Blackthroat saves me from answering. “Don’t make her perform, she just came back from the almost-dead.”
“Right, right. Sorry, Madi.” Eagle holds up a hand to forestall any more conversation.
I twist to look up over my shoulder. “Eagle knows my name.”
“I know your name, too, Windows, I just choose not to call you by it.” Blackthroat delivers this with his usual deep, forbidding tone. It’s one I’m used to ignoring, but now I see through it completely. It means nothing-at least not when he speaks to me.
The man just admitted he’d been gruff when I arrived because he’d been afraid for my safety in the helicopter. Even his tiny niece sees through it. She said he was yelling because he was scared for me.
My heart picks up speed at this tit for tat-our own special form of flirtation. One that turns us both on.
Brick was right about our appearance making dinner materialize. Within ten minutes, everyone I’d seen since I’d arrived had gathered in the living room-all of the executive team, plus John Acker, the pilot, and Blackthroat’s family.
“You guys don’t see enough of each other at work, you choose to spend your holidays together, too?” I quip when Vance greets me with a cool nod.
“We’re family,” Billy cuts in with a frown that seems to imply that I clearly am not.
I notice Brick hasn’t spoken to his mother, but she keeps sending hopeful looks his way. I’m not sure what it says about us that I’m not comfortable asking a man who just made me come why he’s not speaking to his mother.
Dane, the older man who brought blankets to my room, appears in the doorway. “Are you ready for dinner?” He looks to Blackthroat, not Ruby or their mother. Apparently Brick rules in his family, as well. It’s odd and also perfectly natural, knowing the man.
Blackthroat nods, and the assembly moves into the dining room, which has been set with china and crystal but no silver silverware. He guides me to the seat beside him at the head of the table. The children go on his other side, with Ruby and Eagle next.
Dane starts pouring white wine in everyone’s glasses while Liz, who I gather is his wife, transfers platters and steaming dishes from a serving cart onto the table.
Brick’s mother sits down beside me. Brick’s nostrils flare, but he doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t make eye contact with him, just ducks her head, which is elegantly coiffed with a French twist.
“Hi, I’m Madi,” I say. “You’ve seen me naked, but we weren’t formally introduced.”
Billy chokes on his wine.
Auggie laughs loudly. “Naked!” he shouts gleefully.
“Uh-uh,” his mom shuts him down.
The beautiful older woman flashes me a warm smile and shakes my hand, holding it extra long. “Madi, it’s so wonderful to meet you. I’m Catherine. I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I’m going to have nightmares about wolves for the rest of my life, but other than that, I’m okay.”
Glances are exchanged across the table. Damn, this crowd really doesn’t like that I’m here.
“You saw the wolves?” April asks.
“Yes.” Because she said, the wolves not wolves, like she knows about them, I add, “Have you?”
“I wanted to see them, but they were already gone,” she complains.
“Hm-mm.” Ruby shuts her daughter down with a shake of her head although I don’t know why. Are the kids not supposed to speak at the table? Everyone digs into the food, picking up the plates and platters and passing them around.
“Are you a human?” April asks me.
“Of course, she’s human,” Ruby says quickly. “What did you think, she’s an alien?”
“Oh, I’m totally an alien,” I say. “I came from a small planet called… Polkadot.”
April looks at me with round eyes then looks to her mom.
“She’s being silly, baby,” Ruby explains. “Do you want mashed potatoes?”
“How long have you been Brick’s assistant, Madi?” Catherine asks.
Again, the temperature in the room seems to drop. I have thick skin, but I’m starting to wish I hadn’t asked to eat Thanksgiving with them.
Brick’s nose twitches in a threatened snarl, but he says nothing.
“Going on four months now.” I take a huge helping of sweet potatoes-my favorite. “That’s about three months longer than I expected to keep the job.”
Billy makes a judgmental sound in his throat, which I’d have to interpret to mean he thinks I should have been fired that first day I talked back to him.
“I’ll bet he’s a bear to work for,” Ruby says. “I know he hasn’t kept any assistant for much longer than that.”
“Well, I rather enjoyed the challenge of it at first.”
“Don’t use the past tense,” Brick growls beside me. “I didn’t accept your resignation.”
His words produce a tiny flare of warmth to push back the chill from the rest of his team.
“Right, well, when you threatened to throw me to the wolves, I thought it was just a figure of speech.”
Brick’s smile is genuine, but the rest of the group’s responses seem forced. There’s an odd amount of attention on me, like I’m the focus of the table rather than Brick. Like my presence at their table is too jarring not to disrupt things.
Or maybe it’s not me. Maybe the tension and awkwardness are because of his mother’s presence?
If so, then no wonder Brick didn’t want me to witness it.
It must’ve killed him to admit to me he has this vulnerability.
Brick says very little during the dinner, except to speak to his niece or nephew, who obviously adore him. His mother hangs on my every word any time I speak. I realize she must be starved for connection with her son, and she perceives me as an avenue to him. Maybe she thinks we’re more than we are after helping us get stripped down and in bed together this afternoon.
I suppose everyone here thinks I’m screwing the boss now. Oh well. I am. Or I have. And I’ll do it again. Probably tonight.
The memory of what we did earlier-what he did, I should say-makes me clamp my thighs together as a slow throb starts up between them.
As if he can read minds, Brick slides a look my way, his nostrils flaring. We make it through dinner, and I start to feel more like myself after the food and wine.
After dinner, Dane and Liz-who are obviously servants, not family because they didn’t sit down with us-clear the table. “Do you want dessert immediately?” Liz looks to Brick.
“Yes! We want dessert now!” Auggie shouts.
“Buddy, you just ate about four turkeys all by yourself. How can you be hungry for pie?” Brick asks him.
“I ate four turkeys, too!” April claims.
Brick glances back at Liz. “Give us thirty.”
“Thirty minutes!” Auggie wails loudly, letting his disappointment be known.
“That’s enough,” his mother says quietly.
Catherine stands from the table. “Come on, Auggie, let’s go see how much snow has piled up outside.”
“Oh yeah.” The boy leaps off his chair and goes running for the front door.
“I meant here at the window,” his grandmother prompts.
“I have to go potty!” April announced.
“I’ll take you, A.” Brick surges up from the table like he can’t wait to leave. He swings the little girl up into his arms and carries her off on his hip, and I try not to swoon.
Aw, screw it, I’m swooning.
Brick
“When were you going to tell us you’re banging the secretary?” Billy accosts me in the hallway after I take April to use the bathroom.
“Fuck off,” I growl.
As if they were waiting for this moment, the other members of my executive team converge at the same time. It’s an ambush.
“Let’s step outside.” Nickel inclines his head in that direction.
If it were one or two of them, I would have refused, but it’s clear they have something to say to me.
And I know exactly what-or, rather, who-it’s about.
Fine. It’s time for me to put them in their places. I lead them out into the snow ,and Eagle shuts the door behind us with a click. Vance, Jake, Sully, Billy and Nickel face off with me.
“Don’t you think this little dalliance of yours is something we needed to know?” Billy demands. “Did Eagle know? He’s your senior counsel, and it could affect his job.”
“I’m not-” My nostrils flare as I draw in a breath. “It was twice.” And this afternoon practically doesn’t count. It was medically necessary-I was reviving her. She nearly died of the cold out there.
Billy pins me with a condemning look.
“Ok fine. Yes, we’re-” My reluctance to define what she is to me makes it impossible for me to complete the sentence. “Stop calling her that,” I snap instead.
“What? The secretary? What do you want me to call her?”
“Call her Madison. Her name is Madison.”
“She prefers Madi,” Eagle corrects me, and I send him a death glare.
Wind whips around us, snow slashing at our faces and wetting our hair. It doesn’t bother any of us, but the reminder that Madi was out in this mess earlier brings an inner cold.
“Did you know?” Billy demands of Eagle.
“No.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “It would’ve been nice to have a heads up. Especially with your track record with assistants.”
“I’m not firing her,” I growl.
And it’s not because she’s declared herself unfireable.
“How well do you even know her? Is she trustworthy?” Billy asks.
I fix him with a glare that warns him to shut down the line of questioning completely. “Absolutely.” I’m surprised to find the words true. What other human would I trust so implicitly? But Madi would never betray me. Loyalty is in her nature. “Why?”
“What kind of hold does this girl have on-“
“Careful,” I warn. What little good humor I developed after getting naked with Madison evaporates. I stare at him, but he doesn’t drop his eyes.
“You need to find your true mate,” he says, as if that explains everything. “You’re getting too old to be unmated, and your wolf is trying to lock someone down before moon madness strikes.”
I sense my wolf thrash beneath the surface. My nostrils suddenly fill with Madi’s scent. I turn, but she’s nowhere near.
My wolf is telling me something.
He thinks she’s my mate.
Which, of course, should be impossible.
Fate wouldn’t choose a human for an alpha wolf of my bloodline. It would ruin it. But my reaction to Madi’s near-death yesterday was mate-level ferocity. I can’t explain away this obsession I have with her anymore.
That’s the reason my pack brothers staged this intervention.
“Let’s do Christmas in the Alps,” Jake suggests with a false-casual tone. Like I’m supposed to believe he just came up with the idea. “We can combine a ski trip with a visit to the Swedish Winter Pack Games.”
They want me to find an appropriate she-wolf to mate with. My wolf snarls and Madi’s scent fills my nostrils once more.
Fuck. I need to shift and run. Process this on my own. “I’ll think about it,” I growl, pushing past Billy for the door.
He breaks rank and stops me, a hand on my chest. This time, I do growl, sending a glare at his hand then at him.
“She’s not your mate.”
In a flash, I have my hand around his throat, and I’ve slammed him against the mansion’s stone wall. My wolf broke the leash at the threat to Madi.
Billy’s wolf eyes glow bright, but he doesn’t submit. He stares me right in the eye, continuing to challenge me.
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