Chapter 4
SAM
Sam was expecting a number of things from the honeymoon suite, not all of them appropriate for a man chaperoning a teenager, but he definitely was not expecting a beautiful woman.
A naked, beautiful woman.
“Sorry!” Sam yelped, spinning around and slapping a hand over his eyes, as if that could block out the vision of the lean, gorgeous body, the full breasts tipped in pink-brown and the tendrils of damp hair straggling down her long neck and— “Sorry, I think you’re in my room!”
His inner animal was losing its mind. The thing about hosting a horse as the other half of his soul was that it had a tendency to .
.. react ... to things. Sam had developed a truly rigorous inner calm just to stop himself from jumping at shadows, dogs, and blowing grocery bags like his stallion sometimes wanted to do.
But this wasn’t the usual random homicidal panic at moving objects.
This was something truly different, a fierce and focused intensity pushing him to—do something, he wasn’t sure what.
“Excuse me?” The woman’s voice was husky, a voice he could have listened to all day every day for years. It was also brimming with offended dignity. “You’re in my room, and I’m calling the management!”
Feet pounded on the stairs, and Mauro called, “Wait! Mr. Grange! Don’t open the door—I’m sorry, there’s been a mix-up—”
“Sounds like the management’s here,” Sam said.
The woman made a loud “Ugh!” noise and Sam heard her bare feet on the carpet, then was unceremoniously shoved out, suitcase and all. The door closed behind him.
“I’m getting dressed!” she said through it. “Stay out!”
“I’m out!” Sam said.
Mauro skidded to a stop, panting. Behind him came a curious Charlie. “Sorry, I’m so, so sorry, Mr. Grange. I just found out my wife has already put someone else in this room.”
“I noticed,” Sam said mildly.
The door opened, and the dark-haired beauty stood there wearing a silky red and pink kimono-style bathrobe that was probably one of the room’s perks.
At least she was now family-friendly, to an extent.
But having seen those curves firsthand, Sam (and his stallion) were having a very difficult time ignoring how the kimono draped across them, revealing even as it concealed.
The woman’s indignant manner changed as soon as she saw Mauro there. She had her mouth open and her attention on Sam, presumably to give him a piece of her mind, but as soon as she saw Mauro, she was all conciliatory smiles.
And Sam finally saw her face. He had been intensely distracted by other areas earlier. This wasn’t just any misplaced guest. This was his reason for being here, Maggie Reaves, jewel thief and kleptomaniac.
Wonderful.
“Hi, Mauro,” Maggie said. “I’m terribly sorry. What’s happening?”
“I’m sorry too,” Mauro said again. “Very sorry. I thought this room was free. I hadn’t realized my wife had rebooked it.”
“Hey!” Charlie said, from behind Mauro. “Aren’t you the jewel thief lady?”
Maggie grimaced. “Can we not—I mean—”
“Charlie, that’s private,” Sam told his daughter. “Maggie, right? I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” He could feel himself flushing, against all his efforts, at the memory of exactly how they had been introduced. “I’m Sam Grange, Fawkes’s partner. This is my daughter Charlotte—Charlie.”
“Hello,” Maggie said. Her color was heightened, and it looked like she was experiencing a lot of emotions.
Sam wondered if she was also having some kind of struggle with her inner animal.
It looked like it. But she was almost demure as she held out a hand.
Sam gripped it, feeling the lean, strong fingers with their incredible softness.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” she added, with a strained note in her voice.
His stallion was ecstatic.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you too,” Sam said inanely, which immediately brought to mind very pleasant thoughts indeed, that he tried to banish. His blush was getting hotter.
“Oh, my gosh,” Charlie said loudly. She pushed through the adults. “Hi. I’m Charlie. I think you’re in our room, lady.”
“Charlie, don’t,” Sam told her. “We’re going to work this out.”
“Hester told me that if paying guests needed the room, I would have to leave,” Maggie said. A strange expression flickered across her face, annoyed and yet somehow resigned at the same time. “I just took a bath, so I’m going to need a few minutes to get dressed and get my things together.”
Sam’s stallion did not like this at all. (Other than the part about Maggie in the bath. That part, it liked a lot.)
“I mean, technically we’re not paying guests either,” Sam said.
“We’re here by request to, uh—” Keep an eye on you, which Maggie and Mauro and even Charlie knew, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud in quite those words.
“—provide security for the weekend. Which means we’re more like employees than guests, and we can find accommodations elsewhere. ”
“I’m working in the kitchen,” Maggie said. “I’m the one who should leave.”
The kitchen?! Sam’s stallion was deeply indignant about this, too. A lovely mare of breeding such as herself should not be engaged in menial preparation of grains!
Sam tried to ignore it, as usual.
“I’m not sure we actually have an ‘elsewhere’ at the moment,” Mauro said carefully.
“Maggie, by all rights you ought to stay where you are. Hester gave you the room for the night. It’s possible we might be able to put the two of you in employee housing, and double someone else up for the night, or find space in one of the outbuildings—”
“Outbuilding?” Charlie said, as if she’d just been told to sleep in a barn.
“Is employee housing communal?” Sam asked. “I don’t think that sounds appropriate for a teenage girl.”
Maggie cleared her throat. “Listen, I think whatever else we decide, it makes the most sense for your daughter to stay here. This is a perfectly good room. There’s no reason for her to have to be somewhere uncomfortable.”
Sam wished that Maggie’s concern for his daughter hadn’t just made him melt inside—but it did. His stallion was also delighted. She is deeply caring about our offspring. What a good lead mare for the herd she would be!
He had never been so glad that no one outside his own head could hear his inner horse. Especially Maggie, at the moment.
“You two can have the room,” Maggie said to Sam, which immediately caused his stallion to switch its tone entirely.
No, absolutely not, we cannot take a nice bed while our mate sleeps in an OUTBUILDING.
However difficult it was to think with a stallion stamping its hooves in his head, Sam agreed with it.
There was no chance he was going to settle down in a comfortable room while Maggie had to make do with improvised accommodations elsewhere.
However, he wasn’t willing to consign his daughter to a makeshift bed in a storage building, either.
“How awkward would it be for you two to share for the night?” Sam asked. “They said they could bring up a cot when it was going to be me and Charlie ...”
Maggie looked stunned. So did Charlie. Sam ran his words back and realized that he had just suggested that his daughter share a room with a known criminal.
“I—wouldn’t mind if you and Charlie don’t,” Maggie said slowly. “She can have the bed. But ... I don’t know if ...”
“No way,” Charlie said.
“What else is there?” Sam asked.
“I can only think of two other places we can put you for sure,” Mauro said. “We can take one more person in my and Hester’s living space, as long as you don’t mind sleeping on a cot in our bedroom. Other than that, or a room with no heat, the best option I can think of is the generator shed.”
Sam definitely was not having his daughter sleep on a cot in a married couple’s bedroom. “What’s the generator shed like?”
“Dad!” Charlie protested.
“It’s heated for equipment storage, so you’ll be warm enough. There are no bathroom facilities, and not much privacy—”
“Okay, yeah, no, I’m not sleeping in a shed with no bathroom,” Charlie said. She heaved a sigh and looked at Maggie. “This is fine. It’s better than that.”
Sam took his daughter’s arm and steered her a few steps away, holding up a finger to indicate one moment to the others.
“You sure you’re okay with this?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, Dad. I’m sure.” She looked at him pleadingly. “Can’t you stay too?”
Sam imagined sharing a room with Maggie and his teenage daughter. “Not tonight, but I don’t think kicking her out on short notice is right, either.”
“I guess not.” Along with intense stubbornness, Charlie had a deeply ingrained sense of right and wrong; he had always loved that in her. “I’ll be fine. She said I can have the bed.”
“Okay, but remember, if anything happens that you’re uncomfortable with, anything at all, you can turn into a mountain goat and she turns into a bird, so just—”
“Shift and parkour down the wall. Got it.”
“Well, I was going to say shift and go find an adult to help, but yeah, that too. We’ll both get on the hotel wifi, so you can text me to touch base before bed.”
Charlie shrugged and nodded.
They rejoined the others. “Did you work something out?” Mauro asked.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Maggie, you and Charlie will be sharing, provided they can find a second bed. She has all her stuff with her.”
Maggie turned a curious gaze on Charlie. She had amazing eyes, Sam couldn’t help noticing—gray with hints of green. Summer stormcloud eyes. “Are you sure?”
“I said I was, didn’t I?” Charlie said crankily. “And I’m starving. Did we miss dinner?”
“You did,” Mauro said, looking apologetic all over again. “But I can have something sent up, along with a cot. Sam, if you come with me, we’ll get you settled.”
Sam put an arm around Charlie and kissed the top of her head. “Remember, anything at all—”
“Anything at all,” Charlie agreed. She gave him an awkward side-hug back.
“And check in with texts once we’re both on the wifi.”
“Check in with texts.”
“I’ll take good care of her,” Maggie said. She smiled at Sam, with a soft look in her eyes. “I promise.”