by Thalia Eames
Gran threw herself over her bent back and hugged. “Call Dillon,” she said. “My baby girl needs a doctor.”
“She doesn’t need a doctor,” Garrett said. “She needs rest and peace of mind.”
She’d lost a good piece of her mind already. Lennox shrugged free of her grandmother, kissed the old girl on the cheek, and stood. “I’m going for a run.”
With that, she straightened her clothes and headed for her room. No. Not her room. The room Garrett had lent her. Inside her borrowed closet she found a full wardrobe of clothes with the tags still on, along with several beautiful vintage items. Every piece perfectly suited her style. Garrett knew her so well. He’d bought her nearly thirty pairs of shoes too. Many of them in the updated ’50s style she preferred. Hell, the man had even provided a ton of workout clothes. Odd how his generosity made her want to cry. Only Lennox didn’t do the crying thing. Her eyes might get wet from time to time but that was the limit.
She slipped into a black racer-back top, with lime-green panels on the side, and the matching spandex leggings. Topping it off with a pair of FiveFingers running shoes, she pulled the Velcro flaps tight over the arches of her feet.
A run would clear her mind. Lennox rolled her neck and marveled for a second time at how fast she healed. At most she kept a cold for half a day and her physical injuries healed three times faster than doctors expected. The same as with Gran.
Exiting the room, she made a right turn. To avoid the rest of the household she slipped out the side door and into the woods. Something nagged at her but she didn’t give herself time to think. She needed to sweat. She didn’t want to hear her own thoughts, only the wind rushing past her ears.
Leaping over a fallen log, she fell into an easy pace. She dodged in and out of the trees as she ran, loving every minute of it. Lennox hadn’t run in the woods in so long. As an adult she’d kept to the roads. But as a kid she’d run in here all the time. That nagging at the edge of her mind pushed forward. She ignored it, concentrating on the rhythm of her feet striking the soft moss.
As a tween she’d been free to run. She’d played catch with the trees and chased the shadows. She wanted to be there again. To never have to make the hard choices, be free of responsibility, free of fear.
Fear killed.
Her heart stuttered and she lost her footing. Memories were equally deadly. Picking up her pace, she steadied her body. Her mind still whispered of the danger. The things she feared stalked the woods. Red wolves, coyotes, and stray dogs ruled here.
She would have turned back but she heard a noise behind her. The crackle of leaves, a snapping twig…perhaps the rush of someone or something’s breathing. Lennox ran faster. No. No. Not this time. She wouldn’t let fear and memory beat her down. But she remembered despite herself. The dog, wolf, or coyote from that long-ago day pushed through the fog of the past and growled.
She had turned thirteen on the day the beast tracked her. She realized she’d been hunted then. The animal had paced her just beyond her field of vision. Stalking.
When it’d found the right moment it pounced. Cruel teeth seared deep into the flesh of her hip. She’d tasted coopery blood as she tumbled and struck the ground, face first. She’d flipped over to face it. The acid of terror burned her throat when the beast straddled her chest. Every second stretched into an eternity of terror. Amber eyes stared into her; hot breath sucked in all available air until she thought she would suffocate. Crouching low, its nose touching her face, it leaped over her head. As she’d scrambled in the opposite direction the beast turned for one final glance. Their gazes held. Then it disappeared into the trees.
Here and now her legs faltered again. Another twig snapped. Were those footsteps? She wanted to scream but she didn’t want the beast to know where she was. If it was searching for her again, she should be quiet, invisible. She looked for a tree to climb but the lowest branches surrounding her were out of reach. Panicked, she hid behind the widest trunk she could find and slid soundlessly to the ground.
The scar on her hip sizzled like a griddle burn. Bad memories became physical. They brought the injury to freshly wounded life and clawed at her throat. If a dog, or coyote, or, worst, a wolf chased her, she’d surrender completely to the fear. The beast had beaten her twenty years ago and she still hadn’t regained enough strength to fight it off. If it came for her again, she’d give in.
Footsteps, two sets, crushed leaves as they ran through the woods. Lennox curled into a ball, making herself as small as possible. Two animals chased her this time. Two beasts could cut off any path to escape she chose. Best to be quiet, to play dead, and hope to remain unseen.
She lost her faith in her invisibility as the footfalls grew louder, quickly closing the distance between her and them. She bit into her bottom lip and tasted a trace of blood. How many scars would the beasts leave her with this time around?
“You’re too loud,” the voice she adored said. “I’m more than twice your size and am making less noise than you.”
Garrett?
Her heart stopped but her lungs sucked in fresh air. Strange how that worked.
“I’m trying,” Nox said. “Why can’t I just change and do it?”
“Baby steps,” Garrett replied. “Ease into it first. I’m worried about your lack of control.”
Silence sat between them for a few moments. “Don’t give me that look. It’s my fault you don’t have control, okay. Better?”
Lennox guessed Nox must have nodded because they started running again. They’d pass her hiding place in a few seconds. She couldn’t let them see her curled up against a tree, shivering like a hairless baby monkey. Not hardly. So she blinked away the terror-induced moisture in her eyes and did the most sensible thing she could think of. She started tying her shoes. Only the FiveFingers had Velcro flaps. Dammit. She undid and redid the flaps a couple of times until the smaller, louder footsteps stopped to her right.
She looked up and smiled. “Hey, Nox. What are you doing out here?”
Nox inclined his head to one side and stared down at her. A full range of glee, puzzlement, and something she couldn’t name transformed his expression several times over. Finally he said, “You’ve been crying. I can smell the salt from tears.”
“The hell you say,” Lennox said a little too loudly. She wiped her face but her fingers came away dry. Could Nox really smell tears she hadn’t shed? If so, he’d inherited the trick. Garrett had an incredible sense of smell too.
“Look, nut bucket…” She reached out for Nox to help her up. He took hold and pulled her to her feet. “When I run I’m so quick the wind starts whipping past me…” She mimed running, doing a shimmy and pumping her arms. “The next thing I know tears start flowing.” She stopped to check whether or not her godson was buying her nonsense. He nodded. She had him fooled. To seal the deal she finished with, “I ain’t sad. I’m quick.”
Garrett scoffed from behind them. “You’re out of your mind,” he said.
“No I ain’t,” she replied, saucily sticking out her chin. “I’ll race you two to the lake and then we’ll see.” Two blurs of Westlake male whizzed past her before she finished. Holy hell. Go time.
Lennox beat Nox to the grassy shore of the lake by a few paces. Garrett pushed away from the tree trunk he’d been leaning on and crossed his arms. It’d taken her all of sixty seconds to make it to the lakeshore. How long had Garrett been waiting? “Nice to see you two again, Snail and Molasses,” he said. “How was the trip?”
On a quick glance at Nox, Lennox pointed. “He’s snail. I’m molasses.”
Nox made one of those indignant sounds teenage boys excel at. “I had my backpack on.”
She caught him in a hold somewhere between a headlock and hugging his neck. “Oh yeah. Sure, your iPad weighs a ton.”
Nox pretended to struggle. He flailed, begging for mercy before scooping her off the groun
d. Lennox yelped—she’d been doing a lot of that lately.
Holding her high, by her waist and the crook of her knees, Nox walked over to his father. “Here,” he said, trying to hand her off.
Garrett’s arms remained crossed. “What do you want me to do with her?”
“I don’t know.” Nox shrugged. “Look after her while I set us up to play.”
“You got any money?” Garrett asked.
“I’m supposed to inherit a ton,” Nox said, looking hopeful.
“Put me down, you nut,” Lennox interrupted their banter. “What am I? A puppy?”
Nox put her down and jogged over to the backpack he’d dropped during their wrestling. Garrett looked her over. “Well, you are pretty cute with those ponytails on either side of your head. Kinda like those little dogs. What are they called?” He pondered for a second. “Ah, Shih Tzus.”
“Bite me, big boy.”
“We tried that this morning.”
And now she needed to change the subject. Why did he have to bring up their early-morning rendezvous with her still so confused, and horny, and scared from the woods, and horny, and homeless. Oh yeah, and hornier than a horny toad riding a Texas longhorn while playing trumpet in the horn section of a jazz band. Damn she needed to get laid.
Instead of sharing that fact with Garrett, she stretched and pretended to watch boats glide by on the lake. She needed to get out there and go wake boarding sometime this summer. Sports relieved a lot of her stress. Maybe Nox would want to go too. Speaking of Nox. “Why is that kid so strong?” she asked Garrett. “I’m still freaked out from him picking me up.”
Garrett shrugged with the same easy grace as Nox. “He’s my son.”
“You should teach a class on clarity and how not to bring it to a situation.”
His brows lifted in response. She echoed his expression. When a slow smile curved his delectable lips butterflies with wings of liquid flame began to flutter in her belly. Lennox dropped to a bent knee in order to tie the nonexistent laces on her sneakers for a second time. Garrett took in a deep breath as if smelling the air. When she looked at him his amused expression turned positively wicked.
Lennox blanched. If Garrett got her naked again, he was going to eat her alive. Her nipples did the pebbling thing. She chewed the inside of her cheek. “You look like the big bad wolf,” she said.
He shook himself and turned to face the lake. “Sorry. Be assured, I didn’t get anything out of this morning’s session. I focused on taking care of your needs.” He did that thing where he rubbed his five o’clock shadow hard enough to wipe it off his face. “It won’t happen again.”
Well, hallelujah. She didn’t need the complication of Garrett wanting her. Not when she knew it would only be sexual and not a long-term commitment. Plus, she didn’t want to be with Garrett in a lifelong “married with babies” kind of way anymore. Right? Sure.
“I’m ready,” Nox called to them from the tree line. Garrett nodded and joined his son. Lennox followed. “What game are you going to play?”
“Ricochet,” Nox said, jogging backwards deeper into the woods.
A bright patch of red caught Lennox’s eye, then green and blue, pink, orange. Rubber balls decorated the bases of several of the trees around the area. “How do you play?”
“Watch,” Nox said. “Ready, Dad?”
“More ready than you.” Garrett picked up a bright pink ball and teased Nox by pretending he was going to throw it in several different directions. The kid’s eyes darted, more focused on the ball than on his father. Nox tensed and bent at the knees as though ready to pounce. Garrett hurled the ball to the far left. It bounced off a tree, flew in a V-shape and hit another tree. It ricocheted a second time before Nox ran between the branches, leaped, and caught it.
Aha. Ricochet. Now she understood. The level of athletic ability needed to play this game boggled the mind. Lennox wasn’t sure she could handle it. It took hand-eye coordination, speed, and a strong knowledge of geometry. Lennox had the first two in her skill set but the third would test her.
Garrett continued to throw and Nox caught several of the balls. Although some of the zigzag patterns Garrett devised were too much for her godson. He missed more than a few catches. Nox didn’t pout, though. He listened to his dad’s pointers, picked himself up when he fell and kept going. After an hour of watching them play Lennox could see improvement. Pride made her puff out her chest a little more.
She couldn’t pinpoint when it first started, but at some point she’d developed a love for watching fathers spend time with their children. The habit definitely started before her father died. Perhaps because her dad had adored her—she knew how it felt to stand in the glow of fatherly love—seeing children receive that kind of adoration usually made her happy. Just not today. Today Garrett and Nox’s playtime broke her heart.
She didn’t want to watch. Not when it came to them. She wanted to be a part of it all. She daydreamed about calling out strategies to Nox and cheering him on to beat his dad. She wanted Garrett to give her that “you’re going to find yourself in a lot of trouble if you keep that up” look he’d perfected. And when she refused to heed his warning she wanted him to pick her up and silence her with kisses. Maybe Nox would break them up, all the while holding his stomach and grousing about how nauseous they made him. That was what she dreamed of. And she wanted it so bad she had to turn away from them.
Why not her? Garrett could’ve made a life with her rather than eloping with Tina. Then Nox would be hers. Garrett would be hers too and it wouldn’t matter that she’d lost her home yesterday because home would always be where they were.
Her fist pounded a patch of bark off a tree trunk. She’d bottled up her emotions for so long they swelled inside her to the point of overflow. She thought she might pop if she didn’t let go soon. More than want, she needed to give her love to them, to Nox and Garrett, and she wanted them to give the same measure of love right back.
Without a backward glance, she started to walk along the shoreline toward Garrett’s house. She and Gran were going to get the hell out of there. Garrett had nearly gone ballistic when Nox asked her to be his godmother for real and she’d said yes. Plus, he’d told her he had no plans on touching her again. He’d been playing the part of sexual maintenance man when he’d made her beg and moan and come that morning. It hadn’t meant anything more to him than a plumber snaking out a customer’s pipes.
What else could she do with that knowledge? She needed to remove herself from temptation.
“Leni, where are you going?” Nox yelled behind her.
She didn’t turnaround. “I’m still pretty tired. I’m headed to the house.”
A hand landed on her shoulder, stopping her cold. Garrett spun her around.
Where the hell had he come from so fast?
He leaned in to whisper, “You lied to Nox before. When we’re alone you’re going to tell me why you almost cried and what scared you so bad.”
Lennox didn’t have the words. So much of the last three days felt unreal. Garrett knew things he shouldn’t, he moved faster than possible, and he and Ian acted like animals around each other. Not to mention the flickering eyes. She hadn’t had time to think about it thoroughly but things were wonky in LuPines. More than anything else Garrett’s hands on her made it impossible to think. If she had the choice, she’d collapse into his arms and let him take care of everything.
Normally his tone and domineering ways would set her off. She didn’t have the strength to argue with him at the moment. She just stood there, a scrap of paper on the wind, waiting for fate to blow her wherever it chose.
Garrett cleared his throat, loudly enough for Nox to hear. “We’ll go with you.”
They’d never truly be with her. Not the way she wanted. Lennox shrugged away from the warm weight of the hand on her shoulder. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”
Chapter Nine
Nox ran ahead. Tentatively he took Lennox’s hand. Garrett froze mid-step watching her body tense. Don’t do this, Elle. Not now, he silently begged her. He might have to intervene before Nox felt the sting of rejection in her stiff fingers.
Garrett took a few steps forward. Lennox turned to look at his son. They stared at each other for longer than Garrett could stand. Then she pulled their grasped hands up to cover her heart and squeezed. Sighing, she and Nox strolled off as godmother and godson, their steps in perfect sync.
For the first time in more than ten years Garrett had no idea what to do. Hell, he didn’t even know what he wanted out of this messed-up situation. Which made him antsy. Anderson G. Westlake always knew what he wanted. Okay, except for those rare moments when he didn’t. Like now. Aw hell, he’d started thinking in circles.
Inventory time. The things he knew for sure: First, he needed to get Nox trained to Ian’s satisfaction and remove his son from werewolf politics for good. Second, Lennox had become a temptation he didn’t have the strength to resist. Truth be known, he didn’t want to deny their attraction any longer. If he didn’t separate himself and his son from Lennox and Gran, they’d become a family. He’d be happy with that outcome but he needed Lennox to be an auntie and not a second mom or a wife.
The role he wanted her to play conflicted with the fact he kept imagining her naked and straddling him—with his hardness buried so deep inside her they became one person.
Oh, hells yeah, that would be nice. He fixed his gaze on Lennox’s swaying backside. The Elle in his fantasy lifted off his body, turned, and switched to reverse cowgirl position. Her ample ass spread across his stomach in a feast of silken flesh. Fantasy Elle rolled her hips. His dream self gripped those hips and came hard, arching off the imagined bed. Real-life Garrett made a noise somewhere between a groan and a howl.