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Shifter Starter Set

Page 16

by Candace Ayers


  Muddy reached out and caught it, showing off her shifter reflexes. “And Denny has arrived.”

  “Sorry. Sorry about the picture. Sorry… Oof.” Denny dropped into my favorite chair, the chair and a half covered in a faux fur throw with a matching ottoman. She looked around the room and blew out a big breath. “Sorry, do you happen to have any dessert, Carter? I need something sweet. Or rich. Or just something with lots of butter.”

  I stood up and smiled at her, thankful to have the attention off of my five-year-old Hanes bra. “You’re just in time. I’ve got strawberry bourbon cupcakes with maple drizzle and fresh lemon zest, but only if you tell us what’s got you so frazzled.”

  Charlie raised an eyebrow. “I’m not done with you, Carter.”

  Denny was already off on her story, though, so I was able to escape to the kitchen. It was the only room in the house that was completely put-together. The rest still had moving boxes that I hadn’t yet unpacked, despite the fact that Jellybean and I had been in Helen’s Corner for a couple months already. I had two dozen cupcakes that I’d finished icing only an hour or so before. The women always managed to know when I was trying out new recipes and “stopped by” just in time. I guess that was to be expected living in a town of predominantly female shifters. Their heightened sense of smell was one thing, but when it came to sweets, a she-shifter could sniff ‘em out for miles.

  “Hey, do you—” Muddy stopped when she saw me and frowned. “I’m sorry, Carter. You’re missing Jellybean, huh?”

  She’d caught me staring at my daughter’s latest artistic creation hanging on the fridge. It was a colorful crayon drawing of her Uncle Cannon and his mate, Uncle Matt, standing next to Jellybean and me. My arm was around an indistinguishable, swirly blur of color that looked a bit like a rainbow tornado.

  Since Cannon had found his mate, she was obsessed with the idea of me being with someone. If I didn’t miss her so much, I’d almost be glad for the break from her both subtle and not so subtle hints. She was visiting her Uncles, Matt and Cannon, at their home in Burden, Texas, for a few weeks. I touched the blur and sighed a sigh of single mom’s guilt. My daughter wanted a dad.

  I snatched my hand away from that damned blur and tried to shake off the bad feeling I got every time I thought of bringing another man into our life. “Yeah, I am. She’s only been gone for a couple of days and I’m already going a little stir crazy.”

  “I’ll be sure to keep you busy then.” She grabbed a stack of napkins and waved them. “Come on. Stuffing your face with one of these cupcakes will make you feel better. Plus, she’ll be home before you know it.”

  I nodded. It was true. I needed the time she was gone to try to get our home in order. There was never any time to unpack when she was home. She required full time supervision. She had too much of me and Cannon in her. She was wild and brave and everything good in the world somehow, despite what we’d gone through.

  I grabbed the cupcake stands and smiled. “Let’s go hear what Denny’s been up to.”

  THE END

  2

  Alec

  An engagement trip? What the fuck was an engagement trip? I never knew there was such a thing until I was informed that I had to clear time in my schedule for an engagement trip to a strange little town out in the middle of nowhere. A place called Helen’s Corner. We’d just pulled up outside the B&B on Main Street. The sign out front read, Muddy’s Corner Bed and Breakfast.

  I admit, I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d signed up for when I’d agreed to marry Chelsie, but I certainly had no idea it would include a trip to one of the most remote towns in the American Southwest.

  I had important work to do and all I wanted was to be back at the office in New York to tackle it. I was juggling a huge merger with Dames, Inc., and I wanted to be in the office to handle it myself. If anything went wrong, we could lose the chance at getting Patterson Furniture into a major market in North America. The merger meant the opportunity to turn my million-dollar company into a billion-dollar company. The whole engagement trip was an annoyance.

  But, being engaged to the daughter of the man who called the shots at Dames, Inc., Arthur Dames himself, meant that I did what I had to do to make sure she was happy. If she wanted to visit Helen’s Corner, then Helen’s Corner it was.

  Chelsie peered at me over the roof of the car and snapped a picture with her phone. She looked at it and then made a face. “Bay-bee, would you smile? You look so cranky. I don’t want to post this to my Instagram with your miserable sour-puss face.”

  I tried to look like I wasn’t ready to slam my head in the car door, but judging by her frown, I wasn’t succeeding. I opened the trunk and removed our bags. “I’m not miserable. I just have a lot of work to get done before dinner tonight.”

  She looked up from her phone and sighed. “Work, work, work. It’s all you do, Alec.”

  “I know. I tried to warn you of that before we started this trip. With the merger, there’s a lot that needs to be taken care of. Things are stressful right now.”

  “Well, planning a wedding is stressful, too. You don’t see me ignoring you, though, do you?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and looked back down at her phone. I found myself wishing she’d ignore me a little more.

  I supposed that stemmed from the fact that I wasn’t used to having someone else in my life. Something I’d have to work on. Relationships were hard work, or so I’d heard. I’d never been in a real relationship before. Nothing that lasted more than a few months, anyway. Until Chelsie.

  I’d have to make a concerted effort on this trip to act interested in the things that were important to her like… Hmm, I wasn’t quite sure what was important to her, other than shopping, parties and social media.

  Well, there it was. Something to work on over the next few days. Finding out her interests.

  “Come on, Alec. I’ve got to figure out where the girls took their pictures. We’re going to need to up our game to outdo Madison and Edward. Theirs were stunning.” Her demands always irked me a little bit, but Chelsie was Chelsie. She was headstrong, a quality I generally admired. People said the same about me.

  As I followed her through the front door of the quaint bed and breakfast, she was still talking, something about her sorority sisters and their photos, but there was a scent in the air that was incredible. My mouth watered. I tipped my head back and inhaled deeply. Delicious. Even with my shifter senses, I couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. It seemed to just float in the air.

  “What’s that smell?” Even my wolf stirred, agitated we couldn’t figure in which direction to go to chase it. Huh. He never stirred.

  “Jeez, Alec, subtle much? It’s just an old house.” Chelsie stopped at the front desk, her hand already slapping the bell to announce our presence.

  “Not that. It smells sweet. Like cupcakes and…I don’t know, something else.” It was like sweet vanilla cupcakes with buttercream icing. My wolf loved it. He was practically tail-wagging like a pup.

  A tall woman with bright red hair walked in, all smiles. “I couldn’t help overhearing you. It is cupcakes. My friend Carter does all the baking for us and she’s uh-may-zing. I don’t know what she made earlier, but lucky for us, the smell always lingers. I can’t say the same for the cupcakes, though. Those are gone like that,” she snapped her fingers.

  Chelsie flashed her best fake smile and moved in closer to the woman, looking like she was ready to make a new best friend. Chelsie was slick. In fact, I could probably learn a thing or two from her to aid in my business dealings. It was barely detectable that her smile wasn’t genuine. I’d posed for enough ridiculous Instagram photos with her lately to know, but it was unlikely others could tell.

  “Do you work here?” Chelsie cooed. “We’re on our engagement trip and need to check in.”

  “I’m Muddy, owner of Muddy’s Corner Bed and Breakfast. You’re the future Mr. and Mrs. Patterson, I presume?”

  I almost winced. Why did the sound of th
at make me squirm? I guess it was because I’d been a bachelor for so long. I never thought I’d hear a Mrs. attached to my name. One more thing I needed to get used to.

  Long-term commitments had never been my thing. My life revolved around business 24/7. There’d never been a shortage of women around to satisfy my sexual needs, but I went for the “no hassles, no headaches” types. I was a busy man. My idea of long term was having breakfast together in the morning. Until Chelsea, of course.

  “Alec Patterson. Nice to meet you.” She shook my hand with a firm grip and went around behind the desk, where she produced a set of keys. “Nice to meet the both of you. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay with us. I prepared the room for you myself this morning.”

  Chelsie kept up her fake smile and took the keys. Muddy gestured to the stairs and held out a welcoming arm. “I’ll show you to your room now, if you’d like.”

  I nodded and stepped forward with our bags. “That’d be great.”

  The smell grew weaker the higher in the house we ascended and I found myself being pulled to go back downstairs instead of heading up to our room. “That smell really gets to you, doesn’t it?”

  Muddy glanced back at me with a commiserating look. “I know, it really does. I sometimes find myself sneaking off to see if there are any left when I should be working. Carter is magic in the kitchen. I was lucky enough to scoop her up the minute she moved to Helen’s Corner. She’ll be here, making more sweets in the morning for breakfast.”

  Shivers snaked down my spine and I clenched my hands around the handles of the bags I was holding to keep from shifting. I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. What the hell? I hadn’t lost control of a shift since I was a pup.

  “Everything okay?”

  Chelsie looked back at me and frowned. When her eyes went to the handle of her luggage, she shrieked. “Alec! You crushed the handle! That was my favorite piece!”

  She’s lucky I hadn’t crushed the whole damned bag. My wolf was crazed. Up and pacing, clawing, ready to throw his head back and howl to the heavens. At what, I didn’t know. Since moving to the city and working nonstop on the tenth floor of a high-rise, he’d been relatively silent. I scheduled regular times at a wildlife preserve to let him out to run, but even then, he’d not been overly excited for a long time. All of a sudden, he was freaking out about something and I had no idea what or why.

  “Mr. Patterson? Are you okay?” Muddy looked at my hands and then back up to my face like she knew exactly what I was going through. And she might, since she was a shifter, too.

  I shook my head and tried to ignore my wolf. “Sorry. I just had a moment there. I’m fine.”

  “You’re fine, but look at my bag. I can’t believe you damaged it, Bay-bee.”

  I again found myself wondering what the fuck an engagement trip was and why it was necessary. Instead of saying it aloud, I dutifully acted like I thought a husband-to-be was supposed to act. “I’ll buy you another one, dear.”

  Muddy interrupted whatever demands Chelsie was about to make when she directed us to a hallway on the right and motioned to Chelsie to unlock the door of our room. “Why don’t you two go ahead and get sorted. You can look around if you’d like, too. There are three more couples staying here right now, but they’re out and about at the moment. You’ll find several great places to eat in town. You can’t go wrong picking any one of them.”

  My body didn’t want to move forward into the room. My wolf fought, scratched and clawed, to get back downstairs. “Is there someplace I can use as an office? I just need a desk or a table. I’ve got some work to do.”

  Chelsie sighed dramatically, but Muddy just smiled and held her game face. “There’s a common area downstairs. The dining room would probably work since there are a few different tables in there. It’s free until seven in the morning when we start serving breakfast, and even then, we’ll just serve you around your work, if need be.”

  Downstairs, with that maddeningly overpowering scent. I glanced at Chelsie, who was already aiming her phone at the room as she pushed through the door, taking a video of her reaction to it. Downstairs, it was.

  3

  Carter

  “Dammit!” I yanked the scorched tarts from the oven and heaved them straight into the trashcan.

  “Are you trying to wake the dead in here?” Muddy came in from the main room and shook her head at me. “This is a bed and breakfast. Emphasis on bed. It’s six in the morning. People are sleeping, woman.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and let my head fall back so I was staring at the ceiling, as far from those burnt tarts as possible. “I’m having an off morning. Something feels… different. It started when I got here this morning. Did you do something? I don’t notice anything different, but I swear, something is.”

  “Nothing’s changed. You’re the first person in here this morning after leaving yesterday.”

  I looked around, still not quite convinced. Something was making my skin feel too hot. My bear was hyper-aware. While she normally just rested while I worked, she was pacing and pawing at me, trying to get my attention.

  “I burned the tarts. I’m going to have to start over. I need you to watch them this time.”

  Muddy shrugged. “That’s fine. I’ll watch them while you serve the early birds. They should start rolling in soon.”

  I made up another batch and slipped them into the oven. Standing back, I stared at them through the oven door and frowned. It wasn’t like me to burn something. Certainly not something edible.

  “Stop standing there staring at the oven. Crying over spilled milk isn’t going to help anything. Mr. Norton is already out there. Go take his beverage order. I’ll watch the oven.”

  I backed away slowly. “Right.” Getting out of the kitchen for a few minutes would do me good.

  The dining room was just off the kitchen. It was two rooms that had been converted into one, with one long table and a few smaller ones around it. Mr. Norton sat exactly at the center of the long table with his hands clasped in his lap waiting patiently. He was a tall, slender, middle aged man with a nice smile and a shock of dark hair that was slightly graying at the temples.

  “Hello, Mr. Norton. I’m Carter. I can take care of your beverage this morning, water, juice, coffee, something else?”

  “Just a water for me. My wife will be downstairs in just a few minutes. She likes orange juice.” He hesitated. “Are you alright?”

  There was something in the air. It was stronger out in the dining room than in the kitchen and I was seconds from shifting. It was driving me absolutely insane. I’d spaced out on poor Mr. Norton for a few seconds while trying to catch the source of whatever it was that was getting to me.

  When he cleared his throat, I snapped back to attention and forced a smile. “Of course. I’m fine. One water and one orange juice. I’ll be right back out with that.”

  I stumbled back into the kitchen, still shaking my head. “I think I’m getting a cold or something.”

  Muddy sent me a flat look. “You’re a shifter. You don’t get colds.”

  “Well, something’s wrong. My brain is fuzzy today.”

  “Maybe you’re just missing your daughter. Do you need the morning off?”

  I grabbed two glasses and grunted. “No. I don’t want to go back home and see the boxes that I haven’t unpacked. I’ll be fine.”

  I was fine, for a short time. A very short time. I served the guests as they came in while Muddy cooked and kept her eye on my tarts. Even when she pulled them out of the oven, I didn’t want to remain in the kitchen. I was crazy restless. Moving back and forth between guests and the kitchen helped a little.

  I was holding it together. Barely. It wasn’t until I was headed out with a glass of ice water for another guest, Mr. Manus, that an issue arose. I took a deep breath in, trying to calm myself, and instead, got a lung full of something unbelievably delicious. It was like cinnamon and cloves and something citrusy, like bergamot. I turned my head to follow
the scent and tripped over Mr. Norton pushing out his chair to stand up.

  I managed to catch myself before I face planted, but the water ended up flying. It splashed all over Mrs. Manus. Right down the front and side of her flowery blue blouse and smack dab into her stern face.

  I immediately snatched up a stack of napkins from the table and started blotting her arms. “I am so sorry. I wasn’t paying attention and… I don’t know what happened. I feel awful.”

  Mr. Norton rushed over to apologize as well, but Mrs. Manus was already in a tiff. She tossed her napkin onto the table and huffed out of the room with all the righteous indignation she could muster. Which was a lot.

  Mr. Manus scowled deeply and shook his head. “Hell’s Crazy Corner, indeed.”

  I picked up the glass from the table where it had landed, and apologized once more before scuffling back into the kitchen. I was annoyed that he’d tried to insult the whole town because of an innocent accident, but that was the least of my worries. What was wrong with me? And what the hell was that smell that had me turned inside out and upside down?

  “Everything okay out there?”

  I grabbed for a pen and scribbled down the spices I was smelling on a paper napkin. I wanted to bake something with that combination right away.

  “Earth to Carter?”

  I looked up at Muddy. She was staring at me with an exasperated expression. “Huh?”

  “I asked if everything was okay out there.”

  I dropped my notepad and frowned. “No. I tripped over Mr. Norton and threw water all over Mrs. Manus. Accidentally, I mean. She left in a huff and Mr. Manus said something about Hell’s Crazy Corner.”

  Muddy untied her apron and groaned. “I knew they were going to be trouble. Hell’s Crazy Corner. Like that’s supposed to insult us. I should put him out on his ass.”

  I lifted a shoulder. “I did pour water all over his wife, to be fair.”

 

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