by Tasha Black
Grace nodded.
“And I’m amazed that he was able to stop your change. Most wolves are very resistant
to magic.”
“Why was I affected?”
“I’m not sure but my abuela might be able to help answer that question. Ainsley, I
know this is a hard time to leave you, but I’m on duty right now. I took my report here and I need to get back to the station.”
“You can’t report this!” Ainsley said, panic filling her voice. The whole point of her coming to Tarker’s Mills was to make sure her parents’ secret life remained hidden. The last thing she needed was an incident like this splashed all over the local papers.
“I’ve been a cop in Tarker’s Mills for years now, Ainsley,” Grace laughed. “I know how to write these reports. No one will know anything about magic or wolves. But the
neighbors heard a commotion so I need to put in a report.”
Ainsley had a whole new respect for her friend’s career.
“Can you come back tonight?”
“I can do better than that. We’re having a family dinner at my parents’ house. Come,
eat a real meal, and we’ll ask my abuela for help afterward. Just don’t say anything about this stuff in front of my parents. They’re in the dark on all the special stuff in Tarker’s Mills and they think Abuela’s crazy when she talks about magic.”
“Thank you, Grace. That sounds really good.”
“In the meantime I suggest that you eat something and then try to get some rest. Can
I fix you anything before I go?”
Ainsley shook her head.
“I will patrol your house now and again for the rest of my shift. I don’t think Julian is coming back – you probably scared him to death- but we can’t be too safe.”
“Thank you, Grace. I’m so glad you came.”
Grace grinned and gave her a salute, then rocketed down the stairs again, leaving
Ainsley alone to digest a wealth of new information.
C H A P T E R
5
A fter a short rest, Ainsley dragged herself out of bed to clean up. She ached all over, but she knew the sooner this was done, the better she would feel.
She pulled her hair back into a neat ponytail. Then she put on her apron and found a
pair of pink plastic cleaning gloves under the kitchen sink.
She used a broom and dustpan to pick up the glass. Then she used some bleach to
clean up the blood. The smell of the chlorine almost overpowered her elevated sense of smell. It was caustic, but it did cover up the smell of the blood.
Ainsley thought about the night she’d come home to find her dad’s study ransacked.
She hadn’t smelled an intruder. Same thing with her father’s office at the college.
Was it possible for someone to erase their smell?
Everyone was right. She really didn’t know anything about being a wolf.
She stood back to admire her handiwork.
Much better.
The only thing left was the window. It was really a shame. That wavy old glass had
been installed when there were still cowboys in the wild west. She made a mental note to call MacGregor at the hardware store for replacement glass.
In the interim, she decided to install plastic sheeting. Her parents kept scads of it in the attic since they used it to line the drafty windows in wintertime. She would take a quick ten minutes to install some.
It turned out to be a two-person job. She remembered her parents alternately
bickering and laughing as they fought with the thin plastic – racing it into place and then blasting it with the hair dryer to seal it. It took her almost an hour to secure a billowing sheet of plastic over the window. The seal might not be as tight as she’d envisioned, but at least it provided an implied boundary between outside and inside.
She blew air out of her cheeks and spun to face the back wall of the study. Once
again, it didn’t seem that anything was missing. Whatever Julian was doing in here, he didn’t take anything with him.
What was he doing in here?
What was the compass and why did it point at her?
And Erik.
Stupid Erik.
Why did he have to be right? She should have known that Julian was too good to be
true. It wasn’t fair. Couldn’t there be one thing in her life that came easy and turned out right?
Her cell phone rang and she froze. She couldn’t help but think of Julian.
She ran back to her bedroom and saw it was Charley Coslaw. She had forgotten all
about him stopping by to look at the house.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Ainsley, it’s Charley Coslaw.”
“Hey, Charley. How are you?”
“Just fine, Ainsley, and you?”
“Oh, I…I’m fine. It’s nice to hear from you. Were you planning on stopping over
today?”
“Well, I’m in the neighborhood, if it’s a good time. If not, I can come whenever it’s good for you, Ainsley.”
“Come now,” Ainsley insisted, excited to be one step closer to getting out of this crazy town. “Definitely now.”
He laughed. “Alright, I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Ainsley flew around the place, tidying up as best she could. She was beyond caring
about getting every last dollar out of the damned house. She just wanted it sold and
done with. She could not get back to her apartment in Manhattan fast enough.
By the time she returned to her room and took down her hair, a car was pulling into
the driveway.
As she came out onto the porch, she saw Charley standing on the front walk looking
up at the broken window. He had his hand over his eyes to stop the glare and an old
fashioned wooden clipboard under his arm.
No iPads yet in Tarker’s Mills real estate.
Ainsley gave a little wave.
“Hey, Charley!”
“Ainsley!”
Charley strode over and gave her a big hug.
“You look great, kiddo! How are things going here?” he asked with a forced lightness.
“Charley, I’m overwhelmed and exhausted. As a matter of fact I’m embarrassed to say
I even slipped on a book and managed throw a box through the window this morning,”
Ainsley said with as much self-deprecating humor as she could muster.
His shoulders went down a little and his smile lost its edge and became more relaxed
and sincere.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Ainsley. It’s hard enough to clean out a house. I had to do the same for my parents’ house, once upon a time. How can we help?”
“I’d love a list of people who do elder moving – maybe I can get some help just
sorting and clearing out everything into storage or to GoodWill- except the furniture - so you can get it on the market quickly. I just want this to be over with.”
“I didn’t want to say so when you stopped in, Ainsley, but I think that’s probably best.
It’s not good to go it alone with this stuff.”
“Agreed. It’s still a mess inside. You know I know what to do to get it ready, right?”
“Ainsley, no one will have it as ready as you will.”
They climbed the porch stairs, talking all the way about cleaning, staging, landscaping and the works. Ainsley began to feel more like herself as she discussed marketing and home prep.
After an extensive search of the home, during which Charley took copious notes they
settled down at the kitchen table.
“Can I offer you some lemonade, Charley?”
“That sounds fantastic, thank you, Ainsley.”
Ainsley grabbed two mason jars from the cupboard and filled them with ice and
deliciously tart lemonade. She set one in front of Charley.
; “Charley, you’ve been doing this forever. Can you give me a ballpark today?”
“I know it seems like I should be able to do that, doesn’t it?”
Ainsley nodded.
“But I have learned after many mistakes to always do a full market analysis. I want
you to have an accurate number, and, especially because you’ll understand it better than most – I want you to have hard comps along with it so we can dissect it together.”
Damn, he was more professional than she had given him credit for.
“Okay, I get it, Charley. How soon can you come back?”
“Very soon – I’ll try to call tomorrow.”
She walked him to the door.
“Thanks again for coming out. And for not making a big deal out of me going back to
New York. I know my family was important here but you all will certainly be fine without me.”
Charley’s mouth opened and closed once or twice.
“Ainsley, I hope I haven’t offended you by asking you to join the firm,” he said “I was only kidding. I’d love to work with you, of course, but I know you’re well beyond what we do here. No one could really expect you to stay in Tarker’s Mills.”
Jesus Christ, was it really possible that he didn’t know?
He wasn’t a wolf?
This town needed a program to keep the players straight.
“I’m sorry, Charley, you haven’t offended me at all,” Ainsley said, fumbling to cover her slip. “A few friends have been pressing me to stay, but of course I can’t. I guess I’m a little emotional.”
“Of course you are. You know, I get emotional myself whenever I pass by the
hardware store. I can’t believe your mom’s not there. I used to see her almost every day.
She was an optimist - saw the best in everyone. That’s not easy these days. And your dad was so generous. Not many of the professors can afford to give back much, but your dad made a priority of giving back – to Rotary and anyone else who ever asked.”
Ainsley smiled, looking over his shoulder at the stickers on the vestibule window. Her dad had given twenty dollars to anyone who bothered to show up with a worthy cause.
He always agreed to put their free stickers on the door. Her mother had good-naturedly ribbed him that it was like leaving hobo marks out front and would only mean that more people would interrupt dinner asking for money. But Ainsley could see that she wasn’t really annoyed with him - there was pride in her eyes at knowing that her husband was a good man.
It meant a lot that Charley thought highly of her parents. He wasn’t part of the wolf stuff.
“Thank you, Charley,” she said with a catch in her voice.
He clapped her on the shoulder.
“I’ll call soon.”
C H A P T E R
6
A insley had just finished emptying the third floor closets when her phone rang. She
smoothed down her sweaty, dusty ponytail and fished it out of her pocket.
Tarker’s Mills PD.
Must be Grace. Ainsley was anxious to talk to her friend again. She had so many
questions.
“Hey,” Ainsley answered. “What’s up?”
“Um, hi Ainsley, it’s Clive.” His voice was deliberately gentle.
“Oh. Hi Clive, how’s it going?”
“I’m about done with your father’s office. Do you want to come down here and take a
look in about half an hour?”
“Thank you, yes, I will.”
That was just time for a shower.
As Ainsley washed her hair she thought about Clive.
He was a nice guy, he really was. He could have gone on to play college football but
he chose to stay and protect Tarker’s Mills. It was amazing how many people chose to
stick with this little town.
Was there something wrong with her for wanting to get out?
Clive would make a strong and loyal alpha. What would happen if she chose him, and
then disappeared? Once the town had backed him, would they really kick him out if she went away?
She knew she was supposed to love the alpha, but there were lovable things about
Clive, right? All the girls in high school seemed to think so. Even straight-laced Grace would watch him avidly as he passed in the hall, then fall back into her locker in a
pretend faint when he passed, cracking Ainsley up. The time Clive turned around and
caught her “fainting” he wasn’t even a jerk about it – he just gave her a warm smile.
Could Ainsley just love him as he was until it was too late for them to change things?
His blue eyes were lovable, the way he took care of the town was lovable, right? He
already protected the town, which, after all, was the alpha’s job according to Erik.
Erik.
There were butterflies in her treacherous chest just thinking about him. She wanted to slap his arrogant mouth and melt in his strong arms all at once. In another universe she might have been grateful to her dad for encouraging her to choose a male she urgently wanted to mate with.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it?
If she mated with Erik she just might lose herself in him for real. And the last thing in the world Ainsley wanted was to give up her life to become a gigantic lapdog bossed
around by a know-nothing know-it-all like Erik Jensen.
She rushed through her shower, towel dried her hair and threw on one of her new
dresses and a pair of sandals. A quick look in the mirror told her she looked very nice.
She winked at herself, then scowled. This was not a campy spy mission. This required
surgical precision. She got her mind in the game and headed out.
The outside air caressed her bare arms and she walked past Sadie Epstein-Walker,
who was weeding again in her big sunhat.
“Hi, Sadie!” she called.
“Ainsley, hello!” Sadie shouted back cheerfully.
She rounded the corner onto Elm before she remembered that Erik could easily be on
site right across Yale.
Instead of crossing and taking the path directly into the college woods, she hugged
the town side of Yale and crossed at the train overpass. The walk to the woods was a bit longer this way, but well worth it to avoid another run-in.
The cool shade of the woods embraced her at last. She was at Scott Hall in moments,
the marble floors clacking under her Jimmy Choos. By the time she got to the top of the stairs, Clive was there waiting.
“Hi, Ainsley.”
“Hello, Clive.”
They looked at each other carefully. Clive looked handsome as ever in his uniform,
biceps straining at the blue fabric whenever he bent his arms. The steamy tension from their last meeting seemed to be making them both shy.
“I heard there was a commotion at your place last night. Are you okay?”
Oh god, had Grace told him details? What did he know?
“I’m fine, thanks.”
He led her into the office.
“I tried my best to organize the books for you.” His deep voice was soft.
She looked over the collection, which was spread across the floor in no apparent
order.
“They’re alphabetized,” he said with a note of pride.
Christ, they were. By title, not by author.
Ainsley smiled up at his earnest blue eyes and looked the books over again. It was
hard for her to deal without them being organized the proper way, but she resisted her compulsive urge to fix them, and scanned the piles.
The titles swam in her mind. This was exactly the sort of thing she was looking
forward to having Julian’s help with. But that ship had sailed.
Well, not so much sailed as sunk.
After a few minutes she was finished.
�
�I can’t think of anything important that’s missing, Clive. I’m so sorry. There might have been something I didn’t know about.”
Whenever her dad located a rare book she and her mother had to hear every detail
about it. The condition, the people it had belonged to, how much they were asking and how much it was worth. And of course, he longed to own them all. The hunt to bring the book home, unharmed, often meant a family trip to Boston, New York or even Chicago. It would be strange if there were a single rare volume she didn’t know intimately.
Of course, he would have added some new titles in the years she’d been away.
Her shoulders slumped as she pictured a future laid out in front of her without a single book being added to the collection. Suddenly, the reality of her loss seemed to press on her like a weight. She let out a sigh and put a hand on the desk for support.
Clive was next to her in a heartbeat.
He pulled her close and she rested her head on his massive chest as his meaty hand
stroked her hair. She could hear his heartbeat pounding and smell his restrained
excitement.
After a long moment she pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” she said demurely, smoothing her hair down.
“No, I’m sorry for what you’re going through, Ainsley,” he said simply.
Before she could change her mind, Ainsley blurted out an invitation.
“Clive, would you please join me for dinner tomorrow night?”
“Yes!” he said, a little too quickly.
They both laughed nervously.
“Five o’clock?” Ainsley asked.
“Five o’clock,” he confirmed.
Ainsley impulsively reached up and pecked him on the cheek. He froze and she heard
the jolt of his pulse as he waited to see what she would do next.
She squeezed his massive bicep, then sailed down the stairs before anything could go
wrong.
C H A P T E R
7
T he late summer air pressed on Ainsley. No trace of a breeze stirred, and she thought she might be able to wring the moisture out of the humid air like a sponge if she tried.
The scent of an approaching storm teased her with the promise of a cooling downpour.
Despite the heat, Ainsley savored the walk to Grace’s house. How many times had she
taken this familiar trip over the years of their friendship? She looked down at her Jimmy Choos and remembered looking down at the same sandstone sidewalk blocks, slapped by
