Three months apart, and the man insisted on calling him “little brother.”
Grabbing a bunch of random magazines from the rack, Kyle headed toward the cashier. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why are you here, canine?”
“I would like to meet our little visitor.”
Not in this lifetime. Tully came from a long line of Alpha Males. Sometimes it seemed that’s all the Smiths birthed. But in order to become the Alpha Male of any of the Smith Packs littered throughout the States, you had to have something the rest of the dogs didn’t. Sure, they were all tough, strong, and pack oriented. But Tully was smart. Street smart. The kind of wolf that during a drought somehow always found water and food while other Packs were fighting over every drop and slowly starving to death. No way would Kyle let the conniving bastard near Emma.
“Forget it. She’s recovering from the accident. I don’t need you in there bothering her.”
Tully followed him over to the counter. “Now, now, little pussy. No need to get all territorial. I’m only doing my job. We both know it’s strange she’s here. And yet here she is. So the Elders want me to meet with her.”
The Elders represented each Pride, Pack, Clan, and anything else lurking in their town. No matter their differences, they always worked together to protect the town.
“Right now my only concern is making sure she doesn’t go wandering off. She seems real curious.”
“The town’s on high alert that a human’s come to call. So you shouldn’t be too worried. Doubt you’ll see Randy Cartwright running down Main Street, giggling like an idiot while trying to bring down a bleeding antelope.”
The brothers looked at each other and snorted out in unison, “Hyenas.”
“Look, Emma, wait a day or two until they’re sure you’re okay, then come home.”
“I can’t. Not yet.”
Jamie paused, then asked, “What aren’t you telling me?”
Emma winced. “Nothing?”
“Emma …”
“Okay. Okay. Something, I think, tried to kill me. Maybe.”
“This isn’t that government-experiment theory again, is it?”
“No. Although I’m still right about that,” she muttered.
“What was it?”
“It looked like a dog. An Old Schuck, maybe?”
“Have those even been seen in the last … I don’t know … six hundred years?”
“I’m just telling you what I thought I saw. It looked like a big, shaggy Old Schuck.”
“Are you safe? If someone’s conjuring demon dogs from the pits of hell—”
“I’m fine,” she answered quickly. “Everything’s fine. I’ll take care of it.”
“I’m sensing you don’t want me to come there.”
“You’re being paranoid.” No, Jamie wasn’t being paranoid, but no point in getting her all upset. The woman could be dangerous on her best days; no use risking an entire town when Emma could take care of the situation herself.
“I’ve got it all under control.”
“Even though you’re being held against your will by evil government forces busy creating giant, friendly Southern guys?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Okay. Okay.” Jamie laughed. “Before you go, the others will want to see you. Tonight.”
“Why?”
“To make sure you’re okay. And stop sounding so surprised. It’s giving me a complex. Your place later. Okay?”
Finally, Emma laughed. “Yeah. My place.”
“Good. Talk to you later.”
“Okay.” Emma grabbed hold of the doorknob, blinking when she noticed it was engraved with the hospital logo. That seemed a pricey expense for a local hospital. “Later, Jamie.” She closed the phone and opened the door, coming face-to-face with an abnormally large chest. The phone snatched from her hand, Emma made a weird little squeak before raising her eyes up a delectable body to look into the deputy’s handsome face.
“Theft,” he said calmly, “is a hangin’ offense in Smithville, sweetheart.”
And Emma knew he was dead serious.
“You can’t do this to me!”
He didn’t even look up from the circle-track-racing magazine he had in his hands. “Yes. I can.”
Emma stared down at the handcuff securing her right wrist to the metal frame of the bed. Still not quite believing what was happening, she clanged the metal cuff against the metal frame, which extracted a healthy growl from the deputy.
“Stop doing that. It’s annoying me.”
Too angry to be wary, Emma slammed the cuff against the metal again.
His head snapped up and those light gold eyes locked onto her.
Eep!
“I said, don’t do that.”
“And I said, let me go.”
With a smirk, the bastard went back to his magazine. So Emma jangled the cuff.
His growl turned into a snarl. “You do know I can make this much worse for you?”
“And you do know I can sue you, this hospital, this weird little town, and anybody else I can think of? Do you know that?” She didn’t know where these balls she suddenly had came from, but she had to admit she enjoyed them.
“And I can charge you with theft. Maybe you’re hoping to see the inside of our jails.”
“You’d put me in jail?” She couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice. She was Emma Lucchesi. Boring Emma Lucchesi. Except for her tendency to speed on the Long Island Expressway, Emma never had any legal problems. She sure as hell never went to jail!
“It’s crossed my mind.” He leaned back in his chair. “Or you can tell me why you’re here and we can forget all about your thieving ways.”
“First off, I borrowed that phone. And second, I’m on vacation. Besides, I wouldn’t have stopped in this town if I hadn’t gotten lost and crashed my car.”
“Which reminds me … How did that happen? The crash, I mean.”
“Dog.”
“Dog?”
“A dog ran out in the middle of the road. I swerved to avoid it.”
“You sure it was a dog?”
“Yes. I’m sure it was a dog.” From the seventh or eighth level of hell, but a dog.
He didn’t argue with her, which made her more nervous than if he had.
His head tilted to the side as he studied her. “Why do you wear your hair in your face like that?”
Shocked again, Emma reared back a bit. “I’m sorry?”
“Why do you wear your hair like that? Can you even see?”
“Of course I can see!”
“Really? ‘Cause you remind me of one of those sheepdogs, but I heard they can’t see unless someone grooms their hair.”
She took a deep breath and said, “Can we stop talking to each other now?”
“Why? I was enjoying our conversation.” And she had the feeling he meant that.
“Well, I’m not. In fact, you’re starting to annoy me. And I don’t usually say that to people, even when they are. But you? You need to hear it.”
“Fair enough.” He went back to his magazine and didn’t say another word.
Emma picked up one of the magazines he’d bought for her. She rolled her eyes at the fashion model on the cover.
“Not your thing?” And she realized even when she thought the man didn’t pay any attention to her, he did.
She shook her head, tossing the magazine aside and searching through the rest of the pile. “Nope.” She grabbed U.S. News & World Report and rested back against the pillows.
“Hmm. A thinker,” he muttered and Emma almost laughed. But then she nearly choked when he added, “I like thinkers.”
Four
Kyle heard her sigh in her sleep one too many times. He could not stand it. Pushing himself out of the chair, he left Emma’s room. If he wanted to get any sleep tonight, he’d have to find another place to snooze, because every time the damn woman sighed, he got harder and harder until he was pretty sure he might explode.<
br />
He couldn’t go far, not with her being pretty tricky. He still hadn’t figured out how she got his phone off his jeans without him knowing. If she got out, he might have a hell of a time tracking her. And then he’d have to fight off every damn predator in town to protect her. One whiff of her delicious scent and they’d be all over her, too. He simply wouldn’t tolerate it. Which was one of the reasons he’d handcuffed her to the bed. Well, that and she looked damn tasty wearing his handcuffs.
Stepping outside, Kyle breathed in the fresh air and felt the knots in his shoulders start to unwind a bit. He couldn’t help but smile. He sure did love this town. Always had. Tourists came and went. Always in their fancy cars, with their annoying Yankee accents, and they brought in good money. But nothing about their lives outside of Smithville ever interested Kyle. Not when everything he wanted or needed was right here.
Even as he had that thought, a deer came running by, followed closely by the Smith Pack, Tully leading them.
As soon as he caught his brother’s scent, Tully stopped, letting the Pack go on without him. He trotted up to Kyle, his one stupid hoop earring hanging from the tip of his dog ear. He was one of the few shifters Kyle knew who insisted on wearing identifying jewelry while animal. Their baby sister called him Pirate Dog.
Tully dropped his front down while his ass swung in the air. Kyle shook his head, but he couldn’t fight the smile. “I can’t. Forget it.”
Charging forward a bit, Tully nipped at his jeans and jumped back.
Well, a man did have to eat.
“All right. Fine.” Kyle pulled off his T-shirt. “But we can’t go too far from the hospital. I gotta keep my eye on Little Miss Trouble in there.”
Kyle shucked his clothes, tossing them in a safe bin beside the front door. The hospital staff used it when they needed to go for a run or get in some hunting. Shifting, the black cat took off after his brother, tackling him and tossing him ten feet before tearing after the hot meal running away from them.
Emma slept. She knew she did because she was awake in her dreamscape. As a controller of her own dreams, she’d built her dreamscape from the bottom up, and she absolutely loved it. A perfect aqua blue ocean, blue sand, a low-hanging and giant light burgundy moon, and palm trees. She didn’t come here every night, but when stressed, she headed to the one place where she felt calm.
Of course her Coven sisters weren’t letting her rest yet. They wanted to see her, to make sure she was really okay. So they kept calling to her, like someone leaning on her doorbell. Grudgingly, she used her power to yank her Coven from their realm into hers.
“Emma!” Seneca Kuroki threw her arms around Emma and hugged her tight. “Oh, God! I’m so glad you are okay. I was so worried.”
Emma gave Sen another two seconds before she gently but firmly pulled the woman’s arms off her. “I’m fine, Sen. Really.”
“Wow, Em. You really did a lot with this place,” Kendall Cohen remarked softly, looking around Emma’s dreamscape.
“Thanks.”
“I see the Master of Dreams title was fairly earned.” Jamie grinned at her. “You look okay.”
“I’m fine. That hillbilly Nazi took the phone from me.”
“Probably because you stole it.”
“I borrowed it. But do you think he listens? No. He just handcuffs me to the bed like a common criminal.”
As one, her Coven turned to face her, clearly no longer interested in the surrounding beauty of the place she’d created.
She stared back. “What?”
Jamie tilted her head to the side, and Emma could see her desperately trying not to laugh. “He handcuffed you to the bed?”
“Yeah. So?”
Kenny placed her hands on her hips. “Isn’t that a tad kinky, Em? You know … for you.”
Wearing a T-shirt that read “I am Lord of the Rings,” Kenny remained the biggest geek Emma knew. At thirty-two, Kenny seemed to be comfortably staying in her tomboy phase, not only with her short, shaggy haircut and geek T-shirt, but also those very worn jeans, bright red high-top Keds she’d drawn dragons all over, and a leather armband Ken once drunkenly admitted made her feel like “a total warrior chick.” Kenny even turned her one wasted year at MIT—with that whopping 1.7 GPA—into a gaming career that made her more money than seemed humanly possible. It still boggled Emma that there were game packages in Europe and Asia with Kenny’s name on the cover. And Emma would bet cash that Kenny had fallen asleep on her couch with her four-thousand-dollar computer in her lap. Of the five of them, Kenny was the only one fully dressed rather than in nightclothes.
“If it were you, Kendall, maybe. But this is me we’re talking about. Me and kinky … not close friends.”
They all watched Seneca, the pretty waitress from Manhasset and the necessary balance of good for their dark little Coven, spin around them. Literally. “I feel so free here!” More than thirteen years since Sen led their old high school in a cheer, and still the woman acted like pom-poms were permanently attached to her.
Kenny crossed her eyes and sighed. If they weren’t in the same coven, Kenny probably would have beaten Seneca to death a long time ago. Sen’s bone-deep perkiness wore on Kenny’s nerves something awful. Emma didn’t mind Sen, though. She was just so damn cute, it was hard not to like her.
“Come on, Em. Give it up. You and the deputy doing something morally reprehensible with those cuffs?” Mackenzie Mathews, dressed in loose sweatpants and a tank top, stood next to her cousin. Actually, she stood over her. Except for the fact both women were black and related by their mothers, there was very little else in common between them. Mac, a good six-foot-three in her bare feet, always kept her head. She rarely panicked, never became hysterical, and kept her cousin in check. Her straight black hair barely reached her shoulders and the blue tank top she wore showed the very large and powerful muscles she got from her hard work. Jamie, on the other hand, stood a good five inches shorter than her cousin, her long hair curly and usually in a ponytail for work. A lighter brown than Mac and a hell of a lot curvier, Jamie remained their “loose cannon.” The woman had immense power and knew how to use it. But it was her Coven that kept her from doing something incredibly stupid. It was her Coven that kept her from becoming evil and trying to take over the world.
“As you see”—Emma wanted her privacy, so time to hurry this along—“I’m fine.”
When no one said anything, Emma’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“You really think we did this?” Jamie asked.
“Do I think we opened the doorway? Yeah. Do I think we unleashed that thing … that I don’t know. But if I were a gambler I’d probably put money on it.”
“Jamie thinks someone wanted us down here.” Mac adjusted her wide stance and rubbed her left lower back. The wound she had there still hurt even after five months, although they were starting to think it was more in her mind than a true physical pain. Not surprising. After what happened. After the attack.
“Has anyone approached you? Or said anything?” Jamie walked over to her cousin and placed her palm flat against the spot where a blade had been brutally shoved between two ribs. Her hand glowed for a moment, then she said softly, “There. That should help the pain.” It wasn’t until that horrible night at the hospital, waiting on Mac’s doctors to come out of surgery, that the Coven realized how much Mac meant to Jamie. No matter how much Jamie might deny it.
“No.” Emma answered Jamie’s original question. “I’ve only dealt with that idiot cop and the hospital staff. But they do seem real curious why I’m here. Like they’re not big on strangers.”
“Wait,” Kenny interrupted. “Are you trying to say they don’t ‘cotton to outsiders ‘round here’?”
Emma laughed. “Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”
“Well, you’re a better woman than I, Em.” Kenny watched Seneca spin by her again. “I would be freaking out right about now with my ass trapped in North Carolina.” Ken stuck her foot out and Seneca gracefull
y leaped right over it, turned, and gave Kenny the finger. Then the little brat did the Cabbage Patch at her.
Emma rubbed her eyes. “Why would anyone mess with us?” True, to the rest of the world, Emma was invisible. She didn’t exist. She, like her reliable Toyota, was beige. But her Coven … well, that was a different story. Most witches stayed out of their way. Good or evil, they all gave the Coven of the Darkest Night a wide berth. In their minds the fact that Emma’s coven didn’t firmly play for one side or the other bothered most covens. Especially after that one incident that got them banned for life from the Green Man Festival.
But for Emma and her sisters it wasn’t a simple case of black or white, good or evil. Because sometimes, when things went bad, you did what you had to do. Emma’s Coven wasn’t afraid to fight mean. Hell, they were good at it.
So exactly what idiot would be fool enough to lure them to this boring town in the middle of nowhere, North Carolina? And … why the hell had she been stupid enough to agree to come?
Kyle slammed his paw against Tully’s muzzle, ripping his claws through the fur. Tully flipped back, but came at him again. Kyle didn’t wait. He went to the tallest tree and climbed it, dragging his prize with him. Once he found a comfortable limb, he lay down to eat. The wolves circled under the tree, watching him, waiting for him to drop some morsel and planning. As always, the hunt went from simple fun to deadly dangerous once they had their prey in their sights. Out-of-town shifters learned fast that Smithville wasn’t a leisurely town when it came to the hunting. It often turned mean and vicious with so many different breeds fighting over the prey. But for Kyle, that’s what he loved.
Enjoying his warm meal—especially once it stopped squirming—Kyle chewed and stared, keeping a lookout for any other hungry predators. Once, one of the tourist-tigers had leaped up and snagged Kyle’s meal right from him before landing back on the ground like nothing had happened. And more than one lion had climbed up after him. He’d given his prize up since the fuckers were so big, but they could never get down from those trees again, which Kyle found immensely entertaining.
Soon another prey charged by and Tully’s Pack went after it, leaving Kyle to his hot meal. He ate until he was full and then he leaped down from the tree, leaving his prize behind. He didn’t finish it so, in theory, he could share … but he didn’t share. Wolves shared. Lions shared when there was enough to go around. He, however, did not share unless he was human—and his momma slapped him in the back of the head telling him to act right.
My Kind of Town Page 3