The Lawyer's Mate (5 page)

It hurt at lot more than Wren ever expected. She had been holding onto some strange false hope that one day she would be welcome back for herself, even if it were just for visits. But even within the crushing pain lay a bed of acceptance. She was full of pain, but no surprise.

"I suppose that's how it has to be," she said.

Marion stood up and grabbed her brief case. "You've always been a disappointment. Do not call, and if you attempt to enter any of our properties the police will be called."

She walked out the door without looking back at her daughter.

Wren sank to the couch and slumped over letting misery engulf her.

~-~

Andy knew he should give Wren time. She needed space to sort out what he told her. But he climbed into his car and remembered that he hadn't let her know that Max was out of town. It could wait until the morning, he supposed, but would she be more upset that he had withheld the information?

He didn't want to risk it.

He looked at his cell phone for a moment, but decided it would be better to just tell her in person. That way if she had any questions about it they could come up with a game plan right then. They wouldn't have to keep calling back and forth as they remembered things.

Even to his besotted mind the excuse was weak.

But he didn't let that deter him, driving straight to her subdivision and directly to her house.

Another wave of doubt hit him just before he knocked.

She needed time to think, maybe he should just wait. But he knocked anyway and smiled when she opened the door. That smile was replaced by a frown of concern when she let him into her place with no comment and barely spared a second to look at him. She mechanically closed the door behind him and waited for him to speak.

"Max is out of town." He said.

"Oh." Her voice came out flat, emotionless.

Andy pressed on, unsure of whether he had caused this or if something else had happened since they last saw each other. It had only been a couple of hours. "We'll have to talk to him when he gets back, I left a message so he should call me.

"Okay," she nodded, "Thanks."

Part of Andy wanted to leave, to let her deal with whatever she needed to deal with on her own. But she had let him in, and maybe that meant that a part of her wanted him here. "Are you okay, Wren?" He asked.

She sank down onto the couch and curled her feet up under her, her arms wrapping around her torso. "We can work out what we do next tomorrow." She responded.

Andy sat beside her and pulled one of her hands towards him, lacing their fingers together. "Did something happen?"

Wren looked at him, shifting her eyes from where she had been staring across the room. Tears shown in them, gathered but not spilled. "My mother came to visit."

They had never talked about her family. When she moved to town Max made it sound like the relationship had suffered after Wren was bitten. And apparently seeing her mother now had not been a good thing. He pulled her close, hugging her against him. "If you need to talk, I'm here."

"She invited me home." Her voice was muffled in the fabric of his shirt.

Andy's heart stuttered for a moment, afraid that Wren was about to leave him forever. "I see." A neutral statement.

"To experiment on."

Rage burst through Andy and he wanted to leap up, hunt her mother down and destroy her for ever thinking of it. The emotion came on so swiftly that he breathed hard trying to contain it.

Wren rested a hand on his cheek. "I told her to leave and never come back."

Andy wanted to smile, that had to mean she was staying. And if she was staying she might stay with him. But he didn't ask it of her. Instead, he kissed her forehead and continued to hold her close. "If you need me to do anything..." He didn't know how to end the statement, but Wren understood.

"Thank you."

They sat entwined like that for a long time on her couch. Wren finally fell asleep against Andy's shoulder sometime later. He picked her up and set her down on her bed, curling up beside her and falling asleep.

~-~

Andy left before Wren woke up. He went home, showered and changed into work appropriate clothes and headed into the office.

Wren didn't show up.

He worked on several of his other cases, reading through documents and filling out forms. Max did not respond to his message and when he tried to call him again, the voicemail said the inbox was full. It seemed that Andy wasn't the only person calling.

At three o'clock he decided to call it a day and told his secretary that he would be available by phone if he was needed. He thought about calling Wren, but cast the idea aside before it could fully form. So much had happened the day before, he couldn't bother her.

Wren didn't show up the next day either.

She was probably working from home. No one else in the office seemed to be effected by her absence, but Andy was crawling in his skin. He just wanted to see her, to talk to her for a moment. But still he stopped himself.

On Friday she came back to the office. She greeted him in the morning, but didn't mention anything that had happened in the previous week. She closed the door to her office and worked in private.

Just after lunch a woman from the prosecutor's office dropped by the office unannounced. She asked to meet with Andy and Wren in private.

They sat in one of the nicer conference rooms that overlooked the foothills. Marina Trent, an assistant prosecutor in the case, sat across from them. "The prosecutor's office has decided to drop the case against Mr. Griffith."

Andy schooled the shock from his face. There was no way this was unrelated to what Griffith had told them.

"I see," said Wren. "We will look forward to the paperwork. Is there any reason you decided to do this in person rather than over the phone?"

Andy swallowed his smile.

Ms. Trent pursed her lips. "Mrs. Delgado asked me to drop by. If you're satisfied I will be going."

She stood, shaking both of their hands before Andy and Wren escorted her to the elevator bank.

Wren followed him back to his office. "Who's Mrs. Delgado?"

Andy sat behind his desk, "She's one of us, works for the district attorney."

She nodded, "I see. I have some more work to do." She left the office without saying goodbye.

Andy called Max once more, hoping this time he would get through. And he was successful. Max answered on the second ring. "Yes?"

"It's Andy. I just talked to someone from the prosecutor's office."

"Ah," Max paused, letting the silence sink between them. Andy had known him for too long for it to be uncomfortable. "I'm going to have some people take a closer look at Silver Sky. I'm concerned after what you told me."

"And does this have anything to do with the prosecution dropping the case?"

"It's probably best not to confirm that."

Andy gritted his teeth, "You can't bribe prosecutors, Max! We live in this town, we don't run it."

He could hear frustration and something almost like anger in Max's voice, "I didn't bribe her, and since when do you tell me what we can do? Your problem is taken care of." He disconnected and Andy was left holding a silent phone.

They'd have to keep Griffith quiet, it would not do to have a regular person spouting off about real live werewolves at a research facility in Idaho. Not that anyone would believe him, but they stayed safe by being overly cautious.

He dialed Wren's extension. When she picked up he said, "It was Max."

"Okay," she replied.

"I--" He wasn't sure what he wanted to say next, but he didn't want to let her go with less than ten words exchanged between them. "I really liked working with you." There was more to say, but he didn't want her to run.

She was silent for a moment. "I liked working with you too," she finally said.

"Maybe we'll do it again sometime?" Anything to be near her, to be with her.

"How about dinner at my place, at seven sound good?"

Andy tried to stay still, desire and triumph surging through him. "I'll be there."

He hung up the phone smiling.

~-~

Wren hurried home almost immediately after inviting Andy over for dinner, emotions roiling through her. She cleaned around the house, vacuuming the floor and piling some of her dirty clothes into the hamper in her closet. Yes, Andy had seen her place once before, but she hadn't been in the right frame of mind to care what he thought about it.

Now she worried if the candles on the mantle place were set equally apart. She stopped herself before pulling out a ruler and decided that they looked fine, good even.

She put in an order at a Chinese restaurant down the street, not trusting herself with fire or boiling liquids in her current nervous state. But in doing so she was left sitting alone at 5:00 with two hours at least before Andy showed up. She wanted to call him, tell him to get there sooner, but stopped herself from picking up the phone.

Instead she turned on the news and saw the announcement about the DA's office dropping the charges against Griffith. A satisfying if abrupt end to the week.

While she was grateful that Max had intervened, she hoped he didn't make a habit of it. She was used to winning her cases on merit, not because a friend called in a favor.

Some rerun grabbed her attention for several more minutes and she was almost surprised when Andy knocked on her door at 6:45. He waited beyond the threshold, a sheepish smile on his face. "I'm sorry I'm a bit early." He didn't sound sorry.

She returned the smile. "Come in, come in. It's alright." She led him to the table where she had the boxes of food already laid out and candles lit in the middle. He chose to sit right next to her, rather than at the place setting that put the candles between them.

They made small talk and served their food out onto the plates. Wren poured wine into glasses. Once Andy had a bite of food in his mouth, she said, "There's important stuff about me you don't know."

He swallowed and spoke, "Unless you're admitting to war crimes I think I've got a good idea."

Wren smiled and sipped her wine, soothed a little. His sense of humor made what she needed to say seem a little less difficult. "I want you to know the full story, that way you know if you want to stay."

He reached and touched the hand not holding her wine, "Wren, tell me what you need to tell me. But I'm not leaving unless you want me to." He smiled and met her eyes as he said it.

Wren took a deep breath but didn't pull away. "I didn't know I was a werewolf for more than two months." She explained the whole story, her attack in the park, the mental hospital, her family kicking her out, and gave some details on what her life had been like before. She told him how her mother ran everything and had finally decided that her daughter had a use after so many months of exile.

"I didn't choose to come here," she flipped over her hand so that their palms touched and gripped him tight. "But I chose to stay." She could feel Andy's pulse speed up beneath her grasp. "What I feel for you is real, and I want to make a go of it."

It was like the sun came out over Andy's face. She hadn't realized how much of his expression he was holding back until he let it go, warming her with it's heat.

He captured her lips, their bodies angled awkwardly in the chairs. Wren stood and he stood with her, their lips never losing contact. She pulled back, quickly blowing out the candles and leading him back to her room.

They fell on the bed, hips grinding and tongues tangling as need built within them echoing and growing. Wren could feel Andy's hard cock and felt her pussy get wet in response. She worked her fingers under his shirt, pulling it over his head and tossing it to the side. She pushed him down to the bed and he went back with no resistance. Kissing her way down his chest, she ran her fingers over the hard ridges of his body, luxuriating as his muscles jumped at her touch.

He didn't sit calmly at her ministrations, instead working at the tiny buttons on her blouse. Wren wished she had put on something easier to take off before he got here. "Just rip the damn thing off," she bit out.

She saw Andy smile and grab two fistfuls of shirt, wrenching it apart. A few buttons popped off and the shirt came free exposing her stomach and bra through the breach in the material. She shrugged it off, and her bra, watching his eyes flare yellow at the sight of her bare breasts.

Desire coiled through her, wetting her even further. He reared up, clutching her close and taking one of her nipples into his mouth. Wren moaned against him at the sensation, at the beautiful feeling of his tongue engulfing her.

She reached down between them to undo the button of his jeans and massage his hard cock. Andy groaned against her, moving to take her other breast into his mouth.

"I need you inside me," she gasped. Andy lapped more intensely at her breast, rolling his hips against her. But he pulled back for a moment, shimmying out of his pants and sliding hers down as well.

She wrapped her legs around his hips and felt the tip of him tease the wet entrance between her folds. She took his lips and he thrust into her, shooting off a tiny orgasm from the contact. He thrust and thrust, brushing against that super sensitive spot inside her. Without warning a second orgasm rippled through her, bigger than the first but only making her hungry for more.