Rush: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family) (6 page)

 It pissed him off and scared the shit out of him but he couldn't argue that it wasn't a good plan. He also couldn't just stand here and wait for Carla Ambroghetti to call back. He’d lose his mind. He stomped across the room and headed for the stairs.

“I'm going to work out before I do something stupid like agree with this plan.”

Chapter Six

“Was he like this when you were married?” Brant asked.

Olivia watched him stomp out of the kitchen and head down the stairs to the first floor of the building. His broad back was rigid, fists clenching at his sides. Atticus was pissed. It was probably best to give him his space…for now.

“Oh yes. What you see with Atticus is what you get, although it isn't always what you want.”

He chuckled under his breath, nodding his head toward the large leather sofa to sit down. They settled next to each other and she knew an interrogation disguised as a friendly talk was coming. She was a largely unknown quantity to this man except for her reputation as a thief, and that knowledge was courtesy of Atticus. It was a testament to what good friends they were that Brant brought her on this team with nothing more than her ex-husband’s recommendation.

She wondered if he would dive right in or take a more circuitous route to what he wanted to know.  She guessed a dive off the high board but wasn’t sure. He didn't disappoint.

“So, why did you two break up?”

Olivia raised an eyebrow at him. “I think you know why.”

“The stealing of things that don’t belong to you?”

“And I didn’t even have to give you a clue.” They both laughed but when they settled down she continued in a more serious tone. Losing the only man she’d ever loved really wasn’t a laughing matter. “I think it was the fact I lied to him about it for so long, at least by omission. Either way, Atticus was pretty black and white with his morality back then. Maybe now too. I can’t pretend to know him all that well anymore, if I ever did.”

“I think you know him better than most.”

She thought about it, watching Elena work steadily at the computer for a few minutes before answering. “We’re not that different, all outward appearances aside.”

“Really? An earl’s daughter and an orphan kid from Baltimore?”

She wasn’t going to share Atticus’s backstory. It wasn’t hers to tell.

“I don’t really have a sob story. I’m the youngest child and the only daughter of my father. My mother was his second wife and instead of May-December it was more of a January-December romance. I barely got to know him before he passed away and my brother took the title. I spent most of my life in boarding schools but so did most of the girls in my position. My mother moved in and out of my life as her opulent lifestyle allowed and my brothers were all so much older that we had very little in common.”

This is where she and Atticus were so much alike, and no one would ever guess without having their history. They’d been cared for by people who’d been paid to care and that made you view relationships differently. His life in the foster system and hers in impersonal, expensive boarding schools surrounded them with people who gave them what they needed but never
needed
them. It hadn’t taken her long to realize that it was what drew them together. The desire to be needed by at least one other person.

But she’d been the only one to give in to that deep desire. It had kept her in love with him all this time while he’d let her go and moved on.

Brant interrupted her mind drift.

“So you learned to steal because…?” He drew the question out and barely left room for her to answer before he filled in his own answers. “To get attention? To piss your family off?”

She waved off his guesses with a derisive scoff. “I did it to get the answers to exams for me and my friends or to get extra sweets. I realized I was good at it and then started pilfering things at some of my mother’s parties, and when I didn’t get caught I became braver. I studied lock-picking and safe-cracking, and learned so much on the job and from a pair of French thieves who were willing to train and share their knowledge. I loved it and I still do. It’s exhilarating.”

The only thing that had ever come close was being with Atticus.

“Except for the stealing from innocent people part,” Brant said, his judgment showing. She wasn’t surprised but she also didn’t buy into it and never had.

“I don’t really do that anymore. Don't tell anyone but I’ve been more into the business of reuniting rightful owners with their lost valuables lately. I do it for a small fee since I don't really need the money.” Olivia laughed at his shocked expression. “Oh, don’t look like that. I occasionally procure a bauble or something for myself. Something glittery and rare.  I’m not
completely
reformed.”

He considered for a moment, his fingers tapping on the arm of the sofa. Olivia let him stew, mildly curious about what he could be hesitating to ask her. Probably something about Club D or Atticus. When he finally spoke, it wasn’t at all what she expected.

“I could use someone with your skills at MacKenzie.”

“What?” It sounded like he was offering her a job but that was ludicrous. “I don’t think I’m cut out for an office job, Brant. I was not born to punch a clock.”

He shook his head, his smile devilish and his body leaning forward, all indicators that he thought this was a great idea.

“This wouldn’t be nine-to-five. I could use you to test security systems, help design ones for tricky facilities. Who better to keep thieves from breaking in than a world-class thief? You could be a consultant.”

“I don't know,” she said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. It wasn’t that she hated the idea but the fact that she wasn’t outright turning him down that made her squirm. Did it appeal to her? Maybe it did. “I’d have to think about it.”

Brant opened his mouth to say something but the ringing of her phone interrupted their conversation. She looked down on the screen and saw Carla’s name on the display. She flashed it at Brant, who nodded when she took the call.

She listened to her friend on the line and smiled, glad that another part of this puzzle was coming together. When she clicked off with a “thank you,” she rose from her seat.

“Paulo will be at Club D in two hours. Carla told him that I will be there and hinted that I’ll be there to play. She’ll arrange a private room for us and we can grab him.”

“That’s almost too easy,” Brant said.

“It will be up to you and Atticus to get any information out of him and if that fails, I can look over his place and see if there is any indication that he orchestrated the kidnapping.”

“I think it's a solid plan but Rush will be pissed.”

“I’ll tell him. I need to work out and he can yell at me and get over it before we have to leave.”

“So you think you can soothe the savage beast?”

Olivia shook her head. “There’s no soothing Atticus. You just let him roar and get it out of his system.”

Chapter Seven

Pushing his body to the limit was still the best way to get out of his head.

In Baltimore as a kid in foster care and group homes, he’d found solace in the gym at the local YMCA. The activities varied depending on funding and volunteers, but there was always some random stash of equipment and he would spend hours learning to use it. Building his body, developing strength and endurance was essential for a boy with no one in the world to have his back.

He’d never known his parents, never had any family. Hell, his own name had been chosen by a caseworker, a combination of the name of a character from her favorite book and a randomly selected name out of the phone book.

His strength and discipline had gotten him through BUDS training and the years of deployment and nightmare-inducing missions. Pushing his body had given him a place to shove his rage. It was therapy via barbell and boxing ring. Without the outlet he’d have lost his mind, lashed out at the world or eaten his gun.

The only thing that had ever had the same effect was Livvy. Her arms around him had soothed the monsters lurking in the dark recesses of his mind.

But she could also piss him off faster than anything or anyone.

She was his savior and his sin.

So it didn’t help when she followed him into his gym space, wearing nothing but an athletic bra and tiny boy shorts. She ignored his glare, only giving him a quick glance and a flash of white teeth in a half smile. She looked like the damn Cheshire cat, and it wouldn’t have surprised him to see a furry tail swishing in the air in triumph. She knew he was pissed and her favorite game was “how far can I push Rush?”

It was best to ignore her.  She had other ideas.

“I need to stretch before we head over to Club D. Carla called and we’re on for later. The stress has my body in knots. Is this okay?”

What could he say and not sound like an ass?

“There are a couple of mats over there if you need them.” He nodded toward the corner of the gym area. “Help yourself.”

He added two more weights and inserted the pins in the slots before centering himself, planting his feet in the correct stance and squatting in front of the metal bar.  He took a deep breath, gripped the rod and gritted his teeth, lifting from a core of strength he had buried down deep.

Once in a standing position, he executed three perfect lifts over his head before lowering the bar to the floor with a giant exhale and a rattle of metal. He stood and glanced over to Livvy, so glad he’d waited until the weights were on the floor before he did it.

She was executing her yoga moves with a sexy, sensual grace that hardened his cock in his thin shorts. She was…bendy…extremely limber. An expert gymnast, it was a skill set that helped her get in and out of tight and unusual places. It was also something he’d thoroughly enjoyed when she’d been wrapped around him and he was buried deep inside her. Damn. He adjusted his hard-on and turned to the pull-up bars mounted overhead.

Something else that working out was good for—dealing with inappropriate boners for your ex-wife.

He shook out chalk on his hands, dusted off the excess and leapt to the lowest bar, beginning the first of many pull-ups. His muscles burned in the best way, his mind easing off the ledge of anger and fear he’d had in his gut since Brant had showed up on his doorstep. Yeah, he was worried for Katrina, but now he had Livvy in the mix and her little show today had shaved at least a year off his life.

She’d been the first person he’d ever worried about, had ever been afraid he would lose. As a foster kid he’d never been close enough to anyone to care. People moved in and out, there one day and gone the next. He didn’t worry about the guys in his unit. They were trained professionals and knew how to take care of themselves. The possibility of final, deathly circumstances had been part of what they’d signed up for when they’d put on the uniform, and while you never wanted to lose a brother-in-arms, it happened. You couldn’t do the job if you were worried about bad shit happening.

But Livvy…she’d risked her neck for nothing and it made him nuts.

He gritted his teeth and pulled his body up and as far over the bar as he could, lowering himself and then doing it again. Sweat ran down his face and his bare chest but he ignored it.

A shift in the air next to him broke his concentration and he opened his eyes and looked over. Livvy was next to him, her hands wrapped around the bar, sculpted muscles in her arms and back moving under her soft skin with each lift of her body. She was strong and sexy and he groaned with the clench of lust in his gut.

He paused his own movements, watching her as she executed her moves with precise control. A bead of sweat rolled down from her temple, disappearing into the soft hair pulled loose from her ponytail, and he licked his lips with the desire to follow its path and taste her.

“Bloody hell,” she panted, hanging suspended from the bar, her chest heaving with her exertion. She locked eyes with him, her words stuttering as she struggled for breath. “I’m out of shape.”

He scoffed and he spoke in spite of the lust choking him.  “Not even close. Your body is still amazing.”

“Nobody works me out like you used to, Atticus. You’re a brutal taskmaster.”

“You were an easy student.” She had been a great workout partner, never afraid to try something new or to push her body to its limits. It was the thing that had attracted him to her the first night they’d met. Livvy enjoyed the physical, was open to push her boundaries every chance she got. She could meet him step for step, limit for limit.

Her gray eyes darkened and he knew she was remembering the same thing. He glanced down and her hard nipples were visible through the thin spandex of her top, his eyes torn away from the gorgeous sight by her movement toward him.

“What are you doing?” he asked but he knew, his hands tightening his grip on the bar when she wrapped her legs around his waist and looped her arms around his neck. He groaned, not just with the added weight but with the full, searing contact of their bodies.

They’d done this a million times before. Instead of him adding weights to his legs to increase the impact, Livvy had served as his extra measure. Ending up on the floor in a tangle of mouths and limbs was the usual result and his favorite way to end the workout.

“Working out,” she grinned, the challenge in her eyes almost blotting out the desire. Almost. “Today was stressful for both of us. I think we have some tension we need to work off.”

“Some ‘good guy’ lecture I got from Brant told me that I should say this is a bad idea.”

“Ah, but you always love the bad idea.”

“I do.”

“So, let’s be bad.”

He groaned, his muscles screaming with the strain of holding them both up and the sexual tension sticking them together like a magnet and steel. Rush gritted his teeth and glared. But he didn’t say no. There wasn’t enough willpower in the world to get him to do that.

“How many reps do you want to do?” she asked, her words coming out in panting breaths against his lips. The same words she’d said so many times before, the same woman. It was the best fucking déjà vu he’d ever had.