All Hell Breaks Loose by Sharon Hannaford Page A

the bottom of the bed to check if she was awake.  His vibrato purr started up as soon as he saw her eyes open, and he gently gripped the scruff of the tiny squirrel’s neck and pulled it away from her.
    She sat up, rubbing grit from her eyes and wishing, as she so often did, that she was one of those people who only needed a few hours of sleep a night.  Dawn had coloured the horizon just as she’d finally tumbled into bed, so a nine a.m. wake-up call was not exactly what she needed.  She stretched and grimaced as the stitches in her arm pulled slightly and her shoulder muscles protested.  An inspection of her elbow showed that the swelling was almost gone and the bruising had turned a delightful shade of bile green and mustard yellow.  At least the bruising was fading, she’d be able to pull the stitches out tonight.  A little chittering noise reminded her that she had been woken up for a reason.
    “Fine, I’m getting up,” she grumbled, throwing off the duvet.  “You’re rather demanding for a tiny snip of a thing,” she groused at it as she made for the bathroom.
    She had a cup of coffee in one hand, a telephone in the other, a ferret wrapped around her neck and the baby squirrel perched on her head when Derek shuffled into the kitchen dressed only in a pair of jeans.  Apparently he didn’t do well on three hours sleep either, but that didn’t detract from the sight of his sun-bronzed chest, muscled shoulders and oh-so-perfectly defined six-pack.  Or was that an eight-pack?  Gabi found she’d lost her train of thought as the voice on the other side of the phone rattled off a list of ingredients and quantities.
    “Ah, whoa, hang on a sec, Russell,” she stopped him mid flow.  “Let me grab something to write this down on.” She dragged her gaze from Derek to search for the notepad and pen that was always in the kitchen somewhere.  Derek got to them first and, seeing her hands full, sat at the counter and indicated that he would write for her.
    “You sound distracted,” Russell said from the other side of the phone.
    Gabi grimaced.  With Derek’s new Werewolf senses, he’d be able to hear every word Russell spoke on the phone.
    “Uh, Derek just walked in,” she told him, hoping he’d take the hint without her having to spell it out to him.
    “ Ohhh ,” Russell said knowingly, “on two legs or four?”
    “Shirtless,” Gabi replied.
    Derek looked down at himself and then grinned, quintessential male pride showing through the exhaustion.  Gabi rolled her eyes, hoping he hadn’t noticed her wandering gaze.
    Russell chuckled.  “Well, that would explain the distraction,” he mused.
    “The squirrel milk recipe, Russell,” she reminded him.  She’d only just made some progress on her relationship with Julius; she really didn’t need to be reminded of how strong her physical attraction to the stuntman had been in the past.  She held the phone away from her ear so that Derek could hear the list clearly.  Once Derek had written it all down, Gabi quickly thanked Russell and cut the call before he could say anything that might give Derek the wrong idea.
    “You’ll have to fend for yourself this morning.  I have a baby to feed, and Rose only comes in at lunchtime on a Wednesday,” she informed the shirtless male.
    “Russell knows about us?” Derek asked, keeping one eye on Razor, who was glaring balefully at him from the counter.  He poured coffee and set some bread in the toaster as Gabi bent to scratch through a cupboard for her kitten feeding kit and the rest of what she needed to make up some formula.
    “Russell is part of the Community.  He’s a Shape-shifter,” she explained with her head mostly inside the cupboard.
    “Oh,” Derek said, obviously surprised again.  “So that’s different from a Werewolf ?”
    Gabi smiled to herself, it was easy to forget how much full humans didn’t know about the world they lived in.  She began mixing up a small quantity of