Page 16 of Angel's Temper

“What the hell was that?” Molly spun around the alley, but nothing struck her notice until four russet paws peeked out from behind the dumpster.

A squeal erupted from her chest, bouncing off the bricks and nearly startling the little dog back into whatever grimy hole it had been hiding in.

“Oh, look at you! Come on out. I won’t hurt you. Oh my gosh, you poor thing. Please don’t tell me those are your ribs. I’m going to lose it in a puddle of tears if I see your ribs.”

The small hound dog meekly trotted out from behind the dumpster, hesitantly poking its black nose in her direction. The red coloring on its paws gave way to a short sleek ebony coat, which largely covered the rest of its body save for the muzzle and underbelly. Curious brown eyes darted around and eventually settled on Molly’s hands when she held them out. Apparently surmising that her human scent was more than agreeable and what Molly hoped was a fair amount better than the frozen urine puddles, the pup followed up its sniffs with playful licks.

While there were no ribs on display yet—a serious thanks to all the heavy-hitting deities that usually ensured against that kind of animal suffering—Molly worried about that changing as winter kept moving up its timeline with the frigid weather. Seriously, there was a special place in hell reserved for people who abandoned and harmed animals, one where humans were the ones kept in cages and left to the mercies of all the animals they’d wronged. Preferably with shock collars.

A girl could dream.

“Would you like some treats? I’ve got all sorts of breakfast foods. Any kind of meat you could think of, really. Let’s see, there’s maple-smoked bacon, apple sausage, corned beef hash, ham steaks with red-eye gravy . . .”

The dog’s floppy ears swung like a pendulum with each choice, its relaxed tongue lolling from side to side.

Molly sat back on her heels and welcomed the dog farther into her lap. To her surprised delight, the little pup accepted the invitation. “Hmm . . . No collar.” She palpated around its shoulder blades, feeling for the rice-sized lump indicating a microchip beneath the skin. “Nothing there.” Her chilly fingers prodded some more but came away empty. “One last thing I’d like to check, if you don’t mind. I recognize it’s a bit insensitive, but I’d like to become more properly acquainted if we’re to share a meal.” With a flash of an apology, Molly gently lifted the dog’s leg. After a brief, strained bit of eye contact between the two, she swiftly righted the dog. “There, ma’am. You’re all done.”

The dog scooted back a bit and quickly sniffed its undercarriage, so to speak, no doubt ensuring that everything was as it should be. Once satisfied, she settled on her haunches and mirrored Molly’s position while leaning into all the ear scratches offered up. If Molly’s heart hadn’t been thoroughly melted, then the pup’s cheerful mewls evened her out into the most homogenous goo of warmth. The last time she’d been so stupidly giddy was when a company breeding Seeing Eye dogs brought the puppies into town to do crosswalk training.

She’d spent the day with her butt parked on a bench, asked Benny to keep an eye on the dining room for a bit, and cheerfully watched young balls of happy fluff pounce through downtown Aurora.

It had only cost her a whole tenderloin in recompense. Totally worth it.

Molly worked her slowly warming fingers over one spot along the dog’s flank with extra enthusiasm, which seemed to increase butt waggles exponentially. “If only people were as eager to please.” She chuckled softly, before remembering what had dragged her outside in the first place. “Well, maybe not so eager. At least your smiles are genuine. You’d be surprised at how much of an anomaly that is, especially among our opposite sex.”

Creaking hinges drew the dog’s attention, causing it to step out of Molly’s grasp with a yelp. When Molly turned around, the restaurant’s back door slammed shut with a reverberation she nearly felt in her teeth. In front of the door stood Brass, with a bag of garbage at his feet, and a hard expression on his face that would have scorched the earth beneath them.

Molly sucked in a sharp breath and froze.

Because he leveled that threatening gaze right at her.

Chapter 8

At least your smiles are genuine.

There weren’t enough hours in the day for Brass to codify all the ways in which those six little words urged his curse that much closer to the surface. And he’d been doing such an admirable job that morning keeping it at bay, in his very humble damn opinion.

He’d had to, at first, resist the temptation to upend every table in that place each time a woman had asked him to pick up another napkin or when one would brush against his ass with a murmured “Excuse me” on their way to precisely nowhere. Given how quickly he’d calculated the trajectory needed to hurl his serving tray through the window, and he still hadn’t wound up cranking that oversized frisbee yet, he figured he deserved far more than that Medal of Honor pinned on those homespun mortal military heroes.

An act of freaking valor, to be sure, which was why Molly’s words hadn’t simply plucked at his too-short tether but nearly snapped it.

Before he offered to help her, no one would have ever dared touch him, let alone accidentally bump into him, had they known his true nature—the one born of celestial fire and wings he was forced to hide in the mortal realm. In the dining room, however, every inadvertent flex or grunt on his part seemed to invite any human with two X chromosomes and, based on some lascivious glances, a few with Y chromosomes as well, to lose their ever-loving minds.

Ironically, he could relate.

When a—well, he’d go with mature—woman at one table placed her hand on his forearm, even going so far as to squeeze the muscles there, he’d had to swallow down his urge to flay off his skin. Worse yet, Molly had left the dining room several minutes earlier and hadn’t returned to cajole and schmooze with the patrons, though there were times when he suspected she enjoyed it about as much as he did: not one damned bit.

He’d killed for far less, and boy, did it chafe that he couldn’t do so now.

How, by all the mages, did mortal women in general, let alone those in the service industry, make it through a single shift without impaling no fewer than fifteen customers who got too handsy? For every coy glance or soft smirk thrown his way, there were two more bolder, more appreciative, though equally as flagrant maneuvers from women waiting in the wings.

Once he noticed Molly hadn’t returned with her usual efficiency, his trapezius muscles had begun to bunch with strain beneath his collar, and unease prickled his spine. Her proximity had been the only thing luring him away from what he might do to her fine restaurant had his hairpin trigger been pulled just a little bit harder. Whatever thrall her presence had over him wasn’t only noticeable but needed. It was a mysterious circumstance he vowed to uncover, just as soon as he could breathe again without the red haze threatening to snuff out his humanity over eggs and hash browns.

Eventually, faced with a desperate choice and having lost sight of the very reason he’d offered himself up for this ordeal in the first place, Brass had decided to choose the only option that would most assuredly put off his admirers.

Garbage duty.

What he hadn’t been prepared for was the sight of Molly, knees near a puddle and her shapely backside separated from the foul ground by the cradle of her shoes, loving on a random hound dog while confessing that, somehow, somewhere, there lived a male who had used his affection toward her to . . . deceive her?

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