Keeping Secret (Secret McQueen) - By Sierra Dean Page 0,2

emphasis on her vowels and too much friendliness in her voice. She was lying.

I was wearing a sweater I’d pulled out of the back of my closet that had once belonged to my ex-boyfriend Gabriel Holbrook. It had holes in the sleeves and the yarn was pulling loose across the chest, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. Three months earlier I’d watched Gabriel die, and it made it difficult to discard the earthly remnants of him.

But in this situation it helped me divine what kind of person Kimberly was, because the sweater was a piece of crap. Unless she thought I was wearing it in an ironically messy way, there was no way she would compliment for any reason other than sucking up.

Which—considering she was one of the highest paid wedding planners in New York—was exactly what she was trying to do. She wanted to please me because she wanted to make nice with the money. Not my money, since I didn’t have any to speak of, but the money associated with the man I was engaged to marry.

Lucas Rain. Billionaire, corporate head honcho, and the reason I had a massive, flawless diamond ring on my finger. A ring Kimberly kept sneaking glances at while she dangled her bracelets in my face.

Kimberly was one of those New York City girls who talked a lot but never really said anything.

“Secret,” she said, leaning close to me. We were both seated on plush divans in her too-bright, too-big, too-airy office. Her breath smelled like cinnamon chewing gum, and her nearness made me nervous and defensive. Where the hell was Lucas? He was fifteen minutes late, and I was ready to throttle him for leaving me alone with this woman. She said my name again, making the first e sound like a mosquito’s buzzing.

She had my attention.

“What?”

“I said do you have a preference? Monique Lhuillier or Vera Wang?”

The only thing I knew about wedding dresses was that they were all white, tight and probably impossible to kill someone in.

Unless that someone was Kimberly, in which case I’d find a way.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Well, we’ll schedule a trial at Kleinfeld. You might want something totally different.” She laughed as if this were the funniest idea in the world. “And you’ll want to have your mother there, I assume.”

My ears felt hot, and I had my hand balled into a fist without meaning to. “My mother…” I let my fist fall open and dazzled her with the gleaming rock. She was like a kitten looking at a laser pointer. “My mother is dead.” This was a lie, but since she’d pretended to like my hideous sweater I figured my lie made us even. The truth about my mother was too ugly for Kimberly and her taffeta-drenched world.

It was too ugly for my world, and my full-time job was to police the goings-on of the entire vampire population of the East Coast. So…that was saying something.

“Oh…goodness.” Kimberly’s hand flew to her mouth, then her other darted out and held mine, fingers fumbling against the ring. I fought to not wince. “I’m so sorry.”

I started to say, I’m not, but that was the moment Lucas chose to waltz through the office door in his perfect Armani suit trailing a cloud of apologies behind him. Lucas was the kind of man you wanted to forgive for anything the instant you laid eyes on him. Six foot two and well muscled, he had the blond hair and blue eyes of a corn-fed, all-American, football type. His smile showed off beautiful, even teeth and made a glimmer shine in his eyes brighter than the light off my diamond.

My breath hitched.

This was the man I was going to marry.

He stooped low and planted a kiss on the crown of my head, making tingles radiate down my spine and setting off a chain reaction of tremors that ended low in my pelvis. Kimberly practically fell over me to offer him her hand. Politely, he dusted a kiss over her knuckles and gave her a puckish, panty-melting grin.

“So sorry I’m late, ladies. Business.” He shrugged one shoulder then sat next to me on my divan.

Lucas was larger than life. His personality overwhelmed everyone around him—myself included—and suddenly the seat felt too small.

This was what it was like to be dwarfed by the werewolf king of the East. Even humans like Kimberly who knew nothing about our world respected the authority he threw off in waves. She probably assumed it