip in a minute.”

Dawg snorted. “Yeah, and go home all bruised to Chaya? I don’t think so.”

Natches grinned. “I won’t get in near as much trouble as you will.”

Eve shook her head. “You three just work that out on your own.” She turned her attention to Natches. “Give me your keys.”

“That’s the last time I play cards with you,” he threatened her, clearly annoyed that the promise he owed her from the poker game months before had resulted in losing his ride for the day.

“You said anytime, anywhere,” she reminded him with a shrug as he tossed her the keys.

“Eve.” Brogan moved in front of her. “We need to discuss this.”

She shook her head, steely determination and offended pride clawing at her emotions. “No, Brogan, we don’t,” she told him softly, distancing herself from the frustration and the edge of desperation she felt emanating from him. “Not now. Not until you decide that controlling me may not be as important as you seem to think it is.” She turned to Dawg then. “You knew he wasn’t a traitor. Hell, your instincts are better than mine. You all but lied to me, Dawg. And I would have sworn that was something you would have never done to me. You knew all along he was an agent, didn’t you?”

Facing him, seeing the brooding guilt in his gaze, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had been aware of what he was doing when he did it.

Her eyes filled with tears.

She couldn’t stop them. She couldn’t stop the sudden, brutal sense of betrayal as it exploded inside her any more than she could have stopped the sun from rising that morning.

“Why did you do it?” Her voice cracked with the tears suddenly filling her eyes. “I wouldn’t have done that to you, Dawg. I wouldn’t have lied to you about Christa to keep you away from her.”

“Ah, hell.” It was Natches who emitted the low exclamation as he and Rowdy both turned on Dawg.

“He’s going to hurt you,” Dawg stated, so certain of it, so determined he was right that pure arrogant stubbornness filled his face.

“So what if he does.” A tear slipped free as she suddenly realized just how much she and her sisters, even her mother, had allowed Dawg to shelter them. “Can’t I live, Dawg? Do I have to have your permission?”

He frowned at the question. “No . . .”

“Evidently I do,” she cried. “You made me swear I wouldn’t take him as a lover by telling me he was the only man you couldn’t abide my being with. That you believed he was a traitor.” Her breathing hitched as astonishment filled the cousins’ expressions as they turned to Dawg.

“There’s no proof that says he’s not a traitor,” Dawg accused Brogan, his fingers clenching at his sides as his expression turned wrathful and centered on the other man.

Eve shook her head as a sob escaped her. “Momma once told me that even good men had the power to be bad,” she whispered. “And I didn’t believe that of you, Dawg. I really didn’t. I believed there was nothing bad or deceitful in you. That all I had to do was find a man like you and I’d always be safe and loved.”

He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck in agitation.

“Come on, Eve,” he cajoled gently. “I’m not perfect, honey.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Natches bit out.

“Shut the fuck up, Natches,” Dawg snarled, silencing them all in surprise as he said the hated F-word before turning back to Eve. “Look, I never meant I would disown you or anything else if you broke a promise. I just meant that you know he’s going to hurt you. You know it, if he hasn’t already.” He shot Brogan a look of promised retribution. “That’s all I meant.”

“And you left me feeling like I had betrayed you. Like I was no more than a criminal myself, Dawg, because you couldn’t let me follow my own instincts. You couldn’t let me follow my heart.”

“Dammit, Eve, whatever the hell he’s into could get you killed,” he yelled back at her.

“And that was just too hard to tell me at the time, wasn’t it,” she cried out, furious and hurt, and feeling her heart breaking in two. “You lied to me, Dawg. You may not have said the words, but you still lied.”

Gripping Natches’s keys in her hand, she turned to Brogan, seeing for the first time the heavy, dark emotion that filled his gaze, and feeling something hesitant, something distant shutting that door on what had been forming between them.