Timber Wolf (Virtue Shifters Book 1)

by Zoe Chant

  Faces he knew and faces he didn't came in and out all day, working hard, entering the half-constructed kitchen and exiting again with glasses of water or lemonade, bottles of beer, and paper plates laden with the astonishing number of potluck dishes that had been brought over. It had the air of, as Noah said, a party, and Jake enjoyed it from up above where he didn't quite have to interact with it.

  Around 4pm, Mrs. Knutson showed up with the husky puppy Mabs had okayed. Noah, already over-excited, burst into tears, and nobody got much work got done after that. Jake stayed up on the roof even after the rest of his buddies went down to meet the puppy and finished the insulation as the sun set. By then, Noah, hysterical with joy and utterly exhausted, had fallen asleep on the porch, the puppy curled up sleeping beside him.

  "I'll wash up and carry him upstairs, if you want," Jake said quietly to Mabs, who was sitting on the porch step and alternated between smiling tiredly at her son and gazing in astonishment at the...terrible mess of her front yard, if Jake was honest about things. Everyone had done a lot of work, but it had left chaos in its wake.

  She smiled up at him and Jake felt his heart lurch. She had dirt smudged across her nose and her hair was tied up in one of those fast-and-practical looped ponytails that long-haired women somehow magically twisted their hair into so it wouldn't get in their faces. Soft purple strands flew away anyway, slicked back at her temples by sweat. Her jeans and t-shirt were streaked with alternating stripes of dust and dirt. She had on the world's most practical, very dirty, dark brown hiking boots, and a bruise was forming on her upper arm, discoloring one of her tattoos.

  She was the most beautiful person Jake had ever seen.

  "You go wash up," she agreed. "Then you eat something. There's enough food left to feed an army, and you've been up on the roof all day long. I'll bring Noah up."

  Jake nodded as she scooped Noah up, and held the door for them. Noah lifted his head, his eyes widened in sleepy alarm. "Where's Wolf, mama? Where's Wolf?"

  Here! Jake's wolf sat up eagerly, tail thumping, but Mabs, who couldn't hear the wolf, chuckled.

  "He's sleeping too, baby. Don't worry. I'll bring him up as soon as I've got you tucked in."

  "Oh-kay. Okay." Noah put his head on Mabs's shoulder, fast asleep again already, and she smiled over her shoulder at Jake as she passed through the door.

  He looked back at the puppy, once she'd gone upstairs with Noah, and murmured, "Wolf, huh?" to it.

  House-wolf, his wolf said, semi-disdainfully, but nobody, not even wolves, were immune to puppy cuteness.

  I'm a house wolf too, Jake said, amused, and his wolf narrowed its eyes at him before deciding that didn't deserve a response.

  Mabs came back down before he'd gotten out of the doorway, scooped up the puppy, muttered, "You'd better not pee in the bed," to him, and carried him upstairs to sleep with Noah.

  Jake was drying his arms from washing up when she came back, and smiled at her. "You're a good mom."

  "I'm a sucker." Mabs sounded rueful, but not like she really minded. "He's my whole world, and since it doesn't look like there are any brothers or sisters on the horizon, a puppy will be good for him."

  "You want more kids?"

  "I always kind of thought I'd have three." Mabs went to wash up, too, making a face as she realized how messy she was, and muttering, "Ow," when she ran her hand over the blooming bruise. "I wonder what the hell I hit. Jake, you did so much work up there today. Thank you. Have you seen the bathrooms? Or the buttery wing? No, eat first."

  "I can do both." Jake grabbed a paper plate and a pile of potato salad tall enough to hide behind, and followed Mabs through the narrow path left to navigate through the buttery, and into the wing behind it.

  He'd seen it before, because it was where the semi-functional bathroom was, but the bathroom had been the only space anybody could even get into, there. Now what turned out to be a surprisingly large, unpartitioned space spread out with only the marks on flagstone floors indicating where an awful lot of junk had once been stored.

  The floors themselves were in terrible condition, their mortar broken down and the stones uneven and cold on the earth, and the walls were almost see-through in places. Mabs, wryly, said, "I think maybe the crap in here was all that was holding it up."

  "Maybe." Jake handed her his plate of potato salad without thinking about it and padded toward one of the timbers framing the most fragile wall to put his hand on it as he studied the various supports. "I think I can brace it up with a couple of old timbers from the barn, though, and we'll tuck a vapor barrier up against the walls really well for the winter so next summer we can tackle it..." He glanced at Mabs, who was holding his potato salad with a bemused expression.

  Mortification swept him. "Oh my God. I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking." He hurried back to get the plate as Mabs started giggling.

  "It's okay. I think you were thinking that here was another room for you to fall in love with, and that trumped everything else. You think it can be saved?"

  "You didn't throw it on the floor or anything, so I think it's fi—oh. You mean the wing."

  Mabs's eyes sparkled. "I meant the wing."

  It would be all right if the flagstones broke apart and swallowed him entirely, Jake thought. They didn't, though, so he croaked, "I think it can be, yeah," and wondered how long it took to die of humiliation. His wolf tipped its head as if interested to find out, which didn't help. "Not this winter, though, I don't think."

  "I think we have enough to deal with right now. Come see the bathrooms." Mabs led him back through the buttery maze, and the next hour or two slipped away with discussions about how to access the plumbing for new pipes and going through some of the stuff in the front yard.

  The puppy whined, much too softly for humans to hear, but Jake's wolf perked its ears. Jake, without thinking, said, "That puppy's gonna need to pee."

  "Oh!" Mabs ran into the house and emerged a minute later holding the puppy in her arms like it was a baby. He yawned and stretched when she put him down, did his business, then stopped short several feet away from Jake and stared at him in confusion.

  The impulse to shift and play with the little dog was overwhelming. It might even clear up the puppy's confusion—animals tended to react to shifters' scents—but it would be hard to explain to Mabs. Instead, Jake got down on all fours, crouched to make eye contact with the puppy, then jumped his front feet—his arms and hands—forward playfully.

  The puppy—Wolf—vibrated with excitement and copied the gesture, then ran around like a lunatic, nipping and leaping and twisting and generally behaving like a puppy. Mabs laughed until she cried, muffling both the gales and the tears in her hands or the corner of her arm, until Jake, exhausted, rolled onto his back and let Wolf crawl onto his chest and collapse into sleep.

  "I seem to have gotten you a puppy!" Mabs said.

  "I like dogs," Jake said in what he considered to be an epic understatement. "You should get a crate for him to sleep in, especially until he's housebroken. Even puppies don't like to pee where they sleep, if they can possibly hold it."

  "I bow to the expert." Mabs did bow, from her seat on the steps, then got up to stretch and look around. "There's got to be a box that'll do for tonight."

  "Here." Jake curled Wolf into his arm and rose to finish emptying one of the sturdier boxes that had come out of the buttery wing. "I'll knock together a better one in the morning out of scraps."

  "That's really nice of you." Mabs put her hand on Jake's arm, smiling up at him

  His heart missed a beat. Small warm hands, soft smile, sweet scent. He was going to drown in Mary Anne Brannigan, just by standing beside her and feeling the touch of her hand. He said, "Sure problem, it's worries," brightly, then closed his eyes, wincing all over. "That, uh. That came out wrong."

  "You think?" Mabs's laugh, at least, was wonderful to listen to. Jake cracked an eye open to see her grinning at him. "What were you trying to say?"

  "I think
I was going for 'Sure, it's no problem' or 'No worries,' and...it didn't work." An embarrassed smile crawled over his face, Mabs's amusement infecting him.

  She squeezed his arm, still grinning. "Someday some lucky person is going to catch your attention, you're going to have or adopt a bunch of babies, and you'll find out how often you say stuff like that when you've been up for three days and can't remember your own name."

  Jake said, "Okay," as if she'd made a proposition, and a hint of intrigued color came into her cheeks. Then what she'd actually said caught up to him and his eyebrows drew down, himself intrigued. "'Have or adopt?'"

  "Oh, well, I mean, I don't know." Mabs released his arm, suddenly looking embarrassed. "Sarah said you dated girls in high school, but I don't like to make assumptions."

  His wolf, delighted, said, She's been asking about us!, and Jake, equally pleased, couldn't help the smile that broadened across his face. "Sarah said? Been asking about me, have you?"

  "Well, I mean, you know, you're living in my barn and everything," Mabs said faintly, then put a hand over her face. "Yes," she mumbled into her palm. "I might have asked."

  "I like women," Jake said, grinning hugely now. "What else did you ask?"

  Mabs mumbled, "Oh, God," and backed off to the porch step, still smiling but also obviously flustered. "Everybody's coming out here to help because they're dying to know why you're back in Virtue. You know that, right?"

  Jake chuckled and put the box on the ground, and then the sleeping puppy in the box. "Nah. A bunch of the folks who came around during the week, yeah, but today they came to help you, Mabs. People around here like you." He went to sit beside her on the porch step, not too close, but he could still feel her body warmth across the cooling evening. He laced his fingers together, studying the earth beyond them, then raised his gaze to the fence and shrugged his eyebrows. "How many of them have guessed running from a broken heart?"

  He saw Mabs grimace from the corner of his eye. "Pretty much everybody?"

  Another chuckle escaped him. "Yeah, that figures. I thought I'd found the one, yeah."

  Did you, though? his wolf asked. You never told her about me.

  The time never seemed right, Jake answered. The wolf was right, though. He'd never been quite ready to confess the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to his ex.

  He'd been ready to tell Mabs the first day he'd met her, though, except for the... complications. His broken heart. Her kid. It was too much, but it still lingered there, right below the surface. "Turned out she thought she'd found the one, too," he added after a moment. "It just wasn't me. So, yeah, I guess I tucked my tail between my legs and scampered on home to Virtue, where I knew there wasn't any potential for another broken heart waiting for me."

  Mabs exhaled softly, like she'd been hurt. He frowned lightly in her direction and she shook her head, smiling a little. "That's tough. I'm sorry to hear that. You deserve better." She rose, touching his shoulder, and went to get the puppy in its box. "Thanks for telling me. I'll see you in the morning, Jake."

  She went inside, and Jake, feeling like he'd somehow made a mistake, got up and made his way back to the barn, trying to figure out what he'd done wrong.

  TEN

  It didn't matter that Jake Rowly wasn't interested in a relationship, or didn't think anybody in Virtue suited him for one, because Mabs didn't have time to date until the heat death of the universe anyway. She reminded herself of that while they were working together most evenings over the next several weeks, but during the day she hardly had time to think at all, even about Jake's brilliant blue eyes and his equally brilliant smile.

  Fantasies, she thought, were for people who weren't exhausted all the time. The only reason she found room for them at all was that she would have been ten times more exhausted if it hadn't been for Jake, who took over the house restoration like it was his life's blood. The oldest part of the house took shape under his careful, thoughtful work. Mabs came home, night after night, to the roof being finished, the plumbing being updated, and even, after a brief discussion about the financial viability, the windows being redone.

  His willingness to work for so little return gave Mabs time to focus on Noah, and on work, the latter of which she desperately needed to do if she was ever going to pay Jake anything. Not that he seemed to care, but Mabs did. Being beholden to good-looking men was hardly ever a good idea, maybe especially for single mothers who couldn't deny they'd like a little affection in their lives.

  But, she reminded herself again, there wasn't time for that, so she got up every morning, packed Noah up with her, and headed out to the diner while Jake put her house back together. Sarah always asked for a bit of gossip when Mabs dropped Noah off at the library, like there was a passionate affair going on at the Old Brannigan Place instead of two adults so busy with their work they hardly had time to talk to each other. Mabs disappointed her every day, but also left the library with a smile.

  That smile stayed in place until she walked into the diner to find Preston Cole, with his well-cut suit, his affected pocket handkerchief—today's was sky blue—and his smarmy football hero face, waiting for her in one of the booths. "Ms. Brannigan. Nice to see you again. How's the renovation going?"

  "The restoration's going pretty well, thanks." Mabs put a little emphasis on the second word, having learned from Sarah that historical societies liked restorations, not renovations. "Keeping Mr. Rowly busy. What can I get you?"

  He placed his order and she went away, wishing somebody else was available to take over Cole's table. There wasn't, though, not unless she wanted to recruit the boss, so when Preston's order came up Mabs brought it over with a brief smile. She was about to retreat without any further interaction when he said, "So if your contractor ran out with your money, how are you paying Jake?" His smarmy smile slid right into a nasty leer.

  Mabs, carrying a water glass for another table, tightened her fingers around it. "I don't see how that's any of your business, Mr. Cole. Can I get you anything else with your breakfast?"

  "You know you can't pay your mortgage with what you're paying Rowly with, right?" Cole's gaze ran over her whole body, lasciviously, and Mabs, knuckles white around the water glass now, reminded herself she couldn't pay the mortgage without a job.

  Not that a house that had been in the family for two centuries had a mortgage, but that kind of wasn't the point. She gritted her teeth in a smile, said, "Let me know if you need anything," and brought the water to the other table, where Judge Owens was sitting with her teenage daughter Robin.

  Behind her, Cole said, "I can see something I need," loudly enough to be heard around the whole diner. Mabs didn't need to glance over her shoulder to know he was looking at her. "You have any problems with that mortgage, Ms. Brannigan, you come to me. I'd be glad to make some sort of arrangement."

  The judge's daughter, who was, Mabs thought, 17 and a senior in high school, looked from Mabs to Cole, then at her mother. "I'm gonna go use the bathroom, Mom, do you want like another orange juice when I come back?"

  Mabs, grateful for any other topic of conversation, said, "Oh, I can get tha—" as Robin got up. Mabs took a step toward the counter, about to get the juice, and the judge said, "So is Noah excited about Halloween, Mabs?"

  "What?" Mabs blinked back at the judge, who came by her grandmotherly vibe honestly; she had six other children, the oldest of whom had kids older than Noah. Mabs thought she looked like Mrs. Claus, assuming Mrs. Claus ran a tight ship and brooked no fools. Which she probably did, to be fair. "Oh, God. So excited. He's gonna be Captain America. Actually, he already is, all the kids have been wearing their costumes to the library all week and they're adorable. And there's a whole town-wide trick-or-treating event on Saturday afternoon, right? That's how it works here?"

  "There's a whole carnival," the judge said. "Starts at about ten, wraps up at four, and anybody who's left standing goes trick-or-treating after that. I hope we'll see you there. You and Jake both."

 
Mabs smiled. "I swear I'm not keeping him on a leash. Thanks, we'll be there. But let me get you that orange juice, Ju—"

  Across the diner, Robin Owens had already gotten the glass of juice, and as she made her way back to her mother's table, tripped. A girlish shriek cut through the air, followed by an outraged, mannish bellow as the entire contents of the juice glass splashed onto Preston Cole's face and chest.

  Robin cried, "Oh my God!" in what sounded like genuine horror while her mother leaped up to see if Robin was all right. "I'm fine!" Robin cried. "I just tripped on my shoelaces! Gosh, what a mess! Look what I've done!"

  Preston snarled and stormed out, and every ounce of contrition or drained from Robin, leaving her with a glow of self-satisfaction while her mother tried not to smirk. They both came back to their table, and Robin sat with her feet dangling off the side of the booth seat, where Mabs could see them easily. "I guess I should have let you get that juice after all, Ms. Brannigan."

  Mabs, struggling not to smile, said, "Why don't I get it for you now? On the house. And thank you," she added softly, because Robin was wearing pretty, ballet-style flats.

  Flats that didn't have a shoelace in sight.

  Robin winked, her mother smirked again, and Mabs went through the rest of her shift with a light heart.

  * * *

  She came home still cheerful, feeling as though she belonged in Virtue more than she'd ever belonged anywhere. That would have been enough, but she found Jake standing in the hallway, hands on his hips and a thoughtful expression on his face as he studied the half of the house they hadn't touched yet. "You know, snow's not due for weeks yet..."

  "I did know that," said Mabs, who had not known that. A waft of wonderful scent came from the kitchen and she got distracted from asking, "So what does that mean," and said, "Oh my God, Jake, did you cook? What did you cook? It smells incredible," instead. She poked her head into the kitchen, where Wolf raised his head from beneath the table, then scrambled toward the door in search of his boy.