by Anna Lowe
Anjali, his lion purred.
Holy shit. Could it really be?
When he’d told Chase about lion mates, he’d glossed over the fact that some lions mated early — if they found their destined mates. Which was a big if. Wolves and other shifter species might have a fair chance of stumbling across their true mates, but the phenomenon was rarer in lions.
Rare, as in, one in a million. And Dell had always figured he was one of the other 999,999. But suddenly, he wasn’t so sure.
I’m sure, his lion growled.
His mind raced over the past hour. How he’d sensed something before he was even in sight of the house. How alert his inner feline had been.
That could have been because of Quinn, he told his lion.
Could have been, the beast murmured. But it wasn’t. It was Anjali. Okay, both of them.
Dell swiped away the sweat that broke out over his brow. It couldn’t be. Anjali had only come to Maui for Quinn’s sake. She hadn’t come for him. Plus, Anjali was a human, and the polar opposite of him. How could she have anything to do with him or his destiny?
Believe me, she does, his lion insisted.
The others were waiting impatiently, so he forced out a few words. “Anjali has been taking care of the baby. Dealing with her friend’s suicide. We can’t just say thanks and goodbye.”
Cynthia nodded slowly. “You’re right. She only just got here.”
“She might be able to tell us more about Quentin and Lourdes,” Tim mused. “It makes sense to ask her to stay for a few days.”
Dell wanted to yell about all the things that didn’t make sense. Like how he couldn’t stand the thought of letting Anjali go. Just leaving her to attend this meeting had been a battle. Did his protective instincts have as much to do with Anjali as Quinn?
He scrubbed a hand over his face. Christ. He wasn’t fit to play daddy, and he sure wasn’t mate material. Anjali, meanwhile, was far too well-brought-up to be interested in a guy like him. She was organized. A workaholic. Career-oriented. Really, more Quentin’s type than his.
“Right. Let’s try to talk her into staying for a couple of days. When we have all the information we need, Anjali can go,” Connor said.
Dell’s lion growled. Who said anything about letting her go?
But everybody looked satisfied, like that was that.
“Right,” Tim agreed. “In the meantime, she can teach you how to take care of Quinn.”
Dell’s jaw dropped, and the devil on his shoulder cackled. This is so not you, man.
But the angel patted his other shoulder and winked. You can do it. I know you can.
Then it got worse, because Connor added, “Remember, there’s always adoption. I know you don’t like the idea, and neither do I. But it’s probably the best for Quinn. And, hey.” He mustered up a smile. “That means you’ll get your life back soon.”
Dell couldn’t tell if Connor was baiting him to rise and meet the challenge or giving up on him already. And he couldn’t answer the questions spinning through his head. How could he possibly give his brother’s daughter away? What if he didn’t want to continue living the lifestyle that Cynthia had described all too well?
Of course you want to, the devil hissed.
“Good night,” Connor said, heading off to pick up Jenna.
One by one, the others split up until it was just Tim and Dell.
Tim locked eyes with him and whispered, “You really think you can handle this, man?”
Dell looked up at the stars. Honestly? He had no clue.
Chapter Five
Anjali woke slowly, stretching under the crisp white sheets. She turned and hid her face in the pillow, avoiding the morning light.
Sunday. It had to be. A very nice, slow Sunday, because she had that sense of being home. She wiggled her toes, luxuriating in the peace and warmth. Usually, she slept with a window open, but she must have forgotten because it was balmy as anything in the room. She’d slept like a baby, but before that, she’d had the craziest dreams.
Then she sat up with a jerk, opening her eyes wide. Curtains wafted in wide-open windows, letting in a sea breeze. A chain of magenta bougainvillea wrapped around the railing of the porch outside, and the sky was tropical blue.
“Oh my God.”
She looked down at Quinn, sleeping in her makeshift crib.
It hadn’t been a dream. She really had traveled all the way from Chicago to Maui, and she really was responsible for Lourdes’s baby.
Not responsible for long, a little voice said. Quinn’s uncle will take over soon.
She should have felt relief, but somehow, the thought just made her ache.
“Quinn?” she whispered, slowly sliding out of bed. Why was the baby so quiet?
She leaned over the crib, fluttering her hands. Quinn never slept through the night. Something had to be wrong. Maybe the baby was dehydrated. Or worse, sick.
“Oh God…” Anjali felt the baby’s forehead.
How hot was too hot? What temperature was just right?
“Everything okay?” a deep voice sounded from her right.
Anjali spun around to the door that opened directly onto a side wing of the porch. Sunlight streamed through the doorway, backlighting what looked to be a Norse God with long, blond hair. Golden light bounced off his bare shoulders, giving him a mystical edge.
“Dell?” she whispered.
“Okay if I come in?”
She nodded, and Dell stepped in. Even when he moved out of the stream of light, a sense of otherworldly power hung around his frame.
Anjali blinked at his bare chest and mussed hair. Wait a minute. Had he been out there all night, keeping watch over her and Quinn?
She tugged down the edge of the T-shirt she’d slept in and swept a hand over her hair.
“Is she okay?” Dell asked, leaning over Quinn.
Anjali kneeled beside the makeshift crib. “I don’t know. She doesn’t usually sleep this long—”
As if on cue, Quinn twitched, opened her eyes, and broke into desperate cries.
“Whoa,” Dell murmured. “What’s wrong?”
Anjali laughed in relief. “Nothing, apparently. She always wakes up hungry.” She picked up the bawling baby and patted her on the back. “I guess she was as tired as I was.”
“You sure nothing’s wrong?” Dell asked, looking terribly concerned.
Anjali nodded. “Not as long as I get her bottle soon. Here.”
Dell’s eyes went wide with surprise as she thrust the baby into his arms.
“But—” he started to protest as she bustled off to prepare a bottle.
It took a good five minutes, but finally, she had the formula ready. She waved Dell over to one of the couches on the porch and handed him the bottle. Quinn grabbed for it, and within one breath, she went from desperate cries to a satisfied sucking.
“Ho-ly smokes,” Dell murmured. “She sure has some lungs for such a little thing.”
Anjali laughed. “That, she does.”
Then she paused. Whoa. Had she just handed the baby to a near stranger?
Uncle, she remembered. But there had to be more to Dell than that, though she couldn’t put her finger on what that might be.
She settled down beside Dell, watching Quinn drink. It was kind of nice, letting someone else do the holding and feeding for a change. And with Dell, it seemed right, somehow. Even Quinn seemed to sense that, because she stared up at him with those wide, yellow-brown eyes.
“Hang on, little cub,” he whispered, touching her nose.
Anjali grinned. “Yeah, she can be a bit of a tiger sometimes.”
Dell’s lips quirked. “I was thinking more like a lion. The kind who grows up and refuses to take shit from anyone, even the big guys.”
They both laughed. Then their eyes met, and Anjali found herself holding her breath. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d told herself not to get overinvolved in the past week, but she’d already fallen in love with the baby wi
th the golden-brown eyes. And here was a man who looked just like that baby. A man who was all heart…
Her heart thumped, and her cheeks flushed. She nearly slapped herself a few times. It was one thing to have gotten swept up in Dell’s eyes the previous night when she was exhausted. But she’d had a good night’s sleep, so what excuse did she have now?
Dell’s lips quivered, and his eyes brightened. Or was that a trick of the light?
For the next minute, the only sound was that of Quinn’s gulping. Then Dell shook himself a little and glanced at Quinn, then back to Anjali.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“For what?”
He flashed a weak smile. “For taking care of Quinn. For finding me. For coming all this way.”
His voice was deep and sincere, his face earnest, making Anjali smile.
“Of course,” she murmured. “Lourdes was my friend. I would do anything for her.”
The moment she spoke, it hit her again. Lourdes was gone. Dead.
I have to go to work. Anjali’s own words came back to haunt her. One morning not long ago, she had rushed out of her apartment to join a working dinner with some clients, leaving Lourdes and Quinn behind. I’ll see you later, okay?
She frowned, remembering how much frustration she had allowed to creep into her words. It was hard, having a friend and a baby move in. Now, all she felt was remorse. There hadn’t been a later, because Lourdes had died not long after that. A lump formed in Anjali’s throat. Couldn’t she have been more patient? More helpful?
“Hey,” Dell whispered. “Don’t do that.”
She tilted her head. “Do what?”
“Regret,” he said, firmly enough to hammer the word to the wall. “No use regretting what you can’t change.”
She watched his eyes carefully. “Something you’re an expert in, I suppose?”
They flickered — in amusement? In sorrow?
He cracked a slight smile. “You could say so.”
He scratched his chest and looked down. It was amazing, the way he could bounce from invincible warrior to carefree playboy to grieving brother, all in the blink of an eye. She had the feeling the first two came easy to him, while the third… Well, he still had to work on processing the grief.
“Did you know about your brother and Lourdes?”
He shook his head, and the shadow of grief made his eyes darken. “No. Quent didn’t say a word. Not to me, anyway.” He looked down at Quinn, touching one of her tiny hands. Then he looked up again. “Sorry.”
She shrugged. “Not your fault.”
“Not that part, at least,” he murmured so quietly, she nearly missed it.
Another silent second ticked by.
“Tell me about her,” Dell whispered, looking down at Quinn.
Anjali shrugged and touched Quinn’s foot. “What you see is what you get. She eats, sleeps—”
He shook his head. “I mean Lourdes.”
Anjali frowned. Where should she start?
“She loved cats. Cheesy country music. Brownies.”
Dell smiled.
“The two of us used to play behind my house. Other girls played house, but Lourdes wanted to play animal shelter. She’d bring out all her stuffed animals and nurse them back to health.”
Dell laughed. “What did you do?”
Anjali grinned. “I answered the phone — the play phone — and found new homes for them.”
She expected Dell to laugh, but he just looked down at Quinn.
“Ever wonder about destiny?” he asked, ever so quietly.
Anjali took a long, slow breath and stared off into the distance. Her mother would have pooh-poohed that and talked about karma instead. Cause and effect, action and reaction — the vestiges of previous lives making themselves felt. But whatever force was at work there, those early days had been prophetic, for sure. She still spent half her life on the phone — and now she was in Hawaii, looking for a home for Quinn.
“Destiny?” she whispered. “I’m not sure.”
Quinn suckled quietly with her eyes closed, and Anjali stroked her cheek.
“There isn’t much of Lourdes in Quinn,” Anjali said, picking up where she’d left off. “Not on the outside, at least.”
Dell ran a finger over the baby’s wispy hair. “I still don’t get what happened. Quent wasn’t one to get a girl’s hopes up and then leave her. He would have come running if he’d known Lourdes was expecting Quinn.”
“I believe it. But like I said, Lourdes didn’t even guess she was pregnant until after Quentin died. I loved her dearly, but still – she was a mess.”
Dell’s eyes filled with unspoken questions, and Anjali did her best to fill in the blanks.
“My guess is that your brother saw past the mess to the person Lourdes really was. The girl I grew up with before everything went wrong. He saw what she could be and wanted to help her get there.”
Dell sighed. “Yeah, that sounds like Quent, all right.”
Anjali stood and walked to the porch rail. The sun was rising over Maui, and it was gorgeous. A gorgeous start to a gorgeous day, and poor Lourdes wasn’t there to see it.
“Lourdes was always kind of a free spirit, I guess you could say. But by the time we got to high school…well… The usual story, I guess. Her family had issues — serious ones. She started hanging out with the wrong crowd, drinking, drugs.” She paused and cleared her throat. “The world is kind of unfair like that. Some people get everything, others get nothing.”
“Why do you say that?”
Anjali shrugged. “It was like the stars aligned for me, you know? Lourdes could never get herself together, and when her parents split up…” Her mind drifted back to that ugly period in both their lives. “Lourdes ended up shuttling back and forth, and when both her parents got into new relationships — bad ones — it got even worse.”
She frowned, remembering how Lourdes went from bright-eyed and bubbly to glassy-eyed and dull. That had happened in about tenth grade when she had hooked up with an older guy. A much older guy. One unhealthy relationship led to another, and things went steadily downhill. Lourdes’s parents cared enough to check her in to rehab a few times, but she always managed to get out quickly, declaring herself cured – before heading right into the arms of the next guy who would give her what she wanted. Drugs. Sex. Everything but love.
Anjali turned, leaning against the railing while she looked at Quinn. She’d do anything to keep that little girl from following in her mother’s footsteps.
Then it hit her. That wouldn’t be up to her. Quinn’s future rested entirely on Dell’s shoulders. Could he really handle the responsibility?
She looked at the sheet and pillow crumpled in a corner of the couch. Maybe he could. Maybe, like Lourdes, Dell went deeper than what was visible from the outside.
“Did you sleep out here last night?”
“Yeah. You know, just in case you needed anything.”
His casual tone didn’t fool her. She could see the lines around his eyes. Dell hadn’t gotten as much sleep last night as she had — and who could blame him after the surprise she’d delivered.
Quinn bumped him, and he immediately switched to baby talk and fussed with her blanket. “You okay, sweetie? Tasty formula? Yum.”
Quinn closed her eyes again, relaxing in his arms.
Anjali swallowed. Babies didn’t need experienced parents as much as they needed love, and judging by the way Dell looked at Quinn…
He took the baby’s hand and guided it to the bottle. “See? You can hold it all by yourself.”
Her hand flopped away, but that didn’t stop Dell from chuckling to the baby. “Good thing you’ve got me.”
Anjali closed her eyes, picturing Quinn growing up. Taking her first steps, uttering her first words. Heading to her first day of school, and someday, graduating. All with Dell at her side, murmuring encouragement like that.
Then Anjali’s eyes snapped open. A nice fantasy, but all he’d done so
far was feed the baby. Once. He had a long, long way to go.
She studied him, telling herself it was only to judge his ability to parent a baby girl. But her pulse quickened, and her breath caught as she ended up focusing on totally different things. The dog tags that hung from a silver chain around his neck. The scar on one shoulder. The dimple on one cheek. The jaw, set hard in determination.
Maybe he had more in common with his brother than he’d let on at first. Maybe his layers went even deeper than his brother’s, because being a good guy was easy enough. Toeing the line between good and naughty, on the other hand…
His eyes flicked to hers, and he flashed a tiny smile. Not one of those Hollywood smiles that could turn heads. More like one that said, I can’t believe this is happening, but I’ll do my best.
There was a hint of grief in there, too, and she found herself whispering, “Tell me about Quentin.”
Dell’s smile tightened, and he swung his jaw around until Anjali wanted to poke him and say, It’s okay to talk about him. It helps. Believe me.
“He is…was…” Dell started before getting stuck on the past tense. Then he swallowed hard and went on. “…good at football. Lousy at poker. A loyal friend.”
Anjali couldn’t help but smile at that list.
“He was older than me by two years, and from what my mother says, he was responsible from the start, and he stayed that way.” Dell’s eyes drifted off into the distance. Was he looking at the glittering ocean or into the past? Finally, he looked back at Quinn and whispered, “You think he and Lourdes were serious?”
Anjali shook her head. “Honestly, no. I think Lourdes knew it, too. She called him a friend, not a boyfriend. She didn’t talk about the future — she just said he helped her get a new start.”
Dell made a face. “Good old Quentin. He loved being a hero. I guess he was good at it, too.”
Was there a hint of bitterness in that comment or just a lot of pain?
She looked down at Quinn and found herself choking up. Lourdes was gone. Quentin, too. Two young, healthy people who didn’t need to go. She closed her eyes, then opened them a moment at a soft touch. It was Dell, wiping a tear from her cheek.