He smiled then. “I’ll pick you up at eleven. If I know Ma, she’ll pack us a picnic lunch, so we’ll leave early enough to find the perfect place to eat whatever she fixes us. After that? We can do as little or as much as you feel like.”
For the first time, she actually smiled in return, her eyes lighting up, the shadows that seemed so permanently ingrained lifting and fading away. He stared a long moment, at a loss for words at just how much her smile transformed her features. She wasn’t just pretty and wholesome and natural as he’d observed before. She was absolutely beautiful.
Fuck. He had a bad feeling about this. A very bad feeling that he’d just landed in the same exact position that all his other brothers had, and the hell of it was, he could no longer give them shit with a straight face, because now he understood their reactions to the women they’d laid claim to.
CHAPTER 6
ZOE seemed relieved when Marlene bustled over to see how she was faring, a frown marring her face as she scanned the crowd, obviously looking for Rusty and likely about to give her daughter a solid dressing-down for leaving her guest unattended for so long. But when she saw Rusty and Sean in the distance, a scowl covering Rusty’s face and an exasperated expression on Sean’s, she rolled her eyes heavenward and muttered something indecipherable under her breath.
“Thanks for keeping Zoe company, baby,” she said, beaming at Joe. “I can take things from here.” She made a motion with her head in Rusty and Sean’s direction, a silent plea aimed at Joe.
He barely suppressed his smile but nodded and turned away before he made an even bigger fool of himself in front of Zoe, especially now that his mother would stand witness to the entire thing. Besides, Rusty and Sean butting heads was nothing new or earth-shattering. The day those two ever agreed on anything, the entire family might die of shock. Well, and he had his own motive for wanting to break up whatever spat the two were currently involved in.
He wanted information that only Rusty could likely provide, and he’d pry it out of her or threaten to sic Sean on her at every opportunity. Rusty didn’t back down often, but when it came to Sean, she had no qualms about backing away as quickly as possible. He might be the only person on earth who actually managed to intimidate her, or at least infuriate her to the degree of her losing her composure, and she had learned at a very young age never to let her thoughts or emotions betray her. She was a lesson in stoicism. Joe admired her resiliency and her take-no-prisoners attitude but he hated the reason why those attributes had become necessary to her survival.
More than once he wished her piece-of-shit stepfather hadn’t up and disappeared the minute Marlene and Frank Kelly paid him a visit and told him in no uncertain terms that Rusty was theirs now and if he ever attempted to get within a mile of her there’d be hell to pay. Joe—and his brothers, particularly Nathan—would have loved the opportunity to pay the bastard a visit and enact some old-school justice for all the abuse and neglect that Rusty, who’d been a mere child, had suffered.
Sean’s back was to Joe as he approached, while Rusty was facing him, though she had yet to register his arrival. Her face was red, fury glinting from her eyes, and she’d just opened her mouth, no doubt about to turn Sean into a pile of ashes, when she suddenly looked up and saw him. She snapped her mouth shut but her stare was still mutinous as she glared at Sean, as if telling him they were not finished.
“Hey, Rusty,” Joe called out, announcing his presence to the sheriff.
Sean hastily turned around, color scouring his cheeks, and Joe noted he didn’t look any happier than Rusty had. He must have interrupted one hell of a pissing match. Not that it would surprise anyone present at the Kelly family gathering.
“I hope I’m not interrupting, but I wondered if I could steal Rusty for a few minutes,” Joe said in an easy tone, as if oblivious to the obvious tension emanating from the two people standing a short distance away.
To his surprise, Rusty looked relieved. And grateful for the reprieve. Surprising, since she wasn’t one to ever not have the last word. But at the moment she looked as though she wanted as far away from Sean as possible, while Sean looked pissed over the interruption.
“Sure, Joe,” she chirped with far too much cheerfulness.
She was sharp as a tack, extremely intelligent, but she was also a sarcastic, mischievous shit stirrer who delighted in tormenting her many overprotective brothers. The only two people who escaped her brand of “charm” and sharp wit were their parents. For Rusty, the sun rose and set with those two people. She adored them when she had little reason to love or even like most people. She was protective and loyal to her bones and would take apart anyone who ever hurt or disrespected her adopted parents in any way.
“We are not finished,” Sean bit out as he stared Rusty down, never once flinching from the scathing look she threw in his direction. A look that would wither a lesser man and have him clutching his nuts in an automatic measure of protection.
“Yes, Sean, we are.”
“The hell we are,” he barked. “You can’t hide from me forever. I’ll find you, Rusty, and we will finish this conversation once and for all. I’m a patient man but you would try the patience of a saint. Trust me, when you least expect it, I’m going to be there, and this time there will be no one to rescue you, no running and no hiding from the truth. You can take that to the bank.”
Joe’s eyes widened. One thing was certain: Shit never got boring around here. Thank God for that. His brothers, the other members of KGI, hell, even the wives wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if shit didn’t hit the fan on a regular basis.