by Chant, Zoe
Once the other children had been hushed by their parents, the music was turned down and the officiant began.
Shaun spent the ceremony watching Andrea, who stood to one side patiently, holding Patricia’s bouquet.
Chapter 38
Andrea was uncomfortably aware of Shaun’s gaze throughout the ceremony. He had managed to sit where he had a clear view directly to where she stood, and she tried not to fidget or stare back. She wasn’t used to heels, and she was still reeling over his declaration to Trevor that he loved her.
What did it mean? What happened next? Was he really going to stay in Green Valley? The For Sale sign in front of his house made her chest tighten every time she saw it. And a bakery? He was thinking about opening a bakery here?
She had to jerk herself back to the wedding and prompt Clara to reluctantly hand over the rings. The little girl dropped the satin pillow as she unwrapped her fingers from her treasures.
The audience chuckled, and then clapped when she picked it up and raised it in triumph.
Patricia and Lee exchanged rings, and then a passionate kiss as their marriage was declared complete by the bemused-looking officiant.
Everyone clapped and cheered and someone turned the music back up as the ceremony broke out into a general garden party.
Andrea gave Patricia a big hug and returned the bouquet to her for the toss.
Everyone wanted to hug Patricia, and shake Lee’s hand, and congratulate them, including not only this class of preschoolers, but several of the graduated classes, so there was a mob of little girls and boys to wade through.
After another round of photographs, Andrea made her way back to the cupcake table, to find that someone enterprising had cleared it off and bought everything the small local grocery had to offer; there were several tins of shelf-stable cookies, and a big generic birthday cake with most of the decoration scraped off and replaced with Lee and Patricia spelled out in M&Ms. Someone had already cut several pieces out.
“There were going to be vanilla cupcakes,” Clara pouted, materializing by her elbow. “Trevor ruined everything.”
“He thought he was doing something nice for you,” Andrea reminded her. “He tried to look out for you.”
Clara muttered something with the word stupid in it, and Andrea put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Yeah, sometimes it looks pretty stupid from the outside, but you have to understand that Trevor’s mom just left him all alone. He’s been scared. And sometimes we do things we don’t think all the way through when we’re scared.”
Clara looked up at her skeptically. “He’s not alone! He has his dad!”
His dad, Andrea remembered achingly, looking down at the little golden-haired child. Teaching preschoolers big concepts like empathy was one of the hardest parts of her job. They were so wrapped up in themselves at this age, and had such straightforward ideas about how things must work.
As she was considering this, she suddenly heard Patricia’s clear voice calling, “Heads up, Andrea!”
Just as she looked around in alarm, the bouquet caught her directly in the face and she automatically put out her hands to catch it before it could fall to the ground, staggering backwards and nearly falling over with the effort of it in her unfamiliar heels. Shifter reflexes were all that saved her dignity.
Laughter and applause greeted her as she regained her balance. Clara giggled. “That means you’ll get married next!” she explained. “You have to!”
Andrea scanned the audience, and glared at Patricia, who gave her a clearly unrepentant grin and a little wave.
She turned back to the table of desserts, determined to salvage at least a decent cookie from the event, to find Clara staring down Trevor.
He was holding a single perfect cupcake. Its white rose pronounced that it was one of Clara’s coveted vanilla treats. Shaun was standing beside him, looking only at Andrea.
“I didn’t want to make you mad,” Trevor said sheepishly to Clara. “And I saved you one.”
Clara glared at him a long moment, then thoughtfully accepted the cupcake. “I’ll share it with you,” she said graciously. “But I get the frosting.”
Trevor smiled. “Okay!”
Hand in sticky hand, they skipped away into the garden towards the sound of other children laughing and playing.
“I didn’t expect her to forgive him so easily,” Shaun said, watching them go.
“Kids are easy,” Andrea said, turning to the table of treats because she wasn’t sure how else to avoid staring at Shaun. “A little sugar goes a long ways.”
She surveyed the choices, and Shaun came to stand beside her. “Does it work with bigger people, too?”
Andrea gave him a sideways glance. “Are you trying to apologize?”
Shaun looked quickly around to make sure no one was standing too close. “I should never have told you that you weren’t my mate,” he said quietly.
Andrea felt like the ground had fallen away under her feet and gripped the bouquet so hard that the plastic doily bit into her hand.
Chapter 39
Shaun half-expected Andrea to turn and beat him with the bouquet she was holding; he could feel the anger and betrayal from her in waves.
After a moment, she sighed. “I know why you did.”
Shaun realized that he still hadn’t really apologized. “It’s not a good excuse,” he said firmly. “I’m... sorry.”
“What do you want to do now?” Andrea asked quietly, moving to one side as a group of people came to pick over the desserts.
Shaun looked down at the flowered crown of her head and discarded the most inappropriate of the ideas that occurred to him. “Do you know I’ve had three people ask me when I was going to marry you? And that was before you caught the bouquet.”
Andrea gave a hiccup of a giggle. “I didn’t really catch it,” she corrected. “Patricia threw it at my head when I refused to try to catch it. Anyway, you don’t have to marry me.”
“I was thinking about a date,” Shaun offered.
Andrea looked up at him, golden eyes surprised. “A date for a wedding?” she asked in astonishment.
Looking down at her, Shaun could picture just that. Andrea all in white. Andrea on the dais exchanging rings with him. Andrea glowing at him the way Patricia was at Lee. Kissing Andrea and making her his wife. Peeling Andrea out of a wedding gown on a bed scattered with rose petals...
He cleared his throat. “I meant a lunch date,” he said regretfully.
“Like, at a restaurant? Out in public?”
“Gran’s Grits has a great selection of hot sandwiches,” Shaun said with what he hoped was a winning grin.
“Sounds romantic,” Andrea murmured ironically.
“I thought Trevor could come with us,” Shaun added, knowing it was the nail in the romance coffin.
Andrea looked at him speculatively.
“I... want to get to know you,” Shaun admitted. “And I want Trevor to get to know you, too.”
“Trevor probably already knows me better than you do,” Andrea reminded him.
“Trevor probably knows you better than he knows me,” Shaun confessed without shame. “I don’t want him to have crazy ideas that I’ll stop loving him if I ...” he stopped as a couple elbowed their way to the table beside them. Apparently official cake cutting had been abandoned and the cake had become a free-for-all. All that was left of the M&Ms names were two Es.
Andrea was looking at him with an expression of half-hope and half-heartbreak. “You’re... serious about this?” she asked faintly.
Not touching her was taking all of Shaun’s self-control. His tiger was convinced that if he just kissed her, she would understand everything.
“So serious,” he said, fearing it sounded grim. “How about tomorrow for lunch?”
“Andrea! We’re taking wedding party photos with the car!” Patricia’s mother looked like she had done several rounds with the goats; her hair was flying away in all directions and her eyes were wil
d. “We need you!”
Andrea turned to follow, then paused. “Lunch tomorrow sounds great. I’ll see you at noon.”
Chapter 40
It was odd to be at Gran’s Grits in something other than her uniform, and Andrea slid into the crinkly bench seat opposite to where Trevor was squirming next to Shaun.
“Soda machine is still down,” Devon said, offering her a menu she already had memorized.
“Iced tea is fine,” Andrea said, with a wry smile.
“Me too,” Shaun said, not looking away from Andrea. His openly appreciative gaze was a little unnerving after several months of pretending they weren’t looking at each other.
“Me three!” Trevor piped up.
“Milk for Trevor,” Shaun interceded.
“Mommy let me drink sliced tea,” Trevor muttered.
Shaun frowned. “Mommy did a lot of things I don’t agree with,” he reminded Trevor firmly.
Trevor looked solemnly back and Andrea felt momentarily like an outsider.
“I’ll get your drinks,” Devon said with a cough, walking swiftly away.
“I didn’t have preschool today,” Trevor blurted with a glance at Andrea, as if he had just realized it.
“No preschool during the summer,” Andrea reminded him. “Do you know what you want for lunch?”
“Will you read it to me, Daddy?”
Shaun narrated the children’s portion of the menu, Andrea exclaiming over the most delicious of the options.
“What are you in the mood for?” Shaun asked her, once Trevor had settled on a hot dog with curly fries.
Andrea raised her gaze to his face, unprepared for the mischief in his eyes. She slowly smiled, then looked sightlessly back at her menu, her thoughts for the moment swamped with other things she was suddenly in the mood for.
After a moment, she said, “I’m thinking about a chicken fried steak. Gran’s gravy is not to be missed.”
“Breakfast for lunch? A bold move,” Shaun said approvingly. “I was considering a burger, but those omelets are tempting me.”
“Old George does make a great omelet,” Andrea encouraged.
Trevor had to get on that bandwagon, and demanded the child’s pancake platter instead of the hot dog.
“What’s a platter?” he asked, after Devon had taken their order.
“It’s like a plate,” Shaun explained.
“But bigger,” Andrea added. She tore the end of the wrapper off her straw and carefully pushed the rest of the paper off, leaving a corrugated shell. She winked at Trevor, then used her straw to put a drop of her water onto it, making it squirm like a living thing as the folds of paper absorbed the liquid and expanded.
“Woah!” Trevor exclaimed, and he immediately tried to follow her lead with his own straw wrapper.
Shaun donated his straw to the cause after Trevor soaked his, and they laughed together... like a family, Andrea thought, watching him with warmth in her belly. Like they belonged together.
She looked up from Trevor’s antics to find Shaun looking intensely across the table at her.
Heat rose in her cheeks, but she made herself look back.
“How’s the writing going?” he asked, while Trevor entertained himself soaking straw wrappers.
“I actually got a chapter written last week,” Andrea confessed. “And I have most of the outline fixed up, so I have an idea where the plot is going to go.”
“How’s it feel?”
“It’s a little complicated,” Andrea said thoughtfully. “It’s harder work than I expect it to be. Hard to make myself do it, I mean. It feels like there are more important things I should be doing, like it’s just a hobby, and it’s hard to make myself focus. So I’ve been setting a timer, and that seems to work really well. Just 30 minutes at a time, and if I want to keep working I can. Usually I do.”
Shaun nodded sagely. “Yeah, sometimes starting is that hardest bit,” he agreed, giving her an intense look.
Andrea found it hard to breathe around the hope in her throat. “I noticed you’d taken down the For Sale sign at your house,” she said, playing with her straw.
“Trevor’s friends are here,” Shaun said, with a sidelong look at Trevor, who was now making the soggy straw wrappers act out some kind of epic adventure involving a firetruck on the laminated menu. “And Green Valley kind of grows on you after a while.”
“Fungus grows on things, too,” Andrea said lightly. She was trying very hard not to take Shaun’s reason for staying personally.
“I’ve always liked mushrooms,” Shaun said merrily. He was smiling across the table at her and then he added the words that Andrea hadn’t want to admit she was waiting for. “And this is where my mate is.”
Andrea’s hawk gave a trill of triumph and when Shaun offered his hand across the table, she cautiously put her fingers in his.
Almost at once, Devon was there with their order, and she had to pull her hand back as they moved Trevor’s menu and wrapper detritus to make room for their plates and condiments.
“That’s not a platter of pancakes,” Trevor complained. “That’s just a plate.” But he fell into it with relish.
“If you’re still hungry afterwards, we’ll get you a hot dog, too,” Shaun promised.
Andrea put hot sauce on her gravy, and that led to a discussion of food tastes. “If you want really hot food, there’s a Thai menu at Harvey’s that is the closest thing you’ll find without driving to the Twin Cities,” Andrea told him.
“Our next date,” Shaun said confidently. “Tomorrow night?”
“Got a sitter lined up?” Andrea countered.
Trevor looked from one of them to the other, his mouth full of syrupy pancakes, and Andrea tried not to squirm as he finally seemed to realize what was happening.
“Are you going to leave me alone?” the little boy asked into the abruptly tense silence.
“Never alone,” Shaun promised. “And never for long. I was thinking Miss Tawny might come hang out with you while Miss Andrea and I go out and eat super spicy food for dinner.”
“I don’t like spicy food,” Trevor conceded with a shrug, and he returned to his pancakes like that was the end of the discussion.
Andrea dared to look into Shaun’s face again, and saw a mirror of her own relief.
It was the last piece of the puzzle slipping into place. Trevor had accepted sharing the two of them.
One nest, her hawk said, deeply content.
“If Tawny’s not available, I will gladly take a home-cooked meal instead,” Andrea said practically. “It’s honestly been torture smelling what comes out of your house some nights.”
“Every night for the rest of your life, if you like,” Shaun said expansively. “And I am dying to make you my cinnamon rolls. You did say sugar helped with apologies. But they have to be eaten fresh, in the morning, after rising all night.”
“Are you serious about the idea of a bakery?” Andrea had to ask. The picture of Shaun in an apron, covered in flour, was so unexpectedly appealing. Almost as appealing as eating fresh cinnamon rolls with him in the morning.
“I am,” Shaun said thoughtfully. “It’s not the direction I expected to take my life, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.”
He glanced sideways at Trevor, who was dipping his last square of pancake in a puddle of syrup with intense concentration. “The first thing I’ll make, though, is a batch of cupcakes for Lee and Patricia.”
Epilogue
“Oh look, the lights work again,” Andrea said, giggling helplessly as she looked up at the ceiling.
Shaun dropped beside her on the bed, panting and sweating, and gathered her up into his arms. “I’m seeing lights,” he gasped into her hair.
“We’re going to have to get back to work,” Andrea said, making no motion to do so. “Patricia is going to quiz us about how much we got done when she drops Trevor off.”
Shaun made lazy patterns on her arms, content for the moment simply to cradle her and
enjoy the quiet house. “Good thing there was nobody in the house next door. We were probably quite disruptive. Maybe we shouldn’t sell it after all.”
“We could let Trevor use it as a playhouse,” Andrea laughingly proposed. “Make him move there when he’s a teenager. We’ll call it the lion’s pride.” They had both been glad when Trevor continued not to remember being a lion, and he hadn’t shifted again, but they knew those days were in their future.
Shaun sobered and propped himself up on one arm to gaze down at her.
She was such a goddess, sprawled naked in his bed — his bed, not the guest bed, and not the creaking monstrosity that the house had come with. This was his house now, filled with his furniture, home to his mate.
“What is it?” Andrea asked gently, looking up at him with sated golden eyes. “What are you thinking?”
Shaun smiled. “It’s a secret,” he said. “I can’t tell you yet.”
“Argh!” Andrea reached over to grab a pillow to hit him with and he pounced on her arm before she could wind up for it.
As he kissed her from wrist to shoulder, he was sorely tempted to tell her early.
Only knowing how much Trevor wanted to be a part of it kept him quiet.
As he kissed his way up her neck, Andrea sighed regretfully. “If you keep doing that, we’re never going to get out of this bed,” she reminded him. “I’ll go get the crimp tool from my garage and we can get the bathroom water hooked back up.”
Shaun smiled to watch her roll out of the bed and slip her clothes back on. “I’ll make us a snack,” he offered, not moving.
“Excellent idea,” Andrea said in her best preschool teacher voice. “It’s hard to work hard with an empty tummy.”
Shaun was chopping up an apple in the kitchen, still grinning over the anticipation of his surprise for her, when he heard her shriek.
Dropping the apple but keeping the knife, he scrambled for the front door, and paused on the front porch.
