narrowed, my back straightened. He was just a guy, and it was just a bed. Rob would skin him and leave his hide on the fence to dry if he touched me without my permission. I had nothing to fear here.
“I’ll give you a hand,” I said.
I paused at the doorway. I’m about to boldly go where so many women have gone before… I thought, casting an eye over the room. It wasn’t quite the bachelor pad I thought it would be, a large heavy wood framed bed dominating the room, an old chair acting as a bedside table, with a phone charger, a lamp, and an old magazine sitting on top of it. His pillows and quilt lay in a messy sprawl across the bed, something he dislodged as he stripped the bed. I was momentarily transfixed by the way the muscles moved, revealed by his rolled-up sleeves, but when he shot me a quick amused look, I got moving, pulling the sheets off. We worked quickly to put the fresh ones on, my hands spending way too long in smoothing the cotton out, because when I stood up, there he was.
I found his expression completely foreign and needed a moment to work it out. He just looked at me across the bed, eyes scanning my body so closely, it was if I could feel them move across my skin.
“Shan…” he said.
“We have to go,” I replied, not wanting him to finish the sentence. “Rob’ll kill us if we stuff around here. I’ll put some food and water out for the dogs, in case we’re back late.”
He shook his head. “We won’t be home late. C’mon, then.”
Chapter 14
“Shan!” My head whipped around to see Jaz and Rita with Nicky, Eddie’s sister. “What’s going on? The phone’s been blowing up. Everyone’s been called in. Do y’know what for?”
“I dunno if I’m allowed to say,” I replied. We stood clustered on the outskirts of the big area out the back of Rob and Beth’s house. There were kids and adults everywhere, milling around. Some of the pack were helping the senior men that needed it to their seats, others strode through the crowds, the mass parting on automatic to let them through.
“This is big,” Rita said, scanning the group. “I dunno if I’ve ever seen this many people in one place.”
“The Clearys are here,” Nicky said. “They don’t come to any of these things. This is serious.”
“Jacob’s looking all right though,” Jaz said, nodding her head to one of the younger men who’d arrived, his family staying clustered on the outskirts.
“That’s enough of that,” Nicky shot back. “You’re spoken for now, stuck with my brother.”
“Stuck with? Pfft…” Jaz snorted. “If you knew what he did with his—”
Nicky slapped a hand over the girl’s face. “You do not want to finish that sentence. Especially with Mum and the aunties around.”
“Speaking of brothers and mums, how’s things going with Jai?” Rita asked me. Each of the girls turned to stare at me. I took one step back, making the three of them smile. They just kept on staring and smiling as I tried and failed to think of a way to describe what had been going on.
“Probably shouldn’t say too much. Mum’s heard you’re staying with Jai, and she’ll want a word,” Jaz said.
“What?”
“That’s the way it is, with pack men. Mums, aunties, they help all of us adjust, but let’s just say she wasn’t too happy to hear you were staying at his.” Mary Heller was a formidable woman. Unlike the girls, she had inherited her German grandmother’s stocky frame, but she was also bloody tall. My eyes flicked over Jaz’s shoulder to see the woman herself walking over.
“Shit! Your mum is scary as fuck,” I yelped.
Jaz’s hand slapped down on my arm. “Running won’t help you, Shan. Nothing gets away from Mum. I trampled her tomato patch when I was a kid, running away from Jai. I took off to Aunty Rose’s, up on the hill? Hid around her chook shed, hoping to avoid a belting. Just got three beltings when she caught up with me. One for the tomatoes, one for hiding from her, and one for not facing up to my problems. The more you run…”
I could see it then, in the girls’ smiles, their similarities to the men’s beasts. Their teeth glimmered in the low light as the sun set behind their heads, their smiles sly.
“That’s what I keep telling her.” A pair of masculine arms wrapped around