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“Hell no. Could be Melony’s already en route back to her house down here, in which case, I’d be passing her in the air. More importantly, sounds like her presence here has coincided with an emergence of new ferals. Doesn’t sit well with me. I wanna check that out while we wait to pin her down.” He poked me in the chest. “Meanwhile, you need some downtime.”
I reeled back, a little offended. “I do not.”
“Yeah, you do. You barely said four fuckin’ words between the time we got pulled over and the time we left the station.”
“I was managing my temper!”
“You were shoving it into a cage, locking the door, and throwing a blanket over it like you hoped you might be able to trick it into thinking it was nighttime so it’d go to sleep. That’s not management, that’s a Band-Aid.” He tsked. “You’re too close to this, and I can’t even fault you for it. These are your kids we’re dealing with. That’s about as close as close gets.”
“You want me to go home and do nothing.”
“I want you to go home and take some time. Tend to your pack. Tickle your baby. Kiss your mate. That’s a good woman you’ve got right there.” Denny nodded to Felicity, and she flushed crimson. “You’re young, you’re in love, and more importantly, she loves you back. Lot of other people aren’t so lucky.”
Something gleamed almost spitefully in his eyes, and I remembered what he’d told me about his own love life. He must have been in his mid-fifties. No kids, though. No mate. No moon dream.
I’d had the luck of knowing Felicity since I was sixteen, and we still talked about all the time we’d lost between our first meeting and realizing we were mates.
But Denny had lived his entire life without one. He was, quite literally, a lone wolf.
“Now, the flight home is on me,” he said, recovering. The look in his eyes was gone with a blink. “I’m not gonna bill you for today’s hours, either. Rab and Beauty weren’t supposed to let that girl go until you two were well out of town. It was our bad, so I’ll foot the bill. We good?”
“Yeah.” I typed in our information and passed him back his phone. “Golden.”
* * *
Flying first class with a baby was a hell of a thing. Anywhere else on Earth, an infant was almost guaranteed to earn you smiles and coos and the easy, mechanical exchanges of baby-related small talk.Oh, what a sweet little boy! What’s his name? Aw, and how old are you, honey? You’re gonna be such a little heartbreaker when you grow up.
On an airplane, though? The only thing that would’ve earned us dirtier looks was if we started chatting about recipes for homemade bombs. The few times I’d flown economy, I’d noticed people had been most gracious about having a baby on board. They just plugged in their headphones and hoped for the best. Up in business class, the passengers started to get a little more bitter. They were shelling out big bucks for those seats, or burning points, or reaping the benefits of their hard-earned status upgrades. They had expense reports to look over, pitch decks to prepare, sleep to catch up on between inter-coastal meetings. Why should their experience be ruined by a wailing kid?
First class… I saw it the second we took our seats. Every person in the cabin turned to glare, all of them saltier than a package of complimentary peanuts.
“You’d think I crop-dusted them walking in,” I grumbled as I buckled in. I reached for Rylan so Felicity could do up her own seatbelt.
“Or that he did,” Felicity countered. “Maybe Denny should have booked us a little farther back in the plane. We didn’t need to fly first.”
I inhaled and exhaled slowly as I watched the stewardess move down the aisle, taking pre-flight drink orders. “Wish we didn’t need to fly at all.”
We got ginger ales. Felicity sipped at hers slowly. I drank mine like I was tossing back a shot, then ordered another.
“Slow down,” Felicity encouraged me as I raised the second drink to my lips. “How are you feeling?”
“Nervous as all get-out, and emotionally constipated to boot.” I rubbed a hand over my abs and winced. “Christ, after those burgers the Sheriff fed us, maybe not just emotionally.”
Felicity’s laughter was a bright, gentle sound. It reminded me of wind chimes on the front porch, clinking together like Heaven’s own music in the summer breeze. I found myself staring at her like a man starved, savoring the way her nose crinkled up and her pouty lips pulled back to reveal the whiteness of her teeth.
God, she was beautiful when she laughed. Eyes closed, body relaxed, long eyelashes a deep red where they caught the light.
With that kind of gorgeous sitting next to me, a man could almost forget he was about to be defying gravity while strapped to an overpriced armchair launching through the skies.
“What?” Her eyes opened, narrowed, when she caught me staring.
“We haven’t laughed much lately,” I admitted. “I’ve missed the sound of yours.”
Her cheeks flushed the most perfect shade of pink. “I’ve missed yours, too. It’s strange, smiling again after you haven’t done it in a while. Like your face muscles have forgotten what it feels like to move in that way. The first day back in the gym. You okay?”
“I will be.” I folded my arms tightly around Rylan, lowering my voice as our designated stewardess began her safety demonstration. “I fuckin’ envy Denny. The way he handled the cops… I could never do that.”
Cool, calm, collected. Everything an alpha was supposed to be. Everything that, right now at least, I very much was not. While he smooth-talked police officers, I’d been studying various surfaces and imagining how hard I’d have to punch to put my fist through them. It was never hard enough to stop me from yearning to do it anyway. The only thing that had kept me grounded was the threat of losing more time.
