by Cara Adams
Sighing, he glanced at the clock on his phone. Another hour and he’d be able to leave for lunch with his mates. Well, his almost mates.
* * * *
Noah hurried into the restaurant, the Wooden Spoon, relieved that he’d arrived first and could choose the table. He asked for one right at the rear of the restaurant then sat with his back to the wall so he could watch the entry for Verity’s and Ezra’s arrivals.
He ordered a pot of coffee and three cups, and by then Ezra was already walking through the door. Ezra nodded to Noah and made his way across the room. “I should have guessed you’d sit there. You always like to make us walk as far as possible. Like the time you parked in the back row of the parking lot at the gym.”
“Why go to the gym if you’re going to park close to the door? The whole point is to get some exercise,” replied Noah, grinning. It was an old argument, one they brought out as a conversational gambit quite regularly.
The coffee had been served and they’d each drunk their first cup before Verity arrived. She wasn’t smiling and Noah thought she looked…not worried exactly, but maybe tense or on edge.
“What’s gone wrong?” he asked as soon as she reached the table.
“Nothing.”
She sat down and poured herself a cup and sipped it without adding cream or sugar. Now that was a bad sign. Either she was suddenly on a diet or else she was so tense she didn’t even realize she was drinking black coffee. Had some man at her work told her that her ass looked fat? Noah thought her ass was absolutely perfect, but it seemed to him that women were always worrying about whether or not their ass was too big.
The server arrived at their table and took their orders. He and Ezra had discussed the menu and already made their choices. Verity didn’t even look at the folder she was handed. “Chicken salad, please.”
Okay, something really was wrong. Verity usually made careful menu choices, often talking to the waitstaff at length about the ingredients used in various dishes. Of course, they’d eaten here several times before, but still, it wasn’t like her to order without even looking at the menu. Hmm. He may have a problem.
Noah stared at Verity as closely as possible without making it obvious he was checking her out. Her reddish-brown hair in its cute bob cut was shiny and neat. Her hazel eyes were downcast though, and he hadn’t noticed her usual vivacious sparkle in them. Was her face a tiny bit paler than normal? Yes, it was, and there was the beginning of a shadow under her eyes, which implied she hadn’t slept well last night. After the huge orgasms she’d had, she should have gone straight to sleep.
Even her clothing was ringing warning bells in his mind. She was wearing black pants and a black jacket, with a white shirt underneath the jacket. Verity didn’t usually wear such subdued colors. With that black outfit, the very least he’d have expected was a red shirt, or lime maybe, or another bright color. Yep. Something was stressing her out. Now he had to find out what it was without upsetting her. Well, he was up for a challenge. That was part of the deal with loving Verity. Rising to the challenges she set him.
“So, do you think Wills and Kate will have a boy or a girl, or do you think it might be twins?” he asked.
“What?” Ezra looked at him blankly.
“Who?” asked Verity.
“Wills and Kate. Kate’s having a baby. What’s your tip? A boy or a girl?”
“I don’t know any Wills or Kates,” said Ezra, still looking blank.
“Well, there’s Bill at Carnal Connections, but Lucy would kill him if he got some chick pregnant,” added Verity.
“I’m talking about His Royal Highness Prince William Arthur Philip Louis, Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn, and Baron Carrickfergus, and his wife, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, who are expecting their first child.” Noah did his best to hide a grin at the stunned look on the faces of his mates. Ha! That will have shocked Verity out of her worries for a few minutes anyway.
“Oh, them. Princess Diana’s older son. Have you been talking to Carey and Jubilee? It’s not like you to be spouting all those names and titles,” said Verity.
“Princess Diana? Oh, now I get it. You mean in England. Well, why didn’t you say that?” asked Ezra.
“Come on, you two. Get with the program. A boy or a girl?”
Noah leaned back in his chair as the conversation took off. Within a few sentences it didn’t really have anything to do with the forthcoming prince or princess, but it did mean his mates were talking and involved with each other and Verity was smiling and happy. He couldn’t care less about the British royalty, but he very much cared about Verity being happy, so his job was done for now. Except that he still needed to know what was upsetting her and how he could smooth the pathway for her and make her happy again.
The conversation flowed while they ate, but even before her chicken salad was all eaten Verity’s smile had faded and her forehead was creased in a frown. Here it comes. She’s about to tell us what the problem is.
There was a few minutes’ silence and Verity laid down her fork. Sitting straighter in her chair she looked at Noah then Ezra before speaking.
“First you need to know I do love you both very much. And I trust you and want to mate with you both. But…” She stopped and seemed to be thinking.
Here it comes.
“It’s too rushed. Everything’s happening too fast. We haven’t even talked about things like what I want after we’re married. There’s more to life than just orgasms, you know.”
“What do you want, Verity?” Noah asked. His stomach was churning and he was wishing he’d eaten something light and easy to digest instead of steak, but it was too late now. Noah forced his voice to stay soft and gentle and worked hard to keep his face from showing how hurt he felt as Verity began speaking again.
“I want us to be a real family. I want to have a real house where you can bring your friends around, human friends, non-BDSM friends, where we can entertain them, have a cookout, or watch a movie together, just hang out together like a family. A place where we can be alone together, too, doing whatever we feel like. I’m not Serena, and you’re not panthers like Pete and Josh. Your friends are outside the pack, outside the community, and I want us to be free to have them visit us as often as they want without making them mingle with the community and without you only ever being able to meet in a restaurant or something like that.”
Noah forced himself to breathe deeply. This was so different from what he’d expected her to feel. It’d never occurred to him she actually wanted to entertain Ezra’s non-BDSM work colleagues and clients. “You’re saying you want to host private parties for our friends and clients? You want to cook for them, do all the cleaning and everything that having parties requires yourself, instead of sharing it with the community? You don’t just want to socialize with your own people?”
“Exactly.”
“But you work full-time. Do you want to stop working and be our hostess? How can you do both at once? Not that I’m planning wall-to-wall parties, but still…” Ezra’s voice trailed off, but the confusion in his tone was clear.
“I like parties. I like cooking. I like entertaining. Yes, sure, I work during the day, and I expect I won’t be terribly excited if you text me at six one night and say you’ve invited a dozen people for dinner in an hour, but I want to be included in the human side of your lives as well as the BDSM side. I enjoy meeting people, and I want a house suitable for entertaining people. You didn’t even ask me what I wanted out of this mating.”
Noah winced. The hurt in Verity’s voice as she said that last line was painful. He pulled out a notepad and pen. “Okay. What do you need in a house? Obviously a full kitchen and a great room for entertaining. What else?”
“A commercial-grade kitchen,” Verity corrected him. “If I’m cooking for a crowd of Ezra’s public relations and marketing clients and contacts, I need the equipment to do it properly. We’ll also need somewhere suitable for outdoor entertaining. A deck, or patio, or courtyar
d, or something like that. The rest depends on what your friends like to do. Will they be happy just sitting or standing and eating, or will they want to do something? Do we need, like, a dance floor, table tennis table, billiards table, tennis court, swimming pool, hot tub?”
“If we had an open space, something like a courtyard, we could use that for dancing or outdoor entertaining or whatever we wanted. It’d be more multipurpose than putting in something that had only one function like a tennis court. And it’d be a lot cheaper, too. I’m not poor, but I’m not a millionaire, either,” said Ezra.
Noah’s feelings had raced through an entire gamut of emotions in the last five minutes. But now he was starting to understand what Verity needed. He should have realized she’d like to cook—or at least like to be involved in food matters—because of the way she behaved at restaurants and the knowledge she displayed about food and menus in her discussions with the waitstaff.
This may be a hiccup in his plans, but at least it was something he could solve. Already he could feel an idea percolating in his brain. He grasped hold of it and began talking, turning to a fresh page of his notepad and sketching as he spoke. “If we bought four of those modular housing units so many people have been getting at Carnal Connections and placed them in a hollow square with an open space in the center, we could put a clear roof over it so it would be almost outdoors. Like that, we wouldn’t get rained or snowed on, and it wouldn’t be as cold as otherwise, which means we could use it for more of the year. It’d only be too cold for three or four months instead of seven or eight.”
“With a couple of those big outdoor gas burners we could likely use it all year round,” added Ezra.
“It’d mean our guests would be contained, too, in case Omar starts worrying about the security of the panther women. If the guests were walking around to a tennis court or swimming pool or something like that they could wander off anywhere. And one of the house modules could be an indoor entertainment room, with couches and a polished wood floor for people who wanted to sit and talk,” added Verity.
She was smiling, so she must have liked the idea.
“We’d only need two modules for ourselves. That’s all Oliver, Leticia, and William have and Omar, JB, and Ramona have. That means you could use one module for your commercial kitchen and a dining room for smaller parties and the other module as a great room for bigger parties. But are you sure this is what you want? I still think it could be a lot of work, especially with your day job,” Noah said, wondering if she truly knew what she was suggesting.
Verity looked serious. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. We’re rushing into this mating and there are too many things we haven’t discussed. What were you planning to do? Leave me home alone while you continued your parties as usual?”
Ezra looked a little guilty, Noah thought, then realized he should feel guilty, too. He hadn’t actually considered making any changes to his lifestyle at all, assuming Verity may or may not accompany them on any given night. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d prefer to stay with your own pack. Most of the parties we go to are basically business. It may be a social setting, but what we’re talking about is all business related.”
“What? And you thought I was too stupid to join in the conversation?” asked Verity.
“No!” Ezra said forcefully.
“Not at all. I thought you’d get very bored very quickly.”
“Then it’s just as well I’ll have the cooking to do to stop me from being bored, isn’t it,” Verity said in a syrupy-sweet tone.
Uh-oh. Danger ahead.
“How about I make an appointment with Larry, and JB, to answer construction questions, to discuss ordering modules and where we can build on the property? Ezra and I’ll have to sell our apartments, too, and get a loan to pay for our new home.”
“Serena and I have some assets, too. I’m happy to contribute toward the costs.”
“You have assets? But you’re only twenty-one,” said Ezra.
“I’ve told you before that our mother was killed in a car accident when Serena and I were five. The driver was both drunk and at fault. What most people don’t know is that the driver was very rich and he gave Dad a large payout. My father always said he offered us so much compensation money out of feelings of guilt, but Dad took the money anyway and invested it. It paid for all our schooling and we still have a nest egg,” explained Verity.
Noah thought fast. “Maybe you could pay for the furnishings for the entertainment modules. Drapes and rugs, cooking equipment, and that kind of thing. I’ve already bought us a big bed, and most of the other furniture we need Ezra and I will already have. That way you’ll be more likely to have everything set up the way you like it, with a pleasing color scheme and so on.”
Verity nodded.
Noah closed his notepad and leaned back in his chair, feeling completely drained. He thought he’d come through that nightmare safely, but who could tell? He loved her so much, but she was a damn complicated woman. Who knew what she might think about next?
* * * *
“No. Absolutely not,” said Larry firmly.
“No?” echoed Ezra.
“No. When we have BDSM events here we have men guarding the front gate of the property, men patrolling the fence line, security guards in the barn, men in the parking lot, the whole nine yards, to ensure that every guest is accounted for at all times. We can’t do that for a private party. Apart from the amount of people resources we’d need, it’d be just plain rude for a private party. That would mean all our expensive security could be totally compromised every time you have a party, and you’ve just said you plan to entertain frequently. So, no. I’m sorry, but no. You can’t build a house here.”
Bastard! Verity didn’t want to live away from the community in the city. She wanted her own home, but she liked being close to her sister and her pack. Besides, how could she run in cougar form in the city? She’d end up shot by a hunter just like Ramona’s mother had been. And Leticia’s mother had been shot, too. Bastard! Bastard! Bastard! I’ll just have to think of something else. I’m fucking not going to sit home night after night while they’re both off partying though, business or no business.
“Can I please see a map of where the Carnal Connections land joins the movie studio land? Is there enough room for a house there? We don’t need much space, just enough gap around the house so the security fence doesn’t press up against our windows,” said Noah.
Verity thought he was trying to make light of the situation and relax them all with that last comment, but he was right. A lot of their doors and windows would open onto the central courtyard rather than outside. Verity tried to picture the corner where Nicholas and Curtis had purchased an unused road and the reserved land either side of it. Was it on an angle where it met the main road? Would there be a tiny wedge of land there big enough for the kind of house she wanted?
Larry retrieved a map from a drawer and spread it out on the worktable in his office.
He has a nice office, Verity thought. It was on the first floor of the main building, looking out to the side of the property where there were trees and gardens. Of course, it was winter right now, so there wasn’t anything flowering, but in summer it would be really cool and nice in here. Larry was a werewolf who’d mated with two humans, Carey and Jubilee. Carey and Jubilee had a never-ending trivia contest running against each other, and both of them knew the most amazing tidbits of information.
Verity hadn’t even known Larry was a shape-shifter, but apparently the other wolves had known. She guessed he’d kept it quiet because the panther pack had come here for safety after the rogue panthers had started stalking them, and they’d stayed on as members of the community.
Which brought her thoughts around to the rogue panthers. What was going to happen about that bastard Sam Brooks? Would she be safe living outside the security of the community? Until this very minute she hadn’t really thought through the dangers of being no longer protected by CCTV cameras,
the big fence, and all the people of Carnal Connections.
Noah placed his finger on the little sticking-out wedge of land Verity had remembered. “There. We could build our house there.”
Larry frowned. “That’s movie studio land. You’ll need to talk to Nicholas and Curtis about using it. They may already have plans for it. I know they were very keen to get every inch of space they could have, although fronting the road on two sides as it does, it may not be valuable to them.”
“Are they here today?” asked Ezra.
Larry picked up his phone. “Lucy, are Nicholas and Curtis here today?”
“Autumn is. I’ll check with her,” replied Lucy, his personal assistant.
Nicholas was another werewolf. Autumn was a half-blood panther from Verity’s pack and Curtis was a human. The three of them were mated, too, disproving the old theory that cats and dogs couldn’t get along peacefully together.
“They were in the barn. They’ll be with you in five,” came Lucy’s voice through the phone.
“Thanks.”
Almost before she’d finished speaking there was a knock on the door and the men were standing in the doorway. Nicholas’s curly brown hair was a tangled mess and Curtis’s bright-blue eyes sparkled with mischief as he looked over Nicholas’s shoulder.
“Hi, Larry, you wanted us?”
“Come in, sit down. Noah and Ezra want you actually.”
Nicholas raised an eyebrow at them and Verity smiled. These two men had together made a success of their small boutique movie studio then sold the land to a developer and transported everything here, where they were rebuilding, so Autumn could be kept safe.
“You know that I work in public relations and marketing?” asked Ezra.
Both men nodded.
“Well, as part of that I entertain a lot. Mostly up until now it’s been at restaurants, movie premieres, art galleries, and so on, but once we’re mated Verity wants to hold parties for me in our own home,” said Ezra.
“But I thought you were going to live in the main house with us,” said Curtis.