Chapter four

Kevin stormed out of the house, ignoring the catcalls he got from some of his friends as he looked furiously around for Lenny. He swore loudly when her trail disappeared and he couldn't see her, and he moved through the throng of people, looking towards the lake. A small movement to one side of it made him narrow his eyes. There she was, heading home and thinking she was safe, no doubt.

He started to go after her when a hand descended on his arm. "Going somewhere?" Sam asked him, raising one eyebrow knowingly.

"Gonna try and stop me?" he asked, his voice hard.

Sam shook his head. "I'm not suicidal, even if my sister appears to be. Just a word of advice," he said, looking serious. "Don't do anything stupid and don't you dare hurt her. I may not be able to fight you on my own, but there are a lot of big guys here, and most of them are friends with Charlene. If I asked them to, they would defend her."

Kevin looked taken aback, frowning at Sam. "Are you threatening me?" he asked incredulously.

"If you hurt Charlene, yes I am."

The bigger man slowly nodded, giving a wry smile. "I'm not going to hurt her. But she is going to pay for all these little 'accidents' that have been happening," he said, cocking his head to one side. "Any objections?"
Sam shook his head. "Like I said, don't hurt her."

"I can promise to try not to hurt her," Kevin said, grinning cockily.

"Not good enough. Tell me what you have planned."

"I hadn't really planned anything, to be truthful. I just thought I'd play it by ear, although smacking her ass a few times is pretty tempting," Kevin said, shrugging.

The other man nodded, his eyes darkening. "That's pretty much what I thought. You and Mark are a lot alike. But as far as I'm concerned, that would constitute hurting her."

"Oh come on!" Kevin said in exasperation. "You can't be serious. I can't even smack her?"

"Nope."

Kevin stared at him for long seconds, debating what to do. He could just go ahead and spank the daylights out of her, but then Sam would probably never speak to him again, and they had been friends for some years now. He didn't want that to happen. Taking a harsh breath he nodded. "Okay, I won't spank her."

"Promise?"

"Dammit!" he said, frowning with disgust. "Okay, I promise. I promise I won't spank her today."

"Meaning that you will some other time?" Sam asked, grinning at Kevin's taut expression.

"Maybe," Kevin said, shrugging and then returning the grin. "You have to admit she deserves it."

Sam shook his head. "No, she doesn't. She hasn't done anything to you on purpose, you just don't want to believe that they could all be accidents. But they are, Kev. She's just a little...clumsy."

"A little?" Kevin asked, raising his eyebrows. "She's a lot clumsy and you know it."

"Then maybe you should try staying out of her way?"

"God, I try. She has a knack for finding me, even when she's not looking," Kevin muttered, looking down at his drenched outfit and swearing. His eyes met Sam's again and he gave a feral smile. "I am going to get her back for this, and you can't be there every second of the day."

"True," Sam said, nodding and raising his eyebrows, starting to look resigned to his sister's fate. "Why can't you two just get along? My life would be so simple then."

"Why would you want a simple life?" Sam's wife, Rachel, asked as she came up to him, her enormous bump making her movements slow.

Sam wrapped an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. "I just want Kev and Charlene to stop fighting for once."

"Fat chance!" she said, laughing at Kevin's appearance. "Went for a dip did you?"

"Courtesy of your sister-in-law, yes," he said fiercely, scowling.

"And he wants to get her back for it," Sam said, pursing his lips as he studied the much bigger man who was positively vibrating with rage now.

"But....he's not going to, right?" Rachel said, biting her lip and looking worried.

Kevin looked disgusted with the whole business and brushed back his wet hair once again, shooting a hard look at Sam. "Not according to your husband, but he isn't around all the time, now is he?"

"Kevin, don't....er...look, Charlene is already scared of you, it wouldn't be a good idea to..."

"Scared of me?" Kevin asked, looking at Rachel with faint shock.

"Well of course she's scared of you, look at the size of you!" she said, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, okay I'm a bit bigger than her, but I've never done anything to make her scared of me," he said, not liking the idea of Lenny feeling that way, for some unknown reason.

"Apart from bellowing at her all the time, chasing her up trees, throwing her in the lake, threatening to rip her head off....gee, no, nothing there to scare her," Sam said, grinning and cocking his head to one side as he watched Kevin's reaction.

"I didn't..." he started slowly, looking like he'd been hit with a sledgehammer. "She never said anything."

"Why would she, to you? You're the one she's scared of remember?" Rachel pointed out, raising her eyebrows at him.

"This is ridiculous!" he said, fiddling with his hair again. "She's just...it's not like I'm going to actually...goddamn!" he snarled and walked off. Sam was glad to see it was into Mark's house and not towards his, he didn't want Kevin getting his hands on Charlene, at least not until she was more prepared.

Rachel looked up at him and smiled. "You can't protect her forever, you know," she pointed out gently.

"I know. It's just...why did she have to choose Kevin Nash to piss off? There are millions of people out there who she could irritate, but she chooses the biggest man she sees." Sam shook his head. "I guess he's going to get to her sooner or later, and I won't be able to stop him."

"Don't worry so much," his wife said, smiling when he looked down at her huge stomach and patted it affectionately. "You have other things to be thinking of at the moment!"

****

Kevin changed into jeans and a T-shirt and towel dried his hair, frowning as he thought of Lenny. He seemed to do little else nowadays, he thought, the frown getting worse. If he didn't stop his face would stay like this permanently. Giving an impatient growl, he slammed out of his room and walked down the stairs, giving a reluctant smile when Page Falkenburg came in the front door, flashing him a dazzling white grin.

"Nash," he said in greeting, still smiling as he cocked his head to one side and studied the anger that was still apparent on his face. "Something wrong?"

"No," Kevin said a little too fast, then let his shoulders slump comically when Page's grin got even bigger.

"I know you too well, man. Come on, tell Page all about it," the older man invited, folding his arms over his chest and waiting.

"Why the hell is it that you and Mark both think you have a right to know every single little thing about my life?"

Page shrugged. "We're your friends, that's why."

"Yeah, well, that gives you no rights at all," Kevin grumbled, moving past Page and heading into the kitchen, grabbing a can of coke from the refrigerator and pulling the tab.

"Hmm, being a little...secretive, are we?" Page said, narrowing his eyes. "Let me see if I can guess. Does your present bad mood have anything - anything at all - to do with little Miss Hart?"

Kevin shot him a disgusted look and took a long swallow of the coke. "I suppose every single person out there knows all the details of our latest encounter?"

"Hardly surprising, what with you stalking through the crowd dripping wet and with murder in your eyes." Page pursed his lips and perched on a stool. "Why don't you just have a little word with her?"

"Because her brother won't let me anywhere near her! And believe me, when I do get near her I won't be doing any talking," he said in a hard voice, gritting his teeth.

Page laughed, studying his friend. "I'm guessing someone's ass is gonna be plenty red when you're through with her."

"If I can get close enough," Kevin said, nodding in agreement. "Then I'll get a real apology out of her and maybe even a promise that she won't come near me again!"

"Sam doesn't want you to hurt his baby sister," Page said, and Kevin knew that he had known everything all along. "But there are other ways."

"Yeah, like what?"

"You're Big Sexy, you work it out," Page said, patting him on the shoulder and then leaving the kitchen, whistling through his teeth as he went.

Kevin sat for a while, thinking about what Page had said. What the hell had he meant by that? He finished his drink and sighed, knowing he was going to have to find Page and ask him what he meant, and also knowing that Page would be enjoying his discomfort and fully expecting him to seek him out. That meant that he would be hard to find. He wasn't in the mood right now, he thought, and he slammed the empty can down on the work surface, walking outside when he heard some cheering going on.

Mark was handing Amy into a limo, about to leave for their honeymoon, so Kevin moved over to the driveway where he could say goodbye again. He gave Amy a dazzling grin which set her off laughing and then rolled his eyes, shaking Mark's hand.

"Have a good time, and don't do anything I wouldn't do," Kevin told him, getting a wicked smile from the redheaded man.

"That means I can pretty much do whatever I like, then. Take care of our house," Mark told him, raising one eyebrow. "And don't kill Lenny."
"I can only tell you I'll try," Kevin said, shrugging.

"Good enough. See ya, man," Mark punched him gently on the shoulder and ducked into the car with a final wave to the assembled crowd, then the car moved away and Kevin found himself in charge of the party.

Ordinarily he would have enjoyed a good party, but he didn't drink anymore and Lenny had put him in a foul mood. Which, he thought with resignation, meant he had to fake being happy so everyone else had a good time. Dammit. Of course, if Lenny came back he could guarantee he could make his mood better, simply by tanning her hide. Other ways of punishing her popped into his head, each one progressively worse than the last.

He was so lost in thought he didn't see Page come up next to him and watch the car drive off, his blue eyes looking at Kevin with amusement. "Haven't figured it out yet, huh?"

Kevin started at the sound of his voice and looked at him blankly. "Figured what out?"

"How to punish that young girl without hurting her," Page said, smiling and then narrowing his eyes. "Christ, you must have lost your touch, or have you forgotten how to make a woman beg?"

"Beg?" Kevin asked, frowning. "You can't mean..."

Page nodded. "That's exactly what I mean. You want payback, you want an apology, get her to the point of begging and she'll say anything you want her to. You know that as well as I do."

"We're talking about Lenny," Kevin reminded him, thinking back to the times he had made women beg for his body. It hadn't been all that difficult, but he hadn't felt the need to humiliate anyone for a very long time, and the times he had didn't sit well with him anymore. He had done it purely for amusement, and nearly always when he had been drinking, but he had never done it to make someone say something he wanted to hear.

"Yeah, so?" Page said, raising his eyebrows. "She's a woman isn't she?"

Kevin shook his head. "She's just a kid," he murmured, trying to blot the sudden image of a naked Lenny out of his head. He could only imagine what was beneath her underwear, and it sent a shiver down his spine.

"A kid? She's got all the packaging as far as I could see," Page said, laughing inwardly because he had known Lenny since she was a child and he had never thought of her as anything else. But Kevin didn't know that, and Page was enjoying stirring things up.

Kevin looked at the shorter man and scowled. "You shouldn't have been looking!" he snapped, not liking the thought of Page raking her with that lustful glance he'd patented.

The other man's eyebrows shot up and he grinned. "Getting possessive are we? Have you got some claim to her that you haven't told me about?"

"No!" Kevin snarled, hating the way he was feeling and not knowing how to cope with it. He did feel possessive about her, and protective, and he had never realised it before now. The thought of someone else treating her as badly as he wanted to made him furious, and that fact shocked him. He brushed his blonde hair back from his face and scratched his beard. "I need a drink," he said finally, grimacing.

Page laughed. "Got you twisted in knots hasn't she?" he said, shaking his head. "I guess that means you won't be using sexual torture to extract an apology then?"

"I told you, she's just..."

"A kid, yeah, I know. But she isn't, Nash, not anymore, and you damn well know it," he murmured, smiling sardonically and walking away.

Kevin stood there and watched him go, trying in vain to stop his mind from coming up with various different images of Lenny, each one with her wearing something very small or nothing at all. He swore and shook his head. What the hell was the matter with him? He hadn't resorted to robbing cradles just yet, and Lenny was definitely in the hands off zone as far as he was concerned. So then why did he keep thinking like this? He grimaced and turned back towards the throng, forcing a smile onto his face and going in search of the drinks. Today his no drinking policy could go to hell.