Keeping Secret: Secret McQueen, Book 4 (34 page)

“Secret…” His voice sounded the same on every message. Tired, apologetic, but the last ten or so had also come across with some of his signature impatience. “I know you’re still upset.” I snorted. “But we need to sit down and talk about this like mature adults.” Really, he was pulling the
mature adults
card? There was a long, loaded pause. “I miss you.”

I deleted the message.

Leave it to Lucas to make me seem like the irrational one. It didn’t matter that Page Six had spent a whole week covering the fallout from the so-called “White Wedding Massacre”. Forget the gossip column, our wedding had been front page on
The Times
and the
Post
. Both articles made sure to mention how right before the gunfire started I had been stood up.

According to pack law, we were still married.

According to me, I didn’t give a fuck what pack law thought. Lucas and I were done.

I picked up the phone again and made a call. After three rings it was answered with a sleepy, rumbling, “Hey.”

“Did I wake you?”

Rustling sheets and a cough to clear the traces of sleep out of his voice. “No,” Desmond lied.

“I woke you, I’m sorry. Go back to bed.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Liar.”

I stared at the light on my microwave. Eleven forty-seven. I should have checked before I called, but I was still so used to Desmond being on my schedule it was hard to adjust now that he was living like a normal human man again. Out in the daylight where he belonged, not stuck down in a brick-windowed basement dungeon with me.

“I…”
miss you
, I thought, but didn’t quite manage to say. “Just wanted to see how you were feeling.”

“Got myself a nice little scar. Doc said one inch over and you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

I choked back a sob. A bit of noise must have come out because he asked, “You sure you’re all right?”

“Yeah.”

Another silence.

“The pack came back with a decision about Morgan.”

“Oh?” It was all I could say. After I’d brought her out of the hedge maze in one piece, everyone was so shocked she was still alive it had taken them a little time to figure out how she should be punished. As far as the general public was concerned—police, her day job, her friends—she had vanished without a trace after failing to kill me.

Since then the pack had been having heated debates about her fate. Debates I wasn’t a part of because it would mean being in the same room as Lucas. He was right, we were going to have to talk sooner or later so we could figure out where I fit in the pack now that we were through. But I was still holding on to later.

“Yeah,” Desmond continued. “Apparently there’s a pack in Siberia…”

“Siberia?”

“That’s all I know.”

“Desmond…” I rested my head against the cool kitchen wall and imagined I was lying next to him.

“Mmhmm?” Sleep was clouding his voice again, and I knew I’d lose him soon.

“Do you ever think…maybe…about coming home?”

Silence.

I waited, thinking he was just carefully considering his answer. Then the breathing on the other end grew slow and regular, and he began to snore softly. I kept my eyes closed and listened, lying with him in my mind, even though twenty-eight city blocks separated us.

It might as well have been twenty-eight states.

After too many minutes to be healthy for me, I hung up.

May was a great time for night walks in New York. It wasn’t too hot, nor was it so cold as to need layers. I wore Dominick’s leather jacket over my white V-neck shirt and jeans as I traversed the path from my apartment to the only destination my feet seemed willing to go.

In spite of the late hour, the streets teemed with life. The city was awake and alive, ready to drink in as much spring as it could before the seasons shifted and summer swelled up, bloated and stinky with offensive heat.

I wove through the crowds, barely conscious of my own movements. In SoHo a new tattoo studio was still open, and a guy smoking on the front steps offered me a nod as I passed. I smiled, but not too much, and kept walking. I moved past the council headquarters without so much as a second glance, and walked until my feet hit the familiar tile lobby of an apartment building I hadn’t seen in quite some time.

I took the stairs slowly, head down, until I reached the appropriate floor, and once I was outside the door I shook off the stupor that had cloaked me the whole way here. I stared at the green door with its peeling paint, and my heart began to hammer. For a second I thought about turning around and going back home.

But what was waiting for me at home? An empty apartment. A cat that missed a man almost as much as I did.

I raised my hand, and after a heartbeat of debate, I rapped on the door.

A moment later it swung open, and I offered a weak smile to the dark-haired owner of the suite. “I know it’s late…”

“It’s fine.” He gave me a confused look. “What’s up?”

I glanced past him, into the wide-open loft, then I met his gaze and held it for a long time. Long enough it took on more meaning than I meant it to. Finally I said, “I’ve come to make good on a promise.”

Holden stared at me, his eyes widening only slightly. Then he stepped out of the doorway and let me in.

About the Author

Sierra Dean is a reformed historian. She was born and raised in the Canadian prairies and is allowed annual exit visas in order to continue her quest of steadily conquering the world one city at a time. Making the best of the cold Canadian winters, Sierra indulges in her less global interests: drinking too much tea and writing urban fantasy.

Ever since she was a young girl she has loved the idea of the supernatural coexisting with the mundane. As an adult, however, the idea evolved from the notion of fairies in flower beds, to imagining that the rugged-looking guy at the garage might secretly be a werewolf. She has used her overactive imagination to create her own version of the world, where vampire, werewolves, fairies, gods and monsters all walk among us, and she’ll continue to travel as much as possible until she finds it for real.

Sierra can be reached all over the place, as she’s a little addicted to social networking. Find her on:

Facebook:
www.facebook.com/sierradeanbooks

Website:
www.sierradean.com

E-mail:
[email protected]

Twitter:
@sierradean

Look for these titles by Sierra Dean

Now Available:

Secret McQueen

Something Secret This Way Comes

The Secret Guide to Dating Monsters

A Bloody Good Secret

Secret Santa

Deep Dark Secret

Are blind dates supposed to be this bloody?

The Secret Guide to Dating Monsters

© 2011 Sierra Dean

A
Secret McQueen
Story

They say it’s impossible to find a man in New York City. Secret McQueen needs to find two in one night. Of course, it’ll mean pulling off the impossible—find and kill a displaced rogue vampire without disrupting the first promising date she’s had in ages. As a werewolf hybrid used to walking a fine line of survival in the vampire world, though, Secret eats impossible for breakfast.

Somewhere between hello and the first round of drinks, Secret makes her move. Her target, Hollywood’s biggest star, shouldn’t be hard to spot. Just look for swarms of fans. Except every time her vampire liaison, Holden, helps keep her mission on track, her date runs further off the rails.

Either Holden has a hidden agenda, or he knows more than he’s letting on about her quarry. One way or another, Secret is determined to get her man, and meet Mr. Right. Or die trying.

Warning: This book contains a sword-wielding assassin whose barbs are sharper than her blade, a vampire with serious brooding issues but a skilled tongue, and an A-lister with a bad habit of eating his fans. This novella takes place approximately one year prior to the events of
Something Secret This Way Comes
.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Secret Guide to Dating Monsters:

We crossed the street on a Do Not Walk, narrowly avoiding an overzealous cab, and Holden guided me onto East 33rd by placing his hand on the small of my back and motioning me in the appropriate direction. We must have looked for all the world like one of those beautiful couples people love to hate.
He
made us pretty, I just helped make us a pair. It didn’t hurt that the dress gave me the illusion of being more stunning than I actually was.

When we were angled the right way, his hand lingered below my shoulders in a protective gesture. His fingers were level with my hair, and from time to time he would catch and hold one of the curls for a second, then release it.

“You realize we’re almost there, don’t you?” I asked, running out of patience.

It wasn’t his touch that bothered me. It was the delay in his narrative. Vampires have no sense of urgency, which drives me mental. They’ll forget what they’re saying and muse silently to themselves for hours if you don’t remind them to resume their story. I guess living for centuries must make time feel different.

He dropped his hand, as though touching me was part of his distraction, then licked his lips as he prepared to speak.

“It would seem, according to the West Coast Tribunal, one of their rogues has crossed into our jurisdiction.” His hands were now stuffed in the pockets of his gray dress pants. Summer or not, Holden Chancery would never be caught dead in shorts. Climate control isn’t really an issue for vampires.

Plus he was already dead.

“Oh?” I didn’t want to say too much, just wanted him to continue speaking.

Holden reached into his blazer and withdrew a familiar white envelope. The paper was a heavy linen finish and smelled sweet but faintly peppery. It was closed with an honest-to-God wax seal, stamped with Sig’s personal insignia.

My heart always caught with butterflies when Holden brought me one of these deliveries, and tonight was no different. With the slightest tremor of excitement, I took the envelope and held it close for a moment. Here it was, the promise of the hunt. The reward of the chase. The killer inside both my monsters lived for this.

I got down to brass tacks. “How much?”

“Ten.” Thousand. Wow, this guy must have been pretty naughty. The average rogue was worth five hundred if they were part of a sect, a thousand if they ran solo.

Yup. I’ve killed vampires for a mere five hundred dollars. But considering rogues would always be an issue, and I had a menacing reputation to uphold, five hundred bucks for a night’s work wasn’t too shabby. The most I’d ever earned on a single job was ten thousand, so this was a pretty nice number to hear again.

The warrant in my hands would cover almost seven months of rent.

Or five months and some new clothes to replace what Holden had insisted I throw out.

I popped the seal with a satisfying crack and was unfolding the paper when Holden’s attention shifted. A second later I knew why.

“Secret?” The voice was low, comforting and masculine without being overwhelming. It did happy things to parts of me I rarely acknowledged. He also didn’t stumble over my name, so he scored points early in the game for that. With a name like Secret McQueen, it was easy for people to make a mess out of it.

I turned away from Holden, the envelope still in my hand, and was pleasantly surprised by what greeted me.

Detective Tyler Nowakowski lived up to Mercedes’s designation of handsome. He was tall, at least six foot two, and lean without bending towards lanky. His eyes were a little too large, but it gave him a look of attentive curiosity. In contrast, his mouth was small, giving his face the appearance of an inverted triangle. His nose and jaw were strong, alluding to the Slavic heritage hinted at by his name. His hair, short and black, was styled with a minimal amount of gel.

He wore dark jeans, about half a size too big, based on how low they had fallen on his narrow hips, and he’d topped it with a white dress shirt fresh from the dry cleaner. I could smell the chemicals under the scent of his nice, but inexpensive, cologne.

Tyler looked at Holden apprehensively, and his thick black brows drew closer together. When he looked back to me, they went the opposite direction, and I accepted I’d made the right choice in agreeing to wear the dress.

“Yes. Secret. That’s me,” I managed to reply, struggling to shove the envelope into my purse.

Why are clutches so small? What’s the point of carrying a bag if all you can fit into it is your cell phone and a lip gloss? I could have found room for those in my bra.

Feeling foolish, I stuck my hand out to him and flashed him my brightest smile. “You must be Tyler. Cedes has told me all about you,” I fibbed.