by Anne Douglas
“There is one good thing about all this…”
With one hand still in his, Pearl shook the dainty edges of her dress with the other, so that her hem hung the way it should, then looked up at him. “Oh?”
“I got to meet you, and despite everything that’s happened since, I’m really glad about that.”
She cocked her head a little and looked at him with assessing eyes that angled up a little at the edges as if she was holding back laughter. Slowly, a very genuine smile bloomed on her face, and she went up on her tiptoes to place a kiss gently on his lips. “I am, too.”
For a few minutes, he let himself forget about magic and babies, and just felt the comfortable feeling of having a lovely woman ‑‑ his woman ‑‑ on his arm as he walked up to the Grande Dame’s front door.
* * * * *
No doorbell for the Grande Dame, only a large, imposing, cast-iron, owl-shaped door knocker that represented her beast and that of her family line. Its loud, reverberating knock was quickly answered by the Grande Dame’s man-of-all-things, Geoffrey, her genuine English butler.
Pearl got a weird look on her face when Geoffrey spoke and she heard his posh London accent, but she didn’t say anything further.
Geoffrey welcomed them into the house and took the delicate knit wrap Pearl had added to her outfit at the last minute, carefully placing it on the crossbar of a hanger and depositing it in the large coat closet that was discreetly hidden behind the opening arc of the front door.
Rex wondered what the man would do if Rex had been as uncouth as to arrive in his stained, crapped on, and puked on clothes from earlier in the week. Rex had a feeling no problem was insurmountable for Geoffrey, and that if needed, he would be able to produce a perfectly fitting, three-piece suit at the drop of a hat ‑‑ no matter who the guest might be.
Truth be known, over the years Rex had grown to be more than a little in awe of the Englishman. His intuition was uncanny, and his problem solving skills were unsurpassed. Theoretically, Geoffrey was a servant by trade, but by nature, he was a problem-solver, and the respect he garnered from the Grande Dame and the Pack showed it.
“Milady is in the Red Room.” The butler directed them down the wide hallway that ran down the center of the house, but rather than up the large staircase, they turned to the right and into a decadent, red, Victorian-styled parlor. There were a number of Elders present, along with Rob, their Alpha, and Dave, Pearl’s longtime friend. They turned as a group as Geoffrey announced Rex and Pearl, and Rex felt a burst of pride as he handed Pearl over the threshold of the room for his Pack’s inspection. Smug even, as he took the step to stand beside her with his hand linked in hers as they presented a united front.
His bitch…scratch that, his woman stood beside him, his child growing in her belly, and his archaic sense of manly pride, along with his beast, wanted to stand up and crow. Instead, he let his smile say it all.
Until the man standing in front of the Grande Dame turned, and Pearl uttered the fateful word, “Daddy?”
Nothing makes a man’s pride and conceit flail like a half-inflated balloon farting its way across a room than to realize he’s facing the father of the woman he’d only met a week ago, knocked up, and hadn’t made plans to marry.
But it was what happened next that nearly knocked him on his ass.
Pearl called out, “Aunt Lydia!” and she and the Grande Dame hustled toward each other like long-lost lovers on a train platform and exchanged a big, gushy hug.
Both Rob and Dave stepped up beside Rex and questioned, “Aunt Lydia?”
Oh yeah, tonight was going to be a perfect ending to his perfect week.
Chapter Thirteen
“Pearl, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you.” A hushed rush of words followed up the warm exclamation into Pearl’s ear as Aunt Lydia wrapped her in a hug. “Your father was an unexpected visitor, and, no, he doesn’t know anything about the baby.”
Pearl was surprised when she stood back and proclaimed, “Welcome to my home, my dear.” Since he stood slightly behind her aunt, her father didn’t see her dramatic wink.
Then it hit her. My home. That meant the Grande Dame was her Aunt Lydia! Good Lord, could this web get anymore tangled? Pearl was sure a pretzel had fewer kinks in it than she did right at this moment.
“It’s wonderful to be here, though I have to say, Rex hadn’t told me your full name, so I hadn’t realized this was your house. Besides, I thought you lived out of town, not here in Rockville.” As she glanced to the side, she saw a tic flare for just a moment along Rex’s jaw. He didn’t look very happy with the revelation that she knew the Grande Dame ‑‑ familiarly ‑‑ and that her father was in the room.
“I did for a number of years, but I moved back recently.” There was a slight tilt to one of Lydia’s eyebrows as she carried on, “I’m surprised your father didn’t say.”
“Pearl, sweetie!” This time it was her father that pulled her into a hug, though this one was a little more restrained, as befitted a father and daughter. “I dropped in on Lydia unannounced, and she convinced me to stay; now I see why ‑‑ she had a surprise guest!” The easy way he stood told Pearl he was on his second drink. Oh, not drunk by any means, but having served as his hostess on evenings just like this before, she could see that his forthright, staid judge persona had thinned, and he was behaving more like the man she knew as her dad. Dad was a lot easier going than the judge.
“Daddy, you never told me Aunt Lydia had moved back to Rockville.”
Her father looked a little chagrined as he spoke. “Sorry, love, I really meant to.” Typical of her father, he owned up to his mistake but offered no excuse, choosing instead to change the subject. “And who is your escort tonight, my dear?”
Rex’s hand hovered at her elbow, and her father had noticed. Now, she just had to figure out how much she could say ‑‑ or more exactly how much her father knew, if he knew anything at all, about the Were community. There was a little stabbing pain near her heart as she wondered if he’d kept knowledge of Were-kind a secret from her.
“Rex Dixon, sir.” Seeing she was caught off balance, Rex had picked up her conversational slack and had extended his hand to her father, shaking it twice in that strong, solid, sharp way certain men have. Not discourteously, but in the way that said, “I respect you, but don’t fuck with me, ’cause I’ll hand you your ass in a dry cleaner’s bag.”
“Ah, the veterinarian. I believe I’ve heard Lydia and Robert speak of you before.”
Pearl felt heat race across her cheeks as her father inspected Rex from head to toe. It came to her in a flash that this was the first time her father had ever been introduced to a man she was dating ‑‑ there hadn’t been that many, although she wasn’t a total hung-up-to-dry spinster with no social life, but why right now? Didn’t she have enough on her plate?
“And your reputation precedes you also, Judge Gordon.”
“Now, now, enough with all this formality, gentlemen.” Lydia swept up to Judge Gordon’s side, giving him no choice but to offer his arm. “How about we mingle? Aaron, George Trimble wanted to discuss a matter with you. Rex, if you’d be so kind as to introduce Pearl around.”
And just like that, the woman who’d always reminded her of Grace Kelly with that cool, golden charm and strong sense of propriety had maneuvered her problem guests to opposite ends of the room. Pearl almost clapped and cried, “Bravo!” but Rex’s quiet question brought her back to the here and now.
“Aunt Lydia?” His surprise was evident in his raised eyebrows, which looked suspiciously like the twin arches of a McDonald’s sign. “You already know the Grande Dame?”
“I know her as an old friend of my mother’s from college. She’s not really my aunt, but my godmother. She used to visit us a couple of times a year, but now that Mother’s gone…” The rest went unsaid with a small shrug. Pearl glanced back over her shoulder and questioned out loud, “I wonder if Daddy knows she’s a Were? I had no clue she had that s
trong of a tie to Rockville.”
“When her father passed, she took his place on the Elder’s Council.”
Pearl nodded; it made perfect sense now, with Rex’s information about the Elder’s Council. Lydia had spent a long weekend with Pearl and Aaron after her father’s funeral, taking some time to relax ‑‑ obviously, there had been more to the situation she’d not been privy to.
“As for your father, I think he probably knows about Were-kind ‑‑ any Weres that get in trouble tend to come up on his docket. I can’t tell you for sure, but I’ve always thought there was a reason for that.”
“Aunt Lydia whispered to me that he didn’t know anything about the baby, but that doesn’t mean he knows nothing.”
“I can answer that.” Rob’s low timbre sounded from beside them. “Yes, he knows; yes, most Weres come up in his court; no, it’s not so they get off scot-free, but so they don’t serve out punishment where they could turn around and hurt humans. Otherwise, he’s not that involved with the Pack, and his association is not well known to those outside the Elders.” Rob filled them in quickly as they moved toward the first group of guests, and then made quick introductions to cover up Rex’s momentary lack of poise.
Once the conversation had started to flow, Rob leaned in close. “I’ll catch up with you a little later; I see two young ladies who are sure to be mourning the demise of Rex’s bachelorhood.”
Caught not knowing whether to frown or to laugh, Pearl watched him saunter off like the two women were lizards sunning themselves on a fence, and he was the hungry cat who liked to play with his food before he ate it. Her giggle as she realized just how apt the analogy really was brought Rex’s attention back to her again, and she settled on a frown as she contemplated him.
With no idea that Rob had just gotten him into trouble, he looked at her with some affection and a whole lot of lust, and she was caught between making him suffer for having once been a player, or rewarding him for being the kind of man who acknowledged that his little black book was closed once and for all.
Of course, there was the pesky fact that if he suffered celibacy, she suffered right along with him. And she had decided that her no sex rule was just begging to be broken. So she turned that frown upside down and blinded him with a sexy smile of such brilliance that any aliens tooling around on Mars would’ve been able to decipher her intent without any sort of intergalactic translator.
His casual smile cracked a little, and that small tic flared along his jawline again as her intent sank in and made its presence felt. And just to bedevil him a little more, she carefully placed her hand on his arm and leaned into him with a breathy, Marilyn Monroe type of sigh and said, “I’ll make breakfast.”
She thought he did rather well to recover from swallowing his drink down the wrong way and nearly choking in front of the mayor.
* * * * *
Two hours later, Pearl was startled to look around the room and find that all the guests, bar her father, Rex, and Rob, were gone. She’d been sitting off to the side engaged in conversation with Lydia, their little alcove cutting them off from the majority of the room.
“Ah, I see Geoffrey has been his ever-efficient self. He knows I hate for these things to go on into the small hours.” Lydia stood and patted down her skirt so it sat flat again, not a wrinkle to be found. When she looked back up at Pearl, she smiled. “Did I tell you how pretty you look tonight, dear? If I was twenty-five years younger, I think I’d be jealous.”
Her father, having seen they were making a move, walked across and caught the tail end of their conversation. “But if you were twenty-five years younger, Lydia, I’d be accused of being a lecherous old man for admiring your lovely form.” With a few more whiskeys under his belt now, Pearl could see her father had reached a comfortable, happy place. “But she’s very right, sweetie, you do look lovely tonight.” His eyes twinkled with merriment. “I even told that nice young man of yours the same. Quite an interesting conversation we’ve been having, Rex, Rob, and I, rather interesting indeed.” Pearl was surprised, but not unpleasantly so, when her father took Lydia’s arm in a particularly familiar fashion and began the walk back to Rex and Rob. The pair of them seemed to fit rather well together, and she was reminded that in this day and age, her father was by no means an old man.
“Oh, yes?” she asked hesitantly, concerned about just how big a disaster she might have to avert.
“I think your mother would have been quite pleased to see you involved with a Were like Rex.” Unaware of the bombshell he’d just dropped, Judge Gordon walked on while Pearl came to a standstill.
“Daddy?”
Obviously, the querulous, shaky tone of her voice must have rung bells, as he turned and cringed. “Ah…I meant ‑‑”
“What he means is it’s time to get this all out in the open once and for all.” Lydia’s forthright response turned not only Pearl’s head, but Rex’s, too.
“Pearl, is everything okay?” The man who’d so dramatically changed her life moved across the room and came to her side. He slid his arm around her waist, and, though she was quite capable of dealing with whatever life threw at her on her own, she was comforted and leaned in a little closer to Rex’s warmth.
“I’m not too sure…” There was more to this conversation, she was sure of it. She’d never once seen her father hesitate with her, yet here he was, nervous as all hell.
Lydia took the reins once more. “Aaron, it’s time she knew it all. Grace is gone, and though I loved her dearly, you know that I thought her decision not to tell Pearl that she was half Were was a mistake.”
“I’m what?” Incredulity made her voice high, screechy almost. She blinked, trying to contain the shock that flooded her system.
She watched, wide-eyed, as her father shook off the effects of the liquor he’d drunk, his nervousness disappearing as he transformed back into the man known as the judge ‑‑ serious, concerned, and capable. “You’re right, Lydia. It’s time she knew.” The judge threw a glance toward the man who stood protectively beside her. “Perhaps past time.”
“Let us adjourn to my office; it will be more comfortable.” Geoffrey stood beside the twin doors of the salon, waiting, it seemed, for his mistress. “Coffee and tea, I think, Geoffrey.”
Pearl’s stomach decided that it should rumble to fill the awkward silence that had settled over the party as they changed rooms. She couldn’t have felt more embarrassed if she’d tried. She pressed a hand to her stomach and hoped that her face didn’t look as hot as it felt.
“Maybe a cheeseboard also, milady?” How he managed to keep a straight face she’d never know, but he did. Not a twitch of a muscle on his face showed the humor that sparkled in his eyes.
“I think that might well be a good idea.” The Grande Dame’s laughter was barely veiled. “Unless, of course, anyone has a preference of late-night snack?” With Lydia’s pointed look at her, there was no mistaking to whom she was giving the choice of food option.
Pearl shook her head slightly, thanking the fates that her father had moved ahead of them so he didn’t see the looks Rex and Rob directed at her stomach. “A cheeseboard would be lovely, please, Geoffrey.”
Her father, now halfway across the expansive foyer, led the way, looking dapper in his tuxedo, with Lydia on his arm. His forthright walk brooked no argument, the same way his manner in the courtroom allowed for no grandstanding by the lawyers who argued their cases in front of him. Any chagrin or nervousness he’d shown was a thing of the past.
“Pearl, do you have any idea what this is about?” Rex walked beside her, the warmth of his hand soaking through her dress as it rested against the lower curve of her spine.
She fairly hissed her reply to Rex’s question. “No idea at all. Until this evening, I had no idea my father even knew Were-kind existed, let alone that my mother was a Were. I just hope to God he hasn’t guessed about the baby.” She felt bad, though, when Rex paled again and gulped. Even though his collar was open, he pulled a
t it like there was a noose around his neck.
“I’m not so happy about all these revelations myself.”
The study ‑‑ it was much too austere to be called an office ‑‑ was as formally furnished as the little she’d seen of the rest of the house, but it looked more worn and used, and ultimately less imposing. Her father indicated they should take a seat in the cluster of chairs gathered in front of the fireplace. He loosened his tie and the buttons holding his jacket closed before he sat.
Rex chose not to sit, but stood behind her, his hands resting on the back of Pearl’s chair, just inches away from her shoulders. His presence there reassured her. She had nothing to fear from her father, surely, but nonetheless, she appreciated Rex’s protective stance.
Pearl had never brought a man home to meet her family. It wasn’t that she had made a conscious choice not to, but none of her relationships had felt permanent enough to go to all the effort of introductions and fancy family dinners. Nevertheless, having Rex in that place of importance, bolstering her, there and ready to protect her if she needed it, flooded a little piece of her psyche she hadn’t realized had felt neglected.
“Daddy, what’s this all about?” Pearl wanted to say more, to ask why his association with Were-kind had been hidden, but she held her tongue ‑‑ she damn near bit right through it to hold herself back from flinging questions about her mother at him and Lydia.
Rob took a seat off to the side of the group. His interest looked piqued, even though this seemed to have little to do with him personally. Lydia took the chair closest to her father, and with her legs crossed elegantly, waited for Pearl’s father to speak.
“It seems odd to be having this conversation without your mother being here, but I’ll do my best.” With a wistful look on his face, he started into his story.
