Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery Book 3)

by Cynthia St. Aubin

  “You know you’d like it,” he said.

  I grabbed my phone, set the alarm and deposited it on the nightstand. “Just because I’d like it doesn’t mean it’s not a terrible idea,” I said.

  “It’s always been a terrible idea. That’s never stopped you before.”

  “Maybe I’m learning.” I threw the deadbolt on the front door, slid under the covers, and clicked off the lamp.

  “Room for one more?” Morrison’s asked.

  “Couch,” I grunted.

  He sighed, defeated. I was relieved to hear the soft sounds of blankets rustling in the dark as he settled himself.

  “Stay,” I whispered.

  Chapter 10

  The following morning, Morrison caught a ride with me back to the gallery to get his car. I pulled my Mustang into a parking lot several blocks away so we could strategize before I brought him within Abernathy’s supernatural sniffing orbit.

  “Okay, here’s the plan,” I said. “We’re going to circle the block. I’m going to drive very slowly past your car. You’re going to get out of mine and into yours and drive north as fast as you can. I’ll give you a ten-minute head start before I set foot in the gallery.”

  Morrison slouched in the passenger seat looking like something I’d dug out from between the couch cushions. Wearing a dogged expression and the same clothes he had the night before—minus the few vomit stains I’d been able to wash out in the sink.

  Just call me Martha effing Stewart.

  “And why am I going to do this?” Morrison asked.

  “Because despite your recent hiccup, you value your life and don’t want your nose shoved through the back of your skull.” I flashed him a quick, this is really no big deal smile.

  “This would happen to me why?”

  “Gee, I don’t know,” I asked mockingly. “Couldn’t have anything to do with you crashing at my place the same night you and Mark got into an epic pissing match.”

  “How would he know I crashed at your place?” Absent the booze, his sharp-eyed hazel gaze fastened on my face.

  Because he’ll be able to smell you on me before I’m finished parking. “He’s good like that,” I said.

  Morrison scratched the dark neck stubble that seemed to have doubled in length overnight. “So what, he’s going to hunt me down?”

  “Not if I can help it,” I said.

  “And if you can’t?”

  “Drive fast.” I reached over and squeezed his knee reassuringly.

  “I’m not afraid of him.” Morrison’s jaw was set in an echo of the determination that carried him through a record number of closed investigations. It would have been refreshing to see in any other context.

  “I didn’t say you were. But no good can come of you two beating the snot out of each other.”

  Or Mark eating you.

  “I think the hope of anything good stepped out of this situation a long time ago.” Morrison slouched down in his seat, staring out the window at the old brick buildings in the early morning mountain light.

  “All the more reason to let it go.”

  “Or to end it.” The flat finality in his voice drew gooseflesh to my neck. Men. Always so certain they had the world and everyone in it accurately pegged.

  I decided a different tactic was in order. “What if I asked you nicely to get gone for a couple days?”

  “How nicely?”

  “Please?” I asked, in my sweetest, most placating voice.

  “You’re going to have do better than that.” A sly grin stripped away a small measure of his sour expression.

  “Pretty please?”

  Morrison shook his head. “B minus at best.”

  On an impulse, I glanced around to confirm the streets were empty before unbuckling my seat belt, reaching down, and flipping up my shirt and bra both. “The ladies and I humbly request that you not show your face anywhere in the vicinity of the gallery until I let you know it’s safe. Deal?”

  Morrison’s eyes had the drugged, determined look I recognized when he was turned on. “Three days,” he said. “Any more than that is going to cost you.”

  “Deal.” Tugging my shirt and bra into place, I re-buckled my seatbelt and pulled out into traffic.

  “I meant what I said last night.” His voice had a strange, hollow quality.

  “Which part?” I asked.

  “All of it,” he said, turning to look at me. Threats and promises crystalized in his icy stare.

  Before I knew what was happening, he launched across the car and planted a fast, hard, tooth bumping kiss on my lips.

  I shoved him away by the shoulders, about to verbally scorch his hide, but he was already gone.

  As I watched him make his way down the block, it occurred to me I’d managed to trade one mistake for two. I’d underestimated Morrison’s abilities and overestimated my resolve. The time I’d bought might prove to be too costly when the final bill came due. There was nothing for it.

  “All right.” I grimaced at myself in the rear-view mirror, resigned to my fate. “Let’s get this over with.”

  I cranked the engine over and drove the final few blocks to the gallery. Parking around the corner, I hoped the wind would drive away at least some of Morrison’s signature scent.

  No such luck.

  I had scarcely eased the gallery door closed behind me when the door to Mark’s office exploded off the hinges and slid down the stairs from the loft like an unmanned sled.

  Well, shit.

  Rather than follow it down, Mark—still in mostly human form—opted to leap over the railing and make the fifteen-foot jump directly to the gallery floor. The old wood gave a groan of protest as it absorbed his full weight. His nostrils flared as he circled me—six and a half feet of pissed off man clad in a hand-tailored shirt the color of the storm clouds and pants that fit him like the sartorial testament of original sin.

  “A simple good morning would have been okay,” I said in a greatly misguided attempt to lighten the mood.

  Speaking had been a mistake. Mark’s eyes zeroed in on my mouth, and narrowed. Yellow sparks danced in their honeyed depths. He bent his face to my neck, dragging his nose and lips along the sensitive flesh beneath my chin. Air rushed through the impossibly narrow margin between his nostrils and my neck as he filled the great expanse of his lungs. It seemed to ignite every single cell as it skipped across my skin.

  He was scenting me.

  In an uncharacteristically bold movement, I placed both my hands on either side of his face and did my best to hold him fast.

  “Mark,” I said, speaking to the rapidly waning human part of his nature. “Look at me.”

  His eyes seemed to flutter to a dozen spots at once, reading additional details from my hair, my face, my clothing.

  “Mark, listen to me. Nothing happened.”

  The rough pads of his fingers landed on my lips, caging my words.

  “You kissed him.” It was part whisper, part growl, barely human.

  “Incorrect,” I said. “He kissed me. And only then because I had asked if he’d stay away if I asked nicely and he was all ‘how nicely?’ and I was like ‘please,’ and he was all ‘no dice,’ and then I was like ‘pretty please,’ and he said ‘B minus at best’ and I pulled the car over and everything after that is kind of a blur...” My head swam with lack of oxygen as I finished my breathless sentence. Best, I thought, to leave out the part about the flashing.

  “Car? What was he doing in your car?” A vein pulsed beneath the skin of his temple.

  Not good. Very not good.

  “I, uh. He needed a ride. I was just—”

  “From where?”

  “Pardon?” I lifted a hand to my ear.

  “A ride. From where?” The steely edge in Abernathy’s voice sent my intestines crawling southward.

  Lie! Lie our ass off! shrieked the little voice in my head.

  “My apartment.” I winced even as the words left my mouth. Since when had I been unable to f
ib to Abernathy? Fibbing to Abernathy was practically part of my job description.

  No I’m sure the framer didn’t hear you growling in the background.

  I never would have known you were out traipsing through the woods all night.

  A meat basket is definitely the best way to smooth things over with that canvas rep.

  “What the fuck was he doing at your apartment?” Mark’s chest rose and fell riotously with the effort of maintaining normal human breathing patterns.

  “Nothing. I swear to God.” I held my arm up, palm facing forward like someone taking the witness stand. “He just slept on the couch and that was it.”

  “He slept over?” Abernathy’s hands curled into fists at his sides.

  “No. Yes. Look, he was laying in his own vomit on my doorstep. He couldn’t even walk. I couldn’t let him leave like that.”

  “You let him sleep on your couch while he was covered in vomit?”

  “Not exactly,” I admitted, trying to find anywhere to look except in Abernathy’s direction.

  “What do you mean not exactly?” He stepped closer to me, dipping his head so I had no choice but to look directly into his eerie orange-red gaze.

  “I let him use the shower.” By this point, my lungs had all but collapsed, completely and utterly refusing to admit much-needed oxygen into my bloodstream.

  “He was too drunk to walk but he managed to shower?”

  How was it that with each answer I provided, Abernathy’s questions became progressively more frightening? And where was everyone anyway? Hadn’t they heard the small sonic boom of Abernathy pulling a Spiderman leap from the landing?

  “Kind of?” I said. “I mean, I helped him get in but—”

  “You helped him? You helped him?” Rage simmered blood to the surface of Abernathy’s skin, his color deepening from bronze to a color I would call impending coronary purple, were it to end up in a box of crayons.

  “Yes, and that’s all. It’s not like I showered with him. Not on purpose, anyway. You can’t really call it showering with someone if you have your clothes on the whole time, can you?”

  “You had—you were—with him—” Abernathy’s eyes had begun to wander again, twitching crazily everywhere at once. A resounding crack ricocheted through the gallery as his spine doubled over. His hands buried in his hair as he collapsed to his knees, an eardrum-rending roar tearing from his throat.

  His body heaved and bent as every cell was hijacked by the animal that swam in his bloodstream and howled in his heart. Expensive clothes rent like a fabric cocoon from which he emerged at once whole and complete in a burst of animal grace.

  Abernathy, the wolf.

  A wolf larger than any found in the world’s dark forests, deep-chested and powerfully limbed, padded toward me on silent paws. All traces of human understanding had evaporated from the pitiless brightness of his golden eyes. The velvet of his chestnut brown muzzle drew back from teeth like perfect daggers in a predatory snarl. The low growl registered as tightness in my stomach before my ears caught the bass notes as sound.

  One foot behind the other, I retreated slowly, never breaking eye contact. Fear scattered my thoughts like marbles. Scream. Run. Beg. Fight. Ideas that seemed as remote as they were unhelpful.

  Abernathy’s dark haunches twitched, the muscles tensing with preparation to spring.

  This, at last, prompted action on my part. Instinct took over and I slid into a crouch to protect vital organs, covering my head with my arms and squeezing my eyes shut tight. My brain summoned the ghosts of sensations to join me in the present: the tearing of skin, the crushing of bone. I’d learned them and lived.

  What came instead was a spattering sound and an unexpected surge of warmth on my upraised forearm. Then came the scent.

  I cracked on eye open and was rewarded with the underside of Mark’s hind leg hovering over my head.

  Abernathy was marking me.

  “No!” I shrieked, recovering my senses and scampering away from him. “Bad wolf! Very bad!”

  A wounded look widened his canine eyes as I pulled off my cardigan before it could soak through to my shirt. His nostrils flared, catching a scent released by the abrupt shift in my clothing.

  His eyes narrowed, black lips drawing back from his teeth once again as he sniffed the air.

  Morrison.

  If Abernathy got out of the gallery, Morrison was a dead man.

  Without warning, Abernathy took off toward the gallery door at a gallop.

  “Shit!” I darted into his path and blocked the door, throwing my arms wide against the frame.

  “Say, Hanna. You got any—baby Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich!” Steve froze in the doorway leading from the artists’ studios. His mouth formed a little “o” as he saw Abernathy.

  I spoke to him through the side of my mouth without taking my eyes off Mark. “Get. The. Shop. Door.”

  Mark looked at Steve.

  Steve looked at Mark.

  They launched into motion at the same moment. Steve’s leopard print bathrobe flew out behind him like a cape as his skinny white legs peddled furiously to get a head start. He was vastly aided by rubber-soled green Chuck Taylors and Mark’s inability to get similar purchase on the wood floor with his skittering black claws.

  “Shaaaayla!” Steve yelled as he tore down the hall. “Get behind the desk!”

  “What the—shit! Holy fucking shit!” I heard Shayla gasp as Mark’s tail disappeared into the oddities shop.

  As quickly as I could, I wrestled a credenza in front of the gallery door and jogged down the hall to provide reinforcement.

  A crash and the sound of breaking glass resounded through the gallery. Steve had barred the front door to the oddities shop by tipping over a bookshelf in a similar configuration to my own improvised solution.

  Foiled from flight, Mark had apparently turned his attention to pure, wanton destruction. He sprang to the top of a cabinet, sending Shayla’s carefully arranged display of wooden heads and wigs flying every direction. From here he leapt to a row of bookshelves, his weight sending them careening like a row of dominoes. He was free of them before they had finished falling and flying toward a glass display of antique medical equipment.

  “No!” Shayla moaned. “Not the lithotripters!”

  Abernathy was heedless in his quest. The shop was reduced to sparkling rubble and splinters within a matter of moments.

  Steve, Shayla, and I all ducked behind the expanse of wooden counter while Mark seized the neck of an old dressmaker’s dummy and shook it like a rat.

  “He. Is. Huge,” Shayla marveled.

  Oh honey. If you only knew.

  “This is your first time seeing him all wolfy, isn’t it?” Steve asked.

  “Yup,” she said, seemingly unable to tear her eyes away from him.

  “You’ve seen other werewolves, though?” I asked.

  “Just Steve,” she said. “And only on special occasions.”

  I scrubbed the mental image out of my head while Mark turned his attention to tearing a set of 18th century erotic novels from the shelves in the corner. Bits of paper swirled like snow as he tore at the pages, growling.

  “What did you do?” Shayla’s impossible aquamarine eyes fixed on my face in glassy wonder.

  “What do you mean what did I do? I didn’t do anything,” I said.

  “She slept with Morrison again,” Steve said.

  “Hey,” I said, giving Steve a gentle shove. “I did not sleep with Morrison. And why is everyone always assuming that I—”

  “Smells like you slept with Morrison.” Steve said, raising a brow at me.

  “Fine, okay. He slept at my house. But I didn’t sleep with him,” I explained, attempting to sound less defensive than I felt.

  Steve leaned over and gave me a sniff. “He was in your bed. And he was naked.”

  Mark paused in his assault and his ears shifted in Steve’s direction like triangular satellites. He began to pant and drool, then t
ook off back toward the gallery with a howl of rage.

  “God dammit, Steve! You are not helping!” I slugged him in the shoulder as hard as I could, feeling the bony length of his bicep beneath my knuckles.

  “Ow!” he yelped. “You really are getting stronger.”

  The abrupt scraping sound of wood on wood drove us all to our feet. “Shit! The credenza!”

  We scrambled down the hall just in time to see a rolled up newspaper land a resounding thwack to Mark’s snout. He yelped and shook his head as if to cast off the irritating sensation.

  The distinctive cockney bray that followed produced a sudden burst of joy within my chest.

  “Now ‘ows that to behave? You shouwd be ashamed of yourself! Runnin’ around ‘ere, barkin’ at peopwe like you’re some kinda daft pup! And look at ‘ese clothes! I spent days makin’ that bloody shirt and you shredded it like a whore’s knickers! I oughta box your ears!”

  Clad head to toe in an expertly tailored suit of vibrant teal, Allan Ede of Ede and Ravenscroft Tailors, London, looked rather like a disapproving peacock. He stood, hands on his hips, glaring down at Mark through his black-framed Gucci glasses, his perfectly plucked dark brows drawn into a stern line.

  “Allan,” I said. “Thank God. I thought we were going to have to call animal control.”

  “Why Hanna, my girw! Lovely to see you again.” His broad smile revealed two front teeth a shade longer than the rest, making him look more like the Easter Bunny than a 1000 year-old werewolf. “Give us a squedge,” he said, holding his arms open.

  His expression stopped me before I could cross half the distance.

  “Cor blimey!” He clapped a hand over his nose and looked down to Mark, who was chuffing at his feet. “Did you mark her?”

  How odd a sheepish expression looked on the face of a wolf.

  Allan turned his gaze to me. “Right. What did you do, then?”

  “Me? Really? Why does everyone immediately assume this is my fault?”

  “Mostly cause you smeww like a naked chap who ain’t him,” Allan said, gesturing to Mark with his polished Italian loafer. “Looks like he gave you an ‘ell of a snog besides,” he added, blinking at my face.