Chapter 5
Five
Wolves were big and scary and so fluffy, how could anyone resist hugging one just to feel all that fur?
“Ignore the fluffy,” she muttered. “Remember the part about big and scary.”
— ANNE BISHOP
Iwas Vanity Fur Salon’s least productive employee.
Not even Deelie Sue’s surprise text inviting me for coffee after I finished my shift of washing and clipping could make me focus. She’d offered to be my business mentor and share lessons learned from running her used car emporium.
On the one hand, Deelie Sue was a successful businesswoman who was respected by a great many people, myself included. On the other hand, I felt weird about my waterslide shenanigans where I’d gone for a hot ride with her ex-boyfriend mere minutes after she had. He’d asked me to step out with him and added his contact information to my phone.
On a third (and purely hypothetical) hand: werewolves. Werewolves existed, and both Ford and Deelie Sue were werewolves. If I’d correctly read between the lines during Ford’s explanation about his semi-seeing Deelie Sue for all those years, there was some kind of expectation that werewolves hung out with other werewolves and made werewolf babies, presumably to ensure the continuation of the species.
And on a fourth hand (I had octopus aspirations): I’d spent way too much time thinking about Ford and his broad shoulders and narrow waist, his sexy growling and the way he’d literally stepped in to be my rock. It was his fault that I was thinking about sex instead of the poodle I was clipping or my to-do list.
My to-do list couldn’t compete with his kisses, that was for sure.
Nor could the goldendoodle on my table, adorable as he was.
I’d conducted a retrospective on that last Fateful Encounter (and yes, since that Friday night had been epic in all ways, I thought it merited capital letters) and had concluded that Ford was an amazing kisser. I hadn’t gotten a firsthand look at his penis, which was an oversight, all puns intended. What I’d felt, though, had been impressive. It was safe to say he’d only gotten better with age.
I’d never expected to get stuck on Ford’s big hands or to be making a mental list of all the places I’d like to feel those hands. Yet here I was, standing in Vanity Fur Salon, grooming an increasingly grumpy goldendoodle, trying to remember what Ford’s hair had felt like when I’d run my fingers through it…
Great. I was having sexy fantasies in my place of employment.
I didn’t know how to categorize my intrusive sexual thoughts about Ford. His outer packaging was hot and lust-worthy, but his admission—that our kiss in his truck had been the culmination of a longtime dream for him and that he wanted to kiss me again—was overwhelming.
This was Ford. I hated him, or thought I did.
His admission to liking me was even stranger than discovering he could change into a wolf. Which I had questions about. So many questions. Perhaps I’d mistaken an understandable scientific interest in lycanthropy for lust?
Five days had passed since Aunt Sally’s trailer had suffered its fatal demise and kicked off my Boone-filled bizarre night. I’d slipped out of their guest cottage the next morning before anyone else was up and had avoided Ford ever since.
Fortunately, Alessandro had been out of town for only that one night, and on returning he’d immediately swished his fantastic hair and declared that since he would absolutely need a house sitter in the future, I should move in now so that I could learn the ropes. I’d been at his place for a few days, and since he didn’t have any plants and took Pom-Pom with him, I knew he was lying. I appreciated it.
What would I even say if Ford and I met? Hi, Ford. I’m not big on bars or eating in public, but maybe you’d like to go to a pottery class with me on a date? We can put our arms around each other and get dirty.
No. That would work only if he was also a fan of the movie Ghosts.
Or how about this?
Dear Ford, I obviously lack any sense of self-preservation or feminism because—even though you let Deelie Sue give you a sexy lap dance at the waterslide in front of me—I’m okay with it. We could go hang out with the puppies at the local animal shelter and get our oxytocin up! Unless dogs don’t like werewolves?
No. That was potentially awkward.
“You haven’t told me what happened Friday night.”
Sanye Jansen-Webster’s voice from the workstation next to mine startled me. I’d been hyper-focused on Ford and not the poodle I was clipping.
Sanye was tall and redheaded and looked like a Fae queen. She’d married her high school sweetheart, Evan Webster, the day after they’d graduated and three days before he’d joined the military.
Local gossip claimed the speed of their nuptials had been because her daddy, Lucky Jansen, was a horrible piece of work. He didn’t even merit a bless his heart—most people in Moonlight Valley outright said damn him. He was awful, and even after Evan’s tragic death in a training exercise, Sanye had never gone back home.
“And don’t tell me it was nothing,” Sanye continued, “because your cheeks are the color pink called I Got Me Some.”
I clipped another lock of poodle fur. “Three naked Boone brothers.”
Sanye choked.
“Three naked Boone brothers,” I repeated. “That’s what happened. Plus hot looks, a kiss, and practically skinny-dipping. Did you know Ford wears boxer briefs?”
“Stop.” She clutched the pug she was grooming against her hot pink smock. “We can’t talk about this at work.”
“HR policy? Sexual harassment?”
“Time constraints,” she said dryly. “I need to be able to give the mental image my undivided attention.”
I clipped away. The goldendoodle would be bald, but hey, distraction! “You know Knox and Ranger, right? You went to school with them?”
Although her gaze was fixed on the pug, I knew she was seeing something—someone—else entirely. “Yes, but I was closest to Maverick. He was best friends with Evan.”
Evan had been amazing, and I couldn’t begin to understand her loss. Sanye glanced away and blinked her eyes rapidly, looking part resigned and part mad. She hated crying. We both did, but in her case it was because she’d grown up hearing her father claim it was a character flaw.
In addition to being a motorcycle aficionado who spent all his free time riding around Moonlight Valley with his friends, Mr. Jansen was a businessman who owned a massive design company that decorated exotic hunting lodges. The one time I’d been to his house, there had been fur rugs on the floors and a ton of creepy stuffed animal heads hanging on the walls.
He’d done lodges for some famous people, which got him mentioned in various design magazines, and then he’d done a luxury boutique hotel that had received dubious press for its rosewood.
The semi-scandal had been a popular topic of conversation in Moonlight Valley for a summer, although that had partly been due to the way Mr. Jansen had stormed around, yelling that he’d used only reclaimed wood.
Alessandro had confided to me once that he wasn’t convinced and was keeping an eye on him. It might have been the beer talking, or maybe my cousin really was staking out the local rich guy looking for signs of illegal lumber usage.
Sanye likely would have moved away from Moonlight Valley and put multiple states—if not an entire continent—between herself and her father, but Evan’s family lived nearby. She spent time with them at their church and hung out with them on weekends.
Sanye could have given Deelie Sue a run for her money in the Miss Tennessee department. God had given her one of those beautiful faces that were all cheekbones and looked even better in a picture than in real life.
Most important of all, however, she was just plain nice. She had a smile for everyone and never refused when asked to do something. She was an amazing baker, and someone was always asking her to whip up a cake for their event. She’d made Jonah inside the whale for our church and a multi-layer cake shaped like a beehive containing frosting bees when you cut into it for the county fair.
Meanwhile, I could barely open a box of Duncan Hines without spilling it.
Objectively speaking, I should have been a mistress of baking. Baking was science, and I excelled at science. Perhaps I should have hidden myself in a university lab or gone to work for a big corporation in their research lab, but I’d decided science was my passion and not the kind of thing I wanted to do on a daily basis for a paycheck.
This might have had something to do with the chemistry prerequisites I’d failed twice in college. Nevertheless, when I’d returned to Moonlight Valley unemployed and broke this summer, I’d been labeled the science nerd and resident STEMinist. It was a responsibility I took seriously.
Sanye slid me a glance. “Come over to my place tonight and tell me which brother’s better-looking naked, all right?”
“I can’t.” I had another ten minutes on my shift and was nearly done with the goldendoodle. “I have to go out to Aunt Sally’s trailer and clean things up. Get a dumpster out there and some contractors. That tree isn’t going to move itself.”
It would have been handy if that tree had been an Ent and therefore able to get up and walk away.
Sanye frowned at me. “There’s no tree on your trailer.”
“What?”
“I mean, clearly there was, but it’s not there now. You have a really large stack of firewood and a lot of sawdust, though. And the yard’s been cleaned up.” She thought for a moment. “And the trailer’s gone. There’s only the pad and the hookups left.”
This was?—
I was?—
The goldendoodle yelped, and I eased up on my grip. “I haven’t signed anything yet with the contractors. What if they try to charge me a fortune? I’ll have to sell a kidney or trade sexual favors.
“Maybe they went to the wrong site and now there’s some other homeowner who’s wondering where his workmen went and meanwhile all of Aunt Sally’s things are headed toward the dump.”
“It wasn’t a mistaken cleanup, Alice. I saw the Boone brothers there. You can calm down now.”
None of this made any sense. “Why would they do that? They specialize in animal removal, not tree removal.”
Sanye laughed. “Probably has something to do with you seeing them naked.”
I needed to eat my feelings. I planned on stopping at the Piggly Wiggly for the family-sized bag of Cheetos and a bar of Cadbury’s. But first, I needed to discover what had been done to my trailer without my permission.
Except, no, I wasn’t, because suddenly my phone was blowing up with multiple texts from Ranger explaining that he’d found Emperor Meowpatine wandering in the woods. He’d provided a minute-by-minute log of the cat’s voyage and current activities.
Reluctantly, I called All-Purpose Animal Services.
Ranger picked right up. “Got your cat here.”
Ranger believed in using words sparingly. In fact, he’d been known to drive across town to leave a note rather than make a phone call, so his heads-up was unexpected.
“What’s he doing over there?” I’d picked up my feline wards from the smushed trailer the same morning I snuck away from the Boone place; they should have been in Alessandro’s house, scratching his furniture and making themselves at home.
“Cats like to go back after they move,” Ranger supplied after a long pause.
“They’re homesick?”
“Or stubborn.” I could hear him shrug.
“I’ll be right there,” I told him.
I texted my cousin and let him know I’d be out with Sanye, but then I’d resume my (spurious) house-sitting duties. I did not tell him that Sanye and I were paying the Boone brothers a visit.
Alessandro and the Boone boys did not get along, partly because there had been some brouhaha about who could hunt on Boone property and whether they’d illegally had a wolf as a pet. (In light of my recent encounters with naked Boones, I had some new thoughts about what might have happened there.) Alessandro hadn’t been able to prove they’d violated Tennessee’s captive wildlife permit regulations, but he was certain they’d done it.
It also had a lot to do with the one and only Boone girl, Mackenzie Boone, and Alessandro mooning after her all through high school.
Mackenzie—who’d been stuck with the nickname Mack because no one could resist the obvious truck joke—was super nice despite having grown up in Darrell Boone’s proximity. She was loads of fun and one of the girliest people I’d ever met. People expected her to be a tomboy because of her situation, having all those brothers and no mother, but she wasn’t.
The Boones ran their business from a bunch of outbuildings behind the main house on their property, and the drive out to their property gave me time to think. Was Mack a wolf shifter? I hadn’t mentioned werewolves to Sanye, but Mack had to know what her brothers could do, and it made sense that she’d be able to do it too. Huh.
I’d partly come back to Moonlight Valley because Tennessee was a pretty place and I loved it. But another reason was that Aunt Sally’s passing and will meant I had a free housing option. Living in her trailer saved me money while I worked up my business plan. And I had a guaranteed job working alongside Sanye at Vanity Fur Salon. We were the only pet-grooming business in a twenty-mile radius.
I suppose I could have opened up shop in town, if I hadn’t mind being a very, very, VERY small business, but I’d always dreamed of being a businesswoman in a place that actually had foot traffic.
I loved Nashville. I’d spent a lot of time walking that city and thinking about what kind of storefront would suit me best. I had a plan, and these last few months in Moonlight Valley felt like the calm before the starter’s gun went off on a race. I was ready, I was prepared, and I was going to win. I spent the next mile running through a few scenarios in my head. I’d be polite, get my cat, and…
“Boone central.”
Sanye’s gleeful words jolted me from my thoughts. I stared out the windshield as she pulled into the parking lot the Boones had put in behind their sprawling farmhouse for All-Purpose Animal Services. A big barn with the business name painted on the side housed the main operations; smaller outbuildings contained animal kennels and offices.
Happy barks announced our arrival as we parked; the Boones didn’t have to worry about anyone sneaking up on them with that welcoming crew. A pair of broad shoulders beneath a company polo shirt disappeared into the barn, fast enough that all I caught was a glimpse of faded blue jeans before the shoulders’ owner vanished.
The part of me that was full of feelings wondered, Was that Ford? If so, is he coming back? Should we run after him? Yell something funny or amusing?
The smarter, more logical part piped right up, however, saying, We’re a science dork with limited human interaction experience—actual face-to-face conversation after a heartfelt confession is not in our skill set.
“Are you going after him?”
Sanye’s skill set apparently included mind reading. I beamed her an urgent need to leave in search of the Moonlight Valley Café’s legendary double-decker ice cream brownie, but she turned off the car.
I stared at the barn door through which Mr. Shoulders had disappeared. “This is such a bad idea.”
For starters, I hadn’t achieved one-hundred-percent success in telling the Boone brothers apart when they were fully dressed.
Sanye grinned. “Go. Get your cat. Get you a cute Boone. Easy-peasy. If you’ve seen him naked, he’s interested.”
She made a naughty finger waggle. Her pointer finger seriously underrepresented the mighty fineness of Ford’s penis.
The barn door opened and two redheaded, bearded men of heroic proportions sauntered out. One of them cuddled a fluffy cat. After carefully setting the cat down, they proceeded to flatten themselves on the ground and peer under the barn. Sweet baby Jesus. The skies opened up, the clouds parted, and a lightning beam of lust shot down and lit up my southern regions.
The twins wore faded blue jeans, incongruously preppy white polo shirts that read All-Purpose Animal Services, and work boots.
God bless those work boots. They were big, heavy, and perilously close to motorcycle boots without any of the illegality or trouble that came with bikers. They shouted confidence and demanded a girl look up, and then up some more.
The brothers’ hair was roughly the same length, the same lush, well-tended beards framing their mouths. See? I wasn’t a bad person for having mixed them up.
They looked exactly the same on the outside, and I hadn’t been a town regular for years.
Sanye honked the horn and waved vigorously when the two redheads popped out from under the barn.
The one on the left was Atticus. He was more laid-back with people, reserving his uptightness for numbers. He didn’t have anything to prove, and people liked him. No. They loved him. He’d won every contest he’d ever entered, up to and including his race for county tax assessor. I wasn’t sure the election board had even bothered to count the votes.
Ford, on the other hand, was the master of gruffness. He was taciturn and cranky, the kind of man who invested in a Keep Off the Grass! Sign.
He held himself in check, his eyes scanning the open space in front of the barn. His eyes promised that, if there was a threat, he’d take care of it. His frown made him look stern even as Atticus waved at us warmly. I’d noticed Ford’s reserve on Friday. He didn’t bend, didn’t open up easily. Few people were on his access list.
I glanced between the two brothers, forming a new hypothesis. I wasn’t attracted to Atticus at all. My obsession with him was over and done with. My loyalty had been transferred.
To Ford.
To double-check, I gave Atticus a look. Objectively speaking, since he was Ford’s twin, he was a Moonlight Valley hottie. He had great shoulders, a nice smile, and an excellent work history.
I looked at Ford…and BAM. I was a lust-filled fool.
It had been five days since he’d taken me for a ride down his waterslide, and despite what had seemed like a heartfelt plea for dating opportunities, he hadn’t made any effort to reach out to me. No texts or phone calls, no casual stopping by my place of employment or accidental run-ins in the freezer aisle of the Piggly Wiggly. To be fair, I hadn’t reached out either, unless you counted some fevered dreams.
“Which twin, Alice?”
Sanye nudged me, asking me to choose, pushing me to make the decision I’d been agonizing over. It was remarkably easy. “Despite years of obsessing over Atticus, I’m going to go with…Ford. That makes me fickle. Easily persuaded. Possibly opportunistic.”
I made my attraction sound like a joke, but if it was, it was the most profound and complicated joke ever. These feelings I had for Ford weren’t arbitrary at all. They were fact-based, fueled by years of knowing him and sparked by our kiss and his confession.
We might’ve had a history of animosity and arguments, but I’d also spent the last five days dreaming about him and imagining all the ways he could fit into my life.
Temporarily, sure.
Until I moved to Nashville and opened my store, sure.
Until the feelings blew over and we both moved on, sure.
“I don’t hate him.” I tried to find the words to explain exactly what Ford made me feel. “I mean, I certainly disliked him plenty when we were growing up. He wasn’t nice to me, although he hung out with me plenty.”
“The bully likes you.” Sanye’s grin grew bigger. “This is the stuff of romance.”
“Or a really unhealthy relationship.” What worked on the pages of a book was not always a good life plan.
“You know who he is.”
“Not the important stuff,” I argued. “I know that he can’t sit still, that he’s got a weakness for cold cherry soda on a hot day, that he’s a sucker for kitten memes but won’t admit it. I know he stole Mr. Trimbull’s tractor and drove it into a pond doing laps when he was fourteen, then came and pulled it out the next day with his brothers and apologized.”
I paused and thought for a moment. “And also that he’s a morning person—deal-breaker—who whistles when he walks the dogs and puffs out his cheeks when he’s deep in thought. Oh, and he still wears the same brand of black boxer briefs he wore in high school.”
Sanye cackled gleefully. I was glad one of us found this funny. “You know him well.”
“Not really. That’s stuff you learn when you live near someone and spend all summer with them.”
“Do you know what Atticus wears under his jeans?”
I made a face. “I don’t have a clue.”
Sanye gave me a long look. “Did you really have a crush on Atticus, or was he a safe thing because he and you were never really going to have a relationship?” I opened my mouth, but Sanye rolled over me. “Did you maybe like Ford all along but it was easier to pick Atticus?”
Nope. That had not occurred to me. “No.” I turned to glare at her. “Absolutely not. No.”
“Ford is an overplanner who doesn’t take chances. He’s all gruff and stoic, unless it involves animals and then he’s a big marshmallow. He blew up at Dean Worthy when he found out that Dean left his dog home alone for a week while he went to Vegas.
“So?” I’d have had something to say to Dean.
“He went right down to Dean’s place, broke in, and took that poor dog home with him. Gave Dean the finger on his Ring doorbell.”
“So he impulsively commits felonies.”
“He heard what Dean had done and did something. He doesn’t worry about the consequences of doing the right thing or maybe being inconvenienced. He acts. He doesn’t sit around planning out every last step of his day. Atticus is the safer choice, especially for someone like you.”
“Nope,” I said, hoping it was true.
“Ford and Atticus are twins.”
“On the outside. Not the inside. They’re not clones in some kind of space romance.”
“Yeah, but you told me that Ford was no stranger growing up. You know all kinds of things about him. You spent entire summers with him, seems like. But your fantasy man was Atticus?”
“Atticus is a hero,” I grumbled. “He’s nice.”
Sanye laughed, poking me in the arm. “Sure. Or maybe he was the safe choice.”
Ford had disappeared under the barn. His legs, plus his amazing, bitable butt, were sticking out. Atticus put his hands on his legs, pulling, and Ford popped out with an armful of kittens.
I realized that while dream Atticus was a real good time, it was Ford who gave me that certain zing. Even if Atticus was the safer choice, I wouldn’t be making it. Ford was unpredictable and rough, explosive in a chemistry sort of way—and I wanted him.
He wasn’t a grumpy, hot stranger. The first two words were true, sure as shooting, but he was no stranger—and not because I’d had my tongue in his mouth and my butt planted on top of his mighty fine penis.
All righty, then. I had the basics of a working plan: a) get out of the car and yell at Ford and then b) kiss him senseless.
Simple.
Memorable.
Actionable.
That was good enough for me. I got my backside out of the car and marched over to the twins.