Page 103 of Beware of Dog

“Nah.”

“Thought so. Okay, so that’s one: shop within your means, bro. Number two, and this is the important one: if Tenny offers to shake your hand,don’t. You’re gonna need both hands free.”

“Jesus.”

Someone in the background called Mercy, so Shep thanked him and ended the call.

“You’ll be fine,” Mercy assured, in parting, and maybe he would.

Shep slipped his phone away, squared his shoulders, and went back into the store.

Twenty-Six

As with dating, with sex, with “I love you,” and cohabitation, Cass had entertained childish ideas of what her proposal might look and feel like since puberty. What, she’d asked herself at twelve, at thirteen, even at seventeen, did it look like when a man loved you so much he wanted to commit himself to you forever? Candles? Rose petals? A string quartet and a fancy dinner? Skywriting? A hot air balloon and a message cut into a field down below? She’d laughed at such displays when she saw them on TV, and always wondered if hiding the ring in a slice of cake wasn’t a good way to wind up in the hospital for a few days.

But how would it go for her? If it went at all. She’d never been witness to a proposal in person. And back then, she’d been unable to imagine the exact shape of the man who might love her that much.

She’d never expected, as a girl, for it to happen when she was twenty, and worried about testifying at a rape trial on her friend’s behalf. Likewise she’d never have predicted she’d be marrying a grouchy, Jersey-born American twenty-six years her senior.

But when it did happen, on a Friday evening after class, it managed to be nothing and everything like she’d always hoped. Just as it was both the least, and most romantic evening of her life.

~*~

Cass spent most of her day fretting over Shep’s strange behavior that morning, his wild swings between hot and cold, his frantic gaze. He was freaking out. Heneverfreaked out,save when she admitted to having put herself in a dangerous situation. Is that how he saw marriage? Putting herself in danger?

Lost in her own mini freakout, she didn’t notice a very out of place biker resting on a bench until someone reached out and hooked a finger in her belt loop when she passed by. Her mind flashed to Sig, to Bryce, to all the others like them, and she cocked back her arm and swung hard when she whipped around to face the man who’d grabbed her.

Her fist landed inside a big palm with a meaty smack. Shep grinned up at her, eyes crinkled, delighted.

“You just go around punching guys now?” he asked. “No questions asked?”

Her face heated. “Oh. Hi.”

“Hi,” he said, mocking, but his face was terribly soft, sun lines standing stark around his mouth, deep grooves in the shade of the birch tree overhead.

Cass pulled her fist loose so she could open both hands and settle them on either side of his jaw, the sharp line of bone stark along her palms, rough with stubble. When she leaned down to kiss him, his mouth was already open and ready for her. He was adirtykisser, even in public, and she loved it.

She decided then, with his tongue sliding between her lips, that if her father or any of her brothers tried to play the big man and hurt Shep in any way, she was going to disown them and ask Toly to walk her down the aisle instead.

Because there was going to be an aisle. A wedding.

She thought her heart might burst.

When she pulled back, she traced his damp lower lip with her thumb, drinking in his face, and the way it gentled when he was gazing up at her.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Back at the flat, she took off her boots and jacket and set about rearranging canvases in her studio space. She had a new piece she wanted to work on first thing in the morning, when the light was at its best against the windows, and several completed pieces needed to be taken down and moved to a darker space where they wouldn’t fade.

Shep rattled around in the kitchen behind her, getting down glasses. “You want a drink?”

“I don’t think we have any wine left.”

“Nah, we do. I went to the store today.”

“Then yes, please.”

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