The last few weeks I've been advertising the next Lean Dogs Legacy book, Beware of Dog, and talking about Cass and Shep. For anyone who's asked, Cass is of course Cassandra, the youngest of Devin's brood of ten. And Shep is Shepherd, who we first meet in Long Way Down, but who doesn't get to "shine," so to speak, until Nothing More. Obviously, you don't have to read all the books in order, but the new book will make much more sense if you do.
Beware of Dog picks up almost three years after the events of Nothing More, and, thankfully, Cass has done a lot of growing up, and Shep's made a better impression on his sister-in-law since their first meeting.
“Yes, Melanie?” she asked, frowning at Toly’s back as he opened the door.
“There’s someone here to see you.” Melanie’s voice was uncertain. “He says he’s your new security detail?”
Through the intercom, and at the threshold, Raven heard an unfamiliar male voice. “Don’t worry, honey, I can introduce myself.”
“Sir–”
Toly stepped aside, and in stepped a man boldly flying his Lean Dog cut. He wasn’t as tall as Toly – when Toly bothered to stand at his full height – but clearly older, and broader. His dark hair was thick and lustrous, without a trace of gray, but his face bore the lines and textures of a man who’d spent cold winters and hot summers on a bike. He might have been handsome, in a rough sort of way, if not for the truly nasty smirk he turned first on Toly, then on the room at large, and then on her.
Toly shut the door.
The stranger approached the desk – swaggered toward it, really, and everything inside Raven recoiled. He stuck a hand across it. “Hey, there, doll.” His smile was all teeth, and nothing of friendliness. She noted the Sgt. At Arms patch on his cut. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you.”
On a different day, under different circumstances, she would have laughed in his face; even now felt a bubble of it in her throat. But it took little effort to meet his smarmy grin with her flattest, least impressed look, and say, “I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting you.”
She had the pleasure of watching his expression freeze for one bewildered moment. He recovered quickly, but a new edge crept into his already razor-sharp smile. She had him pegged as a bastard straight away, but the minute shift in his expression confirmed it.
She leaned to the side to peer around him. “Anatoly,” she called, “what’s going on?”
He was typing something on his phone, and held up a finger telling her to hold.
She cleared her throat, pointedly, but the finger remained.
The stranger said, “I’m Shep, by the way. Shepherd.”
“Lovely. Anatoly.”
He and Cass have a fun dynamic, and I honestly can't wait for her brothers to find out what's going on.
No comments:
Post a Comment