He raced to her side, hunching down next to her, his eyes full of concern, keeping them on her face like any good gentleman would, running his hands over her cheeks. “Teddy, what the ever-lovin’ hell?”
A cough rose up in her throat as the frigid air hit her exposed skin, making her hack and sneeze. Cormac pulled off his vest, wrapping it around her and pulling her close.
And she let him, naked as a blue jay, somehow comforted by this almost-stranger gathering her in his arms. She didn’t understand it, he certainly wasn’t Mr. Friendly, but he calmed the storm of anger at her missed opportunity to kill that son of a bitch.
Marty, Wanda, and finally a raggedly breathing Nina were there, too, fussing over her, throwing one of their bathrobes on her and helping Cormac get her up to her frozen feet and back into the house.
She grunted at the searing pain in her ribs, squeezing her middle like a vise, but she managed to hobble into the kitchen, where Nina took her from Wanda and Marty. Wrapping her arm around Teddy’s waist, she brought her to a window seat, where a pile of plush cushions in cheerful red and navy blue were stacked.
“Sit. Stay. I’ll make something to warm your Braveheart ass up.”
Cormac was at her side before she could protest, gripping her frozen hands, warming them between his bigger ones. “Are you hurt? What happened? I heard some glass shatter and the next thing I know, you’re hell on wheels across the lawn in bear shift.”
Attempting a deep breath, Teddy shivered from her head to her toes. “Somebody took a shot at me. If you go upstairs to the bathroom, you’ll find a bullet on the floor and a broken window over the bathtub, among other things.”
“The motherfucker!” Nina griped, slamming a pot on her chef-sized stove. “He broke the window? Jesus, those windows with the fancy arch in them cost a damn fortune. I had that room specially decorated for my sister Penny because she loves fairy princesses. I’ll kill the fuck!”
Marty, her hair a wild nest of curls, her silky lavender pajamas clinging to her, rolled her eyes. “Settle down over there, Threat-Maker. You’re not killing anyone. I’ll have Keegen send someone to fix it tomorrow. Penny will never know it happened.” Then her blue eyes turned to Teddy as she brushed a strand of hair from her face with motherly fingers. “Are you okay, honey? Did he hit you? Let me look.”
Wanda rolled up the sleeves of her long, flowing nightgown in sky blue and huffed a breath, her face wreathed in a sympathetic smile. “Oh, Teddy, you were magnificent! You climbed that tree like some kind of otherwordly creature. I’ve never seen something so big move so fast.”
Teddy chuckled then grimaced at the pressure it put on her rib. “I’ve been doing it a long time. And I’m okay. I’ll heal,” she said for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. “How did he get in here anyway? I thought this place was locked up tight with all this high-tech security?”
“An apparent malfunction with the security gates. He got lucky because the gate is electric. Had it been working, he’d have fried to a crisp. But it’ll be fixed in no time,” Wanda assured.
Nina, in footy pajamas with red and white stripes, set a steaming cup down in front of her on the small table by the window seat and held up the gun she’d found by the tree. “You’re one determined broad, huh? You were across that lawn lickety-split. You get a look at him? Was it that Andre dude again? How the fuck could he have gotten here so quick?”
Oh, she’d gotten a look at him, just before he’d knocked her fifty feet to the ground. But she couldn’t tell them that. “I’m not sure, but I am sure it wasn’t Andre. I don’t get it.”
Cormac ran a hand over his jaw, his beard rustling under his fingers. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on at this point. Maybe they thought I was in the room?”
Teddy shook her head, allowing Archibald, who’d rushed into the kitchen on silent feet, to press a heating pad against her ribs. “No. He had binoculars. That was meant for me. He must have been looking into Penny’s window and found me. I feel it in my gut.”
She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he’d meant to kill her. How she’d explain that would have to wait until she investigated further. She’d only cause more grief and confusion without the facts.
Nina whistled as she settled in a chair at the round table, tucking her feet under her. “Okay, so now we have two fucks hunting you two? Shit just got real. What are we gonna do about it?”
“I agree with Nina. I know that’s rare, but what do we do about it?” Marty asked, gripping a mug of her own.
“We get a good night’s sleep and then we figure out who the players in this game are and hatch a plan,” Wanda responded without hesitation.
As their voices became distant background noise, as Cormac held her hands and chatted with them, Teddy knew what she had to do.
She had to figure out why the guy who had hired her was trying to kill her.
Chapter 7