by Zoe Chant
Not that he’d ever had to warn Theo about being polite.
Theo nodded. “Yes, sir.”
The assignment must have been a relief to him, because his dragonmarks started fading right away. It was only his fleeting smile which told Martin that he suspected any ulterior movies.
But it was true that the crowd needed to be handled carefully. And it was even more undeniably true that Theo was the most courteous of them. Fugitives would sometimes sheepishly apologize to Theo for having ever run away in the first place. Theo would get results at the same time as he got some air and a task to focus him. Win-win.
His pegasus tossed its tail approvingly. Our herd. Then there was a twitch of its mane. They’re all here. They’re all... here?
So the horse’s bout of good sense had been short-lived after all.
I know they’re all here, Martin said. I can see them.
But there was something in the pegasus’s pose that made him pay attention. He could feel it inside him, much more vivid than usual. The horse’s neck was outstretched, its delicate ears were pricked up, and its wing feathers were ruffled. It was longing to go over to the crowd of courtroom evacuees when usually being penned in by people made it—and him—feel a little on edge.
Strange.
Shifters knew better than to ignore their instincts. Maybe this was nothing, but he didn’t want to take that chance.
“Come on,” he said. “We could all stand to mingle a little. Spread out and convince people that we’re going to keep them safe.”
“I’ll tell them I like not getting blown up,” Gretchen said. “I have plans for this weekend.”
“Do you really?” Colby said, impressed. None of them ever seemed to manage social lives.
“Niece’s birthday party. I know you think you’re wild, Colby, but you haven’t been to a real rager until you see a bunch of sugar-crazed four year-olds fighting over a unicorn cake.” She touched Martin’s elbow. “In other words, please make me work this weekend.”
The crowd might have seemed tame and manageable from the courthouse steps, but up close, it was a bustling hive of paranoia, camera flashes, and gossip.
“Gretchen,” Martin said, “I think I can promise you won’t make that birthday party.”
Gretchen grinned at him and peeled off to start giving out official reassurances.
“I don’t suppose it would help if I told them that I’d be able to smell if there were a bomb in the building?” Colby said hopefully.
Martin knew that even in human form, werewolves often retained their heightened senses of smell. He still doubted even that would automatically give Colby the ability to sniff out explosives that could have been hidden in rooms—or even on whole floors—of the courthouse that he hadn’t visited that morning. He said so.
“I could schedule you for some professional development, though,” he added. “Put you in classes with the German shepherds.”
“I’m not nominating you for supervisor of the year this year,” Colby said. “Just for that. Enjoy being beaten by what’s-her-name out of the Springfield office.” He exhaled through his teeth. “I don’t like this happening on my turf. If this is about that ‘trial of the century’ bullshit, that means it was about my courtroom. No one edges in on my territory.”
When wolves decided to act like shepherds, anyone attacking the flock was in trouble. Martin would have no problem unleashing Colby’s fury on whatever prank caller had probably phoned in the bomb threat... but until they had an actual suspect on hand, he was going to have to pull Colby off courtroom security. Colby wouldn’t like it, but he would have to deal with it. Security detail required calm and common sense, not things angry wolves with their territorial instincts on high were famous for.
He tried to think of something that might unwind Colby a little in the meantime.
“Jillian’s stepmother. You’d recognize her, wouldn’t you? Why don’t you go talk to her, since Theo’s probably busy? She’s essentially one of the family, and I know Theo would like it if someone looked after her a little.”
Colby bit his lip. “I want to, yeah, but I don’t want to miss the bomb squad.” He looked hopefully at Martin. “Hey, you could keep her company.”
“I’ve never even met her.”
“I only met her the once,” Colby said. “She’s nice, she liked me. And you’re much more likable than I am, so I wouldn’t worry about it. Go introduce yourself.”
He pointed out a sensibly dressed woman who seemed to be entertaining a group of kids and their rattled parents.
“That’s her. Tiffani-with-an-I.”
Resigned, Martin started crossing the street to her.
Only a quarter of the way in, duty turned into pleasure of a kind he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Tiffani Marcus was lovely. So lovely even the sun itself seemed to love her: it glittered in the gold undertones of her bronze-colored hair and fell appealingly across her bare calves. The line of her tweedy, almost old-fashioned skirt against her skin was somehow one of the sexiest sights of his life.
But what drew him in even more was her animation and her air of complete expertise.
Here was a woman who, on her first day of work—on her first day of work in years—had effectively had her life threatened, and yet she had immediately started helping things run smoothly. He could only imagine how scared the children had been before she’d started talking. Now they just looked enthralled. Even their parents were thawing out of their shock, looking at this golden goddess of efficiency like they had no idea where she’d come from.
She didn’t seem like she needed his help at all.
Somehow that seemed... incredibly restful. He didn’t stop walking. If nothing else, he wanted to meet her. He wanted to know if she was telling a story or telling jokes or, for all he knew, putting on some kind of amateur improvised magic show.
Telling a story, as it turned out. He made sure not to distract her until it was finished.
Playing to a modern audience, Tiffani concluded her apparent fairy tale with, “And the intergalactic rock star and her space pirate boyfriend lived happily ever after out among the stars.”
“Playing Minecraft!” one kid yelled.
Tiffani’s face clearly announced that she had no idea what this meant, but she continued seamlessly. “Absolutely. Playing lots of Minecraft.”
The kids devolved into a discussion of the different things the rock star and the space pirate would build in Minecraft. The adults all sagged with visible relief at the lack of tears and tantrums. Martin saw at least one dad mouth a very fervent, “Thank you,” at Tiffani.
Her answering smile was stunning. She had just a little bit of a gap between her front teeth, and it was irresistible, both cute and sexy.
Half of Martin was glad that she’d been thanked and her work had been appreciated.
The other half of him boiled up in unnecessary anger against the man who’d thanked her. He could have transformed right then and knocked the man halfway across the street with a hoof to the chest. All for being the person to get the full sunniness of that smile.
Was he worn that thin, that he would get angry at someone for nothing at all? Had he gotten that lonely?
It is not fair, his pegasus conceded, but it is not nothing.
Martin couldn’t argue with that.
He said, “Ms. Marcus?”
Tiffani turned.
Whatever she actually said in response was lost to him.
Her. This is her. She’s the one.
His pegasus reared back and let out a loud, exuberant cry. It was more unearthly than any whinny.
Our mate! She’s here!
I can’t have a mate, Martin thought, in shock. I missed my chance. I missed my chance a long time ago.
He had missed his chance for a mate. He had married anyway and then lost the wife he’d loved. That part of his life was supposed to be over now, wasn’t it?
He could suddenly remember everything he’d
ever heard about this woman. How she had acted as mother and friend to a stepdaughter who’d desperately needed someone in her corner. How she’d kept her chin up all through the ordeal of her husband’s trial and its aftermath. How, faced with the end of her life of luxury, she hadn’t despaired but had simply reinvented herself.
She had started over completely. If anyone knew fresh starts after missed chances and tragedies, it was Tiffani Marcus.
“Are you all right?” Tiffani said.
She stepped closer to him. Martin could smell the delicate scent of her perfume, like jasmine and silk.
He made himself ignore what felt like the stampede in his heart.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m sorry I got distracted.”
Tiffani smiled that adorable smile and spread out her hands, indicating the still-simmering chaos around them. “I don’t know what you could have possibly found distracting.”
Martin couldn’t help smiling back. “I hope you won’t judge our fair courthouse too harshly just yet. Trust me, most of your days will be much more boring.”
“I didn’t think I would ever say this, but boring sounds incredible right about now. Are you...”
He could see her eyeing him, taking in his height and build.
“...Security?” she finished. “A cop?”
“A Marshal. I work with Theo.”
“Then you must be Martin. I think you’re the only one I haven’t met, and you have—”
“Gray hair?”
“An aura of authority.”
“Being tall helps,” Martin said.
He’d been half-joking, but the pixie-height Tiffani considered this and nodded. “I’ll wear higher heels.”
With higher heels, the top of her head would come almost level with his chin. If he embraced her, that fiery golden hair would brush against him.
“It seems to me like you have an aura of authority already,” Martin said.
“As long as the crowd all still likes juice boxes.”
He wished she wouldn’t sound like she was shrugging off her accomplishment. It was no mean feat to do what she’d done.
“Well, we may have to enlist you for more storytelling. We’re all going to be camping out in the parking lot until the bomb squad arrives and gives the place the all-clear. That can take a while.”
It would make him happy to look over at some point during the long slog of the wait and see her holding the kids spellbound or improvising a hopscotch court with lipstick on pavement.
It would also kill him. Every inch between them, especially with danger and uncertainty in the air, would feel like a torment. Now that he knew that, he couldn’t unlearn it. Now that he’d seen her, he couldn’t go back.
Now that he’d talked to her, he couldn’t even want to.
He said, “I’m so happy to finally meet you.” His whole heart was in those words.
“I’m happy to meet you too. Theo’s said a lot of very good things about you.”
“To be fair, Theo says a lot of very good things about everyone.”
“I know, but—” She hesitated, her full upper lip with its perfect pink Cupid’s bow poised against her gapped front teeth.
God, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted that more than anything.
“But?” he prompted.
“But... they seem true. You are what he said you’d be.”
Martin couldn’t think of an answer to that that came anywhere close to what he really wanted to say.
That awkward silence marked the only time he’d ever been happy, even in a painful way, to see Judge McMillan bearing down on him.
McMillan had always reminded him of a vulture shifter. As far as Martin knew, there was no such thing, but if there had been, it would have been Terrence McMillan. At least a real vulture would have had an excuse for its ghoulish prying and its obvious delight in other people’s pain.
“Powell!”
“Your Honor,” Martin said mildly.
If they were going to use titles, he should have been Chief Powell or Chief Deputy Powell. But Terrence McMillan was the kind of man who wanted everyone’s respect without giving out any in return.
Tiffani seemed to shrink back into herself as McMillan inserted himself into their conversation, the sunniness of her demeanor clouding over quickly. Something had happened there.
Whatever it was, McMillan seemed indifferent to it, as if Tiffani were beneath his notice.
Crush him beneath our hooves, his pegasus suggested. He is rude to our mate and he’s an interruption. Teach him a lesson.
Trust me, Martin said, I’m considering it.
It was a good thing pegasi excelled at staying aloft during whirlwinds. This day would have already knocked him down otherwise.
“Why does everyone already know this was about a bomb?” McMillan growled.
That would have been a good question if he didn’t know McMillan already knew the answer.
“Your Honor, you know how fast gossip can spread in a courthouse. Everyone who works here knows what that sound means and someone talked. That’s all it ever takes.”
“I want that Marshal who was on duty in my courtroom fired at once,” McMillan said.
“Not going to happen.”
“This is not a debate, Powell!”
“You’re right, it’s not. You have influence, Your Honor, but you’re not above me in any chain of command. We don’t even work for the same level of the government. We share a building, that’s it. I have a responsibility to safeguard the courthouse and I take that seriously, as does—”
He had started to say “as does Deputy Acton,” reflexively wanting to defend Colby from McMillan’s wrath, but then he realized it was unlikely McMillan even knew who Colby was. Why name his target for him if he didn’t have to?
Martin smoothly concluded, “As does everyone on my team. And if you can think of a way for a man on guard duty in a courtroom to have stopped someone somewhere else from making a phone call, you can have my job, because you know it better than I do. We’ll be on guard and on high-alert for the safety of everyone in this building.”
“That’s not good enough!”
“It’s the only answer, so it’ll have to be.”
“I’ll have your badge for this,” McMillan hissed.
“I’m sure you’ll try.”
“It seems,” Tiffani said, her voice quiet but steel-strong, “like there are better things you could be doing, Your Honor. I’m sure the jury would like your leadership right about now. They’re probably confused and frightened.”
McMillan finally seemed to notice that she was standing there.
“Yes.” His tone implied that he caught her mockery but didn’t know exactly what to do with it: could someone really think that his leadership was a joke? “They probably are. We’ll discuss this later, Powell.”
He swept off in a flurry of black robes. Like an evil sorcerer.
“You laid that on a little thick,” Martin said.
“I couldn’t resist. And it’s true—what business does he have running around trying to blame someone when everyone on the jury is probably scared out of their minds?”
The passion in her voice stunned him. It seemed like it had been years since he’d felt that strongly about anything. Maybe it had been.
If so, what a waste of all that time, living in a gray and muted world when he could have been in one shot through with care and conviction. With color.
Was it selfish to think that he already couldn’t stand to lose her?
You won’t lose her. She’s your mate.
Minute by minute, he believed that even more. Their chance was here and now and he was going to seize it and never let it go.
Chapter Three: Tiffani
I could get used to looking up at this man.
Chief Deputy Martin Powell was, as he himself had pointed out, tall. Tall and broad and hard-muscled in a way that made Tiffani think of blacksmiths and gladiators. He was handsome in a way that seeme
d to have no modern equivalent.
It was like he’d stepped out of an older and more magical time.
His salt-and-pepper hair was close-cropped, with just enough length to suggest that she would be able to get her hands into it. To get enough of a grip to pull him down to meet her...
She was forty-four years old—forty-five next month. She had too much going on in her life to be panting around her stepdaughter’s boyfriend’s boss like a swoony teenager.
But it wasn’t that he made her feel young. Not really. It was that he made her feel like herself. And made her like it,
What could be more dangerous in a man than that?
He didn’t make her worry about her hair or her waistline or whether or not the skin cream she was using had tightened up her pores. He didn’t look at her like he was seeing art that needed just a little bit more restoration before he’d be willing to buy it. He just—looked at her. A lot.
With an expression in his eyes that she had never seen before.
And he’d told off Judge McMillan, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, hot as hell. He’d taken responsibility and protected his people, both things her ex had never been able or willing to do.
She was on the verge of developing a crush when she noticed the wedding band on his finger.
Regret slid down to her heart, an ice cube chilling everything in its path.
No matter how he looked at her, no matter how much she liked him, she wasn’t making the mistake of becoming someone’s side-dish. She had suffered too much from Gordon’s affairs to play the mistress to another wife.
She tried to stop her smile from fading. It was one thing not to flirt, but it was another thing entirely to swerve into being cold. He hadn’t actually hit on her. He had just made her wish he would.
He still seemed to have caught some change in her expression.
“It must have scared you,” he said quietly. “Were you in the courtroom when the alarm went off?”
Right. The bomb threat. That was probably more important in the grand scheme of things than a little temporary romantic—and, okay, erotic—disappointment.