Auriele took the last cup from my hand. I unplugged the sink and shook the water from my hands before drying them off on my jeans. My hands aren’t my best feature. The hot water had left my skin pruney, and my knuckles were red and swollen. Even after washing dishes, there was still some black grease embedded in my skin and under my nails. Christy’s hands were always beautiful, with French-manicured nails.
Adam hung up the phone and called the travel agent he used to coordinate his not-infrequent business travel: both business business and werewolf business.
“She can stay with Honey and me,” said Mary Jo to me, her voice neutral.
Mary Jo and Honey were the other two female werewolves in the pack. Mary Jo had moved in with Honey when Honey’s mate had been killed a few months ago. Neither of them liked me very much.
Until Mary Jo made the offer of hospitality, I’d been half planning to put Christy up with one of the other pack members because I hadn’t thought it through. I knew that putting Christy in with Mary Jo and Honey would be a mistake.
Adam and I were working hard to increase the pack cohesion, which meant that I was trying very hard not to further alienate either Mary Jo or Honey. I was doing pretty well at keeping our interactions to polite neutrality. If Christy moved in with them, she would use their dislike of me and fan it into a hurricane-force division that would rain down on the pack in a flood of drama.
Once I recognized the power of Christy as a divisive force, I realized that it wasn’t just a problem for my relationship with the pack, but also for Adam’s. Putting Adam’s ex-wife in the same house with Honey and Mary Jo would be stupid because it would force Mary Jo to take Christy’s side on any tension between Christy and Adam or Christy and the pack. The same thing would be true of anyone Christy stayed with.
Christy was going to have to stay here with Adam and me.
“Christy needs to be here, where she’ll feel safe,” said Auriele before I could reply to Mary Jo.
“Uhm,” I said, because I was still reeling under the weight of just how much it was going to suck having her not just here in the Tri-Cities, but here in my home.
“You don’t want her here?” asked Auriele, and for the first time, I realized that Auriele, like Mary Jo, had liked Christy better than she did me. “She’s scared and alone. Don’t be petty, Mercy.”
“Would you want Darryl’s ex staying at your house?” asked Jesse hotly. I hadn’t realized she’d come back downstairs. Her chin was raised as she flung her support my way. I didn’t want her to do that. Christy was her mom—Jesse shouldn’t be trying to choose between us.
“If she needed help, I would,” Auriele snapped. It was easy for her to be certain because Darryl, as far as I knew, didn’t have an ex-wife. “If you don’t want Christy here, Mercy, she is welcome at my house.”
Auriele’s offer was followed up by several others, accompanied by hostile stares aimed at me. Christy had been well liked by most of the pack. She was just the sort of sweet, helpless homemaker that appealed to a bunch of werewolves with too much testosterone.
“Christy will stay here,” I said.
But since Mary Jo and Auriele were arguing hotly about where Christy would be happiest, and the men were paying attention to them, no one had heard me.
“I said”—I stepped between the two women, drawing on Adam’s power to give weight to my words—“Christy will stay here with Adam and me.” Both women dropped their eyes and backed away, but the hostility in Auriele’s face told me that only the Alpha’s authority in my voice had forced her to stop arguing. Mary Jo looked satisfied—I was pretty sure it meant that she thought Christy’s staying here might give Christy a chance to resume her position as Adam’s wife.
Though Adam was still on the phone, my pull on his authority had made him look around to see what was happening in the kitchen, but he didn’t slow his rapid instructions.
“Having her here isn’t a good idea. She’d do okay at Honey and Mary Jo’s.” Jesse sounded almost frantic.
“Christy stays here,” I repeated, though this time I didn’t borrow Adam’s magic to make my point.
“Mercy, I love my mother.” Jesse’s mouth twisted unhappily. “But she’s selfish, and she resents that you took her place here. She’ll cause trouble.”
“Jesse Hauptman,” snapped Auriele. “That’s your mother you are talking about. You show her some respect.”
“Auriele,” I growled. This morning needed a dominance fight between the two of us like it needed a nuclear bomb. But I couldn’t let her dictate to Jesse. “Back off.”
Teeth showing in a hostile smile, Auriele turned her hot gaze on me, yellow stirring in the cappuccino depths of her eyes.
“Leave Jesse alone,” I told her. “You’re overstepping your authority. Jesse is not pack.”
Auriele’s lips whitened, but she backed down. I was right, and she knew it.
“Your mom will feel safer here,” I told Jesse without looking away from Auriele. “And Auriele’s also right when she says we can protect Christy better here.”
Jesse gave me a despairing look. “She doesn’t want Dad, but that doesn’t mean she wants anyone else to have him. She’ll try to get between the two of you—like water torture. Drip. Drip. Drip. You should hear what she says about you.”
No. No, I shouldn’t. Neither should Jesse, but there was nothing I could do about that.
“It’s all right,” I told her. “We’re all grown-ups. We can behave for a little while.” How long could it take for a werewolf to hunt down a stalker and scare him off? A stalker, by definition, should be easy to find, right?
“Good Samaritan Mercy,” Mary Jo muttered. “Shouldn’t we all be grateful for her charity?” She glanced around and realized she was the center of attention and flushed. “What? It’s true.”
Still on the phone, Adam looked at Mary Jo and held her—and everyone else in the room—silent with his gaze. He finished his business with the travel agent, then hung up the phone.
“That’s enough,” he said very softly, and Mary Jo flinched. He is quiet when he is really mad—right before people start dying. “This is not up for debate. It is time for everyone to go. Christy is not pack, was never pack. She was never my mate, only my wife. That means she is not pack business, and not your business.”
“Christy is my friend,” said Auriele hotly. “She needs help. That makes it my business.”
“Does it?” Adam asked her, clearly out of patience. “If it is your business, why did Christy call me, not you?”
She opened her mouth, and Darryl put a hand on her shoulder and led her out of the room. “Best leave well enough alone,” I heard him say before they left the house.
The wolves—including Mary Jo—slid out of the room without waiting for Adam to say anything more. We stood in the kitchen, Adam, Jesse, and I, waiting until the sounds of cars starting and driving away left us in silence. All the uniting benefit of this Sunday breakfast was gone like the last of the waffles.
“Jesse,” I said. “Your mother is welcome here.”
“You know what she’s like,” Jesse said passionately. “She’ll spoil everything. She can get people, can get Dad, to do things they had no intention of doing.”
“Not your problem,” I told her, while Adam’s face tightened because he agreed with Jesse.
“She can get me to do things, too.” Jesse’s face was desperate. “I don’t want you hurt.”
Adam’s hand came down on my shoulder.
“You are responsible for your own actions,” I told her. Told both of them. “Not hers. She’s not a werewolf, not Alpha. She can’t make you do anything unless you let her.”
I glanced up at the clock, though I knew what time it was. “Now, if you’ll both excuse me, I need to change clothes and head to church, or I’m going to be late.” I strode out of the kitchen, then gathered myself together and turned at the doorway. “Something tells me that I’ve got a lot of praying for patience and charity in my future.” I flashed them a grin I didn’t much feel, then left.
Church didn’t help a lot. I was still unsettled by the events of the morning when my back hit the mat on the floor of the garage. The impact forced the air from my lungs in an inelegant sound and drove my worries away. I snarled at my attacker—who snarled back with interest.
The snarl didn’t make Adam’s too-handsome features less handsome, but it would probably have scared anyone else. Me? I think I have some kind of subliminal death wish because Adam’s anger makes me go weak in the knees, and not in a terrified sort of way.
“What are you trying to do? Kill mosquitoes?” Adam was too mad to be aware of my reaction to his anger. “I’m a werewolf. I’m trying to kill you—and you smack me open-handed on my butt?”
Even with me on the ground, he stayed in sanchin dachi, a neutral-ready position that allowed him easy rotation for either strike or block. It also made him look pigeon-toed. Not a good look, even for Adam, but his thin t-shirt, wet with sweat, did its best to improve the picture.
“It’s a cute butt,” I said.
He rolled his eyes, released the stance, and took a step nearer to me.
“As for my hand on your cute butt,” I continued, letting my shoulders relax against the mat, “I was cleverly trying to distract you.”
He frowned at me. “Distract me from what? Your awesome, sneaky attack that left you lying on the floor?”
I twisted, catching him in front of the ankle with one foot as I put my whole weight behind the shin I slammed into the back of his knee. He started to lose his balance, and I rolled up with an elbow strike that hit the big muscle that ran up the back of his upper leg with charley-horse-causing force. As he went all the way down to hands and knees, I swung the wrench I’d snagged on my original fall and touched him on the back of the head with it.
“Exactly,” I said, pleased that I’d been able to lie well enough with my body language that I’d taken him unawares. He’d been fighting a lot longer than I, and he was bigger and stronger. I was very seldom able to best him while we were sparring.
Adam rolled over, rubbing his thigh to relieve the cramp I’d given him. He saw the wrench and narrowed his eyes at me—and then grinned and relaxed on the wrestling mat that covered half the garage floor. “I’ve always had the hots for the mean and sneaky women.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Sneaky I knew, but I didn’t know you liked mean. Okay, then. No more chocolate chip cookies for you. I’ll feed them to the rest of the pack instead.”
He sat up without using his hands, not showing off, but because he was just that strong. He wasn’t vain enough to realize how it made the muscles in his belly stand out under the meager cover of his shirt, and I wasn’t going to tell him.
Not that I had to. His mouth kicked up at the corners, and his chocolate eyes darkened a little as his nostrils flared, taking in the change that desire had made in my scent. He stripped off the shirt and wiped his face on it before tossing it to the side.
“I only like a little bit mean,” Adam confided in a low-husky voice that made my heartbeat pick up. “Withholding cookies is world-class mean.”
We’d been sparring every day since I’d had a fight with a nasty vampire named Frost. Adam decided that since I was going to keep getting into trouble, the only thing he could do was try to ensure I could get myself out of it, too. I was still doing karate with my sensei three times a week, and I could feel the difference all the extra practice was making in my fighting ability. Sparring with Adam meant that I could pay attention to fighting without worrying about hurting someone (werewolves are tough). It meant that I could ignore the need to hide what I was behind human-slow movement. Today, it also meant that I could forget that phone call this morning for a little while.