“But she owns it outright,” Lilah said. Their dad, a late-in-life father, had died suddenly fifteen years earlier. Luckily, he’d been a hardworking, thrifty man who had paid off the mortgage on their two-bedroom ranch house, the one where both Lilah and Jess had grown up, before his heart had given out. Not so luckily, it had given out while he was in bed with another woman. Their mother still lived there.
“She took out some kind of loan on it. And after she gets the operation, she won’t be able to do everything she used to do for a while, and she’s afraid we’re going to put her in a home, or the bank will throw her out on the street.” Jess picked up the empty plate and walked over to the sink. “Like a dog.”
Lilah’s blood pressure spiked. “A loan? She had to take out a loan?”
“It’s been a rough few years. The roof needed replacing, and there was something about the furnace, a utility tax, a medicine she needs that isn’t covered—”
“How long has this been going on?” Lilah asked. “Why didn’t she tell me? We could move in with her and help out.”
“Oh God, you know she’d hate that. She’s too proud. And she loves the idea of us being out on our own, pursuing our dreams. The last thing she wants is to add to your worries. She knows you’ve had trouble of your own, starting a career, paying for college.”
“She didn’t want to worry me,” Lilah repeated to herself, closing her eyes. Poor Mom. Guilt washed over her. She should’ve found a steady job by now. She should’ve majored in something practical, like software engineering or rocket science. Hospitality management was what she loved, but...
She should’ve moved to Fargo to take that hotel job that paid less than she made waitressing at the twenty-four-hour diner she worked at through college. At least then she’d have a job.
She should’ve been born with a multimillion-dollar trust fund to pay for school.
No point dwelling on the past. Right now she had to do whatever she could to get a real job. One that paid enough to get out of the shithole where they lived, one that would give her the resources to help the people—and dog, she thought, petting Smoky’s scruffy head—she loved.
As soon as possible.
Worst case, she’d go back to waitressing. That’s how she’d paid for part of college. It wasn’t so bad, but it felt like a step backward.
Then again, it was a step that had a paycheck.
Smoky let out a sigh and closed his eyes.
“He’s kinda cute when he sleeps,” Jess said.
I’ve got to figure something out, Lilah thought. But what?
The first thought that crossed Gavin’s mind as he came to, long legs stretched out before him on the leather ottoman, a roaring fire flickering behind closed eyelids, was that he really needed to leave this godforsaken city. Now.
With her.
“Sir?” The voice was familiar. Cultured. Concerned. In this city, hearing that voice could mean only one thing: he was at the Platinum Club’s inner sanctum. Built in the late 1800s by Gavin’s father, the club was buried deep underground, tunneled out at the same time as the expansion of Boston’s subway system. So secret was its existence that engineering maps of the city did not include it.
Which suited its members just fine, for secrets were their lifeblood. The members of what they called the Novo Club were accustomed to keeping secrets for long stretches of time. Centuries even. As animal shifters, they lived their lives in secret, known to the outer world only as humans. In human form, they blended in. As animals, they most certainly did not.
As legends, they threatened the very heart of the world humans lived in, and that meant they must hide among them, integrating and yet remaining separate. The secrecy of their true nature must remain unbreached.
Manny had done well, bringing Gavin into the sanctuary of his peers. Willing his eyes open, he let the soft glow of firelight and old sconces penetrate his weary brain. He looked down.
At least his naked cock wasn’t on display. Someone had dressed him in simple, business casual attire.
“Brandy,” he said, clearing his throat, the voice rough but his own.
A glass appeared as if Morgan, the club’s stalwart butler, had conjured it via black magic. Eyeing it with great relief, Gavin drank the two fingers of liquor in one long, quenching swallow.
“Another?”
Gavin sat up, joints tight, legs aching. He turned slowly to take a good look at the man. If any creature on this planet could possibly be immortal, then it was Morgan, a smallish man with a light eastern European accent that was hard to place. He wore a white serving jacket, a black bow tie, and had elegant, wavy white hair the color of freshly fallen snow.
Eyes the color of the brandy he’d just served stared at Gavin from under bushy brows that looked like tangled vines.
“Yes, Morgan,” Gavin answered crisply. “Thank you.”
The second brandy made him warm from the inside out, limbs coming to life as he flexed, inhaling so deeply his ribs nearly cracked.
Recovery was often sluggish, but this feeling was entirely new. He always controlled his own changes. Always. Shifting from human to wolf form was a voluntary act, one that he could implement and withdraw at will. Old wives’ tales said that the Beat could make a shifter lose his mind until he’d truly mated with his one true partner...
Could he lose his body as well?
Unaccustomed to being out of control, Gavin felt the loss keenly, as if his mind were seized by hands the size of planets and he was shaken violently, desiccated and spread throughout the universe.
Her.
This was all her fault.
He laughed, a softer sound than he expected to hear from his own mouth, the smile cutting through his face one that he likely would not recognize in a mirror. Smiles tended to be wielded like weapons for Gavin, part of business strategy or carefully meted out to snare a woman to share his bed for a night.
He didn’t want this woman for just one night, though. And a smile of pleasure was as foreign to him as his loss of control.
Long blonde hair. Tall and graceful, with a body like a lithe, curvy mountain lion, protecting her dog. How she had run so fast and free, thinking nothing of the limousine, the drug dealers, the dirty danger of her neighborhood. Rescuing the animal had been her sole focus.
The dog.
“Manny!” he called out, not caring for the breach of decorum. “Is the dog injured?”
“No, sir. We checked. The mutt’s fine.” Manny appeared from behind Gavin’s chair, quickly moving to the side, coming into Gavin’s vision. Inscrutable features made Manny the perfect driver for the Stanton family. Ex-special forces with a face that was multicultural and chameleonlike. At any given time Manny could become whatever he wished.
Or no one at all.
Today he wore hair shorter than an infant’s fingernails, jet black, with a black goatee, the look just sinister enough to make him look like an actor in a horror film.
Nearly black eyes shone in the fire’s light as he caught Gavin’s gaze and added, “The woman’s safe, too.”
“Add a security watch on her,” Gavin snapped.
“Already did.” Manny’s tone carried a hint of smugness to it.
“And keep that confidential.”
A man who had not spent the better part of four years with Manny might have missed the microexpression that passed over his face. Gavin, though, knew him too well.