Trapped? Tully wasn’t trapped anywhere. It was the one thing he prided himself on.
“What makes you say that?”
“Come on.” He shrugged and she said, “You went to Dartmouth, then Cornell. You have your master’s in architecture. I know nothing about architecture but I know your company because my ex desperately wanted it to design and build his house—gotta impress the neighbors, you know—until he realized we couldn’t afford it, which made me laugh and, according to my mother, completely explains why we’re divorced now.” She shook her head. “I guess I don’t get why you’d give all that up to live here.”
“I didn’t give up anything. I cherry-pick the jobs I want, do them from here, and still get paid for jobs I never touch but that my company handles.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Everything I want is here, Jamie.” And he didn’t realize how right he was until he looked into those brown eyes.
She stared at him as if he’d suddenly started speaking German. “You’re serious?”
“Most of the time.”
Jamie looked around and it suddenly dawned on him how anxious she suddenly was. As if the thought of staying in Smithville was the most horrifying idea she’d ever heard before.
“You know,” he said carefully, pushing what was left of his delicious food around the bowl, “you’ve committed yourself to staying in Smithville as part of our deal. Is that about to change?”
“No. But would I have made the same choice if I had the kind of options you have? That I can’t tell ya.”
Tully released his fork and sat back in his chair. “I’d hate to think you were only here because you settled.”
“I don’t feel like I settled. But I have no idea what I would have done if I had other options.”
“It’s the ‘ifs’ that’ll get ya, beautiful. If my parents were full-human, maybe I would be working myself into an early grave, pushing myself to accomplish all the things I was told I need to. But, thank the Lord, they’re not and I’m not. So I do what makes me happy and don’t worry about anything beyond that. And, not surprisingly, I have amazing blood pressure.”
“I thought you came back here because your grandfather died.”
“Not grandfather. Great-uncle. Everybody just called him Granddaddy. And I did come back because he passed. Wouldn’t be right not to come to the funeral.”
“And that’s when you took over.”
Tully laughed. “Lord, no. I just ended up staying ’cause I remembered what I loved about it.”
“Which is?”
He looked out the kitchen windows to the beach not more than a few hundred feet away and shrugged. “Everything.”
Jamie couldn’t help but envy Tully a little. He didn’t seem so ridiculously happy that she was convinced he was on some type of medication, and yet he didn’t seem on the neverending quest for more. She was on that quest, although most outside her coven never knew it. To the world, even her ex, Jamie was the most laid back, uncaring female on the planet. She didn’t need the latest and greatest and most expensive to be happy. At the time, it had been the biggest problem between her and her ex. His whole goal was to move up and out. He wanted the bigger house, the fancier car, the best of everything. Jamie, however, was more than happy with what she had when it came to material things. Jamie would buy a known reliable car and keep it anywhere from ten to fifteen years. Her ex would lease the hottest car out there and change it up every two to three years. Was it nice to ride around in new cars constantly? Sure, but for her the bottom line was getting from point A to point B as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
And, yet, while her ex was calling her “cheap” for not wanting more things in her life, Jamie was busy searching for more power. Because who needed a big screen TV when, with a little practice, one could levitate off the ground? Who needed the newest, hottest car when objects could be moved around, from the simple paperclip across the desk to moving the house of your enemies a hundred feet into a river?
Since she could remember, the only thing Jamie really craved was power.
Tully reached across the table and took her hand, laying her arm flat. He dragged his fingers across the inside of her forearm, moving slowly back and forth while his gaze stayed locked on her face.
The simplest of gestures and yet…and yet it felt like he was inside her again. He tugged her forward and she willingly went, her body in his lap, her arms around his neck, when his phone rang.
“Dang.”
Keeping her in place with one arm, he reached over to the counter behind him and grabbed hold of the cordless phone. “Hello?”
She watched his expression change, felt the tightness of his body, and immediately knew something was wrong.
“Yep,” he said. “We’ll be right there. No. Jamie’s with me. I’ll bring her.”
When he ended the call, she asked, “Why don’t you just use a megaphone to announce to the universe we’re fucking.”
“It’s a small town. They already know.” He lifted her off his lap and placed her on her feet. He patted her ass and stood. “There’s a problem.”
“I figured.”
“We need to get to—”
“That won’t be easy,” she cut in. “Since you tore up my clothes.”
He had the decency to grimace and even blush a little. “I did, didn’t I?”
Jamie nodded.
He took her hand and headed back to the bedroom. “We’ll come up with something.”
Although the Elders were kept fully informed of what was going on, for something like this they weren’t brought in. Being able to move and react quickly without worrying about permission was so important. And so far, it was sounding like this was a “situation.”
Kyle, his arms folded over his chest and his legs braced apart, quietly explained what he’d seen. “There were about thirty, maybe forty more vehicles. Mostly RVs.”
“How far out of town?” Bear asked.
“No more than forty miles. But so close to Everettville, none of us would have stumbled across it.”
“Why?” Jamie asked. She was bundled up in one of Tully’s black seaman sweaters, his sweatpants that were embarrassingly too long, and one of his leather jackets. The boots were hers and she looked so fuckable in those oversized clothes, he was having a hard time concentrating on a very serious situation.
“Because we don’t go to Everettville,” Bear said.
“Why?”
“It’s not a good idea,” Kyle told her.
“Why?”
Bear snarled a little, but Jamie only shrugged her shoulders and stated, “If you’d answer my question, I’d stop asking ‘why.’”
Tully snorted and now he was being glared at by a cat and a bear.
“What’cha all glarin’ at me for?”
“Can’t you control her?” Kyle snapped.
Tully and Jamie looked at each other and then they burst out laughing, leaning into each other until Tully abruptly stopped and said, “No.” Which only made Jamie laugh harder.
Kyle’s eyes narrowed and Jamie cleared her throat, brushed off her clothes, and wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes. Then she said, “So why don’t you go to Everettville?”
“It’s horse country,” Kyle snapped. “Okay?”
“Ohhhh. You mean like centaurs!”
Tully was bent over at the waist he was laughing so hard as his brother’s rage exploded around them. “No! I don’t mean like centaurs!”
“What the hell’s a centaur?” Bear grumbled, which only made Tully laugh even harder.
“They’re half man, half horse,” Jamie explained sweetly, so sweetly Tully knew she was fucking with Kyle something awful.
“Which half?” Bear asked.
“Would you shut up?” Kyle yelled, but when the grizzly slowly turned his head to glare at him from under the brim of his Sheriff’s Department baseball cap, the cat cleared his throat and added, “Boss.”
Wiping the tears
from his eyes, Tully explained, “Nearly everyone in Everettville either owns a horse farm or they work on one. You’ll probably find more horses there than you’ll find cars. One of us gets too close to town limits and all hell breaks loose. So we stopped going over there.”
“But wouldn’t the same thing happen if—”
“If Buck Smith’s Pack was holed up over there? Absolutely.” And based on what Kyle had told them, that’s exactly what was happening. Buck’s entire Pack wasn’t having vacation at Smithville Arms, it turned out. Instead, a majority of them were hanging out on unused territory near Everettville. Anyone else, the Smithville locals would just keep an eye on them. But when it came to Buck Smith…nothing was ever as it seemed. “The difference is, that old bastard don’t care what happens with those horses.”
Kyle relaxed back against a tree. “Chances are they’ve snuck on to farms and chased a few of the horses down for food.”
“Or because they were bored,” Bear added.
“Which will only be more trouble for us,” Tully said. “Because those people love their horses more than they like each other, and most of them have the money necessary to get the government involved to look into it.”
“And the last thing we need is the government involved.” Kyle took off his cap and scratched his head. “It always gets a little messy when that happens.”
“Right now, they’re probably going to blame the red wolves that got introduced back into the population a while back, but the reds are definitely smaller than we are. About eighty pounds soaking wet while even my momma is a good one-fifty when she shifts.”
“Does Buck know all this about Everettville?”
Tully could only chuckle. “Trust me…he knows. That man don’t do nothin’ without knowing exactly what he’s getting into. He stationed his Pack there for a reason.”
“An attack.”
“He takes out Tully and a few of his stronger cousins and Buck will get control of this town.” Kyle pulled his cap back on his head. “And trust me when I say that the other Smiths aren’t going to stand for that. Not for a second.”
“And that would mean civil war among the Smiths. Knowing my father, he’s hoping to get it all sorted before the other Packs move in, but I think he’s being unrealistic in his old age.”
“Why?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time there’s been some infighting among the Smiths, beautiful. One time it got so bad that the Van Holtz Pack moved in—”
“And that’s when it got out of control.”
Tully nodded at Kyle’s words. “We lost half our members, including pups. Same with the Van Holtz.”
“They ain’t brawny, but they’re wily.”
“Yep. But when the pups start ending up as collateral damage…” Tully let out a breath. “They knew the war had to end or we risked losing Smith and Van Holtz territories on the East and West coasts to the Magnus Pack who were slavering to get in once the smoke had cleared. So a decision was made.”
“What decision?”
“That there would be a truce between the two Packs, no territories given up, no retaliation for the lost Packmates. All we had to do was take out our Alphas at the time. And that’s exactly what my ancestors did.”
It reminded Jamie of the New York mob wars that happened before she was born. One “family” against another, with lots of bodies around when everything finally settled down. She’d prefer not going through that. The few mob hits she’d seen over the years had meant little to her because she didn’t personally know the scumbags who’d bought it. If anything, she knew their business dealings, which usually involved drugs, gambling, and human trafficking, which was a very nice way of saying “slavery.”
But none of the people she’d met so far were like that. The worst she’d seen was an insane fight between the Smith Pack and the Sahara Pride over a rotting elk carcass. It had happened not far from her house and Jamie kept having to turn the sound up on her TV in an attempt to shut out the noise. The next day when she went into town…it was like it never happened. Why? Because at their core they were hungry predators looking for food, not lowlifes looking for a quick buck.
Still, no matter how much she wanted to help, there was only so much she could do given the confines of her coven.
“My coven can’t get in the middle of this as long as you guys are covered in fur when you go at it.”
“We know that.” Tully smiled at her and…wow. How unfair was that to her? “But my father’s set himself in the middle of his enemies for a reason. He’s playing this game for a reason. I need to know what.”
“The dinner with you, your parents, and Buck is tonight, right?” Tully nodded. “Good. The coven will be there anyway to make sure it all runs smoothly. I’ll have Sen spend some time with him.”
“Sen?”
“It’s a gift she has. She can talk to nearly anybody and get a good idea of what they’re up to. That’s one of the reasons she loves it here. You guys are rarely up to much of anything outside of sleeping, feeding, mating, and more sleeping.”
“Are you trying to say we’re lazy, beautiful?”
Jamie snorted. “I’m not trying to say anything. I’m just sayin’ it.”
Chapter Fourteen
It was Seneca, dressed in a tight, floor-length dress, who met them at the door of the hotel and led them to the large table in the middle of the dining room. It kind of fascinated Tully how Seneca had such a sweet, almost angelic face, with that sexy, smokin’ hot body. It didn’t seem right, actually. Sort of misleading.
The party wasn’t large. Just Tully, Kyle, Katie, Momma, Daddy, Buck, Wanda, and Buck’s three sons. Okay, the party wasn’t large for a Southerner.
Seneca sat them all down, gave them menus, and introduced them to the two waiters who would be taking care of them for the night. The entire time she stood by Buck’s chair, her hand resting on the back of it until she moved it to his shoulder, the other hand on her hip. She smiled and laughed the entire time and, when she finally walked away, she had the largest smile on her face.
To say it confused him was kind of an understatement. Maybe they had nothing to worry about with Buck after all…
Jamie looked up from the dark chocolate ganache she was mixing as Sen pushed through the kitchen double doors.
“They’re all set,” she said cheerily before slipping onto a stool by the main workstation and nibbling on a plate of cheese and crackers Mac had set out for her.
“And?” Emma asked, when Sen said nothing else.
“Patchouli alert on Buck’s date. I know how you get, Jamie, and didn’t want you to start World War III when you smell that stuff.”
“Hippies and their damn patchouli oil,” Jamie jokingly snarled.
“What about Buck?” Emma snarled with none of the joking.
“Oh.” Sen studied the ceiling and nibbled on a cracker, carefully thinking over her answer. “Well, based on what I saw he’s a real asshole and he’d kill each and every one of us if it got him what he wanted.” She was silent for a moment, smiled and nodded her head, and said, “Yep! That’s what I saw when I looked inside him.”
“Could you look…perkier?” Kenny asked.
“There’s no use in getting upset. Besides, Jamie will handle it.”
“Yeah,” Jamie tossed back casually, “I already have a young virgin male trussed up and ready to be sacrificed, so we’re ready to go.”
“Oh, my God!” Mac burst out. “Would you let that go already?”
“No! I won’t let that go, heifer!”
Cooking utensils in hand, the cousins moved toward each other but Emma jumped between them. “Stop it! Both of you!” Emma motioned Mac back to her workstation and then Jamie. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Personally,” Jamie said as she began mixing again, “I don’t think Buck will make a move during one of Mac’s overwrought courses.”
“Overwrought?”
Ignoring her cousin’s screech, “I t
hink he’ll wait until early morning, around dawn, when he knows that almost everyone in town is asleep.”
“You know this because…?”
“You keep using that tone with me, cousin, and I’ll show you exactly what I know.”
Tully, Jack, and Kyle stood when Bear walked into the restaurant with his momma. Unfortunately, Buck only eyed her, smirked and said, “Well, hey there, Gwenie. Still lookin’ damn good.”
If Miss Gwen had a reply, they’d never find out what it was as she had to quickly grab her son’s arm, insisting she needed his help to the table the hostess, not Seneca, was trying to lead them to.
Snarling and keeping a firm hold on his momma’s arm, Bear followed after the hostess, but stopped when Mac was tossed out of the kitchen. The tall female landing at his feet.
Kyle leaned over to Tully and whispered, “How long ya think he’s been waiting on that?”
“His whole life?”
“Miss Mackenzie?” Bear said softly.
“Hi, Sheriff.” She ignored the hand he held out to her and got to her feet. “If you’ll excuse me.” She stormed back into the kitchen and came flying back out three seconds later, this time right into Bear’s arms.
By now, the rest of them had returned to their seats and were fully entertained by the activity going on in and around the kitchen.
“That bitch,” Mac snarled under her breath. She pulled away from Bear, cracked her neck and her knuckles, before marching back toward the swinging door. She was only a few inches away when the door swung out, slamming right into her face, shoving her right back at Bear.
At that point, Bear looked back at Tully and Kyle as if they could somehow tell him what to do.
Mac was busy trying to staunch the flow of blood from her nose when Jamie walked out. Unlike her cousin, she wasn’t decked out like a chef. No chef coat or hat. She did have her mass of brown hair in a loose ponytail and a bandana tied around her head, but nothing else that suggested she was part of the staff. Just loose blue jeans and a black v-neck sweater that was doing wonders for that beautiful chest of hers.
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