Ashe couldn’t help but laugh, even though she detected a little bitterness. “I’m sorry, but the visual on that was good.”
Evangeline’s answering smile was slow in coming. “This is bullshit. They really are trying to ruin my business.”
“More like blackmail you into cooperation.” Ashe pulled open the door to the walk-in freezer carefully. Her stomach dropped. Sure enough, there was a rolled tarp under the shelves. She closed the door quickly and dropped the chain lock into place.
“It’s not like I can tell them anything,” Evangeline said. “But I am getting sick of the harassment. I thought some of them were actually my friends.”
Ashe frowned. “You know that’s not possible, right? Those men out there are after your family, and just like the ones who went after mine, they’ll stop at nothing to tear all of you apart. I don’t think it makes much difference which side of the law you’re on if someone is out to get you, but you can’t really be friends with anyone trying to hurt your family.” She couldn’t keep the sorrow out of her voice. “If I had been there, I would have fought to save my parents, but I wasn’t. They liked to be alone together and I was in the way. I knew that. I even accepted it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I would have lied, cheated, stolen or killed to save them.”
Evangeline put her arms around Ashe and hugged her tightly. “I’m so sorry about your family, Ashe. I’m glad you had them for the time you did. Fyodor, Timur and Gorya are my family now and I feel that way about them. The next time a cop comes in, I’m spitting in his drink.”
“Can you bake one batch of those apple-cinnamon cookies with something to make them very sick?” Ashe asked. “Not really, but they so deserve it.”
“Especially Jeff. He pretends to care about me and then he pulls something like this. And what was that with his partner? With Ray? Rodion group texted all of us that he said some things and grabbed your arm too hard.” She reached for Ashe’s wrist, gently turning it over.
“Group texted who?” Ashe asked suspiciously. She was beginning to feel as though she was the only one not in the loop and needed a cell phone.
Evangeline shrugged. “All of us. Fyodor, Kyanite, Gorya, Timur. Even Mitya and Sevastyan. You don’t know them but they’re cousins. They’re my family too.”
“So of course, they had to know.”
“Of course.”7ASHE was far too quiet. Timur had heard from Kyanite the moment the hit men had walked into the bakery and Ashe’s leopard rose. And before that even, when all the cops were drifting into Evangeline’s place of business, a deliberate show of strength. It had cost him to stay away, to wait until the end of the day for Evangeline, so her customers would never see the threat the police made against her. Against them. Their family.
They had that now. It had been a very long, uphill battle for them, but Evangeline had brought them all together as a family. He had his brother and Gorya. He had Mitya and Sevastyan, his cousins. And now, although she was going to try to fight him, to run from him, he had his woman.
He hadn’t been far from her. He’d known better. She was in heat and he didn’t want to take chances. The moment the two men in their business suits had left the bakery and all but run for their vehicle, Timur was after them. He had been silently following with three others. The men had gone, not back to the motel, but to Evangeline’s old residence where Ashe was staying. That had been their last mistake.
He hadn’t had time to extract information from them before he killed them. Their leopards had leapt forward to fight. His big male had defeated one, and the other had been killed by one of the leopards Drake Donovan had sent them. Logan Shields had been in the Borneo rain forest, working with the teams there. Timur was learning to trust Drake’s men.
He glanced sideways at Ashe. She stared out the window of the car, not looking at him, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Unfortunately for her, he was extremely good at reading body language, every little sign a person might give to allow him to better figure out what they were thinking. She wasn’t considering white dresses and roses. Or family. She was angry or hurt. One of the two emotions, and neither was good. He’d take anger over hurt. He didn’t know what to do with hurt.
“Are you going to talk to me?”
She looked up at him. Their eyes met and he saw hurt, not anger. Damn it all. What the hell was he supposed to do with that? She blinked and he found himself looking directly at her leopard. Her leopard wasn’t hurt; she was angry. Very. The amber eyes had gone a deep golden with darker rings around them. Her leopard had risen to protect her from him—from hurt that he’d inadvertently caused. It had gone deep, he could see that.