Keeping Her Pride (Ladies of the Pack Book 1)

by Lauren Esker

  The monitor anklet.

  She couldn't wear a skirt, nothing above the ankle, because Fletcher would see the damn anklet.

  Since the family fall, she hadn't worn anything that didn't cover it up. No matter the weather, only pants with loose cuffs would do. No tight jeans, no shorts, no skirts of any length unless they brushed the floor, which had never been her style.

  Absolutely no water parks.

  "Debi?" Fletcher pulled his hand away from hers, looking at her with concern. "What's wrong?"

  She'd frozen with her mouth open, and the first thing that came to mind was to tell him I can't. She could back out, say she'd made a mistake.

  Because the fucking anklet would ruin everything. She couldn't take Fletcher to bed without having to explain that she was a criminal, and that would lead to him asking what she'd done, and then she'd have to explain—

  No. No, no, no.

  But ... dinner was still okay, wasn't it? They didn't have to let it go any further. After all of this, the idea of going back to her miserable apartment and eating a microwave burrito while watching Real Housewives of Atlanta sickened her. If she did that, she might just crawl into a bottle and never crawl out.

  Fletcher was pleasant company. He was a good conversationalist, funny and nice to look at.

  Just dinner. Nothing but dinner. More fun than drinking myself into a stupor in my apartment. And that's all.

  Under his concerned scrutiny, she shook her head. "I remembered a bill I forgot to pay. No big deal. I'm good to head straight out from work, if you want."

  "Yeah," he said, and a grin spread across his face, adding a touch of sunlight to the cloudy-afternoon color of his eyes. "Yeah, just let me finish up a few things here. Maybe see if we can get out of here by five-thirty or so?"

  She was smiling too; she couldn't help it. "For us, that's practically slacking off."

  Chapter Six

  It was actually a little after six by the time Fletcher locked up the office. He was all too aware of Debi's presence, the vanilla waft of her perfume, as she waited for him a few steps down the hall. She had one hand tangled in her purse strap, fingers working the strap back and forth. By now he'd started to notice that she liked to fidget with her hands when she was nervous or bored.

  "I forgot to ask what kind of restaurants you like," Fletcher said. He dropped his keys into his pocket and picked up his briefcase. "Somewhere that serves meat, right? Hey ..." He gave her an appraising look. Under the hall lights, her eyes were green as fresh leaves. "Is that because of what you shift into? Are you some kind of predator?"

  Those green eyes narrowed in irritation. "Can we not talk about the you-know-what in a public hallway?"

  "Right. Of course." Feeling bold, he touched her elbow to guide her toward the elevator. She raised her eyebrows at him—edged today with just a touch of darker eyebrow pencil to give them definition—and allowed herself to be guided. "But no one's going to guess what we're really talking about if you just tell me an animal."

  "Numbat," was her prompt response.

  "Is that even a real animal?"

  "Don't you know what a numbat is? What's wrong with the educational system these days?" As they stepped into the elevator, she pulled out her phone. After some quick typing she brandished it in front of his face. "Numbat."

  Fletcher caught her by the wrist so he could see the picture, catching a stronger whiff of vanilla from her skin. Her screen showed an adorable large-eared furry creature, something like a striped aardvark crossed with a squirrel.

  "Huh."

  "It's a marsupial." She tried to reclaim her phone, and her hand, but Fletcher held on and succumbed to temptation, pulling her wrist close to his face under the pretext of studying the screen more carefully. Vanilla, sweet and strong enough to taste—she must have just dabbed on fresh perfume before leaving the office.

  "Hmmm," he said. "Nope. Can't be."

  Debi broke his hold with an effortless twist of her wrist. He hadn't realized how strong she was; she could have done that at any time. "Why not?"

  "No green eyes," he said, smiling at her.

  The elevator opened to the lobby. "You ridiculous man," Debi murmured as they left the elevator, her brisk strides and quick taps of her heels perfectly matched to his steps. "You know it doesn't work that way, right? Your daughter doesn't have scales, and she does have ears."

  "I thought we weren't talking about this in public. Your car or mine?"

  "Yours," she said so quickly she must have already thought about it.

  Hmmm. He wouldn't have expected her to relinquish that much control. Interesting. Was she embarrassed about her car? Did she have one?

  His initial read on Debi Fallon had been "money and style." But he was starting to recognize some of the same tells in her that he'd spent his life fighting to conceal. Debi was putting on a show for the world. Whether hers was the same problem he had—grew up poor, trying to fit in around people with money—or something else, he wasn't sure, but either way, he recognized the way she would suddenly go evasive about certain topics, because he did the same thing. It was a very different kind of evasiveness than her almost playful refusal to talk about her shifter animal type. In that case, he didn't think she minded being pushed. It wasn't sensitive in the same way.

  "Is it a fox?"

  "Oh, please."

  "Cat."

  "What, as in a domestic tabby? Try again."

  It would be something long and sleek, he thought. Something aristocratic, a little haughty, but deep-down loyal. "An afghan hound."

  "A dog? I'm not sure whether I should be insulted, or if that guess is so pitiable that being insulted would give you more credit than you deserve."

  The lengthening light of the late afternoon sun, shining between the cliffs and canyons of downtown Seattle, turned her hair to living fire. "Tell you what," Fletcher said. "If you can guess what kind of car I drive by the time we get there, I'll stop asking. If you can't, then you'll tell me."

  "I love how you're turning this back around on me because you're a terrible guesser."

  "Hey, I just think you should get a chance to play too."

  "Uh-huh." Her sideways smile was sharp as a barracuda's. "All right, I'll bite. But I'm still not telling you. Victory grants you the ability to go on asking questions about it, no more and no less."

  Fletcher fist-pumped the air, to her obvious amusement. "Sure. I'll take that action."

  "Very well." She switched the purse from one side to the other, another of her fidgety motions. "You seem like the sort of man who wants to impress others with the car he drives, but only manages to look pretentious. It's a BMW."

  "Nope," Fletcher said, declining to mention that some of the business's early profits had, in fact, gone towards payments on a Beamer. He'd gotten rid of it a couple of years later.

  "Mercedes," she said as they left the street, strolling into the parking garage where he paid an arm and a leg for a permanent space.

  "You know, I'm not giving you partial credit if you guess the make but not the model."

  The golden brows arched again. "Does that mean it is a Mercedes?"

  "If I'm giving out hints, I want a hint in return. Anyway ..." As he approached one of the cars, it unlocked with a click. "We're here."

  "A Tesla?" Debi said in disbelief.

  "It's environmentally friendly—hey, what are you doing?"

  She was opening the driver's door. "I've never driven an electric car before."

  "Yeah, and you're not driving this one."

  Debi leaned on the door and smiled at him over the roof of the car. "If you let me drive, I'll give you a hint about the animal."

  Dammit. He got into the passenger's seat.

  Debi smiled at him pointedly as she adjusted her seat. When he failed to take a hint (because he knew exactly what she wanted, and he planned to make her ask) she sighed and said, "Keys?"

  "It's electric," Fletcher said sweetly. "There aren't any."


  "What." Debi stared at the dashboard, hands not touching the wheel. "You mean it's on now?"

  "Press the brake pedal."

  She did. The dash came online, lighting up with displays. "Oh!" she said, and her face brightened. She looked, in that moment, like a kid opening their Christmas presents, and it took Fletcher's breath away.

  So that was Debi happy.

  He'd do just about anything to keep that look there.

  "I said there wasn't a key, but that's not really true." He took the fob out of his pocket and handed it to her. It was sleek, black, and shaped like a stylized version of the car. "You need to have the fob near the car for the ignition to work."

  "Hmm." She pocketed the fob and planted her hands on the steering wheel. "Is there anything else I need to know about driving this thing?"

  "Not really. It drives like a normal car, except it's quiet since there's no engine."

  Debi pulled out smoothly, her confidence reasserting itself. The joy was still there on her face, though veiled now, hidden as if by an act of will; he could only glimpse it in the sparkling of her eyes, the smile that she seemed to be tamping down.

  Who taught you that the most beautiful things about yourself have to be hidden? he thought with a flare of anger. Who did you outshine, that they had to make you dim your light so their own would seem brighter by comparison?

  "I should probably ask where we're going," Debi said as she settled into the traffic flow. "Or I could just drive until we end up at Bainbridge. That's also an option."

  "I know a good steakhouse near here." He leaned over to tap the GPS and bring up directions. "Sound good?"

  "Sounds wonderful. I assume you're buying."

  Fletcher's breath huffed out in a soft laugh. "Sure. And you owe me a hint."

  "Oh. Right." She pursed her lips. "One of your earlier guesses was wrong, but you were on the right track. Cold but getting warmer."

  What had he guessed? Fox. Dog—but she hadn't liked that one. Cat.

  "You're some kind of cat," he said. His grin widened when he saw that she was visibly trying to control her expression. "Hmm, but what kind? Not a tabby cat." Sleek. Long. Beautiful. "A cheetah."

  "Do I seem like a horribly inbred bundle of nerves that's barely capable of surviving in the wild? Hmmm, on second thought, maybe you shouldn't answer that."

  The car drifted to a stop a block down from the restaurant, making no sound except a faint electric whine. Her parallel parking job was flawless.

  "Not a cheetah, then? A tiger."

  She snorted and got out of the car.

  "Cougar?"

  "What are you implying?" she asked archly and tossed the key fob at him.

  Fletcher caught it one-handed. Tall and golden. Oh. Why hadn't he seen it from the beginning? Of course she was. "You're a lion," he said and watched an expression that was half irritated and half impressed unfurl across her face.

  "Remind me not to play Trivial Pursuit against you, Fletcher."

  A lion, he thought as he followed her into the restaurant. Talk about playing with fire. He'd always known Chloe could kill him with a careless bite, but Debi was an order of magnitude beyond that. Even as a human, she was taller and stronger than he was. As a lion ...

  But relationships were built on trust. He either trusted her or he didn't. If trust was there, it didn't matter if she could crush him with a careless swipe of her paw. A lion's or a human's heart were equally fragile.

  As he knew firsthand. After the disintegration of his first marriage, he still felt bruised inside and out. Maybe getting involved with a lion woman was reckless and stupid, but he hadn't made it as far as he had by being afraid to take risks.

  And right now, his bruised heart was saying, loud and clear: Go for it.

  ***

  Debi liked the restaurant. She'd been worried he would try to take her to somewhere expensive, trendy, and packed, but instead it was comfortably mid-range with a quiet middle-of-the-week crowd. The tables were in the same room with the bar, where a large screen was playing ESPN. The waiter brought their beers promptly: her microbrew, Fletcher's Heineken.

  She was still coasting on the high of driving the Tesla, reveling in the flying feeling of doing something new, different, fun. She wanted to take that car out on the open road and see how it handled at highway speeds.

  She wanted to tell Fletcher all her secrets.

  She wanted to kiss him.

  The waiter had given them a corner table with a tea light flickering in a small jar in the middle of the table. Fletcher smiled at her across it. "Is this where I ask you to tell me about yourself?"

  "There's not much to tell. I'm boring."

  "I very much doubt that."

  The tea light caught highlights in his eyes and touched off red and gold glints in the dark gloss of his hair, which was starting to come slightly ungelled, the curls beginning to reassert themselves. She had a desperate, reckless urge to run her hands through it.

  "Did you grow up in Seattle?" she asked to get her mind off it.

  "Yeah, born and raised. You?"

  "We moved out here from Chicago when I was nine, after my parents died."

  She didn't realize until the words were out that, hoping to head off questions about her past by filling in simple answers, she'd instead invited more. She could see it from the way Fletcher's brows had gone up, his face curious and sympathetic.

  "Nine? Wow, that sounds rough. Did you come out here to live with family?"

  She thought about lying. Thought about not answering. But ... the hell with it. As long as she didn't give him any incriminating details, software companies were a dime a dozen in Seattle, and many of them had gone broke over the last decade. She could talk about herself in vague terms without giving away the exact details of her family's crimes.

  "My brother had custody of the lot of us. He'd just gotten his degree in computer programming at U-Dub and he thought it would be better to move the whole family out west and try to cash in on the dot-com boom rather than staying in Chicago. My older sister and one of our brothers were also talented at programming, and we had a pretty decent nest egg from our parents, so Roger decided to sink it into a software start-up to develop some ideas he had."

  "That's a lot of siblings. How many of you were there?"

  "Five, total. I had four brothers and sisters." She clenched her teeth before she could rattle off their names: Roger, Rory, Mara, and Derek. Roger had been twenty-two, and the youngest, Derek, was only seven when their parents were both killed in an automobile accident, along with both their uncles, leaving them effectively isolated—a pride of five.

  Now Roger and Derek were dead too. And then there were three.

  "Do you have brothers and sisters?" she asked before she could start to drown in those memories.

  "No, I was an only child. We lost my mom when I was young, so it was just me and my dad for most of my life."

  She opened her mouth to offer automatic sympathy, the typical social nicety: "I'm sorry." Except, as the words left her lips, she found that she meant them; she didn't like seeing the shadow of old sorrow darken his eyes.

  "It was a long time ago." Fletcher smiled slightly. "Of all people, I guess you understand. Though I was much younger. I was only three. I don't actually remember her at all."

  "I wonder if that's better or worse." She didn't often get to talk to people who had also lost a parent at a young age; it wasn't a common experience in the modern western world. "I had to go through losing my mom and dad, but you never got to know your mom at all."

  "Yeah, I sometimes think about that. Like, in a way it doesn't even hurt? You can't miss something you never knew. Or at least that's what people say. Except you can, of course, if everyone around you has it and you don't." He reached for his beer, put it down when he realized the bottle was empty, and tapped it to signal the waiter for another. "I used to think about her a lot, build her up in my head from old photos and my dad's stories. But of course I'll never rea
lly know."

  The waiter brought a second round of drinks. "Okay, this conversation went depressing in a hurry," Debi said. "We need a new topic, stat."

  Fletcher gestured with his beer. "Tell me about yourself." As her heart lurched, he went on, "What's it like working as an accountant?"

  She had to laugh. "Fletcher, it's literally the world's most boring job to describe. You'll be asleep on the table before our steaks get here."

  "Nothing about you is boring to me," he said quietly, and her heart lurched again, but for a different reason this time. "I've seen how you get into your work. You really love it, don't you?"

  "I do," she admitted. "I guess that makes me a giant nerd, but I've always liked math and numbers. I don't really enjoy the more esoteric, theoretical math, the kind of math you get into at higher degree levels. For me it's all about concrete math, numbers that describe actual physical quantities in the real world. That's why I went for an accounting degree rather than a math degree. I love that satisfying feeling you get when you total up numbers on a balance sheet, sort out any discrepancies, and make it all add up correctly—and now," she said with a soft laugh, "I must be boring you."

  Fletcher was resting his chin in his hand, watching her. The candlelight made his changeable eyes almost gold, like molten honey. "Wrong," he said and took a sip of his beer. "I love listening to people talk about things that fascinate them. I like the way your face—their faces light up when people start talking about something they love."

  Right now her face felt like it was turning pink. She couldn't even remember the last time a boy had made her blush. High school, probably.

  "You're a good listener," she said.

  "Well, that's part of being good at business, you know—being interested in people. Most people who are successful in the business world are that kind of person."