Chapter Sixteen
James and Truman shifted at the same time and lunged at Cliff, blocking him from attacking Grant.
Taylor scrambled back out of the way as the three wolves circled each other, snarling and snapping.
“Cliff!” she shouted furiously.
He shook himself, froze where he stood, and shifted back into human form – stark naked now. James and Truman did the same.
“I swear to God, if you actually think I’m with Grant…” she snapped at him.
Cliff shot Grant an angry look. “No. I know you wouldn’t say yes to his pathetic attempts. But tell me he didn’t just attack you and try to force himself on you – or I will kill him right here on the spot.”
“Me? Force myself on a woman?” Grant looked amused. Anyone else would have been terrified.
Taylor shook her head. “He was preventing me from going after Jerrold. I just saw him bullying and terrorizing Leota and— I’m sorry.”
“You do realize that if you saw Jerrold, he meant for you to see it?” Cliff grated out. “Notice how she has no bruises on her face or anywhere visible? He’s very careful about how he abuses her. He’s trying to provoke you. I’m sorry. I know this is hard for you – it’s hard for all of us. The trials start day after tomorrow. We’ll be finished up before the full moon. And he’ll be dead.”
Taylor glanced at Grant. “You could have let me get in the middle of that and mess things up to the point where the Elders disqualified Cliff. But you helped your brother.”
Grant scowled at her. “Don’t ever accuse me of helping that walking turd-pile. I just don’t need Jerrold’s help to win. When I beat Cliff’s ass, it’s going to be done fair and square,” he said, and he turned and walked away.
Cliff still looked like a walking thundercloud about to shoot lightning bolts from his fingertips. Truman and James took one look at him and hurried off, leaving Taylor and Cliff alone.
“You still seem angry,” she said to Cliff.
He held up her cell phone. “Your ex-boyfriend has been texting you, and apparently he doesn’t realize he’s an ex. He’s talking to you like you’re his.” His voice shook with fury. “Saying he can’t wait to see you again.” His hand closed around the cell phone, and he squeezed it so hard it shattered.
“Hey!” she yelled furiously. “Damn it, Cliff! If Chantelle can’t reach me, she’s going to freak out and think that I’ve been kidnapped! You want her to go to the police? The media? I’m having a hard enough time stalling her as it is!”
He dropped the shattered cell phone, buried his face in his hands, and groaned. “I’m sorry. It’s just…the thought of you being with another man…it’s agonizing. It’s like being set on fire from the inside.”
“Joel slammed my head against a wall after I broke up with him, so hard it left a bump. Then he harassed me with phone calls and texts, then he came to my house and tried to kidnap me. I can assure you, I am not encouraging his attention.” Taylor’s tone was icy.
Cliff spat out a stream of curses. “Taylor, my God. I had no idea he’d ever laid a hand on you. I was under the impression that he’d just pestered you with a few calls after you left him. I’m really sorry. And I’m going to kill him.” He said that last part so casually that she almost missed it. Like he was saying he was going to go grab a cup of coffee. But he was talking about ending someone’s life.
She shook her head. “It’s okay. I don’t like to talk about it. And you don’t need to kill him. When he slammed me against the wall, I hit him back and broke his nose.”
“Yep.” His eyes gleamed with anger, and she felt a stab of alarm. She suspected that Cliff meant what he said. Should she try to stop him? Joel was an abusive dick, and God knew what he might do to some other woman, but still…
“Let’s hold off on that for now, shall we?” she said. “Maybe just have your people keep an eye on him, and if he tries to go after anyone else, then we’ll talk. In the meantime, you need to let me call Chantelle on your phone.”
He looked around for his pants, or what was left of them after his shift, and pulled his cell phone from his shredded pocket.
She dialed Chantelle.
“Hey, it’s me. Miss Butterfingers. Dropped my phone,” she said. “Feel free to call me back on this phone at any time. Day or night.” She shot Cliff a challenging look.
“Hey! I was just about to put out an APB on you,” Chantelle said. “You dropped your phone? You’ve never done that before. What’s going on?”
“Nothing, Miss Conspiracy Theorist. Take off the tinfoil hat; it’s not a good look on you.”
“You haven’t been home in days.” Chantelle’s voice was impatient. “My mother baked cookies and you didn’t come over. Cookies, Taylor. Chocolate. Chip. Cookies. Don’t try to tell me that’s normal behavior.”
Taylor forced herself to sound cheerful. “Hey, I just got fired, which means I have no job to report to, and now I’m taking a mini-vacation at a billionaire’s house. You got the product samples, right?”
“Yes, I did, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I really mean that. But I’m worried. I don’t know, I just have a weird feeling.”
“Chantelle, this is me. You’ve known me forever. If there were something wrong, I would tell you.”
“Not if you were being held prisoner with a gun to your head or a knife to your throat.”
“You’ve been watching too much Law and Order. Is that even rational? Why would a hot billionaire hold me prisoner?”
“He is pretty hot,” Chantelle conceded.
“Yes, he is. And I’m using him for sex. Lucky me.”
Cliff choked on a laugh.
“Come on,” Taylor continued. “Don’t I deserve to get lucky for once? I’ve been working at that horrible job, I had a nightmare of a boyfriend…maybe the universe is finally just throwing me a bone. Yes, the double entendre was on purpose. It’s a very large bone.”
Cliff’s smirk stretched wider.
“Let me talk to him.”
Before Taylor could object, Cliff grabbed the phone.
“Hello, this is Cliff,” he said. “Your friend is making me feel cheap and easy. I think she’s just using me for my body. Is she always like this?”
Taylor heard Chantelle laugh. Good move on Cliff’s part, being charming and funny. He could be that way when he wanted to.
But it didn’t dissuade Chantelle for long. She was too sharp for that. “Yes, she’s a man-eater, so watch your back and guard your heart. Now, I want to see my friend,” she said. “When, exactly, is Taylor coming back? You’re a busy billionaire, I can’t imagine that you have time to lie around in bed 24/7. No matter how sex-ay my BFF is.”
“Well, I was about to surprise her with a trip to Europe,” Cliff said.
“What?” Taylor and Chantelle cried out at the same time.
“But now you made me ruin the surprise,” Cliff finished. Wow, he was smooth. He’d just come up with an excuse that was good for at least a few weeks more.
“I haven’t said yes,” Taylor said loudly, and gave Cliff a dirty look.
She talked to Chantelle for a couple more minutes, then hung up.
Cliff frowned. “You shouldn’t have said that,” he said, looking annoyed. “I need to be able to give your friend a plausible reason why you won’t see her for a couple of weeks. You know how important pack security is.”
“And you know how much I hate feeling like a prisoner. By the way, I noticed that you only gave Chantelle three more months of treatment. You could have given her years and years’ worth. You did that so you’d still have leverage over me.”
He didn’t flinch from the terrible accusation. He nodded, his amber eyes fixed on hers. “Yes. I need to. Until I’m sure that you’re a member of this pack, and fully on board with protecting us and keeping our secret, I have no choice. We still don’t know how you turned.”
“You guys have done blood tests, which have come up inconclusive. You’ve examined me from head to toe; I don’t have a bite mark anywhere. You had James do his weird mind-mojo stuff on me and verified that I’m not some kind of spy from the government and I really have no idea how I got werewolfed. I’m not going to out you; aside from the fact that you know I don’t want to cause you harm, I would also be outing myself. Can you promise me I’ll be able to leave pack property after the full moon?”
He looked regretful. “I can’t absolutely swear…”
She bit back a curse, then turned and walked away, heading back to the house.
That afternoon, she sat with him for a few hours and let him talk her through her future shift – having her imagine it, showing her his shift several times, talking to her about the history of werewolves.
But that night, she insisted on sleeping in a separate bed. It was torture, she hated it…but she was also at a boiling point over feeling like a prisoner and having Cliff monitor her every move, phone call and text.
The next morning, they ate breakfast in the dining room. Meals were always a family-and-friends affair; the pack was very social. Serafina and her brothers were there, begging her to do the quarter trick again. She obliged. She’d been reading them stories at least once a day. When she finished reading, she noticed, Austin usually stepped in, teaching them to spar, and how to fight in wolf form as well. He was gruff and sarcastic, but he clearly adored them.
James and Anita, Anita’s sister Denise, Austin, Truman, Grant and Mandy were there as well, along with half a dozen other pack members, the servants in the background silently appearing every time her coffee cup or water glass was empty.
The tension between Cliff and Taylor was obvious. She’d barely spoken to him that morning. Her phone was shattered; she’d asked Cliff for another one the night before, and he’d mumbled something and made excuses, so she was struggling not to feel suffocated and controlled.
“Hey!” Denise said brightly. “Let’s take her shopping in town. Cliff, you can get stuff done and we can have a little girls’ morning out.”
“That sounds like fun,” Taylor said.
“I need you where I can keep an eye on you,” Cliff growled. Then he saw Taylor tense up.
“Fine,” he sighed. “I need Truman to go with you and keep an eye on you, though. Jerrold’s bound to try something. The trials start tomorrow. Come back here in an hour.”
Taylor raised an eyebrow. “So I’ll just have time to get there and then turn around and leave?”
It strained every cell in his body, crying out to keep her by his side. “Stay as long as you want. Well…be back in a few hours. I’d like to do some more work with you this afternoon, while I still have the time. Starting tomorrow, James and Anita will have to take over your training.”
He was rewarded by seeing Taylor smile, and he felt the coils of tension in his body loosen just a little.
“I’ll be careful,” she assured him. “Believe me, I really, really don’t want to give Jerrold any edge whatsoever.”
* * * * *
Downtown was crowded with families, shopping, eating at restaurants, strolling down the sidewalk, looking and acting totally human. Except there were two wolf cubs wrestling on the front steps of a pharmacy while a human woman yelled at them to knock it off. And there was a wolf climbing a low tree in one of the many mini-parks that were wedged between buildings. And the man walking by Taylor had tufts of fur on his ears.
“Something is troubling you,” Anita said to Taylor.
Taylor forced a smile. They’d been nice enough to invite her out, and she didn’t want to be a Debbie Downer. “Don’t worry about me.” Then she peered at Anita. “You look pale. Are you sick?”
Anita shook her head. “No. It’s very kind of you to ask. It’s the presence of Jerrold’s pack. The hostility and negative energy is making me ill. But truly, if you tell me what’s bothering you, it will make me feel better if I can help you.”
“A lot of things are troubling me. The fact that I’m not allowed to leave the property. The fact that Jerrold is allowed to beat his wife senseless and nobody stops him.”
Anita nodded. “Yes. Pack traditions can be stifling sometimes, but many of them are what has kept us alive and hidden throughout the centuries.”
“There’s got to be a way to get her away from him before the trials,” Taylor said, feeling frustrated. “Damn it, somebody here has to start thinking outside the box.”
“Who better than you?” Denise said. “You’re the outsider. Maybe there’s a solution and we’re all too close to see it.”
Across the street, Grant and Mandy were strolling together, looking in shop windows. Mandy was wearing painted-on blue jeans, heels, and a blue lace-edged tank top that displayed her assets admirably. She was staring at something in the window of a dress shop. Grant was checking out the ass of a sexy redhead who was sauntering past them.
Taylor frowned in thought. Maybe…
She waved at them. “Hey! Grant! I need to talk to you for a minute!” she yelled.
Grant and Mandy walked across the street. Grant almost tripped because he was still checking out the redhead’s butt.
“Grant,” she said. “I understand you’re the legal eagle here. An expert in the covenant and the pack rules.”
“True.” Grant nodded with a grin. “I’m amazing like that. Much better than Cliff. In fact, there’s a lot of areas where I—”
“I thought I was clear about the fact that we’re not doing this again,” Taylor cut him off, and Mandy stifled a laugh. “Anyway. As I was saying. We need to figure out a way to get Leota away from Jerrold until the Alpha Trials are over. If anyone can find a loophole, it’s you.”
“Hmm. If I do this, will you convince Cliff to drop out of the trials?”
“No.”
“Will you at least have sex with me?”
“No, but if you make a pass at me in front of your girlfriend one more time, I’m going to beat the snot out of you.” She said it with a pleasant smile on her face. Mandy threw back her head and laughed. Anita and Denise joined in. “That may not sound like much of a threat since it’s coming from little old me, but I dealt with a lot of bullying and abuse when I was younger. I learned how to defend myself. I still carry a lot of pent-up anger and frustration, and I would love an excuse to let it out.”
Grant cocked his head, looking at her questioningly. “Okay, so you’re asking me to help you out and offering me nothing in return, and also threatening me.”
“That about sums it up, yes.”
“Here’s a little newsflash. I’m a selfish, self-centered asshole. Ask Mandy if you don’t believe me.”
Mandy nodded. “He does not lie.”
“So why in hell would I do anything to help you when there’s nothing in it for me?”
She marched right up to him until she was almost pressing up against him, and boldly met his gaze. “Because there’s a woman who’s living in terror every minute of every day because she’s married to an abusive sociopath who delights in causing her pain. She might not survive past the trials; who knows what Jerrold will do to her at the end of the day if he’s lost a trial and needs a punching bag? And you may be the only person in the pack who can figure out a way to save her. So you’re going to do it because that’s what a decent person would do, and somewhere underneath that slick, fake exterior, I know there’s a decent human being lurking.”
She knew it because of the picture. Whoever he’d been in love with once, she was likely the only woman Grant had ever loved. Once upon a time, Grant had opened himself up enough to be hurt. He had a heart; he just guarded it really, really well these days.
“Well, that’s just terrible. You actually called me decent? I don’t think anyone’s ever insulted me like that before.” Grant tried to look offended.
“Don’t worry. You hide it really, really well. And Mandy, you’re coming with us.”
“What? Me? You want me to go with you?” Mandy looked utterly shocked.
“Yep. We’re going shopping. We’re going to enjoy some girl time. You need to be in a dickhead-free zone for a while.”
Mandy laughed and walked over to join them.
Grant shook his head. “Seriously. Okay, you offer me nothing, you threaten to beat my ass, you insult me by calling me – excuse me while I puke – decent, when in fact I am nothing but a platinum-plated asshole, and now you’re stealing my date? And you actually think I’m going to help you out with Leota?”
“I know you are,” Taylor said with satisfaction.
Grant shook his head and stalked off without so much as a backward glance.
Taylor’s smile faded and she felt worry twist deep inside. He’ll do it. He has to. He will do it. Won’t he?