Lyin' Heart

by Erika Masten

  Behind Ellie, Caroline humphed. “Ida? Really? Is she then?”

  “Yes, I am.” Ellie’s younger sister darted out from the utility room where she’d been spying since Pietr and Dhakal had arrived. The girl covertly shot her sister an apologetic look.

  There was something about watching the Heath woman, a native of Grayslake with far more standing in town as an established businesswoman with her own bakery, dressing down Ellie and Ida in front of Mason that rubbed Aubrey’s fur the wrong way. It bothered him a lot, actually, more than he should have let it. Again, his lion pushed up and sent a ripple of fur bristling under the skin of his nape, threatening to erupt.

  The Lowe girls had taken on a hell of a mess with that B&B, could barely makes ends meet, and they deserved a lot more respect for holding themselves together as a family than they were getting from the Mason’s father’s kin. Aubrey had to wonder how much of it had to do with the fact that Ellie and Ida were what the western U.S. packs and prides would have called latents but the southern clans called skins—weres without the ability to shift. From what he gathered, the way these bloodlines mixed, Mason wasn’t expected to be able to take either the bear form of his father or the cat form from his mother. Back home in California, where Aubrey’s own latent werelion sister still lived, that would not have been an issue for anyone. In fact, it made her entirely too valuable to the Panthera. But in Grayslake….

  “It’s my fault,” Aubrey contended as he moved up behind Mason to run one hand through the boy’s hair. “Mason and I get carried away sometimes when we’re horsing around and he’s showing me his toys. That little blue Hot Wheels Camaro he’s got is a perfect miniature of my first car.”

  Caroline’s polite smile wasn’t even a little sincere, telling Aubrey she’d picked up on the subtle possessiveness in his manner and tone. “Ah, boys will be boys, then,” she remarked, narrowing her eyes.

  For a second, Aubrey could have sworn he felt their beasts rising up just enough to feel one another out. Bear and lion didn’t often meet in the wild, so their natures wouldn’t have recognized an obvious alpha in one or the other. Just how dangerous is he, she had to be wondering.

  Then to Ellie, she said, “I suppose that’s just to be expected raising a child in an environment like this, in a hotel, of sorts. He’s going to mix with the guests and spend more time with some than others.”

  Caroline’s gaze focused in on Aubrey’s hand where he rested it on the back of Mason’s neck. Even Aubrey had noticed that whenever he did that, the boy got still and calm. Between a lion and his cub, that would have been expected, and it must have chaffed Caroline Heath’s hide no end to see it now.

  It wasn’t Caroline but Ellie who possessively yanked the little boy away from Aubrey. Turned squarely away from the she-bear, Ellie mouthed to the man, “You’re not helping.”

  Aubrey stiffened his jaw but tried not to narrow his eyes at the silent reproach. It galled. Not that he didn’t understand it from a woman as independent as Ellie, and not that he hadn’t let that little pissing contest with Caroline get the best of his better judgment, but still…. Fuck it; he had no business being protective of Ellie and Mason, even if they needed it.

  Temporary assignment, he reminded himself. Temporary. Temp-or-ar-y. It was back to California to check on his sister, Vanessa, as soon as he could manage, then another assignment after that to stay out as Pietr’s line of sight as much as possible.

  Then Ellie Lowe spun and physically put Mason’s tiny hand, still clutching that blue toy Camaro, into Ida’s before herding them through the door to the kitchen.

  “Here, Caroline, let’s you and I walk these two out to Ida’s car so she can get Mason to school before he’s any later than he already is.”

  Pietr sauntered over with the typical werelion grace and deliberate attitude of nonchalance to stand beside his agent. Together they watched the women file into the house with the child in tow. At least Achieli had the sense to wait until the she-weres had gotten out of earshot before he shook his head and cast a doubtful sidelong glance at Aubrey.

  “No small amount of family tension there,” the Greek remarked. “Will it work to our advantage? Can we use this Caroline to persuade or pressure Elizabeth Lowe to sell the B&B to us?”

  “No,” Aubrey said flatly. “No, the Heath woman wouldn’t make a reliable ally. I already ruled that out.” Just now, when Pietr asked.

  It was true, though. While most werebears had a tendency to be straightforward, plain-spoken, and intolerant of bullshit interspecies politics, Caroline Heath’s human side was a natural schemer. And damn if Aubrey was going to rally the town bully to ramp up the browbeating Ellie had already suffered as a werecat skin raising a bear-cat-hybrid son under the disapproving glare of his father’s family.

  Aubrey shook his head at his own private thoughts. No, that level of callous manipulation would have made him far too much like the werecat leader beside him.

  Chapter 3

  Ellie marched out the back kitchen door of the house and down the porch steps into the ankle-high tatter of ragged grass in Garden Gate’s backyard. Stomach trembling so hard that the muscles already burned, she panted through the flood of adrenaline that would’ve had her shifting if her body knew how.

  “Ellie?”

  The woman didn’t look at her sister where the girl was knelt beside an old fountain they were trying to get working again. All Ida could do for it, honestly, was clean the pump parts and hope that lowered the cost of whomever they were going to have to call to come fix it.

  “Ellie?” Ida asked again when her older sister didn’t respond or even try to look at her.

  Clamping one hand over her eyes, Ellie acted as though blocking out her vision of the world would change what she’d just done. “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.” She swore at herself as she huffed out each breath. “I can’t believe I just….”

  Ellie moved her hand from her eyes to her mouth, as though to keep herself from confessing something horrible. Now Ida came up with dirty, grassy knees on her jeans and rallied beside her sister.

  “Oh God,” Ellie rasped one more time before looking damp-eyed into Ida’s face. “I just slammed the front door on Ty Abrams.” The girl blinked hard and opened her mouth like she was about to repeat that incredulous statement, but it was like Ida couldn’t make a sound. And Ellie couldn’t blame her, saying, “I know, I know. Yes, that Ty Abrams.” The Itan, the leader of the Grayslake bear clan himself and the law in this town, not just by virtue of that position. Criminy, he’d been in his damn police uniform, and she slammed the door on him.

  “What—?” Ida tried to ask.

  “Caroline.” The name made Ellie’s jaw lock up so hard these days that she only ever seemed to say it anymore through clenched teeth. “I knew she was going to go back to that compound the bears have on the lake and tell everybody that the house is a mess and still half fallin’ down—.”

  Ida’s sandy brows knit with an ire that resembled her older sister’s. “They can’t blame you for that. We’re spending all we got.” Ida paused as a sheepish look passed over her face. “All you’ve got.” The only work Ida had been able to find around Grayslake, after finishing high school and starting at the local community college, was part-time counter girl jobs that barely paid for gas and books and a spare twenty-dollar bill here and there to help the family. “It’s not your fault if that drunk Nate Brennan messes up half of what his brother Jared manages to fix every day.”

  Both women turned to look back at the house, to see the younger of the Brennan’s, Jared. He was the brother roundly considered one of the sweetest and most handsome bachelors in town and quite the catch had he been a bear rather than a wolf. Easily recognizable by his mussed black hair even through the distorted glass of the cracked window, Jared was watching them from the sink as he washed his hands, probably unnecessarily, looking out after the women. The worry was clear in his expression, in his gentle brown eyes.

  “Lord.” Ellie si
ghed out another heavy breath. “He and Nate saw the whole argument. That brother of his is gonna talk all over town, especially at the bars.”

  “Talk about what? Ellie, what happened? What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  Well, aside from slamming that door in the werebear leader’s face. After raising her voice to him. And telling him Mason was none of his business even if he was the police. And maybe threatening him just a little bit, in a roundabout way. She’d all but hissed at him. It was a miracle he hadn’t shifted on her right then and there. Disrespect of the territorial alpha was never tolerated.

  “Caroline. It was Caroline.” Ellie gritted out the name again but this time while sniffling and blinking out the start of bleary tears. “Ty Abrams came to talk to me about what she told him. She’s trying to say I’m acting indecent in front of Mason. Like all these men around here and I are doing things. She brought up Aubrey Drummond to Ty.” Ellie shrugged hard and threw her hands up. Her sigh rattled through her, threatening to become a sob. “Why did he have to piss and posture like that in front of her last week?”

  “Ellie, that’s not fair,” Ida said. “He was standing up to her, like he was protecting you. It was sweet.”

  “It wasn’t any of his business,” Ellie insisted, her ire rising again like the incident between Caroline and Drummond had just happened that morning instead of days back. “But everyone’s got to get their nose in our business, don’t they? Like I can’t take care of this house or….” Ellie clamped her hand over her mouth again like she wasn’t going to say it, but eventually she had to. “Or my son.”

  Ida shook her head dismissively. “No, that’s just stupid. No one thinks that just because this place is taking so much work and we’re a little strapped that—.”

  “Oh, that’s not the half of what they’re thinking,” Ellie interrupted. “After those men came to visit Drummond, Caroline’s got it in her mind that I was entertaining all of them.”

  “Entertaining?” Ida repeated questioningly. Then her eyes went wide. “Entertaining? You don’t mean…. She can’t possibly think….”

  “Whether she thinks I’m truly whoring myself out in front of my son or not, it only matters what she can make the bears and Ty and the police think.”

  Ida looked aghast. “Good Lord, why would she?”

  “Oh, please, Ida, you know that woman wants a say over everything in Grayslake. She didn’t want her brother messing with a chubby little skin with werecat blood in the first place, and then I got pregnant.” Ellie rolled her eyes. That would easily have been her single biggest regret in life, getting tangled up with a bear shifter when this was all their territory, were it not for the fact that that was how she’d gotten Mason.

  Shoulders slumping, Ellie shook her head and her messy ponytail. “It couldn’t get much dumber of me than to fall for Sam Heath and think it was more than a quick tumble. I hope you’re better than me, Ida. I hope you’ve got a hell of a lot more wildcat in you than I do. If I was true to my kind, I’d know that males don’t stick around like that, and I wouldn’t care. A she-cat’s heart shouldn’t belong to anybody but her sisters and her cubs. You remember that, Ida. You don’t do like me.”

  “That’s not fair, Ellie, to you or anybody else. We’re not all cold like that, not caring about love, and the males aren’t all like that, either. Look at Ty Abrams himself and his mate, Mia. Bears aren’t supposed to be the mating kind, but he sure is with her. And I don’t think Jared Brennan is like that. He’s not on all over town bedding anything he can. As far as I can tell, neither is Aubrey Drummond, and I think both of them have an eye for you.”

  “Ida, that is the last thing I need to hear right now. That Aubrey Drummond—.”

  Ellie had hardly gotten the name out—and why she had set all her frustration on his shoulders in particular she didn’t ask yourself or even want to know—when Ida shouldered her.

  “When I hear my name around here,” a male voice said from behind Ellie, “it’s usually being taken in vain.”

  The women turned to watch Drummond prowl down the porch steps with all the power and ease and damned self-possession of a werelion who just knew he was all that. Even after all day at work, his light brown hair was still ruffled just right and just so along the crown of his head over that firm brow and those storm blue eyes. Not a wrinkle or crease in his tan uniform, but that was probably because the banded muscles of his arms and broad chest filled it out too damn well. Same for his thighs and, yes, the firm ass she had checked out way too many times. He could look a little bit less than perfect and gorgeous just once, just this once.

  Ellie was fuming at him, and he was just blinking those blue eyes and smiling so subtly with only one corner of his lips. Full lips and broad and a half shade darker rose than most from all the time he spent out in the wind and sun. And damn him for making her so warm in her chest and the pit of her stomach and between her legs merely at the sight of him.

  She knew he was trying to be roguishly charming, the werelion default, when he asked, “What have I done to get on your bad side now, Miss Lowe?

  “Miss Lowe my ass,” she swore at him.

  Ellie wanted to yell at the man. Hell, the wildcat in her wanted to scratch and hiss at him. Almost as much as it wanted to rub up on him like a house cat begging for his attention. Dammit. As angry as she wanted to be, as angry as she really was at the way he’d just had to be protective of her and set Caroline off, there were a lot more tears than rage in her voice.

  Then Aubrey Drummond insisted on making it even harder for her to get good and mad at him when he had the bad manners to actually look concerned as he stepped forward up over her. He was standing far too close. He reached for her, laying hands softly on each arm just above the elbow and raising goose bumps along her skin that prickled so high and hard that it hurt as much as it tickled, flushing her sex with heat.

  “Ellie, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  When Ellie should have stepped back and pulled away, should have told Aubrey Drummond not to touch her, instead she found every ounce of strength in her body failing her. She swayed forward, maybe even swooned against him—swooned like some southern bell in a historical romance novel and surely for the first time in her life that she’d ever felt anything like this—and fell into his arms.

  Drummond caught her. And cradled her against his chest, so warm and smelling so strongly of amber and sage and salty male heat. And cooed so softly to her. Damn him.

  “Hey now, what’s all this?” He murmured with his satiny lips brushing the flyaway curls at her temple, the warmth of his breath swirling against her skin. “Stop, Ellie. Is it that Brennan jerk? Did Nate do something? Is that why Ty Abrams is inside talking to him in the den?”

  Looking up in horror, Ellie pushed away from Aubrey. “Ty Abrams? Ty Abrams is in my house?”

  Chapter 4

  At that moment, everyone at Garden Gate was a shifter. Some might have been latents, certainly, but none were humans. Meaning the rule there in Grayslake that any human who uncovered the existence of shifters had to either be mated to one or killed didn’t come into play. As Aubrey bounded up the stairs inside the house looking for Ty Abrams, he didn’t have to be mindful of the slight shimmer rising to the surface of his skin and revealing his shifter nature. Whether or not it was wise to let his lion push up to confront the Itan when Abrams had the final say over the proposal the Panthera had sent Aubrey there to make was another matter altogether. How many territorial laws was Aubrey about to break?

  It was all Aubrey could do to get into Mason’s bedroom ahead of the boy’s mother and her sister. Once there, he found tall, broad, brown-haired Ty Abrams on Mason’s bed with the six-year-old, both sitting with ankles crossed and hands folded, shoulder-to-shoulder while they talked about matters obviously a good deal more serious than toy cars.

  Everything in Aubrey, from the werelion to the Panthera agent to the former hunter serving with the Agency strike s
quads, wanted to scoop up Mason and put him in his mother’s arms—before throwing werebear Ty Abrams across the room. Maybe it was a lucky thing Aubrey had to concentrate on keeping Ellie Lowe from acting on those same impulses.

  Ellie bumped into Aubrey’s back just inside the door. He turned to caution the women, holding a hand up toward Ida but actually taking hold of Ellie with a firm grasp on her shoulder. Her muscles were tensed up like steel. He couldn’t help but appreciate that, the she-cat prepared to defend her young from anything. At any cost. From anyone, Itan included.

  To the angry werecat mother, he murmured low, “Not in front of the boy.”

  Aubrey was certain Mason could sense trouble between the adults, the shifters, but he didn’t need to see it played out in color. Especially if that color turned out to be bright blood red. And wouldn’t that have just given Pietr kittens? Sending Aubrey out here to Georgia to establish a base of operations for observing Agency activities in the southern region only to have the reluctant agent start an interspecies shifter war? All of it over a female latent. That would’ve served Achieli right. It just wouldn’t have done the Lowe family much good.

  Feeling his lion eager to take the lead, and not sure what either man or beast was about to do, Aubrey smoothly pivoted to face the bed. Thankfully, Ty Abrams came up from his seat slowly. The werebear extended one hand in a calming gesture while the other patted Mason’s shoulder reassuringly.

  “That’s fine now, Mason,” Abrams said to the boy, who looked nervous but not especially distressed. “Thanks for talking to me. Good chat, son.” Then the werebear Itan, at full height nearly as tall as Aubrey but with all the muscle and bulk expected of his kind, cast a meaningful glance the other man’s way. “Shall we?” he asked Aubrey as he motioned toward the door and included the women in the question with a silent but commanding glance.