Hawkins_McCullough’s Jamboree_Erotic Jaguar Shapeshifter Romance

by Kathi S. Barton

  “It doesn’t matter to me if she’s one sandwich short of a picnic basket, Gordon. If she’s my child I will take care that she gets all the care that she needs.” Gordon told him that it would be better if they waited just a few more days. “All right. I don’t like it, but you do have a point there. I’ve been busy myself. Doing some research on Becky and what her life had been. She should have stayed put. As soon as she left the home I had provided for her, she was arrested for writing bad checks. I just remembered again, her last name was Apollo. I keep forgetting that for some reason.”

  “I have other things on her that you might want to see as well. When she was living off your dime, I thought for sure she was scamming you. I found out that she took in others to help with the rent, believe it or not. However, when it came to her having the child, she was able to pay cash for everything, and I figured that was what the cash had gone for.”

  She hadn’t been a greedy lover. It had embarrassed her when Marshall would buy her little things. And when he’d given her a car with the apartment, she refused it. Simply, she told him, that she didn’t need it with the bus system practically at her front door.

  Then she’d died recently. He was still trying to figure out how that had come to pass. People were unwilling to part with that bit of information. She’d been young when she passed away—he had found out that she was only in her late forties. Marshall was now sixty-seven, and his time was running out.

  When Gordon left him to take care of a few other things, he pulled out the picture and looked at it. It was uncanny how much she looked like Becky. The hair was as red as it had been on her mother, and the sprinkle of freckles across her nose was the same. It had been what had attracted him to her in the first place. The red hair and the freckles. Since her, there had never been another woman that has sparked his interest like she had.

  Not to say that he didn’t date when he’d been a little younger. He could have any woman he wanted. Not because of his looks—he was an average man, he guessed—but his wealth. Marshall had inherited his parents’ estates and had made good on his promise to make more. It hadn’t occurred to him until almost too late that at some point money meant nothing if you had too much of it. So, he began his crusade to spread his wealth around a bit.

  He was responsible for the downtown rejuvenation. Also, the new businesses that had popped up when it started to bring more people to the downtown. Where there had been displaced people, most of them homeless, was now a beautiful facility for them to go to, at no cost to them, so that they could shower, use a computer should they want. He’d recently added an education room for those who were ready to finish school. He loved that idea more than any other.

  There were many more charitable things that he’d started, most of them small, but others that had made a real difference in quality of life for so many people. Staring out the window of his fifty-third story office building, he looked down at the orphanage that had taken his daughter in. He had a crew now going over the building and making it a landmark. It was already that in his heart.

  Gordon called him on his personal line when he was just closing up his desk to go home. “You near your computer?” Marshall told him that he’d just shut it down. “I’m sending you some links that I want you to go through. They’re concerning the place that your daughter stayed for the first few years of her life. That place was not a place I’d send even my worst of enemies, Marshall. Call me back when you’ve read them over.”

  The first article that he clicked on was about the support that the town was no longer giving the place—it had been called Our Lady of Trust when this was written, about twenty years ago. He thought about just skimming through it, but once he started reading bits and pieces of it, he went to the beginning and started again.

  The place had been a baby mill. Young charges had been brought there with the parents given false knowledge about what they were actually doing with the children. They estimated that there had been as many as fifty children sold around the world, and no one could speculate on a reason to have done that. He had an idea, but then he’d been around the block a few times himself and knew things that they might not have thought about back then. Some of the children, toddlers and younger, had been used in scientific experiments that had been the home’s biggest money maker.

  Then a short five years later, the same thing was going on. This time the name of it was William’s Home for the Young. He remembered that name now—it has been on the paperwork that had been found on his daughter. The article said that not only were the children sold all over, but again it mentioned that they’d been taken to labs to use. Human waste was what they had called the children that they’d shipped out. The man who owned and ran it said that the city didn’t give them enough money to raise someone else’s brats, and he’d had to take in more money.

  The last article that he started to read had been written only about three years ago. The name then was simply City Orphanage. The city was much stricter this time around, keeping an eye on the bottom line as well as the number of children that went into the place. It all seemed to be on the up and up until the city got wind of the children that were being brought through the back door, so to speak.

  City had put out that they would take the children of those that couldn’t keep them, with no questions asked and the assurance that they’d not mention where the parents had taken them. This had gone on from nearly the day that they opened. There was no shipping the children out now; they were simply taken to the lab that had been in town only a short while, and never heard from again.

  Records had been found. Over two hundred children, most of them older kids that had been scooped up off the street, had been taken to City. Pictures were attached to this article, and Marshall was sickened by the sight of the children that had been tossed aside when they were no longer useable. The pile of bones and half gone bodies made him ill enough to have to run to his bathroom and vomit several times before he felt like he could call Gordon.

  As soon as Gordon answered the phone, he told him to halt all work on the building. He was tearing it down. Then he asked about the lab.

  “It was raided a few months back. There had been some experiments going on there that I’d rather not talk about.” Marshall thanked him, feeling his belly tense up again. “I have it on good authority, Marshall, that this girl that may or may not be your child spent about fifteen or twenty years in the place. Not as a lab tech, but one of the guinea pigs that they used.” Marshall closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair as Gordon continued. “There are blood samples of most of the people that were there when it was shut down. I’m having the female ones run now. I know which one her number was, but I’m having them all run so no one is the wiser as to what we’re doing.”

  “Good idea. And when you figure this out, let me know immediately. I don’t care if it’s in the middle of the night or if I’m in a meeting. I need to know.” He told him he’d call him from the lab—he was sitting on them until they were all finished. “Thank you, Gordon. I don’t know what I would have done had you not helped me with this search.”

  “I’d like to find her too, Marshall. I want to see what the child has become.” There was a clicking noise, and Gordon told him to hang on. When he came back, it was to tell Marshall that they were getting results. Now all he had to do was wait.

  Marshall had never been one to be patient about things, especially when it was something that he wanted done a week ago. This waiting to find out if they’d been chasing their tail for six months was going to be incomparable to anything else that he’d had to wait on.

  ~*~

  Jamie was bored. There wasn’t much for her to do with the house. It was beautiful just the way it was. She knew nothing of roses nor the herbs that were in abundance in the garden that was outside of the offices. And if someone would have asked her about the trees and if they needed anything, she would have told them that they were green.

  The phone was ringing when she mad
e her way to the kitchen. She and Hawkins had decided to wait until today to tell his parents about the baby. Then they’d tell the rest of them, after the doctor confirmed it. They were sure—Jon wouldn’t lie to them—but they were taking no chances in telling his family and having it turn out to be a mistake.

  “Miss? The call is for you. It’s Miss Reilly.”

  Taking the phone, she was a little afraid of what she might want from her. Jamie knew that she wasn’t like the others. They all had some kind of power, but hers was much bigger, off the charts stronger. She said hello when she heard Reilly laughing.

  “Just the woman I need to talk to. What do you think about tea and crumpets?” Jamie told her that she had no opinion either way. “Yeah, me either. I don’t care for tea, but cold and crumpets? I don’t even know what they have in them. But we’ve been invited to a tea party with Bea. And when I say that, I’m basically telling you that we’re being made to go with her.”

  “You can tell her no, you know.” Reilly repeated what she’d said to someone else and the laughter was louder. “What’s the joke? I’d like a good laugh about now.”

  “I’m not like you, or Lauren. I’m not a wimp either, but telling Bea no isn’t going to work. Have you told her yet that you don’t want to do something or go someplace with her? I’m betting not. You’re still breathing.” This time Jamie laughed. “You’re a great deal like Lauren and are one of those women that takes no shit and kills whatever disagrees with you. Not really, but you two are scary strong.”

  “I’m opinionated. That’s what Hawkins said anyway.” Reilly told her that was good and asked if he was still breathing. “For now he is. Who knows about that when he gets home.”

  She was enjoying the banter that was going on, and relaxed as the call went on. Reilly told her about the tea and how Miss Buttermilk was bringing her daughters to this thing, and Bea wanted to show her girls off.

  “There is a love hate relationship between Bea and this Buttermilk person, if you know what I mean.” Jamie didn’t, but Reilly continued with the reasons they were required to go. “From what I’ve gathered, Miss Buttermilk—who has a name that is sour milk?—anyway, her daughters look as if they’ve fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. I didn’t say that, but that’s the consensus around town. So you’re to dress up. We’re all wearing sundresses in different colors, and some sexy shoes. I don’t have any of those, and I’m sure that Lauren won’t even consider it, but that’s what we’re to do. You game?”

  “Sure, I guess so. I mean, I’m not doing anything here but missing Hawkins.” He’d gone to help his brothers and dad out. They were trying to get a house done before the vet who was going to live there came home. The house was being outfitted for someone in a wheelchair. “But I don’t know about heels either. I’m not much of a girly girl, so there is that.”

  “Don’t worry about it. The rest of us will cover for you if you’re asked which tea you enjoyed the most with your crumpets. Who the hell cares is what my opinion is. But for Bea, we’ll do this.” Jamie asked her how she was going to get there, she didn’t drive, and even if she did, she didn’t have a car. “I’ll have to get on Hawk about that. What are you to do if you can’t meet us at the mall at Christmas time? Big deal, Christmas, by the way. Well, all the holidays are. I’ll see you in about twenty minutes.”

  The phone went dead, and she wasn’t sure what to do. Jamie had twenty minutes to get sexy and nice looking for a tea? What the fuck was she going to do? Wing it, she thought, and headed to the bedroom to try on different outfits to see which one looked good on her.

  Nearly all the twenty minutes was spent on finding a dress. And when she ran out of time, she wore the one she’d thought up first. It looked like she’d just stepped off a fucking cake, but it was bright and cheery, and she compromised with lace up sandals instead of heels. Going down the stairs when she heard the doorbell ring, Jamie was glad that she’d gone with the bright one. She’s fit right in with the others.

  “Wow, you look fantastic. I love those colors on you.” Reese asked her to turn around and whistled loudly. “We’re going to knock this out of the ballpark, I think. Bea will be proud of us, and we’ll get brownie points. I’m saving mine for when I really screw up.”

  Reese was explaining to her the points that they were able to earn. Having a baby or bringing one into the family earned the most.

  “Since Lauren had four right off the bat, she’s been able to curse around Bea and she doesn’t say anything. Also, if you have a talent—like mine is baking, and I bring something to every affair. All of us have something that we’re really good at. I’m sure you have one too.”

  “No, I don’t cook. I can’t paint or draw. I’m pretty much a failure when it comes to plants, and don’t get me started on the computer. It buggers up every time I’m near it.” She was in the limo now and looked around at the rest of them. “We do clean up nicely, don’t we? But back to my talent, I don’t have one.”

  “Sure you do. Your talent is more valuable than anything we could do. You gave her back Hawkins. And trust me when I tell you, even a baby couldn’t top that one. She was telling me the other day how much she’d missed her boy and was so glad that you two are happy.” Lauren laughed. “I didn’t mention how you had beaten him to shit then tied him to a chair. I wish I could have seen that. I would have given my left nut to have been there.”

  “You don’t have any nuts.” Jamie thought about it a second. “You don’t, do you? From what I’ve heard, you’re really good at busting them, but I couldn’t tell you about whether or not you have a set of them.”

  They were still laughing when they pulled up in front of the country club’s main building. She was almost afraid to get out of the car, then she saw Bea. The woman was the nicest person she knew, and Jamie would do this for her without a fuss.

  When she saw her, Bea hugged her tightly and told her how happy she was about Hawkins. She told her that since he’d been gone, he’d been a different man, not the child she’d raised. Now, Bea told her, he was his same old self again, and perhaps a little happier.

  “I really didn’t do anything but set down ground rules.” That got the women laughing again, and she glared at them before continuing with Bea. “He’s a good man and has a great heart. And I love him. That’s all it is.”

  “Whatever it is, I can’t thank you enough for it. Rich and I were talking the other day about our family, and how it’s growing by leaps and bounds. I don’t think that anyone could hold a candle to how I feel.” A large woman with four equally overweight women went into the building in front of them. “That’s Cora Buttermilk. She and I have a competition. Every year, we try to outdo the other. This year, I’m going to win. My daughters are shining, and that’ll be mud in her eye.”

  This family was a little more violent than she was, Jamie thought. They were also very competitive. Smiling as they were seated at a large table that held them all, she was glad that she’d come here today. And Bea was right, they were going to win this one. Whatever it was.

  Tea was served in tiny cups. Bea had brought them all one to use, and gave them prettily stitched hankies. When Lauren started to take hers to her nose, Jamie thought that Bea was going to have a heart attack. It had been a joke of course. Lauren would never blow her nose on anything but toilet paper, she told her.

  Tickets were given out to all of them. Then you could buy more if you wished. The tea party, an event that happened every year, raised money for the library to buy books and such. Last year they’d managed to get enough funding from this to not just buy books for the shelves, but had been able to put in two more computers.

  Jamie had cash on her. Hawkins had given her a great deal before he’d left this morning. Watching how many extra tickets the other women bought, Jamie purchased two hundred dollars’ worth as well. She had no idea what the tickets were for until they started around the tables with small bags to put their tickets in.

  �
�It’s called a Chinese auction. I haven’t the faintest clue why it is, but they make a good deal of money for the items that are donated, and it’s fun to see if you win.” Bea was putting her own tickets in each bag that was out. “I never win anything, but I’m happy to be here with you girls.”

  “While I have you alone, I have something to tell you.” Jamie did the same thing with her tickets. “Hawkins and I are going to have a baby.”

  Bea didn’t say anything, so Jamie turned back to look at her. She was shell shocked, and standing there with her tickets in one hand and holding onto the table with the other. Jamie asked her if she was all right.

  “Yes. I guess maybe I didn’t hear you right.” Jamie assured her that she had as she got to the end of the line of bags. “You and my Hawkins, you’re really going to have a baby?”

  “Yes. We’re not telling anyone else until we were able to tell you and Rich. So, as I said, I’m glad—”

  The hug was unexpected but welcome. Jamie hadn’t ever had a mother figure in her life and welcomed this woman with her entire heart. “I’m assuming that you are happy.”

  “I am very happy.” Another hug and they made their way to the large display in the middle of the room. “Oh my goodness child, you have no idea how happy I am right now. Hawkins is back with us, and you’re having his child. There isn’t a thing in this world that could make this day any better.”

  She put the remaining tickets in the grand prize bag. Jamie would love to win this and give the all-expenses-paid cruise to Bea and Rich. They would have so much fun. Laughing as she made her way back to the table, she saw that the tea and crumpets had been replaced with small bowls of fruit. Now this was what she wanted.

  Chapter 10

  Hawkins held up the drywall as his dad shot screws into it. It was fun working with his dad and brothers, and the work was hard enough that he felt his muscles strain a little after not having much to do anymore.