“Hold on.” Lucas held both his hands out, palms facing me, as if to show me he was unarmed. “Nobody’s sleeping with anybody. Right? I’ve been on the couch all night. Alone. And Abby would never…” He glanced at his sister, waiting for her to fill in the blank with the expected denial. “Because she’s engaged to…”
And that was when I realized he’d slept right through the rumors about me and his sister.
Abby frowned at Luke, and I read the impending subject change a second before she spoke. “Not you. Isaac. He’s in the bathroom, probably brushing his teeth in the shower. To wash off her scent,” she added, with another glance at Melody.
“Isaac? But that doesn’t—” Luke was the Wade brother Melody always flirted with, and he’d clearly spent the night on the couch. Abby was mistaken. Simple enough.
My temper began to cool as I turned to Lucas, trying to figure out the best way to tell him that I was, in fact, sleeping with his sister, even if he wasn’t sleeping with mine.
Abby rolled her eyes. “Your sister’s window lit up as soon as I knocked on the back door,” she said. “And the shower came on while we were in the kitchen. Melody’s still wearing yesterday’s makeup, and she just brushed her teeth. She hasn’t been to bed yet tonight.” Abby shrugged. “Well, she’s been to bed, but not to sleep.”
An angry pressure began to build up in my jaw until I realized I was clenching it. I turned from Abby to Melody, who suddenly looked terrified. “Mel?”
“Okay, Jace, don’t freak out.” She backed toward the staircase, and I realized that Abby was right—the shower was running. Specifically, Melody’s shower was running. Her bedroom and mine were the only ones on the second floor.
I turned and ran for the stairs.
TEN
Abby
“Jace, no!” Melody shouted, but he was already halfway to the second floor, and the tight clench of his fists was not a good sign. Though that did seem to indicate that he hadn’t sprouted claws yet.
“Wait!” I raced after him, and from the sound of the stampede, everyone else in house was behind me.
“Abby!” Lucas called from half a flight below. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Not now!” I yelled as Jace hit the second floor landing. There’d be plenty of time to avoid talking about my private life once I was sure Isaac wasn’t going to be killed, or fired, or…systematically neutered. I should never have said anything about Melody and Isaac, but she could be such a little bitch sometimes, and I’d struck out with the only weapon I had.
As I raced up the last half of the first flight of stairs, a door creaked open on the third floor, and Garrett, Jace’s youngest half brother, leaned over the railing overhead. Garrett was my age, and he was the only one of the Malone brothers I’d never wanted to punch. “What the hell? It’s barely six in the morning.”
When Foley Malone peeked over his shoulder, I realized the entire house was awake except for Patricia, and with the level of noise our stampede was causing, Jace’s mom couldn’t possibly be asleep for long.
“Jace is going to kill Isaac!” Melody squealed, as I followed Jace across the landing toward her closed bedroom door. “You guys do something!” She gave Chase a shove and he stumbled past me, but our Alpha’s growl of warning stopped him cold.
“I’m not going to kill him,” Jace snapped, and when he tried to open her door, he pulled the doorknob right off. Not good. “I’m just going to rip his balls off and—”
“Jace!” I grabbed his arm, then wrenched the amputated doorknob from his grip. I briefly considered recruiting Lucas for help, but if any of the guys touched Jace while he was seeing red, this would escalate too quickly for me to control. “That’s my brother!”
“In a minute, he’s going to be your sister,” Jace growled, and my stomach clenched miserably.
“Okay, wait. Let’s talk about this calmly. Melody’s an adult. Just like I am,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t need me to spell out my point. And maybe he wouldn’t have if the knobless door hadn’t swung open at that very moment to reveal Isaac standing in the middle of Melody’s bedroom floor, his hair wet and dripping, a towel tucked around his hips.
Jace’s gaze narrowed and his face flushed. “What the hell did you do to my sister?” he growled, and I could tell from the sound that his throat had already started to shift.
Uh-oh.
“Do to her?” Isaac stood his ground, his hands raised, palms out. “I didn’t do anything to her.”
Melody raced past us and threw herself between her brother and mine, her back pressed to Isaac’s chest. She held her arms out to protect him like a human shield, her brown eyes flashing in anger like I’d never seen from her. “Don’t hurt him, Jace. I love him,” she said as Garrett and Foley stomped down the stairs from the third floor.