Page 59 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

As an only child, Shep found it fascinating.

He’d gone from the Army to the club, and so he’d thought he understood what it meant to have siblings.

But the Army had been siblings of circumstance, and the club was siblings of choice, more or less.

But you couldn’t choose blood. Devin’s brood bickered constantly; they insulted and cursed and harassed one another.

And they loved one another. They chose to do so, even if they claimed to hate each other, and he wondered, idly, if they would choose to love him in time.

Or if they already did, and this was their way of showing it.

He rinsed his razor again, and got back to work. The sooner he finished, the sooner he got to see Cass.

~*~

Cass would have been fine with something off the rack, but Raven had tasked one of her favorite seamstresses with altering a unique dress.

It wasn’t until Raven had done up all the tiny ivory buttons in the back, and she’d turned to face the floor-length mirror, that she understood Raven’s insistence on tailoring.

The bodice was fitted, with a sweetheart neckline, cinched tightly at the narrowest part of her waist, with a full, A-line skirt below.

Everything from the neckline up was dainty, floral-patterned lace, including the sleeves, and a matching, simple veil attached to a headband.

It was more formal than she’d expected, modest in its coverage, but bold in the way it clung to her figure, highlighting her narrow waist, and her full breasts and hips.

“Grown up,” Phillip had called her—everyone had called her.

Staring wide-eyed at her reflection, tender wisps of hair curling around her face, shoulders framed by a halo of sunlight through the veil that draped down her back, she felt grown up.

Truly. She’d been half-afraid she’d see herself in a wedding gown and feel like a child playing dress up, but the person staring at her from the glass was a woman, and not a little girl.

“Oh, wow,” she murmured.

The old ladies crowded in around her, smiling. Melissa crouched down to adjust the fall of her skirt, a brisk little feminine gesture wholly at odds with the Melissa Cass knew in the day-to-day world. Raven tweaked her veil, and Emmie patted her arm in a sisterly way.

Emily sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “You look beautiful, darling. Like a princess.”

Raven caught Cass’s gaze in the mirror, and lifted her brows in silent question.

Cass took a deep breath, and nodded.

“What do you think, Vi?” Emmie asked. “Is Aunt Cass all ready to get married?”

Violet made a reaching motion for the skirt and Emmie stayed her hand. “It’s really pretty,” she said, with quiet, childlike awe.

Cass squatted down so they were on eye level. “Are you excited about being a flower girl?”

“Yes!”

“Will you help Abbie with it?”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded, very serious.

“Come here,” Cass said, and pulled her into a hug.

The door opened, and Cass heard the rustle of all of them turning to look together. She stood, sending Violet back to Emmie with a pat on the shoulder.

Devin stood in the threshold, fingertips of one hand lingering on the knob.

For one brief flash, Cass thought, where’s his cut?

But he didn’t have one, because he was the only man in her family who wasn’t a Lean Dog.

He wore jeans, a plain black collared shirt, and a black blazer over it.

Black gator skin cowboy boots with square toes and crepe soles. The outfit suited him.

It was his expression that was alien; that hit her with a physical force.

Cass had always known that Devin was gentler with her than he was with her siblings; she was the youngest, her mother hadn’t painted him as the villain in her stories of him.

But now she could tell that, even at his gentlest, even when she was only just old enough to remember him, there’d always been a spark of mischief in his gaze; a distraction, a siren’s call of somewhere else half-pulling him from the moment.

Now he looked only fond. And proud. And a bit like he wanted to cry.

“Don’t you look gorgeous,” he said, and Cass’s eyes started to sting. He lifted his hand off the doorknob, and offered it to her, palm empty and waiting. “Shall we?”

~*~

The day was overcast, clouds gray, low, and swollen, scudding fast over the tree tops.

It made the fairy lights and lanterns glow warmly against the dimness, so that as Devin led her across the grass toward the makeshift aisle flanked by rented white folding chairs, the moment took on a surreal detachment from the clubhouse grounds.

The arbor, and its bunches of white flowers, the rose petals dropped along the pathway by Violet and Abbie, could have belonged to any place, and any time, and any realm, something beyond the ordinary.

Faces jumped out at her, as everyone stood, and turned to face their approach. Ian and Alec. Joanna and the New York old ladies. The Dogs, all of them. Her brothers.

Raven stood up by the arbor, her matron of honor. Since Cass had chosen only one bridesmaid, Shep had picked one groomsman, and that was Toly, his hair slicked back tight along his scalp, wearing all black under his cut. He had the rings in his pocket, Cass knew, as they’d planned.

She saw all of this with a cursory glance: down to the flower swags on the chairs and the swinging lanterns on poles. Then her attention fixed and held on Shep, who was waiting for her.

He’d clearly spent a lot of time and a lot of product on his hair to capture the perfect artless wave on top where he kept it longer.

Raven had provided him with a nicely-fitted black button-up shirt, pressed and sleek under his cut, which gleamed with a fresh layer of oil.

Dark jeans. His boots were oiled, too. Even his wallet chain looked extra shiny.

The fingers of his right hand tapped at his thigh, a nervous tic, and he leaned fractionally so he could get a better look at her as she and Devin started down the aisle.

His face looked so young: nervous, and hopeful, and excited, and cautious.

His throat jerked hard as he swallowed, and then his lips twitched into a little smile that made her want to cup his face in both hands and rub their noses together.

Even as her eyes filled with tears, Cass smiled; it felt like her face splitting itself in two, unstoppable and bright and bursting with all the energy that mounted in her chest.

Shep’s smile widened, a helpless response, and he looked so happy, happier than she’d ever seen him.

As they made their slow progression across a scattering of petals, Devin patted her hand where it rested in the crook of his elbow and leaned in to whisper, “That’s a happy man.”

“Yeah,” she said, shakily.

“What d’ya say we walk faster?”

“Yes, let’s.”

~*~

There was something incredibly vulnerable and intimate about pledging your life, and your body, and your heart to another person.

It didn’t matter that Cass loved Shep completely, and was proud of the man he was, of his strength, and his endurance, of what he’d survived and come out on the other side of with his sense of humor and his Yankee personality intact.

She always got a thrill walking hand-in-hand with him on the street, strangers seeing them like that and knowing they were together.

But getting married in front of all the most important people in her life felt like being naked in a way that even displaying her art didn’t.

Art was an offering; marriage was wholly personal, something just for her, for them.

It said at the very deepest core of me, I want this man, and she’d spent last night and all this morning jittery with something akin to stage fright.

But when she and Devin reached Shep, and she saw that his hands were shaking, those jitters melted away. Shep needed her; she needed him. What was a little vulnerability in the face of getting to have each other?

The ceremony itself was simple. Joanna had called in a local minister who was a kindly-faced stranger, and his words were plain, and true, and he didn’t bother with frills or big speeches.

She slid her hands into Shep’s big, warm, trembling ones, and they clung tight.

They hadn’t written special vows; there wasn’t anything new to say to one another: they were each other’s best friend, favorite person, soft landing at the end of a long day. That was all they needed.

When it was time, Toly produced the rings, plain white gold.

The minister smiled when he pronounced them.

When the kiss came, Shep captured her face in both his palms, cradled her there, and ducked down so she didn’t have to stand on tiptoe. It was chaste, for them, but solid, and sweet, and he smiled dopily at her when he pulled back, thumb stroking over her cheek.

She reached up to hold his wrists, keeping him there a beat longer. “I love you.”

“Love you, too, kiddo.”

“May I present to you,” the minister said, “Mr. and Mrs. Francis Shepherd!”

A cheer went up, raucous and whooping and fitting for a crowd of bikers and the women who loved them.