EUAN: Outback Shifters #3

by Chant, Zoe

  “I’d like to see something you’ve painted, one of these days. If you’d like to show me.”

  One of these days…?

  Delilah blinked, swallowing. She really didn’t want to read too much into what Euan had said. She’d already had enough unprofessional thoughts about him. She needed to try to keep a cool head now, and so not stick her foot in her mouth. Again.

  She raised her eyes, intending to give him some flippant answer about how one day he’d get to see all the paintings of hers he liked, when the art world woke up and she became a world-famous artist. But instead, Delilah found herself caught in the intensity of his dark-eyed stare, almost as if he were looking right down into the depths of her soul.

  “Um. Sure. I’d like that,” she managed to get out eventually, as Euan dropped his eyes to his hands where they sat on the table in front of him.

  “It’s important I know these things – about you, about your family,” he said after a moment of somewhat awkward silence. “If I’m going to be your bodyguard, I mean. I don’t want to intrude where I don’t have to, but we don’t really know who – or what – we’re dealing with.”

  Delilah swallowed, feeling herself deflate somewhat. So he wasn’t really interested in me, personally. He’s just trying to do his job properly. Which, of the two, is obviously the better option, she reminded herself quickly, before busying herself again with her now slightly cooled breakfast.

  “Hector and Rhys will be patrolling, and they should be onto any trouble first,” Euan went on, as Delilah used the last of her toast to mop up her egg yolks. “And I’ll be with you. And if at any point you want to leave, you just let me know. Okay?”

  Delilah nodded. “Okay. I can do that. But…”

  Euan leaned forward, eyes intent. “What is it?”

  Delilah gestured down at her clothes again. “I know I said I don’t really care about clothes, but I think my sister will literally kill me if I rock up to her party wearing this stuff. I’ll need to go home and change – and we’ll need to go now if I’m going to have time to get home, change my clothes, and then head out again.”

  Euan paused, frowning slightly and clearly thinking something over. “You probably don’t need to go home.”

  Shaking her head, Delilah laughed. “No, I really do. Even I have some standards – I mean, there’s elegantly underdressed, and then there’s this.”

  Just because you said you thought I looked amazing doesn’t mean it’s actually true! For a moment, Delilah was actually tempted to say the words out loud, but in the end, she decided to button her lip. Things had only just started to get un-awkward with Euan. She didn’t want to mess it up by repeating something she was pretty sure he’d only said to be polite.

  “Oh – no, I didn’t mean you shouldn’t get changed, if that’s what you’d feel more comfortable doing,” Euan said. “I just meant that we’ll almost definitely have something here you can wear.”

  Delilah frowned. “The… training academy shirt and shorts?”

  Euan shook his head – and was it Delilah’s imagination, or did the tiniest hint of a smile flicker across his lips?

  “No. It’s probably easiest if you just come with me. I’ll show you what I mean. Or Brooke will, anyway.”

  Wordlessly, Delilah stood as Euan took her empty plate and put it into the kitchen dishwasher, before following him out of the room and down a corridor, her head buzzing with curiosity.

  Euan made his way to a large desk, and a moment later Delilah recognized Brooke sitting behind it.

  “Do you have a moment?” Euan asked, as Brooke lifted her head from the document she was reading.

  “Sure – I’m on light duties today,” Brooke said. She cocked her head as Delilah came to stand by Euan’s side. “Anything you need help with?”

  Euan nodded. “Delilah needs a change of clothes.”

  “Ah – say no more,” Brooke said, grinning as she stood up. “I can definitely help you out there.”

  “Thanks.” Euan seemed to hesitate a moment, before turning to look at Delilah. “You said these are fancy people, right?”

  She nodded. “Uh, yeah. Well – people with money, anyway.”

  “Hmm. Okay. Well. I guess I’ll have to take that into account,” Euan muttered. Before Delilah could ask him what he meant, he’d looked away, turning back to Brooke. “Thanks again, Brooke.”

  Delilah looked after his departing back as he headed off down the corridor.

  “What did he mean?” she asked Brooke, as Brooke briefly tidied her desk, before gesturing for Delilah to follow her to the lifts.

  “Oh, you’ll see,” Brooke told her, smiling serenely as she used her swipe card to open the lift doors, before swiping it again and hitting a level number.

  A moment later when they stepped out of the lift, Delilah really did see. As Brooke showed her ID to a man behind a desk and signed them both in, Delilah managed to take a peek over her shoulder – and into the most massive clothes wardrobe she’d ever seen in her life.

  “Oh my –”

  Brooke looked over her shoulder at her, shooting her a grin. “Impressive, right? Sometimes we have agents who need to go undercover at a moment’s notice. So it helps to have everything we need on hand.”

  “Do you think there’ll be something in my size?” Delilah asked, as Brooke finished signing them in and gestured for Delilah to follow her into the wardrobe’s – well, the room that was doubling as a wardrobe’s – depths.

  “I’m sure of it,” Brooke said. “And if it needs a little adjustment, Daniel at the front desk is the expert there. He’ll make sure it fits you like a glove.”

  Delilah knew she’d just finished telling Euan how little she cared about clothes – and she didn’t. But she would have been lying if she hadn’t admitted that this was… kind of impressive.

  There was everything, from cute holiday outfits to dignified formal wear. Delilah reached out, letting her fingers trail over the fabric of one especially gorgeous emerald green evening gown, suddenly wishing that she and Euan really were heading off to some kind of glamorous soiree.

  He would look super hot in a tux, biceps or not, Delilah thought wistfully. But then, he kind of looks good no matter what.

  “What kind of thing would you like to wear?” Brooke asked, shaking Delilah out of her reverie.

  “Oh – uh, well, it’s going to be a warm, sunny day, right? And it’s an outdoor party, so… a dress, I guess? Something light?”

  Delilah’s one and only decent summery dress was a pink thing she’d had since high school, a long slip dress that she could still get away with because it was simple. Since she’d had no other options, she hadn’t really thought much about it. But now, faced with such a huge amount of choice, Delilah found herself kind of overwhelmed by the sheer number of options in front of her.

  “Ah,” Brooke said, smiling broadly and nodding. “Say no more. I know just the thing.”

  Chapter 6

  Taking a deep breath, Euan stared at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror for a long moment, before dropping his eyes again.

  He hadn’t felt this – the strange, low-level anticipation of going out on a mission, even a relatively minor one like this – for a while. Ordinarily, a bodyguarding job wouldn’t have him too worried, especially since he knew that in this instance he’d have plenty of backup – Rhys and Hector would be out patrolling, using their shifter instincts to guide them and warn them of danger. Keeping calm and alert was essential to the job.

  But when it’s Delilah…

  When it was Delilah, everything was different.

  Somehow.

  He’d never felt such a connection to someone so quickly before in his life. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to do the job he’d trained for his entire adult life, and had dreamed of doing ever since he’d been a kid.

  Since he’d lost his powers, he’d almost deliberately squashed any hope he had that they’d ever return. To hope – to expect – that
they might, only to find month after month that there was nothing there had been too much to bear. So he’d told himself over and over again that it just wasn’t possible. There was no going back. He’d always be only half of the man he’d once been.

  But now he was being told that even without his shifter abilities, he might be able to do someone some good. He might still have a useful role to play.

  I didn’t want it to go like this.

  He could have been talking about any number of things. There were so many things he wished were different right now.

  Euan gripped the edge of the sink, staring down at his knuckles as they turned white.

  But it is like this, he told himself a moment later. And you can either step up, or…

  He shook his head.

  No. There isn’t an ‘or’ in that sentence. There’s only one option here.

  Straightening, Euan glanced in the mirror again to make sure his hair was neat enough to pass in a fancy garden party setting, straightened the collar of the shirt he’d changed into, and then turned and headed out of the bathroom.

  Delilah should have finished showering and changing by now, he thought as he made his way back through the office area.

  Glancing around, he didn’t see anyone at first. The office was small – the Agency operated in groups of five to ten members, so there was less chance of them being able to give away vital information about other agents if any of them were captured, and relied on higher-ups like Robb to co-ordinate their work with other groups – and for now, empty and quiet.

  At least until the lift on the far wall softly chimed, the doors opened and in walked –

  Whoa.

  Euan blinked, feeling his mouth go dry.

  He’d thought Delilah was beautiful from the first moment he’d seen her. That had always been extremely obvious. Even more than her beauty, he’d been caught up by her wide, dark eyes, and the way they’d seemed to be completely unguarded when she looked at him. Trivial things like what she was wearing and her hairstyle had been completely irrelevant compared with that.

  But now, he had to admit, the way Delilah looked when she stepped out of the lift was… stunning.

  It wasn’t that she looked better at all – that was impossible. Euan would have thought she looked amazing even if she’d been walking toward him now wearing a hessian sack and a pigeon on her head.

  But in the flowing yellow sundress she was wearing now, tied at the waist with a white sash, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders, she looked –

  “Um. What do you think?” Delilah held up her arms, cocking her head, her eyes on his face as if studying his reaction. “Is it my color?”

  Euan swallowed heavily.

  “Very much so,” he eventually managed to get out, as he felt heat surge in his belly. The dress was hardly immodest – it was calf-length and the neckline wasn’t exactly plunging. It was exactly the kind of thing that was perfect for a kids’ party – pretty and practical. But it may as well have been some scorching hot, figure-hugging clubbing dress given the effect it was having on him.

  “It really suits you,” Euan said a moment later, sensing that he should probably say something more.

  A smile twitched at the corners of Delilah’s mouth, before she slightly self-consciously twirled in a circle.

  “I don’t usually wear this kind of thing,” she said once she was facing him again. “Brooke picked it out. But I kind of like it.”

  For the first time, Euan noticed Brooke standing slightly behind Delilah, smiling smugly as she looked at him.

  “It’s… nice. Really nice,” Euan said. “Good for a party.”

  Vaguely, he was aware of Brooke’s expression changing from smug to something that was probably fairly close to expressing are you actually serious right now, but Euan honestly wasn’t sure what else he should say – he had no practice at this kind of thing! And what was it he should be saying, anyway? Delilah was looking for a bodyguard, not a boyfriend.

  “Should we head out?” he asked, as much to get away from Brooke’s judgmental stare as anything else. “I’ve organized a car.”

  “Oh. Fancy.” Delilah gave him a bright smile. “But do you think driving across Sydney is going to be easy at this time of day?”

  “Possibly not,” Euan admitted. “But it’s safer than taking the train.”

  “I suppose so,” Delilah said, sighing. “It’s weird having to think about things like that. I really hope I don’t have to get used to it,” she added quietly after a moment.

  “You haven’t… sensed anything else?” Euan asked her, as they made their way across to the office lifts.

  He turned his head to glance at her, noticing as she swallowed heavily.

  “I… no. Nothing like that at all. I think I –” She cut herself off, before pulling in a deep breath. “I think I had a really weird dream last night. And then I got woken up with a bit of a start because of the earth tremor. But no. There’s been nothing like what I felt last night. No, uh…” – she wiggled her fingers at him briefly – “flashes of light or anything like that.”

  Delilah sounded pretty shaken up just talking about it, and Euan didn’t blame her. The fact that she was still determined to keep her promise to her niece and show up to the party after everything that had happened to her last night was pretty incredible, Euan had to admit.

  Delilah clearly took her sense of duty to her family pretty seriously. But besides that, Euan had sensed how much she loved her niece when she’d been talking about her last night. It was clear that Delilah was determined not to let Rosie down, no matter what.

  “You let me know the moment you feel like you want to leave,” Euan told her as they waited for the lift. “If you feel anything, sense anything, or if you just don’t feel comfortable anymore. What matters here is your safety. I’m sure your niece would understand if you had to go early.”

  Delilah nodded, silent. She didn’t say anything more until they’d stepped into the lift and were heading down to the ground floor.

  “So… does anyone have even a theory as to what happened to me last night?” she asked, not looking up at him.

  “As far as I know, they don’t,” Euan admitted. It made him uncomfortable to do so, but it was better for Delilah to have the truth. “I know Robb was going to look into it. He’s the boss, so he has access to the wider network of agents and information that people like me don’t.”

  “Oh, right,” Delilah said, nodding. “So… it’s just you guys in that office then? It seemed pretty small.”

  “It is. It’s intended that way. Agents like me, Hector, Brooke, Trent, Rhys… we really only know as much as we need to know to get our jobs done. We don’t want to know anything we could reveal, in the event that – well, something were to happen,” Euan explained. Probably Delilah didn’t need to hear words like capture and torture or anything else even mildly related. She had enough on her plate as it was.

  Maybe she’d figured it out anyway, because she laughed a little shakily, as if she were covering up some genuine alarm. “It really is kind of, uh, James Bond-y,” she said. She shot him a quick, embarrassed look. “Sorry, that’s just something I thought of last night. I promise it’s not how I really see you. I mean, not that you aren’t, uh – well, I mean, Daniel Craig is my type I guess, but I just meant I’m sure you don’t meet women with names like Strawberry Patch and Felia Upgood or whatever and… hmm. You know what, I’m just going to stop talking now, okay.”

  Euan stared down at Delilah, and at the way her ears – he couldn’t see the rest of her face, since she seemed to be actively trying to cringe it out of existence – were slowly but surely turning the most adorable shade of red.

  “It’s… uh, it’s fine,” he eventually managed to get out. “Uh, yeah, no, I can assure you that pretty much never happens.” He swallowed. “I honestly can’t remember the last time I had to go to a casino and somehow beat Mads Mikkelsen in a high-stakes poker game.”

  Delila
h turned her head to look up at him, still blushing adorably, but now at least there was the slightest twitch of a smile on her face.

  “Well, that’s no good,” she said. “You should talk to someone about that. Who’s getting all the cool stuff then?”

  “Someone who knows how to play poker, I guess,” Euan said. “I feel like that’s probably a requirement for getting those kinds of assignments.”

  “Well, you may be right,” Delilah admitted. “Still. Equality in the workplace. Even those of us who don’t even really know what poker is should be treated with respect.”

  Despite himself, Euan found himself laughing. There was something about Delilah that just seemed to encourage it – that made him feel lighthearted in a way he hadn’t felt since he’d lost his lion.

  No, that’s not quite right, he thought, as the lift door pinged and let them out into the nondescript foyer of the building. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way before.

  Euan opened the building door for her, and her skirt swirled up a little as she stepped out into the street – it was hardly a Marilyn Monroe moment and the hem of her skirt barely reached higher than her knee, but that didn’t seem to matter to Euan’s libido. Almost immediately he felt the warm rush of blood southward, and he was forced to avert his eyes so that things didn’t get kind of awkward.

  “So… are you going to be my driver as well as my bodyguard?” Delilah asked.

  “For today, yes,” Euan said, then hesitated. Usually the standard procedure for this kind of thing was for the person under guard to sit in the back. But for now, he wasn’t sure he wanted to let Delilah out of his sight. The idea of not being able to look at her even for a moment – not to mention for the duration of a drive across Sydney – seemed intolerable to him.

  Clenching his fists, Euan did his best to get a hold of himself. He needed to stay alert to any danger that might cross their path, not gawk at Delilah if she was sitting next to him. He needed to follow normal procedure. Without his shifter senses, he’d be relying more than ever on his training and normal, human alertness – he couldn’t afford even a second’s distraction.