Timber Wolf (Virtue Shifters Book 1)

by Zoe Chant

  "For not minding that Noah needed some Mommy Time. Or that I needed some Noah Time, for that matter."

  "You said he's never spent the night away from you before," Jake said, still surprised. "I figured you'd want to spend time together. Why would I mind?"

  "Because men can be really weird about women with kids? Anyway, thank you. I appreciate it." She smiled at him, and Jake's heart ached with the desire to just take care of her.

  And it looked like he was going to be allowed to, which was the most incredible, amazing thing he'd ever imagined. "Whatever you need, Mabs," he said quietly. "I just want to be here for you. For both of you. I didn't come back to Virtue expecting to find everything I ever wanted, but I have."

  Her smile got even brighter. "I didn't come to Virtue expecting anything but a roof over my head. That's gone kind of sideways, but boy, everything else is coming up roses."

  "Hey! You have most of a roof over your head!"

  Mabs laughed and stood on her toes to kiss him. "I know. And I'll have all of one again, come summer. Until then, I guess the buttery wing has a new roof so we can move everything in the bedrooms and attic into it? Because carrying a billion boxes of who-knows-what across half an acre of house sounds like such fun?"

  "Everything sounds fun if it's with you," Jake promised, then laughed aloud at Mabs's skeptical expression. "Okay, that was cheesy."

  "More than cheesy, it was wildly untrue. Jackassing boxes for days on end is nobody's idea of fun, even if it is with the love of your life."

  Jake's heart contracted so hard his wolf became concerned. "Is that what I am?" he asked, almost breathlessly.

  Mabs, squinting like she was trying to fight off a smile, looked him up and down and lost the fight with the smile. "You know what? I think you are. Is that okay?"

  He picked her up, earning a squeak, and spun her around the kitchen. "It's amazing, because I know you're the love of mine."

  "Because your wolf told you so?"

  "Because I never wanted to leave your side from the moment I first walked into this kitchen and saw you." Jake set Mabs back on her feet and smiled down at her.

  Her own smile, already wide, broadened further. "You know Sarah's going to be unbearably smug for all time, right?"

  "So's my wolf," he promised. "So I guess we're okay."

  "Great." Mabs stepped out of his arms, turned him away from her, and gave him a smack on the butt. "Then let's go move some boxes."

  Jake gave a perfunctory yelp and headed for the door. "I suddenly begin to suspect you do not have a romantic soul, Mary Anne Brannigan."

  "You think a woman who moves to a broken-down farm house in upstate New York, hires a carpenter for the price of a barn room, and falls in love with him, doesn't have a romantic soul?" She followed him, and when he glanced over his shoulder, made no apology for having clearly been checking out his backside.

  A zing of desire shot through him and he grinned. "I guess if you put it that way...."

  "I do. Now scoot, we got work to do."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  * * *

  Sarah volunteered to watch Noah for a while, since it was clear emptying the attic would take a lot of adult attention. The afternoon flew by with Mabs mostly in the attic, lugging boxes and whatever furniture she could lift to the little door in the floor and handing them down to Jake, who went up and down the ladder more times than he could count. Sarah stacked boxes on the landing and kept Noah from rummaging through them, which Mabs said was the harder job. Jake went up for the heaviest stuff himself, the women shouting and swearing as they balanced it when he handed it down, and Noah, in the background, scolding everybody for their language.

  But before dinner, they'd cleared the attic out, and Sarah, staying for leftover turkey, got to have Thanksgiving dinner with them after all. Mabs, dramatically throwing herself into a kitchen chair after dinner, said, "They can stay on the landing for tonight. We'll move them to the buttery wing tomorrow, and start on the bedrooms after that. Sarah, I owe you..." She waved a tired hand in the air. "I don't even know."

  "A million massages," Sarah suggested.

  Mabs lit up, straightening in her chair. "I'm supposed to practice on volunteers, so yeah! That's a great idea!"

  "I volunteer as tribute!" Sarah put on an expression of self-sacrifice that made everybody, even Noah, laugh.

  He ran around the kitchen shouting, "I volunteer as tribute!" until Mabs picked him up, said, "As tribute for a BATH?" and hauled him upstairs, protesting, to be washed. Mabs yelled, "G'bye if you leave before I come back down!" at Sarah, who got up for another piece of pie.

  "Are you kidding, I'm never leaving. Jake?"

  "I'm never leaving either."

  Sarah gave him a sly, but pleased, smile. "You two really hit it off, huh? I'm glad. I really am. She's great, and you were always nice. Now do you want pie or not?"

  "I'll make some more whipped cream." Jake got up to do so, and for a minute the whir of the mixer drowned out conversation. When the cream was done, though, he said, "Thanks for introducing us. I didn't mean to stay in Virtue at all, but I kinda think I'm gonna."

  "Oh, you think?" Sarah handed Jake a piece of pie and he blopped whipped cream on it, then lifted his eyebrows to see if she wanted some. She extended her plate and he put a big scoop of cream on her pie, too, then sat down at the table as she said, "I'm glad, though. I guess half our graduating class is still here, but they're not necessarily the ones I'd have chosen to stay. I'd have chosen you to."

  Jake, around a mouthful of pie, said, "I'm flattered," and actually meant it.

  "Well, you're the only one who could restore all the old houses the historical society wants work done on, so maybe don't read too much into it." She winked and Jake laughed.

  "Gee, thanks." His wolf muttered, sulking, and Jake laughed again, both at Sarah and the wolf.

  Sarah smiled, finished her pie, and stood. "I'm going home before Mabs finds another job for me to do."

  "Wise choice. There's a never-ending list of things to do around here."

  "Yeah. I can tell you're suffering." Sarah grabbed her things, yelled, "Bye Mabs! Bye Noah!" up the stairs, and was nearly out the door before a soap-bubbly, naked four-year-old came running down the stairs to slam into her legs for a hug. Mabs, drenched from collarbone to mid-thigh—which would have been alluring if it weren't for her grim expression, and maybe was anyway—thudded down the stairs after him and struggled to grab his soap-slick-self and carry him back to the tub.

  "It's like wrestling a greased pig," she said in despair as they disappeared up the stairs again.

  Sarah leaned on the door and wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. "Look what you've gotten yourself into, Jacob Timothy Rowly."

  Jake grinned after Mabs and Noah, then at Sarah. "Yeah," he said happily. "Isn't it great?"

  TWENTY-TWO

  There were about seventy 'best things' that Mabs could think of regarding having a new boyfriend, but a warm snuggly body in bed with her was at the top of that list the next morning. Or it was, at least, until she had to get out of the cozy bed. Jake made a lazy grab to pull her back, missed, pouted, and sent Mabs to the shower with a dippy little smile firmly in place. There was a giant hole plywood-ed over in her roof, and an ex to deal with, and she'd absolutely never been happier in her life. Jake kissed her goodbye on her way to work, promising he'd get some of the boxes moved down to the buttery wing, and she went off with Noah in tow.

  She thought the work day might drag, keeping her away from Jake as it did, but a little to her surprise, it flew by, people in and out of the diner all day to talk about the unseasonable snow, shopping for the holidays, and whatever bits of family gossip had been generated over the long weekend. Mabs was exhausted at the end of the day, but felt absurdly light and happy anyway, eager to go home to Jake and get more work on the house done.

  He'd gotten all the boxes moved from the landing, and with Noah's 'assistance' they cleared out the smallest of the par
lor-side front bedrooms before Mabs declared it more than enough work for one day. She was even more reluctant to go to work the next morning, but did anyway, and as the lunch rush slowed, Judge Owens came in with a perplexed frown. "Can I talk to you for a minute, Mabs?"

  Mabs cast a glance at her boss, who waved her off, and followed the judge outside into a cloudy afternoon. "Smells like snow," the judge said, still frowning. "Who's Brent Mitchell, Mabs?"

  "I didn't know snow had a sm...ugh." Mabs's heart rate shot up and she took a deep breath, wrapping her arms around herself. "He's my ex-boyfriend. Noah's biological father. Did he lawyer up like he said he was going to?"

  Faint lines of disapproval formed around the judge's mouth. "He seems to think he doesn't need a lawyer, and is asking for a child custody hearing as soon as possible. Are you working Friday afternoon?"

  "Until three, but I can ask Russ to let me off earlier if you need." Mabs's hands went cold with nervousness, even as she reminded herself that Jake would be there to support her.

  "I can make 3:30 work, if you can get to the courthouse by then." At Mabs's nod, Judge Owens said, "Good. I'll get the letters notifying you of the court date in the mail this afternoon and I'll see you on Friday."

  Mabs said, "Thank you," faintly. "Isn't this a little...informal, Judge?"

  Judge Owens's eyebrows rose. "He's filed, I'm sending a letter of notification, it's all on the books. Can I help it if I know most of the people in my jurisdiction by name and find it easier to drop by their workplace to make sure a day is convenient for them, rather than doing it all by letter and phone?"

  A smile crept over Mabs's face. "I guess not. Thank you, Judge."

  "Sure thing." The judge went to her car, cracking the door open before she glanced up again. "Mabs? What on earth was he talking about a wolf for?"

  Mabs's gut clenched before she let out a wheezy laugh. "I'll explain on Friday."

  "Good. I'll send the letter," Judge Owens promised, and got in her car to drive away.

  * * *

  Intellectually, Mabs knew she had nothing to worry about. Brent was the very definition of a deadbeat dad. Noah had never even met him, except the once when he'd shown up at Mabs's house while Jake was babysitting. He hadn't supported them financially, or been any part of their lives. Intellectually, she knew all that.

  It didn't help at all, emotionally. She got through the rest of the work day and went home with Noah, trying to keep an everything's-all-right facade up. It worked on the four-year-old, but Jake's expression darkened to worry as soon as she came in the door. "I can't talk about it right now," she told him quietly, and all he did was draw her into a reassuring hug, instead of nagging her to tell him.

  Mabs could have cried just for that little kindness, but he washed up from doing construction work and made dinner too, while she played with Noah and tried to get her state of mind straightened out. She felt better by the time Jake served up a stew with homemade biscuits, and considerably better after she'd eaten four of them with blackberry jam from the Halloween festival.

  All of that restored equilibrium was wrecked by Noah fighting about bedtime for nearly two hours. Mabs staggered back downstairs, not even actually triumphant, at nearly her own bedtime. Jake was at the kitchen table with a book, a cup of coffee, and a new pair of reading glasses that for some reason made her entire body and soul go directly into horny overdrive. Even exhausted and angry at her kid, it worked well enough to restore some of her sense of humor. She sat down, put her head on the table, and muttered, "Maybe I should let him take him."

  Jake took his reading glasses off and put them on the table. "I don't think that would make you happy, in the end."

  "No," she mumbled. "I guess not. I've put an awful lot of work into him at this point. I'd hate for Brent to screw it all up." She turned her head so she could see him better. "Judge Owens asked if I could come for a court date on Friday. Custody case, I guess. I don't even know if that's what it is, if there hasn't been a drawn-out legal battle around it."

  Jake rose, came to move the chair beside her, and crouched in that space, putting his hand over hers on the table. "What do you need me to do?"

  Mabs made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and slid off the chair into his arms. "I think I need you to just keep being you. Nobody's ever asked me that before."

  Jake's warm arms closed around her and he chuckled into her hair. "I can do that, but if there's anything more concrete, I can do that too."

  "There is something. The appointment is at 3:30 at the courthouse, and I need you to bring something there for me. Can you do that?"

  "Yeah, of course. Just tell me what." He kissed her hair, then tipped her chin up to kiss her lips, too. "It's going to be all right, Mabs."

  Mabs nodded mutely and buried her face against Jake's shoulder. "I'm so tired," she finally said, and felt him smile against her hair.

  "Probably because some brute has been keeping you up much later than you're used to."

  A giggle escaped her. "Probably."

  "Should the brute carry you up to bed? For sleeping?"

  Mabs leaned back to look at him slightly incredulously. "On those stairs? Isn't that taking both our lives into your hands?"

  "Maybe, but you're very small." Jake stood, offering Mabs a hand up.

  "I'm not very small! I'm—I'm pretty small." She took his hand, standing, then yelped in delight as he scooped her into a bride's carry. "Okay, from your perspective maybe I'm very small."

  "I'm happy to go with 'pretty.'" Jake kissed her, somehow managed to turn the kitchen light off while maneuvering them both through the door, and carried her upstairs without clobbering anybody's head or knee or shoulder. A few minutes later, teeth brushed, pajamas on, Mabs fell asleep nestled in his arms, which was as good an end to any day as she could imagine.

  * * *

  The Virtue courtroom matched Mabs's idea of what a small town courtroom should look like, with a wood-paneled interior and high windows with small panes in them. It was less intimidating than she expected, even if her heart was still beating too hard as she'd entered the lobby with Noah. Jake had been waiting for her, as promised, and said, "I'll keep an eye on him," even though they'd already agreed he would.

  There was a bailiff and a court stenographer, but the only other person in the room just then was the judge, who looked pleased at Mabs's arrival. "You're a few minutes early, Ms. Brannigan. Mr. Mitchell isn't here yet. I don't like having children in the courtroom when their parents are discussing custody, but if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to talk to Noah alone for a few minutes?"

  "Sure." Mabs's voice cracked with nerves. "He's in the lobby with Jake. Should I go get him?"

  "I'll go out to talk to him." The judge rose in a swoop of black robes and went out like she owned the place, which Mabs guessed she kind of did. She sat, waiting, and Brent, dressed in a suit and with his hair freshly cut, came in before the judge returned. Mabs nodded at him, but realized she really had nothing to say, so just...didn't. It felt refreshing, and it obviously annoyed Brent, which was an unexpected bonus.

  Judge Owens returned at exactly 3:30 and listened to Brent's impassioned speech about family values and how he'd grown as a person and the effort it had taken to find Mabs and Noah. Mabs moved restlessly in her seat, wondering again how he'd found them, but it didn't seem like the time to ask. Finally his speech wound up and the judge, without changing expression, said, "The court would like to see your financial paperwork showing that you've paid child support for the past four years, please, Mr. Mitchell."

  "My what?"

  Mabs narrowly fought off a grin as a look of impatient expectation crossed the judge's face. "Your tax paperwork showing you've paid child support," she repeated. "Where is it?"

  "Oh, I don't—have it."

  "And why is that?"

  "Uh, I, uh, uh."

  "Ms. Brannigan, do you have any insight as to where this paperwork might be?"

  "I'd be surprised if th
ere is any, Judge. I've never received any child support from him."

  "What does that matter?" Brent demanded. "She's living in an unfit house with my son—"

  Judge Owens did not have a drawl. She drawled, "Well, now, I've been in that house myself, Mr. Mitchell, and it wasn't even unfit when I was last there, three months ago. Given that it's been under constant restoration since then, I can't imagine it's unfit now."

  "There's a hole in the roof!"

  The judge looked enquiringly at Mabs, who spread her hands a little. "That early snow broke the roof's support beam, but it's in the half of the house we're not living in yet. It's plywooded over now, and the attic is Visqueened off for warmth and safety. I have pictures, if you'd like to see."

  "I've seen them," the judge said, almost cheerfully. "They went around on the historical society's WhatsApp group. The court is satisfied with the condition of your home."

  "What about the wolf ?" Brent's voice broke, and Judge Owens's expression became even more enquiring as she looked to Mabs again.

  "If I can open the courtroom door for a minute, please, Judge?"

  The judge's eyebrows lifted with interest and she nodded. Mabs went to the door and Jake handed her the thing she'd asked him to bring for her. She came back in holding Noah's puppy under his front legs, which was harder now than it had been three months earlier. "This is Wolf, Judge Owens."

  "Get that damn dog away from me!" Brent rose and backed up several feet, fury contorting his face. "That's a dog. I saw a wolf."

  Somehow the judge managed to convey the impression of looking over the top edge of glasses, even though she wasn't wearing them, as Brent scrambled as far away from Mabs and the puppy as he could get. "You don't like dogs, Mr. Mitchell?"

  "That's not a crime!"

  "Not at all. Ms. Brannigan, if you could bring Wolf back out into the hall? He appears to be causing the plaintiff some distress."

  "Of course, Judge." Mabs handed the puppy back to Jake, who winked as the doors closed between them again.

  Judge Owens's expression became serious as Mabs returned to her place in the courtroom. "As I'm sure both of you know, the legal system is reluctant to deny all access to a child to biological parents." Mabs's heart sank, and a nasty smile ran across Brent's face, although as the judge continued, his smile faded and Mabs's heart rose.