Wolf at the Door

by Christine Warren

  “No!”

  “Cassidy, spill your guts this very moment, or I swear to God, I am dumping this Dominican blend right down the sink and making you drink instant decaf every weekend for a year.”

  Cassidy twitched, watching her mug tilt to a precarious angle over the kitchen sink, and crumbled. “He’s just a man. One of the Europeans who came to meet with the Council. It’s no big deal.”

  “ ‘No big deal’ doesn’t have you wriggling around like a cheerleader on prom night.” Randy righted the mug, but she didn’t move it away from the sink. “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t remember.” Cassidy saw the coffee start to trickle from the cup and shouted, “Quinn! It’s Sullivan Quinn. Damn it, give me my coffee.”

  “Not yet. So he’s European, and his name is Quinn. Irish?”

  Cassidy nodded.

  “Hm. And he both got you riled up over the cause and did something that made you blush at the very mention of him. This is interesting news, coming from my dear nunlike cousin who hasn’t gotten laid since the Carter administration.”

  “Randy, I was four during the Carter administration.”

  “You know what I mean.” Randy’s expression turned thoughtful. “Cousin who lives like a prioress. Adorable Irish Furby. Hmm . . .” Randy tapped her chin, her brow furrowed and eyes twinkling. “Hey, did you see him naked?”

  Cassidy’s blush went from a slow burn to a five-alarm blaze and Randy’s laugh choked off in disbelief.

  “You did! You saw him naked!”

  Dropping her head, Cassidy pounded her skull against the counter and wished for a great, gaping hole in the floor to swallow her up.

  Randy jumped to her feet, plunked the coffee mug on the counter, and did a dance like her linoleum was an end zone and she’d just made the winning touchdown.

  “Cassidy Emilia, I am so proud of you!” She squealed and dashed around the counter to hug her cousin, who sat stiff as stone on her bar stool. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that he saw you naked, too?”

  By now, Cassidy was certain the color of her face roughly matched the color of her cranberry sweater. And Randy had no trouble telling what that meant.

  “He did! Rock ON! Score one for the Cassidy! The last virgin in New York has bitten the dust! Woo-hoo!”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Randy,” Cassidy snapped, grabbing her coffee and cradling it to her chest with a scowl. “I did not have sex with him. I only met the man last night.”

  The touchdown dance came to an abrupt halt, and Randy frowned. “So? Why didn’t you have sex?”

  “Because I was too busy running away so that he couldn’t take a friggin’ chunk out of me for dinner, okay?”

  Randy crossed her arms over her chest. “You ran away from an adorable Irishman who wanted to see you naked?”

  “How do you know he’s adorable?”

  “Weren’t you listening before? He’s an Irishman, and he made you blush.”

  Cassidy rolled her eyes and lied through her teeth. “He is not adorable. And anyway, he didn’t exactly seem to want to whisper sweet nothings in my ear.”

  “To hell with sweet nothings. Dirty little somethings are my choice any day of the week.”

  “Then you go ahead and ask him to say them to you.”

  “I’m not the one he wants, now am I?”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t me he wanted, either. I just happened to be there when testosterone poisoning killed that last brain cell.”

  Randy snorted. “You just happened to be there and naked.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. It’s another long story, okay?”

  Randy darted back into the kitchen, grabbed the coffeepot and topped off her cousin’s mug. “Good. I’ll start a new pot while you tell me all about it.”

  After barely doing justice to his second breakfast, Quinn slid his key card into the lock and let himself back into his hotel suite, fully intending to brood over the events of the last fifteen or so hours.

  Ireland was full of curses, or at least the stories of them, and he could think of no other logical explanation for the fact that he’d discovered the female he wanted above all others three thousand miles and two species away from his home. And not only was the object of his obsession not Irish and not Lupine, but after last night, he was lucky she was not pressing charges.

  Feck.

  He tossed his key onto the entry table and stalked over to the phone. He needed a distraction from himself just now, and he knew for certain the one thing that would provide it.

  Ten seconds later, he listened to the double ring at the other end of the line and waited for an answer.

  “And what the hell do you want?”

  The greeting startled a laugh out of him. “Is that how your mother taught you to answer a telephone, Michael Patrick Sheehan?”

  “No, it’s how you did,” his cousin shot back. “I thought you were in America and safely out of our fur for days yet.”

  “I am. But does that mean a man can’t call home to talk to his sainted mum?”

  Michael snorted into the receiver. “Don’t let her hear you talking about her that way, boyo, or you’ll find your arse tossed clear across Dublin center.”

  “Is she around, then?”

  “Aunt Molly? Sure, she’s around somewhere, but she’ll be far too busy to waste time on the likes of you. There’s dinner to manage. Ow!”

  Quinn heard the sharp smack of his mother’s palm on his cousin’s head and grinned. A moment later, Michael was grumbling something in the background and Molly Quinn’s sweet, delicate voice came clearly over the phone line. And she’d have smacked him, too, if she ever heard him describe her that way.

  “Sullivan, darling, I was hoping you might ring us. How do you find New York?”

  “Noisy,” he said. “And crowded. Lord, I thought Dublin was getting bad, then I came here. I’ll never speak a harsh word of her again.”

  Molly laughed. “Of course you will. The very next time you’re stuck in traffic down by the university. Now, tell me everything. Is it true what they say about the movie stars on every corner?”

  “Not so far.” He heard his mother’s little sigh of disappointment and hurried to reassure her. “But I’m nearly certain I saw Robert De Niro walking into a restaurant the other day.”

  “Oh, how lovely. And does he look as he does in his films?”

  Quinn heard a brief rustling sound, then his father’s voice in the background, demanding, “How much time have you been spending watching Robert De Niro, Molly Margaret Sheehan?”

  “I haven’t been a Sheehan since 1967, and you know it, Declan.”

  “Just want to make certain you remember, mate.”

  Quinn laughed at the familiar exchange. God, it was good to talk to his family. “Does Da have a minute, Mum? I’d like to fill him in on the first meeting.”

  “He does, love, but don’t keep him too long. We’ll be eating in a few minutes.”

  “I won’t.”

  He waited for the receiver to be exchanged and Declan Quinn’s deep, familiar greeting. “Well, then, son, how are they taking it?”

  “About like we expected,” Quinn said. “They’re not thrilled about the idea, but they might not have too much choice.”

  He summarized the news of the Light of Truth situation for his father and got the reaction he expected, which would have earned a good, swift smack from Molly, had she overheard.

  “Shortsighted idiots! Do they think we’re doing this for laughs? It’s not as if the members of our Council got together and said, ‘You know, mate, I’ve decided I’m bored. Let’s feck up the world and scare all the humans into killing us! Whaddaya say?’ ” He swore again.

  “You and I know that, Da, but I’m afraid a few of the Yanks still need convincing.”

  “If anyone can do that, the guth of the Black Glen can.” The pride Declan felt in his son and his pack was obvious. It was something he’d inherited from his father and passed on to his son, just
as he had the title and the job. “You just need to find the right way to tell the story.”

  “I’m working on that.” He paused, weighed his next words, then spoke cautiously. “I have a feeling there’s one mind I need to convince first. If I manage that, it might be the key to the others.”

  “The head of the Council, d’you mean? I hear he’s not bad. For a cat.”

  “Actually, no. It’s not a Council member at all, though other members of the family have apparently been on for generations. It’s a sort of outside consultant they’ve brought in to deal with the situation.”

  Declan knew his son well, and it didn’t take him more than a second to understand why Quinn was beating around the bush. When he spoke again, his amusement was plain. “Pretty, is she?”

  Quinn blew out a long breath. “She’s gorgeous.”

  His father laughed, the rumbling sound echoing over the line. “Tell me about her.”

  “She’s a tiny little thing,” he began, recalling her features to his mind and trying not to be surprised by how fast and clearly they came. “No more than a couple of inches over five feet, but you’d be surprised at how strong she is, how resilient.”

  “I don’t think I would, son. Remember, I’ve been mated to your mother for nearly forty years.”

  “She’s an anthropologist. A university professor, and her mind is an intimidating thing,” he continued. “Sharp as tacks. Just like her tongue.”

  “Used the edge of it on your hide, did she?”

  “More than once. She drives me crazy, but I can’t seem to mind. I’m too busy trying to sniff her.” He raked a hand through his hair and began to pace restlessly in front of the wide hotel window. “God, her scent drives me crazy. It’s like I’ve lost my bloody mind. That’s never happened to me before.”

  Quinn frowned. He couldn’t remember getting this worked up over a woman since puberty. He had taken one look at Cassidy Poe and twenty-two years of experience had bolted, leaving him with all the finesse of a thirteen-year-old at a school dance. It made no sense.

  Not that sense had anything to do with attraction. Quinn was man—and wolf—enough to know that.

  “Well, now, that’s a fine thing to hear.” Declan’s brogue thickened, and Quinn could almost hear the crack of his father’s grin splitting his face in two. “When will you be bringing her to visit? Molly will want time to make everything just so.”

  Quinn stopped and scowled into the phone. “Who said anything about bringing her to meet you? Christ, Da, I only just set eyes on the woman last night. You’re being a bit premature with the welcome to the family, don’t you think?”

  “No, I don’t. This is an important moment for your pack and for your family. A man only takes a mate once in his life, Sullivan.”

  A mate. Sweet Christ.

  Cassidy Poe was his mate.

  That thump he heard was the floor dropping out from under him. He was Lupine, a werewolf, and like the animals they were named for, werewolves mated for life. His people knew that at some point in every Lupine’s life, fate would take him by the nose and lead him straight toward the sweetest scent he’d ever encountered, and that would be it. It was a day most of them looked forward to—but did it have to be now?

  Last night he’d been too distracted by his hormones to realize the significance of his reaction to the elusive Foxwoman. His brain had been too obsessed with following her scent to recognize why that particular scent had grabbed him by the balls and led him straight into his honeysuckled destiny.

  What was he supposed to do now?

  Panic.

  “Ah, I’m sorry, Da,” he rushed to say, throwing frantic glances around the room as if a savior might appear out of thin air. Instead, his gaze fell on his cell phone, and he did something he’d been raised never to do. He lied to his father. “I’ve got a call coming in on the mobile. It’s probably about the Lightheads. I’d better take it. Give my love to Mum. I’ll call again when I can.”

  He hung up before his father could say another word and headed straight for the bathroom. A cold shower would have done him a world of good just then, but he settled for running the coldest water he could manage into the marble sink and splashing it over his face. Here he’d finally found himself a mate, and his own father had realized it before he had. Perfectly humiliating.

  He had to admit the first meeting with his mate hadn’t quite gone as he’d always envisioned. He’d behaved like a total savage. A barbaric cretin. A horny dog, for Christ’s sake. It didn’t matter that he was one. What mattered was that he might very well have blown his chances with her before they’d even been properly introduced.

  How could this be happening? Not that Quinn hadn’t wanted it to happen. He’d expected it to happen sooner rather than later. He had recently turned thirty-five and wanted to have cubs while he was still young enough to play with them, but this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. In fact, if someone had put the question to him, he supposed he would have said his mate would be a lot like him. Irish, probably, and Lupine, certainly. That was to be expected. And even if he hadn’t mated with another Black Glen, there were other packs in Ireland to choose from. Then he would have had cute, little purebred pups that would have made his pack and his father proud.

  He didn’t want to paint his father as a racist. It was more that the elder Quinn had a deep sense of the traditions of his family line. Declan Quinn had held the title of guth of his pack just like all his fathers before him as far back as the stories he handed down could tell. He had handed that title down to Quinn, and he expected Quinn to hand it down to his son. And nowhere in that lineage could Quinn recall ever hearing about a Fox-woman. Quinn’s father just assumed, as Quinn had up until a few minutes ago, that his son would mate with a Lupine as Quinn men always did and have a Lupine son to carry on the name of the next Black Glen guth.

  Nothing in Lupine society held a more important place than pups. Pups represented the future of their race, another generation that humans had not succeeded in destroying, another lifetime of the fall of broad, furry paws on the floor of the earth’s dwindling forests. It meant another chance to save what was left of those forests from the encroachment of man, and another generation who would raise their voices to the moon to sing the glorious songs of their race.

  Pups meant life, and to get pups, a man required a mate. And in one of the least amusing cosmic jokes he’d ever heard, it seemed that fate had chosen Cassidy Poe as his mate.

  Quinn stalked back into the sitting room and paced from the entry to the windows and back again, hands deep in his pockets and a frown heavy on his face.

  How much did it matter to him that Cassidy wasn’t pack? Not all that much, when he thought about it. He had to admit it would be simpler to mate with a Lupine. There would be no doubts or questions or explanations required. He would live a quiet, orderly life and never have to worry about how the combination of Lupine and Vulpine DNA would battle it out to leave him with pups or kits or some new blend of the two. If Quinn were to mate with a Lupine, no one would question his choice.

  But if it meant having Cassidy Poe, Quinn wouldn’t mind answering a few questions. It seemed a small enough price to pay.

  He stopped in front of the window and looked out at the city below him. The revelation of the source of his attraction to Cassidy flummoxed him and reassured him and excited him. It meant the beginning of a whole new stage of his life, one he wasn’t shy about admitting he hoped included an awful lot of naked time with his foxy mate.

  And that brought him back full circle to the root of his current problem. How in the world was he supposed to get within twenty feet of said foxy mate when the last time he’d seen her, he’d forced her out of her clothes, chased her around a rooftop, and practically fucked her on the cold, hard floor of another man’s greenhouse?

  When he thought about it that way, Quinn winced. It sounded so much worse laid out in black and white. He wouldn’t let himself within five city blocks of Cassidy,
if he were in her shoes, and that was bad on several levels. First of all, it made it a little tough to have all that sex he was looking forward to, and on top of that, it put a crimp in the plans of the head of the American Council. It was a bit of a challenge to complete an important political assignment when your partner had a tendency to run away and call the police when you got near her.

  Bloody hell. He’d bollixed things up royally, hadn’t he? It was completely unlike him. Quinn had spent most of his life either acting as an ambassador or being groomed for it. He’d learned early on that the key to being guth was to keep cool, keep quiet, and keep control, but he’d lost all three as soon as he’d smelled that honeysuckle.

  Well, he decided, squaring his shoulders and grabbing his key card and his coat, it was time to regain the legendary composure of the Quinn men. And he could think of no better way to do that than to take the bull by the horns and beard the Foxwoman in her den.

  Eleven

  A buildup of frustrated aggression sent Cassidy into her bathroom to wreak vengeance on the unsuspecting grout of her bathroom tiles. Three and a half hours after leaving Randy’s apartment, she stood in her bathtub, barefoot, wearing her oldest, bleach-stained yoga pants and tank top, wielding a scrub brush with the fury of an avenging angel.

  She had started off thinking that if she kept busy doing chores around the apartment, she might be able to keep her mind off Sullivan Quinn for at least a few seconds. When doing the laundry hadn’t worked, she’d moved on to vacuuming. Then to cleaning out the refrigerator. Then laying siege to the soap scum in her shower. None of it had helped.

  Groaning in frustration, she let her scrubbing arm drop to her side. This wasn’t getting her anywhere in dealing with aggressive, Irish Lupines, overbearing relatives, or the end of the world as she knew it.

  She stepped out of the tub and cranked on the shower with unnecessary force. The hard spray of water sluiced the suds from the tiles and sent a wave of foam swirling toward the drain. She wished she could wash away the last twenty-four hours so easily.

  “And that’s what makes you a big fat liar, Cassidy Emilia,” she muttered to herself, cutting off the water and packing her cleaning supplies back under the sink.