She yawned as he cupped her breast and tucked her in even closer to his body. “What’s a boot?”
“What?”
“A boot. You said I made you act like a clumsy boot.”
He laughed softly. “Marine term. Means a new recruit.”
“Ah.” She pulled his arm tighter across her.
“So we’re okay?” he murmured into her hair.
She yawned. “Mmm. We’re okay.”
“Good.” He dropped a kiss on her shoulder.
Of course, she didn’t know what they were. Right now, warm and safe in his arms and in the throes of afterglow, everything seemed perfect. But when she woke up in the morning, all the doubts and questions would return.
Were they still dating? Had he been seeing someone before he moved to Luxor? Did he really want her staying with him?
Was he falling in love with her?
These were questions she’d never have asked back in Luxor, because she’d never planned on dating him for long. Now here she was falling in love—or was she? Maybe it was a combination of sexual chemistry and gratitude for saving her life.
What if she was crazy? Wait a minute. James said fae women were—
“What’s the matter?” Bryan asked abruptly.
“What?”
“You moaned. What is it?”
Great. “Oh. I didn’t— I don’t know. I think I was just falling asleep.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.” She covered his hand with hers and hugged his arm.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. Nick wants to see us in the morning.”
“Nick Wargman? The Alpha?”
“Yep. His office, ten-thirty.”
She tried to stifle a yawn and failed. “What for?”
Behind her back, she felt him shrug. “Debrief me, meet you, figure out where we are.”
That was…nerve-racking. “Okay. I’m s’posed to have lunch with TJ anyway.”
“Oh. Well, cool. Good night.”
“Night.”
One minute later, maybe less, “Bryan?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you think I’m crazy?”
“What?”
“Do you think I—?”
“No! Of course not! Why would I think that?”
“Well, James said most werewolves are afraid to date fae women because we’re all crazy.”
Right before she fell asleep, she heard him mumble, “God, I hate that guy.”
Chapter Eight
“Hi there, you must be Sara,” said the older and frighteningly elegant woman behind the reception desk on the sixty-eighth floor of Chase Tower.
“Yes, ma’am, I am.” The elevator ride had left her a little shaky. And it had been a while since she’d woken up with a hangover two days in a row.
Waking up with Bryan in the bed next to her made both hangovers a lot easier to bear.
“Sara, this is Nancy,” Bryan said.
They shook hands.
“She spent yesterday day with Hurricane TJ,” he explained.
“Ah,” replied Wargman Interests’ receptionist. “You’ll get used to her. Mostly. She had to run an errand, but she’ll be back in a little bit. Y’all go on in.”
“Thanks.” Bryan put a hand to her back and gently pushed her through the double doors into an enormous office.
She didn’t want to gawk, so she took in as much as she could as quickly as she could. Blond hardwood floors. Bookcases covering most of the walls, big pieces of strange-looking art covering the rest. A round wooden table with chairs in one corner, a sitting area with leather furniture and a glass coffee table in another.
The wall directly in front of her—a very long way away, it seemed—was made entirely of glass. Through it she could see much of downtown and, apparently, half of Houston. Standing in front of the glass wall was a man—a werewolf—who managed to intimidate her from all the way over there. Even if she hadn’t known he was a werewolf—even if she hadn’t known werewolves existed—she would’ve known Nick Wargman wasn’t a normal man.
She started to walk forward, but he seemed to sense her fear and made his way to her.
He gave her a gentle smile. “Hi, Sara,” he said, taking her hand. “Bryan, give us fifteen.”
She felt Bryan’s hand squeeze her neck. He dropped a kiss on her head and walked out, leaving her alone with the Houston Alpha.
“Come sit down. Oh, but would you like to get a better look out the window first?”
She nodded, overcome with the country mouse feeling again. “I’ve never been in a skyscraper before.”
He guided her across the office to the glass wall and went to sit down behind the enormous, intricately carved wooden desk in the far corner. From there he sat and watched her as she stared out the window, enthralled. After about thirty seconds he cleared his throat.
“Oh! Um— Sorry. That’s an amazing view. You can see the whole city!”
“At least the southwest part of it.” He gestured to the chairs in front of his desk. “Why don’t you sit down?” It was phrased as a question, and uttered with an easy, charming grin, but it felt like an order, and she found herself obeying.
She couldn’t identify anything physical to account for the air of power rolling off him. He looked about six feet tall, maybe a bit more. He was leaner, more compact than Bryan. There was solid muscle beneath the starched white dress shirt, but not the Marine muscles Bryan had. No, Nick Wargman just exuded an air of control that had nothing to do with his body and everything to do, she guessed, with whatever it was that equipped him to be a Pack Alpha.
He was handsome, but not drop dead gorgeous. Long, lean face with strong features and, she thought, green eyes. Dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Dressed like something that stepped out of Men’s Vogue, or one of the shops they’d passed in the Galleria yesterday. Men who took obvious care in their personal appearance usually struck her as slightly effeminate. Not this guy.
“I won’t keep you very long,” he said, shaking her from her thoughts. “I know you’re having lunch with TJ and Lark. I hear you and she had a good time yesterday.” He quirked his mouth like he was trying to hide a smile.
“Oh, we did! It was amazing. And thank you so much for…for everything. I mean, it was so…” She stammered to a halt, not sure how to proceed. No one had ever done anything like that for her, and she was a little embarrassed.
“My pleasure. You’ve been through a lot, so I’m glad I could help. And to be perfectly honest, I think you might be able to help us in return.”
“Really? How?”
“Sara, can you tell me what Nancy’s wearing?”
Taken aback by the weird question, she gaped at him for a moment. Then she understood what he was doing.
She took a deep breath. “It’s a deep blue dress with a V neck and sleeves to the elbow, with a ruched front. The—”
“What?”
“—skirt is tulip— What? I’m sorry?”
“What did you say the front is?”
“Ruched.”
He frowned.
“It’s like pleating or puckering, but not exactly.”
He blinked. “Huh. Never heard of it. Okay, go on.”
“Her hair’s salt and pepper. She’s got it pulled back. Her earrings are long oval drops, metallic blue with hooks, and her bracelet matches.”
Nick Wargman nodded slowly with a bemused smile. “That’s pretty impressive.”
She shrugged. “It’s normal to me.”
“How about the skyline?”
“What?”
“Describe what you saw out the window. Just the big stuff.” His eyes never left her face, watching to see if she sneaked a peek to her left. She had to drop her gaze under the onslaught of his.
“Okay.” She closed her eyes to see the memory better. “On the left is a very tall building that looks like it’s covered in glass, kind of blue-black. To the left of that are a couple of other buildings that are probably pretty hi
gh, but they look short next to the blue glass thing. One’s dark and it has a square hole at the top. Over on the right is a building that looks like it’s made out of pink stone. It’s got silver spikes on the top and looks like a church.”
He nodded. “It’s an office building. Keep going.”
“There’s a tall white pole, like for a TV or radio transmission or something. Away to the right is a billboard for a radio station—103.7 Houston’s Adult Alternative—and way back in the middle I saw the tall building I noticed yesterday when I was with TJ, so that means you can see all the way to the Galleria from here.”
“Damn.” He laughed softly. “It really is eidetic. Don’t be offended—I never take anything on faith. I wanted to make sure you’ve got the memory.”
“I’m not offended—I just don’t understand why this matters.”
Instead of answering, he asked another question. “Did you ever meet your uncle’s customers, or the people who worked for him?”
“Oh! I see what you’re getting at. Yeah, yeah I did. I didn’t see them often—I tried to stay away from my uncle’s trailer when they were around, but I met them. Sometimes I had to make deliveries for Wayne. He actually brought the more respectable ones into the restaurant where I worked.”
“So you can remember their names, faces, where you met them?”
“Sure. All of it.”
He shook his head. “That’s bizarre. You’ve got a recording device in your head, and it’s always on.”
“That’s a good way to put it.”
“Doesn’t that, I don’t know, hurt? Isn’t it overwhelming?”
She shrugged. “No. It’s normal to me. The only problem I’ve ever had is when I was younger. It was hard not to let people see how much I could remember.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. Okay, good.” He jotted something down. “The Feds would like a chance to talk to you, but they’ll have to talk to my lawyers first.”
“Why?”
“I want to make sure they don’t do something stupid, like try to charge you with anything connected to your family.”
“Oh my God.”
He held up a hand in a calm down gesture. “Don’t stress about it. That’s what my lawyers are for. If anyone wants to question you, they have to make you a promise of immunity, in writing.”
She swallowed hard, hands shaking and heart hammering. “What if they don’t agree?”
He made a wry face. “Then I don’t let them talk to you, and I might even drop a hint to the Chronicle and the Houston Press about the whole thing. The FBI has tried very hard to keep a lid on this.”
Nick Wargman had a lot more pull with the police than she’d reckoned. “Keep a lid on what?”
“All of it. The drugs, the weapons, and especially the whole fae sex slave thing. I understand why they’ve kept it quiet. God knows we don’t need a werewolf panic like we used to have thirty, forty years ago. Plus they look like morons so far. But a lot of people in the fae communities are talking about the women who’ve disappeared, and I know the drug cartels are aware of it, so maybe it’s time to let the general public know about it too.”
“I don’t think the cops would like that.”
He flashed a nasty grin. “I don’t think they would either, so I’m not worried about making a deal for you. You could have valuable information and not even know it. You might have information Bryan didn’t get.”
“I’m not sure what kind of information he got, to tell you the truth.”
“The usual. He tailed Wayne, put a bug on his phone, bugged and tailed the people Wayne talked to, stuff like that.”
“I had no idea Bryan could do all that!”
Nick smiled. “Well, yeah—that’s what he gets paid to do. He used to do it in very dangerous countries.” He chuckled a little, like he thought it was funny she didn’t realize what Bryan did for a living. Then he shrugged again. “Of course, he never saw any of the Kuba wolves until the night he found them at your grandmother’s place. Everyone’s impressed with the way he took them down alive. Your boyfriend’s a smart one.”
She nodded, too filled with goofy pride in Bryan to quibble about the boyfriend label. “Wayne would’ve had a heart attack if he’d known someone had all that dirt on him.”
“Sounds like Wayne wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
“No, but he was big and mean and good at scaring people.”
“Well, according to Bryan, a lot of people knew about your grandmother’s operation and turned a blind eye to it. Which I guess is normal for small towns.” He put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Tell you the truth, if the government would get the fuck over it and legalize drugs, lowlifes like these Euros would have a lot less power.”
She didn’t hide her grin. “My grandmother would be appalled to hear someone suggesting drugs should be legal. She thought people who took drugs were the scum of the earth.”
He looked straight into her eyes, and she dropped her gaze again.
“You had a lousy childhood, didn’t you?”
“How’d you know?” she whispered.
“Because I had a lousy childhood, and I can always spot it. I think we carry it in our eyes.”
She’d have to take his word for it, since she couldn’t see his eyes. “Everything was fine until my mother died.”
“Same here.”
After a moment’s silence, Nick stood. “Well, that’s all I have for now.”
They started the trek back across the cavernous office.
“I hear you got away with a nice chunk of change.”
“Um, yeah.”
“Good. Don’t mention it to the Feds—they’ll seize it as evidence. Give it to Bryan to stick in his safe.”
“I thought I’d put it in a bank. I didn’t know he had a safe.”
“Every werewolf has a safe. And you can’t stick a hundred grand in a bank account without raising the wrong eyebrows.”
“Oh.” She blushed. “I didn’t—”
“Don’t worry about it.” He flicked a dismissive hand. “You’re a smart girl. You’ll get used to life in the big city in no time.”
Bryan was standing at the same spot they’d left him. He held out his arms with a questioning look, and she walked into them with a smile.
“See there, B? I didn’t scare her or anything. When TJ gets here, you and I— Ah. Here she is.”
TJ started talking before she was off the elevator. “You ready? We’re meeting Lark in the Village and we’re already running late. Oh hey, your ass looks fantastic in those jeans. Didn’t I tell you it would?”
“Yes, you did. And thanks.”
She’d felt decadent spending so much money—someone else’s money—on a pair of blue jeans and what was basically a T-shirt, even though the T-shirt was lavishly painted and studded with rhinestones. But she had to admit the outfit looked great with her new boots.
“The first place we’re looking at is a little complex around the corner from where we’re eating lunch,” TJ continued. “Lark used to date a guy who lived there and she said the management’s great.”
“I can’t wait to see it.”
“What?” Bryan frowned. “What complex? What are y’all looking at?”
“They’re taking me to look for an apartment!” She’d wanted to wait until she’d actually found one before she told him. If he knew she didn’t plan on staying at his place any longer than necessary, then he wouldn’t feel tied down or responsible for her.
He didn’t seem relieved, though. “Why are you looking at apartments?”
“Well, because— Because I can’t stay at your place forever, can I? I mean, I need to find a place to live.”
“No, of course not, I just— I don’t want you to feel like you have to move out, like, today. Have I made you feel unwelcome or something?”
“No! Not at all!”
He took one of her hands in his. “I mean, it’s only been three days. I’m not gonna kick y
ou out after three days.”
“I know, I—” She stammered to a halt as she noticed TJ and Nick staring at them, TJ with a smirk and Nick with a knowing smile. Nancy was smiling as well. Bryan, suddenly aware of the scrutiny, dropped her hand with a shrug.
“Well, you know. Whatever you want to do is fine with me, but don’t feel like you have to jump at the first place you see. Take your time.”
“I will. Thanks.”
TJ took her by the elbow. “All right, now that we’ve got that settled, can we get going, please? I’m hungry, we’re late, let’s go.”
“Wait a minute. Where’s your purse, angel? Don’t you have your phone with you?”
“My purse is at ho— Your place, but I have my phone.” She patted the pocket of her thin brown leather jacket, which cost more than everything else she was wearing combined.
“Good. So if I call you, you’re gonna answer, right? Not like yesterday?”
TJ made an exasperated sound and tugged at her arm. “Come on. Let’s bust a move before he decides he can’t let you out of his sight. Nick, I’m gone for the day.”
Bryan grabbed her other arm and pulled her to him, kissing her quick and hard. “I’ll call you in a little bit, and I want you to answer.”
She laughed. “You are so cute.”
“I am so disgusted. Now let’s move, Lark’s waiting for us.” TJ was already in the elevator.
“Y’all have fun.” Nick threw an arm around Bryan’s shoulder. Sara watched them walk back to his office as the elevator doors closed.
“So we need to stop at the condo, right?”
“Yeah, but I promise I’ll hurry. I didn’t think I’d need my purse to run to Nick’s office, and I don’t like putting it in the saddlebags ’cause they’re already so full.”
“Yeah, well, now that Bryan’s getting ready to settle down, it’s time for him to buy a big boy car.”
“TJ, there’s no reason to think he’s ready to settle down!”
“He didn’t seem all that thrilled with you moving out.”
The memory gave her a warm glow. “No, he didn’t, did he?” She shook her head. “But that doesn’t mean he wants me to move in with him for real. Besides, it would be way too soon. We still don’t really know each other.”
Ready to Run: Werewolves in Love, Book 3 Page 10
