by Terry Spear
Andy grabbed a platter too.
“I thought you were here just to grab a bite.” Edward thought his cousins were way too busy to be here to assist their parents.
“Dad called us and said you might be in a heap of trouble,” Craig said.
Edward laughed. He loved his family. He only wished his parents were still alive to enjoy all the family gatherings.
Ben joined them then and grabbed a platter. “Good to see you all here. How’s the woman and her kids?”
“Settling into the house. Joe won’t know what’s wrong with her truck until tomorrow.”
Uncle Ned joined them. “If you want, we can swap house guests. That way no mate will think anything’s going on between you and his wife.”
Edward sighed. “I’ll ask her, but I think they’ll be fine.”
“We’re more worried about you,” Andy said.
“Thanks, guys, but really, I should be fine. These meals are going to get cold. Talk to you all later.” Edward headed for one of the tables and everyone else began delivering meals, but Andy and Craig finally sat at a table that Edward was serving, and he shook his head.
“You didn’t think you were going to get by without us giving you more of the third degree, did you?” Andy asked. “Okay, while you were serving some tables, I checked with my sources in the Northwest Territories, and Robyn Conibear was married to a man named Callahan Gardner of Yellowknife. He drives a big rig for an oil company. Or I should say he did. He died in a hunting accident five months ago.”
“Ah, hell.” Edward hated to hear it, even though he had always envisioned he would have been her mate. But damn if her family hadn’t taken issue with it. Now he was really thinking of ways to keep her here. Even if the boys weren’t his, she could use some help raising them and they were cute kids. The whole sleuth would help. “Why would she be leaving Yellowknife? I mean, what about Callahan’s family? Wouldn’t they want to see the boys for Christmas? It seems an odd time for her to leave and not really have a destination in mind.” If she had good relations with her sleuth and Callahan’s family was her support system, he couldn’t imagine her leaving there.
“Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe Callahan didn’t have any family to speak of. I can check on that. Perhaps she came here to see you.” Andy arched a brow. “Which makes me believe she has something to tell you that’s been nagging at her for six years.”
“Maybe.” Edward served up their meals.
Or maybe she was no longer welcome in Yellowknife once her mate had died and she’d needed to find refuge someplace where she was once welcome. Which gave Edward some hope that she might even consider staying here in White Bear. Permanently. With him.
4
Five hours later, Edward finally finished his shift serving meals at the tavern and headed back to the house, eager to see Robyn and talk. He was having mixed feelings about her, sorry for her loss, hopeful that they might have a chance together, but afraid he was going to lose her again. They still needed to talk about what happened between her brother and him six years ago. She'd left without a word and he wanted her to know the truth about what had happened, if she was in doubt at all.
When he arrived home, he smelled chili cooking on the stove and he smiled. He was reminded of the time when Robyn had made homemade chicken soup for him when he got so sick and Rob and their partner, Casey MacIntosh, had to leave him behind while they took the tour group out. Edward loved her cooking.
Smelling the aroma of chili made him feel as though she was living with him for good. He wished it was for real.
“Momma’s fixing chili for us,” Garrett said, running to greet Edward at the door. Bryan rushed to greet him too, both kids eager to see him and he felt good about that. Again, he was wondering if they were his own sons.
“She is.” Edward smiled at the boys, not used to such a nice greeting when he came home.
“Yeah, and chocolate chip cookies,” Bryan said.
That’s what he’d smelled too. Though he wasn’t sure at first. This was a real treat. He loved chocolate chip cookies, especially when they were homemade. He took off his parka and hung it up in the coat closet. “Chocolate chip cookies too? Great. I’m hungry. What about you?”
“Yeah,” both the boys responded.
“But we gotta eat our chili first,” Garrett said. "Momma said."
"Your momma’s right."
They grabbed Edward’s hands and hurried him into the kitchen and he saw Robyn dishing up the chili, then she added shredded cheese on top. “Hey, are you ready to eat?”
“I sure am. Now this is a welcome meal.”
She set the bowls of chili on the table. “I hope this is all right. I wanted to do something for you for being so nice to us.”
“Yeah, it sure is.” He poured glasses of water for each of them. “Are you seeing your family in Anchorage for Christmas?”
“I don't know,” she said, taking a seat.
“Your license plate says you’re from the Northwest Territories. Have you been there for a while?”
“With my husband’s people. Yes.”
“And your husband?”
She blinked away tears. “He died in a hunting accident and now his parents want custody of my boys.”
Edward’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe it! Why hadn’t she said something about it to him already? He was glad she finally told him about her mate so he didn’t have to pretend not to know, but he couldn’t believe her mate’s family would try to take the kids from her. Wait, so she’d run away? Aww, hell. “I’m so sorry about your mate. Why would your in-laws want custody of the boys?” Edward just couldn’t believe it.
“They’ve wanted them every day since my mate died.”
“They’re controlling, Momma said,” Garrett explained.
“I can’t even comprehend something like that. You’re the boys’ mother, and they obviously love you.”
“Thank you. They do. My father-in-law was the mayor. Everyone thinks he can do no wrong. But I’m an outsider, and they tolerated me because I married one of his sons. But now that…my mate is gone…”
“We’re not gonna live with Grandma and Grandpa,” Garrett said adamantly.
Bryan shook his head vigorously, agreeing with his brother.
“Do you think they will come after you?” Edward asked Robyn, wishing she had told him this already.
“Yes. I imagine they will by Tuesday, if they haven’t already started looking for us. I was supposed to drop the kids off with Callahan’s parents that day. When I don’t, they’ll be calling. They’ve been saying they need to take care of them. They say I don’t have time because of the business I’m conducting.”
“Which is?” He added sour cream to his chili, trying to process what had to be done first with regard to her and the boys to keep them safe.
“Marketing. I’ve been trying to build my business so I can stay home with the kids and work as much as I can. But they get rambunctious when I’m trying to work, or I need to meet clients and videotape their business’s products or services and so they couldn’t go with me. Then they would stay with their grandparents. Before, if they’d offered to see the boys like that, I thought it was because they genuinely wanted to be with them and help me get on my feet with the business. Now, I know better.”
Edward shook his head. Family meant everything to him.
She scoffed. “They never thought I was good enough for their son. They only tolerated me because I’d birthed two beautiful baby boys. From the beginning, when Callahan had been off on jobs, they had wanted to take charge of the boys, as if I hadn’t been caring for them suitably. Admittedly, I’d needed some help when they were newborn, and Callahan couldn’t be there to assist me. But once he’d died, they’d even talked about me marrying one of their other sons.”
“No way.” He couldn't imagine Robyn doing that.
“Yeah. I knew that was only because it was a way to keep my sons in the sleuth permanently. Martha
and Arnold have a lot of influence over one of their sons, and I suspect he might have caved, if I’d been agreeable. Not that I was. Since I’m from Anchorage and my mate was gone, I was quickly seen as an outsider again. I…I was headed back to Anchorage, hoping to reconnect with my family. Hoping they would side with me, though many had been angry that I’d left them to run off with Callahan and join the Yellowknife sleuth. Including a former boyfriend out of Anchorage. I have no intention of hooking up with Maverick again, not as volatile as he was. Which was some of the reason I’d taken off with Callahan in the first place.”
“Hell, Robyn. You could have come to me.”
“And risked an all-out war between your family and my mine? No.”
“But you did come here. You came to see me, hoping I’d help you.”
She sighed and nodded.
“Aww, honey, we’ll get it all sorted out.” He needed to talk to her about his killing her brother, but he needed to deal with this other business right now. “All right. I need to tell the rest of my family. And then we need to share this with the rest of the shifter community in the area. Everyone needs to know that a fight could be headed this way. Most likely, they’ll help, but they have to understand the mess you could be in. Do you think your mate’s sleuth will know which direction you went in?”
“I’m sure they would believe I headed to Anchorage because my family lives there. Hopefully, they’ll think I took the most direct route there and hadn’t gone out of my way to pass through White Bear.”
She added sour cream to her chili too while the boys watched. Garrett tried some, but Bryan waited to see if he liked it first. Garrett ate a spoonful and smiled, then spooned up some more. Bryan added some to his bowl of chili also.
“Unless they believe I wouldn’t go to Anchorage, so that I could throw them off our trail. Now I worry that if they happen to stop in White Bear, and if they eat at your tavern, they would smell our scent and know we’ve been there. I thought they could smell our scent from where the truck was abandoned, but now that it’s secure in the garage, they won’t stop along the way to try and track our scent that way.”
“You need for us to say you continued on your way.”
“I don’t want you to have to lie for us, but—”
“I can’t speak for the rest of the family, but I can say that I’ll do all I can to keep your plans secret." Edward paused, then raised a spoonful of chili. "This is great chili, by the way. I know I haven’t had anything better than this.”
“Thank you. I’ve won the chili cook-offs several times.”
“I’m not surprised.” He looked at the boys who were listening in on the conversation and had stopped eating. They seemed worried and he wanted to alleviate the boys’ concern. He realized then that not only had Robyn been fearful, but the boys had been too. “Hey, maybe we can make this a special movie night and have buttered popcorn.”
Their expressions brightened.
“But you have to eat your chili first.”
They started eating their dinner again.
She mouthed the words, “Thank you,” to Edward.
He nodded. He would have finished his dinner in half the time he was taking so that he could start making calls, but he didn’t want to show he was anxious about this business in front of the boys. He didn’t want anyone telling any members of her sleuth about her staying with him or that her truck was at Joe's Garage.
He soon found a TV program for the kids to watch, made popcorn for them, and set out a plate of chocolate chip cookies, while she brought them glasses of milk. Then he grabbed his phone to make some calls.
“Aren’t you gonna watch the movie too?” Bryan asked his mom and Edward.
“As soon as I make a few phone calls. We’ll watch TV while I’m talking on the phone.”
“Okay,” the boys both said at once.
Wringing her hands, Robyn appeared anxious, but when Edward caught her doing it, she shoved her hands in her sweater pockets.
Edward knew Robyn was in a real bind, though he had never suspected it would be anything like this. They could have real issues with the polar bears of her children’s sleuth and have a real fight on their hands. Everyone needed to be made aware of it right away.
He called Uncle Ned first because he was on the shifter council. The tavern would be open until eleven, but his uncle would know it was important and take the call right away.
“Uncle Ned, we have a situation. We could have some real trouble headed our way.”
“The trouble has already found us. Four male polar bear shifters from the Northwest Territories are here right now. Since Robyn was driving a vehicle with a license plate from there, Joe said, and Andy told me her mate died five months ago, I figured something was wrong and she might even be on the run from her mate’s sleuth.”
“Hell.” Edward glanced at Robyn, who was waiting to hear the news while the kids were engrossed in the movie.
“Yeah. They said she ran away with the kids and have put them in danger. They said they’re the boys’ uncles. So what the hell is going on?” Uncle Ned asked.
“You already know the boys’ dad died, and she’s the boys’ mother and they want to be with her.”
“That was obvious from the way they acted toward each other in the tavern. The men know she’s been here. They’re leaving now. They were talking about checking out the hotel and B & Bs to see if they stopped at any of them for the night under an assumed name. I called Joe to see if he could put a rush on fixing her truck, but he said he’d planned on checking it out first thing in the morning. In the meantime, he covered the truck in his garage with a tarp, something he never does, just in case these men had some idea her vehicle needed to be repaired. I doubt it though. I’ve called others on our list to spread the word that they haven’t seen her anywhere else in town, which they wouldn't have, right?”
“Right. She was just at the tavern, and then at Joe’s garage.”
“What if they were seen leaving with you?”
“Hell.”
“Yeah. Not that anyone’s going to say anything, and the humans that had seen the two of you and the kids left way before these men showed up. Our people were suspicious of them when they came in, so thankfully, everyone’s been wary of the situation. They came in four vehicles so they could go in separate directions if they needed to. Ben was acting as our spy, listening into their conversations while serving other tables close to theirs. They’re looking for Robyn's pickup parked anywhere in White Bear for the night, making sure Robyn and the kids aren’t here, unless they stayed for the night. By their calculations, Robyn and the boys should have been through the town and left already. I called Andy to have him check these men out. You might have to take Robyn and the kids to one of our cabins for safekeeping until her truck is repaired. We need to make sure that she can safely reach her destination, Anchorage, right? That she has a safe place to go once she reaches there?”
“I think that might be a negative.”
“Hell, all right. Let us know as soon as you decide what to do.”
“I will.”
They ended the call, and Edward said to Robyn, “Four men are here looking for you. The word is going out that you must have continued on your way, but no one knows where you were headed. The men are searching for your pickup parked anywhere in the vicinity for the night.”
“They shouldn’t have started searching for me until I didn’t show up to drop the kids off with my in-laws on Tuesday.”
“Which means someone suspected you’d planned to run. You still got quite a head-start on them. You could have told me at the tavern when I first saw you. I would have done things differently.” Like made sure her pickup was taken to someone else’s garage and he could have brought her and the boys straight to his house and fed them there, just in case the men had showed up. They were lucky they hadn’t turned up while she and the boys had been eating at the tavern. He could just imagine what a mess that would have been, dealing with h
er late mate’s kinfolk, a bunch of growly polar bears.
“I couldn’t know that you, or anyone else here, would want to help me. We…parted ways in a hurry and…I just didn’t know. Also, I really didn’t believe they would start looking for me this soon. I was certain I’d make it to White Bear first and that they would believe I went to Anchorage instead.”
“What is the situation with your own family?” No way was he letting her leave here on her own if she was on the outs with her family.
“I…I don’t know. My parents disowned me when I left with my mate. They didn’t want me leaving for the Northwest Territories to join another sleuth, and they didn’t like Callahan. I haven’t spoken to them since.”
"Disowned you?" Edward snorted. “They didn't like me either. What about their grandkids? Don't they want to see them?” He couldn’t imagine them not wanting to see their own grandsons.
“They disowned me,” she repeated. “They don’t know anything about the boys.”
“Hell, Robyn. Then you can’t go home.” He said it in a way that told her he was glad that she wasn’t going home. He would protect her with his life, if it came down to it. “You’re safe with me here for now. If someone mentions you went with me in the van, and they connect that with where I live, we could have trouble. Otherwise, we should be fine.” At least he hoped so.
5
While the boys were watching “A Christmas Story,” Robyn spoke low for Edward’s ears only. “I’ve got to tell you something about the boys.” She took a deep breath and let it out. She was afraid he would hate her for not telling him the truth about their sons for all this time.
She opened her mouth to say it, but Edward pulled out his cell phone and showed her the picture Craig had shared with him of Rob and Edward when they were five-years-old. “They look just like Rob and me at that age. They’re mine, aren’t they?”
"Yes. I’m so sorry, Edward, that I didn’t tell you before this. Garrett and Bryan are your sons. I didn’t dare explain it to the boys when we lived in Yellowknife. They would have told my in-laws right away. In any event, I was going to bring them to see you before they turned five the fifth of January, even if Callahan had still been alive. He had agreed that I should.”
