Damn. She’d torpedoed his every argument. He had nothing. He let out a long, resigned sigh.
Megan whooped with glee. “Yes! He’ll say yes!”
“Not until you graduate from college,” he told Frank, whose face lit up. “You will court her properly, and you will treat her with respect, and you two can’t marry until you have a college degree in your paw.”
“Yes, sir!” Frank said eagerly.
Damn it to hell. The kid was being polite and respectful.
Megan turned to Schuyler and shoved her. “If I ever tell you to run for your life again, you will run for your life, not stick around like a dumbass.”
“Tate!” Schuyler howled. “She called me a dumbass. She used bad language. Aren’t you going to ground her? Why are you laughing? Why are you crying?”
Tate was laughing so hard he was crying, tears of relief rolling down his cheeks. Back to normal. They were all back to normal.
He had Kat, and Megan and Schuyler were safe, and they were back to being the most annoying pack in all of the state, and he couldn’t be more delighted.
Chapter Fourteen
Lainey paced anxiously front of the boarding house, her head snapping up when she saw Tate’s truck pull in.
As he climbed out, she raced over to him and threw her arms around him. She could tell from the look on his face that Megan and Schuyler were okay, and she let her breath whoosh out in a huge sigh of relief. She’d spent the morning practically tearing her hair out at the sheriff’s office, feeling sick and furious and desperate, until they’d finally gotten the news that Megan and Schuyler had been located in the woods and were on the way to the hospital.
He hugged her hard, burying his face in her hair before releasing her and stepping back. “Yes, everyone is fine. Minor injuries.”
“Oh thank God. Thank the Cypress Woods Witch. Thank everything in the world. What a nightmare,” Lainey said.
“Well, it’s not quite over yet,” he grimaced. “We found out what happened to Portia. Ginger got the family’s permission to go to her house, handle her belongings, and communicate with her spirit. It’s pretty sad. Portia had heard that Ginger had brought her tiara to Hoopers. You know how everybody knows everything immediately around here?”
“Shut the front door, I didn’t know that,” Lainey said. “And I hear that you won’t let Megan marry her fated mate, Frank, until he graduates from college? Good call.”
“My God,” Tate said admiringly. Lainey was proud of herself; he’d only left the hospital twenty minutes earlier. “You are one of us now.”
“That explains my newfound mint julep addiction. Carry on.”
“Portia broke into the jewelry store, broke into the safe, and put on the tiara. She’d gone around the bend at that point, totally obsessed with Loch. She didn’t know that Bernard was in the store, too. He’d been going there at night when the other employees were gone, stealing all the jewelry in the store and replacing it with fakes. When Portia saw him, he killed her, and dumped her body and the tiara in the swamp. He had to dump the tiara because he knew about Ginger’s ability, knew if she wore the tiara on her wedding day, she’d have visions of what happened to Portia. We also suspect that he killed Meyer Schofield and dumped his body by a riverbed, and then moved it when he realized police had found it.”
“Who was this psycho?” Lainey shuddered. The man had almost hurt Megan and Schuyler. The thought made her want to claw the man’s face off. Her sharp claws shot from her fingertips, and she stifled a low growl of anger.
“Apparently he was a serial killer and a drifter. He’d move in with someone, male or female, become their lover, and then after a few months, kill them, drain their bank account, and move to another state. Change his name, change his looks.” Tate’s blue eyes turned dark with anger as he talked.
“He moved in with Hamilton in his house in L.A. When Mrs. Hooper contacted Hamilton and asked him to come back to Blue Moon Junction to take over the jewelry store, Bernard saw his chance to come here and rob the store blind. He apparently killed Hamilton, used Hamilton’s credit cards to pay for plastic surgery to look more like him, and then came out here using all the knowledge he’d gleaned from Hamilton.”
“When he killed Portia, why didn’t he just leave town?”
“I think because it would have looked too suspicious. He figured he’d stick around, let things cool off, steal more jewelry, and then leave town when the time was right.” He shook his head sadly. “His mother’s mind pretty much went when we tried to talk to her about it. She’s got no living family. She refuses to accept that this man isn’t her son.”
“Ugh. He flirted with me. It makes me want to puke” Lainey shuddered. She had no doubt in her mind that if she’d said yes, Hamilton would have – ugh, no. She couldn’t bear to think about it.
“It makes me want to dig up his remains and kill him again,” Tate growled.
“Oooh,” Lainey cooed at him. “You are such a jealous cavewolf. It’s the sexiest thing in the world. Do it some more.”
Epilogue
The day of Loch and Ginger’s wedding
Lainey kept glancing nervously at the sky.
“What are you doing?” Tate asked.
“Checking for dark clouds,” she said.
He squeezed her hand. “The dark cloud is gone. Everything is going to be perfect. Didn’t we wake up to good news?”
“We did,” she admitted. Donny’s lawyer had contacted the district attorney’s office and worked out a quick deal. House arrest, no jail time for her brother, and he could go to his job during the day. Then five years of probation.
It was a warm, glorious day. Mother Nature had blessed them with perfect weather; it was warm but not too hot, and the sun bathed the assembled group in glorious, golden light.
Loch, handsome and smiling in his tuxedo, had walked up the aisle and was standing at the pagoda, waiting for his beautiful bride. Hundreds of people sat in folding chairs on either side of a pathway of pink and white rose petals which led to the pagoda, which was decked with pink and white roses.
Frank Sinclair sat next to Megan, holding her hand. None of the other Sinclairs were in attendance. Sadly, they were in Morgan County, planning Portia’s funeral. They also knew that Aurora’s vandalism had been exposed, and they were no longer welcome in Tate’s or Loch’s pack territories, ever.
Ginger’s mother sat in the front row on the left, blubbering noisily into a handkerchief. Sitting next to her were Ginger’s three younger sisters, all of them curvy, pretty and strongly resembling Ginger.
Tate and Lainey sat with his family on the right side of the aisle. Felix, unbearably cute in a tuxedo, leaned on Lainey’s arm.
As Ginger walked up the aisle, her father’s arm linked through hers, Lainey found herself tensing up, watching every single step, praying that nothing else would go wrong. Ginger, wrapped in a frothy confection of white, looked radiant, with a wreath of pink and white roses on her head, setting off her glorious curls. Not surprisingly, she’d opted not to wear the tiara.
With every step that she took towards the pagoda, Lainey’s muscles clenched more and more, and she found she was holding her breath.
Would Ginger make it? Was the dark cloud finally lifted?
Ginger’s father let go of her arm, and she climbed the steps to the pagoda and turned to face her beamed husband-to-be, and Lainey let out her breath and slumped against Tate in relief.
The pastor turned towards the crowd and cleared his throat. “Dearly beloved…” he began.
THE END
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