He traveled all the time, too. How could he possibly be a good father for a little boy?
If his public persona was to be believed, he was a smug, entitled, obscenely wealthy ass.
But on the bright side, she hadn’t seen any indication that he’d ever hit a woman. Jennifer had claimed that Grant beat her, but then, Jennifer had lied about everyone and everything.
It was unlikely that someone as famous as him had been physically abusive and managed to sweep it under the rug.
But what would she do if Grant refused to step up to the plate? Then Jeffrey’s choices were the foster system – never in hell – or her.
What could she offer him? She had been on the run from her past since she was sixteen. She was a ghost. She literally lived out of her suitcase. She had no home address; she traveled around the country from job to job. She didn’t have a single friend.
Yeah, she was only twenty-five. In theory, maybe she could learn how to live like a normal human being. But she wasn’t going to practice on Jeffrey. He needed a home. Stability.
Her heart broke for him, and she had no idea what she was going to do now. CPS was probably looking for them.
So Grant might not be an abuser. But just as bad, she was afraid that he was indifferent. How could he not have responded to her messages telling him that he was a father? What man wouldn’t want to meet his son?
She left the restroom – which had two entrances. She deliberately went out the door in the back, because she was going to have to go hunt Grant down soon.
She made her way into a lounge, which was near the hallway she would need to use to get to his room. A crowd of people was there milling around. The mention of Grant’s name caught her attention.
A pretty, plump girl with brown hair was sipping a bottled water and talking to a skinny woman with blonde, spiky hair. They wore name-tags identifying them as Taylor, who was the brown-haired girl, and Chantelle.
Yasmine came hurrying into the room, scanning the crowd looking for Celeste. Fortunately there was a group of men between her and Yasmine, and they were all surprisingly large and burly.Allthe men here were unusually big and rugged.
“So apparently Mandy really is back with Grant,” Taylor said. “Can you believe it?”
Yasmine, who was walking by them, shot an angry glance at Taylor. Apparently this was bad news for her.
Celeste wasn’t surprised that Grant attracted that kind of attention. He might be a first-class jerk, but he was stunningly handsome. He towered over the dates she’d seen him photographed with, even the catwalk model types in Louboutin heels, and the exquisite, expensive-looking cut of the designer suits he wore couldn’t hide the swell and flex of the muscles in his arms and chest. A little shiver ran through her as she thought about those bedroom eyes, the color of top-shelf scotch, and that feral smile. She wondered if he’d be a good kisser…
She shook herself. What the hell was she thinking? He’d left Jeffrey to be raised by her flake of a sister, who shouldn’t have been allowed to look after a goldfish. Then he’d gone on with his flashy, love ’em and leave ’em lifestyle and never given Jeffrey another thought. Call Copernicus, because apparently the Solar System doesn’t revolve around the Sun, it revolves around Grant Bronson.
Chantelle shook her head. “I thought she’d given up on that stupid man-whore. Tell me, why do smart women date dumb werewolves?”
Wait,what?
Taylor sighed. “Honestly, I was starting to wonder if they were faking the relationship, but they broke the bed in his room last night. And they’re getting noise complaints because of their loud sex.”
“Noise complaints about sex? At a werewolf convention?” Chantelle squawked in amusement. “For God’s sake, this is boink city, here. I’ve never seen a bunch of hornier mofos. All these Alphas in one place, all these Alpha groupies who think they’re going to be an Alpha’s mate…”
Okay. Celeste needed to leave this room immediately.
She turned and walked away, making sure to stroll casually rather than run like hell for the door like she wanted to.
Werewolves.
All those weird headlines all over the country about werewolves. Jeffrey’s sharp, pointy teeth and his pointy ears. She could only pray he hadn’t left sharp wolfy tooth-marks in that CPS woman’s arm. He must not have, or she would have said something.
And now – she was listening to two women talk about werewolves as if it were a normal thing. That would explain why this meeting was happening in a private lodge deep in the woods.
If this was true, Jeffrey needed Grant more than ever. How could Celeste keep a werewolf cub safe?
She pushed her way through the crowd and stomped down the hallway, fingering the square of plastic she had in her pocket. It was a universal key card for hotel rooms. Highly illegal for her to own it – oops. It had also been illegal for her to hack into the lodge’s guest registry and find out what room Grant was in.
As she approached the door, she hesitated. There were the loud sounds of sex, screams of pleasure, and a bed thumping against the wall.
The hell with it. At least she knew Grant was there. He couldn’t exactly avoid talking to her now, could he?
