“I don’t know if she intended it to be harassment or something else entirely, but whatever she intended I honestly think she’s the one behind it. Can you think of another reason that Orion would go rabid on a human?”
“Especially a human that we know,” Jason growled. “I swear if he tries to touch Skye I’m going to rip his lungs out!”
“I think Skye would probably do that herself,” Devon pointed out. Then he sucked in a quick breath. “And speak of the devil, here he comes.”
“Wait a damn second,” Edward growled. “Is he drunk?”
Zane reached for the kitchen door to open it for their brother. “Can we get drunk?”
“I feel like the amount of alcohol it would take to get one of us drunk would basically involve buying out the entire liquor section.”
“Or finding the right combination,” Devon murmured. “He’s been hitting the bottle pretty hard. Maybe he’s discovered the perfect match.”
“Perfect is the wrong word,” Edward decided as Orion’s wolf body actually collapsed through the kitchen door.
Their oldest brother lay on the cool tile floor for several minutes before his body finally seemed to begin its change back to his human form. It looked painful. Edward could not recall ever seeing or hearing of a change that was so disjointed and rough. It was almost like this was Orion’s first time and he had nobody to walk him through the process.
Jason squatted down on the floor beside their brother. “Orion? Wake up.”
Jason’s tentative poking seemed to get no response. Orion was currently lying on the floor in a mostly human form sporting far more hair than any human had a right to have on his arms and legs. He was also naked. That wasn’t a normal set of circumstances. Their father had not been very knowledgeable about the magic that governed their shifting, but every shifter knew that what you shifted with was what you got when you shifted back. It was just a perk of the ability and a fortunate happening since winding up naked in some strange place would have been a good way to get caught and tossed in jail for indecent exposure.
“Oh my God, what happened to him?” At the perfect moment—as always—Tisha burst onto the scene. She knelt on the kitchen floor briefly before stumbling back onto her feet and backing away. “What’s wrong with him? He’s covered in hair!”
“Yeah, Mother,” Zane snorted. He pinched the bridge of his nose and heaved a heavy sigh of resignation. “This is what we look like when we’re kind of in the middle of a shift and for some reason unable to finish.”
Tisha looked as though she might start heaving at any moment. “It’s disgusting!”
“Is there any particular reason you sent Orion after Diana Appleton, Mother?” Edward felt like there was more going on than he could possibly imagine. The garbled texts and half a phone conversation with Diana hadn’t done anything more than raise additional questions. “He didn’t do anything but expose himself in a spectacular fashion, by the way. Good job there.”
“Don’t be silly.” But there wasn’t much conviction behind Tisha’s voice. She sounded more calculating than anything else, as though she were about to tell a whopper of a lie. “It’s because your brother is such a drunk!”
“Shifters don’t get drunk,” Zane snapped out. “We’re barely affected by alcohol. So how exactly do you think that Orion is drunk?”
“I don’t know, but he’s been acting really strange.” Tisha sounded just enough defensive that it sent alarm bells ringing in Edward’s head. Then Tisha made a vague gesture to the front room where Tisha always served cocktails before her parties. “Check in there. I bet you’ll find that the liquor cabinet is empty or something.”
Orion murmured something. It was unintelligible, but at least the hair started to recede as though he were all the way back to his human form in his head too regardless of what else was happening in there.
“Wait.” Jason stood up and frowned. “Why is he naked? Was he naked when he shifted? Why? Why is our oldest brother running around naked?”
“Ask him,” Tisha suggested. She was standing away from them all as though she were actually afraid that what they had was catching. After all this time she could not handle their other nature. It was not just disheartening, it was insulting as hell. “And then tell him to go upstairs before he gets hair or dog slobber on my floor.”
“Yeah, because Lupita won’t clean that up without asking any questions,” Jason snorted. He nudged Orion with his toe. “Hey! Wake up, you ass! Where the hell are your clothes?”
Before they could get an answer out of Orion, there was a knock at the front door. Dammit. Because they did not have enough weird stuff going on. Edward glanced at the clock hanging above the kitchen cabinets. It was now ten o’clock. Who came knocking on the front door at ten o’clock at night? Not for anything good as far as Edward was concerned.
“I’ll get the door,” Edward growled. “The three of you get his ass upstairs. And Mother? Go to bed and take Xanax or something.”
Edward turned his back on his mother’s shriek of outrage. It had basically become her default reaction to just about everything and Edward’s eardrums were tired of it. He carefully exited the kitchen through the butler’s pantry and headed for the front door. There were several possible identities and reasons for a visitor at this time of night, but none of them were particularly good.
So when Edward pulled the front door open and found Eleni Ariosa standing there on the porch shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, Edward wasn’t entirely certain what to say. Eleni looked rumpled, as though she had been in bed prior to coming here. The poor woman was actually wearing flannel pajama bottoms and an oversized hooded sweatshirt with a pair of what appeared to be work boots. It was a rather unusual ensemble for the prim and proper Dallas society maiden.
“Hey,” Eleni said suddenly. “Um. Trick or treat?”
Edward snorted. He should have invited her in. But that wasn’t a good idea when he had no clue where Orion and his brothers were in the house. Letting Eleni have an up-close-and-personal view of Orion’s nude body wasn’t a good idea. At least not in Edward’s opinion. So he stepped out onto the porch instead and closed the door behind him.
“You guys haven’t decorated for Halloween,” Eleni observed. The comment seemed almost random in nature, as though she was searching for something to break the ice.
So for the moment Edward let her have her mundane conversational topic. “No. We typically don’t. You might say that we get too much of the Halloween spirit on a regular basis for us to be very interested in the one day a year that everyone else gets to dress up just so they can come and beg for candy.”
“I suppose that makes a sick kind of sense.” She was bobbing her head and rocking back and forth on her feet as though she were stalling.
Edward cleared his throat and pursed his lips. “I’m going to assume that you didn’t come all the way over here to discuss our lack of Halloween spirit. So how about we just cut to the chase? How can I help you?”
The conversation that Edward had shared with Diana a few hours ago was heavy on his mind. Aliana Ariosa had put such a heavy financial burden on her daughter and her daughter’s husband and his family that they were running across an ocean in order to get away from Aliana. How did this affect the King family? That was what remained to be seen. Ariana wasn’t going to like it when she realized that her plans to marry Eleni off to a King brother weren’t going anywhere.
“Your brother,” Eleni whispered. She leaned closer to Edward. “I know you and I agreed to at least pretend that we were interested in each other.”
“Yes.” Edward could not see where this had anything to do with his brother. “What brother are you speaking about? Jason? I know that my mother had plans for you and Jason before. I’m assuming your mother has other thoughts for you with another King brother who makes more money than I do?”
“Actually I don’t know and I care even less what my mother is planning right now,” Eleni said wearily. “If
I tried to keep up with that nonsense I’d drive myself crazy.”
“So?”
“So I wanted to let you know that Orion was—uh—well I guess you’d say that I found him under my window about thirty minutes ago. He was naked.”
“Oh shit.”
Eleni gave an uncomfortable cough. “I wanted to come and tell you so that you could go looking for him.”
“No need.” Edward almost could not believe what the timetable was for all of this. “He just made it back home a few minutes ago. Naked. So we don’t really know what he was up to this evening or what he was—taking, I guess.”
“He sounded drunk,” Eleni murmured. She bit her lower lip and put her hands on her hips. In the dim glow of the porch light she appeared thoughtful. “I don’t ever remember him looking that way before. I don’t recall him getting drunk. Ever. Not even in college.”
Edward had no doubt that this was true because shifters didn’t get drunk. “I’m so sorry that this happened. I can’t apologize enough to you for Orion’s behavior. I hope your mother didn’t see this?”
“No. Just me.” She paused for a moment as though she weren’t sure she wanted to say anything else. “He was saying some pretty weird stuff,” Eleni finally admitted. “Talking about wolves and your mother and how he didn’t want to kill this girl.”
Great. That was a bit more than Eleni needed to know, but it was exactly what Edward had feared. He could not come up with anything to explain Orion’s behavior though. It just wasn’t possible. So he went with the next best thing. “I can’t imagine what the nonsense was about. He’s been hitting the bottle pretty heavily since our father’s death. With Tex’s death it got a bit worse and now I think he probably needs some help. We’ll try to make that happen.”
“I’m glad.” Eleni’s words sounded far more heartfelt than Edward would have expected. “He’s a good man. I know that he is. Orion is—well, he’s different. He always has been. When we were in school he was always the gentleman. And now I feel like he’s having to deal with these people taking advantage of him.”
“People?”
She bobbed her head. “Yes. People.”
Edward had a bad feeling he knew exactly to whom Eleni was referring. Right now he just didn’t want to go there. He didn’t want to think about it at all. So he only nodded to Eleni. “I appreciate you coming over here to let us know about Orion. We’ll make sure that he gets the help he needs.” Like a swift kick in the balls and a removal from our mother’s poisonous influence.
Eleni patted Edward’s arm. He could not help but realize even in this one moment of time that he felt absolutely nothing towards her. There was not even the smallest spark at the contact. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zip. He could have been touching his brother. Of course, this realization made it all the more powerful that that one brush against Diana Appleton made Edward feel as though he could fly. If only there were some possibility of a future with Diana, but even Edward knew when there was no more point in beating a dead horse.
Chapter Fifteen
Diana could not sleep. She could not stop thinking about those horrible fangs and claws and the sound of that wolf pursuing her through the darkness at the cemetery. She shut her eyes and pressed her face into the pillow but sleep never came. And by the time she had to get out of bed and go to work the following morning she felt like a complete zombie.
There was no amount of coffee that could make her feel better. In fact, Diana avoided The Corner Shop just because she didn’t want to see Skye or any of her friends sitting there. Diana couldn’t be sure that she would not go off on them with unnecessary brutality just because she was so angry that Skye could be so flippant about the whole werewolf-shifter thing. Did Skye not realize how serious this whole situation really was? These people were unhinged. They were absolutely insane.
By the time a bleary-eyed Diana collapsed gratefully into her cozy leather chair at work, she was feeling as though a nap was going to happen very soon whether she wanted it to or not. There was just no way to avoid the lure of closing her eyes and drifting off for only a few moments. Perhaps if she took the opportunity to sleep during the daylight hours she would be able to get a few hours of shut eye.
“There you are.”
Damn. That tone did not sound as though it were going to fit into her desire for a nap. Diana tried to look as bright eyed and alert as possible when Gwen Pallister pushed her way into Diana’s office. The attempt apparently was not sufficient because Gwen gave Diana an up and down look of derision.
“My God, what did you do last night? Party the whole night away? That’s typical! You junior partners don’t have any respect for our company or for the image we’re supposed to be portraying to our clients!”
Apparently there was really no point in being polite. With that in mind, Diana did not bother with the effort it would have taken to keep her expression pleasant. “It’s bright and early, Gwen. You’re almost never here at this time of day. So how about you cut to the chase and tell me what you want? Because obviously you’ve got a reason for bugging me at this ungodly hour.”
Gwen narrowed her gaze on Diana and tossed that Lucietto file folder back on the desktop. “You need to call that Amatuzzio guy and talk some sense into him.”
Diana stared at the folder. She had a really bad feeling about what Gwen was trying to say without actually saying. “What do you mean. Exactly. Don’t lie. Don’t underexaggerate. Tell me what happened when you called Mr. Amatuzzio’s real estate broker yesterday.”
“I didn’t call the broker.” Gwen sounded offended. “Why would I do that? I wanted to talk to the person in charge of the situation and not some flunky who can’t get anything done! I read your notes.” Gwen snorted and folded her arms over her chest. “The broker is the one who has been putting you off. So I went around him.”
It was all Diana could do not to facepalm right there in front of Gwen. Of all the idiotic things the arrogant young woman could have done. This was probably the worst. “You know,” Diana began slowly. She was having trouble hanging onto her temper when she was this tired. “You have almost no future in international business if you can’t remember that there are still plenty of cultures around the world that do not appreciate a woman being involved with the business end of things.”
“Then we need to teach them!” Gwen said, making expansive gestures with her hands. “You have to force them to listen!”
“Oh really?” Diana said nastily. “How did that go for you? Because I feel like you would not be in here to ask me to call Mr. Amatuzzio if it had gone well. You would be in your grandfather’s office bragging that you got something done when I couldn’t.”
“Don’t you talk that way to me!” Gwen was outraged. She actually made a move as though she were about to jump across the desktop. At the last second she pointed to the file. “But then it doesn’t matter, does it? Because if you can’t fix this, you’ll be fired anyway.”
“Are you sure?” Wow. Diana was feeling brazen today. It was almost like she was so tired she did not care about her career, her personal reputation, or anything else at all. “Because I almost believe that your grandfather would know instinctively that any screw-ups were all yours. Just saying. It’s an observation really.”
“You bitch!” Gwen hissed. She pointed at Diana. “You get that fixed before end of business today or you’re going to be hitting the unemployment lines by the end of the week.”
“Uh huh. Okay.” There it was again. That sense of indestructibility brought on by the fact that she was so incredibly tired that she could not even muster the sense of being afraid for her career.
Gwen did not appreciate this new braver version of Diana 2.0. In fact, her face was quickly turning from magenta to purple as she grew madder and madder and finally picked up that file folder and flung it right at Diana’s face. “You’d better learn some respect for your superiors!”
“Gwen!”
Gwen spun around so quickly that she actuall
y lost balance on her ridiculous high heels. She fell against Diana’s desk. The file folder she’d thrown at Diana exploded against the desk and rained paper and sticky notes down onto Gwen as the heel of one of her shoes snapped off and she collapsed to the rug.
“What are you doing?” Bryan Pallister sounded absolutely mystified by what he was seeing. He stood over his granddaughter with his hands on his hips.
There it was once again. That sense of being so tired that Diana just could not muster the energy to deal with Gwen’s bullshit. So she offered Bryan Pallister a small smile and held her hands out as though she were just as baffled as he was. “I’m not sure what’s happening, sir. Gwen came in and got very upset with me. She demanded I call Mr. Amatuzzio in Abruzzo as soon as possible to rectify what seems to be a misunderstanding. Since we were never given permission to contact the seller directly I’m not entirely certain why I would do that.”
Bryan Pallister sucked in a quick breath and turned on his granddaughter. “Did you call that man, Gwen? Did you actually contact Mr. Amatuzzio directly?”
Gwen was struggling to her feet. She had removed one shoe, but it was equally awkward to walk with one heel on as it was to try and walk with one broken heel. She stumbled against the desk a second time. “Of course I called the seller. The broker wasn’t getting anything done. Why wouldn’t I call the seller?”
“Because you are a woman!” Pallister snarled. He started cursing low and colorfully and for just a moment Diana wondered if he wasn’t about to take his granddaughter over his knee and paddle her bottom until it was as red as her face. “Women are well thought of by this old school Italian, but not as business contacts! Don’t you know anything about this file? Why would you even get involved if you don’t know what you’re doing? Isn’t that the first rule of this job? You do not get involved if you are unaware of the protocol or the deal as it stands!”
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 35