by C. P. Rider
"Will do." Chandra snatched up the sobering charm. "You should get out of the water. You need to go home."
"Why?"
"Something happened at the bakery tonight."
I groaned. "Not another alpha leader."
"Come on, get out." She dropped the silver necklace over my head. "You need to see it for yourself."
"To be fair, I was tranqed by a couple of bear shifters earlier. So, that might have something to do with why I was so tipsy this evening." I glanced across the Jeep's console at Chandra, and then back out at the darkened road. The clock on the dashboard read 9:15 p.m., and we'd just turned off the interstate.
"Tipsy. Such a precious, delicate word for shit-faced," Chandra said.
"I wasn't that drunk. And I told you, it was the tranquilizer dart."
"Or maybe it was the margaritas?"
It was definitely the margaritas. The dart had barely affected me. The stuff in it was weak, even for human-grade, and not magically spelled at all. Besides, it hadn't been in my arm long enough for much to get into my bloodstream.
"I could have driven myself home, you know. The witches' charm sobered me up."
"Call me crazy, but I don't one hundred percent trust their magic. All I need is for the charm to wear off halfway to Sundance and you drive yourself off the road. Alpha would kick my ass."
"Thppt. He doesn't care."
Chandra said nothing, just shook her head and flicked her turn signal to make a right turn into the bakery parking lot.
"I don't see anything wrong with my bakery—except for the boarded-up back door. And the burning car is off the street, so that's a nice change. You said something happened. I assumed it was something bad, since that's pretty much been the norm around here for the last few months."
"Something did happen." She parked her jeep in my usual spot and turned off the engine. "Come on."
We circled around the bakery to the front, Chandra scanning the building from foundation to roof. "Do you see it?" she asked when we'd reached the door.
"See what? It's dark and I don't have shifter vision."
With an impatient grumble, Chandra grabbed me by the elbow and hauled me to the door. "What about now?"
I stopped reacting to Chandra and started paying attention. She wasn't the type of person to make a mountain out of a molehill. She was much more likely to crush a mountain into a molehill. With her bare hands.
The sidewalk under my feet was gritty, as usual. Sundance was a desert town that abutted the Rattler Mountains. Sand, grit, and dust were a way of life. I'd swept before leaving this afternoon, but it hardly mattered. I'd sweep again in the morning. Futile, but I did it because my uncle had done it and I figured he'd had a good reason.
"Someone came up to the door. A customer, maybe?" I pointed to the scuffed dirt around the doorway. The bakery's exterior lights shone down on the sidewalk, revealing what appeared to be a size ten- or eleven-men's running shoe.
"The closed sign is visible from the street at all angles." Chandra handed me a flashlight. "Look closer."
There were gouge marks around the doorframe and the lock. "Someone tried to break in." I pointed the light at the glass in the door. "They tried to take out the window here. There are marks in the wood frame around the glass."
"Good. You're getting it." Chandra crossed her arms and leaned on the front post. "Since you can't see much, I'll tell you the rest. The perpetrator also tried to push out one of the windows on the side of the building. Don't know why they didn't just break it, but I suspect they knew there were shifters around who would hear. They poked around the plywood Alpha put up to replace the broken door, then climbed up on the roof and attempted to drop through a vent into the attic."
"The roof? Are they inside the building?" A shiver shook through me. Whoever this was had really wanted in.
"No. For whatever reason, they abandoned the roof. Alpha closed off the attic access this afternoon after he finished with the back door. Maybe they thought it was too much work."
"If it was a shifter, they could have ripped the back door off—same with the attic entrance. Maybe it's not a paranormal."
"You think it's just some average thief looking for money and pastries?" She laughed humorlessly. "Are you serious?"
"No." I switched off the flashlight and handed it back to her. "I think it's probably another damn alpha."
"Given the last few weeks, I think it's safe to say so. This was someone trying to be quiet and careful. And Neely, I worry more about someone like that, because they're willing to take their time and watch for the exact right moment to jump."
Chandra and I went into the bakery through the front door, her sniffing and listening, me scanning the brains of everyone in my vicinity. I picked up nothing except Chandra rattling off her shopping list in her head—spoiler alert, there were three kinds of bullets on it—and the faint, nothing thoughts of a resident out walking his dog.
I flicked on the lights and moved slowly around the café, noting the Halloween jack-o-lanterns and the Dia de los Muertos sugar skull decorations mixed in with my tío's luchador masks and the Talavera vases. Nothing appeared to have been moved or otherwise tampered with, so I went into the kitchen while Chandra checked upstairs.
"All clear. No one hiding in your closet." She jogged down the stairs and up to the worktable beside me.
"What about the attic? Did you check up there?" I hadn't sensed any brains besides Chandra's, but I liked the idea of her checking it out to be sure.
"Nope. Didn't need to." She peered over her shoulder.
Lucas came down the stairs one tread at a time, maintaining eye contact with me as he descended. How long had he been here? I hadn't detected him in the building, and I should have been able to read him. What the heck was wrong with me?
"There's no one in the attic," he said. "I boarded up the vent, since it served no purpose. You have another vent on the west side of the attic that isn't roof accessible. It's not in use, but if you need it, I can send Earp over to take a look. Probably want to think about getting an attic fan anyway." He cleared his throat and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.
Yep, he was feeling as awkward as I was.
"Thank you." I didn't break eye contact with him as he crossed the kitchen to stand in front of me.
"You're welcome." The way he said it, low and growly, made goosebumps break out all over me.
"Yeah, so, I'm out." Chandra backed through the doorway separating the kitchen from the café. "Happy birthday, Neely."
"Thanks," I mumbled, but she was already gone.
"Come home with me, birthday girl," Lucas said. "Please."
For once, I didn't even argue, just nodded and followed him out.
Chapter Three
We didn't speak much on the ride to his place.
Lucas unlocked the front door and led me into his kitchen. The room was as big as my studio above the bakery, and outfitted with top of the line equipment—all this for a man who rarely cooked. Such a waste.
While I might not always be able to articulate my feelings about Lucas, I wasn't shy about saying I was in love with his stove. It was a sexy six-burner, double-oven Viking, and had probably cost more than my car. Every time I set eyes on it, I just wanted to cook things.
"Cheese plate okay? I know how you like wine snacks," Lucas said.
I nodded. Smiled.
Lestat lounged in a heavy art glass bowl on top of the fridge. The chubby white feline meowed raucously at us until Lucas took a packet of treats out of a drawer and tossed some into his bowl. The cat snarfed them down and promptly fell asleep.
I took a seat on a stool at the enormous island and eyed Lucas as he moved around the kitchen. I enjoyed watching him, loved the fluid way his body moved. He was as handsome as the devil himself, and practically radiated sexual energy, but he was so much more than that. He was strong and vulnerable, sweet and obnoxious, and so incredibly loving. He made me laugh and cry, made me question
myself all the time, worried me, and worried about me. I was falling for him. Hard.
Or maybe I'd already fallen.
My gaze snagged on a tall white cake on a silver pedestal in the center of the island. It was round and triple-tiered and had yellow buttercream roses over half the top and trailing down one side. There was a small blue box beside the cake, and a bottle of champagne floating in melted ice in a silver bucket.
Lucas hadn't forgotten my birthday.
I climbed up onto my knees on the stool and scooted the cake closer. "Do you think it was another alpha trying to break in?"
"Probably." Lucas pulled a bottle of water and a plate of cheese from the fridge. He set both in front of me. Then he snagged a loaf of French bread off the counter by the stove and took a serrated knife out of a drawer.
"Who?"
He shrugged. "Chandra and I both thought it smelled like a wolf. No one we recognized."
"Just another alpha looking for a crossbreed," I mumbled.
Lucas wrinkled his nose. "Can we stop referring to the process as turning you into a crossbreed? Makes you sound like a Labradoodle."
I laughed a little. "How about transforming into Goddess of Fur and Spike?"
"That makes no sense."
"It makes total sense. Plus, it's badass, and everyone knows being badass is way more important than making sense."
"True." He cut the bread into inch-wide slices. "It's the spike on the end that really sells it."
"I think so, too." A thought occurred to me. "Did you ask King if he saw anyone around my bakery when we stopped for gas?"
King Jones owned the Sundance Auto gas station, mini mart, and auto repair center across the street from my bakery. He was a lion shifter and mostly kept to himself. Not long ago, he'd done some risky things to help me save Lucas's life. He was one of the shifters in town who neither feared nor hated me.
"Yes. No one saw or heard anything." Lucas slammed his fist on the counter and the cake pedestal jumped. "It's frustrating as hell."
"Tell me about it." I reached across the island, snagged a square of cheddar from the cheese plate, and popped it into my mouth. "Thank you for my birthday cake, by the way. I love buttercream roses."
"I know. You ate all the roses off those cupcakes the Cortez family brought me from the bakery in San Diego, remember? You wouldn't even share." He tried a smile, but it wouldn't stick. He was worried, and was having trouble hiding it.
"I wish we'd saved our fight for tomorrow."
"Yeah." Lucas swiped a rose off my cake and ate it. "Fighting on your birthday sucks."
"This is my worst birthday ever. Even my dad forgot it."
Before today, I would have given the worst birthday award to my thirteenth birthday, which was the day after my father sent me away with my uncle José. He'd said it would be safer for me to go. But he didn't come with us. I guess it was safer for him to stay behind.
"Sorry about fighting." Lucas slid the plate of cheese in front of me. "And sorry about your dad."
"It's fine. My dad is famous for overlooking things that are important to me. Missing my birthday is pretty much on brand for him at this point."
"I had a dad like that. He left for good when I was seven and I went to live with my grandmother. The formidable Luciana Blacke."
"You mentioned before having issues with your grandmother." I hoped it wasn't too obvious that I was trying to draw him out on the subject. He rarely spoke about his family. I knew his Bengal tiger shifter mother was deceased, knew his grandmother was kind of mean, but I didn't know much more than that. This was the first time I'd heard him mention his father.
"Grandmother is beautiful, defiant, and smart. Obviously, I took after her in some ways." This time when he smiled, he managed to hold it for a beat. "But she is also controlling, mean as a snake, and manipulative. I ran away when I was sixteen and joined the pack in San Diego a few years later to escape her. Fat lot of good that did. She bought a house in La Jolla right after I joined."
"What did you do in the time between when you left home and when you joined the Malcolm Pack?"
Lucas set the bread knife in the sink. "Did some traveling. Went to college."
"How did that work out?" I grabbed the water bottle he'd taken from the fridge and opened it. No champagne for me tonight. I was boozed out.
He made a so-so gesture with his hand. "I got my Bachelor's in computer science from USC. My grandmother felt my degree was a waste of time, so didn't bother attending my graduation. She thought I should be training to be an alpha leader. She loved when I joined Xavier Malcolm's pack, but hated when I didn't eventually wrest control of it away from him."
I focused on the most surprising piece of information. I'd already known his grandmother was a piece of work. "You're an engineer? Did you ever work as one?"
"Well, I worked for a major telecommunications corporation in San Diego for a year and a half. Partway through my second year, I took the position on Malcolm's security team. I made a lot more money working for the pack, so I quit my job and focused on that." He moved away from the sink and propped his hip against the island countertop across from where I sat. Absently, he grabbed a piece of sliced French bread off the plate he'd placed them on and handed it to me. "So, you know, good call on my part."
"Well, it's not as if you knew then that he would later try to kill you."
"True, though I always knew he was capable. I just trusted that he wouldn't as long I was useful to him. After that, I assumed he meant it when he said he understood why I needed to go."
I took a bite of the bread and pointed at him with the crust. "You know, it's kind of nice to hear that you make mistakes, too. I feel less alone."
"I make mistakes all the time." He smirked. "You know, to keep you from feeling alone."
I rolled my eyes. "So, will I ever get to meet your grandmother?"
"With any luck, no. She refuses to come to Sundance, not that I've invited her, and is nearly ninety, so she doesn't travel much anymore. Keeps falling off her broom."
Ah, Mr. Sarcasm had returned. "Does she still live in La Jolla?"
"No, that was a vacation home. Currently, she lives under a bridge in Seattle where she makes dark bargains with unwary bridge crossers. Or so I assume."
More sarcasm. Lucas was obviously getting uncomfortable. "Did you grow up in Seattle?"
"No. Grandmother moved there after I left home. I grew up in Los Angeles." He pushed the bread plate at me. "Eat this. I cut it up for you."
And with that, the subject of Lucas Blacke's past was closed.
"Neely?"
I chewed on a piece of crisp crust. "Yeah?"
One shoulder sagged as he leaned against the counter. "Why did you go to the witches tonight instead of waiting for me?"
"Because I was mad at you for storming out."
"Storming out? I went home to pick up some plywood. Earp started stockpiling the stuff in my carport after your windows were shot out." He straightened and pointed at me. "I did that to fix your back door—and the attic entrance."
I stopped chewing and jabbed at him with a square of cheddar. "You asked me to join your group. I said no, so you got angry. You stormed, don't lie."
All the fight drained out of him. He snagged a slice of muenster, stared at it, then popped it into his mouth. "Fine. I stormed." He chewed it fast, then dusted his hands on his jeans and reached for the champagne. "But you disappeared. Not even a text. And later that night, when I heard from Chandra that a wolf shifter had been sniffing around, what do you think I thought? Especially on the heels of yet another attempted kidnapping?"
"Oh." I swallowed the cheese. It went down rough.
Lucas thunked the champagne bottle on the counter as if it had suddenly become too heavy for him. "Jesus, Neely, I thought you were gone, and I didn't know where, or with whom, and I panicked. I wanted to burn down the town looking for you."
"I'm sorry." I jumped off the stool and went around the island, straight in
to his arms.
"I'm sorry, too. For pressuring you." He kissed the top of my head and hugged me tight against him. His arms were like steel bands squeezing my shoulders. His heart beat a speedy rhythm against my cheek. "You scared me, sugar cookie."
His honest reaction surprised me. Lucas and I had been funny about naming what was happening between us. We had great sex. He liked me. I liked him. But that was all superficial and we both knew it on one level or another. There was more to us than that. There was a warmth about this man that lurked behind the sarcasm, the hot body, and the raw power that drew me to him like no one else.
He felt like home to me.
"I got drunk on prickly pear margaritas and sadness," I said after a moment.
"Chandra told me." He wrapped one of my curls around his finger and released it."She also said you were skinny dipping in the hot spring."
"You're supposed to skinny dip in the hot spring." I wrinkled my nose. "However, I forgot to take off my underwear before I jumped in and, FYI, it's uncomfortable to wear wet chonies."
"Are they still wet?" He loosened his grip on me and I tipped my head back to peer up at him.
"No idea. I took them off when you went into King's to pay for the gas."
A long, low growl rumbled in his chest. He slowly lifted the hem. "I'm not a telepath like you, so I can't be sure you're telling the truth unless I see for myself."
"Oh please." I smoothed my sundress back down. "You got an eyeful when I jumped out of your truck."
"My eyes were closed."
"You could take my word for it."
"I could." He slid his hands under my dress and over my ass, easing me close as he lowered his mouth to my ear. "But where's the fun in that?"
Two hours later, Lucas turned on the light and nudged me.
"Wake up, Goddess of Fur and Spike."
"No fur." I was the sort of sleepy that makes trying to wake up feel like swimming through a pool filled with honey. "Only spike. It's my birthday, leave me alone."