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I rolled my eyes and turned back to speak to my visitor. Whatever had brought Colonel Benson here couldn’t be good, and I didn’t want any part of it.

“That dog is not a real dog. He’s a brooding shirker,” I explained.

Colonel Benjamin Benson ignored my rant as his gaze cut to Conn. “Is the dog your partner?”

My mouth quirked at the corners. The man knew what Conn was. He’d seen him in full red demon glory, black curled horns included. He’d also watched Conn fighting the monstrous creature Jack had planned to turn the Colonel and all the members of his team into.

“I come in peace today. I only want to talk,” he said, pulling his hands from the pockets of his pressed jeans and holding them up.

Not only were the jeans and sneakers a surprise, but he was also wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt with a motorcycle jacket thrown on over it. The colonel was quite good-looking in casual clothes. Maybe they were his retirement uniform. Ya could tell he was military because who else would bother pressing their jeans?

The last time I saw the man, though, he’d been in full military mode wearing camouflage gear and a matching hat pulled low on his head. He and his men had been prisoners held inside electrified cages by the wicked branch of the military both my ex-husband and the colonel worked for.

Technically, my ex-husband still worked for them, though perhaps not for much longer. Should I be so pleased about that fact? Probably not, but I was. Our daughter felt different about her father’s career slide, but she hadn’t wasted time pleading his case to me yet.

If I’d been the colonel, I would have been resentful, but Benson had taken Jack’s betrayal in stride. Jack had told me he was in Army Special Forces. Benson had indicated he had the same special background.

I knew Benson worked with Jack in some regard on the DNA manipulation stuff because he’d confessed to it. The two men seemed to share little else, though. To me, they seemed more like enemies than comrades-in-arms.

Colonel Benson had handled Jack’s betrayal of him and his people much better than I had handled Jack betraying me, but I was an Irish witch with a terrible temper. Not being a soldier, I didn’t live life expecting people I cared about to betray me.

Plus, Jack had been sleeping with me. Well, me and at least one other woman I’d learned, but I didn’t know that back then. As my husband, I naturally had assumed all of Jack’s loyalty belonged to me. But I’d been completely wrong. Maybe my mistrust had spread to people like Benson.

Today I wasn’t so sure that aspect of my character was a bad thing.

ChapterTwo

Women don’t like to be betrayed. If ya don’t believe me, ask one. Even the quiet, nice ones like my daughter Fiona would turn on a man given the right provocation.

Trained as a warrior, I was the assertive type who gave ya warning first before I got in yer face. My daughter Fiona was the type to tie a man to the bed and gag him before she went to get her nails done. By the time her nails dried, she would have forgotten he ever existed. Going back and turning the man loose would never have occurred to her.

And once my daughter removed ya from her social media accounts the relationship was over forever.

From my observations, men still hadn’t figured out the quiet ones were as lethal as someone like me when ya stabbed them in the back. The worst would hire expensive lawyers and take every possession ya owned when they divorced ya. Revenge could take many forms.

Jack threw me in jail and took control of all my worldly possessions while I played nice for Fiona’s sake. I wanted his head on a plate. Divorcing him had been liberating, but it hadn’t been enough. What lingered made me irritated at all men all the time.

Conn jumped from Fiona’s lap to mine, growled at me for not paying attention to our guest, and then dove off my lap to scratch indignantly at the grass in front of me. He trotted over and yapped up at Fiona until she rose from the chair and followed him into the house. Since Conn had helped raise her, she knew when he was dropping a hint—even a doggie one.

“I’ll make some lemonade,” she said, smiling at me and the Colonel before she left.

I smiled back at my daughter. “Yer Gigi would be proud of yer manners.”

“And she’d be appalled of yours, Mom,” Fiona teased, laughing as she walked off.

I turned to the colonel looking more unsure by the minute. Two women bickering with each other was a lot for most men to handle. Truthfully, I didn’t want to hear him out, but the man was already here,andhe’d kept his employers from asking too many questions about us.

Maybe I owed it to him to listen. Conn wouldn’t have let him into our house if he hadn’t thought it was important. This I knew for certain.

Decision made, I waved to the chair beside me. “Ya might as well have a seat, Colonel.”

“I have a real name, you know. It’s Ben. You could call me that if you liked.”

“Ben is short for Benjamin. Yer entire name rhymes. Conn learned it before we came to see ya. I’ll try to remember to call ya by it.”

Fighting a grin over my obvious reluctance, the man walked in front of me to take the chair Fiona had vacated. As soon as Conn shifted back to human, I was going to make him fetch the other two chairs from the garage. It was ridiculous for only two people to be able to sit out here at once.

“Is this visit about the werewolves ya mentioned?”