Keeping Secret: Secret McQueen, Book 4 by Sierra Dean Page B

something more than what you have?”
    “Soon.”
    “Okay.” He nodded, then looked over at me, his skin glowing green from the dashboard lights. “You’re going to make a beautiful bride.”
    The dress almost seemed to glow in the green lights.
    “Let’s just see if I can get to the altar in one piece first, shall we?”
    “Deal.”
     
     
    The scene on the street outside Kleinfeld was reserved compared to the melee in Lucas’s penthouse when I arrived a half hour later. Pack members milled around the main floor of the suite, going back and forth from the big staircase to the office. Some nodded acknowledgments, others moved along with their business like I weren’t there.
    I’d barely stepped out of the elevator when my mouth came alive with the bursting vibrancy of lime and Desmond’s warm, muscular arms looped around me, pulling me into a tight embrace.
    “I’m so sorry. I should have been there.”
    “You couldn’t have known.”
    “I shouldn’t have let you out of my sight.”
    Desmond’s official title in the pack, aside from being second-in-command, was as Queen’s Guard. Until now we’d ignored that part of his job description as a mere formality of the title, not a task he was required to perform. I was an assassin and a high-ranking member of the vampire council. I didn’t often need protection above and beyond what I could provide for myself.
    Apparently things had changed.
    “I’m fine,” I told him.
    He held me away from him as if to assess the truth of my words by seeing me. For the first time since I’d arrived he seemed to notice the lace wedding dress I was still wearing and looked momentarily stunned, as though the dress had dealt him a physical blow.
    “You look—”
    “Bloody,” I suggested. “But for once, none of it is mine.” I wanted him to smile at the joke, to laugh at my terrible habit of getting my clothes stained with blood. Instead he continued to stare at the stupid dress.
    I wrapped my arms around my waist as if I could hide the gown from him. “Stop it.”
    “Sorry,” he muttered, finally focusing on my face. “I didn’t… I don’t know what I expected to feel. When I saw this.”
    “It’s just a dress. A stupid dress that weighs a million pounds. It’s nothing profound or mystical or meaningful. Stop looking at me like that. Please.”
    The sorrow in his eyes was almost too much to handle. “I’m sorry.”
    I bit my lip. “It’s just a dress,” I repeated. He nodded and pulled me in for another hug, this one less snug than the first.
    “Lucas will want to see you.”
    I didn’t want Desmond to let me go, but he did.

Chapter Fourteen
    Lucas was in the wide-open living room on the third floor of the penthouse pacing the length of the floor-to-ceiling windows along the far wall. The second I entered the room he vaulted over the couch and had me away from Desmond’s side and pulled into a dangerously tight hug.
    “What happened?” he demanded.
    I recounted the story of the Kleinfeld bloodbath so everyone in the room could hear it. I didn’t feel like reliving the details over and over again, so I wanted as many people to listen as I could. Morgan sat on the couch, expressionless, her arms crossed over her chest.
    When my story was finished, she was the first to speak. “Sounds sloppy. Amateurish.”
    “Sounds like someone has tried to kill me twice in a week in two places I’m never found. I hardly think that’s amateurish, Morgan. Sounds like someone is following me. Someone I haven’t noticed.”
    “Then you’re not being very careful, are you?”
    Lucas must have felt me tense in preparation to attack her because he hugged me to him again and spoke to Morgan from over my head. “Morgan, if you could be so kind, would you go to the store and get Secret a change of clothes, please?”
    “Have Jackson do it,” she replied.
    “I asked you to do it.”
    She sneered but didn’t argue further. He let her get away with a lot, and it