Obviously sobered by the threat of losing her writing career, Emma had returned to the sofa instead of going in search of her phone. She picked up her coffee and took a sip, but her gaze was unfocused. He could tell she was thinking hard, trying to find a way out of this box she found herself in.
“We should have something to eat,” he said. “I’ll order chocolate cake if you insist, but I’d love to see you take in something more substantial than that.”
“Oatmeal would be great,” she said. “It’s what my mother used to fix me on winter mornings as a kid, and it’s my other comfort food besides chocolate.”
He refrained from gagging at the thought of that gooey stuff. He’d been forced to eat it out of courtesy once when a woman he’d been seeing made it for breakfast. “Oatmeal it is.” He walked over to the phone.
“If they can bring it with some soft butter, some golden raisins, and some brown sugar, I can make it taste the same as it did when I was eight years old. Oh, and lots more cream, please. I think we need more coffee, too.”
“Done.” He picked up the phone, ordered her oatmeal with all the fixings and the steak and egg platter for himself.
“And hot chocolate with whipped cream,” she called to him right before he hung up the phone.
“Hang on a sec,” he said to the person taking the order. He turned to Emma. “I thought you wanted coffee.”
“I want that, too. But if they could fix the hot chocolate with real whipped cream, and shake on a little bit of cinnamon, not too much, and some chocolate sprinkles, that would be excellent.”
He gave the order and came over to sit across from her on the other sofa. They had some decisions to make, and putting the coffee table between them would help him keep on track. “I take it hot chocolate with whipped cream and that other stuff—”
“Cinnamon and chocolate sprinkles.”
“Is that comfort food, too?”
“Absolutely. It goes with the oatmeal. Why are you making a face?”
“Because I’m trying to imagine drinking that sugary thing along with all the sweet stuff you’re putting on the oatmeal. It sounds godawful.”
“You don’t have a sweet tooth.”
“No, I have a meat tooth.”
“Ha, ha. Is that werewolf humor?”
He thought about that. “I don’t think there is such a thing.”
“Really? You all take yourselves that seriously?”
“Absolutely.”
“So when you’re all sitting around the bonfire, nobody tells a joke that starts out These three werewolves walked into a bar?”
“Nope.” But the concept made him smile. Maybe he and his pack could lighten up. Someone like Emma hanging around could be a good thing, although Emma herself wouldn’t be hanging around. He’d already determined that she’d hate being confined to the estate the way Nadia’s aunt had been for the first few years of her marriage to Nadia’s uncle.
“I’ve been thinking about the problem,” she said. “And I think the answer is having me sign a contract promising never to divulge the existence of werewolves.” She beamed at him. “You must have legal eagles at your beck and call. Have one of them draw up an airtight contract, and I’ll be happy to sign it.”
“Nice try.” He drained his coffee cup and set it back in the saucer. “But people break contracts all the time.”
“I don’t!”
“That’s admirable, but a contract is worthless to us. Contracts only work when the person who signs it is worried about being sued. If you break the contract, we can’t sue you. You’d have exposed us, and our whole world would collapse into chaos.”
She cradled her coffee cup and stared into it. “I see your point. I’m like a live hand grenade.”
“Pretty much. My dad has the corporate jet on standby. He’s instructed me to bring you to the estate the minute the weather clears.”
“What estate?”
“It’s in Upstate New York. It’s my—well, the Wallace family home. Someday I’ll inherit it.”
Her eyes lit up. “Are we talking about a mansion full of werewolves?”
“That’s one way to put it, yes.”
“Cool. I’m not saying that I’ll agree to hang out there forever or anything, but I’d love to see it.”
He was having trouble keeping up. “I thought you were determined to continue with your book tour?”
“Well, I am.” Her expression became resolute. “Yes, that’s what I need to do. Finish the book tour.” She sighed. “But going to that estate…can you imagine how that would be for a person who’s spent years creating a fictitious world that she suddenly discovers is real?”
Aidan was no fool. He’d figured out early on that the book tour was a duty more than a pleasure. He saw an opening and took it. “What if I could arrange to keep all the stores on your tour happy without you having to physically be there?”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
He noticed that she hadn’t turned him down flat, though. “I’m not saying it would be the same as if you actually visited the stores, but the weather is bad. Denver isn’t going to be much better, and after that you’re booked into Seattle, which has snow predicted for next weekend. You won’t hit any good weather until L.A. and Phoenix.”
“Winter book tours are problematic.”
“So let me arrange for a virtual tour. I’ll have large monitors delivered to any store that doesn’t have one, and you can do a live author chat at the same time you would have been there for the event.”
“What about the autograph session?”
Once again, she hadn’t said no, so he ran with it, spending Wallace money with every word out of his mouth. “We’ll get a list of the names from each store. You can autograph the books off-site and we’ll express ship them to be distributed.”
“That’s a pricey option. Who’s going to pay for it?”
“Wallace Enterprises.”
“Then how about throwing in free coffee drinks to all those who buy a book?”
“We could do that.”
“And an appearance by the cover model for Night Shift?”
In one stroke she’d upped the cost by several thousand dollars. He wondered how much she’d actually end up costing him. On all counts. “Who would know? You only see his torso.”
“And a bit of his long, black hair. Trust me, the readers know who he is. Hire him to show up at the bookstores and I doubt they’ll even miss me. What do you say?”
“If I get this guy, you’ll give up the book tour and come to the estate instead?”
“I’ll seriously consider it. But not to stay longer than a few days. And my mother has to know where I am at all times.”
“You mean geographically, or in general terms?”
“I mean she has to know where to find me.”
Aidan shook his head. “Sorry. It’s very secluded. We don’t make the location public knowledge.”
“What? Are you planning to blindfold me after I get in the car?”
“No, but we take a lot of back roads. You wouldn’t be able to retrace your steps.”
“You’re making this sound way too spooky and I’m telling you right now that I don’t like scaring my mother.”
Aidan hadn’t pegged Betty Gavin as a woman who scared easily, so he figured this as another bid on Emma’s part to gain some control. “How about telling her you’re at the Wallace family home in Upstate New York? Wouldn’t that be good enough?”
“She’s going to want an address, and if I give her this song and dance about an exclusive estate no one’s allowed to know about, she’ll worry that you’re kidnapping me and she’ll never see me again. I’m her only kid. She’s very protective.”
“I don’t doubt it, but—” A rap at the door indicated their breakfast had arrived.
Emma stood. “I’ll get it.”
“Let me.” Aidan moved swiftly to intercept her.
“Aidan, cool it. I’m not going to run out
the door wearing a bathrobe.”
“I know you won’t.” He stepped in front of her. “But the Henderson pack member standing guard in the hall doesn’t. If you appear at the door, he might try to tackle you, which could play hell with the delivery of our breakfast.”
Her eyes widened. “There’s a werewolf guarding the door?”
“Yes, but anyone looking would see a six-five, two-hundred-fifty pound body builder.” He left Emma to consider the presence of a guard at the door while he ushered the server in with their breakfast.
The server arranged everything quickly and seemed to be eager to leave. Aidan didn’t blame him considering the hulking presence outside the door. According to Howard Wallace’s information about the guard, he was the Henderson’s enforcer, a powerful werewolf who owed the pack his life and would kill for them. Literally.
Aidan had closed the door behind the server when his phone chimed with his dad’s ring. “That’s my father. I need to get it. Go ahead and eat.” He crossed to the coffee table and picked up his phone.
“Don’t worry, I will. But ask him about the address thing. He’s a parent. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
Aidan doubted it. The Wallaces had been guarding their location for a hundred years. They’d bought the abandoned and largely forgotten property through an intermediary. The pack had renovated it themselves slowly and quietly to maintain secrecy.
In the early years, they’d disguised the road by using a system of ropes and pulleys to raise and lower fallen trees. Aidan’s dad had replaced that awkward system in the fifties when he built a rushing, seemingly treacherous creek across the road using theme-park technology.
All Wallace vehicles were equipped with a button that slowed the water to a trickle. A touch of a second button opened the dam upstream and the creek flowed again. Howard had created a modern-day version of a Medieval moat.
Aidan answered his call. “Hi, Dad.”
“Is Emma’s phone turned off?”
“Yes. I turned it off this morning. I thought—”
“I get that, I get that.” Howard sounded impatient. “But it seems her mother is a persistent woman. When Emma didn’t pick up her messages, her mother tried the hotel where Emma was supposed to be staying, and then she pestered the hell out of the airlines, and finally she called Roger Claymore, who was at his place in the Hamptons and not happy to have his Sunday morning interrupted.”
“And Roger called you.”
“Bingo. And I’m calling you. Roger told us to take care of it and I promised him I would.”
Aidan looked at Emma. She’d cradled the mug of hot chocolate in both hands and taken her first sip. There was whipped cream on her upper lip. Aidan’s lust had been resting from the exertions of the night before, but now it yawned and stretched.
Turning away from the seductive picture of Emma savoring her hot chocolate, he paced a few feet away and lowered his voice. “Should I let her call?”
“I think you have to. That woman isn’t going to rest until she hears her daughter’s voice.”
“Yeah, but I can’t just let Emma say whatever she feels like saying. The call has to be scripted.”
“So script it.”
“But then it’ll sound like a hostage situation.”
“We have to take that chance. Emma needs to call. I assured Roger that Emma is fine and we have the situation well in hand, but he’s not completely convinced that’s the case. And I have to admit, neither am I.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“Ask him about the address!” Emma called out.
“What did she just say? Something about an address?”
“Never mind, Dad. Everything’s under control. ‘Bye.” He massaged the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath before turning back to Emma.
“I tried not to eavesdrop, but I’m pretty sure I heard the words hostage situation.”
For a woman uttering that sentence, she looked reasonably calm. Maybe the hot chocolate had worked some sort of magic, because the mug was empty. Emma had also started in on the disgusting mess she’d created with the oatmeal and its array of embellishments.
She looked almost happy. But then, she hadn’t heard that her mother was ready to call out the National Guard to find her.
Aidan searched his overworked brain for the best way to broach the subject. “I don’t want you to get upset about this, but—”
“Hold it right there. Nothing good ever comes after a sentence that starts like that. Did you get permission for me to give my mother the address of your estate?”
“No. In fact, there is no address and the place isn’t on any map. The only way for anyone to know where it is would be to actually go there. And before you even suggest it, I’m telling you right now that your mother is not going there.”
“I know that.” She sat primly on the sofa, the bowl of oatmeal in her lap. “But if I don’t give her a better idea of where this mysterious estate is, she’ll demand to know why I’m being so secretive, and that’s not good, either, is it?”
“No.” He sat on the sofa opposite hers and put his phone on the coffee table. “It’s time to call your mother, though.”
“I’ve been saying that.”
Aidan wondered if he was losing his mind, but he could only come up with one scenario that might satisfy Betty Gavin. “Are you willing to alter the truth a little when you call her?”
“Are you asking me to lie to my mother?”
“Yes.” He braced himself for an explosion.
“No problem.”
His jaw dropped.
“Don’t look so surprised, Aidan. You think I want her to be on the werewolf hit list because she knows too much? The trick will be to give her the kind of info that will keep her from snooping around on her own.”
“Well, she already has some information. When you didn’t pick up your messages she tried to contact you through the hotel where you were originally booked.”
Emma flopped back on the sofa with a groan. The oatmeal quivered in the bowl but didn’t spill out.
“Better not get that oatmeal on anything. I’ve heard NASA uses that stuff to make repairs on the space shuttle.”
“Don’t try to change the subject. How do you know this about my mother?”
“Because when you weren’t registered at the hotel, she called the airlines, and when she discovered your flight had been cancelled, she called Roger Claymore to find out where the hell you were.”
“And Roger called your father, who called you.”
“Exactly.”
Emma sat forward and put her bowl on the tray. “I’ve suddenly lost my appetite. How am I going to explain…” She swept a hand around the penthouse suite. “This?”
“I have an idea.”
“Then give it to me, because I got zip.”
“First, you explain that you broke up with Doug.”
“Yeah.” She eyed him warily.
“And then you tell her I’ve swept you off your feet.”
“Aidan, I don’t think—”
“Let me finish.” He was warming to this story, strange as it had seemed in the beginning. “Then you say that because I’m richer than God, I’ve arranged for a virtual book tour so that you and I can jet off to a lover’s hideaway. You can’t tell her where because I’m keeping it a secret even from you, as a special surprise, but it could be tropical.”
Emma buried her face in her hands and groaned again. “This is so bad.”
“Why? Isn’t it the sort of romantic adventure a mother would want for her daughter?”
“Yes.” She combed her fingers through her tousled hair and gazed up at him. “It’s precisely what a mother would want for her daughter. She’s never been crazy about Doug.”
That makes two of us. “So she’ll buy it, right?”
“Oh, she’ll buy it, and she’ll start imagining how fantastic the wedding will be, and how my whole life will change now that I’ve found Prince Charming, and how her life
will change. That dream of an apartment on Central Park West will seem a lot closer, now. And then bam! It’ll all come crashing down, because we’ll break up.”
“I see your point.”
“I’m setting her up only to knock her down later. I hate that.”
Aidan stared at his breakfast, which was quickly congealing into something cold and inedible. He didn’t feel much like eating, anyway. “I don’t know what else to do, Emma.” He lifted his head to glance across the coffee table. “I’m afraid anything less will have her asking all kinds of questions, just like you said she would.”
“It’s actually a brilliant plan,” she said softly. “And if I consider the alternative, that my mother will start investigating my whereabouts and get herself into deep trouble with the werewolf world, I don’t have much choice. I’d rather deal with her disappointment than be afraid for her life.”
Aidan nodded. “That’s the logical way to look at it.”
“I still hate it.”
“I know.” The worst part was, he did know. After all those weeks of keeping track of her, he’d understood how deeply she loved her mom. Deliberately causing her pain would be tough. But as Emma had rightly figured out, it was the lesser of two evils.
“For what it’s worth,” Aidan said. “I hate it, too.”
She held his gaze. “Thanks. That helps.”
Chapter Twenty-One
After Emma retrieved her phone and returned to her place on the sofa to make the call, Aidan came over to sit beside her. She appreciated that. In many ways Aidan was a very nice guy…um…werewolf.
She took a deep breath, filling her senses with the musky aroma that was Aidan. Perhaps it wasn’t some expensive aftershave she inhaled. The scent that drew her could be a blend made up of his natural element—deep woods and moist earth, combined with the primitive essence of a powerful male wolf.
She still had trouble melding the two entities—the man beside her and the golden-eyed wolf that had hurtled into her bedroom last night. In her books, where she’d been somewhat removed from the concept, it had seemed perfectly plausible. Faced with the reality, she discovered that the chasm between man and beast was too wide for her mind to make the leap.
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