A Wolf After My Own Heart by MaryJanice Davidson (free romance novels TXT) 📗

permanent, like a family. Which was a deeply nutty thought to have about a man she’d just met. “Nuh-uh. I’m not. We established that during the lunch of betrayal.”

“Oh,” he replied quietly. “That.” And then he slipped out, leaving her irritated, glad, and sad, which added up to deeply, deeply confused.

“Goddammit,” she muttered, and punched her pillow.

* * *

“More! Please, please more?”

“Dev, I’ve got a pound and a half going already.”

“Did you read Oliver Twist? Please, Mama Mac, some more. Not gruel. Bacon.”

“There’s loads of it. Heaven’s sake.”

“You can never have too much bacon, Mama.”

“Not your call, boy.”

“Beg to disag—ow! I can’t believe the first thing you did in Lila’s kitchen was find her wooden spoons.”

“Not the first thing. Go wash up and—” Macropi turned away from the stove to smile at Lila, who was yawning in the doorway. “Oh, good morning, m’dear. Would you give Oz a shake? Eggs are almost up.”

“He can sleep through bacon wars?”

“He can sleep through anything.” Devoss grinned. “Rallies. Tornados. His own death… It’s a pretty long list.”

“Good to know,” she muttered as she trudged into the living room and beheld a site more terrifying than the woman in Room 2175. Oz was…sprawled, there wasn’t a better word for it. He filled up her couch by being…everywhere. He was a drooling, snoring tangle of long limbs and blankets. “Jesus. I heard the noise but assumed someone was mowing the garbage cans.”

Caro, meanwhile, had come up behind her, given her a nudge, and held up her pad: A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

“Ha!” When he didn’t stir, she added, “That didn’t even make him twitch.”

Waking Oz is like an exorcism: You need holy water and a couple of priests, and in the end, you’re driven to throw yourself out the window.

Lila laughed. “Damn, you write fast.” She reached down, found one of Oz’s big toes, tweaked it. “Hey. Wake up. There’s bacon and probably, I dunno, work? You’ve probably got work today? Since it’s a weekday?”

Nothing.

Toldja.

“You’re like my very own oracle,” Lila informed her. “A ridiculously pretty oracle with cheekbones someone could cut themselves on.”

Caro ducked her head, flustered, which made her look still younger. Lila had pegged her at around seventeen but decided to recalculate. She thought about the small black wolf she’d faced down the night before, about the fact that Caro was apparently a selective mute, and wondered what horrors the girl had survived.

None of which were her business.

She leaned in and said, “Hey! Deeply unconscious man on my couch! There’s bacon, and also, get up!”

“Whuh? Bacon? I’ll have some. Can I have some?” He blinked up at her, smiling sleepily. “Hey. I’m still dreamin’ ’bout you. Are we gonna—” He ran his fingers through his rumpled hair. “Finish? Is this round two? Which I’m.” He stared past her at Caro. “Fine with.” Looked back at her. Around the room. Caro. Then he sat up and yanked the blanket more securely over himself, doubtless shielding Caro’s tender eyeballs from his morning wood. “This is real.”

“Yep.”

“This is so real.”

“Real as rain. By the way, it’s raining.” Caro was already walking away, giggling. “I know this because I looked outside and not at my phone, because Macropi has a huge deal—”

“No!” From the kitchen. “I refuse to look at a telephone for a weather report when I’m in front of a window.”

“Okay, Macropi.”

“Not to mention it’s all of six steps to go outside! You don’t need your phone to tell you what the weather’s like ten feet from where you’re standing! I am desperately tired of having this conversation!”

“—about using phones as the Weather Channel,” Lila finished.

“Annnnnd that proves it. That was way too realistic. None of it was a dream,” he groaned, sitting up and scrubbing his face with his hands. “The fire. Everyone staying here. Sally’s dad. Your nightmare, of which we must never speak…”

“Yep.”

“…your couch, which smells like oranges.”

“I might’ve spilled some juice. Or lost an orange in the cushions.”

“Fuck.”

“Shush. Tender ears and all that.”

“They’ve heard worse.” Then, hopefully: “The bacon part was real, right?”

* * *

Just as Lila was unfolding an extra chair, there was a Sally-shaped blur as the child emerged from somewhere and jumped straight into Macropi’s arms, causing the older woman to stagger a bit before regaining her balance. “I know you! You’re Dev’s foster.”

“So I am, m’dear.” Macropi gave the little girl a squeeze and a smile. “And I’m glad to meet you, and so happy to see you’re all right. But you’ve caused my older kids no end of trouble with all this running away nonsense.”

Sally scrunched down and tucked her face into Macropi’s neck. “I know. But I had to listen to my daddy.”

“And we’re going to talk about that, but first you’re going to eat. Now back up and sit down over there. I don’t want you getting hit with bacon grease.”

“Hi, Lila!”

“Hi, Sally.” Lila guzzled a glass of chocolate milk. “How’d you sleep?” Devoss had gone to fetch her out of the basement so she could sleep in an actual bed, but Sally had made herself a nest beneath the basement stairs and was sound asleep, which Lila would have found charming except Sally used her three best blankets, fuck.

“Dunno.” Sally shrugged. “I closed my eyes and then it was morning. So, I guess…good? Even though it seems like I only slept for one second?”

“Gotta love REM sleep. Which I’ll explain to you after breakfast. Eat.”

She did. They all did, and Lila had real appreciation for Macropi’s bacon: crispy but not burned, as opposed to limp on the fork. She had less appreciation for the scrambled eggs, which had been desecrated with onions. Ketchup smothered the taste nicely.

“Annette’s on her way over,” Mama Mac informed everyone over a table that looked like it had endured a tsunami.

“Boo,” Oz replied, but there was no heat in it.

“And you.” Mama pointed her—well, Lila’s—spatula at him. “You should get dressed. We’ve got a long day and it’s already seven.”

“Gosh, half the day’s gone.”

“That’s