There's Something About Werewolves: Seven Brides for Seven Shifters, Book 1 (12 page)

Chapter Eleven

“You didn’t think he’d arrest you. Did you?” The dryness of Ian’s statement carried an undertone of amusement. He held her favorite snack out to her while holding the glass door to the county jail open with his body.

Lennox took the peach he offered and gave it a once-over. “Is this from my tree?”

“Of course,” he said.

Bless him. He always knew what she wanted, when she wanted it. She bit into the sweet fruit. The morning sun had warmed the juice. It tasted better than ambrosia—not that JELL-O and marshmallow monstrosity but the food of the gods.

She and her personal Jailhouse Hunk trotted down the concrete steps, completely in sync.

“I’ve known Stanley Hewett my entire life,” she said as Ian opened the passenger door to his 1967 Impala ragtop. She slid inside, no hesitation. “I knew good and well he’d arrest me and stop speaking to me for a week or two on top of it.”

Ian chuckled as he swung into the driver’s seat and started the Impala. Lennox watched him out of the corner of her eye. It felt good to be in his car again, driving down their streets together with the windows open. Unlike with Garrett, she never felt uncomfortable or out of place with Ian. Everything ran so smoothly. So why did it never feel quite right between them?

“You were saying?” he asked.

“Oh. Right. Me getting locked up worked out perfectly.”

“Why?”

She flipped the passenger-side sun visor down and checked her hair. Big mistake. Jules’ cat had coughed up more attractive fur balls. Disgusted, she slapped the visor up into place. “I needed a break from everyone.”

He quirked a brow at her and turned down the road toward Pancake Dawg, their favorite breakfast spot outside of the Peach Pit.

“You included.” She finished up with a pointed glare.

“Me nothing. You’ve barely spoken to me since Wolfman Jack showed up.”

Aha, Garrett’s arrival had miffed Ian something serious. She’d never inspired jealousy in men before. She’d probably enjoy the attention if the two of them didn’t scare her when they fought. Not to mention their apparent need to drag both her and Nox into the line of fire.

Men
.

You couldn’t live with them. You couldn’t run them over with your car and still demand a foot rub afterward. Such a pity. She sighed. He gave her a questioning look in return.

“You know what I did last night?” she asked. “I had a nice normal conversation with that hooker who works the bus station.” He side eyed her. Smart remark incoming. She waved him off before he started. “Then I went to sleep. The ceiling didn’t cave in. Nobody talked a bunch of nonsense I don’t understand. No one’s eyes flickered and I didn’t end up hurt in some way. That works for me.”

Ian reached out and tucked a curl behind her ear. “You talk a lot. And your voice is kind of shrill. Are my ears bleeding? I swear they must be bleeding.” He pressed his cheek to her nose and still managed to stay on the road.

“Quit it.” She giggled.

“You want breakfast or are you going to keep running off at the mouth?”

She adopted her most innocent expression. “Both.”

He reached between them, rummaged around, and stuck a second peach in her face. “Chew on that and stop talking my ears off.”

“Some people love the sound of my voice.”

“Yeah?” He eyed her again. “Well, they’re tone deaf and half stupid. It’s your lips they ought to lavish their love on.” He turned his full attention on her for a split second. “Now, your lips? They’re delicious.”

She couldn’t help it. She licked her deliciousness. Big mistake. Huge.

His voice dipped into a seductive rumble. “Is that an invitation?”

Oh. My. Was it? It should be. Things would be so much easier with Ian. She could tell him anything, would go with him anywhere. Love with him would be simple and comfortable with bone-searing sex to go along with it. What sane woman would refuse?

Clearly her sanity had gone M.I.A. She wasn’t ready yet. She had to get Garrett out of her system first. After that she’d be able to settle down with Ian. Right? Sure.

“Sweetheart,” Ian said, the amused crinkles around his eyes softened as he stared at the road. “You do crazy things to me.”

Everything inside her quivered, more than his words, the feeling behind them shook her soul. She wanted to touch him…but not the way a woman touches a man. Only Garrett sparked that need inside her. That was what kept her from giving herself to Ian. She folded her hands in her lap to keep them still. Part of her felt she didn’t deserve Ian. The other part of her longed for someone else, someone with cognac eyes and a bad attitude.

“Ian. Why me?”

He didn’t hesitate or look her way. “Bridges and cold water.”

She laughed. “What? Bridges and cold water?”

He turned into the parking lot at Pancake Dawg, pulled into a space, and turned off the car. Breathing out slowly he pivoted in his seat to face her. “You remember when my daddy started Camp Big Bad?”

“Yeah, for all the rowdy kids in your crew—including you.”

“True enough.” The corners of his eyes crinkled again. “The second summer we hired a camp counselor named Waylon Nelson.”

“I remember him. He and his wife got married when they were seventeen, right?”

He nodded. “You know how in movies there’s always a cool counselor who breaks the rules and makes the summer better?”

“Of course, I’m a filmophile.”

He paused for an
uh-huh
eye roll. “Waylon Nelson made those movie guys seem nerdy and unimaginative. He spent a lot of time with his campers and he taught us how to…be us.”

Lennox pursed her lips, giving him a dubious expression. “He taught you how to be you?”

“Basically. But he never ate lunch with us. The boys and me used to make up crazy reasons why ’cause Waylon never said. He’d just disappear between noon and 1 p.m. Because I’m me and I’m sneaky, I started following him.”

She slapped his arm. “Why were you always following people around? You used to do that to me too. Creeper.”

“What’s with this habit Averdeen women have of hitting people, huh? I…” he said, stressing the long vowel sound and tapping his chest, “…was honing my tracking skills. I’m guessing you and Gran are training to be MMA tag-team partners.”

“I’ll
mixed martial arts
you if you don’t shut up. Get on with your story.” She punctuated her words with a few gentle pokes to his chest.

“Ouch, you’re violent. Do you need a hug?” Ian grabbed her and tried to throw a leg over hers—a very awkward proposition in his Impala. She kept struggling free and laughing. He kept coming on.

“Maybe some quality time with a therapist would help. Oh wait, my hugs are therapy.” Ian switched to a ridiculously thick Southern drawl. “Hold on, baby. I’ma fix you.”

With a shove and more than a few giggles, she finally pushed him to his side of the car. “Get off me, you maniac. Tell the dang story.”

“As I was saying, I followed him in a completely educational and non-stalker manner to Staunton Bridge every day. Where I would, in no creepy way whatsoever, watch him have lunch with his wife.”

“That’s kind of sweet.”

“Sweet guy. Especially since judging by the smell of the food and the look on his face her cooking tasted like baboon ass.”

Lennox nodded as sagely as her need to burst out laughing would allow. “Mm,” she said, “a delicacy.”

Ian curled his lip in disgust but something beyond the smell of the food must have sweetened the memory. His expression transformed and he smiled in that “far too pleasant to be a smirk” way of his. “Waylon looked his happiest standing on Staunton Bridge choking down his wife’s awful lunches. While I watched them, I’d think, ‘I want that.’”

She propped her elbow on one knee and rested her check against her hand. “Hm, that does sound nice. Baboon-ass sandwiches, who could resist?”

“Definitely.” The barest hint of his white teeth sparkled in the sunlight. “One day Waylon decided to show off his balance skills. I’m not sure why a man would need to impress his own wife that badly but he jumped up on the ledge, did the whole tightrope thing, and toppled into the drink.”

“He fell in the water? While showing off?” Lennox shook her head. You couldn’t get any better than that. “Tragic!”

Ian leaned into his seat and chuckled. “Right. You should have seen the shade of red he turned while flailing in all four feet of the river.”

“Seriously. What did she do?”

He rested both arms on the steering wheel and leaned in. After seeming to think on it for a while he turned to look at her, his cheek cradled against his folded arms. For a second or two Lennox thought the soundtrack from one of those hyper-emotional teen movies started playing in the background—mostly because Ian looked like a teenage dream. There were violins and guitars and piano swells and everything. She sighed loudly.

“That’s the best part,” he said. “Waylon’s wife didn’t hesitate. She threw herself over the railing and pulled him up. I thought she was going to fall in but that possibility didn’t seem to matter to her. Even though he could’ve walked to shore and back up on the bridge by himself she put her all into pulling him up.”

“That’s amazing.” A feeling of warmth spread through Lennox’s chest.

“After she yanked Waylon up they fell over together and he got her wet.” Ian lifted both brows.

Lennox sighed again. Romantic stories brought out the starry-eyed girl in her. “Bridges and cold water.”

“Yeah. I knew I wanted that too. To love somebody who threw their whole selves into it.”

Loving and being loved that way sounded so good. “Wait,” Lennox said. “So when we were on that school trip and you fell into the fountain and I pulled you out…?”

Ian sighed this time. She’d never heard a sigh sound so masculine. “Bridges and cold water,” he said.

“Ah, I get it.”

“Don’t forget you couldn’t cook for the first half of our lives. You really were my perfect Mrs. Waylon Nelson.”

Their connection seemed to expand as she gazed at his storybook handsome face. She laid her head on the extension of his elbow. Their noses nearly touched. “Then I had to go and mess it up by letting Garrett teach me to cook.”

Ian closed the minuscule distance between them. He rubbed the tip of his nose to hers. The rasp in his voice took hold of her heart. “Then you had to go and mess it up.”

She and Ian had eaten halfway through their breakfast before Lennox asked the question she’d been pondering since Stan stopped by the night before.

“Ian?”

“Yeah,” he said, less focused on her and more on his six pancake dawgs—sausage dipped in pancake batter and fried like a corndog.

“Why are you forcing Nox to go to Camp Big Bad?”

He barely looked up. “Because it’ll get Garrett out of my town faster.”

His cold vehemence took her aback. She wouldn’t pretend she didn’t understand. Garrett had always been a threat to what she and Ian might have together. Before she went to college the dream of meeting a man like Garrett had stood between them. Now the man himself blocked Ian’s way.

Ian put down his breakfast and wiped his hands. “It’ll hasten Garrett’s exit because it’ll help Nox understand who he is.”

“How? What is this fraternity you’re all members of?”

She looked down as the thrum of his fingers tapped the table. He did that when he needed to think. “There’s an old bond between us, Leni. An ancient one. It’s hard for me to define for you.”

Exasperation must have shown on her face because he clarified without her asking. “Truthfully,” he said, holding her gaze with steady intensity. “The reality will scare you.”

Lennox stood up so quickly her chair toppled over behind her. “Are you telling me Nox will be in danger at camp?”

A server apologized for the chair and straightened it. Lennox waved the teenager away with mumbled thanks. Ian looked up at her. “You know better than that.” He nearly gritted out the words.

She knew Ian well enough to have no doubts he’d take good care of Nox. So why would the truth about their organization scare her? “Break it down for me then.”

“Can you sit, please?” After she sat he continued. “The closest organization I can relate it to is Freemasonry.” He held up a hand to quiet her down. “Beyond that I’m not ready to tell you yet. And before you go asking Garrett I doubt he is either. You’re going to have to trust me.”

She closed her eyes and breathed deep. Fixing Ian with an intensity to match his, she said, “You’re promising camp will be good for Nox.”

“Definitely.”

“All right then. We should eat before it gets any colder.”

They finished quickly after their talk. Although she despised being left in the dark she trusted Ian to do right by Nox. She also trusted Garrett wouldn’t follow through with anything that might be dangerous to his son. It had to be okay.

Content for the moment, Lennox pulled her phone out of her pocket and called her right-hand woman. Jules assured her all was well at the Peach Pit. Apparently Paolo had turned into a kitchen warrior. Jules also asked if they should revise their no jailbird hiring policy. Since Lennox didn’t discriminate in her hiring practices and she’d recently been released from the county lockup she explained she had a middle finger she wanted to show Jules the next time they got together. Lennox tried her best not to ask about Garrett. Her best wasn’t good enough. Jules chuckled in response and said she hadn’t seen Captain Sexy Ass all morning. The news pissed Lennox off. Why the hell hadn’t he been there to pick her up?

While she called Garrett a eunuch under her breath, using the foulest language possible, Ian took a few of the crayons out of the plastic cup beside the napkin dispenser. With a deft hand, he began to draw on the white paper-covered tabletop.

Lennox hung up and watched him as circles and scratchy lines became a drawing of two pudgy animation-style adults and three pudgier kids. Ian stole glances at her as he drew. From moment to moment a hint of a satisfied smile curved his lips. In less than twenty minutes he finished with a flourish and signed the drawing just below the male character’s feet.

“Can I see?” she asked.