Homecoming in a Fur Coat
The Fur Coat Society, Book 6
By Sloane Meyers
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Similarities to actual people or events are entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Sloane Meyers. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
More Books by Sloane Meyers
Thank You For Reading!
About the Author
Chapter One
Mia Evans glanced up at the digital clock display embedded into her office wall. 4:13PM. Only seven minutes had passed since the last time she allowed herself a peek at the clock, even though it felt like seven hundred. She still had over forty-five minutes to go until quitting time, and the idea of sitting here even a minute longer felt like torture.
It wasn’t that Mia didn’t like her job. As one of the top shifter ambassadors in the newly created Bureau of Shifter Relations, Mia didn’t have much to complain about. She had a huge, private office filled with state-of-the-art equipment. Her desk chair was made of the finest leather and included the best self-adjusting technology on the market. Her computers and tablets were equipped with the latest in software development, and required eye-scan verification to be accessed, ensuring that all of her data was kept secure.
Mia even had a “company car” as one of her job perks. The government had issued her a sleek, black hovercraft to assist with commuting. The hover was pretty basic, but it looked nice and it got the job done. And it was free. Mia had always dreamed of a secure job with benefits like this, but, now that she had it, she felt antsy.
She was spending her days reviewing forms submitted by shifters who had been wronged in the now-infamous “war on shifters.” About a year ago, the Mayor of Chicago had stirred up public hatred for shifters, and had managed to get the President on board with his hate-filled crusade. Utilizing shifter-detecting eye scanners, the government had found and imprisoned thousands of shifters. Mia and her clan had managed to escape and hide out deep in a Michigan forest, but they had come out of hiding when a flu epidemic had struck and threatened to wipe out humanity. Because shifters were immune to the flu, Mia’s clan had been able to develop a cure for the flu and save the full humans.
This selfless act had convinced the President that shifters were not the horrible, dangerous creatures they had been made out to be. In an effort to bring healing to shifter-human relations, and to right the wrongs against the shifters, the new Bureau of Shifter Relations was born. The President had offered Mia, along with each of her clan members, a plush job at the Bureau. Mia and her childhood friend Calum were the only two who had taken the jobs. The rest of the clan had moved to Washington D.C. to take on temporary roles assisting the government with distributing the life-saving medicine to combat the flu, but now that several months had passed and the flu was nearly wiped out, those jobs were tapering off. Mia was glad she still had plenty of work at her job. Although the paperwork was boring at times, Mia was happy that she was making a difference. And she was happy that, for once, she was making decent money and had job security.
“Call from, Calum Pearsons. Call from, Calum Pearsons.”
Mia jerked her attention back to the present moment as her computer announced a call from Calum.
“Answer call,” Mia commanded. The portion of her wall that functioned as a computer screen lit up with a green “Call Answered” notification, and moments later Calum’s voice filled the room.
“Hey. I hope you didn’t have plans for tonight,” he said.
Mia’s heart skipped a beat. Was Calum going to suggest going out for after-work drinks as he sometimes did? Mia had been planning to go to the gym, but she definitely wasn’t going to prioritize the treadmill over spending time with Calum. She’d had a bit of a crush on him for as long as she could remember. Growing up, he’d been the cool older kid. She’d admired him for decades, but she’d always thought he probably looked at her as some sort of awkward kid sister. Now that she worked with him every day, though, her crush had turned into a blazing obsession. It was hard to think about business matters whenever he was in the room, staring her down with his piercing violet eyes while running his fingers through his jet black hair. He was the most gorgeous polar bear shifter she had ever seen, and she couldn’t get enough of him.
Too bad he didn’t seem to realize that she was interested in more than just shooting the shit about work over beers now and then. He would rant on and on about the problems with the process for getting government compensation for shifters who had lost their homes in the war. And, although Mia usually agreed with his rants, she wished he would stop ranting for just a minute and notice the way her heart beat loudly in her chest whenever they were together.
“Mia? Are you there?” Calum asked, his voice once again bringing Mia back to the present.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m here. I don’t have plans for tonight. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking anything. Unfortunately, Jim’s been thinking a lot, and he decided it was a good idea to call everyone in for a quick meeting at 4:30. He asked me to let you know, since his secretary is sick and apparently he can’t handle typing up an email himself.”
Mia groaned and rolled her eyes, her visions of a fun night with Calum quickly going up in a puff of smoke. Jim was a nice guy, but he was hopelessly scatterbrained. Whenever he called a “quick” meeting, the meeting ended up being hours long. Mia was going to be stuck at work for another two hours, at least.
“Where’s the meeting?” Mia asked, already trying to figure out how to grab a bite to eat in the next few minutes. She was going to be starving for dinner by the time this meeting was over.
“Conference Room 3B,” Calum said. “I’ll see you there in a about ten minutes.”
“Yup,” Mia said, but her wall’s computer display had already gone dark. Calum had hung up the call.
Mia groaned in frustration, and was tempted to throw her tablet across the room in anger. The last thing in the world she wanted to do right now was spend more time at work. Her long day had just become even longer.
Still, at least she got to see Calum. She loved sitting next to him in meetings, and always found reasons to “accidentally” brush her arm against his while taking notes on her tablet. Mia smiled and shivered as she imagined his skin against hers. Then she grabbed her briefcase and made a beeline for her office door. She’d grab a snack from the vending machine, and then head to the conference room early. If she had to be here for another two hours, at least she could spend those hours sitting next to the hottest guy in the city.
Chapter Two
Mia’s eyes lit up when she got to the conference room and saw Calum already sitting at the large conference table. His back was facing her, and she paused for a moment to admire his broad shoulders under the outline of his dress shirt. The chair on Calum’s right was empty, but to his left sat an older gentleman whom Mia had only met a few times. The man was a panther shifter who had spent his whole life in Texas but had relocated to D.C. a few months ago to assist with the new Shifter Ambassador program. It hadn’t been that hard to convince shifters to relocate to D.C. After the war and the flu epidemic, the worl
d’s population was cut by more than half. Nothing was the same, and entire cities had been devastated by the disasters. A lot of people had nothing left in their hometowns.
Mia sighed as she admired Calum’s back for a few more moments. She was lucky, really. She had lost a lot, but she still had all the people most important to her. Mia took a deep breath and started walking toward the empty chair on Calum’s right. As she stepped into the room, though, she felt herself being pushed aside by someone barging through the doorway.
“Oops, sorry!” came a sickeningly sweet sing-songy voice. “I didn’t mean to run into you. I was just in such a hurry to make sure I’m not late for this meeting.”
Mia struggled to regain her balance, then watched in horror as the owner of that sing-songy voice smugly took the open seat next to Calum. Mia’s face burned red with anger.
“That bitch,” Mia hissed under her breath.
Angela Carter was a wolf shifter, but Mia considered her a weasel. The woman was impossibly beautiful, with perfectly rounded blonde curls, smooth porcelain skin, and sapphire blue eyes. Next to Angela, Mia felt like a schoolgirl. Her boring brown hair and green eyes were nothing special—and she hated how many freckles she had on her face. Whenever Angela was in the room, Mia couldn’t help feeling just a little bit ugly.
But the worst part about Angela wasn’t her flawless looks. It was her sneaky way of always getting close to Calum. Angela had been known to “accidentally” show up at the bar where Calum and Mia were grabbing drinks after work. Mia would be sitting there, laughing, downing a beer, and having a generally awesome time with Calum. Before she knew it, Angela would show up, prattling on about what a coincidence it was that she had run into them. But it happened too often to be a coincidence.
And the way Angela looked at Calum was no coincidence. He seemed oblivious for the most part, but he didn’t brush her away when she brazenly put her hand on his arm like she was doing right now. Angela glanced back at Mia with a barely concealed smirk, then turned her attention back to Calum, her musical laughter ringing through the conference room. Mia bristled with anger, but there wasn’t much she could do. She did her best to keep a neutral expression on her face as she walked around the table and took a seat across from Calum.
“Hey, Mia,” Calum said. “Good to see you. You’ve been holed up in your office a lot this week.”
“Yeah, I’ve been swamped with work,” Mia said. This wasn’t exactly true, but it sounded better than “I’ve been trying to avoid you so I don’t have to think about the fact that I have a big crush on you.”
Calum smiled brightly at her, and Mia felt a little bit better. But Angela must have noticed the smile, because she put her hand protectively on Calum’s arm and started asking him some nonsense question.
Mia wanted to scream out that Angela didn’t own Calum. But she knew how ridiculous that would sound. Mia didn’t own Calum, either. The truth was, she had no right to be angry at Angela. Calum was smart, gorgeous, and kind. He was quite a catch, and Mia shouldn’t have been surprised that one of her coworkers was honing in on him. Really, Mia should only be surprised that Calum hadn’t already paired off with someone. If she wanted to make a move on him, she’d had forever to do so. They’d grown up together in Alaska. Mia’s earliest memories included running around the tundra with Calum and the other cubs from her clan back home. Now, decades later, she had to accept that she’d had her chance to win Calum’s heart.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? She didn’t want to win his heart. She wanted him to work to win her heart. She wanted him to fall head over heels for her, then ride in like a knight in shining armor and carry her off into the sunset. Mia sighed. She realized how ridiculous her own thoughts sounded, and she said a little prayer of thanks that no one had invented mind-reading technology yet. She was going to be in so much trouble when they did.
“Sorry I’m late, everyone,” Jim said, rushing into the room like a bouncing tumbleweed. “I misplaced my tablet and it took me fifteen minutes to find it. I can’t wait for Eileen to get back from vacation.”
Eileen was Jim’s secretary, and the rest of the office couldn’t wait for her to get back, either. Jim was a disorganized mess without her, to put it mildly. Mia sighed and looked down at her own tablet, trying to act interested in taking notes but wondering how she was going to concentrate when all she could think about was Calum. She couldn’t believe she’d let Angela slide in past her and steal the open seat next to him. Mia felt a bit like a high schooler for playing games like this, but she figured everyone acted a little irrational when it came to matters of the heart.
“I wanted to discuss ideas for streamlining our responses to compensation requests from shifters,” Jim said, stroking the stubble on his chin and pacing wildly back and forth across the conference room. He rarely sat down during meetings like this. Mia didn’t know why he’d even bothered to bring his tablet. Assuming he’d actually typed up any notes, he wasn’t going to look at them, anyway.
“Our processing times have gotten slower and slower. I know we’re all working really hard, and that we have a lot of requests to process, but this is unacceptable. We need to think outside the box and come up with a better solution.”
Jim kept ranting, but Mia tuned him out and let her mind wander. Jim called meetings like this every so often, trying to drum up enthusiasm for change, but Mia wasn’t sure what else they could do to speed things up. The volume of requests was overwhelming, and the government didn’t have the budget to hire more people. Tax revenue was low, since half the population was gone. And, while the President was prioritizing helping the shifters, there were a lot of other pressing matters on his plate. Coming back from nearly losing all of humanity was no small task.
Mia looked up at Jim and managed a genuine smile. She liked the guy, even though he sometimes made them stay late, and even though she wasn’t sure sometimes how he managed to get his shoes on the right feet. He was scatterbrained, but he was genuine. A full human—one of the few working at the Bureau of Shifter Relations—Jim was nevertheless passionate about helping shifters. Jim’s family had all been sick from the flu epidemic when the cure that Mia’s shifter friends had made became available. Jim’s family had all been saved, and he was grateful to a fault. He had dedicated his life to righting the wrongs that had been done against the shifters. If only he could manage to organize that life a little better.
The meeting continued on for another two hours, just as Mia had suspected it would. Her stomach kept growling loudly, unsatisfied with the granola bar she had managed to scarf down before the meeting started. At one point, it growled in the middle of a pause in Jim’s monologue, causing everyone in the room to turn and look at her. Calum laughed out loud, causing Mia’s cheeks to redden slightly with embarrassment—and Angela’s cheeks to redden with anger. Angela was becoming more and more obvious about her disdain for anything that took Calum’s attention away from her. Despite Mia’s slight embarrassment over her stomach’s loud complaints, she felt a bit of smug pleasure knowing that she had irritated Angela. As an added bonus, Mia’s stomach made Jim realize how late it was getting.
“Oh, shit,” Jim said. “I’ve babbled on for hours again, haven’t I? I’m so sorry. Let’s end this meeting here. You’re all dismissed, but please think about what we’ve gone over today and try to come up with some creative solutions to our backlog of work.”
Everyone nodded in agreement, but Mia knew it was unlikely that anything would change. Their work was already quite streamlined, and Mia and her coworkers were too tired to spend much mental energy on coming up with a new plan.
Mia stood and put her tablet back into her briefcase. She planned to make a beeline for the building’s exit before she could get too jealous about the way Angela was grasping Calum’s arm and laughing about some stupid joke that probably wasn’t even funny.
But, to her surprise, Calum reached out to stop her as she brushed by him quickly. He grabbed her hand and held ont
o it for a moment, looking into her eyes with a searching expression. His hand was warm, and Mia felt her heart starting to beat faster in her chest. Next to Calum, Angela was narrowing her eyes in Mia’s direction. But Mia barely noticed. All she could think about right now was the fact that Calum was holding her hand.
“Hey, are you alright?” he asked, his voice laced with concern. Mia felt a rush of warmth and happiness fill her at the caring tone of his voice.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?” Mia said, trying to sound casual but sounding a bit like a nervous chipmunk instead.
“You looked a little upset,” Calum said, still holding her hand.
“I’m fine, really,” Mia said. “Just a little tired, I guess.”
Calum looked at her suspiciously for another moment, as though he might say something else. But he decided against it and dropped Mia’s hand, nodding as though he accepted her answer.
“Alright,” he said. “Just checking. Have a good night, alright?”
“You too,” Mia squeaked out before speeding out of the room. She quickly gathered her things from her office and then went to the parking garage and climbed into her hovercraft.
“Home, please,” she barked out.
“Good Evening, Mia,” the computer answered. “Heading home. Estimated arrival time is 6:57pm.”
Mia leaned her head back and closed her eyes as the self-driving hover rose automatically and turned in the direction of her apartment. In her mind, she replayed over and over Calum reaching out for her hand. She smiled as she recalled the warmth of his hand closing over hers, and she felt a tiny bit of satisfaction when she recalled how Angela had looked angry about Calum’s concern for her. Mia knew she was probably going to lose the war for Calum’s attention in the end. The sooner she accepted that, the better. Still, it felt good to at least have won one small battle.
Homecoming in a Fur Coat (The Fur Coat Society Book 6) Page 1