Sassy Ever After: Bonnie Sass (Kindle Worlds Novella) (3 page)

“
Y
ou’re killing me
, you know. Killing me.”

Angie made the pronouncement as she placed an enormous cut crystal vase on the table in front of McKenzie Ferguson, Kenzie for short. The wee girl, as Calum would’ve said, with her long brown curls seeming bigger than she was, beamed at the sight of the bouquet.

Nonplussed, Angie asked, “Do you have any idea how difficult it is in Las Vegas to find a florist that will make a bouquet out of rare orchids and heather? Heather!”

Kenzie leaned forward in her chair, balanced her elbows on the table, and rested her head wistfully in her hands in a gesture that Angie recognized from when the young woman was only a teenager. She batted her eyes at Angie.

“Are you actually supposed to be telling me that?” the girl asked slyly, with a wink. “I mean, you’re supposed to make it look like someone can have anything their heart desires in Las Vegas, right? Aye, and like it isn’t even an effort?”

Angie glared at the girl, although not with true ire. It was hard to get mad at Kenzie. “You have your brother’s gift for knowing just what to say to me.” If the idea was to make her throw something, possibly herself, out of the highest window in the Shifter Access Unlimited Hotel.

Kenzie’s eyes, that trademark Ferguson blue, lit up at the mention of Calum. “Oh, have you seen my brother today? He’s been so busy even I don’t know where to find him.”

Angie chuckled, but it was more an incredulous huff. “That’s a load of
shite
even you can’t pull off, sweetling.” When Kenzie crossed her hands over her chest and gave Angie that innocent look, the woman shook her head no. “I know what you’re doing.”

“What I’m doing?” Kenzie asked, but the girl was hardly putting real effort into sounding sincere. Behind her, a tall blond she-wolf of a bodyguard, whom Angie had learned was the sister to the male version of physical perfection she’d first met in Calum’s suite, lowered her head to cover a snicker.

Tilting her head, Angie asked, “What is it about room service that just won’t do for you today, Kenzie? Every meal, every snack, you’ve got me running to some new restaurant here in the hotel or even in another or even halfway down the Strip. Bouquets with fresh heather. Last-minute front row show tickets that I have to pull and all my favors to get. And every single trip, who do I run into? Why its Lord Calum Ferguson dining with a big bunch of other shifters or walking through the hotel to one meeting room or another.”

With far too casual a shrug, Kenzie shirked off the concern. But then her eyes narrowed the way Calum’s did when there was something going on in that head.

“You could always send someone else to run errands,” Kenzie suggested. “I mean, I don’t trust anyone else to take care of things the way you do, but who would know if you were delegating the tasks?”

The wee girl let that question sit a moment before she added, “But you like to get things done right, and that usually means doing them yourself, doesn’t it?”

Angie wasn’t sure if this statement was proof of some profound psychological insight on Kenzie’s part or a sign of how transparent her own control freak tendencies were. Or did Kenzie know just as well as Angie did that some nagging desire to see Calum, even from a distance, was driving the hotel host to play along?

“I know Calum has been hoping to spend some time with you now that the two of you have reconnected here in Las Vegas,” Kenzie told her with flirtatious delight lighting those blue eyes. “He’s just been ridiculously busy the first couple of days here.”

It would’ve been better, so much better, had Angie not snorted at this remark. Too quickly to censor herself, the woman asked, “Doing what, catting around?”

Angie instantly regretted the candor of the question, tinged with jealousy and possessiveness that had no business being there. Kenzie just giggled.

“That’s a peculiar way to phrase it,” the girl insisted. “A werewolf catting around. Lord knows his pack brothers probably think he should make use of Las Vegas’s nickname of Sin City, but he’s trying to keep his mind on the summit.”

The women’s gazes connected for a moment, and Angie knew that Kenzie could see the curiosity in her eyes.

“It’s maybe a dozen packs,” Kenzie explained. “But the ones with the real influence, over important territories and over other packs. This issue with vampires is really getting out of hand, especially in London and Paris, and we’re expecting you Yanks to see more problems in the near future in the U.S, too.”

“Vampires?” Angie asked.

She knew that shifters and vampires clashed often over their view of humans. Sure, the rogue wolf or bear might consider humans standard prey, but that was nowhere near the magnitude of vampires looking to feed on vulnerable humans. Shifter Access Unlimited didn’t see too much of the trouble, being restricted to one type of supernatural only.

“It’s serious back in the UK,” the girl told her. “We’d always suspected vampires were somehow involved in our father’s death, because he was trying to do precisely what Calum is trying to do now—unite the packs to protect one another and the human communities that depend on us. The situation got worse after our pack lost a member a couple of years ago. He was dealing with a spy among the vampires, a vampire herself. We don’t know who she was, if she was discovered and killed, or if she betrayed him and was the killer herself.”

Kenzie glanced over her shoulder at the blond she-wolf set to guard her. The woman was as tall as her brother and possibly more muscular, and she never seemed to tire standing at attention, at least when there was a visitor in the room. Never knew who might pose a threat, right?

“It was Orla’s oldest brother we lost,” Kenzie said.

Angie swallowed a knot of awkward emotion at the back of her throat, perhaps at the idea of how violent shifter life could be, and how tragic. “I’m sorry.”

Orla responded, “No need. This is the life of a wolf. We fight to protect what we love. We die for it if we must.”

But Angie couldn’t help thinking of a phrase she’d heard Calum use. About enjoying what life had to offer. About being shrewd with your risks. About picking your battles.
You’re a long time dead
.

Kenzie tried to change the subject. “Aye, that’s one reason my brother’s here, why we’re all here. At Shifter Access Unlimited instead of another hotel in another city.”

The girl was hinting at something again. Angie waited.

Smiling slyly as she let out her little suggestion of a secret, Kenzie said, “I helped Calum with all the arrangements. I picked the city—neutral territory, you know—and I picked the hotel.”

Angie’s brow knit as she reared back. “You’re…. You’re trying to get Calum…
and me
…?”

But just that quickly, Kenzie had hidden that knowing look behind feigned innocence again. “About dinner reservations tonight for Orla and me,” she said, changing the subject yet again before Angie could pursue her thoughts.

The one that stuck was the somber one: You’re a long time dead.

The thought haunted Angie the rest of the day. She realized she had never considered how dangerous Calum’s life was as a shifter and now as an alpha. All at once, his life seemed less defined by privilege and pampering than by responsibility and sacrifice. That idea hurt, paired with the memory of what a fearless and unguarded man Calum had made at twenty-three. With mussed sandy waves of hair over those blue eyes. Constantly running around his flat barefooted and reading her textbooks aloud to her while she made evening tea, aka dinner.

Even back then, though, Calum had worn a sense of easy leadership. His pack brothers were still his peers and yet naturally deferred to him—until it came to the matter of Angie herself. That chubby American girl. Human, even. No title or lineage in mundane or supernatural circles. They loved reminding him of that almost as much as her friends reminded her.

The sharp digital bleating of Angie’s cell phone interrupted the dark downturn in her trip down memory lane. It was the maître d’ of Apex, one of the nicest restaurants in the hotel, one of the best on the Strip.

“Angie, I don’t normally ask this, so take me seriously,” the man said. “That Ferguson party of yours is about to make half our kitchen staff and our best waiter quit. Every order has a substitution or a change, and then another when it gets to the table, and then it gets sent back anyway.”

“Seriously? I can’t even believe….”

Kenzie was having her first romp in Las Vegas now that she was old enough, by American standards, to drink and carouse. It just wasn’t like her to be spoiled about it. And Apex wasn’t even the place Angie had made dinner reservations for the girl and her bodyguard. Angie was going to get an earful about that after all the strings she’d pulled at the other restaurant.

A few minutes later, the Apex host was pointing out a group at the best table in the amber-lit dining room, with the best view of the city lights. With the full house and the bustling staff blocking her view, Angie had gotten all the way to the table before she realized she was expecting to deal with the wrong Ferguson.

Calum Ferguson tilted his head and perked that brow and that one-corner smile of his at Angie. Sitting there in his black evening suit, hair falling in devil-may-care waves over one brow and along one hard-contoured cheekbone, he looked so handsome it made both her chest and pussy ache. It was the look on his face and his penchant for causing her trouble that made her head ache.

Angie knew there were other people sitting at the table, but she couldn’t even look at them. She couldn’t focus on anything but Calum, through a red haze of rage and unanswered need.

“You mangy fur ball.”

Those were firing words, something in the back of her head told her. Assuming she’d said it loudly enough for anyone besides Calum to hear. When Calum just kept smiling and handed her his plate, she had to wonder if she’d spoken out loud at all.

“Ah, there we are. You’ll take this back to the kitchen for us, won’t you? Between the waiter and the chef, they just canna seem to get this right. But you will, won’t you, lass?”

Calum Ferguson was treating Angie… like wait staff? Lucky for Angie and Calum both that she could only stand there speechless and numb with astonishment for a moment. Those few seconds were long enough for Monsieur Black, watching her, to enter Angie’s peripheral vision before she was uncontrollably tempted to put the perfectly good contents of the plate over the top of his lordship’s silky, sandy brown hair.

Instead, using every single solitary ounce of restraint she had left, to preserve her job and what little dignity she had to her name, Angie nodded stiffly. “Right away, sir. Our apologies for the inconvenience.”

Angie pivoted sharply and made for the kitchen without finishing her statement—
for the inconvenience
to the restaurant staff of not being allowed to throw Alpha Fucking Lord Calum Fucking Ferguson through that window to see if wolves landed on their feet as well as cat shifters did.

But in the kitchen, Angie burst through the doors and slung the plate down on one of the long, stainless steel prep tables with such force that it slid, spinning, all the way to the other end. Without breaking it or sending it over the edge. That was fucking finesse, Angie thought, taking satisfaction where she could find it.

“Not again!” The chef said in a monstrous bellow. He didn’t even have to ask which table had sent the plate back to him.

“No, no.” Angie raised her hand to stay the chef’s temper. “Don’t do anything. Don’t fix anything. Let me handle it. I just need to… to step back here and break a few plates.”

As Angie headed back behind the kitchen prep space to one of the lesser used storage areas, with plating items they typically used for budget-minded banquets, the chef snorted. “The cheap ones are on the left by the fire exit. Break a few for me.”

Good as it would have felt to shatter dish after dish against the floor, pretending it was Calum’s head, Angie was just slumped over a counter with her own head in her arms trying to contain herself—when that voice intruded on her breathing exercises.

“It seems I still get to you as badly as you get to me,” Calum said.

Angie’s head popped up from her arms. “You can’t be back here. Dammit, Calum, you can’t just go wherever you want whenever you want.”

Like he couldn’t just duck out on her in London on ‘pack business’ with not so much as a goodbye or refuse to comment on her in the press when they asked if he was still a bachelor. Like he was ashamed of her.

Angie had shown Calum he couldn’t treat her like that and expect her to still be waiting in his loft when he deigned to return. She’d shown him by
not
being there, by following the urging of her friends that she kick him to the curb before he made a media splash of doing it to her.

Calum was walking toward her now in the kitchen, like he didn’t have the sense to know she wanted to scratch his eyes out. “Aye, then you’d better do something about that, hadn’t you, lass? Scold me? Throw me out of the kitchen or even the hotel?”

“You stay away from me, Calum Ferguson, or I will, so help me God, slap at least half a brain of sense into you.” He kept coming toward her. “I mean it, fur ball, I don’t have the patience left to keep from—.”

But then he was right there upon her, looming over her, pressing his body in his expensive black suit against her.

“Do it, Angharod,” he told her forcefully, a combination of an order and a dare, as he gathered her roughly and panting into his arms. “Slap me. Scream at me. Get it out of your system. I’m strong enough to take it, and I probably deserve it.”

Angie suddenly felt as if she was in a sauna, like the air was thick with the heat of need. Even the glacial air conditioning being pumped into the kitchen to keep staff cool couldn’t stand up to the furious warmth Angie and Calum generated whenever they got near one another.

“You’re insane,” she panted against Calum’s neck as she tried to twist her face away from his. From those eyes and those lips. Then, involuntarily, she moaned as one of his hands slid up to free her hair and the other took hold of her ass to knead and search her flesh hungrily.