Keeping Her Pride (Ladies of the Pack Book 1)

by Lauren Esker

  "Or at least they're able to fake it," she pointed out.

  A quick flicker of a smile. "True. But I really do like talking to people. It's how I was able to talk my way into business deals when I was sixteen. Who's gonna take a chance at partnering up with a sixteen-year-old kid on a real estate deal? But I got to know my dad's friends, and I really listened to them when they talked about the construction business and house-flipping and all of that. So they already knew me and they liked me, and when they gave me a chance to do a little job for them here and there, I did it well. Competence, asking smart questions, and listening to the answers—that's what it takes to start building a business at sixteen."

  "Good thing you're not full of yourself at all," she teased.

  This brought out a full, brilliant grin. "I prefer to think of it as being clear-eyed about my strengths. In the interests of fairness, I can tell you about my flaws too." He started ticking them off on his fingers. "Stubborn. Little bit of a temper—"

  "Little bit? I heard you in the office today." Debi folded her hands under her chin and smiled sweetly at him. "Or are you only clear-eyed about your virtues?"

  "Okay, maybe it's more than a little bit," he admitted cheerfully. "But I cool off fast. I don't usually stay mad. Just ask my employees. Most of them have gotten chewed out at some point, but I don't stomp around all day holding a grudge. There's only one thing I can't forgive."

  "What's that?" she started to ask, but interrupted herself with the answer. "Oh. Your daughter. She's your berserk button."

  "Of course. Mess with me, screw me over—obviously I won't do business with you again, but I'm not going to waste time being bitter about it. And as for people upsetting me personally, I've been yelled at and insulted and taken for granted, and I don't see any reason to let those people take up valuable mental real estate. I've got too much to do to waste my life worrying about them."

  What a difference from Roger, she couldn't help thinking. For her brother, everything had been about maintaining the pride's image. She'd taken Roger's arrogance for confidence, and had loved and admired him for it.

  But this was real confidence, wasn't it? Unlike Roger, Fletcher wasn't going to feel as if it reflected badly on him if she had an extra helping of dessert or showed up to work with a run in her stocking and her hair less than perfect.

  "And then there's Olivia," she said to draw herself out of her thoughts, the memory of her brother's demeaning taunts echoing in her ears.

  "Yeah ... insult me and I'll get over it, but insult my daughter and you'd better have a good hiding place." His voice was light, but she sensed a fierce undercurrent running beneath it, a leonine aggressiveness that called out to the lioness in her.

  Fletcher wasn't a lion shifter, but when it came to the people he loved, he had a lion in him just the same.

  The waiter arrived with their food before she had time to examine that thought any further, and she discovered a new realm of awkwardness as she tried to maintain demure table manners—napkin in her lap, cutting off tiny bites of steak—when all she really wanted to do was tear into the luscious rare-cooked meat.

  It had been a year since she'd eaten out with anyone. These days, when she decided to splurge on dinner at a restaurant, as opposed to ordering takeout or sticking something in the microwave, she did it alone. The awkward twice-weekly coffee dates with Nia Veliz were the closest thing she'd had to a social life, and all she did at those was sip on an Americano until she could satisfy Nia that she wasn't breaking the law so she could escape from the coffee shop and get on with her day.

  She'd shared meals with her family for most of her life. It shouldn't be awkward to eat with someone again.

  But she desperately wanted Fletcher to like her. She didn't want him to think she was rude or messy or greedy. The more she tried to focus on not dropping anything in her lap or taking a too-large bite, the more self-conscious she got.

  "How's the food?"

  Fletcher spoke through a mouthful. Debi looked up to find that his steak was half gone already, though she'd barely made a dent in hers.

  "If it's not how you like it, or not what you wanted, you can send it back to the kitchen and get something else. This, on the other hand, is exactly what I needed," he added with an almost orgasmic expression, sawing off another hunk of his steak. "God, I'm hungry. I've got to stop working through lunch."

  Debi was hungry too. Starving, actually. And at that realization, something in her snapped. If Fletcher wanted to judge her, he was more than welcome to do so. She sawed off a bite so large she could barely fit it in her mouth.

  It was wonderful.

  After that it was nothing but a frenzy of steak deconstruction for both of them.

  "I really like this place," Fletcher said when both steaks had been reduced to little heaps of trimmed fat accompanied by hollowed-out baked potato skins. "Good ambiance. Great food. I haven't been back in a long time—haven't really been going out much at all, what with Olivia, and everything going on with the company ... oh, hey." He licked his thumb, grinned, and reached across the table. "You've got steak sauce on your nose."

  Debi froze in shock as Fletcher's warm thumb swiped across the tip of her nose. "Well, that's ... embarrassing," she managed weakly as his fingertips dipped lightly to her cheek and brushed across her jaw.

  "It's terrible," Fletcher said, straight-faced. "Worse ..." The ball of his thumb swept ever so lightly across her bottom lip. "I think you might have some on your lips too."

  "Someone should do something about that," she whispered.

  "My thoughts exactly." He leaned forward.

  As kisses went, it wasn't entirely spontaneous: they both had to shuffle their chairs around the table to avoid leaning directly across the candle and setting his tie on fire. At the first soft brush of his lips against hers, though, all thoughts fled. Her mouth opened for him, and his tongue flirted gently around the corners of her lips before meeting her full-on, mouth to mouth. Soft at first, growing ever more heated, the smoldering tension that had burned between them since the first time she'd laid eyes on him flared into a bonfire.

  Fletcher's left hand cupped her face; his right settled against her shoulder, drawing her closer. One of his feet brushed against hers, and she leaned into him, starting to hook her ankle around his, only to have the horrible realization that it was the wrong ankle.

  She yanked her foot away and slid the other into its place, trying to be smooth about it, and instead accidentally kicked him in the Achilles tendon. His kiss had already faltered when he noticed she'd stiffened up. This made him pull back and give her a quizzical look.

  "Sorry," Debi said weakly. "I haven't played footsie with anyone in a long time. Apparently I'm out of practice."

  "You have hard feet, lady."

  "It's my shoes." She poked her non-anklet foot out from under the table to demonstrate. "Pointy toes."

  "Ha. Well." He kissed her again, quickly this time, a light contact of lips on lips. "I was thinking about getting out of here anyway. You wanna?"

  Oh God oh God. It was more than obvious what kind of getting-out-of-here he meant, and she wanted it with every desperate fiber of her thrumming body. His hand still rested on her shoulder, warm and firm. She wanted it to dip lower. Much lower. She wanted—

  ... wanted him to like her, wanted him to trust her, didn't want to scare him away by letting him know how much of a mess she was. Just because he'd enjoyed having dinner with her didn't mean he was prepared to deal with a criminal background and a family who were half dead and half in prison.

  "I think ..." she began, and his lips parted, his eyes warm and intense. "I think I'd like to ... go home? If that's okay. My home, I mean. By myself. I—I have an early morning, and I've been off the dating scene for awhile, and I just want to ..."

  "Take it slow. I get it." He kissed the corner of her mouth very lightly and pulled away. His retreating hand, lifting off her shoulder, left a cool imprint where warmth had been. "It's oka
y. We'll go however slow you want—"

  "Not that slow," she said quickly, and moved forward to kiss him again.

  After their almost-shy first kisses, their mouths slotted into place like puzzle pieces. Debi came up for air with her head spinning and Fletcher's hand tangled in her hair. He cupped the side of her face with his hand and murmured, "Sure you have to get home?"

  "I'm sure." She had no need to fake her regret. More than anything, she wanted to go back to Fletcher's place. She didn't care if he lived in a box under a railroad bridge as long as it had a bed.

  But she couldn't. Not yet. Not until she found some way to explain the monitor anklet, or get rid of it, or ... something.

  Fletcher paid for dinner, over her token protests, and offered her an arm. Debi slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. It felt so right.

  "So where to?" he asked as they went out to the car. "I'd be happy to drive you home—or no, wait, you'll need to pick up your car, won't you? Or did you take public transportation?"

  "The last one," she said. "Parking in downtown Seattle ... you know ..."

  If only it was a choice rather than a necessity. When she was first released on the tracking monitor, the SCB felt that letting her have a car of her own would be too much of a flight risk. It might be possible to talk them into it now, but she was having enough trouble keeping herself financially afloat in her new, reduced circumstances without adding car payments too.

  "I can drive you home, then. If you'd like me to."

  Pro: spending more time with Fletcher. Plus, it would be a relief not to hassle with buses. She sometimes felt like Seattle's public transportation system was intentionally designed so that it was impossible to get anywhere without at least two bus changes.

  But then he'd see the crappy apartment building where she lived, and ... no.

  "It'll be fine. You can drop me off at my bus stop."

  "It doesn't feel right to leave a lady at a bus stop in the middle of the night."

  "Fletcher," she said, as the car doors closed and shut out any possibility of being overheard, "don't forget I'm a lion."

  The corner of his mouth twitched. "It's not that I think you can't take care of yourself. It just feels like the wrong way to end a date."

  Date. It was the first time either of them had admitted it out loud. She wished he hadn't; it had been easier to go on pretending that—

  —that what? That they'd been engaged in totally platonic kissing? That she didn't want to climb across the center console and wrap her legs around his hips and plant her mouth on his? She knew better than anyone that lying to yourself was a loser's game.

  "Tell you what," Fletcher said. "Let me take you for a drive before I drop you off at your bus stop. Would that be all right?"

  Debi sensed a trap but couldn't figure out the shape of it. "All right," she said cautiously.

  The car glided away from the curb, whisper-silent. Fletcher's right hand settled on the center console while he steered with his left. Debi looked down at it and wordlessly shifted her body so her leg pressed against the console, a tacit acknowledgment and invitation. Fletcher slipped his hand over the console and onto her thigh.

  She could still taste him on her lips. His presence was impossible to ignore, a livewire connection; even when she turned to look out the window of the car at the passing lights, she could sense every small movement as he steered one-handed. His fingers, felt through the fabric of her pants, were warm and strong. As he drove south through the sprawling glitter of the city, his thumb rubbed slow circles. She lasted no more than a mile before she put her hand over his.

  She wished he'd move his hand higher—and hoped he wouldn't, because she was teetering on the heated edge of her own self-control.

  They exited the freeway into Beacon Hill. Most of Seattle was gentrifying at a rapid rate, but this neighborhood still looked like most of south Seattle had looked when Debi was a kid: strip malls and chain businesses near the freeway, and away from it, a mix of townhouses, apartments, and single-family homes with weedy yards and chain-link dog fences. Streetlights were sparse out here; the sky lit their way with the city's nighttime glow. There were no curbs or sidewalks, just a strip of gravel where the road petered out at the edge of the scruffy lawns.

  Fletcher pulled over in front of a two-story house with children's toys scattered on its unmowed lawn. Overflowing recycling boxes sat by the strip of gravel that passed for a driveway. The car in the drive was spotted with rust. Behind half-closed curtains in the living room window, a television's glow flickered.

  "Home sweet home," Fletcher murmured.

  Baffled, Debi looked out at the unassuming house. There was a vacant lot across the street next to a house that appeared to be condemned; it was dark and boarded up. "This is where you live?" She'd pictured something vastly different for a man who wore bespoke suits and had his business's offices in a pricy downtown high-rise.

  "Not now. It's where I grew up."

  "Oh." She looked out at the street again with new interest. Although it was hard to tell with what light there was washing out her sharp night vision, some of the houses looked fairly nice; the one a couple doors down had a winding little pebbled walk and prettily landscaped flower beds. Others appeared to be one step away from foreclosure.

  "It looked a little different when we owned it. The siding used to be yellow instead of white, not that you can tell in the dark. And we had a chokecherry tree in the yard that the new owners got rid of for some reason." His voice was soft and wistful.

  "So one of these other houses is the one you told me about, that you fixed up and sold?"

  "Our neighbor's house, yeah. That one." He pointed past the one with the landscaping she'd been admiring to a split-level with a sprawling backyard garden that stepped down the hill, looking like little more than a series of lumps and sticks in the dark. "And past that—you'd see if we walked down that way—there's a little park, the kind that's just a tiny kiddie playground with a swing set. Or at least there used to be. I don't know if it's still there."

  "When did you move away?" she asked.

  "We lost the house when I was a teenager for back taxes. That was after my dad's accident ... I told you he was a construction worker?" Debi nodded, though he wasn't looking at her; he gazed out at the dark street instead. "He was disabled on the job when I was eleven. After that we scraped by on Social Security and whatever little jobs I could find. I busted my tail trying to help out, because even as a kid I could see that we were barely getting by, but I didn't know how much financial trouble we really were in until the house was gone."

  She reached out to touch his leg. "You were a kid. It wasn't your fault."

  "I know, but I still think about it. Dad was your basic blue-collar guy: worked with his hands, didn't talk much, didn't like to admit when he wasn't handling things as well as he wished he was." Fletcher fell silent for a moment, gazing into the past. "Losing the ability to work broke him. I hardly even remember him anymore the way he used to be, tall and strong, forearms like Popeye's from throwing two-by-twelves around. By the time I was a teenager, he was a shadow of himself. Losing the house was the final straw. He had a heart attack a year later. There was one thing I never doubted, though," he added. "I always knew he loved me and would've done anything for me. I think that might've been what was hardest on him, that he thought he couldn't give me the life he'd wanted to."

  "But in the end he did, didn't he?" Debi asked gently. "You said that your dad's contacts in the construction trade were what helped you get your start."

  "Yeah, and more than that, I also grew up learning my dad's work ethic and sense of fair play. He was the kind of guy who'd seal a deal with a handshake and really mean it. Fletcher, he used to say, a man's word is his bond—and you know, it would've been corny coming from anything else, but you could tell he meant it."

  His voice faltered, and he rubbed a thumb at his eye. "Damn," he muttered. "You know, I can go for weeks without thinking about
him. Months sometimes. Then it hits me all over again and ... damn."

  Instinct told Debi what to do; uncertainty made her hesitate, but only for a moment. She leaned across the space between them and put her arms around Fletcher, drawing his head against her shoulder. He didn't even try to resist, but came willingly, sinking into her embrace and wrapping his arms around her.

  He didn't seem to be actually crying, but there was a desperate strength in the way he hugged her. She'd been alone since losing her lion pride, but Fletcher, she now realized, had been alone in that way for all of his adult life. He had Olivia, but being responsible for a young child was nothing like having a family to lean on. And she didn't get the impression that Chloe was a leaning-on kind of person.

  All this time, Debi had been wishing she had someone to be there for her. She'd never thought about the other thing she'd lost along with her family, which was the ability to be there for someone else.

  When Fletcher drew a shuddering breath and pulled away, she took his face in her hands and kissed him: cheek, brow, lips. "Thank you for showing me this," she said. "For telling me this. Thank you for trusting me."

  His smile was shaky but genuine. "I wanted—well, I hoped—It's hard to be the first one to extend trust. I understand that. Whatever you want to show me of yourself is okay, Debi, but ... well, this is me. Now you know a little more."

  She nodded. At first she didn't trust her voice, and then, quietly, she gave him an address.

  The drive was quiet, but the silence was a companionable one. Debi rested her hand on his thigh. When they pulled up in front of her building, she tried to see it through Fletcher's eyes. The neighborhood wasn't the best, but neither was it the worst. It was merely working class. She'd been ashamed, but now that she looked at it, really looked, there was nothing to be ashamed of.

  Fletcher drew her in for one last kiss. It was long and slow, nibbling and sucking at each other's lips, and when the kiss ended they rested their foreheads together, breathing the same air.

  "I'll see you tomorrow," she murmured. "We could even get breakfast, if you like."