There's Something About Werewolves: Seven Brides for Seven Shifters, Book 1
Page 24
“You wait one minute, Lennox Anjali Averdeen,” Gran shouted, her voice puffing out in a heated huff. “You can’t blame Garrett for everything.”
Lennox dropped her arms to her sides. “But he—”
Gran didn’t want any excuses. “He chose,” she said. “That’s what Garrett did. Maybe he chose wrong, maybe he didn’t. But he chose Tina and he let you go.” Gran shook her umbrella in frustration. “What he didn’t do was play with your heart. Not the way you did with Ian.”
The younger Averdeen only answered with a short shocked gasp.
The elder Averdeen didn’t relent. “Don’t act all shocked and affronted, Leni.” Gran swung her still open umbrella in a circle. “Look around, girl. Look at this mess you’ve made. A man I know you love as much as yourself is broken today because you strung him along for what had to feel like a hundred years.”
“I didn’t—” Lennox began.
Gran tossed the umbrella aside and wrapped her granddaughter up in a bone-breaking hug. “I know you didn’t mean to, baby, I know. But you broke Ian’s heart anyway. And you did it so callously, as though you’d earned the right to do it.”
Lennox leaned down into her grandmother’s embrace, burying her face in the thick bun caught at the nape of Gran’s neck. Gran patted Lennox’s back in a heavy-handed rhythm that seemed equal parts consolation and punishment. “But it wasn’t your right, Leni. No one has the right to willingly break a heart. And you were a stone-cold bitch about it.”
Lennox trembled where she stood. Garrett couldn’t see her face but he knew Gran’s words filled Lennox with guilt and self-recriminations. He heard it in the quiet sobbing breath she exhaled before covering her face.
Garrett decided to take the opening Gran had given him. He dropped to his knees rather than drop into an early grave as Lennox had suggested before Gran’s outburst.
Confession time. “Elle, I followed you the day we met,” he said.
“What?” Lennox turned back, stunned, while Gran took a step away.
Garrett inched forward on his knees, knowing he wouldn’t get another chance. “The day we met I arrived at the train station the same time you did. I scented you and you intoxicated me. I had to follow you.”
“No,” she said. “We met in the foyer at the house.”
Garrett swallowed hard, nerves suddenly overtaking him. “I followed you to the house. When you flashed that amazing smile and asked if I’d come to rent a room.” He sighed. “I would’ve said yes to dancing in hell just to see you smile again.”
“Get up,” she said.
“I won’t. Not until you agree to marry me.”
“Then you’re going to spend the rest of your life on your knees.”
He ignored her ire. “When Tina came along I got confused. She checked off every box on my most-wanted-in-a-woman list. You were nothing I’d ever expected. I didn’t understand.”
Lennox sucked in one corner of her bottom lip. “You loved her.”
He nodded. “Yes, I did. I still do. She was everything I’d dreamed of in a woman. But you, Elle, you surpassed those dreams and tilted my world.” Garrett stopped, unsure of what it would mean to say the words he’d never allowed himself to think. Aw hell. He exhaled and let it all loose. “Tina was my wife but you’re my soul mate.”
Lennox lifted one hand, as though to reach for him, but balled it quickly back into a fist. “Get up and get the hell out.” She stamped her foot and pointed in the direction of the driveway.
Garrett inched a bit closer, still on his knees. “From this moment on, I only go where you go. No force of nature will ever separate us again.”
She covered her mouth. “Why? How did you come up with this now?”
Inching closer, he took hold of her hips to caress up and down her outer thighs. “I missed you every day, Elle. I missed laying my head in your lap and hearing the words of comfort you always have for me.” He rested his forehead against her belly, inhaling her scent—peaches and brown sugar. His. “I loved my wife but yours is the lap I wanted to lay in. You’re the one I wanted to tell my dreams to.”
“Get up, Garrett.” She said it so casually.
He dug in, gripping her tighter. “No. Not until you say you’ll be my wife.”
“Get up, Garrett.”
“No, you have to marry me, Elle.”
“And I’m telling you.” She unleashed a breathtaking smile. “Get up, Garrett.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” Holding out her hands to him she helped him off the ground. Garrett took hold of her fingertips and yanked her to him, crushing her in a kiss.
“Yes!” Nox yelled in the background.
Sheriff Stan the Exterminator married them right there and then, in the backyard of Averdeen Manor, with the scent of peaches on the breeze. Jules and Cash stood up as maid of honor and best man. Gran lit their unity candles, and Nox gave Lennox two roses, one from him, the other as a stand in for Paolo. Lennox cried a little.
Afterward Garrett twirled his wife on the makeshift dance floor of their back porch. His Elle had truly become his. He kissed her breathless, holding on to her for life because without her, life didn’t mean as much. Garrett couldn’t believe he’d been graced enough to marry the love of his life—twice.
As he and Lennox danced he caught sight of Gran and Nox. They exchanged a fist bump. “Nicely done, grandson,” Gran said.
“Good job, Grandma,” Nox shot back.
Lennox tapped him on the chest. “Garrett, are you getting the same feeling I am?”
He grumbled in response. “A feeling the two of them planned the whole thing?”
“Um, yeah.” Lennox burst out laughing.
He kissed her again. “It’s not funny, wifey.”
She rubbed her cheek against his light shadow of a beard. “Oh, hubby, it’s hilarious.”
Garrett clenched his jaw in mock anger. “Did you two set us up?” he said to Gran and his son.
Gran shrugged her narrow shoulders. “How should I know? Ask my great grandson.” She jerked a thumb at Nox, who now towered over her. “He’s the giant dog who jumps through people’s windows in the middle of the night and scares the bejeesus out of them.”
When Garrett refused to laugh Lennox thumped him on the chest again. “Garrett, you have to give them points for pure genius. After all, you got me in the deal.”
“Yeah?” he asked nearly purring. “What are you going to do for me?”
“Make you help me find Ian, so we can apologize to him and tell him how much we love him,” she said, her eyes momentarily sad.
Garrett whacked her on the bottom. “I don’t love him.”
He said this partially to make her smile but also because he indisputably did not love Mr. Chuckles.
His wife glared at him. “Yes, we do. We love Ian.”
“Nope. We don’t even like him in the way we’re supposed to appreciate three-and-a-half-hour sweeping dramas complete with thematic metaphors that make most people twitchy and leave you with a bruised ass from sitting in your theater seat too long.”
Lennox didn’t flinch. “We. Adore. Ian. And we’re going to tell him when we find him.” She arched a brow. It scared Garrett a little.
He groaned. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t you worry.” He flashed her a gentle smile that turned wolfish. “Once I find Chuckles and we become Gian or Ianarrett or whatever the hell couple name Hollywood decides to give our love, what are you going to do for me then?”
Lennox bit her bottom lip. “All kinds of wickedly good things.”
He nipped the same lip. “You going to call me daddy?”
“Oh yes, daddy. Yes.”
Garrett leaned in for yet another kiss. He got her palm instead. Lennox peered over her hand. “First give credit where credit is due,” she said. “Nox and Gran fixed o
ur lives.”
Grudgingly Garrett did as his wife commanded. He bowed to Gran and nodded to his son. In response, the old broad and Monster Mutt grinned like the coconspirators they were.
Then Nox transformed into a wolf and chased his screaming godmother up into her favorite peach tree.
About the Author
Thalia Eames turns up the sexy fun in romantic comedies filled with attitude and steam. Action, humor, and love are her favorite ingredients and she’s cooking up great reads.
Look for these titles by Thalia Eames
Coming Soon:
Seven Brides for Seven Shifters
The Devil is a Werewolf
What Werewolves Want
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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There’s Something About Werewolves
Copyright © 2015 by Thalia Eames
ISBN: 978-1-61922-856-6
Edited by Latoya Smith
Cover by Gabrielle Prendergast
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: June 2015
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