She found she didn’t mind overmuch that Mac was aiming a gun at Corbin.
And she hoped he took her literally and didn’t put that gun down.
She grabbed her Peace and Love sweatshirt and threw it on over her head and shoved her feet in her spaniel slippers and bolted down the stairs.
Crap crap crap. What thehellwas Corbindoinghere?
In the dead of night?
She emerged and truly got a good look at the tableau of Mac, spectacular in boxers, stubble, shoes and nothing else, aiming a gun at that asshole she’d lived with for four years.
And for the first time, Ava saw something truly unnerving in Mac.
Mac knew exactly what he was capable of in terms of strength and aggression, and that made him a universe different from Corbin.
Corbin wasn’t easy to intimidate. But maybe he ought to be. He was charismatic. Not stop-you-in-your-tracks rakishly good-looking the way Mac was, but he was certainly used to getting his own way, which was in its way a form of confidence.
She studied him as though he were a stranger.
“Corbin, this is Mac. He’s the groundskeeper for Devil’s Leap and my... er... contractor.”
Mac shot her a blackly incredulous look.
Corbin assessed Mac.
“Contractor, huh? You get guns like that from... what... carrying water from the well, swinging an axe?”
“Bench pressing skinny tech nerds. Do you guys come in a cord, like firewood?”
Corbin ignored this. “Your name is actuallyMac? Like in a 1940s gangster movie?”
“Mac, as in Maximilian.”
Mac wasn’t blinking. His sense of humor had vacated and something very dark and palpable had replaced it.
“Wait. Coltrane? As in... Dixon Coltrane?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t your father practically invent yuppies? And Ponzi schemes?”
“Corbin,” Ava said sharply.
After all, Mac had the shotgun. And a temper.
“Not precisely.” Mac’s voice was now a lazy drawl. “But from him I learned what a fraud and a cheat looks like. Hence the gun aimed at you.”
“Mac!”
She might as well have not been standing there. Testosterone was clearly making the two of them deaf to high-pitched voices.
She swiveled toward Corbin, clearly the weaker of the two. “Corbin, why don’t you wait for me inside the house. I need to have a word with Mac.”
“Yeah, why don’t you wait inside,” Mac concurred lazily. “You probably needed a change of underwear, anyway.”
“Said the brave man with the gun,” Corbin muttered bitterly.
“Corbin,” Ava repeated sharply. “I swear. To. God.”