He was attractive, but in a completely different way than Tate Calloway. Tate was earthy and masculine and genuine. This man was smooth and polished and moved with a kind of practiced charm. Lainey suspected that he was the kind who flirted with women automatically, for his own ego as much as theirs. Not that it was unpleasant; he was easy on the eyes.
“Neither,” Lainey said. “I’m staying at a boarding house. Just came here for some peace and quiet. I actually didn’t know there was a wedding going on.” She glanced over at the Lexus as it drove away. “What was all that about?”
“Oh, that’s Aurora Sinclair. She’s had a running feud with the sheriff ever since he chose to propose to that redheaded witch instead of Aurora’s niece. Aurora used to be a member of the Shifter’s Council, and she blames the sheriff’s family for getting her booted off. It wasn’t really his fault. The fact was, she’d made a lot of enemies, and she was easy to defeat.”
“Wow. All this intrigue and drama,” Lainey marveled. “It’s like I walked onto the set of a soap opera.”
“Yes, there’s a lot more running underneath the surface here than you’d think. If you would like a guided tour of the town, do let me know. I’m Hamilton Hooper. You can find me at the jewelry store, once all of the excitement dies down.” At her surprised look, he added, “My father owned the store, and now I’m doing my best to fill his shoes. So far, obviously, my best isn’t near good enough. Well, I hope I see you a lot more of you.” He winked at her and walked off.
Well, that was about as direct as it gets. She wasn’t interested, but it was nice to be flirted with, at any rate.
“Good heavens, isn’t it just too much?” one of the women in curlers said to her. She was an older woman, in her seventies at least, a panther shifter with golden eyes.
“What’s that?” Lainey said.
“That poor bride’s wedding tiara being stolen like that. Wasn’t that what the deputy was asking you about?” The woman glanced over at Tate, who was still talking to the sheriff. The sheriff turned and walked into the jewelry store, and Tate followed him.
Lainey’s heart suddenly turned into a leaden fishing weight that slowly sank in her chest. He hadn’t been interested in her as a person; he’d been interrogating her as a potential suspect. Of course, it made perfect sense he’d be suspicious of her, since she was a stranger in town, and she wasn’t there for the wedding.
“He’s a deputy? He’s not in uniform.” She tried to make her voice sound light and casual.
“Oh, he owns a landscaping business with his family, but he’s also a volunteer sheriff’s deputy from Anhinga County. Next county over. They’re such a small county, they don’t even have a full time department. He’s the Alpha of his pack, you know.” The woman spoke in the confiding tones of a seasoned gossip who was delivering some juicy secret.
“He’s a real looker, isn’t he?” the woman continued. “I think he was a little sweet on you, in fact.” She winked at Lainey.
Or a little suspicious of me, Lainey thought. She forced cheer into her voice. “He sure is a looker. By the way, I’m staying at Imogen’s Boarding House. Could you give me directions? I need to check in. I’m…I’m Kat, by the way.”
All the women from the salon were staring at her now, although not in an unfriendly way. They were looking her up and down with unabashed interest. They probably didn’t get a lot of new people in town.
“Her and Tate…funny, you don’t usually see cats and dogs getting together, but I could see it, I sure could,” said the older panther shifter to one of her friends.
Lainey found herself blushing again.
“Imogen’s is two miles further down this road, then you turn left at rural route 332 and go another mile,” one of the other women said, patting gently at her curlers, which were covered with a disposable plastic cap from the salon. “It’s the big white farm house on the right. There’s a rooster weathervane on the roof.”
“Thank you! See you around, then,” Lainey said, and hurried to her car without a backward glance.
As she climbed in and pulled away, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing in the rearview mirror. Tate was staring after her and…writing on a pad of paper. He was writing down her license plate number.
Well, good luck with that, she thought irritably. She’d had Katherine book the rental car under her name as well, and reimbursed her for it. She was going to do everything that she could to avoid letting her family track her down.
Yep, he was definitely interested in her as a suspect and nothing else. She felt surprisingly deflated as she headed down the road. What difference did it make? I’ll be gone in two weeks, anyway.
Chapter Two
Tate walked out of the jewelry store, frustrated. Whoever had stolen the wedding tiara, an heirloom that had been in Ginger’s family for generations, had sprayed the air with a concoction made from the scentsbane herb, which interfered with his shifter ability to pick up any identifiable scent he could track. He and Loch and several of Loch’s deputies had tried anyway, shifting into wolf form and running through the store, exploring every nook and cranny, but the scentsbane clogged their nostrils and thwarted their task.
He’d accomplished nothing, and the luscious brunette had left before he’d had a chance to chat with her any more, to breathe in her heavenly cinnamon scent and enjoy the way she made his pulse race in a way he hadn’t felt in years.
Ginger was standing near the store, chatting with several of the older women who’d come out of the beauty shop. “I’m sorry, Ginger,” Tate said to her. “I’m sure we’ll find it. Something as distinctive as that tiara – the minute someone tries to pawn it, it’ll be flagged.”
“Thank you, Tate, I appreciate you trying,” Ginger said, with a sigh. “My mom’s flipping out, of course. I hope they find it before the wedding.”
“You’re not flirting with my woman, are you?” Loch said from right behind him, his tone saying that he was joking. Mostly. But the way that he threw his arm around Ginger’s shoulders left no question as to his feelings about the plump, sexy redhead.
“Are you kidding? I’m not suicidal,” Tate laughed.
“Loch! Quit being such a caveman.” Ginger smacked her fiancé on the arm, her tone of exasperation mingled with amusement. “I am my own woman.”
Lock kissed her on the top of her head. “You keep telling yourself that.”
“Besides, Tate likes the bobcat,” one of the older ladies from the salon piped up.
Ginger perked up immediately, looking at Tate with interest. “Bobcat? Really? Where? Let me check her out and give you my assessment. I can’t remember you ever liking a woman since I’ve known you.”
“She left. And I did not like her. Well, I didn’t dislike her, but…never mind,” Tate muttered. Everybody was staring at him now. Damned small towns. People had nothing better to do than gossip.
“Anyway, Loch, fill me in on what we’ve got,” Tate continued, eager to change the subject. “What else is missing besides the tiara?”
“So far, nothing, not even cash. They’re still taking inventory, though.”
“If the only thing that was stolen was the wedding tiara, that makes it sound personal. Was there any security footage? Nobody saw anything?”
“You know how it is here in Blue Moon Junction. The jewelry store hasn’t been robbed since…ever,” Loch said. “They didn’t have a security system or cameras. They had bars on their window, and a dime store lock on their door, and they thought that was enough. Up until now, it had been.”
Loch glanced at the store. “And to make things even more complicated, the owner of the store, Nigel, died a few months ago, and everything there is kind of in disarray.”
The Hoopers were a family of coyote shifters who’d been running the store since the early 1900s.
“I heard about Nigel’s passing,” Tate said. “Who’s in charge now?”
“His son, Hamilton.”
“Hamilton...don’t think I e
ver met him. I didn’t know the Hoopers had any children.”
“He left town a couple of years before you were born. He was estranged from his father, left town thirty years ago, when he was only eighteen. Word is, he was gay, and his father couldn’t accept it. When he left, his family never spoke of him again. He went out to Hollywood, apparently tried to make it in acting and failed, worked as a bartender. He’d kept in touch with his mother, and when Nigel died, she begged him to come back to town and take over the store. He’s only been back in town a few weeks. She can’t do much on her own these days; she’s got Alzheimer’s.”
Loch nodded toward a lean, handsome man who looked much younger than his forty-eight years with wavy hair and the distinct Hooper bump in his nose. For Hamilton to look that young, Tate was willing to bet he’d had some work done on his face. Typical for an actor from California, Tate imagined.
“What’s your impression of him?” Tate asked, watching Hamilton flirt with a pretty brunette in a tank top and jeans. “Gay, is he? Seems kind of like a lady’s man to me.”
“He’s both. From what I’m hearing, he’s plenty friendly with both men and women. He likes attention. He’s not really taking too well to running the jewelry store. Doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
At Tate’s questioning glance, he added, “He’s a suspect like everybody else. He doesn’t have any significant criminal record, a couple of arrests for public solicitation, about twenty years ago. The Hoopers have insisted that we search their homes to verify that the tiara isn’t there. That doesn’t really mean anything, of course. They’d have to be complete fools to hide something like that in their own home. Nigel’s widow says she was home alone since seven p.m. The neighbors are pretty sure that’s true. Also, when I talked to her today, it’s pretty clear that her dementia’s getting more and more advanced. Hamilton says that he was home last night as well, with a young man, whom he declines to name given the fact that this is a small town and not everybody’s open-minded here. He’s not living with his mother. He’s renting a house over on Meadowlark Lane.”
“What about the Sinclairs?” Tate asked with distaste. The Sinclairs, a wealthy and powerful pack from a county north of theirs, weren’t particularly popular in Blue Moon County, or in Tate’s county, either. Tate currently had even more reason than usual to dislike them. He’d been fighting a running battle to keep one of the Sinclair boys, a notorious high school Lothario, away from his eighteen-year-old sister, Megan.
The Sinclairs had been angling for years to get Loch to propose to a member of their pack, Portia Sinclair, because it would result in a powerful political alliance. The Sinclair family was wealthy, and Loch’s family was popular. Portia had taken to the idea wholeheartedly; she had been so infatuated with Loch that she’d moved to Blue Moon Junction and gotten a job at the sheriff’s department to be closer to him.
Tate knew that when Loch had rejected Portia and instead proposed to Ginger, relations between the two families had chilled to sub-Arctic levels.
Loch grimaced. “They’re on my list. That’s political dynamite, of course. When I asked Quincy to give me a list of where all of their family had been, he and Aurora both blew their tops and threatened to sue, threatened all kinds of things. I stood my ground, and Quincy backed down the way he always does. Honestly, I wish I didn’t have to invite them to the wedding.”
“You didn’t have to.” Tate’s lip curled in contempt.
Loch shook his head. “You know how it is with an Alpha’s wedding. I invited the Alpha of every pack in Florida, and their immediate family, to the wedding and the after-party. If I left out only the Sinclairs, it would practically be a declaration of war.”
The after-party was being held in a meadow outside of town. Hundreds of tents had already been pitched. There were a half-dozen bands, there would be roast boar and deer and pig every night, and thousands of shifters would be partying like it was 1999.
Tate nodded. “So, when was the last time that anyone saw the tiara?”
“Ginger brought it there yesterday to be cleaned. She dropped it off at 5 p.m. She came in this morning wanting to show it to a friend of hers, and when Hamilton went to the back of the store to get it, it was gone. It had been put in a safe. The safe had been cracked, the door was gaping open.” Loch’s brow creased in a scowl. “Unfortunately, we’ve got hundreds of people from out of town already flocking here for the wedding, which means a huge pool of suspects. People working on the Beaudreau mansion, guests, family, friends…and the Sinclairs, of course.”
Speaking of out-of-towners…Tate glanced wistfully in the direction that the bobcat whose name might or might not have been Katherine had driven. She’d almost certainly lied to him when he’d asked her name—but why?
Tate’s younger brother, Kyle, walked up and handed a soda to Tate. “Well, slap my ass and call me Sally. You were actually flirting with that bobcat, weren’t you?” Kyle said, with a big grin spread across his face.
Tate popped the top off and took a long swallow, ignoring the question. “Don’t you have a wife around here you should be keeping an eye on?”
“She’s ferrying our younger siblings around somewhere. If anything, she should be keeping an eye on me.” Kyle winked at a middle-aged housewife as she walked by, and she simpered and giggled. Kyle was an incorrigible flirt, but he would never actually cheat on his wife. “So, about this cute little bobcat…”
As if on cue, a van pulled up and a door opened, and a teenaged girl and a half-dozen wolf-shifter cubs spilled out and ran over to Tate, clinging to his legs, flinging themselves against him, hollering for his attention. They were his youngest brothers and sisters, and they were the reason he hadn’t been on a date in years. After the devastating loss of his parents four years ago, his whole world had narrowed and his focus had sharpened to a fine laser point. Family was everything. There was no room and no time for anything else.
And besides, as he’d found out the hard way, no sane woman would want anything to do with Tate Calloway once she realized that he came as a package deal. Him and six younger siblings. Loud, noisy, demanding, younger siblings. Also included in the package was his eighteen-year-old sister Megan, moody and riding a tsunami of hormones, flitting between their house and the local community college and driving all the local boys crazy with her newly blossomed figure.
“Hey, jerk,” Megan said, trotting after the swarm of siblings.
“Hey, nuisance.” Tate gave her the critical once-over. “That’s an awful lot of makeup you’re wearing, and isn’t that neckline a little low?”
“I refuse to be oppressed by the Man,” Megan said, hands on her hips. “Especially when that man is you.”
“What a pity that I’m also the man who pays the bills, who is the Alpha of your pack, and who has been smitten with the mighty curse of being responsible for your welfare. When we get to the job site, you will change your shirt.”
Megan’s voice rose several octaves. “Why? There’s nothing wrong with—”
A man strode by, looked her up and down, and let out an appreciative whistle. Tate swung around, and his face went hairy, fangs descending as he let out a snarl. His face extended fully, snout shooting out, ears pointy and tufted with bristling gray fur. The man went pale and scurried off into the crowd, hanging his head in submission. He was a coyote shifter, by the scent of him; he wouldn’t stand a chance against a wolf.
Tate turned back to Megan, who was rolling her eyes in disgust. “I am a wolf, Tate. I am fully capable of defending myself. By the way, can I borrow your Bible? The one that you had autographed by Moses?”
“Har har, I get it. I’m old. Hey! That’s my soda!” he yelled as his ten-year-old sister, Schuyler, grabbed his cola and ran off.
“Where’s my soda? I want a soda,” eight-year-old Ashley pouted.
“So-da! So-da!” the six-year-old twins, Robin and Richard, started chanting, joined in by four-year-old Felix.
Tate shot Kyle a glance that was bo
th amused and resigned. “You were asking about a woman?” he said, and then glanced at the rowdy group of children jostling for his attention. “As if.”
He’d accepted long ago that caring for his family meant that he had no shot at romance—especially with a woman as lush, as ripe, as beautiful as the mysterious bobcat who didn’t want to tell him her real name.
He swept Felix and Robin up into his arms, and Richard somehow scrambled straight up his back and wrapped his arms around Tate’s neck. “That’s okay, I don’t need to breathe or anything,” Tate said. The child ignored him.
“Schuyler says she’s prettier than me. Who’s prettier?” nine-year-old Valerie demanded. “And don’t say we’re equally pretty. You have to pick.”
Right. Like that would happen. “Lying is a sin, so I can only tell the truth. You’re both equally pretty.” Neither Valerie nor Schuyler looked happy with that answer. Valerie stuck her tongue out at Schuyler.
Tate saw a man with an unsteady gait standing at the edge of the crowd, watching. Even from where Tate stood, he could smell the sour reek of alcohol and body odor, so potent that it singed his nostrils. Tate thought he recognized the man as Meyer Schofield, a human who spent a good portion of his time in the county jail’s drunk tank.
Well, he’d better get the kids out of here before Meyer barfed on the sidewalk or urinated on a tree, both of which he’d been known to do when he was sufficiently inebriated.
He cast a final, regretful glance in the direction of Imogen’s boarding house, then turned and made his way down the block towards the coffee shop.
“Time for lunch, monkeys,” he said.
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