“What aggression did she have to work out?” Jezebel demanded, shifting her scowl to Nix.
“Horse was Dirk’s best man at his wedding, and Trixie stood up for Pinkie. You know how he loves to rile her up.”
Jezebel gave me a calculating look before she shrugged and went back to grooming Mike the camel without as much anger. Maybe she wouldn’t kill me after the Three-Hundred, which was convenient. She’d have to wait until at least Christmas, or longer. Hopefully, much, much longer.
I was on my way to my tech lab, with a pack of ice to my head, when a red Porsche came through the fencing and towards me much faster than the speed limit. I stared at the car coming at meand barely dove out of the way in time not to get run over. Clint was out for blood.
He got out, slammed the door and stalked towards me while drinking scotch from the bottle. He kicked me before I got the chance to scramble to my feet. I rolled with it, and it wasn’t anything to write home about.
“Morning,” I said, rolling to my feet, crouching, fists up. “You sure you want to do this? I make a living out of hurting people.”
“If you hurt her, I’ll kill you,” he snarled, coming at me with all the rage and hurt of a poked bear.
He was big, strong, and in good shape, but like I’d said, I did this for a living, and I’d wanted to punch Clint for a long time. More, the more I got to know Daniela and saw what her time with him had done to her.
Things blurred in a haze of red the way they did sometimes, and I didn’t feel pain, didn’t feel anything but the need to rip him apart, to destroy the person who had touched my wife, hurting her even if he didn’t realize it. My wife. Savage happiness spread through me at the thought, and I attacked with renewed vigor. I would protect her with all of me from every danger until the world was safe for her.
“Get off him!” Nix snarled, wrapping an arm around my throat and pulling all his weight against me. “Jezebel, don’t just stand there; do something.”
“You want me to shoot someone, or maybe set the mountain lion on them?” she asked, but the next thing I knew, her fingers dug into my armpits, and I couldn’t feel my arms.
Nix finally hauled me off Clint. He lay there, a battered mess of what had been handsomer than me. He looked miserable, but not as angry. He glared at me, but his eyes were bright, from pain in his heart, not his body. He cared about her genuinely, and not just for his ego. He needed Daniela to help him cope with issues that I didn’t want to know about, because it wasn’tmy problem, and wouldn’t ever be her problem again. Still, he’d be a mess without her. He’d only come to me to get help to get her away from her grandfather, and I’d royally screwed him over.
“I’m not going to hurt her,” I said softly.
He laughed, looking away. “Two years together and she walked away without looking back, without one word. I still want her, ache for her like someone ripped my heart out of my chest. I love her. I really, truly love her, but she doesn’t love me, never did. She married you. She really is finished with me.”
Nix gave him a disgusted look. “I can’t imagine why. Look at you. You need to get off your yacht and develop some skills that you can use to build a home for a woman. I’m not talking about fighting, but there is that. Be a useful human that a woman can’t live without. I’m charging you for the fence, and charging extra because it’s the Three-Hundred and Dirk’s already dangerously unbalanced. I’m not letting Jezebel kill you, because you didn’t beat Dani, but you aren’t going to see her again. If you start stalking her, it won’t last long, if you know what I mean.”
“We’ll feed you to the mountain lion,” Jezebel said helpfully. “Slowly,” she added with a glint in her eye, and a revolver in her hand.
Clint staggered to his feet, gingerly touching his face. “I don’t think you understand what you’re getting involved in. Her whole family is psychotic.”
Nix grabbed my shoulders and Jezebel’s. “She’s part of the team, and that makes her family. Yeah, we’re not the most conventional group of miscreants, but we are very good at what we do. I’m not going to tell you again. Get off my lot.”
Clint stumbled away, got into the Porsche, and drove, going out the gate that time.
“He’s not as bad as I expected,” Jezebel said thoughtfully, watching that cloud of dust get further away.
“No,” Nix agreed. “A real psychopath wouldn’t come through the main gate in daylight. He’d take out the people you loved before you knew enough to worry about it.”
“Or he’d play the psychology game,” Jezebel added. “Break down the mind before he started on the physical pain. No, he’s positively civilized. Probably too civilized for someone as talented as Daniela. I mean, if she dropped him in the desert, he’d probably die, not like Dirk, who just ate scorpion for breakfast and called it an early morning. Whoever set her up with him didn’t do it to hurt her. It’s just that some people don’t know how not to hurt people.” She turned and walked back towards her menagerie, frowning in thought.
Nix clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Fun as that was, the Three-Hundred isn’t going to win itself.”
I nodded and headed back inside, but I pulled out my phone and called Tom.
“Is she up yet?” I asked as soon as he answered.
“Who are you referring to?” Daniela answered, her snobbish tone articulate and delicious.
I smiled despite my sore ribs. “My wife, naturally. Good morning. I hope you didn’t fall into the bathroom floor after you got out of bed. The house’s design quirks do keep one on their toes.”
“They really do. I tied up Tom and broke into your garage.”
I tsked. “If you tie up your protection detail, that makes it difficult for him to protect you. Are you looking for anything specific, or just generic breaking and entering to keep in practice?”
“I panicked. I don’t like strange men offering me breakfast, and then after I knocked him unconscious, I thought I should steal something from you in case you changed your mind about the marriage, but your shop is a mess. Nothing is clearly labelled, ‘secret unpatented tech,’ it’s all just, ‘tech geekexploded gadgets all over that may or may not do anything useful.’”
