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Synopsis
He's big, burly, and way smarter than your average shapeshifting bear. He's also about to get trapped by his own game...
Lou Crushek is a reasonable, mellow, easygoing kind of guy. But when someone starts killing the scumbags he works so hard to bust, that really gets under his fur. Especially when that someone is a curvy she-tiger with a skill set that's turning Crush's lone-bear world upside down—and bringing his passion out of hibernation.
As a member of an elite feline protection unit, Marcella Malone has no problem body-dropping anyone who hunts her kind. But Crush is proving one major pain in her gorgeous tail. The only reason she's joined forces with him is to track down the wealthy human who's got her entire species in his ruthless sights. It sure isn't because Crush's stubborn and contrary attitude is rubbing Cella in all the right ways...
Release date: September 29, 2015
Publisher: Kensington Books
Print pages: 400
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Bear Meets Girl
Shelly Laurenston
Brutal, undeniable pain. The kind of pain that could kill a man. Maybe it had. Maybe the pain throbbing in his head right at this moment had killed him and he’d have to spend eternity feeling like this. Like warmed-over shit melting in the hot desert sun.
The worst part about all this? It was his fault. He had no one to blame for this but himself—and those damn Jell-O shots. He should have stayed away from them. He knew better. All that alcohol in those delectable little jiggly squares . . . what was he thinking? And now he could barely move without pain. Brutal, undeniable pain.
Lou “Crush” Crushek tried to open his eyes, but that only made things worse. It was morning and that light coming through the window was destroying any brain activity he had left. If he were home, he’d simply go back to sleep for a few more hours, but he wasn’t home. He could tell. The scent was different. He smelled feline. Everywhere he smelled feline.
Crush snarled a little. That’s whose fault this was. That damn cat. Male lions. Never trust a male lion! Sure, this particular male lion was married to a fellow NYPD detective and was from one of the wealthiest Prides in Manhattan, but he was also the asshole who’d brought the tray of Jell-O shots around, in their innocuous-looking little cups, and said, with that feline grin, “Go on. Try one.”
So . . . Crush had tried one. Then another. And another. After the eighth . . . well, he didn’t remember much of anything after the eighth.
What Crush did remember was making the mistake of going over to Detective Dez MacDermot’s house for a “small get-together with some friends” that turned into anything but. Normally, when parties or events became something he didn’t want to deal with, Crush would find the first exit and head on home to his TV and his quiet life. At least the quiet life he had when he wasn’t working undercover, pretending to be a merciless drug dealer, biker, and occasional hit man. But honestly, Crush didn’t leave the stupid party because he was, for lack of a better, manlier word, depressed.
A word he rarely used about himself. He wasn’t much for sitting around, feeling sorry about his life. He was a bear, after all. A polar bear specifically. No, not one of those guys who insisted on swimming in the Atlantic during the middle of winter to prove how virile he was. But a guy who could swim in the Atlantic during the middle of winter and never worry about dying of hypothermia. A guy who could shift into an eight-foot, twelve-hundred-pound polar bear anytime he wanted to. And, as a polar bear, sitting around being depressed wasn’t really his thing. Instead, Crush lived like most of his kind. Being curious. Asking too many questions. Staring blankly at people until they became terrified and ran away. Eating whenever he was even slightly hungry. The usual.
Too bad, though, Crush had discovered something that all bears found distressing. He’d discovered there would be change. Change was coming Crush’s way and he hated change. He liked to know things were going along as they should, and when that didn’t happen, he became depressed. He still hadn’t recovered from the closing down of his favorite deli five years ago. Or that six years ago they’d moved his favorite shoe store—needless to say that as a six-nine, three-hundred-pound guy, he couldn’t exactly pick up his boots and sneakers from the local sports store—and Crush still walked to where the old shoe store had stood, gazing into the window, wishing things were like they once were, until the customers inside the tea shop called police about the “crazed meth dealer lurking outside the door.”
So no, Crush didn’t handle change well, but he didn’t see that there was anything he could do to prevent this change from happening. Not after one of his old partners had called him and given him a heads-up. The man wouldn’t have called unless he was sure. So now Crush was just waiting for the anvil to drop.
Unfortunately, it felt like that anvil had already dropped right on his head.
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t sit here in a coworker’s house, waiting for the hangover and migraine he had to go away. No, he just needed to get a move on. He had to get up. He had to deal with the pain. He had plans anyway for the afternoon and he wasn’t about to miss out on them. So he had to get up.
But there appeared to be a little problem with him just leaping from bed and facing the day. And that problem was the naked female sprawled across his chest.
Uncaring about the brutal pain it would cause, Crush opened his eyes and looked down. Yep. That was a female all right. A—he took a sniff—feline female. Crush’s lip curled. Another feline. The most untrustworthy of species in his opinion. And since he was naked, too, he could only assume that they’d . . . well . . . you know.
Christ, what was wrong with him? This wasn’t like him. Crush didn’t get drunk and sleep with random people. He just didn’t. It wasn’t in his DNA. It wasn’t just the NYPD who called him “By the Book” Crushek, either. He had classmates from junior high, high school, and college who called him that as well.
Yet a little depression, a few too many Jello-O shots to drink at a house party, and here Lou Crushek was. Naked. With a feline.
Who was this female anyway? Anyone he knew? Crush didn’t think so. He knew lots of felines, but he didn’t spend time around them because they were, as he’d already stated and everyone knew, totally untrustworthy. It was a fact. Look it up!
Too bad Crush couldn’t be one of those guys who drunkenly slept with a woman only to sneak out before she woke up. It would definitely make his life a whole lot easier, but that would bring him to a new level of tacky he couldn’t handle. Just because he felt his life falling apart around him—he hated change!—didn’t mean he’d allow it to actually fall apart. And part of keeping his life together was doing the morally right thing.
Man, it sucked being a good guy all the time.
“Uh . . . miss?” Jeez! His voice sounded like gravel. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Miss? Excuse me?” He couldn’t see her very clearly with all that black hair, with strands of white and red throughout, covering her face and his chest. He recognized that hair color, though. She was a She-tiger.
Hating to wake her up, Crush tapped her shoulder. “Miss?”
“Hmmh?”
“Uh . . . yeah, sorry. I . . . uh . . .” This was so hard. How did he tell a woman he’d possibly had sex with that he didn’t know her name? Couldn’t even remember having sex with her? This was getting worse and worse. When the hell did he become a frat boy?
Suddenly she stretched, her long body briefly writhing on his. Crush ignored how good that felt and said, “Miss?”
She lifted her head and gold-green eyes blinked up at him.
Damn, she was pretty. He didn’t remember having sex with her? Really? How drunk had he been last night?
She blinked at him in confusion; then she smiled. “Oh. Hi.”
Oh, hi?
Yawning and slapping her hand against his chest, she levered herself up and looked around the room, giving him a monumental peek at her breasts and, wow, those were freakin’ nice. “What time is it?” she asked.
“No idea. Early.”
She nodded and settled back onto his chest, eyes closing, arms tightening around his chest. “Good. I’m still so tired.” Wait. What just happened?
“I have to get up.”
“Another hour,” she bargained. “Maybe two. Just relax.”
Completely confused, Crush said, “Look—”
Her head snapped up, those eyes locking on him. “Are you going to keep talking? ’Cause it’s irritating. I’m trying to sleep, and I’m extremely hungover.”
Crush’s eyes narrowed. He was irritating? “Tell me we didn’t have sex last night.”
“As drunk as you were?” She yawned, already bored with him, it seemed. “I don’t think you could have gotten it up with a crane.”
“Thanks.”
“Wait. Is that what you think? That we fucked?”
“We’re in bed together. What was I supposed to think?”
“That I was tired and needed someplace to sleep.”
“But we’re both . . .” He shrugged a little. “Naked.”
“Yeah, I was really drunk, too, so I just took my clothes off.”
“Wasn’t there somewhere else you could have slept?”
“Most of the people who crashed here last night were either full-humans or canines. Have you ever tried to sleep with a canine? They yip in their sleep. And run. It’s annoying. And Mace wouldn’t take the couch so I could sleep with his wife so—”
“You asked a lion male to move out of his bed for you?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Because he’s the majestic lion male, king of the jungle? Or because he’s a rich Llewellyn of the Llewellyn Pride?”
“Because it’s the man’s house.”
“It’s his wife’s house. MacDermot just allows him to stay here with her and those giant, useless dogs she owns. And I know she’d pick those ridiculous rotties over that lion in a hot second.” She sat up. “Well . . . now I’m awake.”
“How annoying for you.” Crush struggled to sit up, too, ignoring the screaming in his head.
“What are you so cranky about?”
“You basically just told me you used me like a giant pillow.”
“You were comfortable. And didn’t yip once. I hate the yipping. Let me tell ya, you don’t know hell until you’ve been trapped in a rainy, miserable jungle during monsoon season with a bunch of canines. Everyone wet and miserable and goddamn yipping.”
Crush tried to ignore his migraine and asked, “Why would you be sitting in a miserable jungle with canines?”
“For lots of reasons.”
“Name two. No. Just name one. I challenge you.”
“You challenge me?” She laughed, her almost muzzlelike nose crinkling a little as she looked him over. “Aren’t you cute?”
Finally, Crush had to ask, “Who are you?”
“If I wasn’t still hungover, I’d give you my most sultry smile and tell you ‘your dream come to life.’ But, eh. I’m just too tired to bother and, honestly, does one have to really put in that much effort for a bear?”
“Are you always this insulting?”
“Insulting? This is me being nice. I even complimented you.”
“Yes. Apparently I’m as comfortable as a pillow.”
“Yeah. But one of those full-body ones. Or like one of those giant stuffed bears you get when you’re a kid. My dad used to get me those and then he’d teach me how to maul ’em.”
“I am not—”
She held up her finger. “Hold that.” Then the insane female stretched out across his lap and reached down to the floor, grabbing a phone out of her jeans.
Annoyed and disgustingly turned on, Crush snarled, “Woman, get off me.”
“Ssssh,” she said, settling her butt onto his lap. “Business call.”
Did she just shush him? She did, didn’t she?
“Yep?” she said into the phone, clearly uncaring that they were still both naked and there was absolutely nothing separating her ass from his cock. “Now? ’Cause I gotta get home to the kid.”
Kid? The woman had a child, but she was hanging out and getting drunk at house parties and torturing him with her butt on his cock?
Thinking about all the shitty parents he had been forced to deal with over the years as a cop, Crush hissed, “You have a child?”
She nodded and while someone kept talking on the other end of her phone, she whispered, “Have to get home. Still breastfeeding.” Then, when Crush thought his head might explode, she silently laughed and mouthed, “Just kidding.”
Holy hell, who was this woman?
“All right. All right. I’ll get Smith on it. You know she loves morning jobs. I know she doesn’t work for you, but think of it as outsourcing. We both know she can do the damn job. Besides, she has to realize that not everything can be the close-up kill.” Not knowing what she was talking about, Crush was relieved when she winked at him. Good. She was kidding. Because it would be really hard to arrest a naked woman sitting in his lap. “Okay. Good. I’ll take care of it.”
She disconnected the call and tossed the phone back on her jeans. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Yes. You need to get home to your child.”
“Yeah. Her, too.” She shrugged. “She’s pretty self-sufficient. She can almost reach the stove.”
Unable to take any more, Crush pushed her off his lap. Not as hard as he’d like—damn his morals—but at least he got her off him and he could move away from her.
Grabbing his clothes, Crush stalked to the door.
“Don’t you want my number?” she asked him. “Maybe the next time we could get drunk and then actually have sex. If you’re worried about the kid, I can put a little brandy in her milk bottle and she’ll be out like a light.”
Crush began to speak, but realized he would only say something completely inappropriate and mean, something he simply couldn’t bring himself to do. So instead he stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
Tragically, however, Desiree MacDermott stood there in her hallway, her green eyes growing wide as her gaze moved down the length of his naked body while he lollygagged in the middle of her hallway.
His fellow detective finally looked up into his face. “Hi, uh . . . Crushek. How’s it going?”
“Fine. Thank you for inviting me to your party.”
“Anytime.”
“Okay.” They stood in the hallway another second, then Crush said, “ ’Bye.”
“ ’Bye.”
And, with as much dignity as he could muster at six in the morning while naked in a coworker’s house, and still sporting a hangover and a semi hard-on—because even degenerates could be sexy as hell in the morning—Crush headed to his truck and absolute freedom.
Marcella “Bare Knuckles” Malone—She-tiger, feline nation protection contractor for KZS, pro hockey player for the championship shifter team the Carnivores, and the Malone family’s bare-knuckles fighting champion—heard the bedroom door open again, but she simply couldn’t stop her hysterical, wheezing laughter. No one could! Why? Because that had been the best!
“Cella?”
She heard MacDermot, but Cella couldn’t answer her. She was too busy laughing and trying to figure out who that guy was. It wasn’t every day Cella got to meet guys who looked like biker gang meth dealers, but had the moral fortitude of Martin Luther. All that indignant outrage over her untended daughter while sporting long, white polar bear hair that reached past his shoulders, a perpetual scowl, a scar on his neck, and pitch-black eyes that probably terrified lots of people. Of course, if all that didn’t scare someone, she was pretty sure that what had to be about six feet and nine inches and about three hundred pounds or so of hard muscle probably did the trick. Man, had that body been like a thousand levels of perfect or what?
Yet even though the guy was really scary looking, Cella just found all that intimidating scowling and raging anger so cute. Like teddy bear cute. Plus, he was so damn uptight! She didn’t know bears could be so uptight. Unless they were startled into a rage, bears were usually the most laid-back of all shifters, except lion males. Although Cella felt there was a huge difference between laid-back and just plain lazy.
Even worse for that poor bear was how all that uptightness brought out Cella’s worst feline qualities. Honestly, the more uptight the bear became, the more she playfully swatted at him. She couldn’t help herself. He was just so cute in his moral outrage!
“Cella!” MacDermot demanded, also now laughing. “What the hell did you do to the poor guy? I’ve never seen him look like that before. He was about to blow a vein in that big bear head of his!”
It was more than she could take. Cella rolled off the bed, hitting the floor, which miraculously made her hangover go far, far away.
Crush was dreaming about breaking through thick ice, pounding on it with his front legs, the seal under the ice giving him the flipper. Little bastard. But then the seal tapped at the ice. Once. Twice. Okay, so now he was taunting him?
“Crushek!”
Crush opened his eyes, looked around. Shit.
He turned the truck’s ignition key to get enough power to roll down the window. “MacDermot.”
She scowled and at first he thought she was angry. Then he realized she was just making fun of him. “Crushek,” she said, imitating his voice, then laughed, and rested her arms on the sill. “How long have we known each other, Crushek?”
“I don’t know.” He thought a minute. “Since the Evans case?”
“Wow. The guys were right.”
“Right about what?”
“That you mark time by cases, not by years.”
“Yeah, well . . . I guess.” Crush heard another knock and looked forward. “There’s a cub on my hood.”
“We were going for a walk so that his father could get a little more sleep. When my boy’s up, he wants everyone up. And gets mighty vocal when they’re not.”
Smiling at the baby male lion, Crush asked, “Already roaring, is he?”
MacDermot sighed. “Pretty much.”
“We’re here, Miss Malone.”
Cella opened her eyes and looked around. Yep. She was here. “Here” being the Long Island town where she’d grown up surrounded by her family. To most people growing up “surrounded by family” probably meant they’d grown up with a mother, father, maybe a couple of siblings. If they had an extended family, perhaps a grandparent, a sickly aunt, or an orphaned cousin. But that’s most people. Cella wasn’t most people. She was a Malone. Not any Malone, either, but one of the Malones.
Sitting up and yawning, Cella pushed open the car door and stepped out. “Thanks, Mario.” Katzenhaus Securities, KZS, was the international feline protection agency she’d worked for since she’d been discharged from the Marines. And of all KZS’s perks (and there were many), Cella’s favorite was the KZS car service. They used the best and fastest vehicles in the world and manned them with armed and well-trained felines. It was perhaps one of the best limo jobs one could find, paying an incredible salary, but it was also one of the most deadly. Cella didn’t like to think about the number of times she’d run back to her car after she’d taken care of a contract, only to find her driver dead in the front seat. This scenario especially sucked when she was in unfamiliar or foreign territory.
Waving once more at Mario and holding her high heels and her purse in her hands, she walked down the street toward her parents’ house. Mario could have driven her all the way to her house, but no one who knew the truth about this block would come down it. And the driver, a bobcat from Massapequa, knew about her street.
“Morning, Cella!” cheery voices called out.
“Hey, Aunt Kathleen, Aunt Marie, Aunt Karen.”
It must have snowed last night, but not hard. Still, the cold felt good against her bare feet. This was her kind’s time of year. The lions and cheetahs could have their summers because the Siberian tigers had the winter. Snow, bracing cold, harsh winds. Lovely.
“Morning to you, little Marcella.”
“Morning, Uncle Aidan, Uncle Ennis, Uncle Tommy.”
Cella reached her parents’ home and went through the side gate into the yard. She walked around the side of the five-bedroom house and into the back. As comfortable with the freezing cold as Cella, her daughter was outside at one of the patio tables by herself, a tall glass of milk nearby, crayons all over the top along with coloring books. Cella sat down next to her, leaned over, and pinched her beautiful child’s cheek.
“How’s my little baby girl?”
Gold eyes just like her own looked Cella over before asking in a decidedly non-childlike voice, “Nice dress, Ma. Still working the docks?”
Smart. Ass.
Crush leaned out the window a bit, looking down at MacDermot’s feet. Sitting quietly there were her four dogs. Waiting. For her. “That’s impressive.”
“It’s a skill. I’ll admit.”
Crush settled back. “So you just happened to be passing?”
“No. We usually walk the other way. But one of my neighbors called. She knows I’m a cop. Apparently there’s a meth dealer hanging around, threatening everyone. A big, old scary guy in a blue pickup.”
“I am not old. I’m not even forty. Unlike others.”
“Discuss my true age at your own risk, buddy. But I’m sure it’s the hair. Although they got the ‘big scary’ part right.”
“Thanks.”
She laughed and handed him something wrapped in a paper towel. “A corn muffin?”
“I didn’t have any honeybuns.”
“I am not a grizzly, MacDermot. I’m a polar, and I am not a fan of honey.”
“Okay. Well, I didn’t have any walrus blubber hanging around, either.”
God, he was being an ass. “Mac—”
“I just figured youse might be hungry.”
Uh-oh. He knew what the appearance of that Bronx accent meant. Of course, he only noticed it because MacDermot’s time away from New York when she was a Marine had given her some kind of weird, flat accent. But when she got pissed . . . look out. Even worse, she’d started pointing a gloved finger at him.
“I was just trying to be fuckin’ nice. Next time I won’t fuckin’ bother!”
MacDermot’s dogs snarled at him, and the cub slashed at his window while giving what could only be called a baby-roar.
Crush turned to the full-human and raised a brow. “You have quite the control of the wild kingdom here, MacDermot.”
She snorted, and they both laughed. Okay. He did like MacDermot. She was one of the few people—full-human or shifter—who didn’t get on his nerves.
“I’m sorry,” Crush finally admitted. “Jell-O shots are not my friend.”
“I told Mace not to have those. I was like, ‘What are we? A frat?’ Hey, do you want to come in for breakfast?”
“Nah. I actually need to get going. Gotta game today.”
“God, are you still playing on that shitty hockey team?”
He wanted to argue with her about the level of skill his NYPD shifter team had, but the reality was . . . they really did suck. The shifter firefighters and EMT guys kicked their asses constantly.
She patted his arm. “Are you okay?”
“I’m just hungover. When I got out here, I just meant to close my eyes for a few minutes and before I knew it—”
“No, no. I mean . . . when you got here last night. You weren’t your usual scowling, non-talkative self. You seemed a more depressed scowling, non-talkative self. Anything I can help you with?”
Crush locked gazes with her, let out a breath. “Not unless you can get me out of this.”
“Get you out of . . . oh.” She smirked. “Heard about the transfer, huh?”
“Yeah. I heard about it. I have very good connections. Now can you get me out or not?”
“What makes you think I can get you out?”
“Heard you had some pull.”
“Crushek, in the NYPD’s shifter division, I’m just the crazy full-human that apparently smells like cat and that everybody steers clear of when I get pissed off.”
He had to laugh. “Predators always know when to run, MacDermot.”
Cella sat back, smirking at her nearly eighteen-year-old daughter, Meghan. Okay. So Cella had lied to the bear. She couldn’t help it. Watching the look of horror on his face when he’d thought she’d left her toddler daughter all by herself while she went out partying kind of made her morning.
Well, actually . . . waking up with all that delicious naked bear flesh had made her morning. The rest of it was really just the icing on top of that cake.
Examining the coloring book her daughter was working on, Cella stated, “I see they’re really challenging you in that private school I’m paying for.”
“I was watching the kids this morning,” Meghan said about her young cousins, her attention still locked on what she was doing, “and we were coloring.”
“But the kids are gone.”
“I don’t like to start things and not finish.” She carefully added a little orange to the sun at the top of the page, of course making sure to not go outside the lines. Cella fondly remembered her own coloring books. Nothing had been in the lines. She hated lines. Hated limits. Amazing since Cella had done so well in the Marines. No one thought she would, especially her family. They were so certain she’d wash out during Basic that they didn’t even complain when she said she’d signed up. In fact . . . they’d all laughed at her. “Our Cella Malone? A Marine? Yeah. Right.” But the Marines had given Cella the freedom she couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. Freedom from her family. From the Malones. At least for a little while.
“There.” Her daughter pushed the coloring book away. “Done.” She placed the crayon on the table. When Cella was gone, Meghan would come back and put all the crayons back in the box—in their original order. “Did you have breakfast?”
“Well—”
“I’ll make you something.”
“Why do you bother asking me when you’re going to make me something anyway?”
“It’s polite.” Meghan leaned in and kissed Cella on the cheek. “Did you have a good time last night at your party?”
“Eh. It was okay. Mostly full-human cops and their full-human wives.”
“Your cat killer friends and that dog didn’t come?”
“First off, they, we, are not cat killers. If you want to be accurate, we’re killer cats. And that dog has saved my life a few times. Respect that.”
“I don’t know why you still do that job. You don’t need the money anymore.”
“What? You think Boston University is going to pay for itself? Speaking of which, did you get that paperwork in?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“I do not want to pay for an apartment in that area, Meghan. Make sure you get a dorm room.”
“Can we talk about this later?”
“Why are you getting so cranky?” Cella frowned. “You have been so cranky lately.”
“I haven’t been cranky.”
“You’ve been totally cranky. At least to me.”
“I don’t mean to be. It’s just very stressful right now.”
“It’s your final semester, Meghan. You’ve already been accepted to college and you’re doing great in school. You shouldn’t be stressing about anything. Just relax. Try and have a good time. I honestly don’t know where you get this intensity from. It’s definitely not a Malone thing. And you didn’t get it from your father. I remember him when he was seventeen.”
“You’re not going to tell me another Dad-and-hash story are you? Because I don’t want to think about my father as some loser.”
“Your father was never a loser. Besides, he grew out of that phase. Look at him now. A responsible accountant about to marry the feline of his dreams.”
As always when Cella mentioned Brian’s upcoming wedding, their daughter got the strangest expression on her face. Cella had begun to think she was upset about the whole event. Seemed typical for a teenager to feel that way but . . . but Meghan was far from typical. And she had to know this didn’t change anything. Not between her and her dad.
Cella tossed her shoes up on the table and caught hold of her daughter’s hands. “Talk to me, Meghan.”
“About what?”
“I mention your dad, you get weird.” Cella tilted her head to the side, studying the beautiful girl she adored. “Is it the wedding?”
“No, of course not.”
“You know this doesn’t change anything between you and your dad. He loves you, Meghan, and so does Rivka.”
“You just like Rivka because she’s another cat killer.”
“You love Rivka and we are not cat killers. Stop calling us that. We are protectors of the cat nation. Like the Marines or—”
“The C.I.A.?”
“Well, you don’t have to get nasty.” Tired of this same damn argument—Meghan, like Cella’s mother, Barb, was not a fan of Cella’s career as a Katzenhaus contractor—Cella released her daughter’s hands and grabbed her shoes. “You know, Meghan, I’m just trying to be helpful and let you know I’m here for you.”
Meghan rolled her eyes. “Ma . . . is there anything about me—or you, for that matter—that screams let’s sit down and talk about our feelings?”
“I’m trying a different approach. I’m trying to be . . . ya know . . . a proper mother. Thoughtful and caring and . . . and all that other shit.”
“Ma, being a hockey enforcer for a guy nicknamed the Marauder, killing on order from a thousand yards away, and being the kind of mom I don’t want my male friends around because all they do is stare at your breasts and drool . . . these are your strengths. Let’s not stray too far from that. Okay? Great. Now I’m going to make you some waffles. You’ll eat, and then you can go upstairs and shower off that funk of . . . of . . . ?”
“Bear,” Cella admitted.
“Right. Bear. Yeah, you can go wash that off and you and I will pretend we never had this discussion, okay? Great. Thanks!”
Cella watched her daughter head back into the house they shared with Cella’s parents. Cella had known all those years ago when she headed off to the Marines that she was taking a risk. The risk of losing her daughter. But what was she supposed to do? Raise another Malone She-tiger? So the kid could end up sitting around all day with all the other “aunts,” plotting and planning?
“Just a few more months, Malone,” she reminded herself. Just a few more months and the kid would be out of here and off to college, to do whatever she wanted. Meghan’s whole world was open in front of her with absolutely no limitations. And that’s why Cella had risked
The worst part about all this? It was his fault. He had no one to blame for this but himself—and those damn Jell-O shots. He should have stayed away from them. He knew better. All that alcohol in those delectable little jiggly squares . . . what was he thinking? And now he could barely move without pain. Brutal, undeniable pain.
Lou “Crush” Crushek tried to open his eyes, but that only made things worse. It was morning and that light coming through the window was destroying any brain activity he had left. If he were home, he’d simply go back to sleep for a few more hours, but he wasn’t home. He could tell. The scent was different. He smelled feline. Everywhere he smelled feline.
Crush snarled a little. That’s whose fault this was. That damn cat. Male lions. Never trust a male lion! Sure, this particular male lion was married to a fellow NYPD detective and was from one of the wealthiest Prides in Manhattan, but he was also the asshole who’d brought the tray of Jell-O shots around, in their innocuous-looking little cups, and said, with that feline grin, “Go on. Try one.”
So . . . Crush had tried one. Then another. And another. After the eighth . . . well, he didn’t remember much of anything after the eighth.
What Crush did remember was making the mistake of going over to Detective Dez MacDermot’s house for a “small get-together with some friends” that turned into anything but. Normally, when parties or events became something he didn’t want to deal with, Crush would find the first exit and head on home to his TV and his quiet life. At least the quiet life he had when he wasn’t working undercover, pretending to be a merciless drug dealer, biker, and occasional hit man. But honestly, Crush didn’t leave the stupid party because he was, for lack of a better, manlier word, depressed.
A word he rarely used about himself. He wasn’t much for sitting around, feeling sorry about his life. He was a bear, after all. A polar bear specifically. No, not one of those guys who insisted on swimming in the Atlantic during the middle of winter to prove how virile he was. But a guy who could swim in the Atlantic during the middle of winter and never worry about dying of hypothermia. A guy who could shift into an eight-foot, twelve-hundred-pound polar bear anytime he wanted to. And, as a polar bear, sitting around being depressed wasn’t really his thing. Instead, Crush lived like most of his kind. Being curious. Asking too many questions. Staring blankly at people until they became terrified and ran away. Eating whenever he was even slightly hungry. The usual.
Too bad, though, Crush had discovered something that all bears found distressing. He’d discovered there would be change. Change was coming Crush’s way and he hated change. He liked to know things were going along as they should, and when that didn’t happen, he became depressed. He still hadn’t recovered from the closing down of his favorite deli five years ago. Or that six years ago they’d moved his favorite shoe store—needless to say that as a six-nine, three-hundred-pound guy, he couldn’t exactly pick up his boots and sneakers from the local sports store—and Crush still walked to where the old shoe store had stood, gazing into the window, wishing things were like they once were, until the customers inside the tea shop called police about the “crazed meth dealer lurking outside the door.”
So no, Crush didn’t handle change well, but he didn’t see that there was anything he could do to prevent this change from happening. Not after one of his old partners had called him and given him a heads-up. The man wouldn’t have called unless he was sure. So now Crush was just waiting for the anvil to drop.
Unfortunately, it felt like that anvil had already dropped right on his head.
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t sit here in a coworker’s house, waiting for the hangover and migraine he had to go away. No, he just needed to get a move on. He had to get up. He had to deal with the pain. He had plans anyway for the afternoon and he wasn’t about to miss out on them. So he had to get up.
But there appeared to be a little problem with him just leaping from bed and facing the day. And that problem was the naked female sprawled across his chest.
Uncaring about the brutal pain it would cause, Crush opened his eyes and looked down. Yep. That was a female all right. A—he took a sniff—feline female. Crush’s lip curled. Another feline. The most untrustworthy of species in his opinion. And since he was naked, too, he could only assume that they’d . . . well . . . you know.
Christ, what was wrong with him? This wasn’t like him. Crush didn’t get drunk and sleep with random people. He just didn’t. It wasn’t in his DNA. It wasn’t just the NYPD who called him “By the Book” Crushek, either. He had classmates from junior high, high school, and college who called him that as well.
Yet a little depression, a few too many Jello-O shots to drink at a house party, and here Lou Crushek was. Naked. With a feline.
Who was this female anyway? Anyone he knew? Crush didn’t think so. He knew lots of felines, but he didn’t spend time around them because they were, as he’d already stated and everyone knew, totally untrustworthy. It was a fact. Look it up!
Too bad Crush couldn’t be one of those guys who drunkenly slept with a woman only to sneak out before she woke up. It would definitely make his life a whole lot easier, but that would bring him to a new level of tacky he couldn’t handle. Just because he felt his life falling apart around him—he hated change!—didn’t mean he’d allow it to actually fall apart. And part of keeping his life together was doing the morally right thing.
Man, it sucked being a good guy all the time.
“Uh . . . miss?” Jeez! His voice sounded like gravel. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Miss? Excuse me?” He couldn’t see her very clearly with all that black hair, with strands of white and red throughout, covering her face and his chest. He recognized that hair color, though. She was a She-tiger.
Hating to wake her up, Crush tapped her shoulder. “Miss?”
“Hmmh?”
“Uh . . . yeah, sorry. I . . . uh . . .” This was so hard. How did he tell a woman he’d possibly had sex with that he didn’t know her name? Couldn’t even remember having sex with her? This was getting worse and worse. When the hell did he become a frat boy?
Suddenly she stretched, her long body briefly writhing on his. Crush ignored how good that felt and said, “Miss?”
She lifted her head and gold-green eyes blinked up at him.
Damn, she was pretty. He didn’t remember having sex with her? Really? How drunk had he been last night?
She blinked at him in confusion; then she smiled. “Oh. Hi.”
Oh, hi?
Yawning and slapping her hand against his chest, she levered herself up and looked around the room, giving him a monumental peek at her breasts and, wow, those were freakin’ nice. “What time is it?” she asked.
“No idea. Early.”
She nodded and settled back onto his chest, eyes closing, arms tightening around his chest. “Good. I’m still so tired.” Wait. What just happened?
“I have to get up.”
“Another hour,” she bargained. “Maybe two. Just relax.”
Completely confused, Crush said, “Look—”
Her head snapped up, those eyes locking on him. “Are you going to keep talking? ’Cause it’s irritating. I’m trying to sleep, and I’m extremely hungover.”
Crush’s eyes narrowed. He was irritating? “Tell me we didn’t have sex last night.”
“As drunk as you were?” She yawned, already bored with him, it seemed. “I don’t think you could have gotten it up with a crane.”
“Thanks.”
“Wait. Is that what you think? That we fucked?”
“We’re in bed together. What was I supposed to think?”
“That I was tired and needed someplace to sleep.”
“But we’re both . . .” He shrugged a little. “Naked.”
“Yeah, I was really drunk, too, so I just took my clothes off.”
“Wasn’t there somewhere else you could have slept?”
“Most of the people who crashed here last night were either full-humans or canines. Have you ever tried to sleep with a canine? They yip in their sleep. And run. It’s annoying. And Mace wouldn’t take the couch so I could sleep with his wife so—”
“You asked a lion male to move out of his bed for you?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Because he’s the majestic lion male, king of the jungle? Or because he’s a rich Llewellyn of the Llewellyn Pride?”
“Because it’s the man’s house.”
“It’s his wife’s house. MacDermot just allows him to stay here with her and those giant, useless dogs she owns. And I know she’d pick those ridiculous rotties over that lion in a hot second.” She sat up. “Well . . . now I’m awake.”
“How annoying for you.” Crush struggled to sit up, too, ignoring the screaming in his head.
“What are you so cranky about?”
“You basically just told me you used me like a giant pillow.”
“You were comfortable. And didn’t yip once. I hate the yipping. Let me tell ya, you don’t know hell until you’ve been trapped in a rainy, miserable jungle during monsoon season with a bunch of canines. Everyone wet and miserable and goddamn yipping.”
Crush tried to ignore his migraine and asked, “Why would you be sitting in a miserable jungle with canines?”
“For lots of reasons.”
“Name two. No. Just name one. I challenge you.”
“You challenge me?” She laughed, her almost muzzlelike nose crinkling a little as she looked him over. “Aren’t you cute?”
Finally, Crush had to ask, “Who are you?”
“If I wasn’t still hungover, I’d give you my most sultry smile and tell you ‘your dream come to life.’ But, eh. I’m just too tired to bother and, honestly, does one have to really put in that much effort for a bear?”
“Are you always this insulting?”
“Insulting? This is me being nice. I even complimented you.”
“Yes. Apparently I’m as comfortable as a pillow.”
“Yeah. But one of those full-body ones. Or like one of those giant stuffed bears you get when you’re a kid. My dad used to get me those and then he’d teach me how to maul ’em.”
“I am not—”
She held up her finger. “Hold that.” Then the insane female stretched out across his lap and reached down to the floor, grabbing a phone out of her jeans.
Annoyed and disgustingly turned on, Crush snarled, “Woman, get off me.”
“Ssssh,” she said, settling her butt onto his lap. “Business call.”
Did she just shush him? She did, didn’t she?
“Yep?” she said into the phone, clearly uncaring that they were still both naked and there was absolutely nothing separating her ass from his cock. “Now? ’Cause I gotta get home to the kid.”
Kid? The woman had a child, but she was hanging out and getting drunk at house parties and torturing him with her butt on his cock?
Thinking about all the shitty parents he had been forced to deal with over the years as a cop, Crush hissed, “You have a child?”
She nodded and while someone kept talking on the other end of her phone, she whispered, “Have to get home. Still breastfeeding.” Then, when Crush thought his head might explode, she silently laughed and mouthed, “Just kidding.”
Holy hell, who was this woman?
“All right. All right. I’ll get Smith on it. You know she loves morning jobs. I know she doesn’t work for you, but think of it as outsourcing. We both know she can do the damn job. Besides, she has to realize that not everything can be the close-up kill.” Not knowing what she was talking about, Crush was relieved when she winked at him. Good. She was kidding. Because it would be really hard to arrest a naked woman sitting in his lap. “Okay. Good. I’ll take care of it.”
She disconnected the call and tossed the phone back on her jeans. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Yes. You need to get home to your child.”
“Yeah. Her, too.” She shrugged. “She’s pretty self-sufficient. She can almost reach the stove.”
Unable to take any more, Crush pushed her off his lap. Not as hard as he’d like—damn his morals—but at least he got her off him and he could move away from her.
Grabbing his clothes, Crush stalked to the door.
“Don’t you want my number?” she asked him. “Maybe the next time we could get drunk and then actually have sex. If you’re worried about the kid, I can put a little brandy in her milk bottle and she’ll be out like a light.”
Crush began to speak, but realized he would only say something completely inappropriate and mean, something he simply couldn’t bring himself to do. So instead he stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
Tragically, however, Desiree MacDermott stood there in her hallway, her green eyes growing wide as her gaze moved down the length of his naked body while he lollygagged in the middle of her hallway.
His fellow detective finally looked up into his face. “Hi, uh . . . Crushek. How’s it going?”
“Fine. Thank you for inviting me to your party.”
“Anytime.”
“Okay.” They stood in the hallway another second, then Crush said, “ ’Bye.”
“ ’Bye.”
And, with as much dignity as he could muster at six in the morning while naked in a coworker’s house, and still sporting a hangover and a semi hard-on—because even degenerates could be sexy as hell in the morning—Crush headed to his truck and absolute freedom.
Marcella “Bare Knuckles” Malone—She-tiger, feline nation protection contractor for KZS, pro hockey player for the championship shifter team the Carnivores, and the Malone family’s bare-knuckles fighting champion—heard the bedroom door open again, but she simply couldn’t stop her hysterical, wheezing laughter. No one could! Why? Because that had been the best!
“Cella?”
She heard MacDermot, but Cella couldn’t answer her. She was too busy laughing and trying to figure out who that guy was. It wasn’t every day Cella got to meet guys who looked like biker gang meth dealers, but had the moral fortitude of Martin Luther. All that indignant outrage over her untended daughter while sporting long, white polar bear hair that reached past his shoulders, a perpetual scowl, a scar on his neck, and pitch-black eyes that probably terrified lots of people. Of course, if all that didn’t scare someone, she was pretty sure that what had to be about six feet and nine inches and about three hundred pounds or so of hard muscle probably did the trick. Man, had that body been like a thousand levels of perfect or what?
Yet even though the guy was really scary looking, Cella just found all that intimidating scowling and raging anger so cute. Like teddy bear cute. Plus, he was so damn uptight! She didn’t know bears could be so uptight. Unless they were startled into a rage, bears were usually the most laid-back of all shifters, except lion males. Although Cella felt there was a huge difference between laid-back and just plain lazy.
Even worse for that poor bear was how all that uptightness brought out Cella’s worst feline qualities. Honestly, the more uptight the bear became, the more she playfully swatted at him. She couldn’t help herself. He was just so cute in his moral outrage!
“Cella!” MacDermot demanded, also now laughing. “What the hell did you do to the poor guy? I’ve never seen him look like that before. He was about to blow a vein in that big bear head of his!”
It was more than she could take. Cella rolled off the bed, hitting the floor, which miraculously made her hangover go far, far away.
Crush was dreaming about breaking through thick ice, pounding on it with his front legs, the seal under the ice giving him the flipper. Little bastard. But then the seal tapped at the ice. Once. Twice. Okay, so now he was taunting him?
“Crushek!”
Crush opened his eyes, looked around. Shit.
He turned the truck’s ignition key to get enough power to roll down the window. “MacDermot.”
She scowled and at first he thought she was angry. Then he realized she was just making fun of him. “Crushek,” she said, imitating his voice, then laughed, and rested her arms on the sill. “How long have we known each other, Crushek?”
“I don’t know.” He thought a minute. “Since the Evans case?”
“Wow. The guys were right.”
“Right about what?”
“That you mark time by cases, not by years.”
“Yeah, well . . . I guess.” Crush heard another knock and looked forward. “There’s a cub on my hood.”
“We were going for a walk so that his father could get a little more sleep. When my boy’s up, he wants everyone up. And gets mighty vocal when they’re not.”
Smiling at the baby male lion, Crush asked, “Already roaring, is he?”
MacDermot sighed. “Pretty much.”
“We’re here, Miss Malone.”
Cella opened her eyes and looked around. Yep. She was here. “Here” being the Long Island town where she’d grown up surrounded by her family. To most people growing up “surrounded by family” probably meant they’d grown up with a mother, father, maybe a couple of siblings. If they had an extended family, perhaps a grandparent, a sickly aunt, or an orphaned cousin. But that’s most people. Cella wasn’t most people. She was a Malone. Not any Malone, either, but one of the Malones.
Sitting up and yawning, Cella pushed open the car door and stepped out. “Thanks, Mario.” Katzenhaus Securities, KZS, was the international feline protection agency she’d worked for since she’d been discharged from the Marines. And of all KZS’s perks (and there were many), Cella’s favorite was the KZS car service. They used the best and fastest vehicles in the world and manned them with armed and well-trained felines. It was perhaps one of the best limo jobs one could find, paying an incredible salary, but it was also one of the most deadly. Cella didn’t like to think about the number of times she’d run back to her car after she’d taken care of a contract, only to find her driver dead in the front seat. This scenario especially sucked when she was in unfamiliar or foreign territory.
Waving once more at Mario and holding her high heels and her purse in her hands, she walked down the street toward her parents’ house. Mario could have driven her all the way to her house, but no one who knew the truth about this block would come down it. And the driver, a bobcat from Massapequa, knew about her street.
“Morning, Cella!” cheery voices called out.
“Hey, Aunt Kathleen, Aunt Marie, Aunt Karen.”
It must have snowed last night, but not hard. Still, the cold felt good against her bare feet. This was her kind’s time of year. The lions and cheetahs could have their summers because the Siberian tigers had the winter. Snow, bracing cold, harsh winds. Lovely.
“Morning to you, little Marcella.”
“Morning, Uncle Aidan, Uncle Ennis, Uncle Tommy.”
Cella reached her parents’ home and went through the side gate into the yard. She walked around the side of the five-bedroom house and into the back. As comfortable with the freezing cold as Cella, her daughter was outside at one of the patio tables by herself, a tall glass of milk nearby, crayons all over the top along with coloring books. Cella sat down next to her, leaned over, and pinched her beautiful child’s cheek.
“How’s my little baby girl?”
Gold eyes just like her own looked Cella over before asking in a decidedly non-childlike voice, “Nice dress, Ma. Still working the docks?”
Smart. Ass.
Crush leaned out the window a bit, looking down at MacDermot’s feet. Sitting quietly there were her four dogs. Waiting. For her. “That’s impressive.”
“It’s a skill. I’ll admit.”
Crush settled back. “So you just happened to be passing?”
“No. We usually walk the other way. But one of my neighbors called. She knows I’m a cop. Apparently there’s a meth dealer hanging around, threatening everyone. A big, old scary guy in a blue pickup.”
“I am not old. I’m not even forty. Unlike others.”
“Discuss my true age at your own risk, buddy. But I’m sure it’s the hair. Although they got the ‘big scary’ part right.”
“Thanks.”
She laughed and handed him something wrapped in a paper towel. “A corn muffin?”
“I didn’t have any honeybuns.”
“I am not a grizzly, MacDermot. I’m a polar, and I am not a fan of honey.”
“Okay. Well, I didn’t have any walrus blubber hanging around, either.”
God, he was being an ass. “Mac—”
“I just figured youse might be hungry.”
Uh-oh. He knew what the appearance of that Bronx accent meant. Of course, he only noticed it because MacDermot’s time away from New York when she was a Marine had given her some kind of weird, flat accent. But when she got pissed . . . look out. Even worse, she’d started pointing a gloved finger at him.
“I was just trying to be fuckin’ nice. Next time I won’t fuckin’ bother!”
MacDermot’s dogs snarled at him, and the cub slashed at his window while giving what could only be called a baby-roar.
Crush turned to the full-human and raised a brow. “You have quite the control of the wild kingdom here, MacDermot.”
She snorted, and they both laughed. Okay. He did like MacDermot. She was one of the few people—full-human or shifter—who didn’t get on his nerves.
“I’m sorry,” Crush finally admitted. “Jell-O shots are not my friend.”
“I told Mace not to have those. I was like, ‘What are we? A frat?’ Hey, do you want to come in for breakfast?”
“Nah. I actually need to get going. Gotta game today.”
“God, are you still playing on that shitty hockey team?”
He wanted to argue with her about the level of skill his NYPD shifter team had, but the reality was . . . they really did suck. The shifter firefighters and EMT guys kicked their asses constantly.
She patted his arm. “Are you okay?”
“I’m just hungover. When I got out here, I just meant to close my eyes for a few minutes and before I knew it—”
“No, no. I mean . . . when you got here last night. You weren’t your usual scowling, non-talkative self. You seemed a more depressed scowling, non-talkative self. Anything I can help you with?”
Crush locked gazes with her, let out a breath. “Not unless you can get me out of this.”
“Get you out of . . . oh.” She smirked. “Heard about the transfer, huh?”
“Yeah. I heard about it. I have very good connections. Now can you get me out or not?”
“What makes you think I can get you out?”
“Heard you had some pull.”
“Crushek, in the NYPD’s shifter division, I’m just the crazy full-human that apparently smells like cat and that everybody steers clear of when I get pissed off.”
He had to laugh. “Predators always know when to run, MacDermot.”
Cella sat back, smirking at her nearly eighteen-year-old daughter, Meghan. Okay. So Cella had lied to the bear. She couldn’t help it. Watching the look of horror on his face when he’d thought she’d left her toddler daughter all by herself while she went out partying kind of made her morning.
Well, actually . . . waking up with all that delicious naked bear flesh had made her morning. The rest of it was really just the icing on top of that cake.
Examining the coloring book her daughter was working on, Cella stated, “I see they’re really challenging you in that private school I’m paying for.”
“I was watching the kids this morning,” Meghan said about her young cousins, her attention still locked on what she was doing, “and we were coloring.”
“But the kids are gone.”
“I don’t like to start things and not finish.” She carefully added a little orange to the sun at the top of the page, of course making sure to not go outside the lines. Cella fondly remembered her own coloring books. Nothing had been in the lines. She hated lines. Hated limits. Amazing since Cella had done so well in the Marines. No one thought she would, especially her family. They were so certain she’d wash out during Basic that they didn’t even complain when she said she’d signed up. In fact . . . they’d all laughed at her. “Our Cella Malone? A Marine? Yeah. Right.” But the Marines had given Cella the freedom she couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. Freedom from her family. From the Malones. At least for a little while.
“There.” Her daughter pushed the coloring book away. “Done.” She placed the crayon on the table. When Cella was gone, Meghan would come back and put all the crayons back in the box—in their original order. “Did you have breakfast?”
“Well—”
“I’ll make you something.”
“Why do you bother asking me when you’re going to make me something anyway?”
“It’s polite.” Meghan leaned in and kissed Cella on the cheek. “Did you have a good time last night at your party?”
“Eh. It was okay. Mostly full-human cops and their full-human wives.”
“Your cat killer friends and that dog didn’t come?”
“First off, they, we, are not cat killers. If you want to be accurate, we’re killer cats. And that dog has saved my life a few times. Respect that.”
“I don’t know why you still do that job. You don’t need the money anymore.”
“What? You think Boston University is going to pay for itself? Speaking of which, did you get that paperwork in?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“I do not want to pay for an apartment in that area, Meghan. Make sure you get a dorm room.”
“Can we talk about this later?”
“Why are you getting so cranky?” Cella frowned. “You have been so cranky lately.”
“I haven’t been cranky.”
“You’ve been totally cranky. At least to me.”
“I don’t mean to be. It’s just very stressful right now.”
“It’s your final semester, Meghan. You’ve already been accepted to college and you’re doing great in school. You shouldn’t be stressing about anything. Just relax. Try and have a good time. I honestly don’t know where you get this intensity from. It’s definitely not a Malone thing. And you didn’t get it from your father. I remember him when he was seventeen.”
“You’re not going to tell me another Dad-and-hash story are you? Because I don’t want to think about my father as some loser.”
“Your father was never a loser. Besides, he grew out of that phase. Look at him now. A responsible accountant about to marry the feline of his dreams.”
As always when Cella mentioned Brian’s upcoming wedding, their daughter got the strangest expression on her face. Cella had begun to think she was upset about the whole event. Seemed typical for a teenager to feel that way but . . . but Meghan was far from typical. And she had to know this didn’t change anything. Not between her and her dad.
Cella tossed her shoes up on the table and caught hold of her daughter’s hands. “Talk to me, Meghan.”
“About what?”
“I mention your dad, you get weird.” Cella tilted her head to the side, studying the beautiful girl she adored. “Is it the wedding?”
“No, of course not.”
“You know this doesn’t change anything between you and your dad. He loves you, Meghan, and so does Rivka.”
“You just like Rivka because she’s another cat killer.”
“You love Rivka and we are not cat killers. Stop calling us that. We are protectors of the cat nation. Like the Marines or—”
“The C.I.A.?”
“Well, you don’t have to get nasty.” Tired of this same damn argument—Meghan, like Cella’s mother, Barb, was not a fan of Cella’s career as a Katzenhaus contractor—Cella released her daughter’s hands and grabbed her shoes. “You know, Meghan, I’m just trying to be helpful and let you know I’m here for you.”
Meghan rolled her eyes. “Ma . . . is there anything about me—or you, for that matter—that screams let’s sit down and talk about our feelings?”
“I’m trying a different approach. I’m trying to be . . . ya know . . . a proper mother. Thoughtful and caring and . . . and all that other shit.”
“Ma, being a hockey enforcer for a guy nicknamed the Marauder, killing on order from a thousand yards away, and being the kind of mom I don’t want my male friends around because all they do is stare at your breasts and drool . . . these are your strengths. Let’s not stray too far from that. Okay? Great. Now I’m going to make you some waffles. You’ll eat, and then you can go upstairs and shower off that funk of . . . of . . . ?”
“Bear,” Cella admitted.
“Right. Bear. Yeah, you can go wash that off and you and I will pretend we never had this discussion, okay? Great. Thanks!”
Cella watched her daughter head back into the house they shared with Cella’s parents. Cella had known all those years ago when she headed off to the Marines that she was taking a risk. The risk of losing her daughter. But what was she supposed to do? Raise another Malone She-tiger? So the kid could end up sitting around all day with all the other “aunts,” plotting and planning?
“Just a few more months, Malone,” she reminded herself. Just a few more months and the kid would be out of here and off to college, to do whatever she wanted. Meghan’s whole world was open in front of her with absolutely no limitations. And that’s why Cella had risked
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Bear Meets Girl
Shelly Laurenston
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