The truck, a three-quarter-ton Dodge Ram, as clean on the inside as it was dusty on the outside—that was Owen’s. I hadn’t seen this particular model, but it was close enough to the last one to make me smile. Owen was a frustrated cowboy at heart, and only he would drive a work truck.
Marc led me through the front door and into the foyer, where I turned left out of habit, surprised to find the kitchen dark and empty. Huh. Usually all the guys hung out around the tiled peninsula, snacking and talking over one another with full mouths.
“Go wait in the office,” Marc said, pointing the way as if I could possibly have forgotten. “I’ll tell your father we’re here.”
That wasn’t necessary, of course, because just as I could hear them speaking in whispers in one of the back bedrooms, I knew they could hear us. They’d probably heard the car from a mile away.
I considered arguing with Marc but couldn’t think of a good reason, so I complied. See? I could play nice when I wanted to. I just didn’t want to very often.
My shoes squeaked as I walked across the kitchen tile to the dining room, and back into the foyer. To my left, across from the front door, was a long straight hallway, dividing the house in half and ending at the back door. In front of me was my father’s office.
I crossed the hall and entered my father’s haven, savoring the darkness of a room with no windows. The air smelled like my father, like leather furniture, polished wood, and expensive coffee. To my right was a sitting area arranged around a rectangular rug: a love seat across from a couch, with Daddy’s armchair at one end, facing them both. In one corner sat a massive oak desk, covered—though not cluttered—in neat stacks of paper, notebooks and ledgers, arranged at perfect ninety-degree angles.
On one side of the desk, its flat-screen monitor turned toward the desk chair, was a state-of-the-art computer, equipped with the latest in drafting software. On the other side sat an antique lamp with a pewter base. I turned the knob on the base, and soft light washed over the room, leaving the corners thick with shadows.
Behind the desk, the glass display cabinet caught my eye, and I moved forward to examine it. My mother had ordered it for my father, to showcase his awards. I opened the right-hand door and flipped a tiny hidden switch on the end of the last shelf. Fluorescent light flickered to life inside the case, and I closed the door, pressing gently until I heard the latch click.
Each shelf was lit from above, so that the trophies and plaques shined, the words glaring almost too brightly to be read. Most were in appreciation of his charity work, but those on the top shelf were in recognition of his buildings, his best ones. My father’s buildings graced the skylines of five different U. S. cities, and in my opinion—admittedly biased—they improved the view from every angle.
Wood creaked behind me. I froze, trying to interpret the blurred reflection in the glass. Another creak as he came closer, and I smiled, in recognition and in breathless anticipation.
“You still have the sweetest ass this side of the Rio Grande.” Hot breath caressed my neck, and lips brushed my earlobe.
I spun around to find my body pinned between the glass case and someone tall, hard and tauntingly masculine. Jace. I inhaled his scent. Bar soap, fabric softener, and something meaty, maybe beef jerky. But under those was something more, something wild, and pungent, that woke up my instincts and made my heartbeat echo in my throat. It made me crave things my human form couldn’t accommodate, things my brain couldn’t even articulate, but my heart and my nose recognized instantly.
I tilted my face up to look at him. “What about the other side?”
He grinned, showing two rows of perfect white teeth, framed by lips that would have been wasted on mere speech. “I’ve never been south of the river, but I bet you could hold your own down there, too.” Jace bent his face toward my ear. I closed my eyes as he sniffed the length of my neck, trailing the tip of his tongue along my skin as he came back up. I shivered and gasped, and he responded with a moan as he pressed his hips against mine, nipping the flesh at the base of my neck.
“Get off my sister.”
Jace hissed in my ear, and cool air brushed my stomach where his body had been a second earlier. I opened my eyes. My brother Michael stood in front of me, holding Jace at arm’s length by the back of his neck.
“I was only saying hello,” Jace purred, his lazy smile still aimed at me.
“Do it without your tongue.” Michael enunciated each word carefully and slowly to make sure he was understood. He shoved Jace to one side, a little too hard to be playful.Jace stumbled, catching himself on the edge of Daddy’s desk. “If I were Marc you’d let me greet her properly,” he said, a hint of resentment in his voice.
“There was nothing proper about that.” Michael frowned, but I glimpsed amusement behind his stern, I-mean-business face. “And if you were Marc, she’d have tossed you off herself. But you’re not Marc.”
“If I were, she wouldn’t have left us in the first place.” He turned his back on us both, slinking to the door with a fluid grace no human could have duplicated.
I blushed, thinking of the carnal promise in his casual words. No one else would have gotten away with such a comment, much less the intimate greeting, but I took a lot from Jace that would have lost anyone else an ear. Or worse. Jace got away with it because I secretly suspected he was right, that his body could really do what his teasing kisses and caresses hinted at. And because he’d never really tried. Our relationship had always been fundamentally platonic, a safe zone for playful flirting, which Michael either couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.
High heels clicked briskly on the tiles in the hallway, and I turned toward the door, steeling myself to face my mother. She stepped into the office, pausing for effect in the doorway as she spread her arms in greeting. “Faythe, we’re so glad to finally have you home.” As if I’d returned for a friendly visit, instead of for a command appearance.
My mother looked exactly as I remembered, down to her gray pageboy and charcoal-colored slacks. She had a closet full of them, hanging right next to a collection of novelty kitchen aprons, printed with not-so-funny sayings, like “I’d give you the recipe, but then I’d have to kill you.”
She came toward me, pausing almost imperceptibly when she realized I wasn’t going to rush forward to meet her. Michael and Jace stepped back, making way for my mother, a tiny life raft of estrogen bobbing amongst the waves of testosterone.
She hugged me, her embrace bringing with it the scent of homemade cookies, with cinnamon and nutmeg. Who cooks with nutmeg in the middle of the summer? Only my pretty-kitty version of a mother, a remnant of the June Cleaver days of intact families and repressed emotions.
Over her shoulder, I watched Marc come in, followed by my father, who pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to polish the lenses of his glasses while he waited patiently for my mother let me go. Daddy was always the last man to enter any room, so he could take charge of everyone all at once. Tall, and still firm at fifty-six, my father commanded respect everywhere he went, and it was all innate. He could never have explained why people did what he wanted, but his authority was undeniable, and unless I was at home, unquestioned.
I frowned at him, preparing to argue my case. “Daddy, what—?”
He smiled, cutting me off with a wave of one thick hand. “Give me a hug first, before we let business get in the way of family.”
I hugged him, but was bothered by his statement, because the business was family. Always. No matter how much he loved creating beautiful buildings, and how many days a year it took him away from home, his true passion—his life’s calling—was the Pride. We were his family, some by blood and others, like Jace and Marc, by association and employment.
Daddy released me, leaving one heavy hand on my shoulder as he turned to Jace. “Go unload Marc’s car, please, and let everyone know the prodigal daughter has returned.”
Again, this was unnecessary; everyone knew I was home. It was just Daddy’s polite way of getting rid of Jace. I took it as a good sign. If my father had been mad or upset, he wouldn’t have bothered with tact. He’d have merely started shouting orders.
Jace nodded and left without complaint. Marc closed the solid oak door behind him, cutting off the masculine buzz of conversation coming from the back of the house.
Suddenly nervous, I wiped sweat from my palms on my pants. I’d never been comfortable in Daddy’s office when the door was closed. Unlike the rest of the house, the walls of the office were made of solid concrete, which made them virtually soundproof, even for us. At least in human form. Most families use rooms like that as an indoor tornado shelter, or as safe rooms in case of home invasions. My father used it for privacy, a hot commodity in a house full of people gifted with a cat’s hearing.
Marc leaned against the door frame with his hands in his pockets, apparently relaxed. I wasn’t fooled. Daddy hadn’t forgotten to post a guard at the door since the summer I turned eighteen, and considering how long it took them to find me that time, he probably never would again.
My mother sat on the leather love seat, patting the cushion next to her—not for me, but for Michael. He glanced at me for a moment before sitting, and I couldn’t resist a tiny smile. Michael was what you’d get if you mixed a Chippendale dancer with a Law Review editor: a handsome face crowning an athlete’s body, all dressed up in a hand-tailored suit, with silver, wire-rimmed glasses added for effect. Seriously. His vision was better than perfect, but he thought he looked more like an attorney in the spectacles. And maybe more like our father, who’d been fitted with prescription lenses three years earlier.