“What the fu—hell is he up to?” Natches murmured as he paced to the door to stand beside Rowdy.

Rowdy didn’t miss the word his cousin had almost used instead. A grin quirking his lips, he slid Natches an amused, knowing look.

“Bliss said the F-word the other day.” Natches sighed in disgust. “Chaya’s of course blaming it on me.”

“I never hear it slipping past her lips, I have to admit,” Dawg drawled from behind them. “Warned you about that, cuz.”

Rowdy glanced behind him where his cousin Dawg sat back in the easy chair next to the desk, his long legs stretched out, a newspaper in hand as he read an article on a story he’d been following for a few weeks now.

He seemed unusually interested in the reporter’s far-fetched evidence that there was some conspiracy brewing in the mountains of Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania where homeland militias were concerned. The article was being written by a reporter that had somehow managed to infiltrate one of those militias.

“I’m telling you, it doesn’t slip around Bliss. I don’t want her to hear me talking like that,” Natches bit out in frustration, his arms crossing over his chest as he glared at each of his cousins before turning back to Cranston.

Normally, Rowdy would have agreed, because Natches was normally not one to slip up once he put his mind to something.

“You say it often enough when you think she’s not around,” Dawg said, glancing around the side of the newspaper.

Natches just shook his head.

As he caught the tight-lipped scowl on Natches’s face, Rowdy knew it would do little good to argue with his cousin over it. He was convinced he hadn’t said the word around his daughter, therefore, as far as he was concerned, he hadn’t said it. Until they actually managed to catch him and point it out, then he’d continue to fight against the idea that he’d let it drop. Rowdy was more inclined to think it had happened out of Bliss’s sight, just not out of her hearing. The three of them usually managed to hold back the words they didn’t want their daughters to hear, whether the girls were around or not. They were all too aware of the fact that their girls were growing up and prone to be present whether they could be seen or not.

As far as Rowdy knew, he himself hadn’t said that word since the last time he’d suspected Cranston was up to something.

It never failed that the F-word slipped out whenever that little bastard was messing in their lives.

Holding his hand up in a “wait” gesture to the driver, Cranston closed the passenger door to the Excursion and began walking quickly to the marina offices.

He wasn’t as fat as he was the last time they’d seen him, Rowdy noted to himself. Not that he’d been overly round, but he had been a bit portly.

His brown hair was still a little thin in the front, though, cut short everywhere else and standing on end as the wind whipping off the lake only made it worse.

The tan suit he wore was rumpled and wrinkled, as though he’d slept in it for more than a few days. Beneath the suit, it appeared he might have been working out just a little.

Frowning, Rowdy glanced to Natches, wondering whether he’d noticed.

Natches wasn’t saying anything if he had.

Giving an irritated snort, Natches turned and paced back to the desk and the chairs Rowdy had placed behind it for his cousins. Cranston’s chair sat all by its lonesome in front of the desk.

Stepping back from the door and crossing his arms over his chest, Rowdy scowled as Cranston pushed into the office, his hand moving to smooth his hair back rather than running his fingers through the normally disheveled strands.

And he looked more harried than usual.

If Rowdy wasn’t mistaken, the former Homeland Security Special Agent in Charge of Investigations looked downright worried and possibly even a little uncertain.

“Rowdy, damned good to see you.” Cranston frowned as he stepped into the office and extended his hand. “You ignored my invitation to the party last week, by the way.”

Shaking his hand, Rowdy raised his brows in surprise. “That was really from you? I couldn’t believe it. I was afraid it was a trick to get us all in one place to kill us all at once.”

Cranston’s frown turned suspicious, and evidently the innocent smile Rowdy gave him did nothing to alleviate the suspicion.

Cranston’s jaw tightened.

Turning to Dawg and Rowdy, he sighed deeply.

Dawg was still engrossed in his newspaper, and now Natches had a part of it—the comics, no less—and appeared just as involved in it.

“So that’s how it’s going to be?” Cranston muttered, sounding strangely disappointed.

The look he shot Rowdy had a curl of shame rearing its head that only managed to piss Rowdy off. Hell, he had no reason to feel ashamed.

“What did you expect?” Rowdy asked as he walked to the desk and took his seat behind it. “Come on, Cranston; we know you. When you make one of your infamous requests that we all meet you together, it means you’re going to pull us into one of your schemes, get us shot at, and piss our wives off. We’re not playing this time.”

“Yet here you all are.” Timothy waved his hands out to encompass the room, that glimmer of somber disappointment still gleaming in his eyes.

“Out of curiosity,” Rowdy assured him as both Dawg and Natches lowered their papers with a snap.

The other man sighed—tiredly?— before moving to the desk, though he didn’t sit down.

“There’s no scheme,” he assured them, his voice matching the resignation in his brown eyes.

“Sure there’s not,” Dawg expressed doubtfully. “You’re still breathing; that means there’s a scheme.”

“The party was thrown, Dawg”—he singled Dawg out, and it wasn’t missed by any of them, especially Dawg—“to allow you to meet four young women and their mother.”

“We’re not bodyguards; nor are we in the market for a woman,” Dawg snapped.

At this point, Cranston sat down. Slowly.

His brows lowered, his brown eyes darker and flickering with what Rowdy had always said were the fires of hell. It was actually the green coming out in the dark hazel of his eyes.

They just appeared brown until he was pissed.

He was pissed now.

He watched the three of them silently, his jaw clenched and granite hard.

“At what point have you failed to miss the fact that I am completely besotted by your wives and children? And since you acquired those wives and children, at what time have I asked you to do anything dangerous?” he asked them then, and Rowdy had to admit he hadn’t expected to hear that edge of some emotion akin to hurt in the agent’s tone.

Dawg and Natches both put their papers aside as Rowdy tensed. They’d seen Cranston in a lot of different moods, but they rarely saw him pissed off at them. And they had certainly never seen him give the impression that his feelings were hurt.

They had seen him pissed at others, often— But he’d never seemed to care enough about anyone that they could actually prick emotions they’d never known he had.

“That doesn’t mean you’re not trying to draw us into one of your damned operations,” Natches growled, clearly missing the fact that Cranston didn’t get pissed at them for saying no to a mission.

“Natches.” Rowdy said his name softly, warningly, his gaze locked on the former agent. “Let’s see what he has to say.”

“Why?” Dawg grunted. “He’s obviously out to cause trouble.”

“Or to alleviate some,” Cranston stated softly, the cool smile that crossed his lips sending that chill racing up Rowdy’s spine again.

Cranston stood slowly, the expression on his face hinting at not just anger, but also that inner disappointment that had Rowdy confused as hell. “Had I known this would be my reception, I would have just told you over the phone,” he stated. “Rather than believing we had been friends for the past four years.”