Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “She’s a widow,” he allowed. “I’m a widower. It occurred to me just now that I’ve never thought to talk to her about it.”

  Gaylord beamed a huge, approving grin up at him and said, “Why don’t you have a little lemonade with us.”

  “Lemonade disgusts me.”

  He whispered, “Because you’re a werewolf?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well then have a seat with us and get better acquainted,” he suggested.

  “Maybe I will,” he agreed and as they started back towards the canopy tent, Rick felt a flutter of nervous butterflies flap around in his stomach. “Maybe I will…”

  ***

  Dean heard Elizabeth groan from inside the curtained changing room she had tucked herself into.

  “I look horrible,” she complained.

  “It doesn’t matter how you look.”

  “I wouldn’t be caught dead in this,” she insisted.

  “You won’t be able to hike in high heels and a purple dress,” he argued.

  “I beg to differ,” she countered, speaking up and refusing to pull the curtain aside and step out. “I think I could get away with wearing the dress.”

  “You want to wear a designer dress with hiking boots?” he questioned.

  “Quite frankly, Dean, I don’t want to wear hiking boots at all!”

  He rolled his eyes and took a slow lap away from the line of changing rooms to get a second wind.

  After Elizabeth had made some semblance of headway on her effort to buy the old Devil’s Advocate building—apparently, it would take a lot more legwork than she had anticipated since the owner, Adelaide, was deceased, as well as Adelaide’s next of kin—Dean had brought her to Acorn Fashion and Accessories up the street, but they’d gotten here hours ago.

  Elizabeth had been beyond picky when it had come to picking out appropriate hiking shorts and shirts. She’d scrunched her nose up at just about every option, stubbornly refusing to so much as touch the folded garments. It had been Dean who had ultimately stalked through the clothing store, selected items, and thrust them at her as he steered her behind the curtained changing room.

  If this went on any longer, they would lose the light and hiking would have to wait for another day.

  “I’m coming in,” he informed her.

  “No! I don’t want you to see me like this! I looked like an androgynous park ranger!”

  “I’m sure you look fine,” he assured her as he pulled the curtain aside.

  She looked better than fine. She looked downright adorable. Hot, in fact.

  He grinned, admiring his work, as Elizabeth slouched in a huff of embarrassment.

  “I hate it,” she complained.

  She was wearing a pair of short-shorts that were really short. The white denim was cut so high on her thighs that the cotton material of the front pockets poked out. The shorts really showed off her long, toned legs, and she looked both sexy and rugged in the fashionable hiking boots he’d picked out for her, which actually gave her a fair amount of height since the soles were a solid inch and a half thick. The top she was wearing was a simple yellow button-down with cap sleeves and a V shaped neckline. Of course, she’d failed to button the top two buttons so the shirt exposed her lifted cleavage.

  “You are so wrong about looking androgynous,” he promised.

  “You’re lying.”

  “Trust me, you look good.”

  She screwed her face up as though he must have lost his mind.

  “I think I could get away with wearing my dress,” she argued, reiterating the same idea she’d been vouching for the whole time. “The only thing anyone really needs when they’re hiking is the correct boots.”

  “And what’s going to happen if you lose your footing and tumble down a trail?” he said, introducing a scenario that Elizabeth had obviously never considered.

  She looked instantly appalled. “Where in God’s name are you taking me that I might tumble down a trail?”

  “Relax,” he insisted. “I’m not going to actually let you tumble down a trail.”

  Before she could quarantine herself back into the curtained changing room, he took hold of her arm and forced her out of the stall. She let out a little squeak and he quickly collected her dress, heels, and purse so that she would have no reason to slip back in stubbornly.

  “Come on,” he said, bringing her to the cashier. “You can wear it out.”

  “Does my butt look okay?” she asked, catching her own reflection in one of the standing mirrors.

  As she twisted and turned, trying to get a sense of what she looked like from behind, he promised her, “Your butt looks amazing.”

  “Yeah?”

  He fought the urge to roll his eyes, but the only way to get her out of the store and onto the trails would be with heaps of flattering and reassuring compliments.

  “You’ll be the hottest woman hiking Yellowstone, I guarantee it. You look like you belong in an L.L. Bean catalogue.” When she frowned in response, he knew he’d chosen the wrong brand, so he quickly revised his compliment. “I mean the Victoria’s Secret hiking edition.”

  She scowled. “Victoria’s Secret doesn’t have a hiking edition.”

  “That’s because they’ve never seen you dressed like that.”

  He let out a soft sigh of relief as she finally lit up, thrilled that she might look the part, and that’s when he brought her, full force, to the counter where the sales girl scanned the barcodes of all the garments she was wearing.

  Dean produced his credit card to pay, which had quite an effect on Elizabeth.

  She grabbed hold of his muscular arm, oozed into him as she smiled up, and said, “You’re so sweet, thank you, Dean.”

  It was just another taste of getting to know the side of Elizabeth that he was pretty sure he despised. Was this all it took to win her affection? Was she really so empty headed and easy to please that all it took was wining and dining, a shopping trip or two?

  “Just get in the truck,” he ordered, having signed the receipt and placed her dress and heels into the Acorn Fashion and Accessories bag that the salesgirl had offered.

  To his surprise, Elizabeth opened the glass door herself and breezed out onto the sidewalk.

  He wondered if she was feeling okay.

  As they walked up the sidewalk, heading for his parked pickup truck, he noticed there was a fair amount of pep in her step and she didn’t have to clutch his arm for balance.

  “As hideous as these things are,” she commented, looking down at her hiking boots as she sauntered at quite a clip towards the truck, “they’re really comfortable.”

  “No need to thank me,” he said dryly.

  “I’m not,” she assured him with a sense of humor that also seemed new. “And no photos! I don’t want to immortalize how awful I look.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of taking your photo,” he told her as he opened the passenger’s side door for her.

  Of course, that had been the wrong thing to say and she hotly objected, “You wouldn’t? Really? You wouldn’t want to capture your time with me with a picture? Seriously?”

  He groaned and shoved her into the truck then closed the door as soon as her long legs had cleared the frame.

  As they drove off towards Yellowstone, Elizabeth swept her hair up into a high ponytail and complained, “It was impossible to get anywhere with buying the building.”

  “Things tend to move a bit slower in Devil’s Fist.”

  “It wasn’t that,” she sighed. “When I went to the police station to try to get the records of who now retained ownership of the building, the guy who helped me was really discouraging. Friendly,” she mentioned. “He’s some detective and I don’t see why he inserted himself into my effort. The receptionist was doing just fine pulling up records for me.”

  “Wait,” Dean interrupted. “Eddie Friendly took over helping you?”

  “Honestly, he was far from helpful. He acted as though the police ow
ned the building since it had burned down due to a crime. But I happen to know that isn’t true. If it was, Dante wouldn’t be actively trying to buy it, you know?”

  Dean sank into deep thought and realized he was gnawing on his thumb. It was no secret that Eddie Friendly was one of Dante’s damned. If Eddie now knew that Elizabeth was interested in buying the building, then it was only a matter of time before Dante would find out. How would he react to learning that the woman he was trying to court had gone behind his back to steal a piece of property he was interested in.

  Dean should have gone in with her, but that might have only complicated matters for Elizabeth. He figured it was probably for the best that Dante didn’t know Dean was protecting her.

  “I wouldn’t deal with the police anymore,” he advised. “You can go to the county courthouse in Jackson Hole, work with the clerk there, leave the station out of it.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, as he pulled into the dusty parking area inside Yellowstone. “When can we go?”

  “Are you sure you want to buy the building?” he questioned as he shifted his truck into Park and pulled the key from the ignition. “It’s a really big commitment.”

  “And I’m a really big girl,” she reminded him, a bit put off that he, too, would discourage her. “I thought you said you liked having me in the Fist.”

  “I do—”

  “Then why are you trying to get me to reconsider?”

  “It just seemed impulsive that you would want to buy a building in town,” he argued. “Rebuilding it from the ground up could take half a year.”

  “So?”

  “So, are you sure you want to be here for that long?”

  “You are seriously trying to discourage me,” she snapped, shifting in her seat and facing him fully, her eyes wide and hurt. “I’ll have you know that all it takes is a checkbook. I don’t have to be here if I don’t want. Or I could. Either way, it’s really none of your business.”

  “Is this how you do everything?” he challenged. “You act on impulse, think nothing through, assume everything will work out, that the chips will fall into place by magic?”

  “I don’t appreciate your tone.”

  “Just stay away from Eddie Friendly,” he warned.

  “Oh, this again!” she laughed. “Stay away from Dante! Stay away from Eddie Friendly! What next, Dean? You say you like having me here, but then you list off all the people and places I should stay away from. Maybe I should go back to Los Angeles!”

  “Elizabeth?”

  “What!”

  “Shut up.”

  She gasped, appalled at his rudeness, but Dean was already climbing out of the truck.

  Elizabeth was so furious that she opened her own door and hopped out, and as she started for the grassy area near the corral stables, she didn’t wait for Dean to catch up.

  He couldn’t help but grin, however. Ruffling her feathers caused her to become self-sufficient. Maybe he could use this to his advantage…

  “Let’s take Moose Creek Trail,” he suggested when they reached the giant wooden map that detailed all of the trails and their mileage lengths. He pointed out the trail he had suggested and told her, “It’s not too steep and it has some great views.”

  “Will there be moose on it?”

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  “Stupid name then,” she grumbled, starting off in its direction.

  She seemed adamant about ditching him and if Dean was being honest with himself, he didn’t mind hiking behind her. It gave him a decent view of her ass, which looked great in the short-shorts he’d picked out for her.

  After a half hour of hiking through thinly forested trees that ran alongside a babbling creek, he sensed she’d cooled off enough to tolerate him being beside her instead of trailing behind her, so he snuck in, kept quiet, and they soon approached a tall waterfall. Sunlight hit the cascade at just the right angle to kick up a double rainbow. Elizabeth paused at the wooden railing overlooking the falls and admired the rainbows.

  “You don’t see this in Los Angeles,” she breathed, taking in the sight.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to have your picture taken?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, but it was clear to Dean that she did. If anything, her uneasy expression had to do with not being willing to admit it.

  “Here,” he said, pulling his cell phone out of his jeans as he stood beside her. He cued up the camera app, put his arm around Elizabeth so that the waterfall was behind them, and snapped a selfie.

  As he lowered his cell phone, she snatched it and examined the photo, then decided they could both do better.

  He had forgotten that girls could be like this. She proceeded to snap off what felt like a hundred more selfies of them, scrutinizing each one, and finally announced, “We got it.”

  She then carefully deleted every single sub-par photo leaving only the one she had approved, and told him, “Text it to me.”

  At least he’d gotten her out of that dress and into appropriate hiking gear…so, that was progress.

  As they started up the trail that cut at a steep incline along the side of the mountain where the waterfall spilled down, she breathlessly mentioned, “My dad would’ve loved this.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I miss him terribly,” she confided.

  He had never seen her look so vulnerable. It was as though the spoiled, entitled mask she’d been wearing had come off and he could see the real woman beneath.

  “Keeping busy has really helped,” she told him as they huffed and puffed their way up the hill, coming to the first overlook point that held views of the eastern valleys of Yellowstone. “I’m afraid to go home. Before I received my father’s will and realized I would have to drive out to Wyoming, all I did was lay around in bed all day. It was awful.”

  “I lost my dad, too,” he said, offering to bridge a connection with her.

  “You did?”

  “It was about two years ago, but it still stings. He was an incredible person.”

  “So was my dad,” she said, locking eyes with him.

  Her big, green eyes misted over with tears but she blinked them away and stared out at the beautiful view of luscious wilderness, the waterfall and creek it spilled into, the soaring eagles that circled overhead.

  “I feel like I have to be here” she confided. “My father never did anything with that land, you know? But what if he’d always wanted to? What if he’d hoped to put his mark on Devil’s Fist or maybe even lay down his roots here one day? I’d like to do that for him. It’s meaningful to me. But you’re right, Dean,” she said, her tone dropping into the territory of what sounded like regret. “I am impulsive. I don’t think things through.” She sighed and shook her head. “Maybe I shouldn’t have sold the land. Maybe that wasn’t what my dad would’ve wanted me to do. But I did it. And now that I have, I feel like I’d like to try to do something more manageable, a smaller scale project, like rebuilding the corner of Main and Bison in town.”

  “I get it,” he said softly as he rubbed her back.

  “Do you?” she asked, letting out a little laugh. “I’m not even sure I get it. I feel like I’m a mess, being pulled in a million directions. I feel like I’ve been in a blind panic ever since he died. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. I just know that if I stop moving forward, if I actually stop to think, it’ll ruin me.”

  “You’re not alone,” he told her, stepping in and wrapping his arm around her so that they would be standing very close. “I shouldn’t have been so hard on you, but…” He took a moment to reconsider whether or not he should slap a but on what he meant to be a reassuring statement.

  “But what?”

  “I really am trying to protect you. I don’t want to stand in your way of fulfilling your father’s dream. I want you to do what you need to do for yourself, and I don’t want to come in-between you and the memory of your father. But there are some people in this town who aren’t sa
fe to be around.”

  She said nothing, only stared at him with wide, questioning eyes.

  “It’s going to sound crazy to you,” he allowed, prefacing the massive secret he finally felt ready to reveal, “but there are werewolves in Devil’s Fist.”

  Shocked, she stared at him as though he’d just sprouted a second head. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No,” he told her frankly. “I wish I was, but I’m not.”

  Absorbing the magnitude of it all, she asked, “Dante is a werewolf?”

  “Yes, and so is Eddie Friendly.”

  “What?” she breathed. It just wouldn’t compute in her head. “How do you know this?”

  “I’ve seen them,” he told her. “There are others as well.”

  He felt the need to delve deeper into the explanation, mention that in Devil’s Fist there were good werewolves and bad ones. That there was a war looming between the two packs, one that he could only pray would end well for his kind. But he reasoned that before he clued her into the real picture of what had become Devil’s Fist, he ought to let her digest what little he’d just shared.

  “You have to trust me,” he went on. “Let me do my job and keep you safe, and I’ll try not to stand in your way, either. Okay?”

  Her expression shifted as she stared up into his eyes. It seemed like the remorseful mourning that had come over her was being gradually replaced with one that conveyed she might be glad to have met him.

  A little grin tugged at the corner of her mouth as she asked, “Can you stand my impulsive nature?”

  He let out a soft laugh and told her, “When it comes to dropping your dress in my cabin…”

  “You liked that?” she breathed teasingly.

  He felt a deep hunger take control of his heart as he whispered, “Yeah, I did.”

  “You liked how I looked?” she said so softly he almost didn’t hear her.

  She was reeling him in and he felt the length of his body stiffen as a fire burned in his chest.

  “Yes,” he said. “You have no idea what it took not to tear into you.”

  She leaned back against the wooden railing and Dean stepped close in-between her wide stance, gripping the railing at either side of her waist. He drank in the sight of her as she stroked her warm hands up the firm wall of his chest.