Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Cindy hit the publish button on her screen and sat back in her chair with a sigh.
It had been an intense article to research and write, but an important one.
She’d had articles about insurance and wills before, but this one went deeper.
And reminded her that she needed to put a priority on getting their marriage handled.
Just because they, and the pack, considered mates to be spouses, didn’t mean the government would agree.
Her current will put her assets in her brother’s hands, so she could trust that he would hand things over to Adam, but it would be unnecessarily complicated.
A marriage license would fix that. And they both needed new wills.
She stretched and moved back up to the keyboard. Pulling up the list she’d already started, she dove into it, researching marriage licenses for their county to start with. She kept an eye on the clock. Jonas had told her he was going to help out at the pack house for a while.
The living room, kitchen and dining room had been set up, but now they needed to make the rest of the house into a home, ready for visitors and any pack members who might choose to live there before setting up their own houses.
Plus, they needed to make it a space where the kids could hang out if their parents weren’t home, or they just wanted to socialize with each other.
He’d said he thought they would start painting the bedrooms today.
Since she’d finished her work early enough, she could make the more complicated of the two dinners she’d tentatively planned.
She pulled up the to-do list for today, confirmed she hadn’t missed anything, crossed out her Plan B dinner option, marked her work as done, and closed the list. She pulled out her phone, switched from her working playlist to one of her cooking playlists, and turned on the speakers for the whole house.
Instead of heading to the kitchen, she went to the bedroom and pulled out an apron she’d ordered last week and hidden in her drawer.
It was retro style, bold red with large white polka dots.
It boasted a lacy sweetheart neckline and a thick, sassy white tie around the waist. It was completely ridiculous, and she loved it, and was sure that Jonas would too.
Especially over her cozy yoga pants and the long-sleeve thermal she was wearing.
She danced and chopped, sang and twirled, photographed and planned.
When she had achieved a simmer, she turned to drinks.
A little tug on the mate bond told her that Jonas was in a good, happy mood.
Probably a little bit tired from the day’s work, but not too much.
She considered her options. Making something that would bring a smile to his face was priority number one.
Having that something be a recipe that could be posted on her blog was just a bonus.
Pulling out her phone, she accessed her file of possibilities and explored. Hmm, an Old Fashioned? A Gibson? No, not after a day of painting. A Mojito? Ah, a Tom Collins. Perfect.
She pulled out everything she needed and prepped the garnishes, then took pictures. She checked along her bond and didn’t sense Jonas on the move, so she figured she had some time to check in with Myra.
Myra answered on the first ring. “Tell me everything.”
Cindy laughed. “Nothing’s happening here, I just wanted to check in with you. I figured inviting and rejecting was probably a stressful process.”
“Well, you’re not wrong. I’m so glad I have Adam to help me out, and of course Jen and Joe have been great as well. Remind me to make sure that any new members of the hierarchy don’t have names that start with J.”
“Or at least have more than three letters.”
“That would work, too. We talked to all of the pack, and decided to invite the Changs, the Parks and Mrs. Bogan.”
“That’s Miss Latisha to you,” Cindy interjected.
Myra’s laugh was clear and easy, so Cindy wasn’t too worried about the stress of the decisions, and relaxed. She moved to the couch and plopped down.
“Right, Miss Latisha is awesome, and has already accepted our invitation. She’s going to take her time with the move, so we might not see her for a couple of months, but she’s in.”
“Yay!”
“It was basically unanimous on all counts, so there wasn’t any reason to talk it out.
The Changs had made a whole vacation out of coming out here.
I talked to Sofia, and she said that they wanted to wait until the vacation was over and the kids were back to normal life, and then talk to them about it.
So we should hear from them in a couple of weeks. But she sounded very excited.”
“Excellent. Blaire and Tasha seemed to hit it off pretty well. It will be so much better for Tasha if she has another wolf to be close to.”
“Definitely. That was one of the reasons I sent her to Chicago in the first place, they have such a big pack with a wide range of ages.”
“It was a good plan. Just because it didn’t work, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a smart play.”
“True. I spoke with Becky Park, and she said that she and Soo had liked everyone, but were a little worried about the size of the town. Now that they know they would be accepted, they want to do some more research about where they might be able to work, make sure they can make a real go of it. They’re excited to dive into that research and will let us know soon.
I told them they should contact you, as you might be able to point them in some good directions. ”
“Absolutely.”
“Adam spoke to both Brenda and Janet.”
“How did you decide who would speak to whom?” She had no doubt there’d been a debate on that.
“Well, first he got me to agree that one person would call the people we wanted to invite and one person would call those we didn’t accept.”
“You can say rejected,” Cindy said with a laugh. “It’s me you’re talking to.”
“Yeah, yeah, the rejected. So, of course, I said he should do the accepted and I would do the rejected. And, of course, he said he would do the rejected.”
“Color me shocked,” she teased.
“So we flipped a coin. I’m still not convinced he didn’t cheat somehow.”
“Pretty sure you’d be able to tell if he cheated. What did he say, how did it go?”
“He said Janet told him it didn’t matter, as she wasn’t interested in joining.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He said Brenda seemed pretty surprised, but in a trying-to-play-it-cool kind of way.”
“That’s all he said?” Myra kicked her feet up onto the coffee table.
“He said she was very reserved once she understood what he was saying, and got off the phone pretty quickly.”
“I guess that sounds about right. Are you going to tell me how many people recommended invite versus reject on her?”
“Oh please, everyone disliked her. They all mentioned she’d said something that rubbed them the wrong way, if not actively annoyed them.”
“You would think she’d be a little more capable when actively trying to get people to like her.”
“You’d think.”
Cindy heard a tone through her phone that signaled Myra getting a text. Then her own phone beeped with a message. “You check yours, I’ll check mine,” she said.
Hers was a message from Jonas asking if she wanted to come have dinner at the pack house. She quickly replied to tell him she was already making dinner for him. He texted back a kissy emoji and said he’d be heading home shortly.
“Hey,” she said, when she put the phone back to her ear.
“Hey. Apparently we’re having a pizza party here. I guess this is a sign that I should get out of the office and see what’s happening in the rest of the house.”
“I told Jonas I was already cooking and to get his sexy butt home.”
“Nice. You guys have a good dinner. I won’t even point out that you didn’t invite me.”
Cindy laughed. “Didn’t even consider it.”
“Bitch.”
“You know you love me. Did Jonas tell you guys about the land we looked at, and think you should, too?”
“Yep, we drove out this morning. We like the land, for sure, just not sure how interested we are in building from scratch. We’re going to do a bit of research, see how complicated that is.
But we’re definitely interested. And we’ve confirmed with the landlord for this house that she’d like to sell. ”
“Excellent. It’s all coming together. You guys have fun tonight. Call me tomorrow and tell me all about it.”
They said their goodbyes and Cindy checked the time as well as her link to Jonas.
He was on his way, she could tell. She switched to a different playlist and danced her way back to the kitchen, made a small pitcher of the Tom Collins, tested it.
Delicious. She poured two glasses and added a cherry and slice of orange to each.
When she felt him close, she listened for the car on the driveway, and went to open the door, drink in hand to meet her mate.
After an amazing meal, a wonderful time divesting Cindy of her fantastic apron, and a very good night, Jonas woke up refreshed and more than ready to face the day.
He kissed his mate and set up with his laptop on the couch.
There was a nice chair in her office, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to resist interrupting her a hundred times if he was in there.
He could make out the soft sound of her music from down the hall, and the clicking of her keyboard. She was a bit hard on the poor thing, he was fascinated to discover. Maybe he should consider investing in a keyboard company.
After researching her list of realtors for a while, he settled on a couple he liked, made some calls. Then he made some sandwiches and stuck his head in her office.
“Baby, I made sandwiches. Ham and cheddar. You want one now, or I can leave it in the kitchen for you later?”
She looked up from her monitor and stared at him for a second before adjusting her brain. Then she checked the clock and smiled. “I’ll eat with you.”
She joined him in the living room, where he’d already set out a soft drink for her.