Brendon ignored his daughter Serena climbing up his back and getting comfortable on top of his head while his son gripped his leg and tried to bite his knees with his less-than-deadly human baby teeth. The little guy wouldn’t come into his fangs until puberty hit, and his mother would probably drop him off at Brendon’s house and not come back for him until he turned twenty-one.
“There you are.” Allie Llewellyn closed the door to the solarium behind her, blocking out all that yelling. “I figured you’d have to escape as soon as the fighting started.”
“I should have never brought Marissa when Missy’s here.” He realized his mistake in the first ten minutes of their arrival. As soon as Missy, head of the Llewellyn Pride, walked into the enormous Llewellyn compound living room, Marissa was in her face demanding to know why none of the Llewellyn Pride had stayed with Brendon at the hospital and why none of them had bothered to call her. When Missy snarled that she was not an answering service it went straight downhill from there.
Three hours later and the two females were still going at it.
Allie stretched out in a lounger and stared at him. “You seem unusually cheerful, considering all the yelling and drama.”
“It must be the holidays.”
Laughing, she said, “Okay. What’s her name?”
“That’s on a need-to-know basis, and you don’t need to know.”
Brendon actually liked Allie. Not when she was around Missy but one on one. Allie and Erik’s mom, Serita, were relatively nice and they’d made breeding with them quite entertaining.
“You do understand that Missy’s not going to like you getting involved with someone from another Pride. At least not without a trade contract.”
“Our contract involves the kids and the kids only.”
“I’m not arguing. Just letting you know. And there’s some slight whining in there because I’ll have to hear about it. Constantly.”
Blocking his daughter’s tiny fist from making contact with his eye, he asked, “It sounds like she’s still raging over Mace and his Bronx m’lady.”
Allie laughed at his use of “m’lady” in a sentence. “Oh yeah. She’s still raging all right. Besides, we’re down to two males now. Petrov’s gone. You’re gone. And Mace won’t let her trade him out for more. Her life is in shambles.” Allie rolled her eyes. “Personally I could care less. Little Miss Evil Kitty over there”—she pointed at her daughter—“is more than enough trouble at the moment. I certainly don’t need to add to it with another cub until she’s a tad older.”
“Makes sense.” Brendon picked up his son and placed him on his knee, ignoring the teeth he sank into his forearm. “But Missy needs to understand, I won’t let her use my kids as leverage against me.”
Allie shook her head. “I won’t let that happen, Brendon. I’m not saying she won’t try, but I won’t let her get away with it.” She smiled at him. “I like you. You irritate me much less than most males. Besides, our darling little brat will rip my long silky locks out if I ever try to get between her and her daddy.”
“And Serita?”
“Missy will be lucky if Serita doesn’t start her own Pride. They’ve been fighting like two cats in a bag lately. Besides, we both know she can’t use the kids. We all read that contract we signed. It’s quite airtight.”
“Damn right it is.” Three high-priced lawyers who specialized in shifter law and his sister made sure of that.
“I don’t blame you at all,” she said with a sigh, leaning back into the lounger and staring up at the ceiling. “Nothing is sadder than an old Pride lion who hasn’t seen his cubs for decades.” Like his dad hadn’t seen Mitch.
Allie yawned, her eyes fluttering closed. “You coming out to dinner with us, Brendon? We have reservations at that new sushi place uptown. The chef is supposed to be a god.”
He’d rather remove body parts before sitting through some overpriced nouveau riche meal with Missy. But before Brendon could state that out loud, his cell phone went off. He checked caller ID and answered. “Yes?”
“Hello, sir. It’s Timothy.”
“I know. I checked caller ID.” After eight years as his personal assistant, one would think Timothy would already know that about his boss. “What’s going on?”
“I received a message from Louise.” Louise had been Brendon’s secretary longer than Timothy had been his assistant. “You wanted me to check the local hotels and find a Smith Pack?”
“Yeah. Did you get something?”
“Sir, they’re here.”
“Here? You mean in New York?”
“No. I mean at the Kingston Arms. They’ve been checked in for more than a week under the name…uh…Sissy Mae Smith.”
Brendon stared at the wall, completely oblivious to his daughter gripping his hair and hanging from his head like a monkey.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir. I even went and checked the other hotels in the Tri-state area that cater to your”—Timothy cleared his throat—“kind, because Smith is such a common name, but the only Smith Pack I could locate is at this hotel.”
Letting out a deep breath, Brendon grinned. “Good work.”
“Do you need me to do anything else, sir?”
“No. I should be back at the hotel in a few.”
“Yes, sir.”
Brendon ended the connection. “I’ve gotta go.”
Without opening her eyes, Allie smiled. “Figured.”
After unattaching his daughter from his hair, Brendon swung her around in his arms and kissed her neck, then kissed the top of his son’s head. “Both of you be good.”
“Don’t forget,” Allie reminded him, “we’re heading out tomorrow to Grandmother’s property in Sag Harbor for the New Year.”
“Okay. I’ll come over in the afternoon to send you off.”
He put his children beside Allie and opened the solarium door. The arguing hit him in the face. It would take time to get his sister to back off. Time he wasn’t in the mood to give.
“When she’s done, tell my sister I went back to the hotel.”
Allie opened one eye and stared at Brendon. “You’re leaving her here?”
“I don’t feel like dragging her out. I’ll even leave the car. I’ll catch a cab.”
Laughing, Allie closed her eyes again. “Okay. But neither your sister nor Missy will be happy. So I hope whoever she is, she’s worth it.”
Oh, she was.
A good long sleep and a little worshipping of the porcelain god, and Ronnie felt much better. Although she still didn’t feel like hanging out tonight and she didn’t know how the rest of the She-wolves were managing it.
Big dinner plans and some club hopping for the whole Pack, courtesy of Bobby Ray. He even tried to drag poor Mace and Dez into it, but from the end of the conversation Ronnie heard, Mace had no intention of getting out of his bed anytime soon as long as Dez was in it.
Ronnie smiled when she thought about the two of them. They were a cute, if unlikely, couple. And she loved the panic in Dez’s eyes every time she caught Mace staring at her like he could simply eat her alive. The man was in love. No two ways about it and nothing Dez did or didn’t do would change that so she might as well suck it up. So to speak.
The Pack stood in front of the hotel’s front desk. At some point they would find permanent dens, and that search would be up to the females. Until then, they would continue to enjoy the luxury of the Kingston Arms.
Bobby Ray retrieved another stack of business papers from the desk staff. He and Mace had already hired a lawyer and apparently Sissy Mae had started working with realtors for a big-enough space to house their office. Clearly Mace and Bobby Ray weren’t men to waste time on “what if”s and analyzing. They just went for it. Ronnie liked that.