Walk on the Wild Side

by Christine Warren

  "You are his family," Max argued, his jaw tightening.

  "You know what I mean, Max. They'll make a scene, just like they did yesterday. He shouldn't have to listen to poison. Not now."

  Max let his forehead rest against hers and sighed. He wanted to keep her with him, wanted her warmth, her softness, her open, tender heart, where he could touch them. He needed the comfort she gave him just by being close, by being herself, but he knew she was right. Martin deserved peace in his final hours, not spite and malice.

  "There's a sitting room through there." Max nodded to the door just a few feet away in the bedroom's far wall. "There's a comfortable sofa and an afghan blanket he liked to use in the winter. There's only the one door, so I'll be able to keep an eye on you. Why don't you stretch out in there and see if you can take a nap? I don't know how long this will take."

  She nodded and slid to her feet. "I'll keep the lights off and leave the door cracked. That way no one will know I'm here, but if you need me, you can just call."

  She bent to press a kiss to his lips, and Max pulled her close for another minute, reluctant to let her go.

  "You shouldn't have to hide," he muttered, burying his face for a moment against her breasts. "He's your father. You have as much right to be here as the rest of them."

  Briefly, Kitty cradled Max's head to her; then she released him and stepped back. "This isn't about my rights. It's about what's right for Martin."

  "I know," Max growled. But he didn't have to like it. He jerked his chin toward the door. "Go on. Try to get some sleep."

  She nodded and slipped silently through the door, leaving Max to his lonely vigil.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-three

  DESPITE WHAT MAX SUGGESTED, KITTY HAD NEVER INTENDED to sleep. She hadn't imagined she'd be able to. She'd only stretched out on the sofa because pretending that she intended to nap seemed to make more sense than sitting alone and silent, staring into the darkness. So when she jerked away with a low gasp, she surprised herself as much as anyone.

  It took a moment for her to remember where she was, but the uneasy feeling in her stomach provided a decent clue. Her father's house. Her father's deathbed. Hiding from her father's family. No wonder she felt vaguely sick.

  Pressing a hand to her queasy belly, Kitty sat up and pushed back the light covering she'd spread over herself when she lay down. The dim room had gone completely dark while she slept, but she remembered seeing a DVD player on the shelves built into one of the walls while it had still been light enough to see. A glance in that direction proved her memory to be sound, and the glowing blue numbers told her the time. Seven forty-six. She'd been asleep about three and a half hours.

  Kitty sighed softly and rose to her feet, pausing to stretch muscles stiff with tension and sleep. As she let her arms fall back to her sides, she heard the quiet murmur of voices coming from the bedroom.

  Careful not to make a sound, she turned and padded softly toward the slightly open door. Of course she had slipped off her shoes before pulling her legs up onto the sofa, and now her stocking feet moved silently across the floor. Sticking to the shadows, she peered into the other room and saw several figures gathered around Martin's bed.

  Max sat where she'd left him, her father's hand still clasped in his. He hadn't moved the entire time she'd been sleeping. Kitty didn't know what else she had expected. She might only have known the man for a couple of days, but since that had been long enough for her to fall in love with him, it had also been long enough for her to understand what kind of person he was—strong, decent, kind, protective, and absolutely, unswervingly loyal. It would never occur to him that he should be anywhere else right now but at the side of the man he called his father.

  Dr. Reijznik had joined Max, pulling a chair close to the bed near Martin's shoulder where he could watch the cardiac monitor and occasionally check the IV that delivered merciful analgesia to his failing patient. Kitty just hoped that after Martin had spoken to her and Max he had allowed the doctor to increase his dose of morphine until the last of the pain washed away in a tide of drug-induced numbness.

  When she looked to the rest of the people surrounding the bed, Kitty had to work to stifle the thought that she could use a dose or two of the hard stuff herself.

  Drusilla and Nadalie had positioned themselves on the side of the bed opposite Max. The older woman dressed in an elegant black dress that looked as if she planned to head straight from her ex-husband's side to a swanky little cocktail party. Her daughter, meanwhile, sobbed loudly and falsely into a white handkerchief, and every minute or so Dru would reach over and pat Nadia consolingly on the leg. At even shorter intervals, she would check to see if anyone was watching her, her eyes lingering on Max before she buried her face once more in her suspiciously dry cloth and resumed her weeping.

  Behind the women, Olivia stood still and expressionless with her back against the wall and her gaze fixed on the black and green readout of her uncle's cardiac monitor.

  A final figure slouched casually at the foot of the bed. In his black jacket and expensively faded jeans, Peter looked like nothing so much as a particularly skinny vulture perched on a fence post while it waited for its next meal to stop with that annoying breathing. Unlike his mother and sister, he didn't even have the decency to fake grief, instead staring blank eyed and bored at his father's dying body.

  Kitty's nausea increased, and she forced her gaze back to Max as her hand pressed more firmly against her stomach. He sat like an island of honest sadness in an ocean of pretentious greed. More than anything she wanted to go to him, wanting to climb back into his lap, wrap her arms around him, and hold him, to offer him comfort and companionship during this hideous experience.

  She knew how he felt. She could read it in his posture, in spite of that blank mask he showed to the world. He looked the same way she had as she had sat with Lonnie at her grandmother's side, watching the woman they both adored slip irretrievably away from them. The memory of her own face staring back at her from the bathroom mirror would never leave her, the blank expression, the dazed, red-rimmed eyes, the heavy baggage of grief. No matter how skillful Max might be at concealing the signs, Kitty could still read them. Because while everyone else looked at Max with their eyes, she saw him with her heart.

  She didn't know what had happened. It seemed impossible that a heart could grow so much love for one person in so short a time. Somehow, in just forty-eight hours, he had come to mean more to her than anything else in the world. She breathed him in like oxygen, swallowed him like nourishment, absorbed him like water.

  How in God's name was she ever supposed to walk away from him?

  Her stomach lurched again, and Kitty pushed the distressing thought away, burying it in the back of her mind. She had plenty of other things to think about and more worries than she could shake a stick at. Right now, she needed to focus on Max and what he was going through.

  She felt a twinge of guilt that she wouldn't be the one to mourn her father most deeply. It seemed like something a daughter should do, but when it came right down to it, Martin wasn't really her father. Maybe if he hadn't been ill, if she had gotten a chance to know him, to talk to him and spend time with him, maybe then something more would have grown between them, but she would never really know. In her heart, her father was and always would be Lonnie Sugarman.

  Papaw might be a generation removed from biological fatherhood, but he had been the one who'd walked her at night when she was sick, who'd taught her to ride a bicycle and bait a fishhook. He'd waited up for her when she had her first date, and held her when she cried over her first teenage crush. No father could ever have loved her better.

  Still, Kitty could never regret coming here and meeting Martin Lowe, and a part of her had genuinely come to love him while she was here. Not because he was the man who had given her life, but because he was the man who had given Max a second chance at life. Even if she could never feel for Martin what he may have wanted, what she ma
y have wanted, she would always love him for helping to shape the man who had stolen her heart. When Martin passed, she would regret his loss and would be sorry for the chance of a greater connection dying with him, but her tears would be for Max and for the pain she knew he would suffer. Somehow, she didn't think Martin would mind that if he knew.

  As she watched from the shadows, she saw Dr. Reijznik frown and lean forward over Martin's still form. She saw the doctor glance at the monitor and then press two fingers to the inside of his patient's wrist. She saw Max tense and then watched as the green blips on the black screen gradually moved farther and farther apart until they stopped altogether and a thin straight line scrolled off the edge of the monitor.

  In the bedroom, Max bowed his head for a moment, then pressed a final kiss to the back of his father's hand and gently tucked it back beneath the smooth covers. Kitty saw him speak briefly to the doctor, but Max's voice was so low that she couldn't make out the words.

  The older man responded with a nod, then turned and quietly flipped the switch on the monitor, turning the small screen still and black.

  Kitty winced as Dru and Nadia seemed to take that as their cue to moan and wail like a couple of well-dressed banshees. They collapsed into each other's arms with true dramatic flair and clung together for several long minutes while they waited for someone else—Max, for instance—to notice their distress and hurry along to comfort them. Instead, Max looked at them from the other side of the bed and spoke softly.

  Kitty saw both women shake their heads and step away from Martin's still form.

  "No," she heard Dru say in a quavering voice with just the right touch of regal forbearance. "I'd rather remember him the way he looks in my memories, tall and strong and healthy. The body is just a shell. I'm sure you'll make all the appropriate arrangements."

  "I can't! I just can't! How can I bear to look at him this way, let alone touch him!" This from Nadia, loud and shrill and predictably subtle. "It's too horrible. I can't even stand to be in the same room with it. I have to leave!"

  Kitty saw Nadia spin around and head for the door and noted acidly that Peter already had his hand on the knob even though no one else had moved.

  "Maybe it's better if you all leave," Max said, his voice rising enough for Kitty to hear him but still low and calm and even. "Dr. Reijznik will have same paperwork to fill out, some formalities to take care of, and I'd like a last minute with Martin."

  Dru frowned at Max. "You should come outside. The pride needs continuity."

  Max had his back to Kitty, but she didn't need to see his expression to understand the anger in the set of his wide shoulders. "And they'll get continuity. In just a few more minutes."

  "But—"

  Drusilla looked like she wanted to say something else, but the expression on Max's face must have told her better. Lifting her chin, she took one of two small purses off the night table and turned to face her daughter. "Come along, Nadalie. We can wait outside and inform the rest of the pack of your father's death while Max has his chance to sit shiva."

  One by one, the rest of the family filed out of the room. Olivia left last and pulled the door closed behind her.

  As soon as the latch clicked, Max turned toward the sitting room door and held out his arms. "Come here, kitten."

  Kitty didn't wait another heartbeat. Pulling open the door, she raced back into the room and into Max's embrace. This was where she had needed to be all along, and when his arms pulled her tight against him and rocked her slowly from side to side, she knew he'd needed her there, too.

  Bending down, Max buried his face in the curve of her neck and let out a shuddering breath. "God," he sighed, burying one hand in her hair and clenching her fingers in the long strands. "I hated not having you with me. I hated watching them sit there and pretend to be upset when I knew they would rather have been shopping, or drinking, or playing golf."

  She heard him swallow hard, felt tears dampen her skin, and tightened her arms around him.

  "He deserved better than them," Max whispered, his voice cracking with emotion. "He deserved so much better."

  Gently, Kitty pulled Max's head up from her shoulder and cupped his face in her hands. Dragging her lips across his cheeks, she kissed his tears away, then pressed her mouth softly against his.

  "He had better, Max. Remember? He had you."

  Max shuddered again and yanked her back against him, seeming unable to let her go. Kitty didn't mind. He could hold her like this forever if he wanted, and she didn't think she would ever complain. Who could complain about being needed so badly?

  She wasn't sure how long they stood there, but it hardly mattered. Occasionally, she heard the sound of the doctor or the nurse bustling discreetly around, but neither of them disturbed the couple. In fact, the Dr. Reijznik and Ms. Mencina seemed very concerned with giving them their privacy, so much so that Kitty felt herself smile in spite of the somberness of the occasion.

  When she heard the click of a door latch, it didn't really register as anything important. She just assumed it was Ms. Mencina or Dr. Reijznik entering or leaving the room, so Kitty didn't even bother to look up. Not until she heard the cry of outrage and felt Max jerk his head from her neck. Dread knotting in her stomach, she turned with him and saw Nadalie silhouetted in the doorway with her mouth gaping open and a look of poisonous fury marring her pretty face.

  "What the fuck is that bitch doing here?!"

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-four

  MAX HEARD NADIA SHRIEK AND MUTTERED SOMETHING foul under his breath. If only Martin had learned to keep his pants zipped after his affair with Kitty's mother, all of their lives would have turned out to be a lot easier. As would Martin's death.

  Lifting his head, Max turned toward the door, automatically nudging Kitty behind him and out of the line of fire. "Nadia, go back outside and wait with your mother. I already told you I'd be out in a minute."

  "You told us you wanted a minute alone with the body," the Leo female hissed, outrage and jealousy feeding on each other to contort her usually pretty, if arrogant, face into an ugly mask. "You didn't mention that you planned to spend it groping a human whore! And my father hasn't even gone cold, you bastard!"

  Rage left Max with a dull roaring in his ears. Only the touch of Kitty's soft hand on his back reminded him of where he was and why he had to keep his temper. It was bad enough for Nadia to come busting in here and making a scene in front of her father's corpse. Max had too much respect for Martin and too much respect for the dead to add to the unpleasantness. He drew in a deep breath and hauled hard at the ties of his self-control.

  "However much you chose to demonstrate your disrespect for the man who raised you, Nadia, I am not going to let you make a scene. Not here."

  Nadalie opened her mouth, but Max cut her off with a low snarl.

  "Wait outside. If you don't go now, I'm happy to throw you out the door bodily, but either way, I will not have this conversation in here. If you have a problem with me or with my behavior, we can talk about it outside."

  For a moment, the woman just stood there, glaring at him. Or rather, through him, since she looked as if she wanted to tear out Kitty's heart and eat it. Max would have no compunction about killing Nadalie before she laid one fucking finger on his mate.

  "Fine," she hissed. "I'll wait outside. But don't think we're not going to have this out, Marcus Stuart, and don't think we're going to just sit back and let you bring that mongrel slut into this pride. I know that personally, I'll see her dead first."

  Nadalie slammed the door so hard behind her that the heavy wood rattled in its frame.

  Max stared after her, half-tempted to follow so he could wring her neck and be done with it. He knew exactly what she was doing now. On the other side of that door, she was painting a graphic and venomous picture of Kitty, styling herself and her family as victims to her father's failing mental stability and a hardened gold digger's grasping machinations. By the time Max came out to set thi
ngs straight, Nadalie would have them so tangled in the minds of the pride that some members would never look at Kitty without suspicion.

  For one tempting moment, he considered saying to hell with them. Let them find another Felix. Let them run their own pride. He would take Kitty and disappear. He'd find his own land somewhere else, start fresh with a new home, a new business, and a new mate. He'd found his own pride, starting with the cubs Kitty would give him, and his legacy would leave the Red Rock in the shadows.

  But then the rage began to subside from a boil to a simmer and he knew he couldn't do it. As much as he wanted to walk away, he owed too much to these people. They were his family, the only real family he'd ever known, and even if he hadn't owed them, he owed it to Martin to stay. The older man had expected Max to take up the reins and guide his pride into the future. It had been one of the last things Martin had mentioned to Max, and it had been obvious that the knowledge of it had given him comfort in the end. Max wouldn't be able to live with himself if he let down the only father he'd ever know.

  Sighing, he bowed his head and fought for control, for strength, for wisdom.

  A small hand stroked over his, eased his fingers open, and slipped inside, fitting palm against palm and curling protectively around him. Opening his eyes, Max looked down and found everything he was looking for in his mate's bright green eyes. As soon as she touched him, he knew everything would be fine.

  Oh, she didn't make the difficulties go away. There was still the pride to face, Nadalie and the other family members to deal with, responsibilities for him to shoulder. He knew that. But he also knew that with Kitty by his side, he could do all that and more. It touched him to know that she would protect him if she could. Hell, she'd probably try to do it, no matter that he had twice her size and three times her strength. That was just who Kitty was, strong and fierce and undyingly loyal.