Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1)(76)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"I’ve been giving him a really hard time at school," Tony said, once we were alone. "But he can take care of himself."

"I really do need to get home," I told him. "What did you need?"

He lifted up one hip and pulled a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket. "That kid you had helping you," he said. "I’ve got some more information on him."

I took the paper and unfolded it. It was a grainy black-and-white picture of Mac with ‘MISSING’ written across the top in capital letters. It gave his vital statistics-he had been sixteen-but gave no more information.

"Alan MacKenzie Frazier," I read.

"They traced him here from a phone call he made to his family last week."

I nodded, handing the paper back and continued to lie to Tony with the truth. "He asked if he could make a long-distance call the last day he was here-a week ago today. He worked all that day, but I haven’t seen him since."

I’d talked to Bran about Mac. He said he’d see to it that a hiker would find Mac’s remains in the spring so that his parents wouldn’t have to wait by the phone forever. It wasn’t much, but it was the best I could do.

It took some scrambling and a fair bit of help, but I managed to be dressed, clean, and beautiful for dinner with Adam and Jesse. Which turned out to be dinner with just Adam because Jesse told him she wasn’t feeling well. He left her home watching a movie with Darryl and Auriele because Warren was out on a date with Kyle.

Under the mellowing influence of good food and good music, Adam relaxed, and I discovered that underneath that overbearing, hot-tempered Alpha disguise he usually wore was a charming, overbearing, hot-tempered man. He seemed to enjoy finding out that I was as stubborn and disrespectful of authority as he’d always suspected.

He ordered dessert without consulting me. I’d have been angrier, but it was something I could never have ordered for myself: chocolate, caramel, nuts, ice cream, real whipped cream, and cake so rich it might as well have been a brownie.

"So," he said, as I finished the last bit, "I’m forgiven?"

"You are arrogant and overstep your bounds," I told him, pointing my cleaned fork at him.

"I try," he said with false modesty. Then his eyes darkened and he reached across the little table and ran his thumb over my bottom lip. He watched me as he licked the caramel from his skin.

I thumped my hands down on the table and leaned forward. "That is not fair. I’ll eat your dessert and like it-but you can’t use sex to keep me from getting mad."

He laughed, one of those soft laughs that start in the belly and rise up through the chest: a relaxed, happy sort of laugh.

To change the subject, because matters were heating up faster than I was comfortable with, I said, "So, Bran tells me that he ordered you to keep an eye out for me."

He stopped laughing and raised both his eyebrows. "Yes. Now ask me if I was watching you for Bran."

It was a trick question. I could see the amusement in his eyes. I hesitated, but decided I wanted to know anyway. "Okay, I’ll bite. Were you watching me for Bran?"

"Honey," he drawled, pulling on his Southern roots. "When a wolf watches a lamb, he’s not thinking about the lamb’s mommy."

I grinned. I couldn’t help it. The idea of Bran as a lamb’s mommy was too funny. "I’m not much of a lamb," I said.

He just smiled.

Time to change the subject again, I thought, taking a quick sip of ice water. "Warren tells me you’ve accepted our favorite serial ra**st as a permanent member of the pack."

"He wasn’t responsible for the rapes in London."

He sounded certain, which meant that he’d asked Ben for the truth and gotten it. Still, I could hear the irritation in his voice and I couldn’t help but push a little bit more. "They stopped when he left."

"He came to the rescue twice, and the second time it was only chance that he intercepted a tranquilizer rather than a bullet. Gerry’s men carried silver ammunition," he snapped impatiently.

I smiled at him and he balled up his napkin in disgust. "Point to you," he said.

"I bet you wouldn’t let him date Jesse," I told him smugly.

When he drove me home, he got out of the car and walked around to open the door for me. Maybe it was because I couldn’t open the door with my broken arm, but I thought it might be the kind of thing that he always did.

He walked me to my front porch and cupped his hands around my face. He stood there for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder and up at the moon, which was nearly full. When he turned back, his eyes had yellow streaks running through the brown.

His lips were soft as they feathered over mine tentatively until I leaned against the pressure of his hands, trying to get closer. Then he laughed, a low, chest-deep sound, and really kissed me.

With my broken arm strapped between us, there was no body language involved, just mouth and hands. He wore cologne. Something rich and subtle that blended with his exotic scent.

When he drew away from me, I left my hand on his cheek, enjoying the faint scratchiness of his beard and the pounding of my heart. Silence grew between us, silence and something tentative and new.

Then the door opened and my new roommate looked out with a grin. "Hey, guys, are you through yet? I made some hot cocoa because I figured Mercy wasn’t wearing much-but I guess you took care of any chill from the weather."

Samuel had been savage when I came home from the garage and told him that I was going out to dinner with Adam. I’d had to remind him forcefully that he had no claim on me, not anymore. He was staying with me until he could find an apartment of his own, and that didn’t give him the right to dictate who I went to dinner with.

If I’d realized that it was going to be a real date, I’d have been kinder. I knew that Samuel was still interested in me-and part of me still loved him.

When Jesse the Matchmaker called me to tell me that her father was on his way over, and not to worry about her because she was just fine, Samuel’d stalked off to sulk in his room, the bigger of my spare bedrooms. But when I’d started trying to put on my dress, he barged into my room to help. I could have done it myself. I wasn’t making pained noises, no matter what he said. But, I had to admit, maneuvering clothes, the myriad of mysterious, but businesslike, Velcro straps that grew off the brace the hospital doctor had given me to keep my arm immobilized, and my broken arm was easier with three hands rather than only one.

He hadn’t been happy when I left, but I refused to let guilt decide who I would date. I don’t play games with people I care about, and I won’t let them play games with me. I promised him that I wouldn’t have sex with Adam any more than I’d have sex with Samuel. Not until I knew what I felt and what they felt. But that was as far as I was willing to go.