The Mane Event

  Yeah. Dez wanted out of here.

  She glanced around at the women watching her. None of them seemed very interested. She glanced down at Anne Marie. She had big, long nails. The kind her sisters never let Dez get because they said they were “beyond tacky.” She glared at those nails, suddenly very concerned with them, but she didn’t know what the woman’s tacky fashion sense had to do with anything.

  Dez finally released Anne Marie and backed away from the women. When far enough away, she spun on her heel and headed toward the front exit and home.

  Mace crouched on the hard ground, his back against the passenger side of Dez’s SUV, and impatiently waited. He didn’t like to wait.

  Of course, the knowledge that he would be going to hell for this, misleading a beautiful woman he was crazy about, didn’t make the waiting any easier. At least, however, he would go to hell with a smile.

  Mace wiped the last bit of blood dripping from his nose. Even with the blood in his nose, he could still smell Christmas in the air. He didn’t know how all the scents he could detect reminded him of this particular holiday, but they did. He loved those smells. Actually, he loved the holiday, he’d just never been able to truly enjoy it. Even the times he’d gone with Smitty to his mother’s in Tennessee. True enough, she always went out of her way to make Mace feel like part of the Smith family, even part of their Pack, but Mace never forgot he didn’t belong. Of course, he didn’t belong with his own Pride either. Instead, he’d have to make his own family. His and his alone. And every fiber of his being told him Dez was the one. She would be the one to make every Christmas special for him. Of course, she did seem to detest the holiday, but no one ever said Dez wasn’t difficult.

  He spotted her immediately as she came around the corner. When she caught sight of him, she slowed down. She probably couldn’t make him out at first. Mace put on his most wounded expression and continued to wait. He didn’t make any sudden moves. He had no doubt Dez would shoot him on sight if she deemed it necessary.

  Dez slowly moved closer until she could see him clearly. Then she rushed to his side.

  “Jesus, Mace.” She knelt down next to him. “Oh honey.” Her soft hands slid across his face. “Who did this to you?”

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.” He looked up at her and blinked, startled by what he saw. Sweat drenched her face and neck, which wouldn’t seem odd—if this were the middle of summer. But it was December twenty-second, and definitely nippy out.

  “Dez?”

  “What, baby?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sure.” Dez swallowed, closed her eyes, and fell face-first into his lap. He stared down at her. Dammit. How many dreams and fantasies had filled his head over the years with Dez MacDermot in this very position? Only then, he expected her fully conscious.

  Mace carefully cradled Dez in his arms. “Dez, baby. Can you hear me?”

  She didn’t answer him. He wondered if someone had slipped a drug in her drink. He sniffed her. She smelled of hyena.

  “What the hell have you been up to, beautiful?”

  Why would Dez be hanging out with hyenas? He examined her body and after several long minutes found the tiniest scratch on the back of her neck. He sniffed the area and smelled the poison.

  Tricky, fucking hyenas. They hadn’t given her enough to kill her. That would have been too obvious, and she would have never made it out of the club on her own steam. No, they gave her enough so she would make it outside, maybe even to a cab, and then she’d pass out. Leaving her to the tender mercies of the New York streets. Or perhaps she’d pass out at the wheel of her car.

  Mace wanted to roar his displeasure and start tearing some hyenas apart, but Dez was his main concern right now. He turned her head and brushed her beautiful hair away from the scratch. He licked the wound and spit. He did it six times until he removed all the poison.

  “Okay, baby. Let’s get you home.” She didn’t carry a purse; instead she had a slim leather wallet shoved into the front of her black jeans. He pulled it out and quickly glanced at her driver’s license. He grimaced. Brooklyn. Christ, the woman lived in Brooklyn.

  “Sure, you couldn’t live uptown, could ya?” Mace stood up, Dez in his arms. Without much effort, he got her keys and got the woman safely bundled into her SUV. He sat on the driver’s side and started the vehicle up. He glanced at her, a rumbling sigh coming from his chest. His beautiful Dez. He rubbed her cheek with the back of his hand.

  “Let’s get you home, gorgeous.”

  Chapter Five

  Mace walked up Dez’s porch with her in his arms. Without putting her down, he unlocked the door and walked into the dark house. His cat eyes could see her furniture clearly, but he went ahead and flipped on the light switch. He froze in shock.

  How could he not? The woman’s living room was a fucking winter wonderland. She had a fully decked-out Christmas tree with tinsel. Lights strung everywhere that were connected to the main outlet, so when he turned on the overhead lights all the Christmas lights came on too. She had stockings attached to her mantel. Three. One for her and two for…? Sig and Sauer? He didn’t want to know and he wasn’t going to ask.

  He smiled. As much as Dez bitched about the holidays, she clearly loved it as well. No one put in this much effort for something they hated when they lived alone.

  Mace took Dez to her sectional couch. He liked this couch. Big and roomy. He wanted to fuck her on it.

  He laid her down and checked her wound again. He’d cleaned out the poison, but he didn’t want the area to get infected. He took off his jacket, tossing it across the floor. Then slipped Dez’s jacket off her body. He had to pull her shirt away from her wound and realized that would eventually get in his way. With a shrug, he pulled her shirt off completely. Once again, he froze.

  A lacey red bra covered those beautiful breasts. The red color contrasted wonderfully with her brown skin. He could nuzzle between those breasts until the end of time, if she’d let him. Mace took a deep breath. This wasn’t helping anything. He shook off his lust and went back to work.

  Dez opened her eyes and glanced around the room. Home. Somehow, she managed to get home. The problem? She couldn’t remember anything past stumbling out of the club. She looked down and realized her father’s old New York Jets blanket covered her body. She still had on clothes, except for her shoes and her shirt.

  And someone had turned on Nat King Cole.

  She lay there and glared up at the ceiling. What the fuck is going on?

  Mace had his cell phone next to his ear, his shoulder the only thing holding it up while he went through Dez’s kitchen.

  “The woman has nothing. I mean, I’ve eaten all her chips and her crackers and she seems to have an unhealthy love of beef jerky. But other than that—the woman has nothing.”

  “Now see. That’s why you should get yourself a nice Southern gal. They always make sure everybody’s fed and comfortable.”

  “Really? So…what’s your sister doin’ tonight?”

  Smitty growled. “That ain’t funny, cat.”

  Mace chuckled. “Actually, yes it is.” Mace opened the refrigerator. “Well, she likes beer.” He grabbed a pizza box, opened it, shut it in disgust, and put it back into her refrigerator. “Clearly food purchasing will be my responsibility.”

  “Uh…tell me, Mace. Have you actually let her in on the fact she’s yours now?”

  “No. But I will. She’ll simply have to deal with it.”

  Smitty sighed. “So says the King of the Jungle.”

  “By these fangs I rule.” Mace glanced around her kitchen again. His eyes caught sight of a bag and he frowned. “Smitty?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She has dog food.”

  A long pause followed his statement. “How much?”

  Mace walked over to it and examined it closely. “It’s a twenty-five-pound bag.”

  Another long pause. “Is there only one?”

  Mace opened up a door lead
ing to a pantry. There were a few things on the shelves. A few human things. But on the floor…

  “Um…she has ten bags of twenty-five pounds of high-priced dog food. You know, the special kind you get from a vet.”

  Another long pause, then Smitty began to laugh hysterically. “Hey, ya’ll. Hey!” he barked to his Pack. “Mace is in love with a dog person!”

  Mace gritted his teeth as howls of laughter assaulted him. A truly humiliating moment.

  “Are you done?”

  “Sorry. Sorry. It’s just fun to see how the mighty cats have fallen.”

  Mace rolled his eyes. “Well, I’ve been here two hours and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of any dog.”

  “Didn’t you smell ’em when you got there?”

  “I’m wearing your jacket. So I thought that was you. You guys all smell alike.”

  Smitty growled again. “I do not smell like a dog.”

  Mace smiled. Nothing pissed off a wolf more than comparing him to a dog. Smitty didn’t speak to him for three months when he found Mace drunkenly talking to a German Shepherd about Mother Smith’s Tennessee mud pie.

  “They’re probably hidin’,” Smitty offered.

  “Hiding from what?”

  “You, dumb ass. And what you wanna bet wherever they are, they’ve pissed themselves. Your little girlfriend won’t be happy when she has to clean up the stains tomorrow.”

  “You really are enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Mace hung up the phone and went in search of Dez’s stupid dogs.

  Mace crouched down and looked under the couch. “Here, stupid, stupid dogs,” he whispered softly in a singsong voice. “Come here, you little fuckers.”

  He wasn’t sure when he knew Dez was watching him, but he knew. He raised his head and found her staring at him over the arm of her couch.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Where’s my shirt?”

  He glanced at a large leather chair across the room. “Over there.”

  “And why am I not wearing it?” When a woman spits that sentence out at you between her teeth, you can feel pretty assured she’s good and pissed.

  “I can explain everything.”

  “You better.”

  Mace stood up and walked around the couch to sit beside her. She pulled herself into a sitting position, her hand holding the green and white Jets blanket up to her chin. He did notice she had securely fastened back on her jeans the holstered .9mm he placed on the coffee table. She couldn’t find her shirt, but she sure as hell found her gun.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Okay, I guess. A little shaky maybe. What happened?”

  “You were drugged.” Saying the word poison would freak her out. And he had no desire to explain the lifelong battle between lions and hyenas at this moment. “But you should be okay now.”

  She looked at him as if seeing his bruises for the first time. Her hand reached up and touched his cheek. “Oh honey. What happened to your face?”

  Mace gazed at her lips and moved in slowly. Not wanting to startle her, but determined to taste those lush lips. But before he could reach heaven, her head snapped around. “Where are my dogs?”

  “What?”

  “My dogs.” Her soft hand on his cheek suddenly grabbed a hunk of his hair and pulled.

  “Ow!”

  “They should have ripped you apart and left you for dead on my porch by now. Where are they?”

  With a dramatic sigh, “I don’t know.”

  Dez got to her feet, a Packlike growl rolling from her lips. “If anything happened to my boys—”

  “What exactly are you accusing me of? Harming two smelly beasts that would happily run out in the middle of moving traffic?”

  Dez threw down the blanket and began to search the room. Mace had to focus hard on her face so he didn’t focus on the rest of that luscious body. Her body did things to him. Strong, almost painful things.

  He shook his head. Stop it, Llewellyn. You’re wasting your time. The woman didn’t even notice him in the room.

  Who was she kidding? Her dogs were somewhere. But waking up and finding one gorgeous hunk of man-meat crawling on her floor had stirred things in her she never thought existed. Things she wasn’t sure she could actually admit to. It didn’t help that seeing his face all bruised up almost shoved her right over the edge of “Stupid Things People Do,” like letting him kiss her—again.

  So finding her dogs seemed the quickest and simplest thing to do, given the circumstances.

  Although she was starting to worry a bit. Her dogs should have greeted them at the door. They should have definitely gone for Mace’s throat by now. He didn’t seem like much of a dog person, but she couldn’t see Mace doing anything to her “boys.” So where the hell where they?

  “You check under the bed?”

  Dez practically snarled at the man who had quickly become the star of any and every fantasy she would ever have. He leaned back into her couch, his arms out over the back of the sofa. His incredibly long and muscular legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. My, he certainly has made himself at home.

  “My dogs don’t hide under beds, Llewellyn.”

  “But did you check?”

  “Did you see me go upstairs?” At his raised eyebrow, she snapped, “Fine. I’ll check.” She headed up the stairs to her bedroom. Her house wasn’t big by any stretch of the imagination, but it had a backyard for her dogs, a second floor, and a huge dining room and gourmet kitchen she rarely used. Most important, though, it was her mortgage. Her place. So it didn’t matter how big or small it was.

  “Sig! Sauer! Where are you guys?”

  “You named your dogs after a gun?” Dez jumped and spun around. Mace had moved up behind her and she hadn’t even heard him. “Holy shit! The Christmas stockings were for them?”

  She would not be having that conversation. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Besides being freaked out by your Christmas decorations—helping you find your dogs. The dogs you named after a weapon.”

  “They’re cop-owned dogs. What did you expect me to name them? Fluffy and Poopsie-head?”

  Dez walked into her bedroom. She could feel Mace behind her. Feel the warmth of his body. She could smell the man. And he smelled really good.

  She mentally shook herself. Snap out of it, MacDermot. She crouched down by her bed and looked under it. And, to her utter disbelief, she found her two dogs. Cowering.

  She reached for Sig. “Come here, baby.”

  Mace crouched down next to her and that’s when Sig gingerly gripped her wrist in his maw and dragged her under the bed. He didn’t hurt her. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear the dog simply wanted to protect her.

  “What in the hell?”

  “You okay?” Mace held on to her ankle and she suddenly felt like a wishbone.

  She pulled her arm away from Sig and slid back out from under the bed. Mace grabbed her hand and helped her to her feet. She snatched her hand away. She had to. His touch made her uncomfortably warm.

  “What did you do to my dogs?” She had no idea where that came from, but she couldn’t shake the feeling they were hiding from Mace.

  “Me? What makes you think I did anything?”

  “Sig once took down a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound professional football player because he got a little too close to me in the park. And Sauer took on three, out-of-control pit bulls to protect me. These are not dogs that hide under the bed. And then you come to my house…”

  Mace didn’t say anything, he simply watched her.

  Dez sat down at the foot of the bed. She ran her hands through her hair. Someone obviously drugged me. Why else would she sit on her bed, hardly worried about the unsightly rolls it would cause in her less-than-taut stomach, wearing her favorite lace Christmas bra and jeans, in front of the one man she’d happily wrap herself around like a boa constrictor? Meanwhile,
her vicious, well-trained dogs cowered under her bed. Something was going on and she wanted to know what. And she wanted to know what right-goddamn-now.

  “My dogs are hiding from you, Llewellyn. And I wanna know why. Or you can get the fuck outta my house.” Christ, less than twenty-four hours around Mace and Bronx Dez came roaring back. But her intense anger kept her from feeling ashamed.

  Mace watched her from under a mass of hair practically covering his eyes. Hair that had not been there the day before.

  What in the hell is going on?

  Damn dogs ruin everything. Typical. If he told her anything but the absolute truth, Dez and her detective mind would see through it in two seconds. That would be it for him too. For them. Dez needed to trust her partners, Mace knew that just from the few precious hours he’d spent in the woman’s company. He couldn’t lie to her. Not if he ever wanted her screaming his name while she came.

  So, throwing centuries of Druid tradition and secrecy out the window, he faced Detective Desiree MacDermot head-on and told her the truth.

  “I’m a shapeshifter. Specifically lion. My Pride is descended from Welsh Druids. Your dogs sense that and that’s why they’re hiding under the bed. That and they’re big pussies.”

  She stared at him. He could almost read her thoughts. She was thinking, I have a nut in my house. How do I get the nut out of my house? He was expecting her to start inching toward the door any second. Or pull her gun and shoot him between the eyes.

  But she didn’t. Instead, Dez crossed her arms in front of those beautiful red lace–covered tits. “Prove it.”

  Mace gaped at her. “What?”

  “Is this a full moon kind of thing?”

  He stifled his roar. Insulting little bitch. “I’m not a werewolf.”

  “Then prove it. Right here. Right now.”

  “You want me to prove it?”

  “Right here. Right now.”

  Mace smiled. “If that’s what you want…”

  Yup. Leave it to Dez to find the one rich nut in New York City who wasn’t afraid to drive out to Brooklyn. The one rich nut who thought he was a—what was it?—shapeshifter? Oiy.