“It’s your fucking fault,” Brogan accused Dawg. “You son of a bitch, if you had just left her the fuck alone.”
“My fault?” Dawg would have shown him the business end of his fist if Rowdy hadn’t grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“You.” Brogan’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. “Why didn’t you stay the fuck out of it?”
“Because she’s my sister, asshole!” he bellowed back at him.
“Someone needs to have a talk with your wife,” Brogan suggested snidely then. “I have a feeling she’d put a stop to your fucking meddling.”
Dawg snorted, though he knew that was way too close to the truth. Behind him, Natches snickered.
“I warned you last year,” Dawg reminded him. “Didn’t I warn you, Brogan? You could step the hell out of what you were doing or you could stay away from my sister; it was your choice.”
Yeah, Rowdy and Natches were both staring at him now as though he were crazy, but Dawg figured Brogan would end up letting the truth slip out of his mouth anyway, so he might as well strike first.
Brogan’s eyes narrowed in contempt before he turned and stalked across the house to the patio room, where he stood with his back to them, obviously staring out into the woods beyond the house.
“What have you done, Dawg?” Rowdy muttered.
Dawg grimaced at the question. “Protected my sister.”
“I wonder how you would react to it if Christa’s brother Alex up and decided to protect his sister in the same way?”
“Kill him.” He shrugged as though he would do just that.
He wouldn’t, but hell, it would be damned close.
“What was the threat?” Rowdy bit out, obviously pissed now. “You had to have had a threat to go with it.”
Dawg shifted uncomfortably beneath his cousin’s glare as he dropped his arms from across his chest and gave the other man a scorching look. “What threat? What do I have to threaten him with?” he muttered.
Brogan turned back to them then, and Dawg wondered whether he had been unlucky enough that the other man had heard the question.
“Dawg
, what the fuck did you do?” Rowdy’s no-nonsense tone had him breathing out roughly.
The threat had been a simple one. Dawg still had connections, major connections at the Department of Homeland Security and among the politicians that could make or break a man’s career in law enforcement. Dawg had simply told Brogan that if he was an agent, and if he did care anything about his career, then he’d understand the ramifications of Eve’s heart getting broken.
His father might well be the director of Homeland Security, but that wouldn’t save Brogan’s place in the Federal Protective Service if Dawg wanted him out of there.
Brogan chose that moment to stalk through the house and disappeared into a room up the short hall. The bedroom, no doubt, Dawg thought.
“Maybe I should just tell Kelly what happened today and see if she wants to ask Christa if she knows what’s going on,” Rowdy suggested.
Hell, he was getting tired of this. Every time his two yahoo cousins went blabbing on him, Dawg managed to do without his wife’s tender touch for far too long. At this rate, they were going to cause him to have to just start knocking heads together again instead of trying to be nice about things.
“We didn’t come up here to hurt Eve or piss Brogan off,” Rowdy reminded him as the door slammed behind Brogan with enough force that Dawg swore the windows rattled.
“He’s not going to listen to us right now,” Dawg reminded him testily. “He’s going to be too busy feeling sorry for himself.”
“And whose fault is that?” Natches questioned behind him.
“Would you two stop acting as though this is all my fault?” Dawg questioned them incredulously. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You breathe, Dawg,” Rowdy accused him bluntly. “You breathe. Some days that’s seriously all it takes.”
The bedroom door jerked open so hard it crashed against the inside wall as they turned and stared at Brogan in surprise.