Moody as a Minotaur (Willow Lake Pack #1)

Chapter 1

AN UNEXPECTED GUEST

PARKER

“Shh… Quit panicking. I didn’t forget about you,” I reassured my goldfish as they chomped down the flakes of food I scattered across the surface of the water. They wiggled excitedly as they swam around. I liked to pretend they were excited to see me, but they were probably happier about the food.

I’d adopted the fish a year ago and ever since, they had become a great sounding board.

Knowing they couldn’t talk back was both a blessing and a curse.

Don’t tell my mother that my closest confidants were fish, though.

She already thought I was lonely. If she discovered I was talking to fish, she would start campaigning for me to move back to the city.

And that would end up frustrating both of us.

I set the food container aside. There. Everything on my to-do list was done. Hallelujah.

I collapsed on the sofa and debated whether I had the energy to crawl to my bedroom, let alone go all the way to the pub.

The biggest of my fish, Sushi, eyed me through the glass.

His judgment was almost tangible, like he couldn’t believe I was complaining when he swam for hours every day without moaning and groaning. But not everyone was a fish, damn it.

Besides, I’d like to see him deal with two people calling in sick, a cooler breaking down, and an entire busload of people arriving without notice about ten minutes into the lunch hour. And I didn’t even want to think about everything that’d happened after lunch…

“Being a restaurant owner isn’t all bubbles and tiny underwater castles,” I explained to my judgmental pet.

Was pet the right word? Calling an animal a pet suggested you could actually pet it, didn’t it? I was too tired to figure that out tonight. “I want to put my feet up and watch TV. We haven’t watched a baking show for a while. Or those restaurant makeovers are fun.”

Sushi flicked his fins at me, like I disappointed him.

“I know, I know. The love of my life isn’t going to woo himself,” I said as I yawned.

Okay, okay. Calling Levi Evans the love of my life overstated the situation by, like, a lot, but Sushi wouldn’t call me out on it.

Everyone in town, but especially Sushi and the rest of my fishy gang, knew I had a thing for Levi. Although, really, anyone with eyes and an appreciation for burly men would be equally smitten. From the moment he walked into my café the day it opened, I had been, and still was, captivated.

Sigh .

“You know,” I said to the fish, “I feel like I should know by now if he’s interested too.”

Sushi didn’t offer any platitudes, but he did swim to the other side of the tank like he’d had enough of my bullshit.

That was fair. He knew all about how I almost gave up my infatuation this past summer. But sometimes Levi would look at me in a way that made my toes curl and my pulse race. In those fleeting moments, I was sure he was as attracted to me as I was to him.

When things had ramped up a few weeks ago, Sushi had front-tank seats to everything that happened.

After that, Sushi had to agree with me—you know, if he talked—that Levi was at least a little interested.

Because Levi had acted like he was ready to confess his undying love for me and sweep me off my feet like a character in a rom com.

But unfortunately, real people didn’t do things like that, or at least Levi didn’t.

“I should probably lay off the wedding cake decorating shows for a while,” I admitted to Sushi. Those shows had obviously given me false hope. Although, I still swore I hadn’t imagined Levi’s interest.

But Sushi wasn’t paying attention. He’d already heard all about it. Hell, he’d been here to witness everything that’d happened when, for no apparent reason, Levi saw me on the street and offered to walk me home.

That day, Levi spent a couple of hours pacing around in my living room, making the most adorably awkward small talk ever, before abruptly rushing out the door.

I’d justified his behavior as a sign of his nerves—which, I hoped, was a sign of the depth of his affection—but he hadn’t made a move since.

No invitations to go for coffee. No texts to check how I was.

No flirty banter while I prepared his regular coffee order every morning. Ugh.

Had I misinterpreted things?

I didn’t think so. He’d approached me. He’d offered to walk me home.

He’d asked if he could come inside my apartment.

How could any of that be mistaken for him not being interested?

Unless he was trying to distract me from something else.

Huh. Because now that I thought about it, finding him and all those other people in the park by the lake on a random weekday had been a little weird.

But that had been the longest I’d been alone with Levi. Ever. So, I’d happily basked in his undivided attention and dismissed my curiosity about what might have been going on in town. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

Now Levi was back to ignoring my texts and refusing to socialize anywhere but the Willow Lake Pub. So, if I wanted to see him, I had to go there.

I know, I know. Most people would take his evasiveness as a sign he wasn’t interested; except everyone—from the town’s mechanic to the bartender at the pub to my cafe’s best pizza maker—agreed he was interested. It didn’t matter what Sushi thought.

And those little nuggets of encouragement kept my hope alive.

Hope. Ha! What an awful word.

And was hope the right word when I suffered from a ridiculously epic crush?

The kind that, until I’d met Levi, I thought only happened to lonely, hormonal teenagers?

If he kept me at arm’s length much longer, that crush was eventually going to lead me to being, well, crushed.

After all, I could make as many plans for how to seduce Levi as I liked, but at some point, if he wasn’t interested, my goal would have to change to how to mend my bruised heart.

But no matter how hard I tried to shake my ridiculous attraction, it wouldn’t leave.

I was a lost cause.

“So, I should probably go to the pub, hey?” I asked Sushi.

I swore Sushi’s buddy Filet bobbed up and down in agreement. At least he was still talking to me. You know, as well as a fish could.

Thinking about getting ready to go out made me as sluggish as the thick milkshakes on our seasonal menu this past summer. Which reminded me, I should have come up with a fall or winter special by now. But not tonight. I was too damn tired after everything that’d happened at the café today.

The Flying Rowan Café was still standing.

Miraculously. It’d been touch and go for a bit earlier today.

And, even better, all the evening staff showed up, letting me escape.

I loved my people. They were amazing, and I was so happy I could trust them to handle the evening rush.

And based on the hum of voices and the aroma of pepperoni filtering up to my apartment from below, they were indeed hit with a rush.

Or at least the Willow Lake equivalent of a rush.

Let’s face it, I lived in a small town. We didn’t have lines at the door of people waiting for tables.

But business was steady and better than I had predicted when I first saw the building for sale online.

That auspicious moment had stayed with me like it had just happened.

My heart warmed every time I thought of it.

I’d been scrolling endlessly, hunting for some place to call mine.

When I saw it, I knew my search was over.

It was as if some cosmic force reached out to me and said, “You belong here.” I hadn’t regretted my decision to move here, not once.

Yes. Life was good. Hiccups happened. A few bumps now and again weren’t going to break me.

But ogling a sexy man like Levi could improve my day by a factor of a ten million.

I loved watching him push his hand through his hair as he worked out his next shot at the pool table.

Lately, his dark hair was at the stage where it needed to be cut, and that was always my favorite hairstyle on him.

It had the slightest bit of curl to it when it was longer like that, and I liked to imagine what it’d feel like curled around my fingers.

And it might make me sound like a creep, but I also loved it when he bent over the pool table. Because, seriously, no one could resist that. He wasn’t fat, but he was a big, brawny kind of guy, so his pants always stretched deliciously over his… um… assets .

I trudged to my bathroom. My feet ached as I stood in the shower and washed away the lingering smells of the café from my skin.

I yawned ten times as I pulled out a fresh set of clothes that weren’t stained by coffee or splattered by tomato sauce.

And I contemplated making a cup of coffee to take with me as I shuffled toward the hook holding my car keys.

The drive to the pub only took two minutes, but I might need the caffeine to survive even that long.

Ugh. Nope. Making coffee was too much effort.

“I’ll see you guys later,” I muttered to the fish.

A thunderous knock on my door startled me from my caffeine dreams.

My heart jumped in my chest. People rarely—more like never—came to my apartment. And, truth be told, the only person I wanted to come over was Levi. My heartbeats crashed together.

Could it be? Had Levi finally stopped by? Was he here to ask me for dinner? It had been an aggressive knock, something a big guy like Levi might do.

As I sprinted down the stairs, I pasted on the biggest, most welcoming smile. My heart pounded in my chest like it wanted to break free. This was it. Levi was here. Finally.

I yanked open the door.

You know those record scratching moments in TV shows when everything suddenly goes wrong? This was one of those moments. I froze as icy blue eyes skewered me in place. My brain scrambled to make sense of what I was seeing.

“Nana? What are you doing here?” I glanced past my grandmother’s gunmetal gray hair, which was easy to do since she was at least eight inches shorter than me. “Is that Finley too? What’s going on?”

“Move out of the way, Parker dear. Don’t make an old lady stand on your doorstep all night,” she said, making it sound like she was frail.

I shuffled out of the way obediently, even though she had ignored my questions.

She scowled when she saw the stairs leading straight up from the door to my second-floor apartment.

My stairs were steep, but they couldn’t have been steeper than the mountain she’d climbed over the summer.

Sure, the hike had been up one of the smaller peaks in the range—I forgot all the details because I usually tuned out when my mother whined about my grandmother’s antics—but I remembered Mom saying Mount something or other.

“It reeks of pepperoni in here,” Nana complained as she trudged up the stairs.

“My apartment is over the café,” I reminded her. “Pizza is one of our specialties.”

I was about to follow her upstairs to get the answers I wanted, but my cousin Finley called out to me. He jogged over to me, carrying two suitcases and what looked like a tactical case.

Oh, man, I really hoped she was just using that case to carry her shoes or something.

But, based on many summers spent with my grandmother when I was young, I knew better.

She’d been determined to educate my cousins and me about all the important things schools missed.

At least that was what she said when she taught us how to clean guns and pick locks.

If anyone else had seen what we’d gotten up to during those summers, they’d have thought she was trying to create her own operatives.

“Here, take these,” Finley said. “I gotta get to the motel and check in still. The guy I spoke to earlier insisted we get over there as soon as possible.”

“You can stay with me,” I said.

“No can do, Pow,” Finley said .

And why was he using the awful nickname?

Fin hadn’t even been born when, while trying to learn how to say my name, I came up with Pow Cow instead of Parker.

My cousin—and damn near every other member of the family—used it anyway.

At least he’d dropped the cow part, but without it, Pow seemed like something straight out of a Batman comic with its own exploding balloon and exclamation mark.

I didn’t have the energy to live up to a nickname like Pow on a regular day, and especially not on a day like today.

“Seriously. The apartment is the size of the restaurant, so I have a lot of space and two spare bedrooms.”

“My team is with me,” he said.

“What team?” I glanced at Finley’s van and saw a couple of people eyeing me curiously. “Who are they? What’s going on?”

“Can’t talk now,” he said. “We still have to check in, haul our equipment inside and all that. Later.” He ran back to his van and hopped inside.

A second later, he and his van of strangers sped off toward the Tarbeck Motel, the only motel he could be talking about.

I tended to just think of it as Levi’s motel.

I sighed. Again.

Levi liked routines. He was going to be pissed about staying at work late.

He hated waiting for people to book into their rooms. And, by the look of it, they must have reserved a few.

Our mutual friend Carter and I always told him he should let his staff deal with the late arrivals.

But Levi had a thing about wanting to meet the people he let stay at his place .

His hands-on approach was quirky, but that was hardly the most noteworthy thing about Willow Lake.

I grabbed my grandmother’s bags and made my way up the stairs.

Nana had already shed her jacket and was poking through my kitchen cupboards. I carried her luggage to my largest spare bedroom. I didn’t go into this room often, so I did a quick check that everything was as it should be before returning to the kitchen.

Now, with any luck, I’d finally find out what the hell was going on.