About Face. Amy Lee Burgess

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      * * * *

      After the ceremony we feasted on baked stuffed shrimp and Maine lobster. I sat at the table with Jason and Lauren, Faith, Scott, Shane, Samantha and Todd.

      Todd was Faith’s father and Shane and Samantha were his bond mates.

      The rest of Mayflower ate at nearby tables. No one from Silverlake was present, and I wondered if that bothered Jason.

      He and I sat on either side of Lauren, but we didn’t talk. He and my mother were very wrapped up in each other, but he made the effort to chat with Faith, who sat on his other side.

      Lauren had chosen the baked stuffed shrimp for an entrée, as had Jason, but I saw how she cast wistful looks at my lobster.

      I put one of my lobster claws on her plate, took half a baked stuffed shrimp in return, and her face lit up.

      “I couldn’t decide what to order,” she confided in my ear with a little laugh. “So I ordered what Jason did, but when the lobsters arrived, I realized I should have ordered that instead.”

      “Always order something different than what Jason does,” I suggested. “Then you can share, and you won’t be disappointed. That’s what I always did when Murphy and I went out to dinner.”

      I bit my lip as I remembered the many restaurants we’d visited on our road trip from Texas to Massachusetts. We’d gotten to know each other as bond mates during that time.

      We’d made a thirty-hour drive last nearly four weeks. If we liked a city or town, we’d stayed there for as long as we liked.

      We’d remained nearly a week in New Orleans. It was there we’d figured out the rhythms of each other’s bodies and the sex became intense. The third day there we hadn’t even gotten out of bed until after sunset, and then only because we were starving.

      It was there, too, we’d vowed to share our food and always order something different so we could try more than one thing. From appetizers to desserts, we never had the same thing, and we shared it all.

      “I wish you’d work things out with him,” Lauren whispered as she dipped a succulent piece of lobster claw into the melted butter on my plate. I moved it to her plate because I never put butter on my lobster. I loved the taste of it plain.

      “Who?” I pretended ignorance and she sighed.

      “I know you’re thinking about him. You just said his name. Murphy, your bond mate. You always get that same starry-eyed, wistful look on your face when you think about him.”

      “Wren.” I wished I’d ordered wine with my meal but I hadn’t because I was still slightly hungover.

      “I know you don’t like to talk about him, but I think it’s a shame. It must be really hard to see all the duos and triads together tonight and be alone.”

      I winced, the ache inside me so raw it hurt.

      “I’m fine,” I gave her a bright smile that didn’t fool her. “Anyway, tonight is about you. You and Jason and the other two duos who bonded tonight. You better drag him on the dance floor because I want to see if he can keep up with you.”

      Lauren giggled and the whole table looked indulgently at her. Sometimes I couldn’t believe this perfectly stunning woman was my mother. She seemed so unearthly, and I was so very grounded and real. It was as if a fairy had given birth to a peasant girl.

      My appetite gone, I gave Lauren the other lobster claw and excused myself to go to the bar for a drink. Hangover be damned.

      * * * *

      Once there, I pulled a Lauren and couldn’t decide between a mixed drink or wine.

      The back of my neck tingled as someone moved close behind me and then came to stand beside me. Scott. He gave me a grin and stood close so our shoulders and hips brushed together.

      He studied the twinkling bottles of alcohol behind the bar and frowned. Then he saw the beer and wine list and brightened.

      “Two Labatts.” Scott decided for me, and the bartender bent beneath the bar to retrieve the bottles from the mini fridge.

      When she’d opened them and moved down the bar to attend to another guest, Scott turned to me and said, “Hunt with me tomorrow night.”

      My stomach flip-flopped, and it wasn’t all due to the fact Scott was gorgeous as hell. It mostly had to do with waking my wolf now that she was supposedly normal.

      “What if she won’t come out?” Scott was possibly the only person on Earth I felt comfortable with talking about my wolf. Comfortable was not even a very good word. He’d been there the last time I’d tried to shift and couldn’t do it.

      “It was the pack bond holding your wolf back, Stanzie.” He nudged my beer closer to my hand with his bottle. Ice-cold condensation dripped down the brown glass. “It’s gone now. She’ll come out.”

      I cast him a doubting look.

      “And if she doesn’t, I’ll be there with you. Look, we’ll shift away from the rest of the hunt. That way if there’s an issue, no one will know. But there won’t be.”

      Shift away from everyone else. I took a sip from the bottle. The beer tasted bitter as my thoughts. I hadn’t participated in many Regional hunts, but when I had, I’d always shifted away from everyone else and gone the opposite direction, with Grey, Vaughn and Elena, my former pack mates, chasing after me.

      Now my wolf was theoretically normal, and Scott, unwittingly, proposed the same basic concept. Screw that.

      “I don’t know.” I took another sip and watched as his gray eyes filled with both compassion and exasperation. “What about Faith?”

      “Have you seen her?” he said and then laughed. “She’s not shifting again until after the twins are born. She says it’s too uncomfortable.”

      There was no medical reason to avoid shifting during pregnancy, but most women did prefer to avoid it after they got bigger.

      “Why don’t you go with someone who you know will be a good hunt partner,” I suggested.

      His seductive mouth twitched. “That would be you.”

      “We may be good Advisor partners, but I don’t know about hunting, Scott.”

      “Well, I do.” He put his hand on my arm, and the weight of it was so soothing I wanted to melt.

      “You smell good, you know that?” I didn’t mean to say it, but the words escaped me anyway. He did. He smelled like Pack.

      “Faith got me this new cologne. Made me wear it tonight.” Scott rolled his eyes.

      “Pussy,” I said and he grinned.

      “Hey, if it gets you to agree to hunt with me, I’m fine with it.” He gave my arm a squeeze. “At least give it some thought, Stanz, okay?”

      I nodded, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t СКАЧАТЬ