by Reina Torres
“Well, I couldn’t drive there.”
Paige’s eyes widened at him.
Cage shrugged. “It’s the truth. Besides, they have different movies going East versus West.”
Frances kept her eyes on a spot on the floor.
“And it doesn’t matter if I knew what your dad had planned, Frances. When I heard that he wanted me to take care of you. I wanted to do it.” He looked at her, but she didn’t move, staring at that place on the floor. “While Social Services took care of your paperwork, Paige and Willa, Boone’s mate, they helped me get some things for you. Told me to wait for the rest until you were here. They thought I wouldn’t have a clue. And they were right.”
Frances turned a little bit, her gaze lifting to about his knees. “So, you really wanted me to pick out the rest of the stuff? It wasn’t because you didn’t want to?”
He looked at Paige and saw the hopeful look in her eyes. “I knew I’d mess it up. There would have been some kind of cartoon pony blanket on your bed if I’d tried to pick stuff up on my own.”
He saw Frances’ nose wrinkle up at the thought.
“I would have hated that.” Frances groaned. “I’m glad you waited.”
Cage chuckled. “You would have loved to see the curtains I probably would have brought home.”
There was almost a smile on her face when she looked him in the eye. “I’m sure it would have been shambolic.”
It was Cage’s turn to be confused. “If that means horrific or ridiculous, then yes.”
From the corner of his eye he saw Paige put her hand on Devlin’s arm. “We should go.”
Cage nodded and caught Devlin’s eye. “Thanks for coming.”
Paige moved closer to Frances. “I’ll set up some time with you to go over your classes in the next few days.”
Frances nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”
Leaning in to speak softly to Frances, Paige had a few more words for the teen. “He’s trying Frances. Men like Cage, they’re hard to understand sometimes, but if there’s one thing I know. They care about family. And if they call you family, that’s all that matters. They’re going to be there for you.”
Frances didn’t answer, and Paige, maybe Paige didn’t remember that Cage’s hearing was sensitive enough for him to hear every word. Taking hold of Devlin’s arm, Paige moved to the door and gave Cage a wink on the way out.
Devlin covered her hand with his and gave it a squeeze. He’d seen the wink. And even though Devlin knew there was nothing between him and Paige, his tiger wasn’t taking any chances.
And that was the way of it. He started to move toward the door to open it for them, but Devlin shook his head. He opened the door and ushered his mate outside, closing it after them with the click of the lock.
That left him alone with Frances and the knot in his stomach. He wanted to say something, but for the life of him he didn’t know what. It was probably a bad idea, but he opened his mouth and started talking.
“Your father was like a brother to me, and when he decided to leave the unit, when he found out that your mother was pregnant, I hated it. It wasn’t the same after he left. The unit was harder to deal with, the days longer.
“But when he called me after you were born, when I heard him talking about you, hearing you cry, because you were in his arms. He was a new man, Frances. He was a dad. Because of you.
“And I stopped wishing he’d come back to the unit. I stopped waiting for things to go back the way things were because it would never go back. He had you and he had your mother. He was happy. At peace. And I knew he was doing what he had to do.”
“Because he was stuck with me?” Frances curled into herself and started to back away from him.
Cage grabbed her shoulders and held her still. “Because he loved you. And he loved your mother. His mate.
“And when we lost them, he made sure that you had me.” He felt the fight go out of her a moment later, with the rush of her exhaled breath. “And I know I’m crap at this, but I’m trying.”
He saw her eyes go dark and then amber with her lion. He saw her emotions flicker across her face, saw her face twist up with anger. “I don’t want you to try.”
She snarled at him, fangs breaking through her gums, eyes flashing like reflectors in headlights.
“I want my dad!”
She launched at him, claws tearing through his shirt and into his skin, nearly stripping flesh from muscle.
He got his hands up, managing to hold onto her wrists. Cage let her kick and scream and flail at him. His only aim was to keep her from hurting herself or raising his jaguar against her.
She got in a couple of good swipes and Cage took the damage and felt a cathartic release of his own anguish and grief. He had no way to know how much time had passed. He only knew that the storm was almost over when Frances sagged against him. He managed to lift her in his arms and take her to her room.
The blood from his ruined skin had seeped into her clothing, so he laid her on top of the covers.
“Frances?”
She didn’t say a thing right away, her shoulders and chest rising and falling in short gasps and hiccups.
“You should get some rest, you’ll need it, or you’ll have a huge headache tomorrow.” He looked back at the door and let out a breath, ignoring the aches and the blood still seeping from his wounds. “Get some rest and I’ll see you in the morning.”
Before he took a step away from the bed her hand snaked out and grabbed his wrist. “Cage?”
He couldn’t help but feel the pain in her voice. It echoed through his body and called out to the beast within.
“Yeah?”
Frances peered up at him through half-lidded eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to say that. Get some-”
“I was wrong. I turned a simple meeting into a complete cock up.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me. You got the short end of this whole situation. You lost your parents. Your home. Your whole country. And I gained a grumpy teenaged girl with crazy hair and claws. ‘Night.”
He started to move, but she still held onto his wrist. Cage sat down beside her and let her hold onto him as she slowly fell asleep. Only when he was sure that she’d drifted off did he extricate his wrist from her hand and head into the bathroom to clean up. It was going to be a pain to pull the ruined fabric of his shirt out of his healing wounds and it was going to hurt like hell, but it was worth it.
For the first time since he’d heard that his friend had passed away, he was hopeful that he wasn’t going to make a complete failure out of Frances’ life.
Chapter Seven
Maggie climbed the stairs to Cage’s apartment, keeping an eye on the street, if someone walked up to the diner she could call down and let them know to have a seat. She was only going to be a minute.
At the top landing she had to take a steadying breath just to make sure her hand wasn’t shaking the paper bag with the sandwiches in it. It was like she was standing out on the front porch of her high school crush.
Because she was.
And it wasn’t really high school so much as a group home and a last chance graduation program, but no one’s perfect.
Before she lost her nerve, she knocked on the door twice and waited. When he didn’t answer after a minute, she tried again.
Leaning her head against the door, she didn’t hear a thing.
A noise down the street turned her head and she saw a pick-up truck coming down the long access road toward their neck of the industrial woods. “Dang it.”
She made one last knock on the door. “Well, if someone doesn’t answer I’ll-”
The door swung open and she turned.
Cage was standing just inside, bare-chested, his hair sleep-tousled, and his long cotton sleep pants barely holding onto his hips. In a word, he was… delicious.
“Mornin’ gorgeous,” his voice was a sleep-laden growl and sexy as hell.
If she had any thoughts
of appearing seductive and irresistible they went out of her head and all she could do was lift her arm and hold up the bag in front of him. “It’s late. I wanted to give you and Frances something to eat for breakfast, before I-”
He pulled the bag from her hand and dropped it on the little table just inside the door, before he stepped out onto the landing and pulled her into his embrace.
“Cage, I-”
Lord, he knew how to kiss.
And his hands… wow. They seemed to be everywhere. Tugging on her ponytail, moving over her back, sliding over her curves and then cupping her backside and tugging her closer so she was up against every inch of his hard heat from her knees to her breasts.
Cage moaned, and she felt the vibrations through her mouth and throat, swallowing his desire as she tangled her tongue with his.
He had her weak in the knees and needy, her arms wrapped around his chest, pulling him closer. When he turned and trailed kisses along her cheek, scratching her tender flesh with the scruff along his jaw, she hissed out a gasp. And then another when his teeth dragged along the shell of her ear.
“Come inside.”
Oh yes, she wanted to so badly, but-
“Cage?” Frances’s voice was heavy with sleep. “Who’s out there with you? Oh!”
Maggie swallowed and managed to pull back enough from Cage and hoped her heart would slip back down from her throat and back into her chest. “Good Morning, Frances.”
“Hey, Maggie, what’s up?”
“You two didn’t come down to the diner for breakfast,” Maggie stepped to the side and lifted a hand to settle some fly away curls against her skin, “so I brought you some sandwiches and-”
“Oh! Food?” Frances grabbed the bag off the table and pulled open the top. Leaning her face into the opening she drew in a deep breath. “Fried egg and bacon sandwiches? Scrummy! Thanks, Maggie!” And then she was gone, disappearing into her room.
“Sorry, Cage, looks like she’s going to eat the whole thing.”
He still had one hand on her hip and he tucked his fingers into the waistband of her jeans and pulled her closer. “That’s alright, Maggie, I’ll get something to eat, later.”
She caught the look in his eyes and wondered if he was considering putting her on the menu. Truthfully, she wouldn’t mind. It wasn’t that it had been a long time since she’d been with a man. Okay, that was part of it, but what was at the heart of the matter was that this was Cage.
Cage Gamble wanted her. She could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, and she could certainly feel it when he touched her, when he pressed up against her and she felt how hard he was against her belly.
Below them, the bell over the front door of the diner jangled, and she pulled away on instinct.
“Come by when you have a minute. I’ll make you something.”
“You make me something every day, Maggie.” His slow grin and his cat-like purr spoke straight to her heart and all the nerves in her body. “I can’t wait to return the favor.”
“I’d like that.” His presence was like a wall of pressure, bearing against her, threatening to roll her under. “But I have to go back… customers, you know?”
He nodded and she pulled back even further.
When he reached out, he caught her elbow before she could pull away.
“Careful,” his grin made her feel warm all over, “you were going to fall.”
She looked down behind her and he was right. Her next step would have sent her falling down the stairs to the ground. “Umm… thanks, Cage.”
“If you’re going to fall for me, Maggie, I’ll take care of you. It won’t hurt.”
Oh, she was sure it would. Falling for a man as hard as Cage Gamble, his personality, she reminded herself, was going to hurt somehow. She doubted that Cage ever ‘gave’ much when he made up his mind about something.
“I have a fight tonight. I want you to come.”
“I don’t know.” She jogged down a few steps, knowing that she had to get into the diner. “Maybe another night.”
“Maggie.” He walked to the end of the landing and leaned down toward her. “You should come.”
“What about Frances? Shouldn’t I stay with her?” A few more steps. She caught Mr. Foley’s eye as he looked out the diner window and raised his hand in greeting. “I can stay with her.”
“I’ve got someone staying with Frances, Maggie. Please come.”
She reached the bottom step and nearly stumbled. “When you’re dressed, come over to the diner and we’ll talk. Okay?”
Maggie had gone a few steps before turning back to look at him, and what a view it was. Standing there near the top landing, Cage was a study in languid beauty, one hand behind his neck, working at tight muscles she’d give her eye-teeth to trail her hands over. Standing bare-chested in the chilly spring morning he made her warm all over and ache in all the best places.
If there was one man in the world that could convince her to hide away in her bedroom for days on end, it would be Cage.
“We’ll see each other later, babe. Bet on it.”
Maggie let out a long breath as she crossed the street and dashed into the diner. Mr. Foley looked up from his newspaper, a cup of coffee in front of him. “I hope you don’t mind.”
She gave him a bright smile. “You angling for my job, Mr. Foley?”
“Oh, no. Not me, Maggie. I enjoy my time reading in the mornings.”
Picking up her apron from the back of one of the chairs, she wrapped it around her waist and tied it in the back. “Same order?”
He gave it a thought. “Hmm, what about we try something new this morning?”
“Oh, a challenge,” she reached for an egg from the tray, knowing that there’d at least be one egg involved, “I can get behind that.”
He looked at the menu board over the pass-through window. “Hmm, why don’t we make Mrs. Foley happy and make it a vegetable omelet?”
Maggie playfully dropped her jaw. “Say it isn’t so!”
“I know… I know… if my employees hear about this they may never respect me again.”
“Well that would be a shame, but I would still respect you, Mr. Foley.”
“You’re a sweetheart, Maggie.”
She set a bunch of vegetables on her cutting board and started to chop them into uniformly sized pieces. “You’re welcome to say that anytime you like,” she set the pan on the burner and dropped the cut veggies in. “My ego will gladly take the propping.”
“Like you need more confidence, Maggie.” He turned the page on his newspaper, “you’ve got it in spades.”
She tucked her chin down so he couldn’t see her expression, even if he looked up right then. “I wish that was true.”
She’d come a long way since her painfully shy and slightly twisted teen persona, but she wasn’t quite as sure of herself as she would like. But, she reminded herself, she was getting there.
That evening, Maggie was glad that her diner was primarily a breakfast to lunch establishment, because it allowed her to have her evenings free. She unpacked the plates she’d brought over from the diner and almost had to dance back a step from the table as Frances descended on the food like… well, a lion.
“It’s a bloody shame,” the younger girl groused, “this balanced diet rubbish.” She poked her fork at the two half-cobbs of corn Maggie had put on her plate. “Just meat is fine for me.”
“Far be it for me to argue with you, but when I spoke to Willa, she gave me the full run down on shifter nutrition. So, I’m afraid as long as you have meals with me, you’ll be forced to eat vegetables and grains along with the meat.”
“What about French Fries,” Frances wondered as she poked at the corn again with the tines of her fork, “that’s a vegetable, right?”
“Ha!” Maggie shook her head. “Keep trying.”
Frances cut off a piece of the steak and smiled when she saw how red it was inside. “Oh, perfect.” She stuffed a piece of the meat into her mouth a
nd moved it over into her cheek. “So, have you met any of Willa’s boys?”
Maggie almost swallowed her water down the wrong pipe. Coughing slightly, she managed not to choke. “Is that a thinly veiled hint for information?”
Frances shrugged as she chewed. “Maybe?”
Picking up one of the half-cobs, Maggie held it between her fingers on both sides. “I guess it can’t be too easy meeting boys when you’re the new girl.”
Frances groaned. “Not just the new girl, but the orphaned shifter to boot. Talk about a recipe for isolation.”
That hit close to home and Maggie let out a sigh, setting her cob back down to her plate without a bite. “I can see how that would be a pain.”
Picking up her napkin, Frances dabbed at the corner of her mouth. “Those awkward teenage feelings they talk about in all of those mental-health pamphlets? Add an accent and some sharp claws and yep. It’s fairly hell nearly every day.”
“And finding some shifter boys to hang out with might seem like half the battle is over.”
Frances paused with another bite hovering before her mouth. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care if folks are shifter or just plain human, but yeah, right now, the less I have to explain myself, the better.”
“Dealing without the pressure, that must seem like heaven!”
Shrugging, Frances barely hid her smile. “You really do understand. Getting along with the curious folks and the evil folks leave me proper knackered. Sometimes I get back here and all I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep.”
Maggie finished another bite and reached for her napkin. “Is that what you’re planning to do tonight? Get your homework done and go to sleep?”
Frances sighed. “What else do I have to do?” A sly smile touched her lips. “I know that Cage is sending Brass to watch the door, he says it’s to keep me safe, instead of keeping me in.”
Laughing at the sardonic tone of her voice, Maggie reached across the table and touched the back of her hand. “He is protecting you. I hear the fights can get a little rowdy and some of the customers… or whatever they’re called, can get a little into their cups.”