The Mane Squeeze (4 page)

Of course, no worries on that. Not with her so high up. And even if they found her, they’d never get her down from here. Even Brendon, cat that he was, couldn’t climb a tree.

Gwen rested her head on her folded arms and began to drift off to sleep.

“Comfortable?”

“Hmm,” she answered. She liked that voice. It was so low. She could imagine waking up to that voice every day, with it whispering that breakfast was ready or asking her if she wanted to share the shower. She could imagine all sorts of dirty things to be done with soap if that voice was involved. And yet…why was that dirty, sexy voice so close?

Gwen opened her eyes and blinked several times. His arms were folded on her tree limb the same way hers were and his head rested on them as he watched her with those beautiful brown eyes.

“Christ, how tall
are
you?”

He scowled. “It’s not that I’m so tall, Mr. Mittens, it’s that you’re not that high up.”

“Bullshit.” She had to be like, forty feet up. Maybe even fifty! Right? She glanced down.
Wrong
.

Still, she wasn’t exactly lying on the ground either. “You’re like seven feet tall, aren’t you?”

“I am
not
seven feet tall,” he snapped at her as if she’d really insulted him. “I’m six-eleven.” When she smirked in disbelief, he added, “And three-quarters.”

“And that quarter inch makes such a difference, too.”

“That’s it. I’m taking you back to the medical center.”

Like hell.

As the grizzly reached for her, Gwen unleashed her claws and quickly scrambled up higher. She knew for a fact that grizzlies couldn’t climb trees, either.
So there!
She was totally safe. She’d simply stay here until she healed up and then she’d head on back to the safety of her Philly streets.

“You’re being ridiculous,” he called up to her.

“I’m not going back there to die. I can do that just as well out here, in the fresh air.” With all her organs intact in her decaying body.

“If you go back to the medical center you’re not going to die.”

“Like I’ll believe that lie for two seconds.”

“And what about when the fever hits? You’re going to fall out of that tree eventually.”

Gwen couldn’t help but get kind of smug. “The O’Neills don’t get the fever.”

“Don’t even try it.”

“We don’t. My brother got shot three times two months ago, and he didn’t get the fever.”

“I bet your family gets shot at a lot, huh?”

“Hey, hey!” Gwen said excitedly. “Look at this! Look at this!” She extended her arm and gave him the finger.

“I should leave your Philly ass up there!” he snarled.

“Like I’d ever need help from some Jersey rich boy!”

“Look, Mr. Mittens—” and Gwen didn’t think she could explain how much she hated when he called her that “—either you get your ass down here or I’m getting you out of that tree the hard way.”

“You have an enormous head,” Gwen taunted, enjoying the way his entire body tensed. “It’s like a giant kumquat.” Then she giggled hysterically, liking the word “kumquat” way more than she should.

“You want it that way,” he said low, “you’ve got it.” He stepped back and pulled off the hospital scrubs he’d been wearing. She only had a moment to wonder why he was getting naked—and enjoying
that
astounding view for all it was worth—before he shifted to bear. His height increased considerably once he did, going from his nearly not-quite seven feet to a full ten, but she was still too high for him to reach.

Leaning over, she taunted, “Nice try but no—”

Gwen squealed, gripping the branch she was on. He didn’t try and climb up to her, he simply took firm hold of the old tree and began to shake it. Christ, how much did she guess he weighed as bear? Fifteen hundred pounds? Maybe more? And all of it pure muscle. With his claws gripping the trunk, he simply shoved the tree back and forth. It was an old tree—sturdy, strong, and disease free—but it still wasn’t strong enough to stand up to the grizzly, the roots beginning to tear from the ground as he relentlessly kept up his actions.

“Stop it!” Gwen yelped, but he ignored her.

The tree, loose from its anchor in the ground, swung forward, Gwen’s lower half flying free of the branch and dangling in midair. She yelped again, and the tree came swinging back. Her body already weak, her hands lost their grip on the tree and she went headfirst toward the ground.

She closed her eyes, not wanting to see that last second of her life. Yet the bear again showed how fast he was for his size, plucking her out of the air and pulling her in tight against his body. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her hands resting on the giant lump of muscle between his shoulder blades.

Gasping for breath, she clung to him, burying her face against his neck. She felt his fur recede, his body straightening as it shrunk down to its only slightly less freakishly tall height, while the dramatic hump between his shoulder blades grew smaller and smaller until she could only feel it as several extra layers of muscle. He began walking, briefly stopping to pick up the scrubs.

“I can’t go back,” she whispered against his neck, horrified she couldn’t stop the shaking of her body.

He stopped, the tree he’d taken her from crashing to the ground behind them, and gently asked, “What are you afraid of?”

“Dying.”

He stroked her side with his fingertips and she was surprised at how gentle his hands were. How gentle
he
was, considering he’d torn an eighty-year-old tree out of the ground and she’d told him he had a kumquat head.

“You’ll be fine.”

“You can’t promise that. They’re going to get me on that table and they’re going to start cutting me open and they’re going to—”

“Hey, hey.” He leaned back a bit, trying to catch a glimpse of her face. “Wait a minute. Where’s my tough Philly girl?”

“Dead, if you take me back there.”

“Do you really think I’d let anything happen to you? That I’d let anyone hurt you? After everything I’ve done today to keep you breathing?”

“I’ll be alone with those sadists and you’ll be in the waiting room.”

“I’ll stay with you.”

“They won’t let you.”

His smile was so warm and soft, she found herself wanting to trust him when she barely trusted anyone.

“Do you really think anybody can force me to do anything?”

“Another bear?”

“You’d have to find one who cares,” he whispered. “Most of us don’t. But we do keep our word. It’s the MacRyrie bear way.”

“You promise you won’t leave me?”

“I promise.”

With her free hand, she clutched his shoulder with what was left of her strength. “Tell me something about yourself. So I know I can trust you.”

“Um…I was a Marine.”

“No. Not that. Something else. Something…just about you.”

“I do a little woodworking.”

“Like birdhouses? Whittling?”

“Okay.”

“And what else? Tell me something private. Something no one else knows.”

He thought a moment before he lifted her closer and Gwen couldn’t believe how good his skin felt dragging against hers. Whispering against her ear, he confessed, “When I’m really stressed out…I play with my toes.”

Gwen leaned back a bit and stared at him. “Seriously?”

“It’s really relaxing and very bearlike.”

And very weird. And yet…“I’m oddly comforted by this information.”

“When this is all over, I’ll show you how to do it.”

She gave a little laugh, her eyelids trying to close. “There’s a specific way to do it?”

“If you want maximum benefit.”

“Oh. Well, then…”

“I’m going to take you back now, okay?”

She tensed up but she could no longer fight her desire to sleep. “But you won’t leave me?”

“I promise.”

“And you won’t let them kill me or remove any of my vital, healthy organs to sell on the black market? Or exchange my vital, healthy organs with crappy, full-human ones?”

“Not a chance.”

“Okay.” She snuggled in closer, her nose against his neck, breathing in his scent. “I have your word?”

“You have my word.”

“’Cause where I come from, your word means something.”

“And you’ve got it. I won’t leave you, Gwen. I promise.”

“And you’ll stop calling me Mr. Mittens.”

“Let’s not ask for the world, okay?”

And even as she felt him taking her back to that death trap, she still managed to smile.

T
he doctor wasn’t remotely happy that Lock wouldn’t leave, but once he started tossing his sister’s name around, she backed off. As the top neurosurgeon at McMillian Presbyterian in Manhattan, Dr. Iona MacRyrie’s name held definite clout, and Lock wasn’t above using it when necessary.

The surgery went well, but the damage to Gwen’s leg went beyond typical Pack harassment. There’d been real intent behind that wound and, although the unknown She-wolf may have made Blayne her first target, it had been Gwen who had really set her off. Maybe it was the cat-dog thing, Lock didn’t know or care. He simply knew that no matter how much that idiot lion glared at him from behind the glass of the operating room doors, he wasn’t leaving.

Maybe Gwen was being irrational—okay, she
was
being irrational—it didn’t matter. He’d made a promise, given his word, and he hadn’t been joking. MacRyries kept their word. That had been drummed into him by his uncles since he was a kid. They’d felt the need to help raise Lock because, to quote them, “Your father’s kind of a pansy, know-it-all. You’ll need us to give you the basics about life.” At five, he didn’t know what they’d meant, but by his early teens he understood that “pansy, know-it-all” translated into “college-educated.” And his father’s position as a highly respected university professor of literature and philosophy? Simply a fancy way of saying, “no real job.”

Strange thing was, they didn’t feel the same way about Lock’s mother. “Your father’s saving grace” was what they called Alla Baranova-MacRyrie, Ph.D. Although a third-generation Russian-American, Alla was a direct descendent of the Kamchatka grizzlies of the Russian Far East. Tougher shifters one would never meet. There was only a small group of them in the States, but their bloodline was well-known and they were more feared than the Kodiaks.

In the end, though, none of that mattered to either of his parents. They were intellectuals and raised their children to be as well. Iona turned out perfectly. Brilliant, pretty, and married with three cubs, she was in medical school before she was old enough to legally drink. And only recently turning thirty-five, she was head of her entire department.

Lock, however, was pretty much…average. He didn’t need a lot to make him happy. Fresh salmon, imported honey, and doorways that he could clear without having to duck usually did it for him.

“I think she’s starting to wake up,” the nurse said.

Lock stood and walked over to Gwen’s bed. She was covered from neck to legs by a blanket, but he discovered when he pushed her hair off her forehead that she was cool to the touch.

“No fever.”

“Yeah. That’s what her friend said would happen.” The nurse talked while quickly and expertly cleaning up the operating room. “Her Pride doesn’t get the fever. Weird, huh?”

Things could be weirder.

“Gwen?” he called out softly when he saw her eyelids flutter. “Gwenie?” Her head rolled to one side. “Mr. Mittens?”

Her lip curled up as she snarled and her head rolled back so she could open her eyes and glare at him. “Stop calling me that,” she whispered.

“But you’re as cute as a Mr. Mittens,” he teased. “Like a little house cat.”

“Bastard,” she mumbled, her eyes closing again. Then she was out.

“Is she supposed to drop like that?”

The nurse glanced at her and went back to her work. “It’s normal for her, according to her friend.” And typical that only the nurses listened to the helpful friend while the doctor almost got choked to death because she thought she knew better. “They really need to do more research on hybrids. Less chance of the doctors getting their throats torn out if we knew what we were dealing with.”

“Uh-huh,” Lock muttered, his gaze stuck on Gwen’s face. She was so pale. He was glad he’d decided to stay and—

“Excuse me?”

Lock glanced over at the double doors leading in and out of the recovery room. He scowled. “You must be kidding.”

The polar grinned and motioned to the hallway with a twitch of his head before disappearing outside. Lock looked back at Gwen, brushed stray hairs off her cheek and out of her eyes before he sighed and followed.

Lock knew the polar. Everyone called him “Toots.” He’d been born and raised in Macon River Falls, New Jersey, and like everyone else in his family, he’d stayed on to become one of the Macon River Falls Rangers. Part peace officer, part animal-park ranger.

Stopping in front of him, Lock crossed his arms over his chest. “That big-haired bastard called the cops?”

“You didn’t expect him to take you on himself, did you?”

“Yeah, he might crack a claw.”

Toots laughed. Like most polars, he had a healthy sense of humor and white-brown hair. He was also a good eight inches taller than Lock and quite a bit wider, since the polars had a tendency to stay closer to their bear size in human form than the grizzlies did, which was one of the reasons more polars were found in smaller, out-of-the-way towns like Macon River than in big cities like New York or Boston, where they would receive more attention than they wanted.

“Personally, I’m thinking that hot little She-wolf stepped in to prevent it.”

Hot, huh?
“Her feet are as big as yours.”

“The bigger the feet, the bigger the tits.”

Never a big fan of “guy talk,” Lock shook his head and said, “I promised her I’d stay.”

“The She-wolf?”

“No.” He motioned to the recovery room. “The tigon.”

“Wow. Got a tigon in there and a wolfdog out there. Two hybrids in one weekend—that’s gotta be a record for us.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Yeah, ya are. Or I can arrest your dumb ass and you can enjoy some time in our lovely jail.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Part of my job is preventing anything from happening as much as it is to fix things when they do happen. You don’t leave, that cat goes postal, you slap him around, the She-wolf calls her itty-bitty friends and, like the dogs they are, they come running. You’ll slap them around. At that point, I’m back out here because the doc’s called me to get you off the property. Or, you can leave with me now and everybody’s happy and breathing.”

“Everybody’s happy but me.”

“Sacrifices have to be made, and we know that lion ain’t makin’ any if he can help it.” Toots winked at him, motioned to the exit door. “Come on, shorty. Let’s go. You can seethe all the way back to Van Holtz territory.”

“Gee, thanks.”

How did he let this happen? He’d promised Mitch he’d take care of Gwen. One weekend out, and she’d been assaulted by interloping wolves and mooned over by that imbecile bear.

Talk about dropping the ball.

Blayne stormed back into the waiting room. At five-eleven, she was a good three inches taller than Gwen, but both hybrids were still pretty small as human compared to most of the breeds they were mixed with.

“You called the cops?” Blayne accused and Brendon could only stare at her.

“What?”

“You called the cops on the bear! I was standing out front and I saw them driving away in the Ranger’s SUV.”

Not sure what she was talking about, but not in the mood to get into a fight with a woman who would happily have a verbal argument with lint, Bren could only shrug. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It was me,” Ronnie cut in and they both looked at her.

“I’m sorry, darlin’,” Ronnie said simply, “but he needed to go.”

“Why?” Blayne demanded, looking surprisingly angry over a bear she didn’t even know.

“Because he didn’t need to be here.” Ronnie’s voice was calm and very controlled, which Bren knew was not a good thing. Happy and sunny equaled good. Calm and controlled equaled wolfdog without her head.

“I don’t think that was your decision to make,” Blayne practically snarled.

“And I think you should suck my—”

“Why don’t you check on Gwen,” Bren quickly cut in, grabbing Ronnie’s hand and intertwining their fingers before she could finish that particular sentence. “She’ll be waking up soon.”

With a loud and rather dramatic sigh, the wolfdog stormed off, and Bren kissed the back of Ronnie’s knuckles. “Thanks.”

Ronnie’s bubbling anger slipped away and she smiled at Bren. “Gwen will be okay.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And there’s no need to call Mitch about this.”

He winced. “Are you sure?”

“You wanna see that little mixed-breed feline really mad at you, Brendon Shaw? You just call her brother back here over something like this. Take it from a ‘baby sister’ who knows. You leave that boy right where he is and let us take care of Gwenie.”

He nodded and pulled Ronnie over until she sat on his lap. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

She kissed his cheek and put her arms around his shoulders. “I’m glad, too. Did you see the claws on that bear? And he was aiming right for your pretty face, too!”

Gwen opened her eyes and snorted.
Figures
.

“What?” Blayne asked, staring down at her.

Blayne
was staring down at her. Not a handsome bear. But Blayne. She loved Blayne…but Blayne wasn’t the bear. The bear who’d made a promise. Gave his word!

See? She couldn’t rely on anyone but herself, her family, and Blayne. Crazy, never-knew-when-she-would-snap, anger-management-classes-are-her-friend Blayne. Anyone else—
not
to be trusted.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Gwen lied.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure. So can I leave?”

“Brendon’s signing you out now. You can’t walk on that leg for at least four hours, so he’s going to have to carry you. Or Smitty.” Blayne’s lips pursed. “The Pack’s here, too.”

Gwen didn’t ask why the Smith Pack was here because she already knew. Ronnie Lee called one of them and said in that annoying country twang, “No, no. I don’t need nothin’. I’ll be fine. Y’all don’t worry ’bout me none.” And the dogs ran over like Ronnie was being locked into an Animal Control van.

“Whatever,” Gwen sighed. Because really…would it have killed the bear to have stuck around at least until she woke up? At least until he knew she wasn’t about to become another victim of body-part theft? Apparently it would have, because he wasn’t here. Like he’d promised!

As Gwen always suspected, male bears were no different from any of the other breeds. All males were born liars. Every last one of them. And why the hell did she care so much that he hadn’t stayed and she felt moments from pouting?

It must be the medication. That was the only thing that made sense. All those stupid meds flowing through her body were making her an emotional wreck.

Brendon walked in. “All right. Let’s get out of here.”

Blayne slipped her arm under Gwen’s shoulders to help her sit up.

“I’ve got her.” Brendon waited until Blayne stepped aside and then easily scooped Gwen up in his arms.

“You don’t need to carry me like I’m an infant.”

And proving how much like Mitch Shaw he really was, Brendon cried out dramatically,
“Would it kill you to let me help you?”

Blowing out a sigh, Gwen looked at Blayne and Blayne looked down at the floor, her shoulders shaking from laughter.

“No, Bren. That’s fine.”

He smiled, happy he’d gotten his way. “Thank you.”

Ulrich Van Holtz continued to read the latest tome on world economics, pretending to be bored, but in truth absolutely fascinated!

He loved weekends like this. Weekends without his father, Alder, or brother in attendance because if there was one thing that pair knew how to do really well was ruin a relaxing weekend among family.

But instead of enduring the presence of those two, Ric was instead getting a few days of downtime with his favorite cousins, a few hours on his own to read a dry, detailed exploration on failing economics, and a chance to watch his best friend storm into the house, slam the door behind him, and make all Ric’s lounging cousins disappear in the face of that grizzly boar-rage.

Awesome.

Lock MacRyrie stalked by the living room entryway wearing hospital scrubs, a scowl, and a series of fresh bruises on his face and neck.

“Lock?”

The grizzly walked back and stood in the archway. “What?”

“Should I ask what happened to your face?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he growled before storming off again.

Placing his book on the table, Ric followed his friend. When the grizzly started to head out a back door, Ric caught his arm and led him toward the kitchen.

Adelle Van Holtz, his father’s first cousin but mature enough that Ric always referred to her as Aunt Adelle, glanced up from whatever she was mixing for tonight’s dessert. Her mouth dropped open in shock when she saw Lock.

“Lachlan!” She put down her mixing bowl and rushed to him. “My poor baby. What happened to you?”

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered and Adelle pulled him toward one of the stools by the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from one of the smaller dining areas.