Chapter 7
It was another hour before they made it to Ruby’s, and Meghan’s stomach was rumbling, even if other parts of her were completely sated.
She pulled the Subaru around the back of the kitchen and turned it off. “Jessie is going to be insufferable,” she warned Trevor. “You are in for a day of winks and innuendo.”
“A price I am willing to pay,” Trevor said magnanimously.
She had done her civic duty in warning him, so Meghan got out of the car and went in the back kitchen door.
But Jessie met her with a grim face. “You’ve got a visitor,” she said.
“This is getting to be a habit,” Meghan said, walking towards the front.
Her empty stomach did a flip flop of horror as she came around the corner of the counter.
The bodyguards were a new touch; Grayden’s paranoia must have gone up a notch with her disappearance.
Grayden himself looked no different, his expensive suit and leather shoes out of place in the shabby diner.
It was possible he had less hair, but it was artfully styled so it wasn’t entirely obvious.
It was darker than Trevor’s white-streaked hair, but Trevor looked decades younger.
Grayden was looking distastefully at a menu, the goons across the booth from him sipping ice water from the cheap plastic glasses.
Meghan’s feet had rooted to the linoleum floor, her heart was hammering in her chest. She was glad there was no food in her stomach; it was doing a good job of climbing her spine up into her throat.
Then he put the menu down and looked up.
“Ah, May,” he said, his silky voice like nails through her toes. “Are you ready to stop playing and come home?”
Home. Her shattered mind helpfully provided images of her cabin, cozy and basic, of sitting with a cup of hot tea and a battered book from the exchange shelf at Ruby’s, Sheppard leaning against her knee for absent-minded pats.
But no, Sheppard wasn’t there any more. And that wasn’t the home that Grayden meant.
He meant her perfect suburban prison.
Grayden stood and came to her when Meghan couldn’t move. “You’ve let yourself go,” he said critically. “But we can get your hair fixed. I’ve missed you.”
A growl at Meghan’s side made her glance sideways with her eyes; she couldn’t bring herself to actually turn her head.
A gray wolf was standing at her side, its shoulder easily at Meghan’s waist.
The bodyguards were standing to flank Grayden, reaching for their sidearms and eyeing the wolf nervously as it stepped forward.
That snapped Meghan out of her trance. “No!” she cried, voice sudden and loud in the tense diner. She threw herself sideways over the wolf, holding it back by the shoulders.
Trevor’s growl rumbled through her arms, and her face was very near the teeth that his snarl exposed, but Meghan’s sense of danger was swamped by the man before them. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said slowly to Grayden, surprised that she could.
Grayden stepped back and Meghan felt a moment of triumph.
It was short-lived.
“Oh, May, honey. You’ve been off your medication a long time, sweetheart. But you know I’ll look after you. I only want what’s best for you. You don’t want to live in squalor like this, do you?”
He always sounded so utterly reasonable. Meghan was uncomfortably aware that she hadn’t taken a shower yet, that she was wearing old jeans with fresh coffee stains, and that her sweatshirt was covered in dog fur.
Meghan put her face in Trevor’s ruff for a moment of strength, and then stood, stepping between the wolf and her husband.
“You have never wanted what’s best for me,” she said gently. “You never even knew me to know what was best for me. Hell, I never knew me. Which is just how you liked it.”
“Now, May,” Grayden started smoothly.
“What are you going to do?” she asked belligerently. “Are you going to get your goons with guns to force me into your car and drive me back home like a lost puppy? Are you going put me over your shoulder like I’m your child? Promise to paddle me for misbehaving, maybe?”
There was a flicker in his eyes. A flicker of doubt.
“I am not your child. I am not your wife. I want a divorce and I want a restraining order, and I want you out of my life forever.”
Trevor’s head pressed on the back of her legs, right under her ass, and without that pressure, Meghan was not sure she would be able to stand. She was trembling, and to her chagrin, she was crying, but she was also, finally, speaking.
“There’s no need to make a scene,” Grayden said, familiar words in his buttery voice. “I have an order from your doctor.”
“Your doctor,” Meghan reminded him. “Your friend, the doctor. Do you really want to go to court with this? Because that’s what I’m going to make you do, you asshole. And I’m going to tell them everything.”
She was only bluffing. What did she know? If it came down to it, wouldn’t it just be his word against hers? And wasn’t he the one with all the friends in high places?
But as she threatened, voice quavering, he blanched.
Then he stepped forward, arm raised, and brought a fist down at her face.
She was too stunned to move out of the way, but it was only a glancing blow as the wolf displaced itself from behind her and tore Grayden down to the floor by his forearm.
The bodyguards drew their weapons, aiming at the wolf who was pinning Grayden down, and Jessie screamed as Meghan threw herself into the fray to try to block their shots and pull Trevor off of Grayden. A shot rang out, and Meghan was too on fire with terror to know if it hit her.
Behind her, the display case glass shattered.
The tinkle of the doorbell announced the arrival of two uniformed state troopers, who immediately drew weapons.
The rumble of Trevor’s growl was the only sound in the quiet diner except for the squeak of the display case refrigerator system.
The bodyguards were poised with their guns at the wolf.
The troopers had their guns drawn and were trying to decide between the wolf and the bodyguards.
Jessie was clinging to Henry at the entrance to the kitchen.
Meghan finally decided she had not been hit by the shot. But Trevor was going to get shot by someone if she didn’t do something.
“Leave it!” she commanded firmly into the silence, as if she were talking to Sheppard regarding a rotten moose bone or a smelly sock. “Let it go!”
With far more obedience than Sheppard had ever displayed, Trevor unlocked his jaws and stepped back slowly to sit down.
Whimpering and rubbing his arm, Grayden scrambled back until he hit his bodyguards’ shoes.
The troopers transferred their aim to the bodyguards, who were still pointing their weapons at Meghan and Trevor.
“We’re going to have to ask you to put those down now,” the first trooper said in a carefully friendly fashion.
The bodyguards slowly complied, putting the guns on the floor.
There was a strange swishy thumping noise that it took Meghan a moment to identify as Trevor’s tail, wagging against the linoleum floor. “Good boy,” she murmured.
“We got a call about a delirious naked man with no memories,” the second trooper, a woman, said cautiously. “Is this him?”
“Do I look naked or delirious? Her dog bit me!” Grayden howled, finally getting his breath back. “Shoot it!”
“That your dog, ma’am?” the first trooper asked.
“Yes,” Meghan said swiftly, heart in her throat. “He was only defending me.”
Jessie stepped forward and came to Meghan’s side. “That man hit her! She’s bleeding!”
Meghan put a hand to the side of her head and brought it back faintly stained red. The blow hadn’t been hard, but the gaudy wedding ring that Grayden was still wearing had scratched her temple.
The first trooper was kneeling by Grayden as they rolled up his torn sleeve. His partner kept a wary eye on the bodyguards and Trevor.
“Looks like it didn’t break the skin,” the trooper declared, though it was clear that Grayden would have bruises. “Do you want to press charges?”
“Yes,” Grayden said instantly.
“I was talking to the lady,” the trooper said.
“Yes,” Meghan said faintly. Trevor put a cold nose into her hand and wagged his tail harder. She knelt and put her arms around his neck, trying not to sob.
“We’ll get the paperwork started. We’re going to need statements out of all of you.
And there was a shot fired, so I’m going to need some extra paperwork from you gentlemen, too.
” The second trooper did not appear to be amused, but she holstered her gun as she retreated to the truck to get what she needed.
The first trooper left Grayden to roll his own sleeve down and started snapping photos of the diner.
On cue, Trevor fell over onto his back and waved foolish legs up into the air, his tongue lolling from the side of his grinning mouth.
“Whose clothes are these?” the officer asked, picking up a pair of sweatpants and a ripped t-shirt that were behind the display case.
“Mine,” Henry squeaked. “I’ll, ah, take those.”
“Wait…”
Grayden’s touch had Meghan recoiling and Trevor sat up and growled at him.
Everyone froze, and Grayden’s eyes flickered to the trooper. “Could we have a moment alone?”
“No,” Meghan said fiercely.
“I don’t think so,” the trooper said thoughtfully.
“Fuck you,” Jessie added with pepper, clearly riddled with extra adrenaline.
“This could be really bad press,” Grayden said thoughtfully. “For both of us, I mean.”
Meghan set her jaw, twining her fingers into Trevor’s fur. “You could say it was a kitchen accident.”
Grayden flinched.
He glared at her, glanced at the trooper, at Jessie, at Trevor, and finally looked back at Meghan.
“You want a divorce,” he said finally, as quietly as he could.
“It’s all I ever wanted,” Meghan said, equally quietly.
“Don’t press charges.”
“I’ll drop the charges when I get the divorce papers in the mail,” she countered, less quietly.
Trevor’s tail thumped on the floor.
Grayden worked his jaw helplessly. “Fine,” he said, standing with the aid of one of his bodyguards.
“You should get a collar and some tags for your…dog,” the trooper told her.
“I will,” Meghan promised.
“What’s his name?”
“Fred,” she said quickly. “His name is Fred.”
Trevor thumped his tail on the floor again.