It Adds Up for Mary [Hardwick Bay 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Morgan Henry

  The second thing she noticed was that the entire shop was verging on pristine.

  All the tools were racked or put away. The floor was swept. There were no cans of varnish or stain or whatever else he needed for the furniture sitting around. The pieces that he was working on were out, but they were still neat. There were no stacks of wood piled haphazardly beside them or shavings in the corner of the cabinet. It was organized. Tidy.

  Even the bulletin board with the calendar of orders and deadlines was gridline straight.

  Mary was shocked. “I’ve seen your room,” she said. She’d peeked on the way out the door. It was a shambles. “What the hell is up with this?”

  Logan gave a little laugh that sounded self-conscious. He scuffed the floor with his hiking boot. “I don’t know. The rest of life doesn’t bother me, but when I work, I need this place to be clean and orderly. It somehow allows me to focus on the design instead of the surroundings.”

  “That makes sense. But it doesn’t matter if it did or didn’t. It works for you, and that’s what matters.”

  He cocked his head to one side and gave her a smile. He gathered her in his arms and gave her a slow, gentle kiss that made the rest of the world fall away. Mary was almost dizzy when they stopped.

  They were silent for a few seconds.

  “This is beautiful.” Mary gestured at the trestle table that looked more or less complete. “I don’t know what that is, but it’s pretty.” She gestured to a large x-like structure.

  Logan looked as if he was trying not to smile. “It’s a St Andrew’s cross. The BDSM crowd likes to fasten their subs to it and play with them.”

  “Oh!” Mary blushed. In the whole ménage explanation, Karen had mentioned there were a fair number of BDSM enthusiasts in town. Mary had a vague idea of what that entailed, but she hadn’t been interested enough to explore further. “Ah, are you into that sort of thing?”

  “No. I know enough about it to make the furniture, but Derek and I are not into it.” He shrugged. “Just doesn’t appeal. We’re kinky enough on our own.” He gave her a lascivious wink.

  “True enough.”

  Logan walked over to her and pressed her back against his workbench. He nipped her earlobe. “A bonus of keeping this place clean is that I can bend you over this table and fuck you senseless without worrying you’ll get a nail poking into anything important.”

  Mary couldn’t help the moan that slipped out between her lips. That did sound appealing. Especially with Logan trailing his tongue down her neck.

  The door to the shop opened and Derek poked his head in. “That looks like fun. Are we going to indulge before hiking?”

  “We may never hit the trail if we do that,” Logan answered. “Let’s go.”

  They hiked for close to a couple of hours, winding up at a picnic spot on a small lake deep in the Barbers’ property. They told Mary there was a cabin on the opposite side of the lake, but she couldn’t really see it.

  It was perfect weather. It was cool enough that she didn’t get sweaty from the exertion. There were definitely no bugs at this time of year, and the leaves were amazing. Reds and golds mixed in with the evergreens said that winter was coming, as did the smell of frost from the morning.

  They kindled a fire in the small pit that was ringed with stones and dug carefully into the ground. There was a tiny lean-to that held a grate to go over the fire, a few pots, and an old-fashioned coffee percolator.

  “We don’t leave any food here, and everyone who uses it is careful to clean up afterward so it doesn’t attract bear or too many mice,” Logan explained.

  They unpacked the two backpacks the men had carried. Mary wasn’t sure whether to feel piqued or treasured that she wasn’t allowed to carry anything.

  Coffee, instant soup, cheese, and crusty bread made an appearance. It felt like a feast on this cool day, and the scenery made it even better. There was a little wind making ripples on the lake and rattling the colourful leaves. The air was so fresh and clean it almost made Mary want to cry. The little bite of smoke from the fire was just enough to add to the perfection of the day.

  It never smelled this good in the city.

  They lazed around the fire for a while, talking and savoring their outdoor coffee. They had even brought a little sugar for Mary, along with the cream she and Derek liked. Logan teased them about being high maintenance.

  Eventually, they had to head back out.

  They cleaned the pots, doused the fire, and put everything back in the lean-to. The hike back out took them along a ridge that gave a beautiful view of the lake and a swampy area that bordered it. The autumn colors were so vibrant, Mary couldn’t help but take a few photos with her phone.

  Sitting in the truck on the way back to town, Mary felt content. It was almost bizarre, that feeling. She hadn’t felt it in so long it took her a minute to recognize it. She was pleasantly tired from the hiking, and other exertions of the day. She was warm, and it felt so good to be between the Murray brothers. She felt as though she belonged exactly where she was.

  Was this what it would feel like forever with them?

  Mary tried not to go there, but her brain just tripped along on its own. Thinking about waking with them each morning, going off to their separate careers and coming home to spend their nights together. Cooking, keeping house, having fun, enjoying family and friends—her brain went down the whole road.

  It looked really good.

  The logical part of Mary knew there would be bumps. Nothing was ever perfect. There would be fights, small disasters, things to struggle through, but they could survive, surely.

  The truck pulled up to the alley where the back entrance to Karen’s store, and Mary’s apartment, was. Mary’s car was there, tires repaired.

  There was something on the stair to the back door, though.

  Mary looked at it curiously as she got out. It was kind of orange and furry. As she moved closer and got a better look, she was sure it was an animal lying on its side. No, not just any animal, a cat. A cat who was completely still, and was that blood on the concrete?

  “Sammy!” she screamed, dropping her purse and pounding toward the furry body on the gray concrete stoop.

  She skidded to a stop in front of the little body. She was sobbing uncontrollably. How could her little cat have gotten out?

  She hadn’t been able to see the head until she was closer. It was smashed, a mess of black, congealed blood attached to a ginger tabby body. Now that she was close, there was the smell of death around him, metallic and fetid.

  She reached out to stroke the soft fur on his tail. And stopped.

  This cat’s tail was pure orange. There was no white tip.

  It wasn’t Sammy.

  She started sobbing again, this time in relief. But also for the little dead cat on the stair, whose name she didn’t know. She didn’t even know if he belonged to someone who would miss him.

  Derek pulled her into his arms, murmuring words of comfort.

  Logan, too, had his hands on her. “We’ll look after him, Mary. We can bury him at our house, or we can have the vets cremate him and you can get his ashes back.”

  Mary realized they didn’t know it wasn’t her Sammy. They hadn’t spent enough time with him to know him down to the tip of his tail. She was still clogged with tears. “Not him. Not Sammy,” she choked out.

  Derek gently held her face in his hands and wiped the tears from her cheeks. His blue eyes looked deep into hers. “It’s not Sammy? You’re sure?”

  At her nod, he frowned. “So someone put a dead cat that looked like Sammy at your door?”

  Mary suddenly realized how sick that was. Had that person killed this poor cat because he looked like Sammy? That made her shake and cry more.

  “We need to bury him,” she said between the tears. “He didn’t need to die for this, whatever this is.”

  Derek and Logan nodded. “We’ll bury him at our house,” Logan offered.

  Derek pulled Mary off to
the side and held her while he stroked her hair. Logan went to the truck and grabbed a blanket from the back. Wrapping the cat in it, he placed him gently in the back.

  He returned to them with a grim look on his face. “Let’s go upstairs,” he suggested.

  Mary let them in and deactivated the alarm.

  Sammy greeted them at the door to the apartment, and Mary cried anew.

  The men settled her on the couch, and Sammy took his cue to comfort Mary. He rubbed his chin against her face and purred for all he was worth.

  She heard Derek in the kitchen putting on coffee and Logan in the hall making a phone call.

  Mary used the time to settle herself down. It wasn’t like her to cry, but she had thought Sammy was dead!

  It had been such a perfect day and to come home to what she thought was her dead cat seemed a harsh punishment for trying to have a life. She finally let herself think that things might work out here in Hardwick Bay, and then someone had put a dead cat on her doorstep.

  Maybe it was just a terrible coincidence. Maybe the poor thing had been hit by a car and crawled onto her step to die.

  It could have happened. People were always going too fast on the main street. Maybe it was just bad luck and not some sort of cosmic conspiracy to make her regret taking up with the Murray brothers.

  Logan came back into the living room just as Derek arrived with three coffees. “Colin and Marcus are on their way,” he reported.

  “What for? I’m sure the poor cat just crawled there to die.” Mary had convinced herself that was what happened.

  “The cat didn’t leave a note, Mary,” Derek informed her gently as Logan held up an envelope with the initials MW in black marker on it.

  Chapter 18

  Derek was angry.

  Ice-cold, beat-someone-with-a-vengeance angry.

  He knew Logan was pissed, too, and barely holding it together. If Derek lost it, so would Logan, and then neither of them would be able to be there for Mary, so he shored up his calm facade with as much internal concrete as he could manage.

  What sick fuck would put a dead cat that was almost identical to Sammy on Mary’s doorstep? The same one that slashed her tires he would bet.

  He set the three coffees he was carrying on the table in front of the sofa and sat on the other side of Mary. Her look of abject horror at the envelope Logan had in his hand made him want to throw the coffee at the wall and scream his fury. But that wouldn’t help Mary.

  She was now white and trembling a little. She held out her hand for the note, but Logan wouldn’t give it to her. He set it on the dining table.

  “Colin and Marcus want to see it first,” he told her softly.

  “It’s addressed to me. I want to know what’s in it,” she said stubbornly, but Derek could hear the new tears in her voice.

  “Please, Mary. Wait.” Logan knelt in front of her and rubbed her knees. Sammy wouldn’t leave Mary’s lap.

  She didn’t answer but didn’t get up to grab the envelope either. Logan put her coffee in her hand, and she took a sip. Logan had to steady her hands with one of his.

  They heard the knock on the door, and Logan went downstairs. He didn’t come back up right away.

  At Mary’s questioning look, Derek said, “I suspect they’re looking at the other cat.”

  She set her coffee down, and a few more tears leaked from her eyes. “He didn’t deserve to die.”

  “No, he didn’t. I still am glad it’s not Sammy though, and so is Logan. It doesn’t make any of us a bad person to feel that way.” Derek wondered if Mary would be feeling guilty that she was glad Sammy was okay.

  She sniffed. “Thank you for saying that.” She petted her cat for a while. “I’m not sure I would have been okay if someone had come in here and killed Sammy.”

  “That would be completely understandable.”

  “But it’s still not okay that the other cat is dead.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  They heard the movement on the stairs. The three men entered the living room, and Logan split off to get coffee for Colin and Marcus.

  Marcus cleared his throat. “The other cat appears to have been hit by a car and brought to the stoop. We’ll get the vet to have a closer look for us. We can’t know if it was deliberate or not. It would have been very quick. I doubt the little guy would have known a thing.”

  Mary looked at Marcus and swallowed heavily. “Thank you. It’s good to know that.”

  Colin put on a pair of gloves and picked up the envelope. “So the only person who handled this is you?” he asked Logan.

  “Yeah. It was off the side of the step, like it had maybe slipped off the cat,” he answered.

  Colin carefully opened the envelope and pulled out the paper inside. He unfolded the white page and read it. His expression didn’t change from its solemn, professional calmness.

  He held it out so that the rest of them could see it.

  This is what happens when you’re not where you belong. Leave Hardwick Bay.

  There was silence for a moment.

  “I don’t get it,” confessed Mary. “I mean someone obviously doesn’t want me here, but I don’t get the first sentence. Why would a cat getting killed on the road mean anything to me? Aside from the fact that it’s sad.”

  “Do you recognize the handwriting?” asked Colin.

  Mary leaned closer and scrutinized the page. “Not really. It just looks like generic printing. I could make my writing look like that if I tried. It reminds me of those primers in school where you have to copy the letters in kindergarten or grade one.”

  After a few more questions on their whereabouts over the last two days, Colin and Marcus left. They didn’t say much on who they thought might be responsible, just that they were “checking into a few things.”

  They also agreed with Logan and Derek that she shouldn’t stay at the apartment by herself.

  Derek wanted her with them. He knew that Logan would want the same.

  Mary, of course, had other ideas.

  They were still in the living room, arguing. Logan was in the chair facing the couch that held Derek and Mary.

  “I just agreed to date you, not to move in with you. I’ll stay with Karen.” She had that stubborn set to her mouth. “I want to be closer to my sister anyway. We’ve been a bit estranged over the past few years, and it’s been good to know her again. She won’t mind, and I’ll be close to the store.”

  “We’re getting to know you, too, and we want to know you’re safe. If you stayed with us, we could accomplish both of those things.” Derek tried to be reasonable.

  Logan didn’t. Apparently he had lost a little of his reservations about letting her into their lives. His hands were in fists on his knees as he leaned forward. “You’re coming with us. We’ll keep you safe while the guys figure out who is doing this. Then we’ll beat the crap out of him.”

  “No, you won’t.” Mary’s voice rose a little. “It’s not your job to do that, for one. And you don’t get to order me around. I’m not one of the subs you make kinky furniture for.”

  “No, you’re not,” Derek looked hard a Logan. Shut up. “But we do care about you and want you to be safe.”

  “I’ll be safe with Karen. Their place is less isolated than yours, you know. So if there was anyone hanging around, they would be noticed.” She folded her arms.

  She had them there. Their place was somewhat isolated, they had about four of acres of property, and it was out of town.

  Logan looked as though he was about to blow. Mary wasn’t budging thanks to Logan’s bulldozing tactics. Derek couldn’t figure out a way to get Mary to their place short of dragging her by the hair, and that wasn’t going to make for a good long-term relationship.

  “Okay,” he finally agreed. “You go spend time with Karen, but we’ll be checking up on you, and we want you to spend a few nights with us each week. We would have been asking you to do that now that we’re seeing each other if you were staying here anyway.
Can you agree to that?”

  Mary narrowed her eyes at them. “Two nights per week,” she countered.

  “At least. More if we can convince you,” offered Logan.

  “No guarantee they will be consecutive,” she added.

  “No guarantee they won’t be,” Logan said immediately.

  “And I’m going to Karen’s tonight and tomorrow night.” Mary stood up. “I have to pack and get Sammy’s stuff together. And I have to ask Karen,” she amended.

  She grabbed her cell and walked into the bedroom.

  Derek and Logan looked at each other.

  “I don’t like this,” Logan said.

  “Well, neither do I, but we didn’t do a great job at convincing her to stay with us, did we?” Sarcasm made the “we” pointedly about Logan.

  Logan had the grace to look guilty. “Yeah. Sorry about that. My mouth got ahead of my brain. I was worried.”

  “I get it. But Mary’s not one to be ordered around. I think she got enough of that as a kid and is finally trying to break free. I don’t get why it took her so damn long, but what can you do?” He shrugged.

  “I’ll work on her. Be the nice guy, I promise.”

  “We’ll see what happens. I’m worried about this.”

  “So am I.”

  * * * *

  Mary called Karen on her cell as she threw clothing into a suitcase. She was damn tired of moving all over the place. Why couldn’t life get calm enough for her to stay in one spot and sort stuff out?

  Karen answered the phone. “Hey you.”

  “Hi.” Mary couldn’t keep the distress out of her voice.

  “What’s wrong?” Karen immediately asked.

  “Well…” Mary really didn’t know how to tell Karen about the whole mess. She decided just to forge ahead. “Someone put a dead cat that looked like Sammy on the stair to the store in the alley and now Marcus and Colin say I shouldn’t stay here and Derek and Logan want me to live with them but it’s too soon because I just agreed to date them not move in.”