Page 2 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

“She alright?” the cabbie asked, doubtfully, after Shepherd mopped her chin with the spare bandana in his back pocket and bundled her into the backseat.

She was out cold, which worried him, but her breathing was normal and she wasn’t convulsing.

When he lifted an eyelid, her pupil responded, but only fractionally.

“Fine,” he told the guy in a don’t-fuck-with-me voice that usually worked. “Her jerkoff friends got her drunk. Fucking kids.”

“Ah,” the guy said, and put the cab in gear. “I hear ya. You’re a good dad for picking her up this time of night.”

Thankfully, the dark hid the heat that flared to life in his cheeks. He didn’t correct the cabbie. Saying actually, I’m an unrelated male acquaintance tasked with minding her by my illegal club sounded like a good way to spend the rest of the night in a cell.

He gave the guy the address, sat back, slung an arm around Cass’s shoulders, and was thankfully left alone for the short ride to the club-use apartment where he’d crashed earlier.

He hadn’t stopped to think about it until right this moment, with Cass breathing hot and sour-smelling against the side of his neck, but he spent more nights at the apartment in Manhattan than he did at the clubhouse in Albany.

He could pretend it was because the bratva and the civilian mob that was Prince’s outfit needed lots of hand-holding and oversight…

but it had been almost three years since those two outfits helped New York and the Tennessee prez raid a high rise and kill a mogul-turned-sex-trafficker, and the ship more or less sailed itself at this point.

Likewise, he could insist that Maverick had stuck him on permanent babysitting duty, and that he loathed it, and was counting down the days until Cassandra Green decided to go back to Britain, or went down south to bunk with one of her other siblings.

But Maverick had issued no such order. Neither had Raven.

She’d asked . She’d said, “Oh, Shep, would you mind…?” And he’d grumbled, and muttered, and made vague unhappy noises.

But.

But. The truth was: after almost three years, he wasn’t sure how to kick the habit of worrying about where the kid was going, who she was seeing, and what sort of trouble she was landing herself in.

He’d been appointed her guardian during a high-stress, high-stakes time for the club, and then no one had told him to stop, so…

He was still guarding. He did whatever Mav wanted him to do in the city, trying to look useful – no, indispensable.

It was important for someone to have a finger on the Manhattan pulse, and Shep had appointed himself as that guy, since he was in the area anyway.

He kept waiting for one of his brothers to give him shit about it, but, so far, no one had.

He wasn’t so stupid he thought it would never happen. But until it did, he was enjoying the city. Its conveniences and diversions, the chance to be the downtown go-between, always a coveted position given the staggering boredom of Albany. And, well…

Mercy Lécuyer would have to duct tape him to a chair and take the pliers to him to get him to admit it, but he enjoyed Cass, too.

Which was why he was currently fantasizing about that stupid beanie-wearing kid with Cass on the sidewalk taking a nice deep swim in the Hudson.

Cass didn’t stir when they reached the building, and he had to haul her out of the cab and lug her up to the door. He leaned her up against the wall while he dug out his keys, and then had to grab her around the waist so she didn’t slide down the facade and faceplant on the sidewalk.

“Shit,” he muttered.

Forget the Hudson. He was going to put that kid’s beanie-wearing head through a plate glass window.

“You could help a little,” he griped, and she smashed her face into his shoulder and started to snore. “Lazy. Your generation is so fucking lazy. Come on.”

It was easier to scoop her up into a bridal carry and cross the lobby that way. A stoner stepping off the elevator blinked at them, then looked down at her lax face. “Nice.” He gave Shep a thumbs up as they passed one another.

“Shut up,” Shep told him, and juggled Cass higher against his chest so he could kick the button for his floor.

He had to shift her so she was slung fireman style over his shoulder so he could unlock the apartment door when they got there, and she finally moved a little.

“Wha…?”

“Hold on.”

Her hands fluttered around, bouncing clumsily off his ass, and he decided not to think about that. Better for everyone.

“Shep?”

“Yeah, yeah, I said hold on.”

He managed to get inside, get the door shut and locked, and get her laid out on the couch.

Then he got his first good look at her—more importantly, at what she was wearing.

“What the fuck?”

She twisted her upper body, and cracked her eyes open. “Hm?”

She had on a dress. Deep red and velvet .

Did people wear velvet anymore? When her jacket fell open—cropped, leather, not warm enough for the February cold—he saw that its straps were narrow little spaghetti lines, and the hem flashed way too much leg.

The shoes were a feat of footwear engineering, and clearly something she’d borrowed or stolen from her sister.

She was dressed like a model with a coke habit, and the fact had him clenching and unclenching his fists. Did Raven know she went out looking like this? Toly?

Or had the little brat gotten dressed in her dorm with no one the wiser and gone to the Upper West Side to meet some skeevy guy with a beanie who couldn’t even grow a mustache?

The latter seemed likelier.

Now that they were safe inside the apartment, the door locked against prying eyes and little shithead date-rapers, anger swept through him in a bristling hot tide.

He closed his eyes, and then pressed his hand over them for good measure, afraid that if he kept looking at her, he’d start shouting and never stop.

He was just tired, he reasoned. Anyone would feel like shouting if they were awakened at three a.m. A pitiful excuse for the rage that boiled in his gut, but one that allowed him to talk himself back from the edge.

When he opened his eyes, Cass was still again, head cocked at an uncomfortable-looking angle, mouth open and hair trailing across her slack face. Even that was different: crunchy and stiff with product and worked into iron-created twists.

She’d gone out trying to impress someone. Probably the little douchebag he’d scared off the sidewalk and back into his six-million-dollar townhouse.

Had Raven known that was where she was going? Maybe. He sure hadn’t. When she first started school, she’d yammered on about all her friends, and her plans. She’d told him things she wouldn’t tell her sister.

But he hadn’t known about tonight, and that…well, it didn’t sting . He didn’t care .

The truth of it was, she was growing up.

Hell, she was grown. Her birthday was next month, and she would be twenty, and in the three years he’d known her, she’d gone from a lanky kid obsessed with K-Pop bands to a…

the word woman got stuck somewhere between intuition and acknowledgement, so he cursed himself and went to the fridge for a banana bag.

~*~

A full bladder woke Cassandra. She rolled onto her side, smacked her lips, and found that her mouth was dry as the Sahara and tasted foul. When she kicked her legs, she felt unfamiliar sheets, and the light fell across her closed eyelids form an unfamiliar angle.

What happened at the party? She remembered the sidewalk, and spilling water. Had Sig gotten her inside? Was she in his bed?

If asked a few days ago, she would have said she was glad to wake up in his bed, but now, in the moment, it was panic rather than joy that crackled to life inside her, waking her the rest of the way up.

When she opened her eyes, she saw bunk beds. Ugly, flat carpet, plain white walls. She turned her head and saw the underside of another bunk, which meant she was on the bottom. Did Sig have bunk beds ?

Then the penny dropped. This was the bunk room at the Lean Dogs’ flat downtown. And then she remembered calling Shep. Maybe puking all over his shoes.

“Ugh,” she muttered when she sat up. The room didn’t spin, but her head felt split open, and her hands shook when she folded back the blankets and shifted laboriously to hang her legs off the side of the mattress.

A quick check revealed that her dress was gone and she was instead dressed in an oversized man’s t-shirt, which meant someone (Shep, it had been Shep, he was the only one staying at the flat just now) had changed her out of her dress.

Her bra and panties were still on, so she hadn’t been naked, but the lingerie, she remembered with a wince, was burgundy lace and didn’t conceal much.

A cotton ball was taped to the inside of her elbow, and the skin and joint were sore when she flexed her arm.

An IV, then, which explained needing to pee.

Someone’s (Shep’s, of course it was Shep’s, it even smelled like his cologne) hoodie was hanging off the top bunk, and she pulled it on and made her way to the bathroom.

Her reflection, when she washed her hands, proved pale and bedraggled, hair greasy at the roots from the styling paste.

She’d done her makeup heavily last night, lots of smoky eyeshadow, but all of that was gone; Shep had wiped her face clean.

She used her finger and a dollop of toothpaste to clean out her sour mouth, but gave up on trying to comb out her hair.

She needed a shower—when she could manage one.

Her stomach still felt uneasy, but the scent of frying bacon drew her out into the main part of the flat.