by Mandy Rosko
Still, it was nice to hear Dane tooting her horn so enthusiastically. Enthusiastic for him, that is, but she would take it and smile about it all damn day.
“Is that your next drawing?”
Lois held it out to Garret when he reached for it. “It’s not done yet.”
He took it and looked at it, frowning slightly. “I think I recognize this man, too.”
Jax was holding onto her first drawing. “If we can make copies of these, we can hand them out to others in the pack. If they know who they’re watching out for, they might be safer.
“What supplies do you need to make more of these?” Garret asked.
Lois hadn’t expected that question. “Well, a proper drawing set with better paper would help. I usually use my computer and tablet, but those are at my apartment.”
“I could get them for her,” Dane said. “She needs those things if she’s going to get back to work anyway, right?”
And again, he was being nice to her, almost watching out for her. She didn’t care if he was only doing it because he needed something from her. She liked it.
Garret shook his head. “Jax will go. Lois, if you can keep doing drawings like this for me, I’ll pay you more than what you make working from home to compensate.”
Dollar signs immediately went off behind Lois’s eyes. “Wait, so this means I can have my phone back? Work on my computer when Jax brings it here?”
Garret looked to Miranda. Lois didn’t need to look at her friend to see that she was giving Garret hopeful puppy dog eyes.
“Miranda trusts you, so I will, too. I’m sorry we had to keep you here like this, but—”
“I get it,” Lois said quickly, doing her best to keep from looking at Dane, from letting everyone in the room see how much she was doing this for him as well as her friend. “I’ve seen what you all look like when you change. That’s got to be scary and you don’t want the public knowing about that. It’s fine.”
Garret looked at her for a long moment, as if gauging her sincerity, before he smiled and nodded.
Lois hadn’t expected him to reach his hand out to her. She stood there, probably looked like a complete idiot in the time it took her to realize he was trying to shake her hand.
She gave him her hand. She did it to be polite, to bury the hatchet, and to test something within herself.
He had a firm grip. His hand was callused but strong, and she also felt none of that buzzing warmth she got whenever she touched Dane. Hell, there was nothing there at all.
Lois had started to think that maybe a lot of her attraction was due to Dane being a handsome and mysterious shifter. That, and she’d always had a mild attraction to good-looking men she could try to heal.
Either way, it definitely wasn’t the shifter thing because she got nothing when she shook Garret’s hand. Part of her wanted to go over to Dane and touch him right now just to reaffirm what she already knew.
That there was something there, and it had to do with more than just him being tall, dark, and brooding.
Garret didn’t seem to notice that Lois’s mind was elsewhere. He’d started talking again to Jax, to Dane, and even to Miranda before he came back to Lois. “And Dane can take you there. Sound all right?”
Lois blinked, her immediate response to fake that she’d heard any of what he’d said. “Uh, yeah, that sounds perfect.”
Hope for the best and don’t get caught staring at Dane, or thinking about Dane, being distracted by Dane in any way, shape, or form. That was too humiliating.
Dane’s eyes narrowed slightly. He had to know, but he didn’t say anything to her about it. He just nodded. “All right. You wanted to get out of the house so damned bad, go take her into town and see if the craft store has what she needs.”
New art supplies. That’s what Garret had been talking about. He wanted to buy her new art supplies, and already Lois could feel her heart pounding in her chest, her mouth filling with moisture.
But then, she couldn’t exactly take advantage of his generosity either. She damn near groaned to have to admit to this out loud, but she did. “It’s okay, I have some things back at my place. When Jax brings them back here, I can use those.”
Garret nodded. “All right. Make a list of what he needs to grab and where he can find it and he’ll bring it here. Until then, I think it’ll be faster if you go into town with Dane and pick up some stuff you can use now.”
“I only have one more drawing left to do.”
Garret nodded. “That’s enough.”
He was determined to buy her art supplies, and Lois was out of polite excuses to give as to why he didn’t need to go to the trouble.
Her greed was taking over, and she was happily going to let it if it meant she got some free pencils and paper. Free art supplies were right up there with getting free food. There was almost nothing better than that.
“Who are you calling?”
Dane was frowning at Garret, who had his phone out.
“Flynn. He can escort you both.”
Dane launched himself to his feet faster than he should have been able to move and smacked the phone out of Garret’s hand.
Garret didn’t move, but his eyes did change as he glanced up at the other man. “What the fuck was that?”
Dane didn’t back down. “I do not need any backup. I can watch her just fine on my own.”
Garret stared at him, hard. “Don’t be an idiot.”
It wasn’t what he said so much as how he’d said it.
And yeah, maybe a little of what he’d said, too.
All the air seemed to get sucked out of the room. It was silent. The two men glared at each other, and Lois couldn’t entirely understand the lives of the people who lived in and around this house, but there was something so utterly animalistic about the way they looked at each other.
“What’s going on?” Lois looked to Jax, who watched both men, his muscles tense, as if he was gearing up to break up a fight.
With his arm still in that sling, that probably wouldn’t be such a good thing.
And Lois felt like she had to do something to keep this from getting totally out of hand. “Dane, I think I’d feel a lot safer if there were more people around.”
He seemed to blink and come out of the angry trance he and Garret had put themselves into. He looked at her, his green eyes wide.
And in that moment, Lois couldn’t tell if she’d insulted his pride. That worry was the only thing that kept her from getting sucked into those eyes. Whether it was his Navy Seal pride, his alpha bear shifter pride, or just his good old fashioned male pride. Maybe a little of all three.
He recovered quickly, however. Dane’s mouth set in a firm line, and he shook his head, running his hand through his hair. “You’re right. I need someone else,” he said, then walked out of the room.
Lois didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to make it worse, and Garret and Jax were probably aware of it anyway, but she could have sworn that she saw a small spot of blood coming through the bandage on his shoulder.
5
Dane wasn’t too happy with himself for a couple of reasons. On the ride into town, one he wasn’t even driving, he had some time to reflect.
Flynn, good beta that he was, sure as shit didn’t say much beyond the initial greeting when Dane pushed himself into the passenger side of the Jeep, leaving Lois to climb into the back.
And they were silent until they got to the art supply store. Dane had always thought this place was for people who did knitting and made their own bead jewelry, but Lois seemed to know where she was going as she found a rack full of pencils, leads, erasers, and he didn’t understand what the sandpaper was for, but she picked that up, too.
He also didn’t get the need for ten different kinds of pencils. She had been drawing well enough with what had been available to her back home, but she picked up everything she needed as if she did this all the time.
She probably did.
And meanwhile, Flynn was watch
ing the front door while trying to look like he was casually browsing. Dane didn’t know how that man was supposed to look like he was innocently checking out the cake decorating section, but so far there wasn’t a commotion coming from the front.
And Dane was standing over Lois, watching her.
She was down on her haunches, a fistful of pencils and white sticks in her hand. There were three sketchbooks on the floor beside her feet, with three more drawing pads, and they were all in various sizes and paper colors. White, cream, and tan.
If Dane had known she was going to grab so much, he would have brought back a basket for her to carry all that stuff in. Right now, he figured it was better to not leave her side. With his luck, he’d turn around and she’d vanish.
She might as well have read his mind. “You don’t have to watch me if you don’t want to.” She glanced up at him. “I’m not going to run again.”
She’d been reading his mind, but hadn’t gotten the whole message. “I’m not worried you’re going to run.”
He was more worried Dennis, Laurence, or one of their idiot lackeys was going to show up and cause some mayhem in the store.
Dane hadn’t expected this, but now that they were out of the house, in town, surrounded by other normal people, his protective instincts were on high alert. It was like he couldn’t totally focus on anything other than the possibility of something bad happening. Not to him—he knew how to handle himself when bad shit went down—but to her.
She was human, fragile and breakable. She couldn’t defend herself if Dennis made a move.
Lois stayed low to the ground since the shelves she was looking at were only two feet high. She started pulling some pens from the racks. Dane didn’t understand what was so special about those either, other than the fact that the packaging had an artsy picture on the front.
Lois turned it around, read the back of the pack, then seemed to approve as she added it to her collection of stuff.
Dane sighed, bent down, and picked up the books and the pack of pens.
Because he had to see what was so special about them, he read the pack.
Black ink, waterproof, with brush tips in various sizes.
Whatever happened to just a ballpoint?
“Do you really think something bad is going to happen?”
Dane looked back down at her. This time, he got the very strong impression that Lois was purposely not looking at him. Her neck and body looked tense in that position.
Dane sighed. “I don’t know. To be honest, things can be dangerous, especially when there’s a rogue pack that wants your territory, but we’re not always this tense.”
“You’re not?” Lois finally looked at him.
Dane shook his head, happy to be truthful about this one. “No. I don’t know if it was because Dennis was always so busy looking for Miranda, but a lot of the time we live like normal people. Garret wouldn’t have approved of anyone leaving the house, with an escort or not, if we were in an actual war zone.”
“I guess you know what a war zone looks like, don’t you?”
Dane rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah.”
He didn’t offer any more than that.
Thankfully, she didn’t push for more details. “So then, in your opinion, it is safe for us to be walking around like this? Out in the open, I mean?”
Dane sighed. His wounds itched. “Depends on your definition of safe, I suppose. For me, having Dennis around, always picking fights with the pack, was always more annoying than anything else. It’s different now. He’s gotten more aggressive. I think he’s pissed off that he came so close to getting back at Garret and couldn’t.”
“But I’m not a target, right?”
She might be. The fact that Dennis had seen her face was enough. That he’d seen how much Lois and Miranda meant to each other was something he would probably use. This was enough to make Dane more nervous than he’d ever been in his entire life.
“No one specifically in the pack is a target for anything, but sometimes people do get hurt.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t mean we hole ourselves up in that house and never go anywhere. We try to live as normally as possible, go out shopping, drinking, joyriding, that sort of thing.”
She smiled at him. “Hopefully not in that order, though, right?”
“We try to keep an eye on the pups after they get their licenses. Sometimes shit happens.”
Lois laughed at that.
A woman with a small cart rolled by, picked up a pack of markers, then stared at it for a while.
Lois was tense, but Dane could smell this one. Human. Nothing to worry about. He smiled at his woman, then stopped smiling when he realized he’d just thought of her as his woman.
“So is this a thing for shopping? The guys somehow get stuck holding the bags?”
Lois glanced up at him, and her features softened. Good girl. She got the message, and her response was playful as she shot back at him, “I don’t remember asking you to paw at my stuff.”
Dane snorted. “Like it matters. It’s just paper.”
Lois’s mouth dropped and her eyes widened in a fake, bad acting sort of offense.
They laughed at each other. Dane’s back stopped itching.
Art supplies, even just pens, pencils, and paper, cost a lot more than Dane thought they would. He could handle it. Garret paid him a good sum of money to be second-in-command, but though the man had offered to reimburse Dane, when he saw the eager smile on Lois’s face, the way she practically bounced as she reached for her bag of goodies, he knew he wasn’t going to do that. He wanted to be the one to give her these things, not Garret.
“So where to now?” Flynn asked as they left the store. The man was doing a good job of making himself scarce and quiet while Dane was with Lois.
Dane looked around, and he grinned when he saw the spot. “How about something to eat?” He pointed to the diner, his favorite place in Meadow Springs.
Lois grinned. “That’s almost like the one where Miranda works. Or, used to work.”
“Except this one has the best steak sandwich I ever had in my entire life,” Dane said.
“Sounds great. Have you eaten here, Flynn?”
Fuck. It wouldn’t be much of a date with Flynn around, but at least he could share a meal with her. Maybe he could share a couple meals with her before she left the pack.
“I’ve eaten here a couple of times. It’s really good, but I can’t stick around,” he said. “I have to walk the perimeter, check for suspicious targets, that sort of thing.”
Actually, he didn’t need to do that at all. Dane nodded to the man. He was a good kid, and Dane decided he owed him a little.
Flynn stayed outside while Dane opened the door for Lois. Her grin, her bright eyes, and white teeth as she stepped into the warm air, the chatter and smells of the diner, made his stomach warm. His stomach, his chest, and a few other places, too.
What was he doing? This was such a mistake. He was basically leading her on and it wasn’t like this could actually go anywhere. She was eventually going to leave. She was going to have to because there was no way he could be considering what he was. Not with a human woman, and not when Dennis was out there making these ballsy moves against the pack.
Still, one meal together couldn’t hurt. Dane chose a table that would give him the best view of the front doors, as well as the rest of the diner. Old training never really went away, and when she sat across from him, everything didn’t seem quite as dire as it had just a moment before. This felt like any other normal day, except he had a beautiful woman sitting across from him in a booth by the window.
The waitress, an older woman named Sherri that had served him several times before, came and quickly took their coffee orders. It wasn’t breakfast or lunch time, so they’d beaten the rush and were likely to get faster service. Which was good since he was planning on ordering at least three of those steak sandwiches.
Lois put her hands on the table. “This feels kind of weird.”<
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Dane looked at her. “It does?”
He looked around. Everything seemed normal enough.
Lois was smiling when he looked back at her. “Yeah, sorry. I guess it’s just…” She lowered her voice. “You changed into a giant bear creature and kidnapped me, and now we’re sitting in a diner getting coffee together.”
Dane supposed he could see the humor in that. “Now that you mention it, it is kind of backwards.”
“How’s your back?”
It itched and stung, but his legs were fine enough. He was walking around and sitting here without much discomfort.
“I’m okay. Starving though,” he added, just to get the topic off the still healing slashes in his back. He picked up a menu.
Lois seemed to think it was enough, which was good. He didn’t want her to worry about him. That was the last place her worries should be focused.
They ordered their food, and Lois’s eyes bulged when she heard how much he was going to be eating. Sherri, used to this by now, jotted down the order and quickly left.
Lois stared at him, a shocked smile on her face. “Are you serious? You’re going to eat all that?”
Dane shrugged, though it was difficult to hide his amusement with her reaction. “It’s just three sandwiches.”
“And you ordered two of them with fries and one with a Caesar salad upgrade. And a Coke on top of it.”
“Yeah, it’ll make a good snack before I have to have lunch.”
Now her eyes were really bulging, and Dane had to admit, he was having a little fun at her expense.
“I’m just kidding. I will eat it all, but that will be my meal. I won’t need anymore for a few hours,” he said, and then she was really laughing.
Their food came fast, but their plates had barely touched the table when Flynn marched inside.
“We need to go.”
“What’s the matter?” Lois asked.
Dane didn’t need to ask. He pushed himself out of his seat and moved to the front door. They were glass, so he could see Dennis and Laurence out there, along with a few other guys, and they could see him. They were just standing there, across the street, staring at the diner like they were planning on coming in. Dane didn’t like that.
