Cody chuckled and held Sophie, who blinked up at him and punched him in the chest. Molly pushed Jessie to sit down next to him with the twins in her lap and suddenly, it felt just like he’d been handed a real family. The thought was both frightening and exciting.
But suddenly there he was acting like a dad and Jason was begging him to read them a story, convinced that he would be an excellent reader. He cleared his throat and took the book from Jason’s eager little hands and even the older kids were staring at him, waiting for some new entertainment with bated breath.
He caught Jessie’s eye and he wondered if she was reading his mind. She looked like she knew exactly how nervous he was about something as simple as reading a story. Cody blushed, ducking his head and opened the book. It was about a duck who wanted to go camping with his friends.
“Okay,” Cody said, clearing his throat, and Jason leaned up against him as if they did this every day, and Jessie arm came up around his shoulders and her finger twirled a lock of his hair. Home, he thought. “I’ll do the best I can.”
13
Tobin
Tobin’s contact at the sleuth was a woman named Sheila who sounded like the kind of bear you didn’t want to mess around with and there were few people, either bears or humans, who Tobin wasn’t willing to mess around with if he thought he could get something out of it.
Tobin had been feeling pretty cocky when he called up Sheila and told her that he’d found the girl. Her name had been printed on her employee locker. Jessie Marquez. She was working at the Black Bear Lake Lodge and she wasn’t going anywhere. The cubs’ collective scents had been all mixed up with hers, he said, and even if he didn’t smell them anywhere in the lodge, he had to think they were nearby. He had tracked them for miles and miles. This Jessie person wouldn’t just leave them suddenly after so long.
“So have you found the cubs or not?” Sheila didn’t sound quite as excited as Tobin had been hoping. He supposed that was down to the job taking longer than expected.
Still, he had hoped for some kind of vindication. It had been a difficult tracking and lesser trackers would’ve given up long ago. He thought he should be commended and also get some extra money out of it.
Sheila did not sound like she was in the mood for a conversation about a pay increase, however.
“I haven’t found the cubs yet,” Tobin admitted. He was sitting alone in the lounge, far from any potentially curious eavesdroppers. He knocked back another sip of bourbon and sat back in the luxurious circular booth dimly lit by candlelight. “I wanted to call you first about the girl. See what you wanted to do. I could kill her?” He said it hopefully. He bounced a little on his toes. His mouth had been watering to taste that girl’s blood in his bear’s maw.
“Do not kill her,” Sheila hissed. Her voice was usually cold and crisp on the phone but now it was a dangerous whisper.
Definitely not messing with this one.
He was tough and everything. But he had a sense of survival. Being reckless never paid well.
“Black Bear Lake Lodge,” Sheila said. “Fine. We will come soon if you say she is there and not going anywhere. In the meantime, you will find the cubs.”
“Got it,” Tobin said tightly. “About my fee-”
“You’ll get your fee,” Sheila snapped. “If everyone is alive including this girl, we’ll add on a grand.”
With that, she hung up. Tobin sighed heavily and pocketed his phone. A grand was something anyway. He’d been hoping for more. But the initial fee had been negotiated with the assumption that some or all of the cubs were probably dead. He appreciated the bonus for finding them alive anyway.
At least the sleuth had integrity in business. He had to think they were not so kind to the cubs they were searching so hard for.
But that had nothing to do with him.
Tobin messed around on his phone, reading some news and watching some porn as he sipped his drink. It was already late. He figured he would take his time. The sleuth would take a while to arrive at the lodge.
But by seven that night, he was buzzed and impatient.
He went to the parking spot where he’d originally found Jessie’s car. The parking lot for employees was a few blocks from the lodge and Tobin found it easily. He was good at remembering very specific locations like parking spots. The car was still there. From what he’d been able to tell so far, Jessie usually left work at five or five-thirty. But it was already seven. She was staying late.
That was lucky for Tobin. There was nobody around in the tree-lined lot. No one was there to see Tobin inspect the entire exterior of the car for clues and finally break inside using a wire to poke between the window frame and the glass and unlock the car from inside the door.
Inside, Tobin found a goldmine of clues to the cubs. Their scents were all over the car. There were little toys and half-empty bags of chips and granola bars in the glove compartment and blankets in the back seat. If there had been any doubt at all, Tobin was positive that Jessie still had those cubs.
All he had to do now was lie in wait, and follow her.
An hour later, Jessie had left the lodge. She looked pretty upset from what he could see from skulking behind an oak tree and pretending he wasn’t watching through a telescopic lens. He gave her plenty of lead time and finally jumped in his rental car and followed from a distance, but it was enough to hang far back and follow the scent of her peeling out of the parking lot and heading up a curvy road behind the lodge and up the mountain.
From there, catching up to Jessie at the cabin was easy.
Once he’d followed Jessie to a certain point, he parked the car offroad, shifted, and followed Jessie’s scent. The road was too deserted for him to drive after her without her noticing. It was just as easy anywho to follow on foot and the scent was so attached to the car that crept up the steep road, he was able to track it easily from the cover of the woods, running along side it all the way up to the shabby cabin with the lights glowing from little.
Tobin stayed back and watched as Jessie got out of the car and carried a duffle bag and a purse inside. He waited a few minutes, shifted into human form, and crept up along the side, peaking in the windows.
Six cubs in human form, all accounted for. Tobin checked the pictures the sleuth had sent to his phone just to double check. They didn’t look like they were in any kind of duress. They looked healthy and happy and one of the boys was hugging Jessie.
All found alive. That meant another thousand dollars for him.
Tobin grinned and ran off into the woods to make his phone call.
14
Cody
By the time Cody left the cabin, he had all the cubs’ shoe and clothing sizes typed into his notes app. He didn’t know when he was actually going to have a chance to shop for them and he thought it would be better if Jessie went with him, seeing as how he knew nothing about what children actually required.
He got home late that night. He’d helped Jessie tuck the cubs into their beds and the strangest part was how it had not felt strange at all. Jason and Chris seemed to be enamored with him and Chris, seemed especially fascinated with the idea that Cody had three brothers. Somehow he’d let slip that he was rich, although he had not put it that way. He supposed that bringing them several hundred dollars worth of new stuff out of nowhere had put it into their heads anyway. But Jason kept asking questions even as Cody stood by, making sure he brushed his teeth, because Jessie said he fibbed about it all the time. Jason wanted to know if Cody had ever been on an airplane and if he lived in a mansion and rose around in a limo every day and Cody had entertained his interest.
But once the children were in bed, Cody sat down on the couch along with Jessie. They’d talked for a long time, their voices soft with only one dim light left on to save energy from the generator. They inched closer and closer and finally the conversation had devolved into an intense makeout session, Jessie beneath him as the groped like horny teenagers. It had gone no further than that. It was too
risky with the kids so close by.
But Jessie had been smiling when Cody left and he knew the next day they’d be texting back and forth and that he’d bring her lunch. He was already excited as he drove home that night.
That evening, when he walked into his residential suite, it felt somehow very different than usual. The place was cluttered. He was a little embarrassed that Jessie had seen it that way when she’d come over. He shared a maid’s services with his brothers but he always managed to mess his place up in between her visits. Yet Jessie’s cabin had been in a similar state... except that she had six children. He would have expected it to be much worse. That either spoke very well for the childrens’ behavior or very poorly of his. He chuckled to himself thinking about it as he threw away old take-out boxes and threw dirty laundry into his hamper.
He should’ve been going to bed, except that he never managed to get to bed very early. He’d never required a whole lot of sleep. If being a little messy, except in his kitchen which was immaculate, made him a potentially questionable father figure, he considered a point in his favor that he didn’t need a lot of sleep.
Instead, he found himself restless, leaning on the kitchen counter and watching his phone charge. He wished he was in bed with Jessie, spooning up behind her... and if one of the cubs woke up from a nightmare or needed something, he’d be there. He didn’t even have a doubt about it. It was odd how much he was willing to jump into the caring for the cubs. It was Connor who was the one who seemed a little melancholy lately about wanting a mate and cubs of his own. But here they potentially were for Cody, and he wanted that life and that woman and those cubs in his life so intensely and so suddenly, he thought he might die if he didn’t get it.
Cody was just about to turn in when he patted his pants pocket and found a picture Jason had drawn for him as they were all hanging around in the living room. It was a picture of all the cubs and the cabin. It didn’t look much like the actual cubs or the cabin, which was colored blue for some reason, and yet it was perfect. Cody found himself sticking the messy crayon drawing to his otherwise plain refrigerator with a Black Bear Lake Lodge bear magnet. It looked completely out of place in the professionally decorated suite that, if he were a neater person, would look like something out of a magazine for interior decor with its expensive mid-century modern furniture and art prints on the walls. Yet, outside of photos of Cody with his brothers, the suite was a little bit cold. It didn’t look like a person with much of a life lived there. The picture was the homiest thing in the place, and that made him smile. He wondered if he had never realized how much happier it was possible to be.
Now all he had to do was figure out how to protect the people making him so happy.
The next day, Cody woke up happy.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d rolled out of bed as if it was Christmas. It wasn’t even his day off. Yet he was excited just to be alive and to go to work. He found himself smiling like a lovesick dope as he hummed his way to the bathroom and took a shower. He played Queen on his shower speakers and headbanged and took longer than usual on his hair because at some point, he would be seeing Jessie and he wanted to look good.
Cody dressed in dark skinny jeans and a thin t-shirt that clung to his tight muscles. Nathan would tease him about if Cody saw him. It was a Thursday and that was usually when he liked to visit. He might even bring baby Emily with him, if only to watch Cody squirm and worry about her in the kitchen even if she was safe in her father’s arms.
Sure enough, Cody saw Nathan at breakfast that morning. Breakfasts at the lodge used to be more of a group affair but both Nathan and Eric had mates now and Connor was so often busy with lodge business. Cody always pretended to be annoyed when one of them showed up just to hang out and steal bacon, but it was truly one of his favorite things about working at the lodge.
“Cody!” Nathan slapped him on the back just hard enough to show he meant it and Cody shot him a long-suffering look as he sauteed garlic and oil in several giant pans. He had started early, seeing guests milling around in the dining hall. “You look good today, bro. You get a haircut?”
“No,” Cody said with a snort.
Nathan made himself comfortable at the kitchen island, the spot that was unofficially reserved for the Strauss brothers whenever they wandered into the kitchen.
“Oh, it’s that maid business,” Nathan said knowingly. “You get that straightened out? You should take my advice on women. I know everything now.”
“This is because I asked you for advice,” Cody said wryly. “My mistake.”
“Did you take it?” Nathan said. He smirked. He already knew the answer. Cody found this infuriating.
“Yes, alright?”
“Did it work?”
“Yes!” Cody rolled his eyes and handed his spatula over to one of the kitchen staff. He grabbed an omelet he’d thrown together just in case Nathan showed up and set it down in front of him before pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Yes, I took your advice. I cleared the air. Bla bla bla.”
“Aright, but you said she couldn’t date?” Nathan prodded. “Any update on that? What’s up? She’s got someone already or what?”
“Oh! Um... ”
Cody was not very good at lying. He never had been. In his book, lying was a sign of weakness. Except that, having made a habit of not lying on behalf of himself had made him bad lying on behalf of others when necessary. Eric had teased him about it on occasion. Eric said lying was a very necessary part of his job as a concierge and also claimed that getting pissed off at people because you were secretly angry about something else was a much bigger sign of weakness. When he said things like that, Cody just tried to ignore him.
“It’s something she’s working out,” he said instead. Which was true. He just hoped Nathan didn’t try to dig any deeper.
“Okay... ” Nathan scarfed down his omelet and for a moment, Cody was dumb enough to think he was going to let it drop. Instead, he pointed his fork at Cody and said, “So what’s the something?”
“Uh... ” Cody pulled a face and shrugged. “Oh, nothing important. Just some life stuff she has to figure out. How’s Emily doing? How’s Alanna?”
Nathan burst out laughing at that and shook his head. “Wow. That was an absolutely deft switch in subjects. Seriously stealthy. I didn’t even notice.”
“Okay okay,” Cody said, rolling his eyes.
“They’re great!” Nathan said, and Cody was relieved that Nathan at least indulged him even if he knew Cody was holding back. “I mean it’s corny, man. But I’ve never been this happy. It’s not always easy. Don’t mistake me. Sometimes I am so tired but at least I’m a shifter. Extra stamina. Though, believe me, that little cub of mine has stamina too. Cries twice as long, twice as loud. Gets twice as hungry. But goddamn... she is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like Alanna and I are just having these little epiphanies and making these little discoveries all the time, man. It’s totally wild. And we’re discovering all these things about each other too. It’s not like we’ve been together long. It’s awesome. Anyway. Yeah. Things are great.” He grinned and ate up the rest of his breakfast in three bites and Cody sighed.
He wanted what Nathan had. He felt like he was very close to getting it. He just had to be careful.
“Kids are cute,” Cody muttered. He was smiling fondly, thinking of Mary’s cute little smile and the way Molly held her carefully as if she might break.
He snapped his mouth shut, frowning as he ducked his head. He made himself busy sipping coffee. He’d just given himself away. He was always giving himself away. It was another reason he was so bad at lying and why the way he projected his feelings was always so transparent.
“Kids are cute?” Nathan said, chuckling. “I thought you hated kids?”
“I don’t hate kids,” Cody snapped. “I’ve never said that. I don’t think I ever thought about it, either way, I just... No yeah. They’re cute. Ya know. Especially bear cubs. Pretty adorable.”
“No!” Cody sat up straight. He ran a hand through his hair and tried very hard not to look shifty. “No, she doesn’t have a kid or anything. It’s just something I was thinking about. I mean since you have a kid. And your kid is cute. That’s all.”
“I forgot what a shit liar you are!” Nathan threw his head back and laughed. “I swear, I can smell it on you. Smells like fear. Alright, buddy. Keep your little secrets. If you told Jessie you wouldn’t tell anyone about her secret kid, then I won’t push it. But it’s a little hinky if you ask me.”
“Hinky,” Cody said flatly. He supposed he would have to take this amused agreement not to push from Nathan. It was better than nothing anyway.
“Hinky,” Nathan said. “Like suspicious.”
“Hinky,” Cody said again, rolling his eyes.
“Hey, Cody.” Nathan reached out and clapped Cody’s shoulder. “In all seriousness, bro. If anything changes, if you need me or anything. You know you can always talk to me. It’s not like I’m gonna tattle on shit to Connor.”
“Right.” Coddy nodded. “Thanks, man.”
“Now get to work,” Nathan said, winking. “Geez, man. Breakfast ain’t gonna fix itself.”
15
Cody
That night, Cody went to Jessie’s place again. This time, he brought a big pot of spaghetti and meatballs with him. He made a very good Caesar salad and packed up chocolate cake for dessert. There was so much food, he had to load it onto a cart to take to his car. He’d included some easy breakfasts that Jessie could easily heat up in the morning, even though he’d just bought the cubs fresh milk and several boxes of cereal. He couldn’t stop himself.
Cody (Strauss Bear Shifter Brothers 0f Colorado Book 3) Page 8