Pablo's business was a little more sophisticated than that, but he wasn't going to argue the point.

"How about this?" he asked. "Your friend gets a little forgetful in the witness box, my lawyers help my brother, and we call it quits? Your friend stays in her business in SoCo, I stay in mine here, and we never see each other again."

The Shifters said nothing. They didn't look at one another, but Pablo got the feeling they were discussing it amongst themselves, with that nonverbal communication animals were supposed to have.

The one called Dylan was the first to speak. "We want you out of our town, Pablo Marquez. And you'll go."

He looked straight into Pablo's eyes. Pablo, having grown up in the back streets of almost every city in the south, had learned to meet his opponent's challenging stare and then look away casually, almost derisively, as though he wasn't concerned about winning the staring contest.

But he couldn't look away from Dylan. Pablo wanted to, but Dylan's blue-white stare would not let him go. He saw, behind Dylan, Sean relaxed, unworried. They had no doubt that Pablo would obey Dylan--if not now, then eventually.

"Why don't you go on out of here?" Pablo said, pretending nonchalance. "I'll make sure my boys don't get trigger happy so you make it to your car. But I can't guarantee it, so watch yourselves."

The Shifters didn't like being dismissed. Well, too bad. Pablo wasn't going to wet himself for them. He had his own plans. The next time they met, he wouldn't be caught so unprepared.

They faded away. Pablo wasn't sure how they did it, but one minute the three Shifters were in the shadows of his office; the next, they were gone.

He snapped an order to the man who was supposed to guard the door and got no response. Gun in hand, Pablo made his way to the front door and peered outside. The darkening street showed no one, not his guards, not retreating Shifters, not the mechanics who ostensibly worked in his body shop. All was silence, but for the few bits of trash that drifted across the pavement on a hot Texas wind.

Chapter Eleven

The bar Liam managed opened for business that night, but none of the Shifters went to work. Ronan explained that the human government had ruled that Shifters did not have to work on Sundays, a concession to the Shifters' request that they be able to continue their religious observances after taking the Collars. Ronan related this with a laugh, because, he said, Shifters didn't have a designated religious day or a set time for prayer. All days were religious to them; any time and place fine for meditation and prayer.

An interesting take on the matter, Elizabeth thought.

Apparently Shifters used the day off to build bonfires in the common land between the backs of their houses, cook out, and let the kids run around in both human and animal form.

Sean Morrissey, minus sword and in a plain T-shirt, was grilling alongside his brother Liam, the two of them arguing about how best to cook the steaks. Ellison and the trackers lounged nearby, beers in hand, though Spike with his black eye wasn't getting too close to Liam.

Cherie and Mabel were laughing together in the age-old manner of twenty-something girls aware that men eyed them, but not deigning to notice. Olaf romped around in his bear cub form with wolf cubs and wildcat cubs.

The tall, blonde Glory sat on her porch, long legs crossed, in a tight, leopard-print pantsuit, not far from Dylan, who quietly drank beer from a dark bottle. With them were Kim and little Katriona and the pregnant Andrea.

Elizabeth eyed them a little shyly. They were all so comfortable with each other, including Kim, who was human, an outsider. Mabel carried on as though she'd lived here all her life, but then, that was Mabel. Elizabeth had always been the cautious one.

Ronan moved close to her. "I know."

Elizabeth looked up in surprise. "Know what?"

He motioned to the scene around them. "It's overwhelming. You don't know who to get close to, who to talk to. You want to be accepted, but it's a little scary with all those eyes looking at you. You don't want to say the wrong thing to the wrong person."

"Exactly. Are you reading my mind or something?"

"Your body language." Ronan's warm hand rested on the small of her back. "And it's how I felt when I first moved in."

"You?" Elizabeth studied the towering man, with his round, tight shoulders in his T-shirt. "You were shy?"

"I'd lived by myself in the Alaskan woods all my life. Most of my life, anyway. Then I was shoved into a Shiftertown with all these wolves and wildcats who stared at me all the time. I'm a big guy, and that makes it worse."

"You stand out." Elizabeth snaked her arm around his waist. "Hard to miss."

"You got that right."

"And then you adopted a bunch of cubs." She shook her head in mock dismay as they strolled away from Glory's house. "What were you thinking?"

"I ask myself that sometimes."

Elizabeth hooked her fingers through his belt loop, liking how the loop seemed to be made for her fingers. "So where do you go when you want to be alone? Really alone?"

"Around here? It's tough. I've got the Den, but that's always being invaded. But there are some caves out west of town, down on the riverbank. Not many people know about them. I go out there, sometimes. Not the same as the deep woods, but it can be peaceful."

"Sounds nice," Elizabeth said wistfully. "I never have time to go to places like that."

"I'll take you. You'll make time."

"Then you won't be by yourself. I thought that was the point."

They'd cleared the crowd and were now relatively isolated under tall Texas oak trees. Ronan stopped. "I won't mind being alone there with you."

Elizabeth let go of his belt loop and turned to face him. It felt right to put her hands on his waist, to feel the warmth of his big body through her fingertips.

Ronan's eyes went dark. "I'm going to kiss you, Elizabeth," he said, a growl in his voice. "I've been dying to kiss you all day."

"Yeah? What stopped you?"

"Human gang leaders and too many nosy Shifters."

"There aren't any around right now." Trees screened them from the Shifter gathering and the bonfires' glows.

For answer, Ronan leaned to her, his breath touching her mouth, his lips following. He kissed her softly, as though afraid he'd break her, all the while holding her with hands so strong.