“All right,” she said. “But if we end up lost, I will cry. I don’t cry pretty. Anyone can see that. I might have already cried over the direction my life has taken, but there are more tears inside me. I can feel them. They’re sitting there waiting for the floodgates to open. And I’m talking to a dog. Fine. I’ll follow you, but there had better be a hot shower and a big glass of red wine waiting for me.”
Jacey gave a wolfish grin and set off weaving between the trees, reassured once he heard her stumbling after him and mumbling under her breath. About men of all things. His grin widened. He looked forward to furthering his acquaintance with this woman, learning her name.
But first, he needed to check out the photos she’d snapped with her smartphone.
Chapter Three
Plan B. It wasn’t going too well. She’d spent the morning walking and blubbering, and now she had a wet butt. She could feel the clinging slide of her silky underwear with each step and a chill had sunk to her bones. The path exited the trees, and she glimpsed the farm cottages, one of which she was renting for the week. Apparently, the dog was correct, and she’d been getting herself lost too.
Megan snorted, the sound emerging with an edge of tears and the dog shot her a look, its ears pricking. “What is with you, dog? It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.”
Yes! That was another look, complete with rising doggy eyebrows.
It was official. All males sucked.
A pity because she enjoyed sex, and her trusty vibrator wasn’t always a good substitute.
“Let’s go.”
She noted the rear end of a SUV parked on the far side of the neighboring cottage. Perhaps her luck would bloom, and she’d find a sexy younger man right next door to build up her confidence. Another snort emerged, this one stronger and angrier. Her gaze zapped to the dog, and she discovered he’d stopped and turned to stare at her with those freaky blue eyes. And his eyebrows rose again in a question.
“Who do you belong to?” She did not want to deal with a lost dog, although this one seemed to know his way about. “The station owner, right?”
He yipped, a sharp, impatient bark.
“Okay. Okay. Shower. Big glass of red wine.” Megan stomped down the gentle incline until she reached the sealed parking area. Landscaped gardens full of native flax and miniature hebes, a green hedging plant, these covered with tiny purple flowers, edged the sealed area. Subtle security lamps lit the way at night, giving a magical appearance. If she wasn’t so worried about her future, she might have enjoyed her visit to Middlemarch.
The organizers of the Sevens tournament had left a welcome package containing snacks, the bottle of red wine and a floral arrangement that included a note with an invitation for dinner tomorrow night. Emily Mitchell, who wrote the letter, introduced herself and mentioned she’d taken the place of the man who’d contacted the network. He’d passed away suddenly, and Emily hoped her replacing Kenneth Nesbitt was okay. The woman had provided red wine. Okay with Megan.
Megan headed for her stone cottage. The dog waited at her door, as if he expected to enter. His tail wagged, his ears pricked, and those blue eyes held pleading.
“No, you can’t come inside. You’re wet and muddy.”
The dog stepped away from her and shook vigorously. She blinked, felt her mouth drop open as she stared. The dog shook a second time, and Megan frowned. Weird. Plain weird.
She pulled her room key from the zipped pocket of her vest and shoved it in the lock. On automatic, she patted the matching pocket on the right side of her vest for her phone. Losing that would put a seal on her crappy day, but no, it was there. She yawned, exhausted from her walk and crying jag. Perhaps she’d take a snooze before the wine. She opened the door, and the dog pushed past before she could stop it.
“Hey! You go back to wherever you came from.”
The dog ignored her and settled in front of a wall heater with an expectant glance in her direction. He was doing well with communication. Next, he’d speak to her.
Megan shook her head at her inventive thoughts. Too fanciful. It was no wonder she’d made a second career of writing romance with her imagination. Now she was assigning a personality to this dog. The wretched creature had probably pulled this stunt with previous guests.
“Fine,” she muttered and stripped off her coat. She dumped it over the back of a chair and stooped to unzip her black boots, then hopped like an ungainly stork while she removed them.
The dog barked—a short yet demanding yip—and glanced at the heater.
“Fine,” she snapped again, but a sneaking admiration pushed into her mind. This was one bright dog. “A freaky pair of blue eyes will only get you so far, mister.” Megan flipped the wall switch, and the heater clicked and hummed to life.
Megan padded through the open-plan lounge and kitchen area to one of the two luxurious bedrooms. Everything in the cottage spoke of luxury and good taste, a blend of cream and different shades of brown in the furnishings and the local artwork on the walls making the place comfortable and inviting relaxation. The same ambience radiated from the bedroom and attached en suite. A plush cream robe hung on the back of the en suite door. Fluffy cream towels with chocolate-brown accents hung on rails, ready for her use.
In the bedroom, she stripped off her damp clothes, placed her phone by her pillow, and naked, she headed straight to the shower cubicle. She opened the door and flipped on the water mixer. Warm water poured down, and she ducked under the spray. She regulated the temperature and adjusted the controls for a second showerhead. The water pounded her back. A sigh slipped free. Perfect. Just perfect.
Ten minutes later, feeling much warmer and cleaner, she slipped into an oversize T-shirt, closed the blinds to shut out the day and crawled into bed. She picked up her phone, intending to ring her contacts, Saber or Emily Mitchell, but instead closed her eyes and drifted, her exhausted mind craving sleep.
Jacey listened to the shower switch on as he turned to warm his other side. His eyelids slipped shut, and he jerked them open again. Crap. He couldn’t go to sleep. He needed to get his hands on that phone and delete the photos she’d taken of them. His happiness, Henry’s happiness, depended on it, and damned if he’d let the community chase off Henry because of an innocent mistake. Henry had settled here in Middlemarch and didn’t need more turmoil in his life.
He shook himself and cast out his senses. The shower was still going. He’d check her coat pocket. Unfortunately, he hadn’t seen where she put her phone. She’d slipped it away while he, Henry and Leo had held their strategy meeting. Jacey listened again and heard the shower cease. Bother, he’d thought she might dally. He needed to hurry.
Jacey shifted, shot a quick glance in the direction of the bedroom and headed toward the chair where she’d left her coat. He rifled through the pockets and came up empty. Damn it. Why couldn’t this be easy?
Resigned, he stalked toward the bedroom. She was in the en suite. If he was quick and lucky, he might find the phone on the bedside cabinet or out in the open for her to grab if it rang.
At the bedroom doorway, he listened, and when he heard nothing, he peeked around the corner. She was still in the en suite. He’d risk it. At the last second, he stopped and shifted to wolf. While she mightn’t be happy to see him wandering around her bedroom in his wolf form, she’d freak if she saw a strange naked man. And if she saw his face, that would put a full stop on him getting to know her better.
Bother the woman. She was a problem on all fronts, a threat to his wolf and to the man.
He shifted, and not a second too soon. The woman strolled into the room wrapped in a towel. She pulled something bright blue from her bag, dropped the towel and pulled on a shapeless T-shirt.
Jacey blinked at the shapely blonde. Slim waist. Curvy hips. Breasts a nice handful and pert for her age. A natural blonde. Before he knew it, cloth screened her nakedness from neck to knee. He focused on the design on the front of the T-shirt. It read Loch Ness Monster and had a pict
ure of Nessie with his head showing above the lake waters. He resented that monster, blocking his view. Scowling, he shook himself back to the job at hand. While he’d been staring at the T-shirt and mourning its presence, the woman had drawn the blinds and slid into the bed. She gave a gusty sigh and settled on her side, facing the window.
Perfect for his purposes.
Jacey padded into the bedroom, the woolen carpet soft beneath his paws. He approached the bed. Nothing on the bedside cabinet apart from a notepad and what looked like an e-reader in a purple case. Bathroom next. A floral scent greeted him when he slinked into the en suite and reared up on his hind legs to survey the countertop. The same floral scent he’d registered on her earlier, but stronger. Toiletries graced the countertop—a yellow toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, a comb and a brush. No phone.
Her clothes lay in a heap on the floor where she’d kicked them aside. The messiness pleased him since no one liked perfect. Hands would be better suited for this job. With a swift glance at the bed, he shifted and checked her pockets. Nothing again.
Damn, what had she done with the phone?
Jacey returned to wolf. He reared up to check the tallboy dresser on the far side of the bed, but couldn’t see the phone. A gruff sound of frustration escaped him and the woman stirred in the bed.
She rolled toward him and rubbed her eyes. “What are you doing in here, doggie? Out! You are not getting in this bed with me.”
Jacey froze as his mind wandered in the direction her words sent it. Bed. Woman. Nakedness. His heart raced while every muscle in his body stiffened. Images flashed of bodies writhing against each other. Shock coated some of the visions since he hadn’t craved a woman with this intensity for a long time, not since Moira entered his life and changed everything.
“Out,” the woman ordered.
Jacey turned and trotted from the bedroom, forcing his limbs to move when every particle of him wanted to approach, shift to human form and slide into the bed next to this sexy woman. Crap, he didn’t even know her name. He could fix that soon enough, but finding the phone was more important right now.
Out in the open space of the lounge, he checked all the surfaces, even though he knew she hadn’t set the phone down here. Nothing. The only possible place it could be was in the bed with her. A surge of disappointment flooded him. Not a workaholic? He didn’t need someone like that in his life. While he worked hard, he liked to play and enjoy himself too. No point working so hard that life flew by without enjoyment.
They’d have to get the phone another time, because although urgency drilled through him, there was no way he was invading her bed or frightening her into giving up the phone. A man had to have standards, and those were his. He never frightened women. Men who used their brute force to control the opposite sex were below contempt. Moira’s first husband, for example.
Conceding defeat, Jacey shifted to human and slipped from the cottage. He surveyed his surroundings, saw nothing or no one out of place, and closed the door behind him with a soft click. He darted over to the next cottage where Leo and Henry waited in Henry’s SUV.
Leo opened the passenger door and handed out Jacey’s jeans. “Any luck?”
“The woman took the phone to bed with her. What kind of person takes a phone to bed with them?” Jacey demanded in frustration.
Henry scowled from the driver’s seat. “Hell.”
“I was hoping we’d handle this without having to confess to Saber,” Leo said, sounding resigned. “Emily mentioned she’d invited the woman to dinner. Scoring Megan Saxon as our commentator is a big deal, and Emily wanted to make sure she enjoys her visit to Middlemarch.”
“That’s her name? Megan?” Jacey asked.
“Yeah. You haven’t heard of her? She does special-interest pieces on rugby players, interviews and commentates some of the games. You mightn’t have seen her on the telly in Australia,” Leo said. “I thought there was something familiar about her but it took a while to click. Megan Saxon is not the right person to take a photo of us in our animal forms. She will ask questions.”
“She’s a reporter?” A trace of horror coated Henry’s sharp words.
The same dismay rippled through Jacey. His day kept getting worse. “What should we do now?”
Leo scowled. “As I said, we’ll have to tell Saber. Isabella is gonna laugh off her butt. The awfulness of my teenage years coming back to haunt me. I hope Saber finds humor in the situation. Felix, my older brother, and I used to go around getting into trouble. The twins too. Saber says we gave him gray hair.” He glanced at Jacey, scanned his silver hair and chuckled. “Henry must have been a right handful.”
“Not helping,” Henry said. “Right, we’ll head to Saber’s and confess.”
Jacey had already met Saber Mitchell and his wife, Emily. He’d liked the younger couple and sensed their happiness. Jacey didn’t, however, want to cause trouble for the man. It wasn’t too late to toss him and Henry out of the Middlemarch community. Saber and the rest of the feline residents could make things very uncomfortable for them.
Ten minutes later, Henry pulled up in front of the Mitchell residence. “Well, let’s face the music.”
Lucky for them, Leo Mitchell had been present, otherwise they’d be at an even greater disadvantage.
Jacey and Henry followed Leo up the flower-edged footpath to the front door. They waited while Leo thumped on the white front door then opened it.
“Saber, you there?” Leo wiped his feet on the doormat and entered.
Emily appeared at the end of a long passage, wiping her hands on an orange towel. Her long jumper stretched over the curve of her pregnant belly. “You’ve just caught him. He popped in for a cup of tea before heading out to muster the sheep. Who is with you? Oh, Henry. Jacey. Come in and have tea.”
They trailed Leo down the passage, catapulting Jacey back to his school days with memories of visiting the school principal. He’d also been a mischievous teenager, not that he’d admit it to these two.
“Hi, how did the run go?” Saber stood and gestured to the empty chairs around the kitchen table.
Jacey shared a glance with Leo and Henry.
“Not so good,” Leo said after a long pause. “We were running in the north paddock where we’ve run before. There was a woman there, sitting under a tree. She snapped a couple of photos. I don’t think she saw us, but when she looks at her photos later, she’ll realize she snapped more than the scenery.”
“Anyone we know,” Saber asked, his green eyes alert.
“Megan Saxon,” Leo said. “I didn’t recognize her right away. Henry and I went back to collect our clothes and the SUV while Jacey went with her, hoping to retrieve her phone so he could delete the pictures.”
“It didn’t work?” Emily asked.
“She thought I was a dog,” Jacey said. “I went with her back to the cottage at Gilcrest Station and got inside. I searched for her phone while she was in the shower and checked the bedroom. She’d gone to sleep, but I woke her up, and she ordered me from her bedroom. The only place the phone could have been was in the bed with her. I’m sorry. I tried to find it.”
“If you were running in the north paddock, you weren’t out of order,” Saber said. “Leo was with you.”
“Try telling that to the militant felines,” Emily muttered as she set empty mugs on the kitchen table. She plonked onto an empty chair next to Saber. “Milk?”
“Please,” Jacey said.
“Yes, please,” Henry said.
Emily poured their tea and shunted mugs in their direction. “Have a chocolate chip cookie. One of you could ask her out for dinner,” she suggested.
“Not me,” Henry said, his manner emphatic.
“I’m out. Isabella would gut me,” Leo said with a grin. “Then she’d do something diabolical to the woman, just to make her point.”
Everyone turned to Jacey, their expressions ranging from amusement to determination. Jacey sighed. “I guess we could try that, but how am I
going to meet her? I can’t bowl up there and ask her out. She doesn’t know me. She’ll think I’m a stalker, someone interested in her public face. She’ll think I want to use her fame for my glory.” The last thing Jacey wanted was a woman in his life who was public property. It wasn’t too late to walk away. He’d scarcely touched her. A lick didn’t count. He took a shallow breath, but it did little to quell the surge of panic bouncing around his stomach like a pinball. A lick—two licks weren’t enough to cement a bond. There was no bond. Jacey closed his eyes and forced away the memory of her orange blossom scent and the faint wolfish musk on her skin. “Couldn’t we break into the cottage or pretend to be a cleaner?”
He glanced up from his mug of tea and caught Henry’s gaze. His son was eyeing him with concern.
“What?” Jacey demanded. “The longer we leave it the more danger we’re in. Maybe she didn’t get a photo of us, but what if she did? She could have seen the photo already. She could have emailed it to her network or a media contact.”
“You’re not to scare her,” Emily ordered. “She’s coming here for dinner tomorrow night. Ah! I have a better idea. I intended to suggest to Saber that we raffle off a dinner date with her. We could swing it so Jacey wins the date. Voila, dinner for two. You’ll have to pay for a ticket though. I was thinking ten or twenty dollars for each ticket. Since we’re rigging the raffle, you’d have to pay five hundred.” She winked at Saber, and he sent her a lazy grin, an intimate one that made Jacey feel like an interloper.
“Emily,” Leo protested. “Two things. You can’t extract money like that, even for a good cause, and stop matchmaking for Jacey. I’m sure he can get his own dates without your shenanigans.”
“We can’t delay until tomorrow,” Jacey warned, ignoring the dating and matchmaking part of the conversation.
She wagged her finger. “The three of you have made this problem. Even though it wasn’t your fault, it’s right you suffer the consequences.”
“Saber.” Leo turned to his older brother, but Saber smiled and clasped Emily’s hand.
My Plan B (Middlemarch Shifters Book 11) Page 3