Page 52 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

“Do you hear her?” Cass said, mock-scandalized. “And after I got you to sleep.”

“Wah-wah,” Raven said. And then, in a startling about-face: “Do you want one? A baby, I mean.”

Cass jostled the one currently in her arms as she snapped her head Raven’s direction. Nat squirmed, and she relaxed her hold, and took a few deep breaths, and saw that Raven was staring at her, entirely serious, that concerned groove between her brows. “Um. What ?”

“I don’t mean now, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Cass mocked, but her heartbeat quickened, and her voice came out faint.

“I told Shep, when he came to see me, and he told me about the two of you, that he should wait until after you were done with school.”

“Because it’s his decision?”

“Darling, I think everyone knows that you’re driving this whole Cass-and-Shep bus. But he knows to be careful. He knows your education is important. So I don’t mean now , but I’m asking. In the future. Do you see yourself wanting children?”

Three weeks ago, Raven was asking if she was keeping up with her homework, and now Raven had spent most of the evening paging through wedding magazines trying to narrow down a dress style for her, and was now asking her about babies. It left her head spinning.

But when she glanced down at Nat sleeping in the crook of her elbow, and she took a deep breath, the surreal nature of the conversation gave way to what she’d always known. “Yes. I always have. I just didn’t think…”

“I know. But like I said: not now .”

“I can’t believe I’m getting married,” Cass said, and the wonder of it swept over her, as it had been doing all day, in bursts like sea spray, warm and exhilarating.

“Me neither,” Raven said, and shook her head. “How did your mum take it?”

Cass frowned as she thought back on the phone conversation she’d had with her mother earlier today.

Emily McElroy had been a next-door sort of beautiful in her heyday, when Devin first seduced her.

Hourglass-shaped, hair thick and lustrous, big green eyes, dimples.

“God bless her,” Devin had said once, when Cass was about seven, “not a thought between her ears, but she’s damned sweet.

” Cass hadn’t understood what that meant until later, but by the time she was old enough to resent the statement, she was also old enough to understand the truth of it.

Her mother wasn’t stupid; she’d never thought that.

In fact, she was a terribly good nurse who could rattle off stats and medication dosages in her sleep.

But in her personal life, she was the too-trusting, too-sweet sort of friend and girlfriend who got walked all over and didn’t even resent it.

Of all Devin’s trysts, Emily was the one who would always welcome him readily back into her home and bed, and never seemed to resent him for his free-wheeling habits.

“Oh,” she’d said, after Cass had carefully explained that she was in love with an American man, and that she was going to marry him in a matter of days. “Oh, well, that’s…that’s wonderful, sweetheart. I’m sure he’s lovely.”

Cass sighed now. “I could tell she was crying. She wants to come.”

“I assumed she would. I told Tommy to make sure she arrives safely.”

“Do you think she’ll like Shep?”

“Well.” Raven shrugged. “She likes Dad .”

They both grinned.

A key jangled in the front door lock, and they turned as the guys trooped in from the foyer. Toly led the way, shrugging out of his jacket and cut, his expression neutral, which Cass took as a hopeful sign.

But then Shep charged around him, headed straight for her, his face lined with tension. His dark eyes were big, and worried, forehead stacked with lines.

“You okay?” he asked as he rounded the couch. “Are you—” He paused in the act of bending down, and she didn’t know if he’d meant to kiss her, or pick her up, or cover her with his body like a shield, but he pulled up short when he saw Nat in her arms. “Oh,” he said, at a loss.

She smiled, because she knew he needed her to, but what she wanted to do was wrap her arms around his head and pull it down onto her shoulder. “I’m fine. How’d it go?”

“As good as we could expect,” Toly said, and leaned over the back of the couch, hands cupped and ready.

Cass handed Nat to him, and when he’d straightened, and her arms were empty, Shep crowded in close and put both arms around her waist. Half-hauled her into his lap, heedless of others watching, and hooked his chin on her shoulder. His breath was hot and too-quick against her throat.

“Frank,” she murmured, shifting enough so she could stroke a hand through his thick, helmet-flattened hair. “What is it?”

He squeezed her tight, and then exhaled, and eased up.

Cass swung her legs over so she was sitting properly on his thighs, and could look at his face, which was twisted up with unhappiness. “Shep,” she said, stroking his hair again.

He stared at a snag on her sweatpants; fiddled with it, plucking loose threads between his fingers. “Blackmon paid Tres Diablos to scare your friend.”

She raked her nails along his scalp, and he shivered. “Yeah, we figured that,” she said, gently. He was vibrating .

“He offered—he offered a bonus if they—got to you.”

“Well. That’s not surprising.” Her breath shivered, though. “They…” She trailed off when he shook his head and refused to meet her gaze.

Got to you , she figured, could mean only one thing, and it was something he didn’t want to voice, and she didn’t want to think about.

She glanced over at Toly, who was cradling Nat and shaking his head, slightly. Don’t make him say it , his look said, brimming with sympathy, and she knew that Shep was badly rattled if even Toly felt sorry for him.

She turned back to Shep; curled a longish piece of hair at his crown around her index finger. “But Mav and Prince reasoned with them, didn’t they?”

Shep sighed, and leaned into the tug of her finger, one arm slinging around her waist and dragging her a few inches closer up his thighs. “Mav paid them. Bought out the contract.”

“He overpaid them,” Toly added. “They have no reason to do anything else. And Mav laid it out very clearly for them what would happen if they touched you.”

Cass nodded, and shivered. “Okay. That’s…that’s good.”

“Yeah.” Shep didn’t sound convinced.

Cass glanced toward Raven, whose mouth pressed thin and twitched side to side in a tic that Cass was very familiar with: Raven was concerned, but was going to take it upon herself to inject optimism into the situation.

She clicked off the TV and stood. “Come on, darling,” she said to Toly with false brightness. “I’m exhausted. Let’s turn in. The two of you are welcome to stay.” She tipped her head in a way Cass read as please just stay. “There’s fresh towels in the hall bath.”

Cass wanted to go home, but Tenny and Reese would be there. She wanted to be alone with Shep, and they would have more privacy here, all the way on the opposite side of the massive flat.

“Okay. Thanks.” She smoothed her hand down the back of Shep’s skull and teased the back of his neck with her nails. “You want to go to bed?”

“No,” he said, and then, shoulders bowing, “Yeah.”

He turned her loose with obvious reluctance when she slid off his lap.

Followed her silently down the hall to her old room.

They took turns in the bathroom, and when Cass slid between the sheets in her PJs, he stripped down to his boxer-briefs and crowded in beside her under the covers, arm going around her waist and drawing her close.

Cass twisted around so she faced him. She’d switched the lamp off, but city light filtered through the sheer drapes, a dull glow that picked out lines and old acne scars along his cheekbone in the darkness.

She laid one hand in the center of his chest, where he was warmest, his skin soft, and the dusting of hair rough.

His heartbeat throbbed against her palm, a trot instead of the gentle walk it should have been.

She laid her other hand along the plane of his cheek, where nighttime stubble prickled against her fingertips.

“I would ask if you’re okay,” she said, “but I know you’re not.”

He turned his head, as she stroked his face, and kissed the heel of her hand. Then he settled again, and let out a deep breath that smelled of toothpaste. Ever since he’d arrived, he kept exhaling like breathing was difficult…or like he carried a physical weight yoked across his shoulders.

When he spoke, his voice was low, more rumble than sound. “Blackmon. That bastard. That pussy motherfucker. He pointed a street gang at you. He told them to…that he would pay them extra if…” Again, he wouldn’t say it. A muscle in his jaw popped as he ground it.

“But you got it sorted. Mav paid them. They’ll go away,” she reasoned.

“Yeah.” But his voice was tight, and his heart still throbbed too quickly.

His words from her birthday came back to her: nobody’s ever loved me .

And now someone did, and he loved her. He’d never had an old lady, not even a serious girlfriend, and violent men had threatened her, and he was clearly having a lot of feelings about that.

Feelings he’d not experienced before, and which he had no idea how to process.

She wriggled closer within the circle of his arm, sliding her leg between his, and kissed him, chaste and sweet, on the corner of his mouth. “You’re a very sweet man, Frank Shepherd,” she murmured against his stubbled chin.

He snorted. “Yeah fucking right.” But then he cupped the back of her head and drew her back in to kiss her properly.

Everything he’d choked back and hadn’t been able to say came through in that kiss. The love, the worry, the desperation. He gathered a fistful of her hair and held her tight to him, kissed her until she was dizzy and drunk on the hot, slick press of his tongue in her mouth.

When he rolled her over onto her back and settled between her legs, Cass clung to him, a welcome vessel for all the raw fury his love for her had kindled in his blood tonight.