Page 129 of Beware of Dog

Eden’s voice was shrewd, professional. “He’s been her security detail?”

“Yes. Three years now. Since the bratva problem.”

“I think he’s hot,” Axelle piped in.

Eden uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “The important thing is: is he committed?”

Raven frowned and swirled her wine around in her glass. She wasn’t going to tell anyone from Tennessee that she’d shouted, and cried a little bit, and thought seriously about slapping Shep when he told her. Because it had broken her heart, a sudden burst of pain, a fear realized—how many times had she said to herselfplease not Shep, anyone but him—but once the first shock was past, she’d been able to look at his face, fierce and fired up, ready to shout right back at her, unwilling to back down, her anger had collapsed like a house of matchsticks. She’d spent three years watching the two of them grow closer; watching Shep fall wildly in love with her, patient, content towait, resigned to never get her if her gaze never softened in invitation.

She took a sip and said, “Shep is an asshole. But he’s an honest one. He doesn’t have very close relationships within the club. The day he came to my office to tell me that he and Cass were involved, he told me that she was his best friend. Cass has said the same, independently.”

Eden nodded, slowly, watching as Shep downed another few swallows of beer and chucked the cup onto the grass. Cass grabbed his arm and said something to him, and he nodded, and then waved off Crash when he lifted the ball in invitation to continue.

“Nah,” Shep said. “We creamed your asses. Take the L.”

Cass’s laughter floated across the field, high and musical.

“She looks happy,” Emmie said. A glance revealed she was smiling: a quiet, introspective sort of smile. “Every time I’ve been around her, she’s always looking around, taking everything in, listening to everyone. I’ve not ever seen her so…vibrant. Like this.”

Raven nodded. “Exactly.”

~*~

Fox squeezed a lime wedge into his G&T and then dropped the whole thing into the drink with a little splash, so the liquid brimmed right at the edge. He ducked forward to suck the first half-inch off the top, then picked up his glass and eased back on his wicker bench. It irked Walsh to no end that the bastard could make any seat, no matter how quaint, look like the coolest possible place to sit.

“The thing is,” he said, lifting a forefinger off his glass to aim at Walsh, “not a one of us has a leg to stand on when it comes to telling her what to do with her love life.”

Walsh regarded his can of sparkling water with extreme regret. He’d spotted an unopened bottle of Grey Goose in the freezer earlier, and it was taking a not-small amount of willpower not to go and fetch it. He sipped his La Croix, grimaced, and said, “Do you think I don’t know that?” He didn’t want to have this conversation with Fox, but Fox was the only one he could have it with, so, here he sat on the back deck of the Albany house, watching Cass playbeer pongwith her fiancé.

Christ.

“It makes sense, if you think about it,” Fox continued, unbothered. “All of us have daddy issues—”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Oh no. You hate him worse than anyone. You have themostdaddy issues.”

“Shut up. I’m leaving,” Walsh said, but didn’t move.

“Dad and I get along famously.”

“That’s because you have no soul.” And also, Walsh knew, because Fox was the one who actually loved the bastard. Loved him the most, anyway: Tenny was pretty damn attached at this point, and Cass, too, to a lesser extent. But like Raven, Walsh had watched her pull back over the years; had seen her carefully snip through some of those threads. All the little-girl love she’d once felt for Devin had been transformed and was now directed at Frank Shepherd.

Speaking of…the beer pong game came to an end, and Shep reeled Cass in by both hands to kiss her like nobody was watching.

“Ooh,” Fox said, flatly. “We might have to kill him.”

“Yeah,” Walsh agreed.

Cass, arms around Shep’s neck and standing up on her tiptoes, dropped back down, smiling so wide Walsh barely recognized her. Shep turned her around, patted her on the hip,and she went to join the women where they’d set up camp around one of the bonfires.

Shep headed for the porch.

“Cass will be angry,” Fox said. “But she’s young. She can find someone else.”

At the bottom of the porch steps, Shep paused, hand on the rail, and glanced back over his shoulder toward Cass, where she’d gone to perch on the arm of Raven’s Adirondack chair. Walsh wanted the look on his face to be proprietary, or predatory; a nasty leer, a pulse of personal satisfaction.

Instead, it was sickeningly fond.

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