Page 57 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

Devin left Shep hanging a long, ridiculous moment, then finally withdrew his arm from around her shoulders and clasped hands with him. Gaze on Shep’s face, he said, “Cass, dear. Let me have a word alone with your man a minute.”

“Dad…”

“No, it’s fine,” he said, cheerful and unconvincing. “We’re just going to have a nice little chat.”

She huffed.

Shep’s gaze cut over, quickly. “Yeah, we’re good. Go catch up with Shaman or something.”

She threw her hands up. “I tried!”

~*~

“Let’s step out and get some fresh air, eh?” Devin said, and what was Shep going to do? Say no?

“Okay,” he said, and led the way out onto the front porch, which was thankfully empty.

Devin folded his arms over the rail, peering out at the driveway, the detached garage, the freshly-mown lawn studded with tiki torches for tomorrow. There was a white Rover in the driveway, and Shep figured Devin and his chaperones had arrived in it.

The brothers had been annoying, but nothing Shep couldn’t handle.

He found, though, as Devin gazed serenely out across the vista, that a cold, hard anger toward the man was building behind his sternum.

If Raven wanted to shriek and fume at him, then, sure: she’d all but raised Cass.

She had every right to threaten him. But Devin? Nah.

“Lovely evening,” Devin said, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly with an air of satisfaction.

“Yeah.” Shep kept several feet between them when he stepped up to the rail and rested a hand on it. “But I’m not really a sit-on-the-porch kinda guy, so if you’ve got something to say, let’s just get it over with.”

Devin half-turned his head, eyes sparkling in the porch lights, his grin sly and amused. “Oh, he’s in a hurry.”

“Nah. He’s tired of the bullshit.”

Devin straightened, mirroring Shep’s pose with one hand braced on the rail. He gestured between them with his free hand. “Why don’t you elaborate on that.”

Why don’t you kiss my ass? Shep swallowed his kneejerk response and said, “Candyman’s a lot older than your granddaughter. Walsh got married at gunpoint, basically. Fox won’t marry his woman, and you were here for that whole shitshow with Toly and Raven.”

“Your point being that none of my children have what you’d call normal marriages?”

“My point being I didn’t see you take Toly out for a lecture, and he was fucking double-dealing with the bratva.”

Devin cocked his head, that birdlike angle Tenny got, as if, though his face was doing all the human things, the thoughts behind the mask weren’t human at all.

“Your boys have been giving me shit,” Shep said, “and now you’re gonna give me shit, and none of it’s gonna scare me off, so why don’t we cut it out already?”

Devin studied him a long, unblinking, eerie moment, then nodded, and the life flooded back into his expression. “Fair enough. But I’m still going to say my piece.” He shifted his weight, cocked a hip. Ready? Or relaxed? God knew. “Son—”

“Don’t call me son. I’m not your son, and I hate your fucking guts.”

Devin’s brows twitched, but mildly, and not with anything like surprise. “That’s a bold statement.” His lips quirked. “I’ve not heard the old ‘hate your guts’ since the boys were in short pants.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Smart. They’ve said it since.” He tilted his chin. “Them I understand. Why do you hate me, then, Francis?”

He secretly liked when Cass called him by his full, given name. It showed that she knew him, that she had pried the biker lid off the tin and liked what she found beneath. It was an intimacy with her…and one he didn’t feel like granting to this smug asshole.

“You’re a shit dad,” he said, more aggressively than he’d intended.

“To all your kids. They love you, and you disappoint them over and over again. If you were a real dad then, yeah, maybe I’d sit here and take your threats, let you wave a shotgun at me, tell me I’m no good for her.

But you’re not around. Ever. You don’t get to swoop in and pass judgement on me when I’m here, day in and day out, keeping her safe, trying to make her happy.

Fuck you for playing the dad card now, when it’s too late. ”

Devin rocked his head side to side, gaze fixed on the porch ceiling, absorbing the words. “Alright,” he said, and made eye contact again, face calm, eyes sparking. “May I speak now ?”

Shep spread his arms. Go ahead .

Devin’s grin widened, tugging hard to one side, and Shep wasn’t the sort of guy who admired other guys, okay? But there was something very old school Steve McQueen about that grin that made it easy to understand why ten women had let the man impregnate them.

“Okay, then, Shep,” Devin said. “Before you jumped down my throat, I was going to thank you.”

“Oh.” Shep felt his face go slack with surprise. “Uh…”

“Yeah. Women I understand. To an extent. But daughters? Minefields. Raven’s always been very self-possessed, very driven.

She walks the straight-and-narrow that one.

Too much. I was relieved she married a real man instead of some model or photographer or wanker in her industry.

But Cass is my willful one. If she was a boy, I’d have trained her up like Charlie myself.

Let Abe spend a few years molding her and then taken her across the globe with me. ”

“You don’t take any of your kids ‘across the globe’ with you, not unless Ghost asks you to.”

Devin sighed. “Right you are. Part of that whole ‘shit dad’ thing, eh? My point is: she’s headstrong.

I don’t understand her, quite honestly. I worry about her.

I know her sister worries about her. But you .

” He pointed at him. “You’ve figured out the balance, mate.

Watch her, guide her, but don’t get in her way when she needs to run free. ”

“She’s not a wild horse.”

“Eh.” He see-sawed his hand just as Fox had done, in partial disagreement.

Then he settled, and he smiled. A true smile, or a perfect facsimile of one.

“What I wanted to say is, I know the boys are giving you holy hell. I suppose that’s their job.

She’s still a baby to them, but I know you don’t see her that way. ”

Shep blinked. “No.” She was his baby, but in an entirely different, adult sort of way.

Devin continued, “I still travel. I still get calls now and then, old friends needing favors. But I’m based in Tennessee.

By God, those little girls are gonna call me ‘grandpa.’” He chuckled.

“But as far as being a father goes: I’ll be as much of one as they’ll let me, but I won’t try to tell them what to do.

” He nodded toward Shep. “ You’re the man in Cassandra’s life.

You have been for a while. And I thank you for that.

For loving her. I hope you’re good to her in bed. ”

Shep made a face, but Devin was undeterred.

“That you make it fun for her, yeah? Give her what she wants. I have the sense that girl wants a lot .” His grin turned wicked. “All my kiddos inherited my…appetites, shall we say.”

“Ugh.”

“And I hope,” he went on, serious again, “that you’ll give her babies if she wants them. I don’t have to tell you to keep her safe, because I know you do. And I don’t have to ask if you love her, because I know that, too.”

He reached into his back pocket, came out with his phone, and pulled up a photo. Turned the screen so Shep could see it.

He might as well have slapped him.

It was one of the selfies Cass had insisted on taking the night after he told Raven about them, and they went over to the penthouse apartment for dinner.

When they ate pizza on Raven and Toly’s bed while the baby slept, and Cass’s eyes had been red-rimmed from the good kind of tears, her sister loving and accepting of the direction of her heart.

He’d been on his second or third whiskey, Cass stealing sips, and she’d pressed their faces together.

Devin reached up and scrolled through a sequence of photos, and in the last one, Shep had turned his head, and kissed her cheek, and Cass was beaming. He was startled by his own face, by the raw, unguarded emotion in it; by how exquisitely happy Cass looked, like she’d won the lottery.

He swallowed, and found a lump in his throat.

Devin pulled the phone back, and said, scrolling, “Cass sent me these, along with a text…ah. Here it is. She said, ‘Hi, Dad. I know Raven called you about me getting married. I am marrying, and I’m marrying Shep, who you already know, so I won’t bother with all the boring details.

’” His mouth hitched up at the corners as he read, tickled by Cass’s word choice.

“‘Before you overreact, I want to tell you how much I love him. I want to tell you how special he is, and how much he needs to be loved. He’s a good man, and he looks after me better than anyone, and I want to be able to look after him in all the ways that I can. He loves me, too. I know he does, because he tells me so, and because I can see that he does, in all the little ways that are most important. Please be kind to him, Daddy. He’s more than earned it. ’”

Devin gazed at the phone a moment longer, then nodded to himself, blacked the screen, and slipped it back into his pocket. “Right then,” he said, face creased with smile lines. “Our girl wants us to get along. She wants me to treat you with kindness, so that’s what I intend to do.”

He stuck his hand out, and it was a friendly gesture, this time. “Hi. I’ve no idea what my real name is, if I ever had one, but I’ve been Devin Green for forty-some-odd years now. It’s suited well enough.”

Shep was still reeling from the text. Simple words, and a truth he’d already known, but hearing the way Cass had strung it all together for her father had left his sinuses stinging. He accepted the handshake. “Frank Shepherd. I’m gonna marry your daughter.”

Devin’s smile lines deepened. “Good. I think that’s what she wants.”

~*~

“Home sweet home.”

This wasn’t the first time Cass had crossed the threshold of Shep’s designated cabin up the hill in the woods behind the clubhouse, but it was the first time she’d entered it as his lover. His fiancée, even.

It was one room, with a bathroom that jutted off the back, all very rudimentary.

Metal bed frame, military footlocker, an old dresser with peeling white paint where he stowed his clothes, not many now that most of his things had migrated to Manhattan.

A round dining table sat in front of the window, two chairs, a desk lamp.

The first thing she spotted when she walked in, the thing she’d been looking for, actually, was a familiar stack of skin mags on the nightstand.

“A little light reading before bed?” she asked, innocently.

Shep followed the line of her gaze and said, “Aw, shit.” He crossed the room, gathered up the magazines, and bent to shove them under the bed. Two slipped off the top and landed splayed-open on the hardwood.

Cass tilted her head for a better angle and said, “Well that doesn’t look comfortable.”

Shep muttered under his breath and kicked them under the bed with the others, glossy paper crinkling and tearing under his bootheel.

Cass laughed. “Don’t hurt yourself. I’ve seen those before, you know.”

“Yeah, but that was…shit.” One tried to slither from under the bed, and he snatched it up, crumpled it in both hands, and chucked it across the room to land with a neat swoosh in the wastebasket in the corner.

He was breathing harder than the situation warranted.

His brows shot up. “That was before your dad told me to make sure you come really hard when we fuck.”

“He what ? Oh, disgusting . Is that what the two of you were talking about?”

Shep grimaced. “He said,” doing air quotes, “to be ‘good’ to you in bed. Like, who says that? And I am.” His face fell. “I am, right? You’re…” He gestured vaguely.

“Yes, you’re wonderful,” she said with a wave. “Our neighbors probably hate us I make so much noise.”

He grinned. “Those are good noises.”

She wasn’t going to get distracted. “I can’t believe he said that.” She turned and dropped down on the end of the bed, old iron bedsprings creaking. “I can . But. Just. Ew .”

Shep sat down beside her. “He’s a fucked-up dude.”

“He has ten children with ten women. He, and all of us, are fucked up.”

He slung an arm across her shoulders, heavy, grounding, always welcome.

He did it so often that she’d come to expect it; she felt too light, like she might float away, when it wasn’t there.

“Not too fucked up for me,” he said in a put-on, cheesy mockery of sincerity that, nevertheless, managed to sound pretty damn sincere.

She leaned into his hold and patted his thigh. “Thank God. What would I do with someone well-adjusted?”

“Eat him alive, probably,” he said, and they both chuckled. He jostled her lightly, and turned his head to press his lips to her temple. “Hey, you wanna get married tomorrow?”

Her smile started in her chest, warmth spilling down through her ribs, welling up into her throat until it stretched her lips. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

His forearm swung forward off her shoulder so his hand covered her breast. “You gonna let me be good to you in bed like your daddy told me to?”

“Oh, no!” She made an outraged noise, and he fell back across the bed easily, laughing, when she shoved him.