will motivate a man to talk.
His hesitance had been understandable. Revealing that my father had been murdered when I was eight years old, rather than dying in a car accident as I had been led to believe, was pretty damning stuff. Particularly since Mark had been there the night it went down and had facilitated the cover-up after his death. Admittedly, “Local Salesman Gored by Bloodthirsty Werewolves Set to Destroy Infant Heir” would have made a much more awkward headline.
“We?” Mark challenged. “What we? As I remember, you were slouching at a roulette table in Monte Carlo with a blonde 800 years your junior at the time. Had there been a we, I might not have had to do what I did.”
“What you did was save the child,” Joseph said, half yawning. “What more could be expected?”
“Turning an infant into a werewolf is an abomination,” Mark growled.
Joseph looked at his son with a mix of confusion and amusement. “He’s no longer an heir. Not now that his blood is no longer pure. That fact alone redoubles his safety.”
“Few of our kind are so discerning,” Mark said. “Should any of them learn he is still alive—” At this, he cast a meaningful glance at me.
I resented the ocular implications of mistrust.
He had forbidden me from revealing anything I knew to anyone, my brother included. Trouble is, my brother, Steven Franke, worked as one of the resident artists in Mark’s gallery, and in the short time we’d known each other, we’d been through a lion’s share of bonding scrapes. I saw him every day, loved him already, and yet, I could say nothing.
I hated Mark for asking this of me as much as I loved him for keeping my brother safe.
“You haven’t told him?” Joseph asked. “He doesn’t know he has a sister? And the mother? She doesn’t know her son lived? Mark, you can’t do this. You can’t ask this of Hanna. The boy has a right to know who he is.”
“I know, right?” I interjected. “Only he isn’t so much a boy as he is a weird Peter Pan-like ageless eternal teenager.”
Mark’s jaw ticked. A vein rose in his temple and pulsed.
Battle stations! shouted the little voice in my head.
“I ask what I must ask.” Mark’s voice had taken on that particular bowel-loosening timbre somewhere between a whisper and rasp. “What I do, I do for their safety. Who are you to question me? You who failed to keep even your wife—”
A blur, a brief whiff of wool, and Joseph’s hand was at Mark’s throat.
It was only the second time I’d seen Abernathy surprised. But then, Theo Van Gogh was a hell of a bluffer.
“You will not speak her name.” Joseph said through clenched teeth. “You know nothing of what happened.”
“I know enough,” Mark choked, the bones of his knuckles white as a fish belly as he gripped his father’s tanned wrist.
Seizing the moment, I wedged myself between the two muscly, testosterone-twitching male bodies and push a hand against each of their broad chests.
“Okay alphas,” I said. “I think we need a time-out.”
Standing between them felt like being in a sauna, heat blasting me as they verily shot steam from their nostrils.
“Joseph,” I said. “Why don’t I give you a tour of the gallery? I’m sure your son has plenty to do. Isn’t that right, Mark?”
Saying his first name aloud still felt like pilfering a dark chocolate truffle from my mother’s forbidden stash. I’d melted into it sometime after our flurry of naked near misses.
Anticipating Abernathy’s oncoming objection, I fixed him with my best steely-eyed German hausfrau glare. Miracle of miracles, it worked.
Barely.
He took a single step backward, his shoulders still squared, his fists clenched.
Deciding this was my only shot, I laced my arm through Joseph’s and tugged him toward the office door. Only, he wouldn’t be tugged.
Time for plan B.
Leaning into him, I allowed my breast to brush his arm as I tried to achieve just the right mix of playful and sex-kitteny. “Come on, you.”
A familiar grin slid across Joseph’s lips. I’d seen it on a face very like his on a couple lucky occasions. “With such pleasant insistence,” he said, “how could I resist?”
“First stop, Mission Control.” I felt like a flight attendant, all contrived gestures and shiny teeth as we exited Abernathy’s office and approached my desk. “This is where I take care of all the administrative details that keep this place humming. When I’m not making futile attempts at trying to keep your son organized