Page 45 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

As with dating, with sex, with “I love you,” and cohabitation, Cass had entertained childish ideas of what her proposal might look and feel like since puberty.

What, she’d asked herself at twelve, at thirteen, even at seventeen, did it look like when a man loved you so much he wanted to commit himself to you forever?

Candles? Rose petals? A string quartet and a fancy dinner?

Skywriting? A hot air balloon and a message cut into a field down below?

She’d laughed at such displays when she saw them on TV, and always wondered if hiding the ring in a slice of cake wasn’t a good way to wind up in the hospital for a few days.

But how would it go for her? If it went at all. She’d never been witness to a proposal in person. And back then, she’d been unable to imagine the exact shape of the man who might love her that much.

But when it did happen, on a Friday evening after class, it managed to be nothing and everything like she’d always hoped. Just as it was both the least, and most romantic evening of her life.

~*~

Cass spent most of her day fretting over Shep’s strange behavior that morning, his wild swings between hot and cold, his frantic gaze.

He was freaking out. He never freaked out, save when she admitted to having put herself in a dangerous situation.

Is that how he saw marriage? Putting herself in danger?

Lost in her own mini freakout, she didn’t notice a very out of place biker resting on a bench until someone reached out and hooked a finger in her belt loop when she passed by.

Her mind flashed to Sig, to Bryce, to all the others like them, and she cocked back her arm and swung hard when she whipped around to face the man who’d grabbed her.

Her fist landed inside a big palm with a meaty smack. Shep grinned up at her, eyes crinkled, delighted.

“You just go around punching guys now?” he asked. “No questions asked?”

Her face heated. “Oh. Hi.”

“ Hi ,” he said, mocking, but his face was terribly soft, sun lines standing stark around his mouth, deep grooves in the shade of the birch tree overhead.

Cass pulled her fist loose so she could open both hands and settle them on either side of his jaw, the sharp line of bone stark along her palms, rough with stubble.

When she leaned down to kiss him, his mouth was already open and ready for her.

He was a dirty kisser, even in public, and she loved it.

She decided then, with his tongue sliding between her lips, that if her father or any of her brothers tried to play the big man and hurt Shep in any way, she was going to disown them and ask Toly to walk her down the aisle instead.

Because there was going to be an aisle. A wedding.

She thought her heart might burst.

When she pulled back, she traced his damp lower lip with her thumb, drinking in his face, and the way it gentled when he was gazing up at her.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Back at the flat, she took off her boots and jacket and set about rearranging canvases in her studio space.

She had a new piece she wanted to work on first thing in the morning, when the light was at its best against the windows, and several completed pieces needed to be taken down and moved to a darker space where they wouldn’t fade.

Shep rattled around in the kitchen behind her, getting down glasses. “You want a drink?”

“I don’t think we have any wine left.”

“Nah, we do. I went to the store today.”

“Then yes, please.”

The fridge opened and slapped shut. Ice clinked in a tumbler, and she heard two corks get pulled, the sounds different from the wine and the whiskey bottles, respectively.

She set her latest panel for the gallery show up on an easel and tilted it so she could glance easily out the window at the building across the way, which she was using as a backdrop in the painting.

She heard his socked feet scuff across the carpet as she squinted at her half-finished work, trying to decide what was wrong with it. “I think the perspective is off on the building,” she decided, and his arm came down over her shoulder, full wine glass held out in offering. “Thank you, baby.”

She took it, and took a sip. “What do you think?”

His arm retracted. “I think art’s way above my paygrade. But.” His arm returned, and there was a ring sitting in the center of his palm.

“Oh, Frank,” she gasped, heartbeat spiraling. “Is it for me?”

“No, it’s for the mailman.” He lifted his hand closer to her face. “ Yeah , it’s for you. See what you think.”

All day she’d worried that he would back out, would change his mind; had worried that he was having second thoughts…and he’d been ring shopping. For her. So he could marry her.

There were no candles, no rose petals, no bent knee, no grand gesture. Just his familiar, smooth-callused palm held before her, and his breath warm and tickling against her scalp, and this ring that he’d picked out for her, his undramatic promise of forever.

She swapped her wine glass to her other hand so she could pick up the ring, fingers trembling faintly.

It was white gold, the band thin and delicate, with the tiniest little leaf detailing around the square-cut diamond. It was feminine, and a little old-fashioned, and not a thing like Raven’s massive rock, or the chunky bands and broad stones so popular lately.

“I thought,” he said, haltingly, “that since your hands are small, it should be…I dunno. Not too big. But if you don’t like it—”

“No.” She didn’t realize until she spoke that she’d started to cry, her voice watery. “It’s perfect.”

“Yeah?” He sounded nervous, but hopeful.

Slowly, the shaking getting worse, Cass set her glass down on her art stool, so she could turn and see his face.

She’d never seen him so nervous, his head half-ducked, looking up at her through his lashes, mouth tight, like he thought she might hit him.

She smiled through her tears, and lifted the ring. “Would you…?”

“Oh.” His brow smoothed; his whole expression cleared, and became something wondrous. “Yeah. Sure. I can—yeah.” He took the ring back—it looked tiny between his fingers—and then took her hand in his. He was shaking, too, she saw, when he slipped the band on her finger.

He cleared his throat, and said, very formally, “I always thought I’d be absolute shit at this, but I don’t think that anymore. Not with you.” He took a deep breath, and, thumb smoothing over the ring, his gaze boring into hers, said, “Cassandra Jane Green, will you marry me?”

She gazed down at the ring, the diamond winking up at her. At his large fingers, with their blunt nails, and then up at his handsome, hopeful, bashful face.

“Yes!” she shrieked, and laughed, and tackled him.

He caught her around the waist, and spun her around, and laughed into her hair. “Fuck yeah! Let’s get married!”

“Fuck yeah!”

~*~

Shep woke with the sense that something was wrong. That preternatural awareness he’d first developed in the Army. An inaudible hum in the air, a prickling along his skin.

His eyes snapped open. The right was full of Cass’s dark hair, and the left could pick out the blind-width bars of light across the wall and closet door.

They hadn’t crashed out, sated and deeply happy, until after midnight, and they’d been asleep long enough for him to reach R.E.M.

His dreams had dissipated slowly, and then he’d woken all at once.

Cass was still asleep under his arm, her breaths regular and deep against his chest.

He pushed up onto his elbow, blinking the crust from his eyes, and she murmured a protest and tried to snuggle in closer. That was when he heard a sound out in the living room. A faint, muffled thump.

“Babe.” He shook her shoulder gently, and then sat all the way up. “Cass, wake up.”

“Wha…?”

“There’s someone in the apartment.”

While she floundered upright, breath hitching, he withdrew his gun from under the pillow and racked the slide.

“Wait.” Cass grabbed at his arm. “Wait, don’t—”

He eased out of her grip and swung his feet down to the floor. “Stay here.”

“ Shep .” She sounded terrified.

He stood, and reached back to smooth her hair off her face. “It’s okay. Stay here .”

She drew the covers up over her chest and stared at him, big-eyed, and young, and worried for him.

There was a pair of his sweats hanging over the closet doorknob, and he stepped into them fast. If he was about to have to shoot somebody, he didn’t want to do it with his dick out. Then he moved silently to the door on the balls of his feet and listened a moment. Silence.

He sent Cass one last look. In the glow of the streetlight, he could see the glimmer of her ring where she had her hands fisted in the blankets. She nodded.

He lifted his gun, opened the door, and slid out into the dark hallway.

The lights were on in the living room and kitchen. A figure stepped into the mouth of the hallway, tall and narrow. “You going to shoot me?” a British-accented voice drawled.

Tennyson Fox.

Shep’s finger twitched, wanting to pull the trigger. “Fucking maybe!” he snarled. “What the fuck are you doing? How are you here? What the fuck’s with the B yesterday; whatever. His better half was poking around in the kitchen, filling a glass with water.

Reese lifted his free hand and said, “Did we wake you?”

“ Yeah . You did .” Shep looked between them, incredulous. “And again: how the fuck did you get in here?”

“It’s the club flat,” Tenny said, with an implied duh . “There’s a spare key in the mailbox downstairs.”

He’d…forgotten that. Pongo always stayed with Dixon, and Topino stayed God knew where; Toly lived with Raven. None of the city-bound Dogs ever swung by anymore, and he’d come to think of it as his and Cass’s place, their home , and not a club hub.