Page 71 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)
Three Years Later
Cass’s stomach clenched, and she lunged forward over the toilet once more…but it was a false alarm. She gagged, swallowed, wiped her mouth, and then collapsed back on her haunches again. “Guh,” she said, elegantly.
“Oh, darling,” Raven clucked, and leaned off her perch at the edge of the tub to dab at Cass’s forehead with a damp cloth. It felt amazing. “Should you try the ginger ale again?”
Cass gulped at the thought of it. “No. It’ll pass in a few minutes.”
“A peppermint?”
“ No .” When her stomach stayed still for the moment, she slowly eased down to sit on her bum and braced her hands on the shaggy bathmat. “Ugh.” She reached up to take the cloth from Raven’s grip and shift it to the back of her neck. That was much better. “How have you done this three times?”
“Well.” Raven picked invisible lint off her skirt, the motion jangling her chandelier earrings. Unlike Cass, she wasn’t sweating and shaking and battling through morning sickness with gritted teeth. “When the babies are squalling at three in the morning, it doesn’t make the vomiting seem so bad.”
She was straight-faced until Cass cracked a grin, then she smiled, and scrunched her nose, and winked.
Cass chuckled…and then groaned when the motion sent a fresh wave of nausea crashing through her stomach.
A light rap sounded at the half-open door, and Shep called, “You still puking?”
“That’s lovely,” Raven said, cross. “It’s only your fault.”
A glance at the mirror revealed Shep lifted both palms in a defenseless gesture. “Hey. She jumped my bones.” When Cass shot him the finger, he grinned. Then grew serious. “Not to rush things along, but the car’s gonna be here in fifteen minutes.”
Cass groaned and put her forehead down on her raised knees.
Raven said, “We’ll be ready.”
“Speak for yourself,” Cass mumbled. But in a few minutes, she was able to stand, and drink some water, and then brush her teeth, and dab on fresh powder and blush, tidy her hair.
She was wearing clothes from her new line, a graphic, off-the-shoulder tee and leather leggings, killer over-the-knee boots.
Her earrings were silver lightning bolts.
Her eye shadow was dramatic, smoked black and blue.
“I look stupid,” she declared.
“You look young, and edgy, and fabulous,” Raven said.
Cass sighed. “Yeah. I guess.”
“It’s going to go well.” Raven patted her on both shoulders and turned for the door. “Let’s go, or we’ll be late.”
It had taken months to finalize her line; years, really.
They’d started when she was still in school, but hadn’t knuckled down and approached it full-force until she graduated.
Tonight was the official launch, with a runway show and a reception afterward: cocktails, bougie apps, and lots of elbow rubbing with Manhattan’s most influential and fashionable.
Cass had named the line Canem, which was Latin for dog, and her professional fashion name was Cassie Shepherd.
In a way, that felt like taking something special that was Shep’s name for her when they were alone together and sharing it with the world, with people who didn’t deserve to know it; but in the end, she’d decided that Shep’s Cassie was the girl who’d been shot and survived; it was the last thing she remembered him screaming before she lost consciousness, and that was the girl she intended to be from now on, fearless and confident in the wake of near tragedy.
She couldn’t manage to strut just now, as she followed Raven out of the bathroom and into the main part of the flat, but she didn’t think she would barf again anytime soon, so that was something.
Shep and Toly were waiting in the living room, Toly all done up and slicked back in his public-facing Yuri persona, Shep looking far cooler than any of them would ever admit to his face, lest his head swell any more.
Raven hooked her arm through Toly’s and towed him toward the door. “We’ll meet you at the car in ten,” she called over her shoulder, and the two of them left, door to the flat closing behind them.
When it was just the two of them, Shep’s cool-guy expression melted into something soft and worried. He looped an arm around her waist and towed her in close enough to nose at her hairline, and kiss her forehead. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I can’t promise I won’t hurl on your shoes later.”
He snorted. “That’s what boot polish is for, baby. Hurl away.”
She wound both arms around his waist and hugged him close, relishing the scent of his cologne, of his new leather jacket that hugged his shoulders so nicely. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“For what?” he sounded amused.
“Just…”
For looking out for her even when she was a shitty teen and not even nice to him.
For sticking around when he didn’t have to.
For coming to pick her up at a party. For not being noble, and kissing her, and loving her, and fessing up to it when a different sort of man might have shoved her away.
I’m not a martyr , he’d told her, three years ago, and taken her to bed, and kept doing it, and then he’d walked into Raven’s office and told her to her face, knowing she might slap him.
No, he wasn’t a martyr. He was too good for that, a truth of which she wasn’t sure she could ever convince him, but of which she was certain in her bones.
He’d never coddled her, but he’d been careful in all the ways that he could; despite her unsteady stomach, and the mood swings, and what she was sure would be worse physical discomfort in the months to come, she had been the one to tell him she wanted children, and in the way he’d handled every aspect of their relationship, he’d nodded, and said, Okay, when?
When she said now , he’d hauled her, laughing, up from the dinner table and tossed her over his shoulder on the way to the bedroom.
“Everything,” she finished, and when she swallowed it was around a lump in her throat that had nothing to do with morning sickness.
He stroked a hand up and down her back, and with the other he cupped her cheek and tipped her head back so he could meet her gaze. His smile was sideways, and a little smirky, but unbelievably fond. “Yeah. You, too, kiddo.”
He kissed her, and then they walked hand-in-hand toward a new beginning.
THE END