Wolf at Law by Heather Long (7 page)

And, if he were honest, charmed him utterly.

The door to Tiffany’s suite opened, and he rose to his feet. Collin was in the hall; Zane had work elsewhere for Ryan today. He was heading to the attorney’s office to track his meetings with Taglioni. Legal business in Cook County was all about who a person knew—and what they had on them. If he gathered enough information, he’d throw the sale under the grind of the Cook County legal system, then use a shell company to sweep the land up.

It didn’t matter whose name was on the final deal so long as the pack benefited from the land.  The room phone rang, and Ryan answered it even as he listened to Tiffany and Collin

“Alexis is watching a movie,” she said. “I’m going to talk to Ryan. Do you mind listening for her?”

“No problem.” Collin’s smile was evident in his voice. He had a bit of a crush on Tiffany, but he also had his orders. It hadn’t taken Ryan long to sniff out the interest and he’d told Collin to look, to protect, but no touching and absolutely no flirting.

The younger wolf obeyed without hesitation, though he hadn’t cared for the order.

“Huston,” he said by way of answer.

“It’s Zane. Taglioni knows Tiffany and Alexis are gone.” Why the hell was he following Taglioni? “The guy—I’m assuming the dirtbag is her husband—was at the attorney’s office this morning. Caught the tail end of his conversation with his attorney as they were leaving. He went home last night, and now he’s got men out looking for them.”

Seven days.
It had taken the bastard seven days to even notice.

“Understood.”  Tiffany had reached his door and knocked. “Stay with the attorney.”

“What about the dirt bag?” the hunter growled. He liked Tiffany and Alexis fine, but he’d also picked up on the abuse. Like Ryan, it offended his every sensibility that the bastard treated her so badly.

“Leave him for me. He’s not getting anywhere near her.” It went without saying, but the repeated information mollified the other wolf.

Conversation over, the hunter ended the call. Crossing the room to the door, he opened it to let Tiffany in. “Good afternoon.”

She leaned against the doorframe, her expression soft and unguarded, a half smile curving her lips. “Are you busy?”

“Not at all,” he said. He would never be too busy for her. He swept his arm toward the room. “Come in.”

The sweet scent of her shampoo, fruit and spice, lingered in the air as she passed him. Tiffany walked slowly, rubbing her arms and not quite settling. Nervousness swirled around her. She studied the layout of his suite as though curious, but since it was identical to her own, he let her find her footing.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Yes,” she said, then paused and shook her head. “No. I’ve had about twelve cups of coffee today, so more coffee probably isn’t a good idea.” She paced the room and he leaned against the arm of the sofa, tracking her restless actions with his gaze. “But if you want something, I could get it for you. I guess. Well, maybe, unless we have to call down for it.”

The nervous babble wasn’t her. Nor was the way she pulled at her hands. She went from wringing them together to rubbing her arms, then finally fidgeted with her skirt. “Tiffany…”

“I know. Okay, maybe you do want something. I can use a phone.” She walked over to the desk he used and reached for the phone. The petition for her divorce sat on the top along with hospital photos. Zane had ‘retrieved’ other evidence, including statements from two emergency room doctors.

She froze, staring at the words on the page. The urge to scoop her up and hold her until her fear passed surged through him. It was a violent need, to take care of this woman who could be his mate. The wolf clawed at him, demanding he go to her, but the man waited. For years, her control had been utterly usurped. If his mate was to heal, to become the powerful woman he’d glimpsed in her eyes, she had to face this part of her past.

Face it and accept it.

As much as it sickened him to think in those terms, she needed to forgive herself for it. She saw herself as a victim, a pitiful creature who should have done more, instead of the beautiful survivor who’d protected her daughter and made the decision to choose a better life for herself.

“How did you get these?” The falsetto trembling in her words betrayed her emotion, as did the downturn in her scent. Shame and embarrassment vied with her pain. The wolf struggled against him, but Ryan remained rooted in place. Touching her when the wolf vied for control was not an option.

“I have connections. I made some calls. In cases such as yours, the social workers will document your condition and medical causes even if you elect not to press charges.” He folded his arms, better to keep them occupied. She wasn’t ready to hear Zane had charmed the information from nurses, or lifted the evidence from files. The Taglionis had paid a considerable sum to keep the information buried.

“I wish you’d never seen them.” She’d been seven months pregnant in the first one he’d seen. She’d sported two heavily bruised eyes and a cracked cheekbone. In another, her eye bone had been fractured. The later photos showed a consistent pattern of abuse, though he’d veered away from her face.

A broken wrist.

A broken collarbone.

A littering of bruises. In one he’d left her back crisscrossed with bruises and whip marks. He’d used a belt, from the looks of it. Ryan had catalogued every injury in the last five years. Detailed all of them, paying particular attention to the injuries that could be corroborated. Illinois would grant a divorce for irreconcilable differences only if both parties agreed—since she’d indicated Giles would never agree willingly, he had to rely on other information.

“Physical cruelty.” Tiffany’s breath hitched. “Mental cruelty, criminal behavior?” Tears shimmering in her eyes, she faced him. “What criminal behavior?”

“His family is heavily invested in trucking and transporting. They have some pretty interesting clients.” Clients who wanted items shipped they didn’t want anyone else to know about. Smuggling didn’t look good on the books. Ryan had already engaged a forensic accountant to scour public records and find a pattern.

“That doesn’t mean he’s a criminal,” she began, biting her lower lip hard and drawing his attention to the injury she’d done herself. “Does it?”

Incapable of ignoring the hurt, he pushed away from the sofa and paced to her. Cupping her face, he cradled her soft cheeks in his palms and nuzzled the wounded lower lip. The faint brush of his tongue elicited a groan from her. When her arms twined around his neck and her mouth opened, he deepened the kiss.

He tasted the coffee and a hint of butter toffee from her favorite creamer. Below that, the faintest touch of hazelnut. Sugar and spice, and everything nice.

The urge to claim clamped down on him, and his wolf stretched. Easing away from the kiss, he leaned his head back, but drew her close. His ragged breathing and racing heart served as a testament to his fraying control. The desire to claim had to be tempered with letting her heal, strengthening her battered spirit, and the base acknowledgement of her personal freedom.

“I’m not going to give you a false sense of comfort, Tiffany. Everything I’ve managed to turn up on Giles Taglioni indicates he is involved in his family’s business, even the less savory aspects of it.” The anxiety in her scent climbed and she sat abruptly.

“I always thought—thought he had too much entitlement, but rich people can be like that. They expect things to happen, and they have the money to make them happen.” She ran a hand over her face. “I think that’s why all those other attorneys turned me down. They didn’t want to cross him.”

All the other attorneys were cowards.
He kept the thought to himself, however. “I’m filing the papers in the morning, as well as asking for an emergency restraining order to keep him away from you and Alexis.” Navigating the human legal system would take finesse. He had more than enough evidence to make a case for keeping Taglioni away from Tiffany.

“He never hurt Alexis.” She swiped at her tears, her anguish turning fierce between one breath and the next. Yes, his lovely lady was far stronger than she realized. “I would never have allowed that. I know it sounds stupid considering he beat on me more than once, but I always thought if I were a little stronger, a little better, a little more obedient…it would stop.” Then, before he could respond, she shook her head. “It only stopped when he was bored with me and went off to see his mistress. Those were good days. I would have been gone a long time ago if he’d ever touched her. I’d have killed him first.”

Ryan gave into the desire to be near her and crossed to where she sat. Scooping her up was easy enough, then he settled and drew her onto his lap. Wolves craved physical comfort when they gave off the waves of distress. “Why did you marry him?” Why had she done that to herself?

“I told you,” she said, curving into him and tucking her head to his shoulder. Every day her defenses shrank further. That she would relax into him and let him soothe her eased his wolf’s anger. They never wanted her scent to darken and turn muddy with fear, pain or any other sad emotion. They wanted their mate—yes, she was definitely the woman for him—happy.

“You said you’d made a lot of bad decisions.” He remembered the conversation clearly, every syllable etched into his brain. “But never what it was about him that invited you to say yes.” He didn’t add
to him
, a person who could never be her mate. To someone with a vicious, empty soul that let him cause her physical injury.

Tiffany toyed with one of the buttons on his shirt. He let her distract herself. Sometimes she was so like her daughter. Constantly active, always thinking, but other times, she was, indecisive and worried. He couldn’t blame her. Life had delivered her a powerful disciplinary punch, both literally and figuratively.

“My dad took off when I was little. A lot. He was never really around. I think my best memory of him when we went to the corner shop and he bought me a lollipop while he talked to the owner. I’m pretty sure it was a drug deal, but I didn’t know it then.” She sighed, tugging the button free, then putting it back into the slot. “He died a few weeks later. My mother didn’t tell me how, but when I was a teenager, I looked it up. Drug deal gone bad. He’d had a gun and shot a cop, so they shot him. Turns out they had better aim.”

Another sigh. “We never had much. I never really questioned it. When you’re used to going without, you don’t notice what you are without. We’d get checks from welfare and social security. Those were the good days of the month. Mom would by liquor, and she’d buy food. If I was good, I could make the food last most of the month. The alcohol never made it that long.”

She didn’t have to elaborate how those days would worsen over the month.  Living with an alcoholic intent on trashing her life left Tiffany defenseless at a very young age. In the pack, others would have stepped in. The children taken care of, and the adults disciplined or sent away to continue their self-destructive pattern where they couldn’t hurt anyone.

No adult should ever countenance abandoning a child—children like Margo, whose very existence might prove a threat to the Alpha and Alexis whose father hurt her mother. All three needed protection. They needed and deserved it, and those were the reasons he would help Margo, Tiffany and Alexis.  It was the right thing to do.

The only thing.

“Anyway, by the time I was sixteen, I was trying to do the school thing and make it through class, but I never had much in the way of supplies. Some of the teachers were great. They’d donate stuff to me. But I had to get it as stuff, never a check. One time, they sent a check for Christmas and, well, Mom had a great one. She was three sheets to the wind for the whole holiday. It was just me and her. We didn’t have any other family. I met Giles when I was seventeen, and he kept doing nice things for me.”

She lifted her head and looked at him. The mistrust swimming in her eyes cut him to the bone. “Kind of like you’re doing nice things for me now. Things I don’t deserve, and I don’t know why you’re doing it.” She touched two fingers to his lips. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to accuse you of anything, but it scares me sometimes. You barely know us, and these suites have to be costing a fortune. I know you’re an attorney, but I don’t know anything else about you, like where you come from. If you have a family. Why you’re helping me.”

The last sentence was the most telling. Ryan smiled against her fingers, then kissed them gently. “Do you want to know more about me, Tiffany? Do you want to know why you can trust me?”

“I don’t mean to be an ungrateful—”

It was his turn to put his fingers against her lips, then turned his head and locked gazes with her. Holding her attention, he wanted her to see he meant every word. “You are not ungrateful. You are a mother, and you’re asking questions to protect yourself and your daughter.” If he succeeded in nothing else, he would convince her that protecting herself had value. “In any situation where you must choose between hurting my feelings and protecting yourself, you have to choose you. In fact,” he said, lacing command into his voice. “This is the one time I will order you. I want you to always put
you
first. You and your daughter. Do you understand?”

Tears shimmered in her eyes. “You mean that, don’t you?”

Trust, ephemeral and tenuous, could be born of the oddest moments. “Yes,” he said, solemn and firm. “I want you to choose you. Ask me anything you want.” Some secrets would take time to share, but she needed to know it all.

“Where do you live?” She licked her lips, then blew out a breath.  “I mean I know you don’t live in a hotel. You can’t, though you apparently can afford these expensive suites and you haven’t let me pay for a meal and I know how expensive hotel bills are. You won’t even let me buy you coffee here.”

“Coffee is seven-fifty a cup. If you want to buy me coffee, I’ll let you do it.” He couldn’t quite contain his smile at her wide eyes.

“Are you kidding me? Ryan!” Impatience wrapped in chastisement chased the word and he grinned wider. He liked her reprimanding him. She should do it more often.