Shifters Unbound 1 - Pride mates Read online

  Kim followed them inside and stopped in surprise. Sean had taken Sandra into his arms, letting her lean against him while he rubbed his cheek on her hair. Liam moved to stand behind Sandra. Very close behind Sandra. He rested his chest on her back and both he and Sean murmured to her.

  This was crazy. The way Liam had greeted his brother had made Kim think the two of them had something going on. Now she swore the brothers and Sandra were in a threesome.

  Liam and Sean stepped away from Sandra, and Sandra wiped her eyes. Kim was struck by how young the woman looked, too young to have a twenty-five-year-old son. Sandra could be thirty, though her eyes spoke of a woman who’d seen far more of the world than Kim had.

  “Can I get you coffee, Ms. Fraser?” Sandra asked, her voice shaky.

  “No, no,” Kim said. “Don’t go to any trouble.”

  Sean smiled at Sandra. “I think a big pot would be grand, Sandra. I’ll help you, shall I?”

  Sandra softened under his look, and she and Sean walked to the back of the house to the kitchen. Sean went in first, then ushered Sandra in with his hand on the small of her back.

  “What was that about?” Kim asked Liam.

  “Sit down, Kim. You look all out.”

  She hadn’t really expected him to answer. Kim collapsed to the sofa with a grimace and laid her briefcase on the coffee table. Her feet were killing her. She ran her finger inside her shoes, but it didn’t do much good.

  “Are you hurting?” Liam sat down next to her—right next to her, inside her personal space. “Let me see your feet.”

  Kim blinked. “Sorry?”

  “I saw you limping. Get those ridiculous shoes off and swing your feet up here.”

  His eyes were so damn blue. Why did she suddenly long to feel his warm hands on her feet, on her ankles, up her legs under her skirt to where her stockings ended at bare thigh . . . ?

  He was a Shifter. This wasn’t right.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You mean you won’t.”

  “How do you think that would look? For the mother of the man I’m defending to come back in and find you giving me a foot massage?”

  “She’d think it was the first sensible thing you did. You hide behind those clothes like they’re a suit of armor. She’ll not open up to you if you do that.”

  “But she will if I play footsie with you?”

  Liam smiled a heart-thumping smile. “Get your damn shoes off, woman.”

  Oh, to hell with it. When in Rome . . . or Shiftertown.

  Kim couldn’t stop her groan of relief as she eased the heels from her feet. Liam patted his lap. Kim leaned into the corner of the couch and plopped her ankles on Liam’s thigh.

  “Is everything in Shiftertown backward?” she asked.

  “Backward?”

  “Men enter a room first, it’s better to kick off your shoes on a stranger’s couch than be businesslike, and you say hello by rubbing yourselves all over each other.” Kim sagged in pleasure as he moved strong hands over her feet. “Ooh, that’s good.”

  Liam’s thumb traveled over her arch to her heel, his touch warm. Did the man know how to loosen tension, or what?

  Another groan escaped her. “This is better than any day spa I’ve been to. You could make money doing this.”

  “Shifters aren’t allowed in any profession where they touch humans.” His voice went soft. “We might bite.”

  Kim didn’t think she’d mind being nibbled on by him. Her nervousness about Shifters hadn’t quite drifted away, but Liam was dissolving her fears little by little, at least about him. “I think I’d make an exception for you.”

  “Pheromones.”

  Her eyes popped open. “Sorry?”

  “Sean and I felt Sandra’s distress, and we calmed her down. She needed our touch. Like you need me rubbing your feet.”

  Kim thought about their caressing, group hug. “She must have been very distressed.”

  “She is. Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “Was Sean distressed when he came in your office? You hugged him too.”

  “Of course I hugged him. He’s my brother. Don’t you hug your brother or your sisters?”

  “I don’t have a family,” Kim said. She couldn’t keep the sorrow out of her voice. “Not anymore.”

  Liam gave her a look of open pity. “No wonder you’re so tense. What happened to them?”

  “I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “Talk about it anyway.”

  Kim had always thought it best not to open up, but Liam’s blue eyes and gentle voice pried something loose. “It’s no big secret. My brother Mark died when I was ten. He was twelve. He was hit by a car while he was walking down to a corner store with his friends—a hit and run. My parents passed away a few years ago, within months of each other. Old age, is all. They had their kids late in life. So now it’s just me.”

  The story was simple, easy to relate. Her grief had burned away to emptiness long ago. She lived in the big house she’d inherited from her parents, and it was—so quiet. She tried to cheer it up with weekend parties or office mixers, but the warmth never lasted. Her parents’ neighborhood was one of standoffish elegance; no kids would dare splash in plastic pools in any front yard on her street.

  Liam gently squeezed her feet. “I’m sorry for you, Kim Fraser. It’s the hardest thing, losing a brother. It’s like losing a part of yourself.”

  He was too right. Kim’s next words came reluctantly. “When Mark was killed, I blamed myself. I know that’s stupid. I was at a friend’s house miles away, and I was ten years old—what could I have done? But I kept thinking that if I’d been there, I could have warned him, pulled him out of the way, kept him home altogether. Something.”

  Liam’s warm, relaxing fingers slid beneath each of her toes. “Sean and me, we had a brother. Kenny. We lost him about ten years ago. You always wonder, if you’d persuaded him to do something different that day, would he still be alive?”

  “Exactly.” After seventeen years, Kim had never found anyone who really understood, not friends or colleagues or the child counselor she’d been hauled off to. Now a Shifter she’d met an hour ago wrung the truth from her heart. “I’m sorry, Liam. About your brother.”

  He acknowledged the sympathy with a nod. “Did they ever get the bastard who hit Mark?”

  Kim shook her head. “The police picked up a guy, but it turned out he didn’t do it. Everyone wanted him to be guilty, wanted someone to blame, but I knew he hadn’t done it when I saw him. He was so scared, and his wife was crying, and I said it wasn’t him—but of course, how could I know? I was a kid and hadn’t even been there. In the end, evidence came to light that cleared him. But everyone was pissed that he was innocent. They couldn’t catch the real guy, so they wanted a substitute.”

  His hands slowed. “Is that when you decided to become a defense attorney?”

  “No, I wanted to be a doctor.” She grinned. “Or a dancer, I couldn’t decide. I was ten. But I wanted the right guy to pay. I knew that if the wrong person went to prison, then whoever really did hit my brother would have hurt that many more people, you know?”

  “Well reasoned for a ten-year-old.”

  “I thought about it. A lot. For a while, I couldn’t think about anything else.” Hence the child counselor.

  “I know.” He looked grim again.

  Kim wanted to ask how his brother had died, but at that moment Sandra and Sean returned with the coffee. Kim tried to jerk her feet from Liam’s lap, but he closed his hands around her ankles and held them fast. She glared, and he smiled back, showing her nice white teeth.

  Sean set a tray on the table. It held the whole works: cups, a pot, cream, and sugar. No artificial sweetener. Kim wondered whether that was because Sandra didn’t like artificial sweetener or whether Shifters never had to worry about their weight.

  Sandra didn’t look surprised or shocked that Kim had her stockinged feet in Liam’s lap. She poured out a cup of coffee and
handed it to Kim without comment.

  “So, tell us, Kim,” Sean said, as he sat down and took his cup, “is there any chance for Brian?”

  Kim couldn’t lie to them. “Brian’s DNA was on the victim, Michelle, and in her bedroom, and now that everyone watches CSI, they figure DNA is the magic truth. But Brian says he’d been dating Michelle and had gone to her house, so of course his DNA would be there and on her too.”

  “Then what can we do?” Sandra asked, angry. “If this DNA has already convicted him?”

  “We can prove he was nowhere near the scene of the crime that night,” Kim said. “Which is why I’m here. Neither the private investigator I hired nor my journalist friend who’s been following the case can find any information on his whereabouts that night. I mean, no information at all. Like he’d vanished for twenty-four hours. But I can’t believe no one saw Brian or knew where he was going.”

  Hell, everyone on this street had known within minutes that Liam and Sean were taking the human lawyer to Brian’s house. They probably knew Kim’s full name and her favorite color by now. “I’m having the investigator look into Michelle’s side of things—see if she had a jealous ex or an abusive father, or even a normally nice friend upset that Michelle was dating a Shifter. I’m trying to find any evidence the police overlooked in their zeal to arrest a Shifter.”

  “Your investigator came around and asked me questions.” Sandra sounded pissed about it. “But Brian didn’t tell me himself he was walking out with this girl, so how could I know?”

  “But you might know something that can help,” Kim said. “I’m sorry, I know this is painful for you, but Brian’s clammed up about Michelle, so I have to poke and pry. I think getting him released is more important than keeping his personal secrets, don’t you?”

  “Is it?” Sandra had a bit of the same Irish lilt as Sean and Liam, but Brian didn’t. He’d told Kim that his father came from a different clan, she guessed not an Irish one. Either that or his clan had lost their accent after living in Texas awhile.

  Kim didn’t really understand how the Shifter clans worked, though Brian had tried to explain a little. She knew that each immediate family belonged to a larger, extended family group called a pride, and they belonged to an even more extended group called a clan. Shifters never married within the pride, and tried to marry outside the clan. When a female married, she joined her husband’s clan and pride, leaving her own. Kim had thought clans were based on what kind of animal the Shifter turned into, but Brian said it was more complicated than that. This Shiftertown was home to several clans, as well as several species of Shifters, and there was another Shiftertown with more clans on the northeast edge of Austin.

  Liam’s father, Dylan Morrissey, was more or less the official head of the Austin branch of his entire clan, but also the unofficial head of this Shiftertown, even over the other clans. But no, Kim couldn’t talk directly to Dylan, Brian told her. He was off-limits to non-Shifters. She could petition him through Liam and Liam only.

  Why not Sean? Kim wondered, glancing at Liam’s brother. What position did he hold in the clan hierarchy? Officially and unofficially?

  Sean helped himself to coffee and exchanged a glance with Liam. “So you need to find someone who was with Brian at the time in question?” Sean asked.

  Kim could have sworn that Liam had nodded ever so slightly, as though letting Sean know it was all right to say this. Nonverbal cues were flowing thick and fast.

  “An independent witness would be terrific,” Kim said. “Someone without a grudge against Shifters. And preferably not a Shifter him- or herself.”

  “Tall order,” Sean said.

  “The girl is human,” Sandra snapped. “What human will come forward and say my son didn’t do it?”

  She had a point. Kim knew that locating a witness was a long shot, but it would be a nice change to find something concrete. Innocent until proven guilty was not working in Brian’s case. The fact that he was Shifter had already condemned him in most people’s eyes. Kim had to exonerate him or he didn’t stand a chance.

  Liam started massaging the tops of Kim’s feet, which made her tense limbs start to droop.

  “I might be able to find out where Brian really was,” Liam said. “You should have come to me about this right away, love.”

  “I didn’t know that, did I? Like I said, Brian is the first Shifter I’ve ever met, and to get him to tell me that you, Liam, even existed was an amazing feat.” Brian hadn’t bothered to mention Sean.

  “We don’t like talking about ourselves,” Sean said.

  “I don’t see why not. Shifters exposed themselves years ago, and everyone knows all about you. There’s nothing to hide anymore.”

  She felt the three exchange another wordless communication, and it irritated her. It reminded her of being eight years old and watching her two best friends whispering and giving her gleeful looks, not letting her in on the secret.

  A cell phone vibrated on Liam’s belt. He looked at the readout, and without a word gently lowered Kim’s feet to the floor. He stood and walked to the kitchen, closing the door, shutting them out.

  Kim felt cold without his warmth beside her, even in the July heat. “Anything you can tell me might help,” she said to Sean and Sandra. “Right now I can only win this case by tearing holes in the prosecution, and there aren’t many holes. I need something that will stick a fork in the case and shred it.”

  Sandra drank her coffee, her gaze moving from Kim to the windows. Kim caught a glimpse of her sadness as she looked away, her near despair.

  She’s resigning herself to losing her son, Kim realized. Sandra thought there was no hope. She’d already started grieving for him.

  Sean was watching Kim with an assessing look. She still wasn’t sure about him, or where the haunted feeling she got from him came from.

  “I don’t like to lose, Sandra,” Kim said briskly. “I want to see Brian walk free and the real person pay for his crime. I won’t let you down.”

  Sandra didn’t answer. Sean nodded at Kim. “I’m sure you won’t.”

  Liam strode back into the room. Kim realized that the other two had said very little while Liam had been gone. Had he signaled them not to? And why?

  Liam took up his coffee cup without sitting down and took a long swallow. He looked over the rim at Sean, who came alert.

  “Everything all right?” Kim asked. “Did you get bad news?”

  Liam clicked his mug to the tray. “No, an errand Sean and I need to run. I appreciate you coming all the way out to Shiftertown, Kim Fraser, but now it’s time for you to go.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “What’s going on?” Kim demanded as she strode down the driveway with Liam. “I just get you talking, and suddenly you’re throwing me out.”

  Liam looked down at the fuming woman next to him. Sunlight danced on her black hair, the afternoon warmth making her smell good.

  He was finding her enticing, even when she was mad as hell. When he’d announced the interview was over, she’d jammed her shoes on her feet, said a sweet good-bye to Sandra, and stalked out. Now as they walked back down the driveway, she glared at him.

  “Sandra was uncomfortable,” he offered. “She’s not easy around humans.”

  “And you? Are you comfortable around us?”

  “Not really. But more than she and Sean are.”

  “Is that why you work at a bar?”

  Liam shrugged. “Humans like to see Shifters in bars. It brings in business.” She didn’t need to know the real reason he worked there.

  They’d reached the sidewalk in front of 445A. Kim swung to face him with hands planted on hips. “I’m trying to help. Why does Sandra believe Brian has no chance? I’m on the case.”

  Liam hid a smile. She was like a fox terrier determined to bring down a lion. He admired her balls, first in believing Brian’s innocence, and second, for coming down to meet big, dangerous Shifters like him and Sean. She didn’t realize how dangerous he
r pilgrimage was, and Liam wasn’t going to tell her.

  “And you on the case should be good enough?”

  “I’m good, Mr. Morrissey. Michelle and her family will only get closure if the right guy goes down.”

  Liam lifted his hands. “I agree with you, love. It’s not me you have to convince.”

  “Then why won’t you tell me anything?” She regarded him with suspicion. “Something’s going on. You and Sean know it. Sandra knows it. Hell, Brian knows it. I’m the only one in the dark. Help me out here.”

  Liam put his hands on her shoulders, and her blue eyes flickered with discomfort. Why did humans worry so much about touching? “We’re grateful to you. You’re the first human we’ve met who cares about Shifters. But you have to let me handle it from here.”

  If she didn’t, Kim could die. Liam had already broken Fergus’s rules by not placating her and sending her away at once, but Fergus could stuff it.

  He couldn’t tell Kim that he didn’t know all that was going on, either. Sandra was hiding something, even from Liam, and it annoyed Liam that he didn’t know what.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Kim asked him. “I shouldn’t have even come to talk to you, but I’m desperate. I have to be very careful about every point I have, so whatever you come up with will have to be checked and double-checked. It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s that I can’t.”

  Liam circled his thumbs on her shoulders. “Well, you will have to trust me, sweetheart.”

  A shiver went through her body. She wanted to be touched; he could feel it. She needed it. But she fought it. Humans.

  She glanced at his hands. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re not PC?”

  “Why, because I enjoy touching your soft skin and call you sweetheart? Or because I won’t let you have it your own way?”

  “What was the phone call you took about?”

  “Oh, now you’re prying into my business, are you? It was personal. Do you have a boyfriend?”