Forbidden Pleasure (33 page)

That was her bedroom. If she held the hearts of two men, two men willing to share her love, then it was her business. It wasn't theirs. And if they wanted to make it their business, then let them have at it. She had seen too much, known too many lonely days and nights before she met Mac, to ever want to return there. She wasn't throwing away something she wanted, something she needed, because of gossip.

Finally, blessedly, the meeting came to an end. Victoria Staten released them with a graceful nod to the buffet and snacks set up in the back of the ballroom with a pointed reminder that everyone should attend the next meeting, which would finalize the details for the booths.

Keiley rose hastily to her feet, waiting impatiently as Victoria left the podium and moved for the ballroom doors as a maid moved to open them.

"I have some things to see to for just a moment," she informed the room at large. "I'll return in a bit."

And Keiley had every intention of escaping. But seconds after Victoria left, Delia stepped in front of her.

"Keiley, could you come to the committee board?" She extended her hand to the long table where the women of the committee still stood. All but Victoria Staten.

"Of course," Keiley murmured before following the other woman suspiciously.

She didn't trust Delia, and she didn't trust the glitter of triumph in her gaze.

"Hello, ladies." Keiley nodded to the six women who hadn't bothered to stand as she approached. "What can I do for you?"

"You can resign from the committee." Delia laid a resignation form on the table in front of her as Keiley stared back at her, trying to hide her incredulity.

"Resign? Delia, why would I want to do anything so insane?" She would lose heavily if she resigned now. Not only would she lose the money she had invested in the charity booth, but she would have to pay a heavy loss for walking away.

"I believe you'll consider it in your best interests when you see this." The other woman removed a picture and slapped it down on the table in front of her.

Keiley felt the blood drain from her face. For a moment, the room darkened, and she had a horrifying fear of losing the strength in her legs.

Nothing could be more incriminating. The picture had to have been taken from a crack in the curtains over the wide living room windows of her home. It was positioned perfectly to catch the full view of Mac, Keiley, and Jethro. Naked. Obviously engaged in a full ménage act, their expressions tight with ecstasy.

Keiley picked up the picture, watching the print shaking in her hand and realizing her fingers were trembling violently.

"Where did you get this?"

"Does it matter where I got it?" Delia questioned snidely. "I have it. And so will everyone you know if you don't sign that paper."

They would have it whether she signed the paper or not. She lifted her gaze and met the condemning stares of the other head committee members.

She could feel the heat of humiliated anger rising in her face and refused to bow down to it. This picture was an invasion of her privacy, of her home, of her life.

"Are you truly this vindictive, Delia?" she asked, even though she knew the other woman was. "Is your life truly so pitiful that you have to destroy others to make it seem worthwhile?"

She looked at the other woman, watching as a flush of fury mounted her cheeks.

"You're not wanted here, by any of us," Delia snapped. "You should have never married Mac and you should have never come here. You don't fit in and sluts like you are not wanted."

"What about the slut who is so hot for another woman's husband that she'll resort to this?" Keiley retorted, indicating the picture as she stared back at Delia. "Do you think for one second you'll ever have Mac?"

Her lips thinned, and for a moment Keiley glimpsed the gloating satisfaction in Delia's gaze. Delia didn't care at this point if she managed to snag Mac to her bed or not. The point was, Mac had rejected her all those years ago. He was the only man to have done so, the only thing she had wanted that she couldn't have.

"I'm not resigning."

"Then this picture will hit the Internet within hours," Delia drawled smoothly.

"Everyone in Scotland Neck will see it and they'll know you for the whore you are."

"You're such an amateur, Delia." Keiley shook her head sadly as she folded the picture and secured it in her purse. "You should be certain when blackmailing a person that they give a damn about the blackmailing material. Of course, I'm just the slut having sex in my own home. I'll be sure to give Mac your demands and see how he feels about it."

Keiley watched her composure slip marginally then. Delia hadn't anticipated this.

Though why she hadn't, Keiley couldn't understand.

"If I post that picture he'll be humiliated," Delia snapped.

Keiley shook her head. "You really don't know Mac, do you, Delia? The first thing he's going to do is come down on your husband's head like a ton of bricks. Then he's going to call his very good friend, your mother-in-law, and he'll come down on her head like a ton of a bricks. And then." She looked at each of the other members. "He's going to come after the rest of you. You should really research your victims closer and make sure they give a fuck about the blackmail material."

Keiley was aware of the fury vibrating in her voice then. She knew it was shaking through her, shuddering violently through her in-sides. Her stomach knotted with rage and the flashback to the helpless teen she had been when a community had turned against her tore through her.

She could see the nervous uncertainty working through the other women of the committee then. The heads of the charity committee, mostly older women, certain in their morality and their judgments. Certain that Keiley would be as horrified by her secrets coming out as they would have been.

Victoria had made a mistake in choosing these older women, and especially in choosing her daughter-in-law as the only younger member of this group. Because Delia didn't have a clue about her own peers. Alternate sexual lifestyles among her age group were not that uncommon.

"This will ruin you," Delia snarled. "No one in Scotland Neck will work with you and you'll definitely not be wanted within the organizations you're a part of now. You'll be an outcast, Keiley."

"So cast me out." Keiley smiled coldly. "I don't need you or the fine people of this county to work. And I promise you, Delia, my clients don't give a damn who I sleep with.

All they care about is the bottom dollar, and I bring that in excellently."

"And Mac?" Delia sneered. "What about him?"

Keiley gave her a pitying glance. "You obviously don't know Mac very well. By time he's finished with the husbands of this fine group, no one will dare ostracize him or me.

Get a clue here, Delia. He has friends in the FBI. Friends who, I promise you, wouldn't blink at the picture. Or at the hell they can make your life. And yours." She turned to Victoria's sister-in-law. "Or yours." Victoria's best friend. "Or yours and yours and yours." Each member of the committee was staring back at her in horror. "Cut your losses, ladies," she sneered. "Because if you don't, I promise you, Mac will make certain you wished you had."

She wasn't wasting so much as another moment here. The longer she stood here, the more the demons of the past bit at her. The humiliating memory of trying to be so good, of trying to redeem herself in the eyes of a community where she had never sinned. Of paying for her parents' sins and realizing she would never be good enough, never rise about her father's thievery or her mother's weakness.

She had been so young, too young to understand what she now knew. It didn't matter when people wanted to see a sin. When they

wanted to condemn a person, then the condemnation didn't have to make sense. There were no laws to govern the thoughts and hearts of those with petty, vindictive minds.

Keiley refused to try again. She wouldn't lower her head to Delia. She would not give into blackmail. Never again would she be so weak that she would run and hide because those around her thought she should.

She believed in taking responsibility for her own actions, at all times. She enjoyed the path her life was taking. She enjoyed sparring with both her lovers, and she enjoyed the hell out of the challenge that would come in keeping them in line.

Keiley Hardin McCoy was not a fainting miss, she assured herself as the maid whisked opened the ballroom doors for her and she swept into the huge marbled foyer.

"Keiley, you aren't leaving." Victoria's voice called from a wide door at the end of the foyer as she stepped out. It wasn't a question, it was a demand.

"Sorry, Victoria." Keiley lifted her chin. "I believe it's time for me to leave." Getting out of there before she ripped every hair out of Delia's head out was imperative.

A frown instantly snapped between the other woman's brows as . her green eyes narrowed.

"Is there a problem, dear?" she asked.

If Victoria didn't already know about the picture, then she would. There was no hiding it now, and Keiley knew it. As the older woman walked toward her, Keiley felt a flash of sudden regret.

"You know I've always appreciated what you've done for me, don't you, Victoria?"

She asked.

Suspicion filled the older woman's eyes. "What has Delia done, Keiley? She's fairly harmless, I'm certain whatever ill will she managed to begin—"

Keiley shook her head. She was going to cry if this gentle, proud woman tried to apologize for her vicious daughter-in-law one more time.

"Just know I've appreciated everything. I really have to leave now."

Keiley turned and moved toward the front doors. She could feel her eyes tearing up and she refused to cry. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't going to be a baby over this. She was going to be an adult. That was what she was going to do.

Leaving the house, she caught sight of Mac and Jethro standing in front of the truck.

They straightened as she stepped onto the wide porch, their expressions filling with heat, memories, and equal desire. And emotion.

The emotion in Mac's gaze was fierce, untamed. Jethro's was wild but more controlled and just as damned sexy. They were tall, broad-shouldered, powerful, muscular. They were men that women dreamed of having in their beds. Men with morals and with a conscience, and they loved her.

Both of these men loved her. Mac, she knew, would always love her. Jethro, she wasn't as certain of, but she knew she couldn't deny him. Couldn't deny the pleasure they both brought her. Or the emotions building inside her. She wanted the chance to hold him the same as she held Mac.

As she moved down the steps, Keiley admitted that she knew she should have stayed home tonight. She knew that coming to this meeting was a bad idea, and Mac would be lucky if she didn't shoot him herself for forcing her into it.

But it had been informative. It had forced her to realize how little the opinions of these women mattered. She had sworn years ago that she would never let a community enforce their opinion of her, on her. It would never happen again. And it wasn't going to happen here.

There was no fooling Mac or Jethro. As she moved toward them their eyes narrowed, their bodies tightened with tension. Each showed his awareness of her volatile emotions in different ways. Mac's hands flexed as though he were holding his fingers back from clenching into fists. Jethro's biceps seemed to thicken beneath the short-sleeved shirt he wore, pumping up, preparing for battle.

They were like warriors, instinctive, aggressive in the face of any threat. And she couldn't mention this threat. Not yet. Not until she got a handle on it herself and her own sudden aggression.

This relationship had changed her. Two weeks ago she would have been in a panic, horrified that anyone could have witnessed anything so intensely private.

Someone had invaded her home. Had taken pictures. Had shared the evidence that Keiley had enjoyed not just the touch of her husband, but also the touch of his best friend.

And she had enjoyed it. Keiley had seen her pleasure in her face. In Mac's. In Jethro's.

The intense intimacy, the emotions beginning to bind them. It had all been there in that picture for anyone who cared to look close enough. To notice how Jethro covered her from behind, his lips pressed to her shoulder, his expression twisted with not just pleasure, but a tortured emotion rising from the depths of his gaze.

And Mac, below her, one hand framing her face, staring into her eyes, his face twisted into a grimace of ecstasy.

She stared at the two men now, knowing they would demand to know why she was upset, that if they found out then both would march straight into the Staten mansion and tell every woman there to go to hell.

And she couldn't bear that. Not yet. Maybe next time. For now, she had to figure out for herself how she felt about this and how she intended to deal with the complications that would arise.

There was no keeping those pictures hidden. If they hadn't already made the rounds of the county, then they would tonight.

"What happened?" Mac's voice was a low growl, a warning of the impending anger ready to rise.

"I told you, you should have just fucked her and had done with it fifteen years ago,"

she told him with a tight smile. "She would be a little rude now."

"Did she make a scene?" he snapped.

God help Delia Staten if she had, because Keiley couldn't lie to him about it.

"She didn't make a scene, just showed her ass in front of her friends." She shrugged. It was basically the truth. "So, did your handy-dandy little gadget show anyone in the house?"

His lips tightened. "Not yet."

"Then let's go get dinner," she stated. "I'm in the mood for Casey's. What about the two of you?"

She was aware of the probing looks she was receiving from both men as she pulled open the door to the truck.

"I thought you wanted to get home," Mac pointed out.

"I don't want to cook, and I don't want to clean up anyone else's mess," she told them both, knowing her mocking smile wasn't fooling anyone. "I need a drink and a hot meal, and I want to dance. We haven't gone dancing in a long time Mac."