Page 22 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

“You can talk to me if you are, though.” She frowned.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to handle everything on your own.

” What she didn’t say, but which was clear from the way she tapped her fork against the edge of her plate, was that even if she loved Ian, she was hurt that Cass would go to him instead of her.

Cass forced a smile. “I know that. Next time, I’ll come to you first.”

She didn’t miss Toly’s sideways, assessing look, nor Shep’s accusing one. She put her head down over her plate, grateful when Raven started talking about her new swimsuit line.

~*~

Raven was yawning too frequently to talk by the time they started clearing plates, and that was before Natalia let out a piercing wail that traveled down the hall and through the baby monitor perched on the edge of the counter.

Toly stood and pressed a hand to Raven’s shoulder on his way past. “I’ll get her.”

“Thank you, darling.” She put her face in her hands. “God.”

“Go sit down.” Cass gestured to the sofa, and the TV quietly playing the evening news in front of it. “I’ll handle the dishes.”

Raven went without argument, and flopped down onto the sofa with the grace of a swooning dancer.

Cass assumed Shep would throw out a “see ya” and leave now that the food was gone.

Instead, he sidled up to her at the sink while she was filling one side of it with suds and pushed up his sleeves. With a glance at Raven, he lowered his voice and said, “That was your opportunity.”

Cass tested the water and cranked the handle all the way to hot. “Opportunity to do what?”

“Don’t play stupid. It’s a bad look on you.”

“Okay. Ouch.”

He snatched the sponge out of her hand with an impatient sound and pointed to the towel waiting on the counter. “I’ll wash, you dry. You don’t ever scrub hard enough.”

“I don’t have to stand here and take this kind of abuse.”

“What you have to do is tell Raven you might be called to testify at a rape trial before she finds out about it on the news.”

She sighed. “I already told you—”

“And Raven just told you that she wants you to come to her. Did you see her face when she was talking about Ian? She wanted to claw his damn eyes out.”

“God, you’re dramatic. She doesn’t want that. They’re best friends.”

He made an obnoxious and realistic buzzer sound. “Wrong. You’re her best friend. Why else do you think she was all butthurt that you went to him instead?”

“Do you even hear yourself? The idea of Raven being butthurt …”

Raven called sleepily form the adjoining room, “Is everything alright, you two?”

“Fine,” Cass and Shep called in unison.

They shared a look. Shep’s expression was set in those stubborn I-know-better-than-you lines that managed to be infuriating, and fond, and cute all at once.

She knew she could wheedle and manipulate him, but only up to a point.

When he put his foot down, he really put it down.

He wasn’t going to rat her out to Raven, but he wasn’t going to back off his insistence that she clue her sister in to what was going on.

“I’ll tell her,” she conceded, turning back to the sink.

Shep nodded, and resumed scrubbing the pot. “How’s your friend holding up?” he asked, quietly.

“She went home to Brooklyn to stay with her parents.”

“Shit.”

“It might be for the best. Sig doesn’t know where she lives, and maybe if she’s away from school for a little while she’ll stop freaking out so much.”

“Was she a basket case before all this shit happened?”

Just like the other night, Cass found relief in his blunt, insensitive questions about Jamie.

She didn’t have to be a good friend when it was just the two of them talking.

She could reveal a little of her own worry, and thus unwind some of the tension she’d been carrying between her shoulder blades.

“I’d describe her as na?ve. Really excited about school.

Giggly about boys. Always wanting to go to parties, and be invited to things. ”

“So a normal teenage girl.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“And we all know teenage girls are super stable.”

She elbowed him, and he laughed and cursed and dodged away from her. “Shit, I didn’t mean you . Here, rinse this, you little shit.”

They worked in easy silence after that, him washing, her rinsing and drying, until all the dinner pans were drying in the rack and the sink was rinsed clean.

The baby monitor went silent, Toly’s quiet Russian singing winding down to nothing, and then he emerged from the hallway rubbing his eyes with one hand and scratching at his chest with the other.

He glanced over and spotted Raven on the sofa, who must have been asleep judging from the soft look he shot her. Then he crossed into the kitchen and climbed up onto a stool.

He gestured to the pots. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.” Shep dried his hands. “You look like shit. Take your girl and go to bed while the kid’s quiet.”

Toly scrubbed both hands down his face. “Yeah.” Then he looked at Cass. “I’ll walk you down, first.”

“Nah. I’ll do it,” Shep said. “I brought my bike. I can take her home myself.”

Toly, who’d been gathering himself with something like pain, nodded and slumped back down on the stool. “Yeah. Okay. Good.”

Cass went around the island to kiss his cheek. “Thanks for dinner. You should have just ordered pizza.”

He patted her clumsily on the back. “Next time.” Then heaved himself up like a much older man and went to where Raven was curled up on the sofa. Instead of waking her, he scooped her up, and left them to see themselves out.

“Oh, shit, my laundry,” Cass said, after she’d shrugged into her jacket, and went down the hall to retrieve it.

While she was shoving clothes from the dryer into her bag—she’d worry about how wrinkled they were later—she heard the low murmur of voices just down the hall. Raven had awakened, apparently.

Cass cinched her bag up, stepped out of the laundry room…and tip-toed closer to the master bedroom. She shouldn’t; eavesdropping was shitty. But .

She could hear Raven, low and scratchy with sleep. “…worried about her. Do you think…?”

When the pause stretched, Toly said, “What?” Just one word, and no pet names, but the wealth of feeling in his voice, even tired, even rough from lack of sleep, sent a shiver down Cass’s spine.

“Do you think she’s unhappy about Nat? That she thinks I don’t have time for her anymore?”

“No,” Toly said, soothingly. “She loves Nat.”

“But…” Raven sniffed, and sounded near tears. “She’s pulling away. And I don’t…”

“Shh. Come here. It’s alright.”

Cass swallowed and found there was a lump in her throat. She shouldered her bag, and walked quick and quiet back down the hall, through the great room, and into the foyer, blinking hard and trying not to cry.

Raven thought she resented her own niece. That she was unhappy about Raven having a baby. Did she think Cass was that shallow? Or was guilt needling at her, the way it was Cass?

“Shit,” Shep said. “You were gone three seconds and now you’re crying. What the hell happened with the dryer?”

It was such an absurd overreaction that a laugh bubbled in her throat. She dashed at her eyes, and shook her head. “Nothing. Girl stuff.” She shoved his shoulder in a fruitless attempt to move him closer to the door. “Let’s go.”

He gave her a long, unconvinced look. “How bad are things at school? Kids giving you shit? You don’t want to go back to your dorm, is that it?”

She didn’t want to go back to her dorm, but that had nothing to do with her current state.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to seize on it, though.

She searched his face. “If I wanted to go back to the club flat instead, would that be okay?”

He nodded. A muscle in his jaw leaped, even as his eyes softened. “Yeah. Come on.”

She went.