by Lauren Dane
She’d chosen a fantastic onion soup with a cheesy piece of bread broiled on top. But once she’d finished, Jace stood, holding a hand out.
“Come dance with me, little witch.”
She waved her napkin at her face a few times before standing and letting him lead her to the dance floor where Otis Redding’s “Long Time Coming” started playing.
“You noticed, huh?”
He swayed with her, holding her close enough to envelop her in his heat and the scent of him beneath that.
“You like to play it when we fuck,” he murmured as he bent to her ear, sending shivers through her.
“You’re naughty,” she told him as he stood again.
“I can only make you feel as hot for me as I am for you right now. Truly, you’re a sight. That dress is the prettiest wrapping on the best present I’ve ever been given.”
“Wow. You’re really working it tonight. I like it.” She smiled up at him as he twirled her at the song’s end and led her back to their table.
“You’re making everyone look bad,” Damon said as the appetizers came out.
“On account of me being so awesome?” Katie Faith asked as she grabbed some stuffed mushrooms for her plate before passing it to Aimee.
Damon looked over to Jace, who just shrugged.
“Oh so you know she’s a weirdo?” Damon demanded of his brother.
“Like I have a say in it?” Jace asked.
“I’m such a cross to bear,” she tossed in, before turning to Aimee.
“Are you mad at me now, Katie Faith?” Damon asked. “I don’t think she’s mad,” he said to Jace.
“If she was mad, you’d know it. She’s not one of those silent suffering martyrs. She’ll shove her grievances up your ass until you pay attention.”
Major thought that was hilarious. Jace had to admit it was pretty funny. And sexy. She wasn’t just going to sit around and mope or hope things happened. Everything she did, she did for a reason.
Just another thing he adored about her.
“I can’t help if you all have no game and feel outdone by mine,” he told his brothers.
“You had a song arranged for her. Everyone here knows it now.” Damon shook his head. “I can’t recall a time you did something sentimental like that.”
“I can’t recall ever wanting to before she barreled into the apartment across the hall. Seems like decades since that moment.”
Funny to think about that. They’d just fit, closely and well from the start. He reached out for her and she was there, warm and giving. She was smart and fierce and was, as his brother said, a weirdo. But in just under three months his entire world had changed and it felt like it’d always been just waiting there, patiently holding until that time when they came together as they were supposed to.
He didn’t normally go in for all that stuff, but in this case, it felt like it was meant to be. Not back when she was in high school. Not when she’d left town. He wasn’t right for her until this precise moment in time and for that, he had no choice but to believe it was part of some bigger, wiser plan.
More food came as the entrees appeared. A few couples’ spats had broken out and he’d been keeping his eye on a few wolves who’d been drinking pretty steadily for the last hour. He just wanted the evening to go well if for no other reason than Katie Faith wanted to have a nice night out and what she wanted, he’d bend over backwards to give to her.
He didn’t much like the renewed outbreaks of trouble between Dooley and Pembry around town. Darrell appeared to have sprung himself free of his time out and was talking dirt all over town. Striking tempers and getting everyone all wound up once more.
If Dwayne didn’t hurry up and control his wolves, he’d lose a lot more ground than Jace first figured. On one hand that was good for Dooley wolves. But on the other, it wasn’t good for the town as a whole.
“Stop thinking about work, honey,” Katie Faith said in his ear as she put her fork down with a happy sigh.
Aimee had gone out to dance, along with a lot of other folks, leaving their table deserted at their end.
“I could say the same for you.”
“Me? Dude, I just ate a slice of cake as big as a side of beef. I wasn’t thinking about anything but cream cheese frosting and your abs. At the same time.”
Their little game had been escalating all evening, starting with that dress of hers, though he did his part with playing Otis and making that comment about sex music. She had a penchant for Otis Redding and so every time he heard it now, he thought about the way she looked, rising above him, candlelight on her bare skin, gleaming against a sheen of sweat.
“You were just thinking about sex right then,” she accused, leaning in close.
“How do you propose to know that?”
“Well, a non denial is a pretty big indicator.” She sent him a raised brow that made him hard. “When you think about sex you get this faraway look—pretty similar to when the pizza is on the way from the kitchen at the pub to our table.”
He couldn’t stop the laugh at that. She knew him really well.
“Remember that time we ate pizza while we fucked?”
She blushed right down to the pretty cleavage on display at the front of her dress. “I remember.”
She’d not only showed up at his door wearing nothing under her robe, carrying a pizza, a six pack and a really giving heart. She’d even turned on the game in the bedroom, not that he watched anything but her making all his wishes come true. He might have absently kept track of the score, but he’d deny it if asked.
She probably knew anyway.
“You know me pretty well.”
“When it comes to you thinking about sexytimes, yes, I think I do.”
“And yet, you’re right there, looking up at me and trusting me to my core. How’d that happen so fast? How’d you become everything so fucking fast?”
Her cheeks darkened a little as she blushed. “I’m so strange for getting turned on at how mad you sound at the very idea of loving me like that. Grrr, feelings, I’m so mad at you!”
He took her cheeks in his hands, kissing her. “You should marry me.”
It was out of his mouth before he’d thought about it a little more. He’d planned to ask her, yes, but he had a plan to ask her once they got back home. He had champagne chilling already back at the apartment.
She pulled back, looking at him carefully.
“I know I sort of tossed it out there.” He pulled the ring box out. “But I actually had plans to ask you in a more romantic way than a blurted thought.”
And then he dropped to one knee in front of her.
Though there wasn’t an actual scratch across a record album sound, the whole room was suddenly looking at them as the music went down about half as everyone blatantly gawped and eavesdropped.
“Takes some stones to do this right now with the whole town watching,” she said, one corner of her mouth hitched up.
“I think we’ve established the state of my stones, Katie Faith. What do you say then? Marry me.”
Her gaze went down to the rings.
“Those belonged to my great grandmother. My grandma passed them on to you.”
A few tears dropped over her cheeks as she tore her gaze from the rings to his face. “Wow. Wow. They’re beautiful and,” she ran a fingertip over them, “they still have a trace of the magic she made with your great grandfather when she married him. Patty passed these on to us, so there’s a kind of magic from that too.”
“Answer the man, for goodness sake!” someone called out.
“Oh! Shit. Sorry. Yes. Yes, I’ll definitely marry you.”
He lunged to his feet, bringing her with him as he kissed her soundly. “Thank god that worked out. I was starting to worry that you’d
say no.”
“No you didn’t. What kind of fool would I be to say no? I’m not any type of fool.”
“I talked to your parents already. And my family. But look, I know you want to go slow. So we’ll take it at whatever pace you need to,” he said, his forehead to hers. “If you want to wait until this whole mess quiets down, I understand.”
Everyone began to get back to their tables, or over to the bar to get something else to drink. Friends and family rushed over to congratulate them in a pretty solid stream for the next hour or so.
By the time that had settled down, Katie Faith should have known it was too good to be true that they could get through an event without nonsense.
Scarlett lumbered over, giving them both a look. Nadine got between them, surprising Scarlett into stepping back.
“You keep away from my daughter. You hear me?” Nadine crossed her arms over her chest and dared Scarlett to say anything else.
“All I was going to do was wish them well and tell her I hope things turn out better for her than they did his momma. The Dooley men have a spotty track record.”
Katie Faith didn’t even have the time to jump on Scarlett and beat her dumb face in because it was Nadine who did it first. Nadine who was at least three inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter than Scarlett.
Nadine who had a lot more magic than people gave her credit for and a whole lot of anger about what had just been said to her daughter.
There was a scuffle as Nadine got the first few blows in, mainly due to surprise. Chairs flew to the side as they went at one another. She kept her magic to a minimum, which was good as it was for self-defense as Katie Faith had done and Scarlett hadn’t shifted form.
“Y’all are trash,” Scarlett yelled out.
Dwayne waded in, trying to get her talked down.
Katie Faith got between the two women. “Momma, please. It’s over. You made your point and Daddy is going to get worked up if you don’t chill out.”
“You’re the one acting like you’re on a reality television show. No one asked your opinion of this engagement. You got no call to say that mean spirited stuff about my daughter. No call at all,” Nadine said to Scarlett, still pissed off. “What is wrong with you? You got grown children and grandchildren and you just did that? You should be ashamed of yourself!”
Katie Faith turned her mother in her arms, aiming her away, using her body to propel them both from the scene as the yelling continued at her back.
“Mom, I need you to focus. Calm down.” She managed to get them both outside where TeeFay and Aimee waited.
“I will not abide that woman one more moment.” Her mom tried to get past but they managed to get her held back.
“Nadine!” TeeFay grabbed Katie Faith’s mom’s shoulders and gave her a good hard shake to get her attention. “Get yourself under control. Avery needs you right now. We got Katie Faith’s back so you can handle him. Get him home.”
“She wished my daughter to die in childbirth. She wished my child to a loveless relationship with an abusive piece of garbage. How dare the likes of Scarlett Pembry even think that much less say it aloud? I can take her.”
“Mom!” Katie Faith hugged her mother tight as she yelled. “Stop. Please. You’re totally freaking me out now.”
Shaken, she let go when her mom slumped in her arms and scrubbed her hands over her face.
“It’s not all right,” she whispered.
“I know. But I’m not going to die in childbirth and I have a really wonderful boyfriend, well, soon-to-be husband now, who loves me. I trust him. Nothing she can say is going to hurt what I have with Jace. She just showed her ass to the whole town in there. Think about that.”
It was all Katie Faith could think about once she’d managed to get her parents in a car and on their way home.
“You guys should go home now too. It’s okay. I’m going back in there to be with Jace.” Katie Faith turned to TeeFay. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you tonight. Thank you. And for having my back with that whole mess.”
TeeFay hugged her tight. “Girl, you’re like my own. I’ve always got your back. As for your mom, I haven’t seen her that angry in a really long time. Maybe only three times her whole life.”
“What Scarlett says doesn’t matter. I don’t care about her.”
“Katie Faith, some things once they get said gather a sort of power. Some superstitions are based on real things. Some words can’t be taken back. You know? Your mother doesn’t want that bitch putting any sort of negative energy out there waiting to hurt you. And it’s outrageous to say what she did. She’s lucky your mother didn’t snatch her baldheaded.”
Aimee hugged her too. “We’re here until it’s time to go.” They linked arms and headed back inside where things appeared to have calmed down enough to sharp discomfort.
“Oh and congratulations again,” Aimee said in a whisper.
She grinned. “Yeah, despite all this chaos, it’s a nice night.”
“Do you have a wedding date?”
“He said I could take my time. Wait until things calmed down. Until I was sure.”
Aimee cocked her head. “He’s nearly perfect except for that control freak streak. Giving you more space even though you know he’s chomping at the bit to move forward. Once a wolf makes up his mind, they don’t seem to let up.”
They all watched Jace and Dwayne have a very tense conversation in one corner for a moment.
“I notice something.” Aimee turned back to Katie Faith. “The witches are here at your back. The Dooleys are here at your back. Outraged on your behalf one and all. Know who isn’t over here? Who didn’t stand up for you during that fight and right after? Pembry.”
“I’ve been trying not to make any overt declaration that might affect wolf business. But no matter what I do I’m making a declaration. I just need to think about what I want to say.”
She caught Sharon’s eye, the two looking across the room for long moments. That attack hadn’t come from her, it had come from Scarlett. Katie Faith wasn’t going to blame Sharon for that and she was done blaming her for breaking up with Darrell which was for the best anyway.
Carl stepped between the two wolves and Katie Faith hurried over.
“That’s enough for one night. This should be a celebration. We had an engagement this evening. Love is a good thing. We’d been peaceful and you’re damned well going to hear me tell you peaceful is a good thing.”
Katie Faith moved up to take Jace’s left hand, careful to leave his dominant hand free. “I have a lot of ideas for the wedding I’m excited to talk to you about. So let’s shine this mess on. If Pembry can’t get itself together, that’s ultimately their problem.”
Dwayne’s eyes widened. He hadn’t been expecting her to take such a public stand. Even after his wife had said all that!
Jace stood taller at her side, glowering back at Dwayne.
“You’re not Patron yet, boy, know your place,” Dwayne snarled.
“As soon as they get married, he’ll take over. What’s it to you anyway, Pembry?” JJ said.
“Talk to me then,” Dwayne said.
“Shut up, Dwayne.” Katie Faith took a cue from Jace and stood taller.
“You got no call to speak for wolves,” he said.
“And you got no call to decide who speaks for Dooley. In any case, I’m speaking for the witches in this town.”
The leaders of the consort except her parents, fanned out at her back.
When she saw his shock she sneered at him. “Yeah, that’s right. We’re not invisible after all, huh? You come at one, you come at all.”
“I thought you were going to stay out of wolf business,” Dwayne challenged.
“I did until you all made it town business.” She shrugged before turning h
er attention to Jace. “If you’ll take over as Patron once we get married, I think we can pull off a wedding pretty quickly.”
“I meant what I said. Take the time you need,” Jace murmured.
“‘’Course you did, which is why I love you. Anyway, you and I both know this town is never going to calm down so if we waited for that, we’d get old and gray.”
“You best watch the steps you’re taking.” Dwayne reminding them he was still there being a giant asshat.
“I’m entirely sick and tired of you and your family threatening me. I know which steps I’m taking. You need to be sure to do the same. I’m done with all y’all.” She held up a hand toward Dwayne and spoke to Jace. “I’m going to go home now. I need to check on my parents after this mess and there are plenty parts of this wolf crap I want no real part of.”
Jace smiled down at her, bending to kiss her. “Big, bad, tough witch. I like it. I’m done here to and I want to go with you to see Avery and Nadine.”
“Tell your daddy I’ll stop by soon,” Dwayne said and Katie Faith turned back from where she’d been walking away.
“You won’t be doing that. You’re not welcome. You’ve done enough so back off.”
“I’ve known your—”
Katie Faith interrupted him. “I don’t care about anything you’re going to say right now. I told you what was what. Keep your ass off my parents’ property or I’ll handle you myself.”
He stepped back as if she’d slapped him and she wished she had. When she was assured he wasn’t going to say anything else, she and Jace left with all the witches and Dooley wolves. The cat shifters had already been edging away, but once Katie Faith had reached the door, the cats had made their way out too.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jace’s jaw hurt from keeping his control so tight. With Katie Faith upset, her parents upset and his pack worked up, they all needed him to keep it together.
They’d gone to her folks’ place, where her mother had convinced Avery to go to bed but Nadine was still worked up. Which got his little witch upset all over again.
