Read Tempting Danger for Free Online

you take over. And some will wonder if you wanted it that way.”
    “You’re giving me gristle—lots of chew, not much meat. How is he, really?”
    “Hardheaded. Worried. And older than he wants to accept. The pain’s too much for him, and he doesn’t heal as fast as he once did. He won’t go to a hospital—no, don’t bother to explain. I understand his reasons. But if he can’t use technology to keep him going while he heals, he’ll have to spend a lot of time in Sleep.”
    Rule swallowed his fear. He couldn’t be a child now. There was bloody little room to be a son. “If he must, he must.”
    “I shouldn’t have let him out of Sleep as soon as I did,” she admitted. “He faked me out. Got his vitals under control long enough to . . . well, never mind. Don’t worry about things here. Your father will heal, and the Council can handle things while he does.”
    He wanted to be at Clanhome, too, dammit. Tradition banned him from his father’s presence while he healed, but not from Clanhome itself. That was his big brother’s doing. Benedict’s authority to bar the Lu Nuncio from Clanhome was shaky in theory, firm enough in practice. No one argued with Benedict about security. Most people didn’t argue with Benedict, period.
    At least he knew the Rho was safe. Barring a strike by the U.S. Air Force, nothing and no one was getting to their father when Benedict was there. “Give Toby a hug for me,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.” He disconnected and tucked his phone in his jacket pocket.
    Then he just sat for a moment. He was scared. For his father, his people, and himself. This was a hell of a time for the Nokolai leader to be incapacitated.
    Which, of course, was exactly what Isen’s attackers had wanted. Rule stood and headed for the bar and the one scent that drew him right now. “Ah. My coffee’s ready.”
    “Don’t see how you can drink that crap,” Max said.
    Cullen grinned and slid a mug across the bar. It held coffee made from Rule’s private stock of beans.
    “It requires a palate.” He could keep his shoulders loose. He could control his expression, his voice, and to some extent his smell. But he couldn’t keep the nerves from crawling across his belly, making it as jumpy as a Chihuahua on caffeine. “This place looks like hell with the lights up,” he observed, sliding onto a stool.
    Max set his own mug—which would hold Irish whiskey, not coffee—on the bar and hopped up on the stool next to Rule’s. “That’s the point.”
    “But this is the morning-after kind of hell. Like a carnival before night falls and the lights and music turn tacky into mystery.”
    “It’s five o’clock in the goddamned morning, what do you expect? Anyway, I don’t want to hear about carnivals. Makes me think of the years I spent in the sideshow.”
    “You were in a sideshow?” That was Cullen, who’d stayed on the other side of the bar. He was in one of his restless moods, fiddling with first one thing then another. “Was this before the war, or after?”
    “Which war? Humans are assholes.” He tilted his mug, downed half of the contents, and belched contentedly. “Leave the damned glasses alone.”
    Cullen continued polishing the glass he’d picked up. “World War Two. That’s the one you always lie about.”
    “Jealousy.” Max shook his head sadly. “This younger generation is sick with it. Lacks respect, too.”
    Cullen paused. “You calling me a member of the younger generation?”
    “You’re all younger. Children, every one of you, running around like crazy so you won’t notice how soon you’re gonna die.” Max took a silver case out of his jacket, opened it, and selected one of the cheap cigars he liked to poison the air with. “Take the way you idealize truth—telling it, finding it.” He snorted. “Finding it! As if it were lying around somewhere, waiting for you to pick up. Childish. People live by stories, not truth. What you really want are answers so you