by Anya Nowlan
“And now we get to clean up! Joy!” Dean called, her tall, broad-shouldered brother grabbing two stacked trash bags and walking toward the back of the pub with them, grumbling all the while.
“If you bus the tables I can take care of the rest. Miriam did the restrooms already so we’re mostly done,” Kelly called after him, looking sort of hopelessly at the pile of dirty dishes they had in the bar.
Even with the dishwashers going full blast, it still meant that there was a lot of hand-washing over the weekend to keep up with glass demands. And somehow, she’d been clever enough to get roped into only taking the evening shifts, so it would constantly be her problem as well. Sighing with a modicum of self-deprecation, she turned the tap on and started scrubbing.
The night had gone well enough. Her father had done the till and they’d had one of the best nights they’d ever had, income-wise. No one had gotten injured and the few brawls that had broken out had been quickly dealt with by her brothers, three of whom had shown up for service and bouncing duty that evening. The Callahan clan had a convoluted, but precise plan for the whole extended celebration weekend and so far, everything was going according to plan.
Except for the fact that Kelly had really forgotten how exhausting it was dealing with half of Boston during St Patrick’s. It felt like her arms were going to fall off and she could fall asleep where she stood. And yet, while she washed and cleaned up, her mind, though equally as exhausted, kept going back to the cute delivery guy and his antics.
I can’t believe I agreed to go on a date with him, she thought to herself, smiling. Dad’s going to skin him alive.
Well, it wasn’t that bad, obviously. But she couldn’t believe he’d be happy about it with the overprotective vibe that had been going on lately. Thankfully enough, she was her own woman. While it was a convenient excuse, she wasn’t going to let her family’s misconceived notions stand in the way of a decent date with a guy who, while being a bit cheesy, still seemed like a fun guy.
We’ll just do a coffee date or something. Nothing serious. Keep it casual, she mused, humming to herself as she heard Dean in the kitchen, cursing the whole way.
About twenty minutes later he showed up again, looking victorious and exhausted in equal measure.
“Okay. I have the morning shift tomorrow as well so I’ll take you up on that offer. I’ll take out most of the trash but can you grab the last few bags when you head out, sis?” he asked, shrugging on his jacket.
“Sure thing. I’m almost done here. The morning shift can polish these,” she said with a wink, motioning to the seemingly endless row of glasses stacked next to one another on some towels, making a full circle around the bar.
“Joy,” he groaned, leaning over the counter and giving her a peck on the cheek before picking up another few black plastic bags and heading toward the back door.
She heard the door slam shut and about a half an hour later, when the streets were beginning to really empty out as nothing was open anymore, she finished up at the bar. Kelly was heading to the back when a heavy knock on the door shook her from her thoughts, making her jump up in surprise.
Glancing back, she recognized the guys who’d been causing trouble before when Pran had still been around and who’d later gotten kicked out for getting into a fistfight.
“We’re closed!” she yelled back at them, getting a slew of expletives in response and snorting under her breath as she turned her back to them.
She shut the lights in the main customer areas and headed into the back, finding three trash bags waiting for her there. With a sigh, she opened the back door and pushed a stopper in the way so it wouldn’t close while she grabbed the bags. They were heavy but not too bad and she stepped out into the cold night air in only her T-shirt and jeans, completely ready to get this over with and head home for a long, well-deserved bath and then an endless night—or morning—of sleep.
Kelly got about ten steps toward the big trash containers when she heard the chilling sound of the door falling shut behind her.
“No, no, no!” she cried, turning around, but the sight that welcomed her made her drop the bags and her green eyes go wide.
It was the guy who’d been at the front door and two of his friends, all completely wasted but seemingly all the more angry for it.
“Hey, honey! So you didn’t want to let us in for a drink, huh?” the main lughead asked, grinning as he leaned on the door. “Guess we’re gonna have to have some fun outside then, huh?”
“Hey, easy now!” Kelly called, her skin pricking up in goose bumps. “We’re closed. You can come back tomorrow. Let’s not do anything we’ll regret in the morning, okay?”
She was talking to them like she would to a pack of dangerous animals, trying to calm them down. The men grinned to one another, beady eyes watery and their breath rising in pillars of steam as they walked toward her, taking their time.
It was like something out of a slasher flick, Kelly’s frightened mind managed to tell her, which didn’t make any of it better. For every step she took back, holding up her hands and babbling words at them that should have made them snap out of their drunken idiocy, they seemed to take two toward her. She didn’t have far to go and soon enough, her back was against the brick wall of the alley and her heart was in her throat.
“Come on, guys. Please, don’t do this,” she whimpered as the first of them came to a stop before her, grinning like she was some sort of a prize for a night well wasted.
The shiner he’d gotten earlier that evening during the fistfight was starting to take root, purplish-blue even in this light.
“Naw, honey, I think this is exactly what I want to do,” he said, grabbing her arm and twisting it, trying to turn her around so her face was to the wall when Kelly screamed.
The scream echoed through the alley, followed by their laughter, and a second later a third sound she couldn’t quite place. The trio of goons turned to look over their shoulders, giving Kelly a moment to wrench her arm out of the main guy’s grasp. When she looked in the direction they were, she was proven that the night could get weirder.
A fully grown stag was running toward the three guys, snarling with rage, his powerful antlers brought low and pointed forward. His hooved legs, muscled and strong, hit the dirty, muddy pavement like thunder and Kelly barely had enough time to fling herself out of its path before it plowed into the three men.
All she could hear were grunts and terrified yells from the three guys as the stag gored them with his antlers and ripped at them with those sharp hooves. She was curled up in the corner of the alley, watching him bring all three of them to the ground, bleeding and screaming.
But the more she looked at him, the more familiar he somehow looked. The glint in his eyes, the way he carried himself… maybe his scent, she didn’t know what, but she knew this apparition, this beast who had suddenly come to her aid. When he paused above the main guy, who was pleading for his life now, Kelly jumped up.
“No! Don’t… don’t kill them. They’re drunken fucking idiots. Are you ever going to do this shit again?” she asked, glaring at the men on the ground. “Don’t think I don’t know who you are, Mulaney. O’Malley. My dad knows your dad, Roarke. You promise me this is the last goddamn time you drink and I won’t have my hooved friend here fuck you up for life. What do you say?”
The buck stood still, antlers lowered, steam rising off his body. But he held back while the three men on the grimy ground promised Kelly every manner of good behavior from now until their last, dying breath.
“I’m sorry,” Roarke said through tears, blubbering like a kid while blood seeped out of a cut on his cheek, the smallest wound he had. “We were just messing around! Drunk, you see! I didn’t mean any of it!”
“Get the hell out of my sight,” Kelly snarled, her words steady though she was practically vibrating with nervous energy.
Slowly, the buck stood up taller and took a step back, giving the three sorry excuses for decent human beings a chance to s
cramble up on their feet and stumble out of the alley. Both he and Kelly watched the trio disappear around the corner before Kelly’s eyes met his deep, brown and soulful ones.
“Who are you?” she asked quietly, wrapping her arms around herself.
With the adrenaline wearing off, she was suddenly very aware of how cold she actually was. But even that was forgotten for a moment as the large stag changed before her very eyes, his body twisting and contorting until none of the animal remained and a very familiar man stood in its place, rolling back his shoulders though no signs of his easy grin could be spotted on his features.
He was wearing a heavy frown, his mouth pressed into a thin line as he moved to take off his jacket.
“Here, put this on. You’re cold. You shouldn’t have let them get away with it,” Pran said, his voice dark and still tinged with the rage he must have been feeling.
She looked at the jacket dubiously, but he stepped forward and draped it around her body. Immediately, the warmth lingering in the leather jacket wrapped her in a safe, cozy bubble and without even thinking about it, her hands clutched at the sides of it, pulling it closer around her. She hadn’t realized she was as cold as she was before another, better option had been presented, which only spoke to her current state of mind.
“Oh, trust me. They won’t get away with it. We know their families. The moment I tell my dad about this they’ll get far worse from their own families than anything the cops could ever do to them,” Kelly said with the kind of conviction that came from seeing what happened to sons stepping out on families that were as close-knit as most of the Irish-American ones were in her social circle.
She let out a sigh, shaking her head at what had happened. Never in a million years would she have thought that she’d find herself in a situation like that, being almost assaulted by guys she knew from her childhood, who she had served earlier that night and who had even stared eye-to-eye with some of her brothers. How in hell did they think doing something like that would be a smart idea?
Alcohol, she reminded herself with a gentle roll of her eyes.
The easiest answer wasn’t always the wrong one in such cases.
Pran’s hands were shoved in his pockets and while he was standing a few steps away from her at a respectful distance, the fire burning in his eyes was so bright that she felt like there was no room between them at all. She opened her mouth to thank him but nothing came out. Frowning, she cleared her throat and tried again.
“Thanks, Pran. I mean it, thank you. I don’t know what they would have done if you hadn’t been here at the right time,” she said, managing to steady her voice enough to get the words out.
“Oh, I have a couple of ideas as to what they might have done,” he said glumly, tossing a glare over his shoulder in the direction they’d disappeared. “Don’t mention it. I was walking home and just wanted to make sure you’d finished up okay. You’re not wearing weather-appropriate clothing, by the way, so I think my educational presence is needed in more ways than one here.”
He grinned, though it didn’t completely reach his eyes, his mood still clearly marred by what he’d just witnessed. Kelly couldn’t blame him—she’d definitely had a few better ways in mind on how their next meeting should go and getting attacked by three drunks did not feature on that list.
“I was only coming out to throw away some trash bags,” she started, when Pran pointed at the ones she’d dropped.
“These ones?” he asked, already picking them up and slinging them into the trash container.
“Those ones, yes,” she confirmed with a laugh, but it got cut off suddenly when she realized that the back door had been slammed shut behind her by Roarke or one of his friends and the front door was locked.
And she didn’t have her keys.
“Shit,” she muttered, slicking a hand over her hair and almost having the jacket drop off her shoulders because of it.
“Whoa, little lady, language!” Pran chided good-naturedly, by her side in a flash and moving the jacket back on her shoulder before Kelly could react to it falling.
“I forgot my keys in the pub. And my jacket. And my phone. Basically, everything,” Kelly said, staring at the closed and locked door with horror.
Just in case, Pran went to try it, pushing on the handle, but it was one of those automatic snap locks that shut immediately. She couldn’t stop the groan of defeat from passing over her lips.
“Great. I’m a genius.”
“Well then, I guess it’s Pran to the rescue, take two, then. Where do you live?” he asked, coming back to Kelly, now wearing his casual smile as he cocked his head to the side.
“In the South End, but my roommate’s out of town for the next few days and no one else has the keys,” Kelly said, cursing her excellent luck.
“Okay. Well, hear me out then. You can come to my hotel, make all the calls you need to make and I can get you a cab to your parents’ place or wherever. I’m around the corner here basically, at the Regal Blue. How’s that?” he asked, cocking a brow at her. “I swear I’m not a weirdo, past the whole ‘turning into a buck’ thing.”
He gave her a disarming smile and Kelly couldn’t help but laugh at that. Okay, so she’d gone from giving him the cold shoulder that morning to agreeing to go out with him that evening, and then getting rescued by him at night and considering going back to his hotel room all in one day? The guy had game, obviously.
“Are you sure? I don’t want to impose,” she said lightly, though she already knew she was going to agree.
It wasn’t like she had a whole plethora of options and after seeing him shift, she doubted he had a lot of additional big secrets to hide.
With Pran Frost, that of course couldn’t have been further from the truth, but it was the thought that counted, right?
“I’m sure. You’re not an imposition in any way and I’d never live with myself if I let you freeze to death on the mean streets of Boston,” he said with a smile, pointing his thumb in the direction of the street. “Shall we?”
“I guess we shall,” Kelly responded, shaking her head as she studied the bemused, albeit worried look on his face.
Looks like someone was looking out for her that night.
This is the weirdest first date I’ve ever had.
CHAPTER FIVE
Pran
The walk itself was short enough, and cold enough, but Pran was entirely committed to not taking the jacket back from Kelly, though she kept offering. His own counter of “sharing” it did not go over so well, though what she could have against him carrying her to the hotel in his rugged, strong arms he’d never know.
“So, am I winning some major brownie points here for being the hero you need, and the one you deserve?” he asked as they walked along, a slight blush of either cold or mortification on Kelly’s cheeks.
Whatever was causing it, he liked the way it looked. Made her pretty face light up a little.
“Well, it’s either that or I should be worried that you were stalking me in the middle of the night, right?” she countered.
“Stalking? Come on! I’m a stag, I don’t ‘stalk.’”
“You prance, then?”
Pran laughed, trying to mask it behind an actual coughing fit but failing horribly, considering the look Kelly gave him. She was not far off target, this one.
Better be careful, she’s clever, he thought with a wide grin on his lips.
“You could say that.”
“So what’s it like?” Kelly asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Being a shifter. I haven’t met too many.”
“You didn’t seem too surprised, though.”
“Oh, well, that’s on account of my older sister marrying one. A jaguar, I think. She doesn’t bring him around too much, though,” Kelly said with a shrug. “But he shifted once during a family barbecue just to show us what it looks like. I don’t think my father appreciated it.”
“Don’t shift around the father unit, gotcha
,” Pran said, nodding sagely. “It’s… I don’t know. How’s it like being human? This is sort of the same, but you’re also an animal,” he said with a nonchalant shrug. “Some days you’re more one than the other. It’s a game of balance at the end of the day, figuring out what feeds both sides of you.”
“And what feeds both sides of you?” she asked with a pointed smile.
“Milkshakes and burgers, mostly. But I’ll settle for clever conversation with a beautiful bartender if I can get it,” he said with a wink.
Kelly snorted slightly in response, though that blush got a bit deeper and redder. So it wasn’t only the cold.
Score one for the werebuck!
The hotel came into sight and Pran tossed Kelly a quick look, making sure that she was still comfortable with this. He didn’t want to rush her into anything that would make her uncomfortable and despite the current situation, getting her to come to his hotel room might have read as a bit too much. But with her nose red now too, he was beginning to think that he had to get her somewhere warm for a bit, lest she got a cold on the busiest weekend she had.
They walked into the lobby and without thinking about it, Pran slung his arm around her shoulders protectively, as if any of the hotel employees would stop and question the guy who had reserved the biggest suite in the whole place about his choice of company. Still, he couldn’t help but feel entirely possessive of her and wanting to make sure that she was okay and safe seemed to come naturally now that he’d seen her in danger once.
He didn’t want anything to happen to her. Not now, not ever.
He thumbed the top floor in the elevator and enjoyed the relative tight space, feeling her body heat and getting to revel in her scent. She smelled sweet, with a slight vanilla undertone, which was a feat in itself considering that Callahan’s Shamrock smelled mostly of beer and sweat by the end of the day, he had to imagine. Pran was sure that her scent would stay with him for life now.
