“Have you seen the desk? It’s beautiful. And perfect for Gunner. Andi did a wonderful job in having his medals framed and put in the room. You should go see it.” Brit told Sippy she would. “So it’s going to be called Henderson. I love that. The building has just been called the pantry or the food store since I’ve been around. I’m glad it’s getting a good solid name now.”
There were other projects they talked about. Most of them had been started and were finally being used. Brit was going to try and do more for the people around this town so she could feel good about living here. She also decided she was going to hire the people she needed locally so she could stimulate the economy some too.
“I saw your building the other day. It took me a while to figure out why you were having it put in with temperature control. Then I realized that with the weather around here, things like that could get wet and rot. Then they’d be no good to you.” Brit told Penny, who had shown up a little while into their talk that she was also going to have a building put in for her other rentals. “I would imagine you have a great deal of inventory to move.”
“I’m not going to move it all at once. I’ve decided I’ll have the renters move it for me. Each time something is returned, I’ll have it brought here instead of back to New York. Also, I’ll have time to build places where I can sort and store things.” Penny asked her where she got her inventory. “You’d be surprised how much is easy and cheap to pick up at garage sales. Auctions too, but I get better prices when the people selling things they just want out of their home and sell it accordingly. The other day I got an entire living room set from the early sixties for twenty-five bucks. I’m in heavy with that one. Even after having it cleaned, it’s still going to be very profitable.”
“How do you know what to get? I mean, there wouldn’t be much demand for some of it, would there?” Brit said it was all in demand, as there were movies being made all the time. “I guess that’s right. When the movie comes out that you’re a part of, I’d like to go with you to see it. So you can tell me what you were able to supply them with.”
“I usually get premiere tickets to go. I’ve never used them before. I’ll make sure I tell you when I get them from now on. It might be a lot of fun.”
They were still having fun when Dwayne came home from work. The women scattered quickly after that. It was nice to have some time with Dwayne after a long day of working. Even Jamie enjoyed it.
Chapter 7
Quincey moved to the middle of the pack. He supposed it was rude of him to call people, mostly humans, a pack, but to his way of thinking, saying it out loud and thinking it were two different things. Thinking things about people was what got him through the worst kind of patients. The light that told them when to walk was still red, but something just wasn’t right about the man and woman in front of him.
He could tell they weren’t together if the glares the man was giving the woman were any indication. Not to mention, he told her several times to get out of his space. Not that it did him any good—she never moved out of her place right behind him.
Quincey saw the big truck coming down the road. It had been the safest and the quickest construction route for the new building going in on one of the properties they all owned. Even as he was thinking this was going to end badly, the man moved. Then the woman did.
Grabbing her back from following the man, he was driven to the sidewalk by her turning on him. Leaping up, he grabbed her again and buried her face into his chest to keep her from the horrors of what had just happened. She was still fighting for freedom as everyone around them backed from the dead man’s body and the truck that had ended his life.
“I have you.” She fought free of him and then began signing at him. Putting his hands over hers, he stopped her, but only long enough for him to sign back to her that she needed to slow down. “It’s been a while. I’m a little rusty. I didn’t want you to follow the man into moving traffic.”
She turned then, looking where the rest of the people were looking. When she turned back to him, she thanked him as only a deaf person could. Her fingers to her chin, then pointing them toward him. Having her settled, he went to the man lying broken on the road. Even though he could see that his back was broken, as was his neck, Quincey tried his pulse on what was left of his throat. He was able to pronounce him dead. He then reached for his brother.
There’s been an accident/suicide on Main Street, Sawyer. Could you please send help? He asked if anyone else was hurt. No. Just the man. The truck driver couldn’t have stopped in time if he had seen the man. Whoever he was, he timed it perfectly to step in front of the truck and end his life.
I’m on my way. I’ve called an ambulance too. He thanked his brother. You were there, I’m assuming. Are you sure he wasn’t pushed?
Positive. There is a deaf woman here too. I managed to keep her from moving into the same accident. I think she was using him as a reference as to when she could cross the street.
The woman was upset—anyone within two inches of her could tell that. Going to her, Quincey was careful to wipe the man’s blood from his hand as he got closer. He didn’t want to frighten her any more than she already was. When she looked up at him, he could also see fear there. Assuring her that she wasn’t going to be in trouble had her smacking his forehead.
“You’re very violent, aren’t you?” She told him to fuck off. “Rude. I was just going to let you know that the police are on their way and that my brother knows you weren’t involved.”
Quincey had to think about some of the words he was signing to her, and when she laughed, not a sound moving past her upturned mouth, he grinned back at her. He explained to her that he hadn’t used ASL for a while.
“I had no idea he was going to get hurt when he moved.” Quincey explained to her that he thought the man had committed suicide. And had she followed him, she would have been killed too. “I can’t hear the clicking. There were too many people for me to see the other side, or this one, to tell me when I could walk.”
“You’re fine now, so that’s all that matters, right?” She nodded and looked to his right. Turning that way as well, he saw Sawyer get out of his truck and walk toward him. “That’s my older brother. He’s the acting sheriff here until they find someone to replace him. He knows ASL too.”
ASL, or the American Sign Language, had been something he’d been taught by his mom. All of them had been when she homeschooled them. Mom had learned it from her aunt, who was born deaf. It had, over the years, come in handy when he had to speak to someone that couldn’t hear.
Sawyer seemed to be doing all right now that he’d told her that he too was a little rusty, so Quincey started away. When his hand was grabbed, he turned back to the woman and said he wasn’t going to leave her. He needed to talk to the coroner.
“Her name is Beth Stone. She’s new here in town to teach ASL to the staff at the hospital. Did you know anything about that?” He told Sawyer he no longer read the emails at the hospital, as they were stupid. “Be that as it may, could you check on it for me? Not that I don’t believe her, but she has literally only just arrived and hasn’t had a chance to figure out where they’re putting her while here.”
“Yes, I can do that.” Pulling out his cell phone, it didn’t bother him in the least that Beth was still holding onto him. Asking for the department that scheduled classes for the staff, he wasn’t just told about the woman, Beth, but was also told that she was late. “She’s been involved in an accident. She’s not injured or a part of it, but she was a witness to it.”
“Is this the body that is coming to us soon, Doctor Bishop?” He told her he’d pronounced him dead at the scene and that he would be in later to sign the death certificate for him. “Thank you, sir. I’ll make sure I tell the others what has happened to her. Also, if you’d not mind, when you come, I’d like you to take her housing information so she may have it. I’m to understand s
he’s deaf.”
“Yes, she is.” There wasn’t anything more that he wanted to add to the conversation, so he closed his phone. Turning to Sawyer, he found himself alone again with Beth. She asked him what was going on. He explained to her what was happening with the hospital.
“Thank you. To be honest with you, I’d forgotten about getting in touch with them.” She looked at her hand on his shirt but only released him long enough to sign. “You must think I’m a loony, holding you like this. But it anchors me.”
“I don’t think that at all. You’ve had something traumatic happen near you, and it’s understandable that you’re upset and need to anchor yourself.” Something occurred to him in that moment, and he felt his heart rate pick up. “Beth, are you seeing anyone? Married or something like that? I mean, do you have someone in your life right now?”
“Why? Has someone contacted you? I’m not going to go to my mom. She isn’t a nice person. Did she have someone contact you to get in touch with me?” He said he didn’t know who she was, but no, no one had. “Then why do you care if I’m with someone or not?”
“I’m a shifter. White Bengal tiger. Do you know anything about shifters?” She said she knew a great many shifters, but sadly, no tigers. “Yes, well, I’d have to figure it out, but I’m thinking the reason you feel so comfortable around me, and me you, is that you might be my mate. I’d have to get closer to you to find out.”
“How close?” He told her. “All right. You can sniff me. But nothing else. I know you won’t hurt me, or you would have already, but just don’t get too fresh with me.”
Burying his nose into her neck, he knew immediately that she wasn’t his mate, but she had been around someone that might be. Instead of asking her who it was, he just told her she wasn’t, but that he was here for her.
“I thank you for that. I know a few shifters, as I said. And a man that is a wolf nearly married the wrong woman when it was her mother all the time he was smelling on her. He didn’t realize it until the day of the wedding.” He told Beth that was something he’d been thinking too. Then asked her if she had anyone. “My mother. But you’d better hope it’s not her. She’s off her rocker. Mom is in an asylum for the criminally insane. Mom killed my dad, sister, and brother, and a bunch of other people one night. It was much more than her putting a bullet in their heads, she— Well, that’s one you’ll have to look up on your own. Melody Stone. Five years ago.”
“I’ll look into that. No one else then?” She smiled at him and told him she had two sisters, one younger, the other older. “I’m assuming they don’t live around here. If not, then I don’t think it could be them. This person you would have had contact with recently.”
“Both of them do, as a matter of fact.” He smiled at her and said he might be better off letting it go. “Doubtful you could survive that, Doctor Bishop.”
“Doubtful that either one of them would want to attach themselves to a country doctor with no chance of moving on to something more. Not that I want that, but I’m not all that much where a woman would fall over herself for me.”
She told him to behave, then the police asked to speak to her. Since Sawyer was working for the department, he let him take care of translating for her. However, he didn’t leave her side. She needed protection as much as his tiger did, he thought. She was tough and seemed to be able to defend herself. Watching her as she answered their questions, he thought about her family as he looked it up on his phone.
Melody Stone had made the front page in every newspaper around the world, it looked like. She’d killed not only two of her children, but her husband, his mother, sister, brother, as well as a mailman, two men who picked up the trash, and as two officers when they had tried to arrest her. Melody had, according to the report he was reading, just simply snapped one day.
After reading the accounting of what had happened to the people she had killed in her home, Quincey shivered. The only reason Beth and Joanie had been able to live was that they’d hidden in the basement. Hearing the screams of their mother’s victims, as well as the laughter from her the entire three days they’d been trapped with no way out, had been a lot to endure, the author of the article had written.
Just as he was finishing the article, he was touched on the arm by someone. Looking at Beth, he asked her if she was all right. She asked him to call her sisters and that she’d buy him lunch.
“I’ll call them for you, but you don’t have to buy me lunch, Beth. I was joking when I said I was nothing but a country doctor. I have other means of making money.” She said she figured that but still wanted to have lunch with him. “All right. But I’ll buy. It’s a manly thing to do.”
The place across the street from his office served a really good French dip sandwich. He ordered that, as well as a cup of their vegetable soup to go with it. Beth wanted the same, but instead of water, she wanted tea. Writing down the numbers after the server left, Quincey wondered what he was getting himself into. As soon as the phone was answered by someone cursing, he knew this person was going to be his mate.
“My name is Quincey Bishop. I was—” She told him she didn’t know him. “I’m aware of that, Ms. Stone, but your sister is here with me, and she’s—”
“Is she hurt? I told her to take one of us with her. Damn it. Did you hurt her?” He said he’d not. “Well? What the hell are you doing with my little sister then? I’m telling you right now, you’re not going to get away with—”
“Will you calm the fuck down for a minute and let me finish telling you the reason I called you?” No apology came from her end, but he was just pissy enough to let it go for now. “She was witness to an accident that claimed the life of a young man. She wasn’t involved or injured, but she’s understandably shook up. However, why she would think you’d be a comfort to her is beyond me. We’re at the Dixie Restaurant on Main Street.”
Closing the phone, he didn’t want to tell Beth what had happened, but she asked, so he told her the one that had answered the phone was a rude bitch. Beth smiled and told him it could have been either of her sisters. Neither of them were good with people.
They ate their lunch and spoke about her job. He’d not been as excited about his job as she was about hers in a long time, he realized. Of course, she was just beginning hers, and he’d been a doctor for nearly eight years. Christ, he thought, that was a long time.
When two women sat down with them, just barged into their lunch, he watched the conversation the two of them were having with Beth. They were pissed. Not at her, but that she’d not called them right away. Beth told them both to fuck off and that she was a grown woman. That got him laughing, and the two newcomers glared at him.
“You two are a great deal alike. I’m assuming you boss everyone around when you feel you’re in the right.” He spoke to the other two and signed for Beth to understand him. “I told you she was fine, yet there you are checking her out like she was some sort of kid you have to boss—” One of them told him it was none of us business. Quincey slammed his hands on the table and spoke again. “Stop interrupting me when I’m speaking. You’ve done that so many times I can only assume you’re used to people letting you ride all over them. Well, I’m not going to allow you to beat up on her or me. So you can either calm the fuck down, or you can just get the hell out of here. Beth and I were having a nice lunch until you two arrived.”
Neither of them said another word to him or Beth. When the server arrived, he asked them if they needed a menu. They both agreed to have whatever Beth was having. When the server walked away, he knew the woman talking was the one who had answered the phone.
“I’m sorry. I’m not good around people. My name is Grace. My sister is Joanie. You’ve been really nice by taking care of Beth, so she wasn’t too traumatized, and we all appreciate that.” He told Grace it was his pleasure. “Thank you for that. And you were in the right when you yelled at us. Now and on the phone. We came
here on a whim for Beth, and I’ve not had any luck getting things squared away for us to live here with her.”
“What sort of issues are you having? I’m assuming it’s housing.” She told him that was it. “Buying or renting? The reason I ask is, my family has both sitting empty right now.”
“Buying. But you don’t have to go to any trouble for us. We’ll get it settled up.” Joanie told her to shut up and let him help. He noticed they were doing the same thing he’d been doing, speaking and using sign language so that Beth could be a part of everything. “All right. We’ll take your help. But you don’t have to go out of your way and make your family—”
This time it was Beth that put her hand over her sister’s mouth. She told him she’d take all the help he wanted to give them. She wasn’t as stubborn or as stupid as her sisters.
Quincey laughed and called his brother Gunner. He knew he had several properties around town and could help these women out. Putting the phone on speaker when he asked his brother if it was all right, he explained who he was with as well as what they needed. He signed the conversation to Beth.
~*~
“I don’t understand. What do you mean, he thinks one of us is his mate? I’m not going to settle down with someone that has to love me. No way.” Grace looked at Beth as they spoke. “You have to have that wrong. He never said a word about it.”
Dwayne: Bishop’s Snowy Leap – Paranormal Tiger Shifter Romance Page 10
