“I’m fine.Just sore,” Ryan murmured, not getting up from the sofa which was unlike him, and telling of how battered he still was.“You’ll have to forgive the lack of a kiss.”
She blinked, but her jaw tensed.“For you to be in one piece, I’ll forgive a lot.”Her gaze cut to the other people in the room, and at the sight of Bailey, her nostrils flared.“Who’s this?”
“A uniform who attended the explosion.He was one of the first on the scene.”
“He’s Wolf,” came the flat response.
“My ears might be ringing, mother, but my nose still works over the scent of explosives.I’m well aware what he is, and he’s well aware that he’s filling in for my regulars.”He shot Bailey a look.“But, if he does well, then I’ll keep him on retainer.I don’t have enough Shifters I can call on in the PD, and he’s aware of the situation.”
She sniffed.“You can’t trust Wolves.”
“And I’m sure they say the exact same thing about us,” Marc said calmly, heading over to her to anoint her cheeks with a kiss.
There was an irony to the fact he’d known Leilani a long time, but, in all those years of friendship, he’d never met her son.They hadn’t been close friends, more like acquaintances because she was very high maintenance, but still… the Fates could be bitches sometimes.
Leilani tilted her head to better accept his kiss, then her head whipped around.“What is that?”
It was a tone reserved for venomous snakes that happened to appear out of nowhere.
El had shuffled in place, and Marc wished he could wind back the clock just ten minutes so that he could shepherd his mate upstairs and out of Leilani’s crosshairs.
“She’s my mate,” Ryan said blandly, as well as bluntly.
Marc could sense he wasn’t in the mood to fight, and that Leilani was going to get nowhere if she wanted to butt heads.
Marc rubbed his jaw, and apparently on the same wavelength, murmured, “Leilani, there are times to pick your battles.Now is one of them.”
The older woman’s eyes flared with irritation at being set down in front of, Marc had no doubt, Bailey.Just as the thought crossed his mind, she cut the young male a look and glowered at him.
With a sniff, she turned back to her son and glowered at the Pantera in the room.She pointed.“You haven’t heard the last of this, son.”
“That comes as no surprise, Mother,” Ryan said wearily.“Your rooms are always ready here if you wish to stay.”
“Of course, I wish to stay.Your father will be here shortly.”She sniffed again, tilted her chin up, but her eyes were deadly and the pupils were pinpricks as she glanced over El once more.“I’ll wait in my room until you’re ready to talk about…that.”
“I can’t wait,” was all Ryan said as Leilani strode off, her shoulders straight but her every pore throbbing with her displeasure at the situation.
The three of them looked at one another, knowing just how much of a pain in the ass Leilani could be.Then, Shawn blurted out, “She’s a piece of work,” and like that, even though it made no sense, they burst out laughing.
Mother, it felt damn good to laugh.
Laughter might not always be the best medicine, but it sure as shit was the greatest way to break the ice.And considering the Arctic Circle had just walked in in the form of Leilani, they needed all the help they could get.
At yet anotherargument between mother and son, El decided enough was enough.
She’d heard more goddamn yelling over the last four days than she’d heard in a childhood of living in the Forsythe-Drew household.And that was saying something.
Her parents, while they’d never divorce, weren’t exactly proof that happy marriages existed.
And hell, she was also living proof that her father had cheated at some point.
So yeah, she had a great familial background.Not.But even so, the yelling between Ryan and her mother-in-law was getting so bad, her head was throbbing in a continual ache.
She was inches away from a migraine.
El closed her eyes as she slipped out of the balcony just off her room, and with a grace that had failed her the last three decades, used the wrought iron to climb over the side of the wall, then clinging to the curlicues, descended as far as she could before jumping and dropping to the ground.
Yeah, the move stunned her too.
