There's Something About Werewolves: Seven Brides for Seven Shifters, Book 1 (5 page)

“Got it,” Nox shouted. He pulled the dust-bunny-covered book out from under the couch. Lennox stood, took one look at the dust from under her sofa, and started whistling.

Yeah,
Garrett thought, smiling to himself.
You ought to be embarrassed
. Those dust bunnies could swallow a small child. Luckily his kid was twice the size of most.

As Nox wiped off the book he made a funny face, his nose twitched.
Achoo!
He sneezed. Fur sprouted and he went wolfen. The book skidded across the hard wood. Lennox’s mouth fell open. She blinked rapidly. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she fainted. Garrett dove for her but surprise slowed him down. Lennox dropped, her head lolled to one side. Her temple struck the carved wooden arm of the chair with a sickening thud.

A gash opened at her temple. Nox howled. Throwing himself beneath Lennox, he and Garrett both cushioned the fall as she rolled over onto the floor. Garrett whispered comforting words to his son but he knew fear had carved worried lines onto his face, which scared Nox more.

Garrett swept Lennox into his arms, cradling her against his chest. Blood slid down her cheek and rolled under her chin. He didn’t recognize his own hoarse voice yelling for Gran. He was too busy begging Lennox, the universe, anyone, not to let it happen again. Not Lennox too. Please don’t take her too.

Chapter Five

Lennox woke up beside a warm body. The dog! She sat up swinging. Nox jumped out of her way fast enough to momentarily blur her vision.

No dog, just her godson…and pain. Excruciating, bone-shuddering pain in her head and neck.

“You okay?” Nox asked. His anxious expression worried her more than her injuries.

Lying down, she groaned at the hurt in every movement. “I’m alive,” she said.

“That’s what Dr. Dillon said.” Nox looked down at his hands. “I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“For what? I should be sorry. I didn’t hit you, did I?” He shook his head but wouldn’t meet her gaze.

Garrett slammed into the room with Gran chasing his heels. Her grandmother swung her red umbrella at every corner until she’d satisfied herself they weren’t in any danger. “No wolv—er, dogs?” Gran asked, her darting eyes on alert.

Everything went out of focus. Lennox blinked against a second bout of blurry vision that had nothing to do with Nox.

Garrett sat on her bed, on the opposite side from his son but stayed silent.

“What happened?” Lennox asked her grandmother, ignoring the all too real man at her side. “I remember Nox dropping the book…” She brushed tentative fingers over her eyes before probing the bandage at her temple. “Oh, and I had the worse nightmare about Monster Mutt.”

“What are you asking
me
for?” Gran said. “I went to bed and left
Señor
FUBAR in charge. Ask him about Monster Mutt.”

“Gran…” Lennox paused to let a wave of dizziness pass by. “I’m asking about the giant lump on my head and the tweeting birds flying around it.”

“Same difference.” Gran leaned in, whispering loud enough for the entire town to hear. “If you ask me, Garrett’s trying to kill you. He’s been working on finishing you off for years now.”

Garrett gritted his teeth. “Not funny, Grandma.”

Gran walked around the bed. Garrett winced, expecting to get whacked, which you could never count out with Gran. She pinched her fingers together, pushing his chin up to look him in the eye. “No, Garrett, it isn’t,” she said in earnest.

Something Lennox couldn’t name passed between them. It lasted half a second, then Gran walloped him with the red umbrella. The former love of her life covered his head a second too late. Lennox wanted to snicker but it hurt too badly. Garrett hissed and waited until Gran settled herself in the armchair by the window before he released the crossed arms protecting his head.

It took Nox a full five minutes to stop laughing. Although Lennox loved her godson’s laugher, the sound ripped jagged cracks into her skull. She finally pressed a finger to his lips. “You’re killing me, baby boy.”

She thought her words might hurt but Nox grinned at her instead. “Well, um, Dr. Dillon said to wake you up every hour. I say we have an all-nighter instead.”

“Dillon came by to check on me?” Lennox tried to sit up. Garrett gently pushed her down.

“You don’t remember? He stitched you up and you threatened him. Said if he left a scar you’d pour nail polish on his car.”

Okay, that made sense. Dillon lived past her orchard on the farm next door. And if his reputation meant anything, he had been a wonderful plastic surgeon before he gave it up. Lennox liked Dillon, a dead ringer for Prince Harry, a lot. She felt bad for being surly with him. Hopefully he’d forgive her because of her injury.

At the edge of her vision Garrett reached for her temple. She batted his hand away. He drew back.

“She’s got a lot of anger, Dad,” Nox said. He made himself comfortable beside Lennox and started reading another graphic novel. “If you’re not me or Gran, you probably should leave her alone.”

Lennox had to suppress a snicker, again. Gran didn’t have the same problem. She cackled and put her feet up on the ottoman.

Amused, Garrett rubbed his chin. “What makes you think you’re on her good side?” Nox made a face that might as well have accused his dad of being the village idiot. He shrugged and continued to read his book.

“Well, Dr. Reardon did say we need to watch you. An all-nighter isn’t a bad idea.”

She glanced at the face she used to love, the dark slash of eyebrows, waves of hair framing his temples, the almost too straight nose, and the mouth meant to kiss away all a girl’s hurts—up top and down below. Holy shit. With his black dress shirt unbuttoned and cuffed at the forearms, he looked like that werewolf guy on TV, the big one with the sexy walk. And that guy could charm Mother Teresa into giving him head. She’d bet Garrett could do the same, and make a woman forget to ask forgiveness. Okay, she felt bad about imagining Mother Teresa in compromising positions, but better an icon of virtue than Lennox. Mother Teresa had already gone to heaven.

Lennox panicked. The things she wanted to do with Garrett were only sanctioned in hell—in the really, really filthy, depraved, freaky parts of the underworld. Not even her massive headache could counter the deep pulse of desire low in her belly. She had to find away to eradicate her Dr. Feelgood yearnings from earlier.
Sex with Garrett?
Not going to happen. She needed to get his ass out of her bedroom. Stat.

“Gran will look after me,” she said quietly.

On cue Gran started snoring. She went so far as to slump over in her chair and drool a little. That bony old broad was such traitor.

“I don’t need you to stay, Garrett. You’re a movie mogul. Don’t you have stuff…” she waved her hands in the air, “…you know, to do?”

He stood. She breathed in relief until he resituated himself at the head of her bed. Stealing one of her unused pillows to make the headboard more comfy, he leaned back into it. “I don’t have anything on my 3 a.m. schedule tonight. We’re good.”

Lennox sputtered.

Wait, she still owned this house. She didn’t have to put up with unwanted guests. “Go, Garrett. You need to get Nox to bed.” Lennox knew she’d made a mistake the moment she uttered the last sentence. Mostly because Nox went into chainsaw mode, he started snoring loud enough to wake Gran. If the old fart weren’t faking sleep too.

“Fine.” Lennox gritted her teeth and winced. Damn, everything hurt. “I’m going to bed,” she muttered, closing her eyes.

4:00 a.m. winked at Lennox from the clock on her bedside. Her neck had stiffened during sleep. She could barely move. Garrett shifted beside her and she feigned sleep. He chuckled. A strong arm slipped under her pillow and gently lifted it, her head, and all. He placed two triangular tablets in her palm. “Flexeril,” he said. “Dr. Reardon thought you might’ve hurt your neck so he prescribed a muscle relaxant. He already shot you up with Motrin for the pain, but we’ve got that in pill form too.”

Lennox didn’t argue. She threw the pills at her face and caught them in her mouth. Garrett held a glass to her lips. A quick sip and the Flexeril went down.

“How did you get the prescription filled so fast?”

Another chuckle. Lennox groaned. She really wanted to put her face in his lap. Or sit on his face. Either option worked for her.

She sighed, such an unladylike response. Sex toys would be ordered as soon as she got to her tablet. Lots of sex toys, with lights and vibration and shame.

“Money has its privileges,” Garrett said. “I have connections. It wasn’t hard to have the prescription delivered.”

Money looked good on him too. Real good. But it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t get sucked into the Garrett trap for a second time. He’d fractured her trust and she had no intention on letting it mend.

“Let’s play Storytellers.”

Lennox jumped at Nox’s sudden exclamation. No matter how much she wanted to be annoyed he made her smile. Garrett smiled too. “We need pictures to play Storytellers,” he said.

“I’ve got a bunch on my tablet.” Nox got excited. “They’re from college. Hold on.” He ran out of the room and clobbered the stairs with heavy steps.

“He’s been to college?” Lennox asked as Garrett helped her sit all the way up.

He studied her position and plumped the pillows. “I think we’ve been set up. He has my snapshots from school.”

Gran hopped out of the armchair out of nowhere and held one finger high, as if she’d had an eureka moment. “I’ve got pictures in my room too,” she said, disappearing through the door.

“Oh.” Lennox nodded, and regretted the movement immediately. Her bones and nerve endings were trying to merge together. It hurt.

“You all right?”

She hated the concern in Garrett’s eyes. If someone wanted to build a better mousetrap, they only had to start with Garrett’s eyes. She’d been caught up in those depths and had her neck snapped before. “I’m okay. Maybe Nox just wants to know more about his mom.”

“I’d buy that if he didn’t know everything there is to know about Tina. He knows her favorite foods and music, her cultural traditions, everything.” Garrett resumed his lean against the headboard, and rested an elbow on his bent knee. When he turned to her amusement sparkled in his eyes. “He wants to know more about you.”

The smile in his eyes disappeared suddenly. His jaw hardened as he turned to look at her. “You’ve been good to him today. He likes you a lot. Having a godmother means more than you know and I appreciate it. But don’t abandon my son, Lennox. Don’t do that to him.”

Where the hell had that come from? Her, Lennox Averdeen, abandon someone? Never. She knew what it felt like to suffer a mother’s rejection. “You think I’d do that, Garrett?”

His hard stare swung from her to the door. “You’ve done it before.”

Nox bounded in before she could reply, a backpack bouncing behind him.

This man was too much. She doubted they could ever be civil to each for more than an hour. She fumed but put on a happy face for Nox. “How do we play?”

Her godson refused to explain until Gran came back, clutching her nearly bursting leather photo album tight to her chest.

“Okay, Gran,
can you hear me
?” Nox said, making a show of speaking loudly for the senior citizen sitting directly beside him on the bed. She shook her fist at him and shouted, “
Eh?
” directly into his ear.

Nox recovered quickly. He passed out index cards from his backpack. “Write down three words. Whatever you want.” On a second go round he handed out Sharpies in citrus colors. “Then we take turns picking cards. Match a card to a picture. An’ tell the story behind the picture.”

Breathless, Nox paused to make sure they all understood. They nodded or, in Garrett’s case, grunted.

“Since me and Gran are the only ones with pictures we get to pick the words. Y’all get to write ’em.”

Lennox regarded the two opposites on the age scale. One face she couldn’t imagine life without. A scary thought when most of her friends had already lost their grandmothers. The other, younger face had somehow made her life a little sweeter.

How did a kid come along and wreck everything while building it up? Fears Lennox hadn’t let run through her mind in years, broke free. She couldn’t help it. She had to wonder if she’d ruined her mother’s life more than made it better. After all, Angie Evans Averdeen left town as soon as the doctor cut the umbilical cord. No hellos. No goodbyes. And it still hurt because Lennox still wondered why.

Lennox paused and listened, but only one answer came to her. She let out a long breath. Most new mothers probably felt the way she did: scared, choked up, and excited. The exact opposite of Angie Evans Averdeen.

For Lennox, getting to know this child, who’d been named after her, who had become hers in a sense, seemed like an adventure she’d need Indiana Jones’s whip and wit to survive. She couldn’t wait to see what her godson would do next.

Lennox picked up her index card and scribbled her first word in orange marker. Words two and three took a few seconds each. Garrett finished before her. He flipped his cards facedown onto the middle of the bed.

Nox shuffled the cards, sliding them around on her comforter.

“Are you sure that ink is dry?” Lennox scanned the creamy fluffiness for any sign of Sharpie transfer. She’d heard kids somehow made messes just by looking at something clean. No streaks of orange marked her bedding. She sagged with relief.

“You pick first, Gran,” Nox said, grinning.

“What happens if a word stumps her?” Lennox asked.

“Then the person who wrote it gets a point.” Garrett stretched, reaching for the ceiling. “If she tells a good story, she gets a point.”

His muscles strained the fabric across his upper arms. Lennox tilted her head. Damn those biceps looked good. She blew out a breath and looked away, without pain. The Flexeril had kicked in. Actually no pain unless you counted the burning need between her thighs. With all the great prescriptions drugs on the market, you’d think they’d have invented an anti-horniness pill. It’d fix a whole lot of bad situations.

An announcer voice boomed inside her head,
In love with your hot English prof? Swallow down the Prude Pill and stop whoring your way to that A. Can’t stop scheduling extra examinations with your sexy doc? Take the Prude Pill and quit begging for plastic glove love.

The possibilities went on and on. She’d pay good money for a prescription drug that cured lusting for your gorgeous ex-best friend who’d broken your heart and knew exactly what to say to piss you off. No wonder “hot” described both arousal and anger equally well. Her rage kept turning into raging desire.

Damn you, Anderson Garrett Westlake. Damn you to hunk of burning love hell.

The sound of crickets filled the room, actual crickets from her backyard. Her three companions had gone silent. Each of them stared at her with differing degrees of amusement.

“Were my lips moving?” she asked.

Gran readjusted the shawl around her shoulders. “Let’s hope I’m the only one who can read your lips.”

Garrett cleared his throat. “You’re not,” he said dryly. “What hunk of hell am I supposed to burn in?”

“You said what?” Nox nudged her thigh with his bent knee.

Lennox sucked one corner of her bottom lip between her teeth. “What word did you pull, Gran?”

Gran shook her head and flicked the index card she’d chosen a few times, allowing her eyes to adjust. “Home.” The senior Averdeen hugged herself and rocked side to side. “I have the perfect picture for that.”