Danea (27 page)

“Monday,” came the rough, rasping growl.

“And our girl is up and singing…and making coffee…”

“She’s evil…delicious and beautiful…but damned evil,” Noah rolled to his back and shoved two hands up to first rub over his face and then raked the black hair out of his eyes.

“No kidding,” Wade
threw the blanket off and pushed his legs over the side of the bed. Sometime in the night, he’d found the sleep pants he wore that now rested low on his hips. “I smell food…”

“Evil…” Noah grabbed his jeans from the floor and shoved his legs into them, standing up and zipping them. The snap was next when he heard the loud pounding on the front door. His head snapped around to meet the look on Wade’s face. “Danea! Do not open that door!”

Danea looked up, first at the knocking on the door and then at the rough male shout from the loft. Well, at least she knew they were alive and awake, she thought, grinning and striding toward the front door.

It was a little puzzling who would be visiting, in the dark, at six-fifteen in the morning. Her hand was out and almost on the dead-bolt lock when a strong arm came from behind and pulled her back. Hard.

“Hey!”

“Do you want us locking you in a room until this shit is settled?” Noah growled next to her ear, his arm tightening and jerking her when she struggled.

“Do you really think someone wanting to kidnap me is going to knock?” She gripped the band of steel holding her up off the ground, her feet doing a little floundering thing. Until she was tossed over to Wade, whose arms weren’t any less yielding. She sighed in defeat. “Fine. Oops…I goofed…”

The knock came again, a little louder.

Danea’s
eyes went round when Noah stepped up to the door, one hand flipping the dead-bolt and the other sporting a lethal set of claws. For some reason she kept forgetting the other sides to these men. Or the part of them that had wrapped themselves so tightly around her heart that she kept waiting to wake up.

“Shifter,” Noah said softly
, flipping the main lock and turning the knob. The tension remained until he saw the man standing on the porch, facing out toward the road and the ocean. “Myles?”

“Good morning, Noah,”
Devereaux Myles pulled a palm from the pocket of the long black winter coat and offered it. “Been a few years. Seth sent me to help with your little problem.” He looked into the room. “Clothing optional morning?”

“They were in bed,” Danea wiggled against Wade and stumbled when he released her. She thrust one palm forward while giving Noah a little shove with her hips. “They also haven’t had their coffee this morning. I’m Danea.”

“Dev Myles,” he responded, a smile tilting his lips. “Coffee is vital, so I can sympathize.”

“Oh…come inside. It’s almost frigid out there,” Danea closed the door behind him. “This is Wade Franklin…why did Seth send you here?”

“Danea…” Noah glowered at their perky mermaid, realized it was a waste of effort and headed toward the kitchen. “Come on into the kitchen, Dev. And Seth sent him to be your body guard while we’re at work, Danea.”

Wade took the palm that was offered. “Thank you for coming out. He didn’t mention that part yesterday.”

“He did in a text,” Noah said, pulling three large mugs from inside one of the cabinets. “It was just before bed last night.”

“I don’t need a body guard,” Danea remained by the front door, arms up and crossing over the brightly flowered tunic she’d selected that morning. It skimmed her curves and stopped just past her hips. One booted foot tapped lightly on the tiles of the entryway.

“Ignore her. Milk’s in the fridge…” Wade offered the sugar container. “Or there’s honey.”

“Straight, thanks,”
Dev shrugged out of his heavy coat and dropped it over the back of a breakfast stool.

“Ignore…” Danea simmered and offered a little growl.

“How long have you been working for the Institute?” Noah looked over the top of his cup, through the steam, at the man he’d worked with for a few years in the military.

“
As soon as he started it,” Dev answered, meeting his gaze openly. “Met him the last couple months on that tour in the middle of Europe. You’d gone by then. He picked up me and Jude along with a few others that left the Army.”

“I don’t need a babysitter!” Danea yelled out.

“What time does she leave for work?” Dev asked casually, glancing from Noah to Wade with an arched brow.

All three looked over at the swallowed scream.

“I’m thinking any minute now,” Noah offered up a half shrug. He watched Dev gulp down the coffee and reach into the front pocket of his jeans. Two business cards were tossed on the counter seconds before he was around the edge and whipping his coat off the stool. “Thanks, Dev. I’ll send you a text later so you have our numbers.”

“Later,”
Dev replied crisply, taking off out the door behind the silver-gold ponytail that twitched like a certain cougar tail he watched often.

“I’m thinking we need to remind her of her promise to co-operate…for our sanity,” Wade took a large swallow of coffee before setting the cup down and heading for the stairs to the loft.

“Yeah…no kidding,” Noah went off to the first floor bathroom for a long shower.

Danea was still pouting a little after noon when she settled behind her desk and finished the payroll for the previous week. She pushed the slice of chicken around with her fork, stabbing at a tomato and biting down with another sigh.

She was doing a lot of apologizing lately. She’d let her staff know about the man sitting in the parking lot. That he wasn’t trouble and was there because of some personal problems over the weekend. She wasn’t sure why she tried glossing over it. The story was all over the area by now, thanks to all the confidential people at the hospital.

Not that she could blame them. Having a patient come in with a wound caused by a bolt action arrow and then walk out as if it never happened, oh, yeah, that would raise some eyebrows, even in a small coastal town like Aftport.

Only a few mentioned her mother. Most who knew her just didn’t want to get on her wrong side. And while Danea was new to Aftport, her mother was well known throughout the medical community, up and down the coastline. It was after one when she sent an apology out to Noah and Wade, grimacing at the response from Noah.

“We’ll talk.”

She didn’t hear from Wade and sighed.
First, she had to start with the hired help. Danea carried the almost all eaten noodle and chicken salad into the kitchen and sorted the food from the recycled plate. She let Myra know she was leaving and went into the parking lot. She didn’t have to tap, a pair of amazingly blue eyes watching her approach. The window lowered slowly.

“Hi…I’m sorry for my behavior this morning. I promised them I’d be okay with changing my habits because of this and…well…I wasn’t very adult this morning, and I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Dev told her with a crooked grin. “I’m used to rebellion in females lately.”

“Yeah…well…You don’t have a place to stay here, do you?”

“I arrived really early this morning and haven’t checked out the local hotels.”

Danea nodded and pulled her key ring out of her pocket. She carefully worked one of the larger keys free and offered it to him.

“There’s an apartment above the daycare,” she pointed to the door towards the back of the building. “That door leads up to the apartment. It’s furnished…and I haven’t taken all my stuff out yet, though…but there’s a bed and it’s not bad. You’re welcome to it while you’re here.”

Dev
looked from the key to her face and held his palm out, the cold metal settled into the center. “Thank you, Danea. It’ll be better than a dreary, bad smelling motel room. Are you headed home?”

“I am…I have some serious groveling to do,” she admitted, grinning at the soft male chuckle.

“Then I’ll have an early night. Check out some of the local stores and settle in until morning,” Dev closed his hand around the key.

“Thank you…for your help. I…” her fingers closed over the side of the open window. “Be careful, please,” she said quietly, turning and striding off to her car.

Danea was glad neither car was in the drive when she pulled alongside the house. Her fingers moved over the key pad seconds after she opened the door.
Within the hour, she had dinner started, things picked up and put in their places and the loft bedroom a little more organized for the three of them. She’d moved a bureau from one of the back bedrooms to the bottom of the stairs to the loft when the front door was pushed open.

Noah’s dark eyes met the surprised look on
Danea’s face. And a scowl formed over the lazy grin he’d greeted her with when he finally took in the location of the bureau and the strong sheen of sweat covering her face and bare arms.

“If I were to ask what you’re doing…”

“I’d try lying at first,” she admitted with a gulp. He had an armful of clothing still on hangers. “Is there more in the SUV?”

“There is…”

“I’ve arranged the closet upstairs,” Danea rubbed her hands over the seat of her jeans.

“Good evening…” Wade came in behind Noah, an alert gaze taking in the stances and situation. “Ahh…she’s rearranging the house.”

“You told me…”

“I also said, tell one of us what you want and we’d make it happen,” Wade repeated his instructions with a shake of his head. He dropped his leather briefcase to the surface of his desk and looked at Noah. “I’ll get the other boxes I saw in the SUV then we can move the bureau upstairs for her.”

“Thanks. I’ll hang these things up,” Noah squeezed past Danea and the bureau and took the stairs two at a time.

Danea should have been glad that all she received was a pat on the ass from each of them at different times as she wandered into the kitchen, waiting for them to return from outside. Deciding that she was far from the patient sort, she went to the stairs and pulled two of the drawers free, carried them up the stairs and set them on the bed. She appraised what she’d done and nodded at the location of the new addition.

She was at the head of the stairs when she heard them below, Noah on the bottom and Wade holding the head of the bureau as they moved higher towards her. She quickly moved aside, watching as they silently took in the changes to the arrangement and the spot that set empty waiting for the bureau.

“This looks good,” Wade commented after they had the bureau situated. He took the drawers, one in each hand and slid them into place. “And dinner smells great,” he leaned in when she hadn’t moved, brushing his mouth over hers. “Thank you.”

Danea was about to speak when he moved away and Noah replaced him. It still fascinated her how very different each of their kisses were. His fingers gripped her chin as his mouth moved hotly from one corner to the other.

“If you try and move pieces up the stairs
, we’re going to be greatly displeased,” Noah whispered against her mouth before backing up, winking and vanishing down the stairs.

Danea felt her knees shaking. She knew it had nothing to do with the implied threat. That
, she had seen quite clearly in both their eyes. She took a blind couple steps backward until she felt the bed behind her and just sat. When her heart finally stopped thumping, she told herself to get over the hormone rush and back to work.

By the time she had dinner laid out on the table, she was still trying to figure out how to apologize. Neither of them said anything about her behavior. But it annoyed her.

She had promised to accept their watchful eyes because of the attack. She’d promised. And turned around and behaved like a spoiled brat. Nothing to do but get it out and over with, she finally told herself after cleaning up the kitchen.

But they hadn’t behaved like they were angry with her. Things felt more normal then she ever imagined possible. Their conversations roved and ranged, literally, all over the globe; they continued to brush and touch her whenever and wherever they wanted and maybe she was the only one obsessing about this morning.

So she changed her mind. Again. And pulled the large box of books she’d brought from the apartment toward the book room. She stood in the middle of the well-lit, ten foot by ten foot room and just stared. Since she knew Wade had the house designed specifically to his needs, the library had been planned and was half empty. Track lighting ran the ceiling in a tic-tac-toe pattern and she saw the shelf Noah had already claimed for his wild, hard-boiled mysteries that ran a gauntlet from westerns to sci-fi. So she took an empty area near the tall, narrow window.

She heard them talking while she arranged her books and then heard the patio door open and close. She looked out the twelve inch wide window in time to see the large black wolf run off toward the high country, up the hills and through the trees.

Danea plopped down in the center of the room and began sorting her books. Some work related, some pleasure; some to do with kids, some with making a business successful. She set some to the side to donate to the local library. As wide a variety in her selections as with the choices on the shelves of the men she’d decided to live with.