by Nancy Gideon
A large dog? A wolf? Whatever it was, the creature advanced into the open with an aggressive ferociousness, its red gold pelt bristled from snout to stiffly held tail, bloodied muzzle peeled back from barred teeth. Its strange eyes, an odd silvery green, held an unusual intelligence and purpose.
That’s when Kendra gave a sudden cry and spoke an impossible name. “Cale.”
Cale? Impossible!
Until he noticed the thin scar cutting across one of those unnatural eyes. Somehow this animal was his brother!
“Another step and I kill her.”
The beast halted, head low, ears back, waiting as James measured the distance he had yet to travel to reach the safety of his car. Too far to drag a reluctant burden. Yet, if he killed her, Cale would be at his neck in a heartbeat. So he took a chance, betting his life on the other’s obsession.
“I want to walk away, and you want your queen back in one piece. Is that a tradeoff you can live with, Cale?”
Ears went up and fierce teeth were covered.
“Sit there.” He could swear the creature gave a snort as it settled on its haunches. “Walk toward him slowly,” he told Kendra. And to Cale, he called, “We’ll meet again, my king.”
Kendra let out a shaky breath when the pressure about her throat slipped away. A slight push started her moving forward. She heard James retreating, but thoughts of him disappeared just as quickly as the rogue Terriot. She raced the last few feet, kneeling to fearlessly hug the powerful creature to her, face burrowing into the thick pelt that held Cale’s scent.
And then smooth, warm skin was beneath her cheek and strong arms surrounded her.
“Are you all right?” they both asked at the same time, rising up together.
She clasped his face between her palms and vowed, “I am now,” and kissed him, hard, just to be sure he was real. Her hands adored his shoulders, his sleek back, curving to cup his tight ass. She stepped back, gasping, “Cale, you’re naked!”
He grinned. “You have a problem with that?”
Her anxious gaze swept over him, pausing at the new scarring of bite marks on his thigh, across his chest. Then, she smiled, nodding over his shoulder. “No, but he might.”
Cale glanced back to see Silas’s rapid approach, gun in one hand, his clothes in the other. “Nothing he hasn’t seen before.”
“To my understandable regret. Here.” He tossed the garments and boots to Cale. “James?”
“Gone. A necessary compromise.” Cale dressed quickly, pulling on his ruined jeans and bloodied boots. His jacket, he wrapped about his queen. Unwilling to be separated from his mate for more than a moment, he pulled her in close. Just breathing her in. That delicious scent of home.
“What was that . . . what you did?” Silas asked, at a loss to explain what he’d seen.
Cale smiled faintly. “Not my secret to share, but it came in damned handy.” And somehow, as an extraordinary bonus, the transformation had managed to heal him, leaving him restored. Neat trick. Something else he’d have to thank Savoie for.
“Tina? Kip? The others. Is everyone all right?” Kendra asked anxiously, pressing into Cale’s body heat to still her shivering.
“The kid has his first battle scar to boast about,” Silas replied. “Everyone else is fine.”
“Then let’s get the hell out of here. My queen needs a change of clothes and a meal.” He nuzzled against her ear, whispering, “And a bath. You stink.”
She couldn’t disagree. It didn’t keep him from crushing her to him the entire ride back to Savoie’s where Brigit greeted her with a relieved hug and a wrinkled nose, claiming, “Girl, you smell!”
Leaving the communal bathroom to his brothers, Cale and Kendra enjoyed the space and multiple shower heads in Savoie’s en suite. Amid suds and sighs, cleanliness was secondary to sharing urgent caresses.
“You’d have sacrificed yourself for us.” Kendra’s revering hands paused to deal out a sharp swat to his very fine kingly ass. “Stop doing that. What would I be without you?” The slight hitch in her scold nearly drowned him in pleasure and pride.
“It was no sacrifice,” he assured her, tone husky, mouth tenderly buffing her brow. “You’d be my queen, and I’d still love you in this world or beyond.”
Lifting her up to meet his fierce kiss, he carried her, slippery arms and legs tight about him, into the bedroom to fall with her on the smooth spread.
“Cale, this isn’t our room!”
He eased over her, their skin barely brushing, rolling his hips until completely inside her. Hard, strong, so wonderfully familiar. She arched into his measured thrusts, sighing, “Silas is still here. He can do the laundry.”
Eventually, they slipped along the balcony, carrying their dirty clothes, eager to continue what they’d only just started. Once inside their room, all Cale’s joy vanished as his gaze fell upon the special delivery box on their bed.
“What’s this?” Kendra lifted the parcel addressed to her, unaware of his unnatural stillness.
“For you,” he said quietly. “Something I should have given you long ago, but was too much of a coward.”
She put it down, frowning at his now noticeable withdrawal from the playful, passionate mate of moments before. “If it upsets you, it’s nothing I need.”
“It upsets me more to deny you what’s inside.”
“What is it?” she whispered uneasily.
“What your father died to protect. What he wanted you to have. A future.”
She pulled on one of Cale’s tee shirts and solemnly sat on the edge of the mattress to rip through the packing tape. Cale stayed where he was, a sleek, remote shadow, braced for the inevitable pain he’d suppressed for almost twenty years.
When she opened the box, Kendra gasped in recognition. She drew out a leather satchel and hugged it to her chest. “This was my father’s.” She looked to him, her eyes teary.
“Look inside,” he urged. “I never opened it, Kendra.”
“I believe you.”
She lifted the flap and drew out a stack of ledgers. Each contained row upon row of account numbers in her father’s recognizable hand followed by massive dollar amounts.
“I don’t understand.”
“Those are the secret set of books your father was keeping for mine. Bram’s Get out of jail free and live in the tropics fund. He’d siphoned off a percent of everything our clan made for decades so if things got tough, he could let us all go to hell and run. Your father invested wisely, thinking it was to protect our family’s future, not to pad my father’s. When he discovered just how crazy his king was—” He broke off and swallowed hard, continuing in a strained voice. “After what happened to your mother, he hid all the records away.”
“How did you get them, Cale?”
“What happened to your family,” he continued in that frightening flat tone, “it was more than just my father’s anger over the MacCreedys hiding Tina from him. It was everything about them. Their goodness, their decency, their defiance. Our clan saw in them everything my father, in his madness, was not. Support for them was building to the point where he couldn’t ignore it. Martine convinced him that they were plotting to overthrow him by luring away his son, hiding his heir, stealing his money. He wanted to not just punish them, he wanted to make examples of them so no one would ever dare challenge him again.”
“Until you did.” Her gaze warmed from anguish to admiration. Cale couldn’t meet her eyes. “How did you find this out?”
“Bull told me after I overthrew my father.”
Kendra had no reason to doubt that what Bram’s bodyguard told him was anything but the truth.
“I have to tell you something, Kendra,” Cale began in a tone as dead as he felt inside. “About how your father died.”
Her eyes filled. Her voice became achingly gentle. “I already know what happened.”
“What?” He blinked. “Did Bree—”
“No, Wesley. He told me before I came here. He was afraid James
would use the information to hurt us. To hurt you.” A single tear fell. “And it has, hasn’t it? All this time, keeping that secret locked away.”
“You knew? You knew, and you didn’t say anything?”
“I didn’t know if you were ready to face it. If you’d ever be ready. You didn’t know what was driving you, making you push those who loved you away, taking risks you never should have. You wanted to blame Kick, but it was your conscience tearing you apart. I’ve carried that kind of pain. It’s so self-destructive. You’d buried yours deep, pretending it was a debt to our families you could pay by throwing your life away. But it was never that, was it? It was this one awful thing.”
Wild emotions twisted his features, conveying his inner struggle. “I killed your father! How could I tell you that? How could you ever forgive me that?”
“I already have. I told you, Cale. I told you I’d forgive you anything. I meant that.” She reached out to him, tempting him closer to convince him what she said was true.
He approached like that wary animal he’d become to save her, cautious, skittish, braced for the worst. Instead of taking her offered hand, he went to his knees, resting bowed head against her. She placed her hand there, stroking gently.
“You could have told me. I would have understood.”
“That I’m the same kind of monster my father was? How can you trust me to raise your children? What if what he was is what I’ll become? How could you want me with you?”
She cupped his chin, raising it until their eyes met. His were beautiful, that silvery green so filled with anguish and pain, yet still holding onto hope. She’d fallen in love with the boy he’d been because of that vulnerable gaze. Because of the strength and caring behind it.
“What you did was brave and kind, and the most selfless thing . . .” She broke off to swallow down the feelings clogging her throat. “You saved him from terrible suffering by taking it on yourself. If I didn’t already love you, I’d give you my heart all over again. You’re nothing like Bram Terriot. He couldn’t destroy the good I saw in you, that my family saw.”
“Not so good,” he confessed. “Before he died, your father told where he’d hidden the ledgers and where I could find the key to his lock box, to tell only you. But I never had the chance. I told my momma so if anything ever happened to me, she’d be able to get you safely away. Even if it meant safely away from me.” He paused, struggling with his true shame.
“Then, when I had the chance, I couldn’t tell you because I was afraid you’d use the money to run away from me before I could convince you that I loved you. If I was a good man, I would have given you that choice. I didn’t trust you when you said the words. I was afraid to believe you, afraid you’d despise me for that weakness. I’m giving you that choice now. You can have any kind of life you want, with any one you want.”
She smiled, caressing his taut features with her fingertips. “I already have it, Cale. And you’re everything I could want for the father of my child.”
The spark of belief lit reluctantly but continued to flame in his gaze. He offered a faint smile in return. “Is there something important you need to tell me?”
She took his hand, placing it against her as she said, “Meet your heir, my king.”
“Gemma.” A reverent whisper.
“A girl? Susanna said it was too soon to tell.”
“I have it on good authority.”
“But you wanted a son.”
“No,” he argued against that faint whisper of disappointment. “I wanted a child made between us.” He stroked her abdomen, adoring the life growing within. “Besides, if she’s anything like her mother, who’s to say she can’t rule?”
“Gemma.” Her happiness spilled over. “Thank you. My mother would be so pleased.”
“She gave me a message for you.”
Kendra went very still, about to question until she saw the absolute of it in his uplifted stare. “What did she tell you?”
“That she didn’t take her own life. That she would never, ever have left you and your father. I suspect Martine killed her, afraid she’d lose her hold over the throne.”
Sorrow softened her features, but a sweet relief shone through, a faint rainbow after an emotional storm.
“I’m sorry you lost everyone you loved,” he said at last.
“Not everyone. I have Silas and Bree.” She adored his face with her gaze. “You and your family. Our child. I’m surrounded by love. Only one thing could make me happier.” She paused long enough for him to raise his brows. “Come up here and kiss me.”
Cale settled next to her on the bed. Palm still resting on her middle, he leaned in to touch his mouth to hers, moving slowly, tenderly, breathing against her lips, “I love you, Katy. I’m going to prove that to you for the rest of our lives.”
“You don’t have to prove it, Cale. But frequent reminders would be appreciated.”
He grinned. His mood sobered once more as he patted the ledgers. “What will you do with your fortune?”
“Give it to you for our family.”
He laughed, finally relaxing. “Baby, we’ve got so damn much money we could never spend it all. You do something with it, something that pleases you. Something to honor a good man.”
“Because of another good man.”
Kendra kissed him, and finally, Cale believed those words.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“A going away party? Hosted by Silas MacCreedy?” Cale smirked. “Oh, this will be fun.”
Kendra gave his arm a smack as he reached up to swing her out of the SUV. “Be nice.”
He held her up, lost in looking at her. His angel, with her pale gold halo of curls, sweet smile, and floaty white dress that made him think of a wedding. Or a negligee. Catching that spark in his eyes, hers lit with an answering fire. Slowly, his arms bent, lowering her until she layered against his body and upon his lips.
Brigit sighed in irritation. She’d complained about her bloated figure and swollen feet the entire ride but when Giles helped her down from the front seat, she absolutely stunned in a flattering wrap dress of emerald green and for once, sensible heels. “Get a freaking room.”
Kendra looked up at him with brows raised.
“Not until everyone gets a look at my gorgeous baby mama.”
Kendra laughed, confiding, “It was all I could do to keep him from slapping a “Baby on Board” bumper sticker on my belly.”
Jacques LaRoche’s Cheveux du Chien was closed to the public for the night. Nica stood at the open bar in a chic cocktail dress, helping their buxom waitress Amber pull draughts from the taps and mix drinks while food from Helen’s kitchen filled the plates of circulating guests.
Cale paused in the doorway. Not so long ago, he’d seen many of these faces for the first time and had felt himself an outsider, unwelcomed among them. Now, he felt at home.
“Hail to the king, baby!”
Rico’s shout had attention turning his way. That’s all it took to goad his swagger into overcoming fuzzy emotions.
Like him, his brothers were dressed in Terriot fine from flashing diamonds in their ears to sleek grey suits with shirts a shade darker. Looking rough and handsome and impossibly arrogant standing together in an impressive group, they exchanged manly hugs with their leader and had gentle kisses for their queen.
To escape Kendra’s embarrassing concern over his healing wound, Kip demanded of Cale, “Spill! I’m hearing all kinds of crazy ass rumors about your fight, taking out Lee, and your standoff with James. Some are saying it was voodoo or magic.”
Cale laughed, his gaze meeting Max Savoie’s as he approached, his arm about a leather wrapped Cee Cee, with Silas by his side. “Just crazy rumors, brother. Why would I discourage them from making me a legend in more than my own mind?” With a nod to McCreedy, he gripped Max’s hand firmly then warmly embraced his dead sexy NOPD date.
“Congratulations,” she told him, getting him beaming wide all over again as if the first m
ale to ever seed an heir. “None of we ladies were in the least bit surprised, except by why it took you so long to figure it out.”
“Hey,” he cried in his own defense, “I’m not the detective.” He started getting all shiny-eyed again as he curled Kendra in tight. He couldn’t have her close enough.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
Silas’s surprised mutter drew Cale’s attention.
Rueben Guedry, bold as brass, had crashed their party.
Looking sleek and darkly dangerous in a hip-length black coat over jeans and beautiful tooled boots, dove grey hat angled so it concealed his eyes, the uninvited clan leader approached, flanked by the lovely Mia and, more surprisingly, T-Ray Roux.
“What the hell are they doing here?”
Hearing MacCreedy’s growl, Rueben offered a chilly smile. “Come to pay our respects to a most worthy adversary.” He started to put out his hand to Cale only to find Rico and Colin instantly between them, squared off and bristling protectively.
Appreciating the gesture on both sides, Cale touched his brothers’ arms with a murmur of, “It’s okay,” so they’d step aside, letting him accept the proffered hand. “Rueben, you’re taking a risk coming here.”
“I consider myself under your protection.”
Cale grinned at that irony. “Pretty ballsy assumption.”
Rueben gave him a cool once over. “You’re looking better than when we last met.”
“Like I said, I’m never weak when strength is demanded.”
“A lot was demanded, from what I understand. I respect that. And the fact that you allowed Mr. Roux to be standing here tonight. That was surprisingly generous.”
Cale’s gaze cut briefly to his worse-for-wear opponent. “I owed him. That debt’s paid.”
“Understood. I think we’d have worked well together.”
Cale gestured to Colin. “My brother will stand for me. Though you may find him less generous with his favors.”
Rueben assessed the larger, stoic Terriot. “That’ll be between him and Mia. She assures me they’ll get along well.”
Cale looked between them, raising an uncertain brow before he gestured to Max. “Rueben, Max Savoie and Detective Charlotte Cassie. You know Silas.”