Tianna Xander (6 page)

“
The boys didn’t get dick. I
think they thought we were set, since we’re all older and already
established in our careers,” Lance said as he entered the room and
leaned against the wall, his hands in his pockets. “Any
news?”

“
Where have you been?” April
turned to their brother, then waved her hand dismissively. “Never
mind. There’s no new news except that Tony here is Tansy’s mate and
May has a collection of cocktail napkins from a club called
the
Purring Pussycat
.”

“
She has what?” Lance’s eyes
rounded and his face grew red. “Oh, my God! I knew that girl looked
familiar!” He spun on his heel and practically ran down the hall
toward the stairs. The girls and their respective mates clamored
behind him. At some point, all of them asking, “What’s wrong with
him?”

Tony grinned. He couldn’t help himself.
He was sure Lancelot Flowers was scarred for life if he’d just
watched his sister strip in a club.

“
What in the hell is she
doing there?” Lance said with a growl as he stomped down the
stairs. “Thank God, April called me out of that dump before she’d
taken her clothes off.” He shuddered. “Oh, my God.” He turned to
the rest of them. “I’d better not hear of any of you doing that for
a living.”

“
Too late.” Ginger glared at
him and crossed her arms as though daring him to make
judgments.

Tony wanted to laugh. Apparently, his
sisters knew how to handle him. It was about time at least one of
their brothers cared enough to hang around and see what the Flowers
girls were up to.

Hell, in his mind, it was
criminal to leave these women unprotected. Even if they thought
they were protected from the dragons whom they thought would harm
them. They should have stuck around to protect the young women…from
everyone else, including themselves
and
their crappy magic.

They followed a cursing Lance outside
where he climbed onto his motorcycle and zoomed away, not caring to
wait for the others to join him.

“
Boy he’s mad,” Ginger said,
biting her lip. “If he’s this mad over May doing this once a month
for a charity, how mad do you think he’s going to be when he finds
out I do it two weekends a month, just because I can?”

Marigold scowled and crossed her arms.
“He has no business barging back into our lives and telling us what
to do now. He should have stuck around after Mom and Dad
disappeared, if he wanted the right to try and tell us what to
do.”

“
You’ve got that right,
sis,” Jasmine said from inside Drake’s limo. “Come on, you guys, we
have to hurry if we’re going to get there before May strangles him
with something green. You know how she gets when she gets mad.
Let’s just hope there aren’t any live plants in that
club.”

“
There aren’t, but that
doesn’t mean anything. She only needs them near the club.” Ginger
climbed in next to Jasmine and the rest of the sisters followed
suit.

“
To the
Purring Pussycat
Club, Oscar,” Drake
said as he closed the door. “You do know where that is, don’t
you?”

“
Of course I remember,
sir.”

April gave her husband a dirty look.
“He remembers where it is?”

Drake just gave her an unreadable look.
“You can hardly be upset about the places I found myself before we
met, sweet.”

“
I can if you’ve lied to me.
You told me you’d lost interest in sex until you met
me.”

Drake appeared uncomfortable. “Just
because I had lost interest in sex does not mean that I didn’t find
pleasure in looking at women.”

April huffed and turned away from her
husband. “Men! You can’t kill ‘em and, well, you can’t kill
‘em.”

Tony noticed she didn’t resist when
Drake pulled her close and tucked her under his arm.

“
May is in so much trouble.”
Tansy pressed her fingers against her lips, most likely to hide her
smile. “I can’t imagine what Lance is feeling right now, especially
if he thought she was hot.”

A few of the girls stuck their fingers
toward their open mouths. “Gag!” they said at once.

After so many centuries alone, Tony
felt as though he was part of a family again. He looked down at
Tansy and thanked the heavens that he found her. Having made the
decision to end his life just before they met, she was literally
his salvation.

He wanted nothing more than to take her
into his arms and kiss her stupid. His fingers practically itched
to touch her soft skin, her silky hair and his body ached to feel
her soft curves pressed tightly against him, but he knew she would
never allow it here, in front of her sisters.

After so many years alone, this woman
gave him life, a family and siblings to tease and protect all over
again.

“
Tell me,” he said,
interrupting their feminine chatter. “Which do you think upset him
the most, the fact that his little sister is an exotic dancer, or
that he was attracted to her before he realized who she
was?”

The sisters all began to laugh.
“Definitely the latter,” April said with a giggle.

“
Definitely,” they all
agreed at the same time.

Chapter Five

The
Purring Pussycat
was just the way
Tansy imagined it. It was dark inside and sleazy. Topless
waitresses ran about filling and exchanging the drinks on the
tables, fighting off the men with wandering hands as they did
so.

Lance stood at the bar, his back to the
liquor, his elbows resting on the gleaming wood behind him. He
stared at the stage, his expression grim.

Thankfully, it wasn’t May on the stage,
but another woman that Lance couldn’t seem to stop staring at. She
wore a librarian costume, complete with her hair in a bun, high
buttoned blouse, thick bottle glasses and black chunky
shoes.

For some reason, Lance didn’t look any
happier to see that woman there either. What was it with her
brother lately? Did he decide to return home to suddenly become a
prude? And if he was a prude, what had he been doing in here in the
first place?

Tansy frowned, whatever his issues
were, she didn’t like it. After all, all seven of their brothers
disappeared after their parents’ deaths and left the girls on their
own. He had no business getting upset with the way they went on
with their lives.

Lance looked away when the music began
to play and the woman began to strip her clothing off. Tansy had to
hand it to the woman though. At least she wore a G-string and
pasties. She was never totally naked. She danced a burlesque more
than she stripped and Tansy found herself hoping that was what May
had done as well. She wasn’t sure she could handle knowing that
this entire crowd had seen her sister totally naked. It was a
thought beyond bearing.

Tony kissed her on the cheek. “Stay
here for a minute, will you, angel? I have to talk with someone.
I’ll be right back.”

Tansy watched as Tony sauntered over to
a table and sat down with two other men. The two at the table
didn’t seem happy to see Tony, but at least they weren’t jumping up
and slamming their fists into his face either. Whatever business
Tony had with the other two, they didn’t seem to like it much. It
looked as though their discussion became rather heated until May
took the stage.

Seven men headed for the platform when
May danced out wearing a bunch of feathers over what Tansy hoped
was at least pasties and a G-string. The music suddenly stopped
when the DJ saw the men approaching her position. He leaned toward
his microphone. “You’d better get out here, Barry. There’s going to
be trouble.”

Tansy closed her eyes, unable to bear
to watch as the men stormed the stage. The big bouncer, who was
most likely the man May left the lingerie shop with, ran out and
tried to keep them off the stage, but every one of the men pushed
him aside and made their way to her sister. Lancelot was the first.
He ripped his leather coat off and draped it over May’s
shoulders.

“
If you want money for
charity, I’ll give it to them. I never want to see you in here
again.” Lance’s voice carried over the crowd.

“
Puhleeze, Lancelot
Flowers,” May said as a group of men chuckled at their brother’s
name. “You have no right to come in here dictating to me.” She
sniffed. “Where have you been since Mom and Dad died?”

“
First off, little sister,
Mom and Dad aren’t dead. If you and the rest of my harebrained
sisters knew a damned thing about magic, you would know that good
magic can’t kill.” He shook his head. “And none of you could ever
handle black magic. With your control you wouldn’t only kill
someone else, you’d most likely blow yourselves up. They aren’t
dead. They’ve been transported somewhere. The rest of the guys are
still out looking for them.”

May held his coat tight around her as
she looked out at the rest of the men standing on the edge of the
stage. “What are the rest of you guys doing here?”

She held her chin up, her lip trembling
in the telltale sign that she was about to cry. Hell, Tansy would
cry, too, if she saw half of her family and a bunch of family
friends standing around when she was about to strip down to little
more than a few well-placed pieces of tape.

Tansy made her way onto the stage.
“Come on, May. Let’s go home.”

“
I can’t.” Tears began to
flow down May’s cheeks and Tansy wanted to cry herself. “I signed a
contract saying that I would dance here tonight and once a month
for the next year.”

Crap!

“
What were you thinking,
May?” April asked, her eyes wide. “How could you think that this
would be okay?”

May turned to them, her eyes filled
with anger. “What difference does it make? Seriously? I mean,
there’s some sick-o out there with naked pictures of all of us.
What’s to stop him from showing them around to everyone and their
brother?” she paced away, still holding Lance’s coat tight around
her.

“
Face it, you guys. There
could be hundreds, thousands of people looking at our naked
pictures on the internet right now. What’s so wrong with me dancing
and getting paid for it so I can give the money to homeless
kids?”

Drake stepped forward, draped the
blanket his driver had carried in and handed to him over May and
gave Lance his jacket back. He kissed May on the forehead. “There’s
nothing wrong with it, little sister.” He held up his hand at the
choking noise Lance made and continued. “Normally, there is nothing
wrong with it. But right now, there are a lot of things that could
go wrong.”

He wrapped his arm around her and led
her from the stage. Drake looked at the club manager who stood
wringing his hands and stamping out little fires that kept
springing up all around them.

“
What the—” The manager
frowned and stamped out another fire.

“
I’m sure you will allow the
young lady out of her contract now that you know her life is in
jeopardy. Will you not?”

The manager sneered. “I
offered her good money and she signed a legal and binding contract.
If she doesn’t dance, she owes
me
money.”

“
How much?”

One of the men with whom Tony had been
talking, stepped forward and raised a brow. “How much do you want
to let her out of this contract?”

The manager sputtered. “I—I don’t know.
I never thought about it. Nobody wants out of their contracts. They
make damned good money here.”

The man stepped closer, an obvious air
of menace about him. His brown gaze bored into the man. Death was
in those eyes as she watched him stare the man down. Tansy could
almost see the Earth opening up and swallowing the club owner as
this man, no, this dragon stared him down. “Say, for the sake of
argument,” he paused and turned toward May, “that this woman wants
out. How much?”

The owner licked his lips, then looked
at them all before his gaze settled on Oscar in his uniform. Tansy
could almost see his brain working out how much money these men
had.

“
I don’t know.” His eyes
narrowed as the rusty cogs in his brain obviously began to spin.
“I’ll have to think about it. I’ll lose business because of this.
I’ll have to figure out how much.”

The unknown dragon grinned and pulled
out a checkbook. “To hell with that. I’ll give you
five-hundred-thousand dollars for this place right now.”

“
Sold! But I’m not taking no
damned check.” The man sneered. “Do you think I just fell off the
turnip truck? You’ll get me the money before I sign
anything.”

“
I’ll have your money before
you can get to your damned office to call your lawyer to draw up
the paperwork. Now go!”

The manager scurried away and the
unknown dragon turned to Drake. “Five-hundred grand. Ha! Chump
change.” He shook his head. “I’ll get the money, sign the contract
and you can take your sister-in-law home.” He checked his watch. “I
have a business meeting in less than an hour. Can I talk with you
tomorrow? We’ll work out the details then.”