“Tell me later. I gotta go.” Mace closed his phone. He licked his lips and tried to slow his breathing. She couldn’t really be here…could she? But hell, if she were then he’d always been right. A sign from the goddess Druantia, Queen of the Druids, herself—she belonged to him. She would always belong to him.

He made his way to his sister’s private offices, hearing the arguing before he even reached the door. He could hear her getting good and frothy with someone, too. Not surprising. Last thing the Pride needed was a bunch of cops searching into their lives. But Petrov had not only been his sister’s employee and one of the Breeding Males, he lived on the premises. Since a shot to the back of the head usually indicated murder, the cops had every right to check the house.

Of course, all that logic wouldn’t mean a damn to Missy, leader of the Llewellyn Pride females, his oldest sister, and the official family pain in the ass.

Mace turned the corner, one more hallway away from his sister’s office, when he smelled her.

He stopped. Cold. It took him less than a second to recognize it. He knew it better than he knew his own name. Implanted on his adolescent brain more than twenty years ago, his adult brain still remembered it. In fact, his adult brain acted like his adolescent brain used to. It stopped functioning. All it wanted to do was wrap itself around the owner of that scent and purr. The cat in him wanted to stretch out his body and rub his face into that scent.

He’d been right. She was here. That explained his sister’s anger. She hated her. Hated her whole family. Missy would never let her anywhere near the Pride home…unless, of course, she had no choice.

He came around the corner, slowly moving into the secretary’s office. One more door and he’d reach Missy’s office or, as he liked to call it, “Destination: Hell.” He could hear his sister dressing down someone behind the closed office door and he didn’t envy the man, but he had something much more important right in front of him. He had her.

She stood in front of the window overlooking Columbus Circle with her back to him. She didn’t seem moved at all by the yelling coming from Missy’s office. She radiated calm. Her energy centered. Her arms folded in front of her chest. Not nearly as tall as the women in his family, she stood no more than five foot eight or so. But curvy. Ripe. A brick house. She’d filled out in all the right places. She’d cut her auburn hair so it brushed thick against the collar of her leather jacket. As he glanced down the length of her sumptuous body, he could see the woman armed herself better than most SEALs. A gun holster bulged large behind her leather jacket, and a smaller ankle holster on her right leg under her black slacks. It also looked like her left leg sported a holster with a small blade, which he seriously doubted any other cop in the state would consider legal.

Her phone vibrated against her hip. She easily slipped the small device out of its holster, glanced at the caller ID, and answered. At that point, he almost dropped to his knees and crawled to her. That voice. That goddamn, fucking voice. Like ten miles of bad road in the hot desert,but she’d somehow tamed that brutal Bronx accent. A bit of a disappointment, though. He loved that accent on her. She used to wear it like an old leather jacket. Now she kept it muted, controlled. Kind of like her. He smiled and wondered what it would take to get back that Bronx girl he knew and still loved. Thankfully, though, there was nothing she could do about that voice. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and let her voice roll over him like a rough wave.

“I thought you’d never call me back. You won’t believe where I am.” She laughed and his balls tightened. “Missy Llewellyn’s house…no, I’m not lying. How could I make that up?”

She scratched her long neck. The desire to lick the same spot nearly strangling him. “Jesus Christ, don’t you read the papers? One of her people was killed in Battery Park. A couple of joggers found him. What? Nah. So, any message you want me to give her?” Her body began to shake as she stifled a laugh. “Well, I don’t think I’ll give her that message. Geez. And you said I hold a grudge.”

After a few more moments, her body stiffened. “No. I can’t. I’m working, that’s why. Yes. Even on Christmas day. Besides, I hate Christmas. I have moral issues with celebrating it.” He frowned to keep from laughing. She had “moral issues with” celebrating Christmas? The crap she could come up with still amazed him.

“Look, I gotta go. No, I’m not arguing about this.” She closed the phone and slipped it back into its holster.

Dear God, the woman was still beautiful. After all these years. All this time. And he bet he could have her pants off and be inside her in…he glanced at his watch. Thirty seconds. Yeah. That would work.

Desiree MacDermot stared out the windows of the secretary’s office and waited. Well, waited and fumed. Leave it to her oldest sister to ruin her moment in the sun. Here she stood in their archenemy’s house, moments away from throwing the rich heifer’s ass in the back of a squad car, and what does her sister say? “Are you coming to Mom and Dad’s for Christmas dinner?”

Why of course I am. I also plan to remove skin from the most sensitive parts of my body and rub salt into the open wounds.

Because isn’t that what the holidays are all about—letting your family make you wish you were an orphan?

Dez shook off her sister’s clear attempt to make her miserable. How could she be miserable when she had grand plans of making Missy Llewellyn cry? Missy, who seemed to love nothing more than to make the MacDermot sisters’ lives hell. Apparently, it wasn’t enough that all three of them had earned the right to be at the exclusive Cathedral School of Manhattan by earning top-level scholarships. Or that their parents worked damn hard to get their daughters the best they could afford. No, to Missy and the other Llewellyn sisters, none of that meant shit. They only cared about one thing—the fact the MacDermots were poor, Puerto Rican–Irish girls from the Bronx. And they wanted to make sure they never forgot it.