Deadly Sins by Lora Leigh

home and cause him to default on the trust.
    Fuck. They could give him a break. His intruder could give a single night a break and the nightmares could surely evaporate for one night and allow him to enjoy the fantasies of the luscious little neighbor whose kiss still burned through his body.
    Moving his hand silently from where it rested against his abdomen, he slid it to where he had tucked the handgun at his side earlier that night. Logan forced himself from the comfortable position he’d fought to find over the past hours, blowing out a silent breath as he did so.
    He should shoot the trespasser just for irritating him. Or maybe just beat the shit out of him.
    If he could catch him this time. So far, he’d just been shit out of luck. Whoever it was had been slick enough to run before Logan could get to him.
    Holding the weapon securely, Logan sat up before sliding his feet, still shod in leather sneakers, to the smooth hardwood floor of the dining room.
    His cousins Rafer and Crowe had laughed when Logan had begun sleeping on the old couch. He didn’t explain why, and he wasn’t about to. His eldest cousin, Crowe, was already concerned about the neighbor.
    As though he knew Logan well enough to know exactly where his fantasies lay.
    There were no fewer than four large bedrooms with attached bathrooms upstairs, all with large beds, Crowe had commented. When he had, his expression had stilled and a single memory seemed to haunt all three of them.
    At one time, three Callahan couples had lived in this house, along with their children. Three boys, Crowe, Logan, and Rafer, and one infant daughter. The first daughter born to the Callahans since before they’d immigrated from Ireland.
    They had come together for the sake of their children’s safety. For their own safety as they planned to set in motion their final vengeance against the three powerful men trying to destroy them.
    There wasn’t always safety in numbers, though, and the innocent didn’t always persevere. The Callahan men and their wives had learned that one snowy, miserable night on a mountain road as they made their way back from Aspen. With them had been an infant daughter. Bright-eyed, dark-haired, and just beginning to smile. She too had been taken from life far too soon.
    Placing his feet silently on the floor, Logan rose slowly from the couch. The memory of the infant’s baby sounds drifted through his mind as he held the weapon at his thigh and moved through the dining room, keeping close to the shadows.
    Pushing back those long-ago memories, Logan concentrated on the lack of sound that processed along the side of the house. He was listed as a medic with the special forces, inducted from the marines, but he’d been far more than that. Just as his cousins had been.
    Logan had been expecting problems since he’d returned to the house nearly six months earlier.
    Another sound drifted into the house. The sound of tiny growls, immature and fierce. The sound had a silent snarl of fury curling at Logan’s lips.
    The little squatter camped on Logan’s patio outside the living area was already fiercely territorial, even for her small size. The pup was an innocent bystander in the war beginning to heat up between the Callahans and the patriarchs of the three ruling families of the county. The Barons, as they were called. Logan’s, Crowe’s, and Rafer’s grandfathers had set out to destroy the sons of their only daughters the moment those daughters had died.
    Logan could see that particular little ball of fluff being harmed just for the hell of it. He knew Saul Rafferty had brought it simply to torment him. He’d done it to give Logan something to care about so she could be taken in the cruelest way possible.
    Just because she was small enough, innocent enough, and because enemies would assume it belonged to Logan.
    If only someone could convince her to actually come to them or take a treat from them, then they could harm it. Thankfully, the little