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

by Cynthia St. Aubin

  “Very thoughtful,” I said, following suit.

  In fact, my fridge hadn’t been all that great before I’d left for Scotland. The mostly disappointing contents had indeed been returned to their non-leprechaun-invaded and mostly empty state.

  We chewed together in silence for the space of several moments.

  “Actually, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  “Goddamn it,” I said, plopping a goodly wedge of Cambozola back down on the cutting board. “When will I ever learn that your food always comes with ulterior motives?”

  Morrison picked it back up and ferried it to my plate with a cheese knife.

  “Hanna, what happened here last night,” he said, “what’s been happening as long as I’ve known you. It’s not—it doesn’t—”

  Offering him no assistance whatsoever, I paired the new cheese acquisition with a fig and set my total focus to enjoying the silky, salty, piquant creaminess.

  “Things have to make sense,” he said, finally able to distill his point. “Everything has an explanation. A logical explanation.”

  “Not everything does.” A truth I had to be taught again and again.

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Morrison turned on the couch, angling his body to face mine. “If you wait long enough, even the most inexplicable events can be traced back to a single decision. Some seemingly unimportant detail you overlooked. Everything has a beginning, and an end. And if you’re patient, the pieces come together. They always do.”

  “You’re talking like a detective.” I leaned forward to pick up my glass of wine and take a healthy swallow.

  “I am a detective.”

  A wave of trepidation rippled through my rapidly filling belly. “I’m aware.”

  “You’re not, though. Those are the rules, and they apply universally. With one exception.”

  I gave him back the words he’d so often given me. “My boss?”

  “Your boss. Nothing about him makes sense. I followed the facts. I followed the patterns. And I was wrong.”

  “Happens to the best of us.” I myself had been wrong about Mark at least a dozen times. Maybe more. A feeling I had not altogether become comfortable with.

  “You don’t understand,” Morrison insisted, scooting closer to me. “I am never wrong. Fifteen years in homicide, and every time I’ve locked down on a suspect, their guilt has been proven without a shadow of a doubt. Except one.”

  “My boss,” I repeated.

  “Your boss. And you know why?” His hazel eyes surged with some unspoken revelation.

  “Enlighten me,” I said far more casually than I felt.

  “Because he doesn’t follow human patterns.”

  My breath froze in my lungs. I pushed myself up from the couch and aimed myself toward the kitchen.

  “Where are you going?” Morrison called after me.

  “To get the wine.” I brought the bottle back to the table and refilled both our glasses, picking up my own before handing his to him.

  “This won’t change the questions I came here to ask,” he said, taking it.

  “And it won’t change my answers. But we’re lushes, and there’s no reason we shouldn’t enjoy the wine.”

  We clinked glasses again over this sentiment.

  “As I was saying,” Morrison paused to take a sip. “Your boss doesn’t follow human behavioral patterns.”

  “He’s eccentric. You won’t find me arguing that point.” I took a sip from my own glass.

  “And I was willing to accept that,” Morrison added. “Until you.”

  “Me? What about me?” Why did it feel like I was asking this question too often lately?

  “You.” Morrison reached forward to construct another bit. Manchego cheese this time, but with a smudge of orange fig spread and a thin slice of spicy capicola. He’d always been a rebel.

  “I used to be able to read you,” he continued. “I used to know when you were lying. When you were stalling, bluffing, holding back. I used to be able follow your thread. Put you together. Take you apart. All your pieces made sense.”

  “I’m pretty predictable.” And I was. A creature of habit and most of them bad.

  “Used to be. You don’t follow the patterns, Hanna. You don’t make sense. What’s happening here—” he gestured around my apartment “—doesn’t make sense. Not anymore.”

  I sat quiet in the space made perfect by a source completely unknown to me. Morrison was right. As usual. “I don’t have an answer for that.”

  “That’s the same thing as saying you do, but you don’t like it.” Morrison wiped his fingers on the super elegant patterned paper towels I had supplied by way of napkins.

  I did the same, not knowing what else to do. “Then I guess there’s nothing left to say.”

  Morrison lifted his glass from the coffee table, skewering me with that intense, green-blue hazel gaze. “Why won’t you tell me what’s happening?”

  I drained the contents of mine, a warm barrier against his cold questions. “Because I can’t.”

  Well, shit. Damned if I didn’t sound like—

  “You can, but you won’t.” Morrison reached out and captured my hand in his. “Please, Hanna. Just tell me. It won’t change anything. Nothing you can tell me will change what I feel for you.”

  A loud, unexpected laugh erupted from my mouth.

  “What?” Morrison asked. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. You just have no idea what you’re saying.”

  “What? You’re a serial murderer?”

  Not yet.

  “I’m something worse,” I said.

  “Stop this, Hanna.” Morrison now gathered both my hands in his. “Stop taking on his guilt. I don’t care what he’s told you.”

  At this, I finally understood what the word hysterics really meant. “He hasn’t—” a painful laugh seized my abdominals “—he hasn’t told me anything. Never does.”

  Morrison’s expression bore genuine concern. “Fuck me. I shouldn’t have brought the wine.”

  “Believe me, I would if I could. And the wine was fabulous. Don’t be sorry.” I rested a hand on his knee, feeling beneath my palm the muscles of his thigh attached to the rounded bone. Such a wonder, he was. So beautifully made.

  He brought a hand to the back of my neck and pulled me to him until our foreheads touched. “Why won’t you be with me?”

  Because my fucking you could drive my boss to murder the first para/super natural who crossed his path, resulting in a war capable of consuming every last life on the planet.

  “I just...my feelings are too complex. It’s not fair to—” My words stopped the second I saw Morrison’s face.

  He looked as if he’d been slapped. Eyes wide. Cheeks pale. “You’re in love with him.”

  A ton of bricks fell from the sky and landed on my chest, each one extracting its own weight in flesh. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t need to.” A sardonic smile stole across his lips. “Now this, this makes sense. Why you lie for him. Why you stay.” His laugh matched my own for bitterness. “Shit. All this time, I’d been gauging your actions against what you might feel for me. Your pattern does make sense.”

  Hearing him talk this way ground the last of my heart to dust. “Don’t. Please don’t do this.”

  “I didn’t do this. You did.” He pushed himself up from the couch and slipped on his shoes.

  I slid across the couch and reached out to capture his hand. “James, please don’t go. I want you here. I do.”

  He peeled my hand away from his body as if it was a leech. “Then tell me what happened here last night.”

  My heartbeat marked every second as it passed, thundering in my ears like a metronome from hell. “I can’t.”

  “Goodbye, Hanna.”

  The closed door to my apartment was a gunshot, marking the end of the life I knew.

  Chapter 23

  Clad in silk and chiffon, standing beneath the artificial hea
ven of twinkling lights and swirling fabric, on the day of my brother’s wedding, I contemplated murder for the first time.

  Was it possible to kill a unicorn?

  I added this to the long list of questions someone, anyone, had yet to answer for me.

  Were they like vampires? Slow healing but impossible to kill? Or was it more like a werewolf proposition? Capable of sustaining massive damage unless you steal the core?

  I might yet find out.

  There, buried muzzle deep in Steve and Shayla’s four-tier wedding cake, was Wallis. The same unicorn who had destroyed and magically restored my apartment, was now eating my brother’s wedding cake.

  Arms folded against the considerable cleavage Allan’s gown had architecturally created, I crept up behind the offender’s rounded white haunches and delivered a stinging slap.

  A sudden jet of warm, cotton candy-scented air sent my riotous pile of curls flying a second before the blizzard of glitter erupted toward me. Too late, my hands flew up in front of my face. I stumbled backward, tripping over my own dress and falling hard on my ass. As if in a snow globe, the world around me became visible by gradual degrees as the sparkling flakes settled on my skin, my hair, and the floor. At the end of my fourth sneeze, a wad of glitter-caked snot flew into my palm. I shoved myself to my feet and grabbed a monogrammed napkin off the nearby table. “What the fuck was that?”

  “You fucking startled me.” Wallis’s rainbow-colored mane tossed against his muscular neck as he turned toward me. Frosting and fondant decorated his muzzle instead of the cake. White crumbs fell as he spoke.

  He turned and resumed eating, his horsey lips making rude smacking sounds.

  “You...you farted glitter on me?”

  “What did you expect,” came the mumbled reply. “I’m a goddamn unicorn.”

  “Ugh!” I danced around the gallery, brushing glitter out of my hair, shaking it out of my dress, slapping it off my skin. “That’s disgusting!”

  “It’s fucking magical is what it is.” He turned away from the cake, his golden hooves echoing across the wooden floor as he licked the last of the frosting from his lips and belched. But instead of a burp, the tinkling sound of babies’ laughter filled the gallery.

  “So that’s what that sound was! You piece of shit! Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused me?”

  “No, but I’ve got an idea of the kind of trouble I’d like to cause you.” His thick pink tongue swiped the last of the frosting from his velvety muzzle.

  “Do you bleed rainbows? Because I’m just about ready to—”

  “Hanna! ‘ere you are! I’ve been—” Allan stopped short, his small eyes growing wide behind their glass walls. “Cor blimey, love! I know it’s a weddin’ an all, but I fink you might’ve gone a bit over de top wif de body glitter.”

  “I didn’t wear any body glitter,” I said, cutting my eyes toward Wallis as I continued batting it out of my hair.

  “Oh, shit,” Allan said, following my gaze. “What de ‘ell did you eat?”

  “He ate the wedding cake!” Quite unsuccessfully, I attempted to scrape glitter off my arms with my fingernails. “That’s what he ate.”

  “You try being the only sucrose intolerant unicorn in a species that spins sugar into magic!” A sheen misted his large brown eyes. “Do you know what they eat for breakfast in Unicornland?

  “Cotton candy!” Wallis sobbed. “Cotton fucking candy. And for lunch, it’s jelly beans. And dinner—” his voice grew thick, choked with tears. “They, they gave me...hay. Hay! Just because I was different.” Fat, pearlescent teardrops slid down his long, elegant face. “They all laughed at me. They called me names.”

  “Oh, Wallis.” I rushed over to him, wrapping my arms around his broad neck. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Hanna,” Allan coughed.

  “It hurt so much.” Wallis inhaled a long, wet sniffle.

  “You poor thing,” I said, stroking his flank.

  “Show me your tits,” came his hoarse whisper.

  I drew back, looking him in the eye. “What did you just say?”

  “It would make me feel so much better.” He batted his long equine lashes at me. “Really it would.”

  “You son of a bitch!” I said, the realization dawning. “The laughing, the name calling. You stole that from Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer!”

  “He’s my cousin,” Wallis said. “Isn’t that close enough?”

  “Look, you,” Allan said, grabbing Wallis by the ears. “I’m going to call the caterer and have another cake brought. And you’re not going to touch it. You’re going to carry de bride down de aiswe. You’re goin’ to keep your mouf shut, and be a good unicorn, if you do right the rest of the time you’re here, I won’t report you. You understand?”

  Wallis’ eyes widened. “I’ll be good. Promise I will. Just don’t report me, okay?”

  “We’ll see.” Allan released Wallis’s ears as a pointed a stiff finger down the hall. “Go see Joseph ‘bout your weddin’ gear.”

  The sound of hooves clopping against a wood floor echoed across the gallery until Wallis was out of sight.

  Allan pressed his forehead against the wall. “If we get out of this weddin’ alive, it will be a bleedin’ miracle.”

  “In the meantime,” I said, taking a dramatic step back to admire his ensemble. “You look fantastic.”

  He wore a fitted black jacket over a white button up shirt and black vest. Below this was a kilt of red, green and blue tartan. Thick white socks came to just below his knee interrupted only by the laces of his black ghillie shoes. Hanging at his waist, the traditional tasseled Scottish sporran swayed in time with his panicked breaths.

  “Breathe, Allan,” I said, completely unfamiliar with being the calm-ee in this scenario. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “It’s not!” he insisted. “In a few minutes ‘is gallery is going to be full of werewolves, satyrs, nymphs, and God knows what else!”

  “You forgot Crixus.” Who definitely fell under the what else category.

  “Bite me ballocks! ‘Es here too, then?”

  I nodded.

  “Mark’s goin’ta kill ‘im you know. After what he done at the castle. Gonna skin him alive and wear ‘im like a scarf.”

  “I’ll take care of Mark and Crixus,” I said. Somehow. “Just go make sure Steve and Shayla are ready.”

  Allan closed his eyes took a deep breath, the unflappable mask of professional confidence dropping back into place. “All right, then,” he said, giving my arm a squeeze. “Showtime.”

  Mark and I met at the top of the aisle, his dark eyes drinking me in from head to heels just as I’d hoped they would. Draped in Allan’s sartorial masterpiece, I felt bold enough to meet his gaze.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” he answered.

  We stood opposite each other just out of sight of the throng of seated guests, their excited buzz making a hive of the gallery. He offered me his suit coat clad arm as we shuffled to our place in the processional line. Paired up by height—or so Allan said—we were to be the caboose.

  Kirkpatrick and Helena were in front of us, disparate height notwithstanding in consideration of their mated status. Pregnancy had tacked on a good thirty pounds since the last time I’d seen her, her rounded butt a hypnotizing juggling act beneath fabric the same pale green shade as mine.

  Allan had met my shocked expression with the revelation that werewolf gestation periods were roughly equivalent to all wolf gestation periods. At forty days pregnant, Helena was more than halfway through, and Shayla wasn’t far behind.

  “Nice sparkles,” Mark said, giving me a quick sideways glance.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” I fixed my eyes straight ahead, trying to prevent little bursts of light from reflecting from my cheeks by keeping my head still.

  We took a few steps forward and paused, waiting for Allan’s nod to signal our turn to walk.

  My lack of breath had nothing to do with a c
orset this time, though I was able to reuse the expensive contraption Allan had laced me into for the Spring Lambing social at Castle Abernathy.

  No.

  Dusted by blue rose petals, the narrow expanse of floorboards between the chairs choked with creatures from both sides of the families whispered to me.

  What if this were your wedding? The aisle seemed to ask me. And all these people were here for you? Your mother would be here. Just like she would have been if she knew her son was alive.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” I said.

  “What?” Mark asked, ducking his head to listen above the swelling violin version of Lionel Richie’s “Hello.”

  “I—er didn’t have a choice. About the dress. Allan made it before we left for Scotland.”

  “Neither did I.” Mark glanced down, and I made the mistake of following his gaze. “Haven’t worn a one of these things in ages.”

  Oh. God. Mark Abernathy in a kilt. He was an Iron Age savage, a warrior, a crusader, a king. The muscle-bound Laird on a thousand paperback book covers.

  Heat flushed my cheeks as a sharp, acute wave of nostalgic longing rolled through me.

  Mark steadied me, his large, warm hand easily spanning the small of my back. “Easy.”

  But nothing about this was.

  Allan nodded, and then we were walking.

  I felt eyes from both sides of the aisles roving over my face, my breasts, my hips, and my ass.

  “I’m going to have to kill half the wedding guests,” Mark mumbled out the side of his mouth.

  “Bad manners,” I whispered.

  “Don’t care. You’re still my assistant.”

  “Until 10:00 PM,” I reminded him.

  “Plenty of time.” He nodded toward the werewolf side of the aisle, attempting to smile, but mostly bearing his teeth.

  Steve’s grin, on the other hand, shone like the crescent moon against the painted panels behind him. My brother, radiantly, stupidly, happy.

  I forced myself to keep walking when all I wanted was to stop and cement this memory for all time. Like Mark and Allan, he wore a dark jacket, vest and kilt, his calves impossibly narrow in their socked tubes.