Eileen Wilks: Blood Challenge

It was a gorgeous apartment. That was part of the problem. Nothing she could afford fit the place. Rule had furnished it in man-modern, with low-slung leather couches and beautiful old wood. The crystal dish where she tossed her key rested on a two-hundred-year-old console table in the small entry. Her water bottle didn’t exactly go with the décor, but it was a handy spot to leave it when she went for a run. She grabbed it, twisted, and started chugging as she walked.

The great room was the star of the show. A huge window-wall framed the combined living and dining areas. Freshly minted morning sun poured in through the glass, striking mahogany sparks from the hair of the man seated at the big, dark wood dining table at one end of the room.

In other lighting, Rule’s hair was nearly black. In any light, it was shaggy. She used to think that was part of his persona, the look he cultivated as the public face of the lupi. In fact, Rule just didn’t like getting his hair cut. He could get away with that, being so outrageously sexy. But she liked knowing the shaggy hair wasn’t part of the persona, but part of the man.

Rule spoke without looking up from the laptop that anchored the sprawl of papers covering half the table. “Your mother found a cheaper printer for the invitations. She wants you to call her about it. You’ll have time for that, as I’ve already called about the damage to your car.”

Her feet stopped. “Ah … oh. Who did you call?”

“Your current comrades-in-arms. The local FBI office.” Now he looked up. “You did plan to tell me, didn’t you?”

“I was considering it. How did you find out?”

“José saw it when he was leaving on an errand.”

José was Nokolai and the head bodyguard. “So you called the office, but you didn’t call and warn me.”

Now he looked at her. “I did. You didn’t answer.”

Lily opened her mouth to argue—and shut it again. She stripped off the armband, took out her phone, and checked. And grimaced. “The ringer’s turned off. Sorry. Who did you talk to?”

“ Agent Gray. He assured me he’d send someone out right away. He wanted me to tell you that the handwriting expert confirmed that the letter you received last week was written by the, ah, perp you suspected. The one with a habit of writing sexually explicit letters.”

“It’s nice to be right.” The letter had been yucky, not scary. The guy who wrote it was a known quantity—not known by name, maybe, but by habit. He got off on writing dirty “love letters” to people in the news, and was sadly promiscuous in his attentions. He’d written everyone from Britney Spears to the First Lady. “I told you about that letter.”

His eyebrows—he had wicked eyebrows—lifted. “Yes, you did. Unlike the other letters you’ve received. The ones serious enough that the FBI is investigating them. Those, you haven’t mentioned.”

Busted. Damn that Gray for tattling. “Because you’d jump to conclusions. The FBI has a policy of tracking any threats its agents receive. Standard practice, not anything to worry about.”

“When someone threatens you, I worry.” He rose. “You will not, in some misguided effort to protect me, keep such things from me.”

Rule was one of those rare men who look elegant in anything. Maybe it was the shoulders, or the runner’s legs, or the sheer grace of the man. Today’s choices were black, as usual—black slacks with a black dress shirt with the sleeves pushed up. His feet were bare.

It was inappropriate to find those bare feet sexy when he was clearly angry. And with reason, she admitted. If their situations were reversed, she’d have been pissed. “Okay.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Okay? Just like that?”

“On one condition. We are not having the bodyguard argument again.”

He considered that a moment. “I’ll table it for now. I reserve the right to bring it up later if conditions warrant.”

“Rule, I can’t go everywhere trailing lupus bodyguards! Aside from the fun Friar would have with that story once he found out—and he would, eventually—there’s the matter of confidentiality. I can’t have civilians privy to an investigation.”

“I thought we were tabling the argument.”

She huffed out a breath. “Why, when I got what I asked for, do I feel like you won?”

His smile came quick and easy. “Because you’re a deeply suspicious woman. About those threatening letters—”

A herd of elephants galloped down the hall from the bedrooms. A second later, the herd came into view, transformed into a nine-year-old boy with dark hair and his father’s eyebrows. He was wearing his tighty whiteys—and nothing else.

Toby skidded to a stop in front of them, grinning. “I’m hungry! What’s for breakfast?”

“Hamburgers,” Rule said. “But you don’t seem to be ready to eat.”

“It’s my new strategy,” Toby explained. “Hi, Lily. You’re all sweaty.”

“I am,” she agreed, baffled by the feeling that rose inside her. How could she feel this way about a boy she’d known such a short time? “I need a shower.”

“I had mine last night. That’s part of my strategy. See, when Dad tells me to get up I lay out all my clothes, but I don’t put them on until after I eat. This way I don’t have to worry about spilling stuff on them. Well, except for my underwear, but if I spill something on them it won’t show.”

Rule nodded thoughtfully. “I believe that would be called a tactic, not a strategy. A tactic is the immediate means used to achieve a goal. Strategy is the overarching vision of how to employ tactics and other assets to achieve a goal.”

“Yeah?” Toby considered that. “So my strategy is keeping my clothes clean, and my tactic is not wearing them when I eat.”

“Precisely. Unfortunately, that tactic only works at home.”

“Well, yeah! The kids at school would think I was pretty weird if I stripped in the cafeteria at lunchtime.”

“Which makes this tactic ineffective. The overall goal is for you to learn to keep food from decorating you.”

Toby’s face fell. “You mean I gotta get dressed.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I don’t gotta get dressed before breakfast when I stay with Grandpa.”

Grandpa was Rule’s father, Isen Turner—the Nokolai Rho. Toby had stayed with him at Clanhome until school started.

“That was summer vacation,” Rule said firmly. “The rules are different once school starts.”

That was a telling argument. The boy had been raised by his maternal grandmother, Louise Asteglio, until two months ago, when Rule was finally able to gain custody. Lily knew Louise had insisted on dressing before breakfast during the school year.

Toby’s face fell. “But—”

“Toby.”

Toby heaved a sigh, then brightened. “Hamburgers?”

Rule nodded.

“Are you gonna make one for Lily, too?”

She answered that one. “I ate before I went for my run. It’s not a good idea to exercise on empty.”

“Yeah, but … hamburgers . For breakfast .”

That hadn’t happened back in North Carolina at his grandmother’s house. It hadn’t happened at Lily’s home when she was growing up in San Diego, either. Rule was keeping some of Mrs. Asteglio’s rules, both because they worked and because he thought the continuity would help Toby adapt. But he saw no objection to burgers for breakfast. Even a fully human boy needs protein in the morning, he’d said.

And Toby wasn’t fully human. He was lupus, though he wouldn’t turn wolf until he hit puberty. Lupi needed extra protein even before the Change.

“I don’t think I have time,” Lily said. “I’ve got to take my shower and get dressed, or I won’t get you to school before the bell rings.” Dropping Toby off at school in the mornings was her idea. Rule could have done it. Any of the guards would have been happy to do it—and might need to sometimes, when her job got crazy. But Lily wanted those minutes with Toby in the car when it was just the two of them.