by Lola Gabriel
“Actually, the story I heard had you down as a dark fae,” Laila smiled.
“Oh, how exotic,” Fabian grinned.
Laila studied him for a moment.
“I have to say, you do look awfully young to perhaps be my father,” she said cautiously, afraid she might make him angry.
Instead, he laughed.
“We did have you quite young. I was nineteen. So yeah, I’m forty-two now, but I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said.
“If you are my father, I hope I’ve inherited your genes if you’re seriously in your forties. I would have said you were in your early thirties, if not younger,” Laila said.
Fabian smiled at her again. They had reached the bottom of the mountainside now and Fabian slowed right down.
“Where are we going, then?” he asked.
Laila was no longer scared of Fabian, but she wasn’t ready to trust him entirely yet either, and telling him where she lived seemed like an unnecessary risk.
“Just here is fine, or if you don’t mind going into the town, could you drop me at the store, please? I need to grab a few things,” she said.
“The store it is,” Fabian replied, heading toward Main Street.
He dropped her off at the store as promised, telling her he would let her know the second he got the results of the test. He asked her once more not to tell anyone in the town about this. He made it a joke, saying he didn’t want the townspeople turning up at his place with pitchforks and torches. Laila got the impression there was a little bit more to it than that, but she agreed without pressing him. The last thing she wanted was to start telling people in the town she had been to the castle of the evil fae or whatever the hell they thought he was. She didn’t want them to start telling stories about her too.
8
Laila went into the store. She didn’t really need anything, but she didn’t want Fabian to know she had asked to be dropped off here because she didn’t trust him with her address. She thought that realistically, there was likely a part of him that knew that was the case already, but she didn’t need to be nasty enough to confirm it by just walking away.
She grabbed a jar of pasta sauce—the size that was too big for one meal and not quite big enough for two. She paid for it, glad for a quick and easy meal to make once she was done with the after-school club. It was only as she left the store that she checked her watch. Her eyes bugged out of her head when she saw it was almost six o’clock, and her heart dropped. She hoped that the kids were okay.
She had to call Cassie, but first, she had to work out what the hell was going on here. Where had the time gone? She had left work at about three-fifteen and she was at Fabian’s place for half an hour, forty-five minutes at the very most. And it was only a ten-minute drive each way. By that, it should be four-thirty at the very latest.
For the briefest second, Laila saw herself being pulled into a car roughly and dragged into the castle. Drugged. She shook her head. That wasn’t what had happened at all. Maybe her watch was broken. She felt relief flood her. Of course, that had to be it. Her watch was broken.
She started heading toward home when she spotted Cassie. Cassie saw her too and began walking purposefully toward her. Laila thought she looked worried rather than angry, but she didn’t look like someone just coming to say hi. Laila knew then her watch wasn’t broken. She had missed the after-school club and this was likely Cassie coming to fire her. She couldn’t even tell her the real reason she had missed it. It wasn’t like she could say, “Oh, sorry I wasn’t there, but you see, I was just up in the mountains with the lady-snatching fae king.” Yeah, really believable.
Laila’s heart skipped a beat when she saw who Cassie was with. The hot stranger from the pub. Oh God, talk about making a bad situation worse, Laila thought to herself. Not only did I manage to miss my first after-school club with no explanation, I’ve been making eyes at my boss’s husband too.
“Laila? Are you alright?” Cassie demanded as she reached Laila.
Laila realized then that she didn’t look pissed off or even worried now. She looked relieved to see her.
“I… yes, I’m fine,” Laila said. She had started to apologize for missing the after-school club, but she changed her mind at the last second, wanting to know why Cassie looked so relieved to see her. Even knowing she had missed work, the reaction seemed a little bit over the top. “Why?”
Cassie and the hot guy looked at each other. Laila couldn’t help looking at him too, and she reminded herself he was likely Cassie’s husband and forced herself to look away from him. But not before he gave Cassie the briefest of nods, like he was giving her permission to speak.
This town is damned weird, Laila decided.
“Someone said they saw you being forced into a car. I thought something bad had happened to you,” Cassie said.
Someone must have been passing by or looking out of their window when Alan flashed her a look at the gun. Great. Now the whole town was going to be talking about her.
“It was a friend,” Laila lied. “He was just messing around.”
If Cassie asked about the gun, she would tell her it wasn’t a real gun, it was just an old inside joke between friends that whenever he spotted her and offered her a ride, he would do that. She would come up with some movie reference or something.
Cassie and the hot stranger exchanged another glance and Laila got the distinct impression they didn’t believe her.
“I’m sorry if we’ve overstepped the mark,” Cassie said, a little coolly. “It’s just that when we heard that and you hadn’t shown up for work, I was a bit worried. And I roped my brother, Cedric, here into helping me look for you.”
Laila’s heart skipped another beat. The hot stranger wasn’t Cassie’s husband; he was her brother. She looked at him again, unable to keep her eyes off him for long. He looked back at her and gave her a half-smile that made her center clench tightly. Again, she forced herself to look away, feeling the heat flooding her cheeks. She hoped they would put the redness down to the fact that she was embarrassed about missing work.
“How did I miss work?” Laila asked, knowing how to play this now.
“Well, the after-school club,” Cassie said with a frown.
“Oh my God,” Laila said, bringing one hand up to her mouth and widening her eyes a little bit. “The after-school club. Shit, Cassie, I’m so sorry. I forgot all about it. You’re not going to fire me, are you?”
The slight panic in her voice when she asked if she was going to get fired was real. She loved her new job and she really didn’t want it to be over after three days.
“No. No, of course not,” Cassie said. “Just try to be a little bit more organized next week, okay?”
“I will,” Laila promised. “Should I go along to the school now and take over from whoever is there?”
“No, it’s okay. One of the students’ moms has taken them to her place,” Cassie said.
“I really am sorry,” Laila said.
“It’s okay,” Cassie said again, flashing her a quick smile.
“I promise you it won’t happen again. I’m never normally this irresponsible,” Laila said.
She bit her lip, forcing herself to stop talking. The more she said, the more Cedric looked at her. His smoldering gaze was making her feel all hot and flustered and it wasn’t just the fact that he made her want to rip his clothes off and fuck him senseless. There was also the fact that she got the distinct impression that he didn’t believe a word she was saying. She didn’t know why she thought that, just something in the way he was looking at her seemed odd. Like he could see inside of her head and read her thoughts. God, imagine if he could. He’d get to see himself as the star of some very questionable porn.
“Let’s just forget this happened, okay? Call it a trial run. I know how overwhelming your first few days in a new job can be,” Cassie smiled. “And added to the fact that you had to move across the state in a day or two, I’m honestly surprised you’re not a total wreck.
”
“Thank you,” Laila said, grateful that she had not only kept her job, but also that she wasn’t going to be punished for doing something so stupid so soon.
“See you tomorrow,” Cassie said.
“Will do,” Laila said.
“See you around, Laila,” Cedric said.
She felt the heat flood across her cheeks again when he said her name, her heart slamming in her chest and her clit tingling. His voice was deep and husky, the sort of voice that just screamed sex.
“Bye,” she managed to squeak out before she practically ran from him.
Laila got home and tried to push aside her growing discomfort. She put on a pan of pasta and she poured the sauce into a separate pan. She sat down at the tiny table to wait for the pasta to be almost done before she started to heat the sauce up.
This town was definitely weird. First there was Fabian, reclusive enough that the townspeople told stories about him being some sort of supernatural creature who snatched women away. Then there was Alan and the way he had gotten her into his car with a gun. And worse than the gun, there was this sense she got that there was more to it, that she had actually been dragged into the car. On a rational level, she knew that hadn’t been the case, but the little thread that felt like a memory, but couldn’t possibly be, tugged at her, not quite ready to be let go.
There was also the fact that she had lost over an hour of time with no idea what had happened to her in that time. She thought briefly that maybe she had been hypnotized to forget about being dragged into the car and having her wrists bound—her wrists bound? That bit was new—but she dismissed the thought as quickly as it had come. She was being ridiculous.
But someone had seen something—something bad enough that they had felt the need to mention it to Cassie. And if they had seen a gun, wouldn’t they have mentioned that? And then there was her reaction to Cedric. Yes, he was hot, but she had met hot guys before and she had never felt this certainty inside of herself that she was meant to be with them. Especially when she told them something and they made it clear they didn’t quite believe her. But Cassie seemed to have believed her and she was her boss, so she was the one that mattered.
Laila got up and switched on the gas beneath her pasta sauce, giving the pot of pasta a quick stir. She sat back down and told herself to stop being so ridiculous. She had had a strange day, there was no doubting that, but that was because she had met someone who claimed to be her father.
So, she had lost track of time and a person in town had passed on a bit of gossip. That was it. And Cedric was right not to believe her story—she had been lying, after all. There was nothing weird about Greer. It wasn’t making her crazy; she was doing that all by herself by letting herself think such crazy thoughts.
Her thoughts turned back to Fabian’s story that her mom wasn’t really her mom, but rather someone who had killed her actual mother and had taken her away as a baby. Now, there was a crazy story. And yet, Fabian’s story had a slight ring of truth to it. There was no denying the similarity between her and Fabian’s dead wife. And he had known her mom’s name.
She thought about calling her mom, but what would she even say if she did? “Oh, hi Mom, I met a man today who claimed to be my dead father. He said you killed his wife and stole me away from him. So, did you?” Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.
Laila decided to wait and see what the DNA test came back saying before she told her mom about any of this. It was most likely to come back negative, and if that was the case, she didn’t want her mom to know she had started to doubt her, not even for a second.
9
Cedric and Cassie were sitting in Cedric’s living room. Cedric kept thinking about Laila. He wanted to get to the bottom of what had gone on this evening, but it was hard to do that when every time he thought of Laila, all he could focus on was the sensuous smile on her lips, the curve of her hips, and the way her eyes sparkled when she looked at him, heat flooding her face and turning her pink.
He pushed the lust for her aside, concentrating instead on the practical reasons he needed to think about her. She had been lying about something tonight and Cedric couldn’t decide what it was. Maybe she had just decided to blow off the after-school club and her lies were just a tale she had spun to cover that, but it struck Cedric as odd that someone had reported seeing her getting dragged into a car. She had laughed it off, saying it was a friend, but who?
And what sort of friends had an inside joke that made a stranger think someone was being snatched off the street? Laila hadn’t been in the town long enough to make a good enough friend that would do that to her as a joke. Cedric thought it could have been someone from her hometown driving through to see her, and that it could be a joke between them—a bad one, granted, but people were strange, weren’t they? And maybe that’s why she had missed the after-school club and lied about it. But that just didn’t feel right. He was missing something here and he didn’t know what it was.
Although Gretel had done the right thing by giving the witness the memory potion, he kind of wished she hadn’t. He would have liked to have been able to go to Mavis and quiz her a little bit, find out for sure if the car Laila had been seen getting dragged into had been one of Fabian’s or just a similar-looking make.
There was another possibility. One Cedric didn’t like at all, a much darker possibility. Maybe it had been Fabian in the car, and Laila was friends with him. Maybe she was even working with him, infiltrating the town and reporting back to Fabian. He dismissed that idea almost as quickly as it had come. His instincts were telling him Laila was meant to be his mate, and that she was lying about what had happened tonight, but they weren’t sensing evil or darkness. And he knew Cassie would have sensed it too if it was there. Cassie was even more wary of strangers than he was and he knew how thoroughly she would have vetted Laila before she offered her the job at the school.
“What is it? You’ve got that serious look on your face again,” Cassie said.
“I don’t know. I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to tonight than we know about,” Cedric said. “You know as well as I do that Laila was lying back at the store.”
“I did get that impression, but maybe she was just uncomfortable because she really forgot about the after-school club. Or maybe she was having a good time with her friend and she lost track of the time and didn’t want to admit to that. Is that what this is about, Cedric? Are you jealous of Laila’s friend?”
Cassie put friend in air quotes and Cedric rolled his eyes.
“No. I can’t be jealous of her friend, because I don’t believe there was a friend involved. The townspeople like a bit of gossip, I know that much, but making up someone getting dragged into a car seems a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it? And I trust that if the witness had exaggerated the story a bit, Gretel would have gotten to the bottom of that and not bothered me with it,” Cedric said.
“So, what are you saying?” Cassie said with a frown. “What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know,” Cedric admitted. “Something about this whole thing just feels off. And I can’t help but think Gretel was right and Fabian is involved in it all somehow.”
“Okay, but then explain to me why, if Laila had been dragged into a car by Fabian or one of his men, she would have lied about it afterwards,” Cassie said.
“Maybe she’s not lying as such. Maybe Fabian used a memory potion on her, just like we do when we need humans to forget something,” Cedric said.
“Okay, I could buy that,” Cassie conceded. “But why would he have let her go? Fabian doesn’t take women until he’s sure they have the Sanmere protein in their blood. And there’s no way he would let someone with Sanmere in their blood just walk away.”
“I honestly don’t know, Cass. But I intend to find out,” Cedric said.
He stood up and Cassie raised an eyebrow at him.
“Look, I agree something weird is happening here. And I also agree we need to deal with our Fabian pro
blem,” Cassie said. “It’s past time we did that. But bulldozing your way into Fabian’s castle and confronting him with something like this isn’t the way to do it.”
“Thanks for that,” Cedric smiled. “But I’m not stupid, Cass. That’s not my plan. I think it’s time I introduced myself to Laila properly and asked her out for a drink.”
“Right,” Cassie said, grinning at him. “And it’s purely to find out what’s going on in the town, right? There’s no other reason you might want to take Laila out for a drink?”
“I didn’t say that, did I?” Cedric laughed. “I want to figure out this situation, but if Laila and I click and have a good time, well, there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
“Nothing at all. Just remember you like this girl. Maybe focus more on that than grilling her,” Cassie said.
As if I can forget that I like her, Cedric thought to himself. She’s all I can think about.
“Got it,” he said.
Cassie stood up and walked out of the house with him.
“I’d better get home. Stuart will be wondering where I’ve gotten to,” Cassie said.
She gave Cedric a quick hug and headed toward home.
“Good luck!” she called over her shoulder as she walked away.
Cedric gave her a thumbs-up, but he hoped he wouldn’t need luck. He hoped Laila would be happy at the thought of a date with him.
By the time Cedric reached Laila’s house, he was feeling a little bit nervous, but he knew it wouldn’t show. One of the first things he’d learned being the pack alpha, after trusting his instincts, had been how to project confidence, even if he wasn’t really feeling it.
He knocked on Laila’s door and waited. She pulled it open and smiled when she saw him. His cock instantly started to respond to the sight of her standing there. She was still in her work clothes, a black, knee-length dress that clung to her breasts a little and then flowed out at the waist, and she looked amazing in it. Cedric could see the outline of her breasts through the fabric, the curve of her hips, and he couldn’t help but imagine what she would look like out of the dress.