Burning Up Read Free

looking after her.”
    Alex huffed. “Didn’t look after her very well, did you? She got attacked right here, almost on the main road.”
    “Mom,” Ria said, intending to stop the diatribe, when Emmett calmly nodded and said, “It was my fault. I’ll fix it.”
    “It was not your fault,” Ria said, but no one was listening to her.
    “Good.” Alex turned back to Ria. “Your grandmother’s waiting for you.”
    “How did you manage to make her wait at home?”
    “I told her you’d want her special jasmine tea when you got back.”
     
    E mmett had grown up in a strong and vibrant pack. He’d figured he could handle Ria’s family. That was before he met her grandmother. Five feet nothing of pure fury and a tightly held rage that was all the more impressive for its control. Ria came first, of course. Emmett would’ve allowed noth-Ria came first, of course. Emmett would’ve allowed nothing less, even if her grandmother hadn’t ordered him to carry Ria—who was protesting that she could “walk, for goodness sake”—into what looked like the grandmother’s bedroom, so she could wash up and change. Soon as he’d completed that task, he was banished to the kitchen to wait.
    Ria’s father was still at the site, being restrained from giving the near-dead attacker even more of a beating. So was Ria’s older brother. Which left him in the kitchen with Ria’s mom and sister-in-law. Alex and Amber looked more like sisters than anything else. Ria’s mom was a pretty woman, petite and graceful. Amber was cut in the same mold—even heavily pregnant as she was now, her features were delicate, her arms slimly fragile.
    Emmett stayed very carefully in the chair where he’d been ordered to sit. He was afraid he’d break one of them if he accidentally touched them. Now Ria, Ria he wanted to handle .
    “Drink!” Something slammed in front of him.
    He looked down at the puddle of jasmine tea around his little cup and decided not to mention Alex’s temper. “Thanks.”
    “You think I don’t see it?” She poked him in the shoulder. “You, the way you look at my baby?”
    Nobody dared attack Emmett. He wasn’t one of the more volatile leopards in DarkRiver, but he was beyond dangerous when riled. And wouldn’t all his trainees just love to see him now, not daring to lift a finger for fear of bruising Alex. “How do I look at her?”
    Alex narrowed her eyes. “Like a big cat with its food.” She hooked her hands into claws and made as if she was shoving others aside. “Like that.”
    “You have a problem with that?”
    “I have a problem with every man who wants to date my daughter.” With that, Alex turned and walked back to the counter. “And her father, he has twice the problem.”
    Emmett wondered if Alex expected that to scare him off. “I grew up in a pack.” He was used to nosy packmates, snarling fathers, ferally protective mothers.
    Amber smiled when Alex sniffed and turned away. “They have problems with women, too,” she said in a mock-whisper. “When I started dating Jet, Alex told me if I broke his heart, she’d beat me with a rolling pin.”
    Alex waved the very same implement in Amber’s direction. “Don’t you forget it.”
    Laughing, Amber hugged Alex. “She’s okay, Mom. Ria will bounce back—better than you or I ever would.”
    That was when Ria’s male relatives returned. Her father’s first question was, “Who the hell is he ?”

TWO
    R ia sat back in the bubble bath her grandmother had drawn and sighed.
    A light knock came moments later.
    “It’s okay, Popo .”
    Her grandmother came in. Though tiny, with a face that bore the million marks of a life well-lived, her stride was steady and her eyes clear. Miaoling Olivier had a whole heap of decades left in her yet, as she liked to say. Now, she walked in and took a seat on the closed lid of the toilet as Ria’s father began yelling in the kitchen.
    “Here we go,” Miaoling said, rolling her eyes. “Sometimes, I