“He’s an artist, Daddy,” his baby told him, tilting her head back so she could look at him directly. “An artist.”
Shay knew a little about Kyle Jean-Louis Parker. He was an eighteen-year-old jackal with shoulder-length hair and the title of “art prodigy.” A title that Shay had no respect for. It was bad enough the kid was hanging around his baby sister, who might or might not think he was “dreamy.” But to think his innocent daughter was getting all googly-eyed over a boy—any boy—was beyond upsetting.
She was just a baby! His little girl! She was too young to be mooning over some artistic pretty boy who acted like he knew better than everyone else because some of his artwork had already sold for six figures.
“Please, Daddy!” Dani begged, her arms now wrapped around his right leg. “Can I stay with Auntie Nat and the bears? Pleaaaaaaassssseeeeeee!”
He looked at Charlie. “You’ll look out for her?”
“Of course. And if you pick her up by eight a.m. tomorrow, I’ll make sure you guys get breakfast.”
He trusted Charlie. Didn’t know why. She was half canine, and he barely trusted his own wolf teammates to cover his back on the field. But he was entrusting his only daughter to a woman who’d greeted them at her front door with a semiauto and an offer of brownies.
Shay looked down at Dani, her head tilted all the way back so she could focus on him with those eyes just like his own.
“Okay. Fine.”
The squeal his cub let out nearly shattered his eardrums, and even Charlie covered her own.
Using her strong cat legs, his daughter catapulted herself into Shay’s arms, making him laugh.
“Thank you, Daddy!”
“You’re welcome. But,” he quickly added, “I don’t want to hear tomorrow that you caused any trouble. Understand?”
“When do I ever cause trouble?”
“What I’m saying to you, Dani Malone, is that there will be no treating the Dunn Triplets like they’re giant teddy bears.”
“Even though they look like giant teddy bears?”
“Especially because of that, baby. That’s how they lull their victims into a false sense of security.”
*
Finn found his older brother sitting on the stoop and staring across the street at the bear triplets’ house. He tried to sit next to him, but their shoulders made that impossible, so Finn went down a step and looked up at Shay.
“What’s wrong?”
“Dani’s spending the night at the bear house.”
“Why?”
“She wants to spend the night with Nat, and I refused to let her spend the night in a house filled with guns.”
That was probably a good idea. Not long ago, Finn had found a sawed-off shotgun taped under the kitchen table. He hadn’t told his brothers because he trusted Charlie MacKilligan when it came to weapons. But it was one thing to have their seventeen-year-old sister living here with angry, armed women. And quite another to have their ten-year-old niece stay the night.
At the same time, Finn also understood why Dani wanted to stay. Nat was the girlfriend-slash-sister that every ten-year-old girl needed in her life. Her mother was not that woman and neither was their mother. But with Nat, Dani could play with makeup and clothes and learn how to take down a deer without getting her face battered by a hoof. Important things all female cubs needed to know.
“I wouldn’t worry,” he told his brother. “You know Nat will watch her.”
“I do. I do know that. I just don’t want her to think she’s getting tossed off somewhere. Again.”
“Didn’t she ask you if she could stay?”
“Yeah.”
“And wouldn’t she have just thrown a fit if you’d said no?”
“Yeah.”
“Then stop worrying. It’s not like you’re leaving her here for weeks.”
The screen door behind them opened and Shay could hear the heavy human footsteps of his brother seconds before Keane stepped over them to get down the stoop stairs.
“Are you two coming with me?” he barked at them. Keane wasn’t in a bad mood. He just spoke to everyone as if he was in a bad mood.
“No,” Finn said before Shay could figure out what he wanted to do. “Shay’s going to hang at Mads’s house with me for a little while.”
Keane gazed down at him for a second before asking, “You gonna try and fuck Tock?”
“What? No!”
“What is wrong with you?” Finn demanded on a surprised laugh.
“She’s just a friend,” Shay insisted.
“So, you’re saying you’re not gonna hit that? Is that because she’s too short for you? You know, there’s a benefit to banging a short woman. If they’re tough enough, you can just toss them around like a Tonka toy,” Keane said.
Without another word, Shay got up and stormed across the street, heading to Mads’s house.
Finn shook his head and, grinning, asked his eldest brother, “Why do you insist on starting shit with him?”
“He lets me,” Keane admitted.
*
“What do you want to eat?”
He stopped short when a phone was shoved into his face.
“What?”
“What do you want to eat? We’re ordering dinner. And we need to order dinner now because in another twenty minutes all the good restaurants will stop delivering.”
Shay carefully placed his hand on the top of the phone and slowly lowered it so he could see Tock’s face.
“I don’t care what I eat,” he told her. “Just make sure there’s meat.”
“So then you do care what you eat, but you don’t want to make a decision.”
“I’m not a bear. I need protein. Not vegetables and honey.”
“I’ll just ask Finn,” she said with an annoyed sigh, looking back at her phone. “You’ll eat what he eats, right?”
“Yes. We’re interchangeable.”
“I noticed that,” Max said, pirouetting around him in the big kitchen of Mads’s newly purchased house. “But Stevie said I was being racist. How can I be racist, though?” She stopped, arms up like a very big-shouldered ballerina. “I’m Asian, too.”
“We’ll take care of dinner,” Finn said, pushing Shay out of the kitchen and toward the living room.
Shay sat down on the couch and examined the room around him.
“Nice, right?” Nelle asked, sitting in a club chair near him.
“It is.”
She winked at him. “Thanks.”
Apparently, Nelle had designed Mads’s house without Mads’s knowledge or consent and it was definitely a sore spot between them. He didn’t know why, though. Nelle had done a really nice job. Not that Shay would ever say that with Mads around. Finn had and she’d bitten his head clean off.
“Okay,” Tock said, walking into the room. “We ordered Chinese food, but Max keeps saying just calling it Chinese food is racist. We’ve chosen to ignore her.”
Shay and Nelle exchanged mutual eyerolls. Max was . . . a lot. How that black jaguar put up with her, Shay didn’t know. Maybe his breed had more patience with irritating weasels than tigers did. Of course, Zé Vargas was currently in his cat form, asleep on the top of a cabinet across the room, his long black tail twitching and turning on its own. They played football together, and Vargas was a pretty good running back.
Tock sat down next to Shay, tapping furiously on her phone.