Things had apparently changed more than Henry had realized in the years he’d been gone.
“You’re the one who asked me to check out the plane. So back off and let me do my job.”
Henry heard Tamara’s gasp. “Because we thought someone was using her, and we wanted to know what the hell was going on,” Henry said.
“You son of a bitch.” Tamara’s glare burned a hole in him. She pushed back her chair and would have stormed off. Adam’s next words froze her in place.
“Sit down, Ms. Jones, or I’ll arrest you and throw you in jail.”
Henry had never heard that tone from Adam before. He met Morgan’s gaze and knew he and his brother were only seconds away from pounding the hell out of the town sheriff, charges be damned.
“No one, including me, thinks you’ve done anything wrong. One thing you’re going to have to learn, Tamara, is that Kendall men take care of what’s theirs. That’s why Henry asked me to run the plane. I ran you just because I figured these two Romeos weren’t seeing beyond their swollen dicks.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong, and neither has my uncle! He bought the plane from a friend of his outside of Abilene.”
“Yet you had no paperwork, and no flight plan filed for the jaunt,” Adam said.
Henry sat back, the hardest thing he’d ever done, and let Tamara handle Adam. When she looked at him, he gave her what he hoped looked like an encouraging smile. Morgan reached over and laid his hand on her back.
“Uncle Goodwin said the paperwork was in transit. Mr. Smith told me I had to move the plane immediately, or he was going to have it demoed.”
“And that didn’t strike you as strange?” Adam asked.
Tamara sighed. She sat back and closed her eyes, and Henry understood that she had, that she’d been making excuses for the sloppy deal all the way around.
Tamara opened her eyes again and looked at Adam. “Yes, of course it did, but I’d put it down to being par for the course. My uncle has a habit of making…interesting friends. I just figured Smith was being a curmudgeon about things. So, what’s up with the plane? It’s stolen, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t exist.”
Henry sat forward. “What the hell do you mean, it doesn’t exist?”
“I ran the registration numbers through the FAA and came up with nothing.”
“So…maybe someone altered the numbers?” Tamara asked.
Adam didn’t answer her. Instead he looked at Morgan and raised one eyebrow.
“More likely, is that record of the plane’s existence has been expunged from the FAA’s database.” Morgan didn’t sound happy about that fact, and Henry sure as hell wasn’t pleased about it, either.
“What does that mean?” Tamara looked from Henry to Morgan and back again. Then she turned her attention back to Adam.
Henry knew Tamara was intuitive and smart. Her pique gone, she looked at each of them in turn again, but he could have sworn he saw her mind working.
“Nothing good,” Adam said at last. “You might want to give your uncle a call.”
“Is he in danger?”
Yes, she’s smart as hell. “We won’t let anything happen to him, sweetheart. Why don’t you invite him down here for a visit?”
Tamara shook her head. “No. If there’s danger, the last thing you need is for us to be here. Maybe I could—”
Morgan moved before Henry could. He reached over, turned Tamara’s face to him, and gave her a fast, hard kiss. “Adam already told you, but let me repeat it, just so you have no doubt. You belong to us, and we Kendalls take care of our own.”
“Damn right.” Henry looked over at Adam. “We need to get that man here, as soon as possible.”
“That’s why I wanted Tamara to give him a call. Let him know I’m on my way.”
Tamara looked at Morgan and then him. “Bossy. The two of you are a couple of bossy, dominating, Alpha dogs.”
“It’s a good thing you realize that, sweetheart,” Morgan said.
“It will save a lot of time and grief in the years to come,” Henry added.
Tamara grabbed her hair and screamed. “Argh!”
“You know, she sounded exactly like Mom just now,” Adam said.
Henry tried not to laugh, but it was tough. The truth was there were more than a couple of passing similarities between their woman and their mother.
He thought it would probably be wise, however, to avoid pointing them out to Tamara at the moment.
Chapter 14
Tamara paced the front porch of the Kendall family home—the New House as it was called. Unable to sit down or relax, the pacing helped to keep her calm. She reminded herself that Uncle Goodwin was safe, and that was all that really mattered. He was with Adam Kendall, and the two of them should be arriving soon.
She still didn’t feel right about accepting the Kendalls’ hospitality, under the circumstances. Letting others come under fire because of wrong choices was how her parents handled things. It wasn’t her way, nor was it Goodwin’s. Yet he had readily accepted the family’s invitation to stay with them.
If there’d been a ground-floor bedroom at the cottage, she’d have insisted he stay with her. But there wasn’t, and since he could no longer navigate stairs all that well, his staying here made perfect sense.
It made sense, but Tamara was surprised it was actually going to happen. Hell, she’d been shocked that he’d so quickly agreed to accompany the sheriff back to Lusty in the first place.
She’d always believed her uncle to be as fiercely independent as she herself had always been.
After speaking with Goodwin earlier, Tamara was more convinced than ever there had to be something wonky about the business surrounding the Piper.
Her uncle had admitted to not really knowing John Smith all that well. He’d confessed that since the moment she’d called him after the plane had malfunctioned, he’d been trying to get in touch with the man, but with no success.
John Smith wasn’t answering his e-mails or his phone. Not only that, but the
