Page 131 of Beware of Dog

“Well,” Walsh said. It was self-explanatory.

Shep rolled his eyes, but he shifted in a way that made Walsh think a nerve had been struck. “You think kids—college students,” he corrected himself, quickly, “don’t drink at parties if they’re not twenty-one? You want her out drinking with a bunch of fucking frat boys somewhere?”

Walsh sipped his awful bubbly water.

“Yeah,” Shep said, “that’s what I thought.” He pointed to the glass. “She only drinks with me, and it’s only if she’s somewhere safe and I can keep an eye on her.”

“What did I say?” Fox said. “Daddy issues.”

Before Walsh could fire off a retort, Shep sent him a disgusted look. “Gross. Get outta here with that shit.”

Fox angled his head back along the bench, regarding him from half-lidded eyes. “It can’t have escaped your notice, right? Absent father, young girl, older man. You’re filling a certain role in her life.”

“Fuck off.”

“And maybe,” Fox continued, “you like that role.”

“Where’s your off switch, man?”

“It’s broken,” Walsh lamented. “It snapped right off when he was born, the wanker.”

Shep sat forward and put his drink on the table. “Okay, time out for a sec.” His gaze turned guarded. “I get that it’s, like, the law that you gotta give me shit. I can take it. But you get that Cass isn’t a little kid anymore, right? And that she’s going to be withsomebody? Am I honest to God the worst possibility?”

Fox see-sawed his hand in the air.

“You sure you want us to answer that?” Walsh asked.

“I’m sure you’re a dickhead,” Shep said. “Both of you.”

“And you’re not?”

Shep grinned. Stood, and picked up his drink and Cass’s wine. “I know I am. That means I fit right in. I’ll see you later.” And then he walked back down the porch steps and across the lawn.

“He’s got us there,” Fox said.

Walsh barely withheld his smile.

~*~

Dinner wasn’t a true meal, but a grazing spread laid out on the dining room table. When Cass had drunk her wine and wanted a refill, Shep urged her to go inside and get something to eat, too. They crossed the lawn hand-in-hand, and walked past Fox and Walsh on the way to the kitchen door, the two of them locked in what looked like a heated debate.

Shep lifted a two-fingered wave as they passed, and Fox saluted him. It was mocking, but his grin was surprisingly true.

Walsh called, “She better not be hungover in the morning,” and Shep shot him the bird over his shoulder.

“What was that?” Cass asked once they were inside.

Shep shook his head and steered her by the shoulders through the crowd in the kitchen, out the other side and across the hall into the dining room. “They wanted to get cute and give me more shit about you.”

She sighed. “I wish they’d stop.”

“Nah, I handled it.”

She craned a glance over her shoulder to check how badly he was bluffing, but his expression was serene.

“They’re insufferable,” she complained, taking a plate off the stack and scanning the offerings: crudité, charcuterie, fruit salad, sausage pinwheels, meatballs simmering in a crock pot. “Which is stupid, because you’re just like them.”

Plates clattered, and she realized her mistake when she glanced over and saw him big-eyed and frozen. “Uh. What?”

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