Sentinels: Alpha Rising

“Are you all right?” The woman eyed her. Her name was Mariska, and she was far too knowing for Holly’s taste. Far closer to bodyguard than escort, with a short sturdy form both rounded and strong—not to mention a sharp gaze that gave away more than Holly was probably supposed to see. So did her complexion, a distinctly beautiful brown shade that might have come from south India but instead came from the bear within her.

“You’re kidding, eh?” Holly said. “No, I’m not all right. Why can’t you people just leave us alone? Leave me alone?”

Mariska transferred her gaze to Holly’s hands, where they chafed against her arms in spite of the distinct heat still overlaying the fading summer day.

“Being here makes my skin crawl,” Holly told the woman, which was only the blunt truth. She’d felt it before, this sensation...on her Upper Michigan home turf, when she first started a restoration on an old clogged water feature. But nothing like this. One final squeeze of her upper arms and she let her hands fall. “You have no right to do this to me.”

But she’d always known they would. Just as she’d known that her parents would pay the price for hiding their family to protect Kai.

“Maybe we don’t,” Mariska said. “But we hope you’ll come to understand.” She lifted her chin at Jason, the tall man who served as her partner; they exchanged commentary in a silent but very real conversation, the likes of which Holly had previously seen only between her parents. Jason raised his phone, hitting the redial button. Again. Trying to reach the man they’d called Lannie with a strange mix of familiarity and deference.

“If you’re trying to reach him, why don’t you just talk to him?” Holly gestured between them in reference to the silent exchange they’d just had, only peripherally aware that the crawling sensation in her blood had eased.

“Lannie prefers that we don’t.” The woman gave her a wry look, one that said she had chosen her words diplomatically. “Besides, not all of us do that.”

“I don’t,” Holly muttered. Because she didn’t need it and she didn’t want it. She had no intention of letting someone else in her head—

It’s not real.

No way.

“What did you say?” Holly asked, a wary tone that drew Mariska’s surprised glance. Her glance would have turned into a question, had not a ringing phone pealed from the back of the store.

Jason made an exasperated face. “You might have picked up instead of just coming in,” he muttered, slipping his phone away—but he sounded more relieved than he might have.

Holly looked at him in surprise, understanding. “You weren’t sure he’d come.”

“Oh,” Jason said drily, “we were pretty sure he’d come. We just aren’t sure—”

“Shut up,” Mariska said, sharp and hasty, her gaze probing the back of the store.

It’s not real.

Holly spotted the new arrival against a backdrop of hanging bridle work and lead ropes, and understood immediately that this man owned this place.

That he owned any place in which he chanced to stand.

It wasn’t his strength, and it wasn’t the quiet but inexorable gaze he turned on her companions. It wasn’t even the first shock of his striking appearance—clean features with even lines, strong brows and nose and jaw, a sensual curve of lower lip and eyes blue enough to show from across the store. His hair was longer than stylish these days, layered and curling with damp around the edges.

No, it was more than all that.

“Oh, turn it off,” Mariska said.

Something changed—Holly didn’t even quite know what. Only that he was suddenly just a man in a casual blue plaid shirt yoked over the shoulder, half-buttoned and hanging out over jeans and boots, a heavy oval belt buckle evident beneath.

Cowboy, Holly thought, and found herself surprised by that. For the first time, she noticed not only bruises, but fresh bruises. A little smear of blood on a freshly washed cheek, a stain coming through the side of the shirt. An odd look on his face as he watched her, something both startled and somehow just as wary as she was—and then that, too, faded.

“That’s better,” Mariska grumbled, but the words held grudging respect. She exchanged a glance with Holly that was nothing to do with their individual reasons for being here and everything to do with a dry, shared appreciation for what they’d seen—a recognition that Holly had seen it, too.

The man rolled one sleeve and then the other, joining them with a loose walk that also somehow spoke of strength. “A little warning might have been nice,” he said, a quiet voice with steel behind it.

Jason held up the phone. “We called.”

“Did you?” the man said flatly. He eyed Holly with enough intent to startle her—as if he assessed her on a level deeper than she could even perceive.

She suddenly wished she wasn’t still wearing well-worn work gear—tough slim-fit khakis over work boots and a long-tailed berry-colored shirt. Her hair was still yanked back into the same ponytail high at the back of her head, and it was a wonder her gloves weren’t jammed into her back pocket instead of in her overnighter.

She released a breath when the man turned away from her.

Jason scowled, eyes narrowing, and Mariska stepped on whatever he was about to say. “Look, Lannie, this all happened fast, and we’re making it up as we go. There’s no cell reception between here and Cloudview—and we did call as soon as we could get through. If we’d been able to talk to you—”

Silently, she meant. Even Holly understood that much. But Mariska had said it. Lannie prefers that we don’t.

Lannie didn’t raise his voice...somehow he didn’t need to. “You aren’t supposed to be reaching out to me at all.”

“No, sir,” Jason said, just a little bit miserable. “The Jody thing. I know. But that wasn’t your fault, and we—” And then he stopped, apparently thinking better of the whole thing—and who wouldn’t, from the quick, hard pale-eyed look Lannie gave him?

Holly found herself smiling a little. After hours in the care of these two, unable to so much as use a toilet without an escort, it was gratifying to see the tables turned. Even if she did wonder about the Jody thing.

But Lannie didn’t linger on the moment. He ran a hand through his damp hair, carelessly raking it back into some semblance of order. “You want coffee?”

“Holly drinks tea, if you have it,” Mariska said, apparently well-briefed on all things Holly. “So do I.”

Jason looked as though he’d drink whatever Lannie put before him.

They joined Lannie in a tiny nook in the back hallway, which had a coffeemaker and electric teakettle, a diminutive refrigerator, a sink and half a box of donuts sitting on an upended fifty-gallon drum. Lannie reached for the teakettle plug...and hesitated there, leaning heavily on the counter.

As if for that moment, the counter was the only thing holding him up.

Holly shot a startled look at Mariska and Jason, finding them involved in some sort of mostly silent but definitely emphatic disagreement. By the time she looked again at Lannie, the teakettle was firing up and Lannie had pulled a bowl stuffed with tea bags from the narrow, open-faced cabinet above the sink—right next to the big green tin of Bag Balm, some half-used horse wormer and an open bag of castration bands.

“So,” Holly said. “Lannie. My name is Holly Faulkes, and I don’t want to be here.”

He pulled four mugs from the half-sized drainer hanging in the sink, and she realized she hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know—but that unlike everyone else in this mess, he wasn’t impatient or annoyed by it.

“Phelan,” he told her, swirling the coffee in its carafe. “Phelan Stewart. But yes. You can call me Lannie.” He filled one of the mugs with coffee and handed it out to Jason without looking; the teakettle activity built to a fever pitch. “What’s your story, Holly Faulkes?”

“What’s yours, eh?” she countered. “Why are they dumping me on you?”

Lannie held out the tea bags without any visible reaction, and Holly plucked out a random blend and passed the bowl to Mariska. Lannie put his hip against the counter and sipped coffee—only to immediately dump it down the sink, exposing a gleam of torso through the gaping shirt and annoying Holly simply because she’d noticed.

“Faith,” he said, as if that explained it all. And then, “Holly Faulkes, if you’d come with a group, I’d say you all needed to become a team. Since you’re here alone, you’re probably not playing well with others in some way.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, patently ignoring Jason’s dilemma over whether to try the coffee. “You must be important to them.”

She found herself amused. “Because Brevis only bothers you with the important things, eh?”

“Something like that. And the fact that I’m on sabbatical.” He held out his hand. After a hesitation, Holly offered him her tea bag. He took Mariska’s, plunked them both into mugs, poured hot water on top and handed the mugs over. “Your turn. Or would you rather have them tell your story?”

Holly relaxed, curling her hands around the mug. He might be Sentinel, but he wasn’t pushing her. He’d given her options.