“What’s up?” she asked Charlie.
“The ship that went down earlier today . . . ? We need to look into that.”
“Why? It wasn’t me.”
“I know.”
“You do? Because everyone else keeps asking if that was me.”
“No. You’re subtler.”
“Thank you,” Tock said earnestly. It was nice to be appreciated.
“We’ll meet in the morning and go over together.”
“You guys can crash at my place tonight,” Mads said, clearly resigning herself to no practice time the next day.
“Are you sure?” Streep asked, batting her eyelashes in a really annoying manner.
“Why would I not be sure? And stop doing that with your eyes. You look like you’re having a seizure.”
“I’m just assuming that you’ll want to invite Finn over tonight. Since he didn’t stay at your place last night.”
“First off, stop tracking when guys I’m fucking come over to my house. And second . . . I don’t care if you crash at the house when Finn is there.”
Max hopped onto the counter behind her so she could sit without sharing a kitchen chair. “You don’t mind us hearing your nasty sex noises, Mads?”
“Who says we make nasty sex noises?”
“He’s a cat, isn’t he?”
Chuckling, Nelle eased into a chair, phone clutched in her hand. “Is that why you spend all of your time over at Berg’s house?” she asked Charlie. “So you don’t have to hear Max’s nasty sex noises with Zé?”
“I’ve had to wear headphones to bed since Max hit puberty. She was always having dirty, nasty sex dreams and she kept waking up the entire Pack with her incessant screeching.”
“I’m a horny badger,” Max happily admitted. “What can I say?”
“Nothing,” Tock told Max. “You can say nothing. I know it’s unusual for you, but try.”
“Come on.” Mads stood. “Let’s go over to my place. Order some dinner. Watch some TV. We’ll bring the brownies with us. We’ll meet you around eight tomorrow morning. Okay, Charlie?”
“Sure. And don’t let the bears see you with those brownies,” Charlie warned. “They will just rip them right out of your hands.”
*
“No, Dani. You can’t.”
“Pleeeeaaaasssssseeee!”
He stopped in Charlie’s kitchen and turned around to face his daughter. She was starting to get red in the face, which meant a real healthy tantrum was about to happen.
“I said, no.”
“I want to stay with Aunt Nat,” she repeated, yet again. “Just for tonight.”
“She can stay here if she wants,” Charlie said, putting away recently cleaned dishes and pans. “I don’t mind.”
“No offense, but your house is a nightmare of gun ownership.”
Charlie shrugged. “She can stay at Berg’s place with me and the triplets. There’s a room she can share with Nat.”
“Aren’t the triplets a professional security team? Which means more guns.”
“Yeah. But they put their guns away in a safe. A real safe. It’s like a big closet with a massive, metal door that even they can’t tear open. If it’s bear safe, it’s cub safe. And Princess and the pups are already over there.”
“What are they doing over there?”
“Let’s just say that Princess was not comfortable having my dogs around her puppies. She nearly took Shotzy’s ear off.”
“Oh, my God. I’m so sor—”
Charlie waved away his apology with a quick swipe of her hand. “Shotzy was asking for it. He’s like Max. A little shit-starter.”
“Was the damage bad?”
“I had the jackal and the wolverine take him to the emergency vet for me.”
“I like Kyle,” Dani said on a near-whisper as she stepped forward. “He’s dreamy.”
Shay, now standing behind his daughter, pointed at her and mouthed to Charlie, What the fuck?
Charlie cleared her throat to keep from laughing and said, “He is a handsome young man, Dani. But very busy.”
“He’s an artist, Daddy,” his baby told him, tilting her head back so she could look at him directly. “An artist.”
Shay knew a little about Kyle Jean-Louis Parker. He was an eighteen-year-old jackal with shoulder-length hair and the title of “art prodigy.” A title that Shay had no respect for. It was bad enough the kid was hanging around his baby sister, who might or might not think he was “dreamy.” But to think his innocent daughter was getting all googly-eyed over a boy—any boy—was beyond upsetting.
She was just a baby! His little girl! She was too young to be mooning over some artistic pretty boy who acted like he knew better than everyone else because some of his artwork had already sold for six figures.
“Please, Daddy!” Dani begged, her arms now wrapped around his right leg. “Can I stay with Auntie Nat and the bears? Pleaaaaaaassssseeeeeee!”
He looked at Charlie. “You’ll look out for her?”
“Of course. And if you pick her up by eight a.m. tomorrow, I’ll make sure you guys get breakfast.”
He trusted Charlie. Didn’t know why. She was half canine, and he barely trusted his own wolf teammates to cover his back on the field. But he was entrusting his only daughter to a woman who’d greeted them at her front door with a semiauto and an offer of brownies.
Shay looked down at Dani, her head tilted all the way back so she could focus on him with those eyes just like his own.
“Okay. Fine.”
The squeal his cub let out nearly shattered his eardrums, and even Charlie covered her own.
Using her strong cat legs, his daughter catapulted herself into Shay’s arms, making him laugh.
“Thank you, Daddy!”
“You’re welcome. But,” he quickly added, “I don’t want to hear tomorrow that you caused any trouble. Understand?”
“When do I ever cause trouble?”
“What I’m saying to you, Dani Malone, is that there will be no treating the Dunn Triplets like they’re giant teddy bears.”
“Even though they look like giant teddy bears?”
“Especially because of that, baby. That’s how they lull their victims into a false sense of security.”
*
Finn found his older brother sitting on the stoop and staring across the street at the bear triplets’ house. He tried to sit next to him, but their shoulders made that impossible, so Finn went down a step and looked up at Shay.
“What’s wrong?”
“Dani’s spending the night at the bear house.”
“Why?”
“She wants to spend the night with Nat, and I refused to let her spend the night in a house filled with guns.”
That was probably a good idea. Not long ago, Finn had found a sawed-off shotgun taped under the kitchen table. He hadn’t told his brothers because he trusted Charlie MacKilligan when it came to weapons. But it was one thing to have their seventeen-year-old sister living here with angry, armed women. And quite another to have their ten-year-old niece stay the night.