The Strength of the Pack

  An hour after arriving, they managed to get through dinner. When Eva needed to use the bathroom, Nate went with her, standing outside as if awaiting his turn. He studied more pictures hanging on the wall, one of them older, at least by a generation. Four kids, three girls and a boy, and their parents.

  One of the girls was as fair-haired as the little girl in the newer portraits and bore a striking resemblance to her.

  When Eva emerged from the bathroom, he pointed without speaking.

  “That’s Michelle,” she said, “and Mom.” She pointed to an older, dark-haired girl, then to others. “Aunt Kelly and Uncle Mike, who are out there.”

  He caught her hand and squeezed. “Okay. Wait here for me.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  That she didn’t even try to argue told him a lot.

  He quickly used the bathroom and was washing his hands when he heard a man’s voice just outside.

  With the hair bristling on the back of his neck, he didn’t even bother drying his hands as he opened the door and found Eva’s father standing there, with Eva backed against the wall.

  Nate put on a smile and stepped between them, staring down at the man. “Abe, old chap,” he softly said, letting his full accent come through, “I suggest you take a step back. One would think you’re trying to intimidate your daughter.”

  Abraham Banks didn’t take a step back, though. He glared up at Nate. “You sure you’re not one of those faggots, too?”

  Nate didn’t even blink. “I would strongly suggest that you don’t talk about Laurel’s father and step-father like that,” he said. “I consider them close personal friends.”

  “Huh. Imagine that. She managed to pick herself two queers for guys. Can’t do anything right. Had a chance to get full custody of that little girl and she blew it.”

  Nate’s fingers itched to close around the man’s throat but he resisted. “Wow. You are a pillock, aren’t you? Leo and Eva warned me about you but I honestly thought perhaps they were exaggerating. No one in this day and age could be so utterly lacking in social graces as that. Sad to see I was wrong.”

  Nate stepped forward, forcing the man back against the opposite hallway wall. “Eva, love, go say good-bye to your mum and sisters, now. We must be off.”

  Eva bolted. When Abraham made like he was going to go after her and put a hand up to push Nate back, Nate grabbed his hand and twisted, hitting the pressure points in Abraham’s hand as well as reaching up and hitting one in his upper arm.

  He drove older man down to his knees. “There, now,” Nate muttered. “That’s a good chap. You’re lucky I don’t break your bloody neck, but I promised Eva I’d behave myself like a gentleman.” He released the man and followed Eva to make sure she hurried.

  Nate suspected once Abraham got up off the floor that he’d be off his trolley and come after him. He had fixed a pleasant smile on his face and already fished his keys out of his pocket by the time he reached the lanai. He’d prefer to go out the back and around the side rather than through the house again.

  He caught up with Eva, hugging her sisters and her mom good-bye.

  “But why do you have to leave?” her mom asked.

  “Sorry, my fault,” Nate said. “Wife of one of my regular clients just called. Emergency case, poor man’s going through chemo. Sad thing, really, but I need to go do a treatment on him for nausea. So lovely meeting you all, and thank you for dinner. Ann, once again, congratulations. Good evening.”

  He caught Eva’s elbow and aimed her for the side door out to the backyard.

  Didn’t even bother looking behind him, but when they emerged in the front yard, Abraham charged out the front door.

  “You come back here!” he raged, although Nate wasn’t sure who at, himself or Eva.

  Nate grimly handed her his keys. “Right. Go lock yourself in, love, and no matter what, stay there.” She stared at him. “Go! That’s an order.”

  Nate followed her a few more steps, slowing his strides and waiting, just in time to turn, stepping sideways and dodging the man, who wasn’t expecting Nate to jump out of the way. Abraham lost his balance and fell. That sent him sprawling across the grass.

  A couple of the cousins had spilled out the front door and were now watching with stunned expressions. Ann and Gayle also emerged, followed by their mom.

  Abraham tried to lunge at Nate, but Nate caught him by the hand and set him back on his knees. “That was a rather nasty spill, Mr. Banks,” Nate said loudly enough for the people on the porch to hear. “Here, let me help you up,” As he forced the man onto his feet, Nate once again hit a pressure point in Abraham’s hand, but the way he was standing shielded his action from view.

  The witnesses thought Nate was trying to help the older man to his feet.

  “You really shouldn’t drink quite so much, sir,” Nate said, raising his voice even more. “I believe you’re inebriated.” He leaned in and whispered, “If you so much as look at Eva again, I will kill you, sir. Don’t think I can’t do it and make it look like an accident. And I have friends in law enforcement who’d be happy to help me, considering your checkered past regarding children.”

  The last was supposition on Nate’s part, but it certainly seemed to shake the older man, whose eyes widened.

  Nate released the hand pressure point and grabbed Abraham’s elbow as if concerned about the man’s balance as he helped him back to the front porch, but he had a finger dug into another pressure point on the inside of the man’s arm and was pretty much forcing him to stay upright at that point.

  “Mrs. Banks,” Nate said, “you might want to think about giving him a couple of cups of coffee.” He let Abraham go, glaring at him.

  Well, the stupid bugger didn’t know when to quit.

  Abraham turned around. “I’m not drunk, you asshole! You attacked me.”

  Nate looked hurt. “You tripped on the lawn. I helped you up.”

  “Uncle Abraham, you were running and tripped,” one of the men said. “I came out the door as you went down. I saw it. Mr. Crawford helped you up. He didn’t trip you.”

  “You didn’t just see him attack me right there?” Abraham waved his hand at them. “Look what he did to me! And…and he attacked me inside the house, too!”

  Nate gave a pitying look to Mrs. Banks and sadly shook his head. “Is there a history of dementia in his family?”

  Abraham shoved Nate, hard, but Nate had anticipated his motion and been prepared for it and played it up, rolling with it, making it look like he’d been caught by surprise as he went down.

  “Abraham!” his wife screamed as several people rushed to help Nate to his feet and a couple of the men dragged Abraham back. “What the hell has gotten into you!”

  “He…he attacked me!”

  “You just attacked him,” Gayle screamed back as she bent over to help Nate up. “What is wrong with you, Dad?”

  Nate let them fuss over him and pretended to be rattled. “Mr. Banks, it’s obvious you’re not feeling well. I’ll let that little incident go.” He brushed his clothes off and turned to Lorie, taking her hand and kissing it although he didn’t want to.

  It did, however, complete the tableau in a very satisfying manner. “Mrs. Banks, it was terribly lovely meeting you. Thank you for your hospitality.” He turned, barely able to conceal his smile as he walked down to his car.

  Behind him, Abraham ranted, shouted, and no doubt if people weren’t holding him back, he would have taken another run at Nate.

  He heard the locks click open as he reached for the handle and then he smoothly slid into his seat, closing the door behind him. He held his hand out, palm up, and Eva dropped his keys into it.

  He waited until they were away from the house to glance over at her.

  She stared at him with wide, terrified eyes.

  “Are you all right, love?”

  She nodded.

  He focused on the traffic ahead. “What did he say to you in the house, before I came out of the bathroom?”


  She burst into tears.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Nate pulled over into the same parking lot and held her until she calmed down.

  She couldn’t tell him. Not right then.

  “When we get back to your place, please,” she whispered.

  “All right. Call home, sweetheart,” he gently said. “Check on Laurel.”

  She did. “What happened?” Leo asked upon answering. “It’s way too early for dinner to be over.”

  Nate got them back on the road again.

  “It’s okay,” Eva said, sniffling. “Nate took care of it.”

  “Did that fucker try to lay a hand on you?”

  “I’m okay. He…” She closed her eyes, not even sure how to begin explaining what happened. It’d be better to let Nate tell him tomorrow. “It’s okay. Nate took care of it. I’ll be home tomorrow. Nate and I need to have a long talk tonight.”

  “About…him?”

  She knew who he meant. “Yeah. I need to tell him.”

  “I was afraid something like this might happen if you went. I think your dad was always a little afraid of me.”

  She didn’t know exactly what Nate had said to her father when he helped the man up off the grass, but from the brief flash of terror in her father’s eyes, she knew it had to be threatening.

  “Yeah, well, now’s he’s even more afraid of Nate.”

  “Heh. Good. I want to hear that story tomorrow. I always knew Nate was good people. I expect both of you here for dinner. Love you.”

  “Thanks. Love you, too.”

  “Here’s Laurel.”

  When Eva ended the call, she sat with her hands in her lap, her gaze out the windshield. “Thank you, Sir,” she said. She still couldn’t believe what she’d witnessed.

  It was like she was dating a British ninja basketball player or something.

  He reached over and took her hand. “This is my job,” he said, the British accent now faded from his tone. “Protecting you. Taking care of you. I know I told you I won’t ask you to tell me or force you to tell me, but obviously he is a threat, to you, and to Laurel. I need you to give me at least the information I need to keep both of you safe.”

  “When we’re back at your place,” she said. “I want to be curled up in your arms when I tell it.” She stared out the passenger window. “Then I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Including whatever it was he said to you in the house today?”

  She nodded. “Yes, Sir.” She needed to tell him the other part first.

  About the baby.

  That would determine what else—if anything—she told him.

  He squeezed her hand. “Fair enough, sweetheart.”

  * * * *

  They stretched out on the couch, but fully clothed, her head in his lap and his feet on the coffee table. Clothed was by Nate’s choice, because he didn’t want her to feel any more vulnerable than she obviously already did.

  He’d grabbed a box of tissues as well. “Where do you wish to start?” he gently asked.

  “I need to talk to you about something else first.”

  “What’s that?”

  She wouldn’t look him in the eye. “It’s a two-part process. I need to see how you’re going to react to the first part before I can finish telling you everything else.”

  “Very well.”

  Whatever this was, it had weighed her down like an anchor on the Titanic. Her energy felt subdued, drained, weak. When she finally spoke several long moments later, he could barely hear her.

  “Jesse and Leo already know about the second part. Jesse didn’t know at first. Not until after Leo’s accident and…something happened. And I realized as a result of all of that how much Jesse means to me. I love him. Like a brother and a friend, not romantically. But he saved my life.

  “Until I can tell you all of it, some of this won’t make much sense. But because of Jesse, my family—my pack—is whole. There is always room for more people in it. You, Cherise, Wade. Another baby. You have to understand and accept on faith that Jesse is as important to me as Leo is. That I love Jesse as much as I love Leo.”

  He nodded. “I know. I can see that. I also don’t question or begrudge it in the slightest.”

  She took a deep breath. “Jesse’s always wanted to have a baby. Because of…things, Leo and I only had Laurel. I didn’t tell Leo everything before I was pregnant. But with Leo and Jesse, it’s okay. And I always wanted to have another baby. At least one more.”

  He knew a lesser man might think she was being melodramatic.

  But he’d just gone a round with her father and could afford to be patient and charitable. “Yes?”

  “I told Jesse that I want to have a baby with him. With a doctor’s help,” she quickly added. “Artificial insemination, not…not sleeping together.”

  He had not expected this and it took him a moment to process things. He realized she was waiting on him to respond. “When is this happening?”

  “We’ve got an initial appointment to see a doctor in a couple of weeks.”

  He slowly nodded, conflicted, processing. “May I ask questions of you about this?”

  “Sure. Yeah. Of course.”

  She had tensed in his lap to the point that she felt like a jagged ball of scrap metal, rusted, dull, trying to protect herself from what she surely thought would happen. She’d obviously expected a bad response from him.

  He loved her too much for that.

  No, this wasn’t something he’d expected to hear from her, but to be honest, he’d never expected to be in this situation in the first place.

  To be in love with a woman who lived with her ex-husband and his husband and co-parented their child together.

  Had he not known Jesse and Leo personally, this revelation might have struck him…well, might have pissed him off, actually.

  But he had seen the love in both men, for each other, and for Eva and Laurel.

  And to be fair, Jesse had known her first.

  He carefully considered his next question before posing it. “Is this something you’re doing because you want to do it, or because he asked it of you?”

  “Because I want to. It was my idea. I asked him about it. Him and Leo. Leo had to sign off on it.”

  “Because Jesse is his slave?”

  “No, because he’s his husband and it affects everyone in our pack.”

  “How will Leo and Jesse feel about me being around and being in a relationship with you while you’re pregnant?”

  “They like you a lot, Nate. They’ve signed off on you.” She snorted. “They keep asking me if we’ve talked yet and moved forward.” Her tone softened. “They worry about me.”

  He worried about her, too. “You’re not being coerced in any way to have a child with him?”

  “No! They would never do that.”

  “Leo has full legal custody of Laurel. You can see why I would ask that.”

  She hesitated. “No,” she said. “Nothing like that. That was…” She shuddered. “That was what happened to protect Laurel after Leo’s accident. And it was partly my idea, anyway. I wanted it that way.”

  “And is that part of the second thing you wish to talk about?”

  “Yes.”

  Here was a tiny spotlight brightly illuminating what was, at best, a side issue. A relatively minor one in the grand scheme of things. A baby was not a bad thing, even someone else’s.

  The larger problem and barrier to them ever being together was that “second thing.”

  “Are there any other issues, besides the other issue, that I need to know about?”

  “No, Sir. That’s it.”

  He laced fingers with her. “Will having this baby make you happy?”

  She finally looked up into his eyes and nodded. “For a lot of reasons.”

  “To be honest, I raised a child. Maybe not biologically, but I was there all her life. I had also reached a point of acceptance that I likely wasn’t going to father a child with
whoever I ended up settling down with. If this is going to make you happy, and you’re doing this of your own free will, and you and I will still be able to have our relationship while you’re pregnant, then I’m okay with it.”

  Gobsmacked didn’t come close to describing the shock on her face. “Really?”

  “What, would you rather me get territorial or jealous or be unreasonable about it?”

  “I…” She stared, stunned.

  “One of my rules is that you cannot be romantically involved with someone else. You can’t be sleeping with them. If you’re going through a doctor to do this, that still, to me, follows my rules. I don’t wish you to help him with the sample collection, as it were. I would suppose that’s Leo’s job.”

  She sat up and stared at him. “You’re okay with this? Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I…I can’t promise you that I’ll want to or even be able to have another baby after this one. I’m going to be forty soon.”

  He smiled. “I can do the math. That’s an issue we can discuss later. Not having a biological child with you isn’t a deal-breaker for me. It never has been. I love you for countless reasons, but your ability to conceive or not isn’t one of them.”

  She kissed him, throwing her arms around him and squeezing tightly as she broke down crying again. “Thank you, Sir.”

  “I told you, I’m in this for life. Now, my opinion would have been drastically different had you decided to do this without talking to me first after I collared you. I will demand input then.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He palmed her cheek, brushing his thumb over her flesh. “So if I’d freaked out and said absolutely not, we wouldn’t still be talking right now, would we?”

  She laid her head against his chest. “No, Sir.”

  He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against the top of her head.

  “You said there was more. Are you ready to talk about the rest of it, then?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  She didn’t continue.

  “I’m not asking or ordering you to tell me. I’m still not changing my position on that. You have to be willing to tell me.”