At some point he’d planned a follow-up blog to acknowledge his new understanding regarding Were-human mating. A Were female mating with a human had a different situation, and he’d planned to invite some comments from his followers on the subject and get a civilized debate going. But now…Kate had consigned him to hell!
Something was very wrong, but he couldn’t find out what it was unless he saw her in person. Taking his phone from his pocket, he texted her. We need to talk.
Her response came back quickly. Not in this lifetime.
I don’t know why you’re so upset.
Then you’re even more stupid than I thought.
Please, can I meet you somewhere?
No, and hell no.
He sighed and stared at his phone. This exchange was getting him nowhere. Then he noted the time. A lunch break would be next, followed by the autograph session featuring him, Kate, and Emma Wallace, Aidan Wallace’s mate and a best-selling novelist.
Earlier today he’d been looking forward to the autographing as a chance to be in the same room with Kate. After the rumors about them he’d been careful to avoid her, thinking that was for the best until they worked out how they’d proceed. Judging from her blog post, there would be no proceeding at all, ever. She absolutely hated him. How could that be?
He was thoroughly bewildered and wished she’d been willing to meet him privately to discuss the problem, whatever it was. She hadn’t been, but she couldn’t duck him forever. They would both be in the room for the autographing, and he’d find a way to talk to her then.
Bolstered by that thought, he admitted to himself that he was exhausted. He needed sleep more than he needed lunch. Returning to his room, he set his phone alarm, pulled off his clothes, and fell into bed. He was asleep instantly.
The alarm woke him thirty minutes before he was due at the autographing. He also had a text from Howard on his phone. Glad you took that terrible blog post down. Don’t know if you did it or one of your Woofers, but you owe Kate an apology. We can’t have this kind of animosity on the council.
Muttering a few swearwords in Gaelic, Duncan treated himself to a very hot shower and clean clothes. Even though he’d showered this morning, he felt dirty. As he dressed in a black turtleneck, slacks, and a sport coat, he thought of something that didn’t match up and quickly checked his blog. His original post was still there, so what did Howard mean about being glad he’d taken it down?
If he hadn’t known for sure that he was wide-awake, he’d think this was some horrible nightmare. But he knew what nightmares felt like, and this was real. Too damned real. He intended to get some answers.
The autograph session had been set up in the ballroom, because the debate was to follow immediately afterward and that allowed Duncan and Kate to remain in the same room. Delegates were already lined up outside the door waiting for the autographing to begin. The Woofers gave him a grin and a thumbs-up, but the Howlers simply glared.
“Don’t think you’re off the hook because you took it down,” one female in a purple shirt called out to him.
“Yeah, better stay out of dark alleys,” said another.
Frustrated, he turned to them, hands outstretched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
One Howler turned to another. “Short memory.”
“That’s a Woofer for you.”
“Hey!” A male with a long lanyard full of buttons gestured to the two Howlers. “I’m glad MacDowell finally took the gloves off. It’s about time. If I had my way, we’d—”
“That’s enough, my friends.” Howard came down the hallway with Emma, his daughter-in-law, and Aidan, his son and heir to the alpha position. Emma, a curvy blonde, was dwarfed by the Weres flanking her.
Duncan finally had the two Wallace brothers straight in his mind. Aidan, who was now striding toward him, had brown hair and eyes that were almost golden. Roarke, who had blond hair, was not with the others at the moment.
“The blog has been taken down,” Howard said to the Weres standing in line. “And I’m sure Duncan plans to make amends, don’t you, Duncan?”
“First I have to find out what I’m supposed to have done.”
Howard gave him a sharp glance. “That wasn’t quite the response I was looking for.” Then he turned back to the lines of autograph seekers. “I warn you, we can’t have arguments breaking out during what’s supposed to be a pleasant author event. The doors will open shortly. Please be civil to one another.” He walked forward and held the door for Emma, Aidan, and Duncan.
“We need to talk,” he said in a low voice as Duncan walked through the door.
“I’d like that very much.” Maybe the mystery would finally be solved. He glanced to the front of the room where Kate had already ensconced herself at a table piled high with books. A petite brunette stood by her side, and he made a guess that was Heidi, her assistant.
Howard motioned him toward the back of the room. “I’ll admit I was surprised and disappointed to see your blog this morning,” he said. “I thought you understood that inflaming the opposition wasn’t going to help this organization function.”
“I fail to see how my blog inflamed anyone. In fact, I was afraid that my followers would accuse me of pulling my punches.”
Howard studied him for a long moment. Then he sighed. “I wondered if that’s what had happened.”
“What?”
“I’m afraid somebody hacked into your blog, Duncan. They posted something really offensive as if it had come from you.”
A trickle of cold sweat worked its way down Duncan’s spine. “Tell me about it.”
“This morning, sometime before the end of the first round of seminars, your blog post included a picture of Kate in bed with a TV star. He’s on one of those cop shows. Emma would know it.”
Duncan’s jaw dropped. “No, it didn’t. I don’t know what blog you were looking at, but I’d sure as hell like to find out. That’s outrageous. It’s…” He trailed off. “Is that what she thinks was on my blog, too?”
“She doesn’t just think, Duncan. She knows. She saw it. We all did. There’s no doubt it was your blog.”
“It couldn’t have been.”
“Well, it was. A couple of us might have been mistaken, but when nearly all the convention delegates say they saw it, then it was there. And it was yours.”
Duncan swallowed. “What…what else was on there?” He listened in horror as Howard described the rest of the blog’s contents.
“So you see why she was so upset,” Howard said. “Why we all were, except some of the Woofers.”
“I didn’t do it. By all the saints, I didn’t put up that blog.” Duncan turned toward the front of the room. “I have to go tell her. I can’t let her think that I—”
“Hold on a minute, son.” Howard laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. “I doubt she’ll believe you, and you’ll only cause more of a commotion.”
Duncan glanced back at him. “Do you believe me?”
“Yes, I do. But before you go trying to convince Kate or anyone about your innocence, let me put Aidan on the job. He handles security for Wallace Enterprises, and when it comes to something like this, he’s the best. Let him nose around and find out what happened with your blog.”
Duncan scrubbed a hand over his face. “I hate for her to go on thinking I would sabotage her like that. No wonder she wants me to burn in hell.”
Howard gave Duncan’s shoulder a squeeze and stepped back. “We’ll get it fixed. Let me have a word with Aidan. Right now it’s time to open those doors so you three can sign some books.”
“Aye.” Duncan walked up to the front of the room feeling like a condemned man going in front of the firing squad. An innocent condemned man, at that.
Kate glanced up once and then turned to talk with her assistant.
His heart ached at the disdain he’d glimpsed in her blue eyes before she turned away. Her assistant didn’t turn away, though, and she had more than disdain in her eyes. Duncan wo
uld describe what he saw there as bloodlust.
He didn’t blame Heidi for that, either. In fact, he was happy to know that Kate had such a loyal friend on her side. In Heidi’s place, he’d feel the same. He’d want to kill whoever had hurt Kate.
Three rectangular tables had been lined up across the front of the room. Kate was on the far right and Duncan was on the far left. Emma sat at the middle table, and she gave him a tight smile. Howard had already pulled Aidan over into a corner, leaving Emma alone at her table.
He glanced at her and sighed. “I didn’t do it, Emma,” he said as he walked around behind the table with his name tent on it. “Howard’s asking your mate to investigate a potential blog hijacking.”
Some of the tenseness left Emma’s expression. “Really? You didn’t put that up there?”
“No, I didn’t. And I wouldn’t. That’s not my way.”
“I didn’t think so, either, but…who would want to hijack your blog?”
“I don’t know.” But he was already lining up suspects in his mind. Anyone who had reason to want the rivalry to continue had a motive. That included Jake, who pretended not to be much of a tech-savvy Were, but that could be an act. Angela Sapworthy needed a steady supply of juicy stories to keep her readership. Besides those two, he wondered if any of his Woofers might be that crazy.
If Jake wasn’t the culprit, then perhaps some other Howler wanted to make sure that Kate didn’t go soft on the Woofers. Then he remembered that on Friday someone had hacked into Kate’s Furthebest dating site. Although the doors had opened and delegates were pouring in, he quickly left his chair.
Emma glanced at him in surprise. “You can’t leave, Duncan. Your fans are arriving.”
“Please tell them I’ll be right back. I have one more piece of information for Aidan.” He covered the distance in a few long strides and spoke quickly with Aidan, who seemed glad to get more evidence that someone was up to no good in cyberspace.
“Don’t worry,” Aidan said. “We’ll figure this out.”
“I hope so. I have a lot riding on it.” He’d said that without thinking, but it was true. If he couldn’t convince Kate that he would never knowingly do anything to hurt her, he’d carry that sorrow with him for the rest of his life.
On that cheery note, he returned to the table to greet the first delegate in line to have a book autographed. He managed a smile and picked up his pen. For the next hour, he tried to focus on the steady stream of Woofers who wanted a signed book as a souvenir.
But his thoughts kept drifting to Kate, sitting so near, yet so far away. Then he thought about Aidan, and whether he’d learned anything yet. If Aidan was a fast worker, maybe he’d be able to resolve the issue by the end of the hour. If not, the scheduled debate could be torture. But an hour wasn’t a lot of time. And it was going fast.
Kate wasn’t having a good day. The shock of seeing Duncan’s blog had shattered her composure. She’d fired off that response without thinking it through, and Grandma Elizabeth had not been pleased. She’d literally called Kate on the carpet over it, but at least the lecture had been a private one in Elizabeth’s suite.
Duncan’s behavior was reprehensible, she’d said in words that still rang in Kate’s ears, but you stooped to his level with your out-of-control response. A leader can’t afford to have a hissy fit in public.
Kate had wanted to argue that she had good reason for her hissy fit. But she knew her grandmother would be unmoved. She also knew her grandmother was right. After years of watching Grandma Elizabeth handle any crisis that came her way, and after recently observing Howard dealing with unruly delegates, she knew how she should have responded.
Anger was fine so long as it was controlled and directed like a laser at the offending party. She’d spewed vitriol over the entire Were Internet. She’d also sounded like a teenager when she’d added that part about hoping Duncan roasted in hell. Saying it had felt oh-so-good, but now it was everywhere, which felt oh-so-bad.
She’d taken her response down but hadn’t decided what to put in its place. After very little sleep last night, and not a whole lot more the night before, she was mentally and physically exhausted. She wasn’t sure how she’d have survived the autograph session if Heidi hadn’t been there giving her moral support.
Most everyone who came to the table had some comment to make about Duncan’s blog. The majority understood that the picture was fake, but a few didn’t and wanted to know what that actor was like in person.
“I don’t know,” she’d answer each time the question came up. “I’ve never met him.”
The Were would look confused. “But…”
“The picture was a fake. He and I have never been in the same room together, let alone the same bed.”
“Oh.” The questioner usually left looking vaguely disappointed.
“You’d think they’d be more concerned about you abandoning your principles to sleep with the guy,” Heidi muttered. “I guess if the human’s a celebrity, then all bets are off.”
“How much longer until we’re done here?”
“We’re almost there.”
Kate couldn’t even rejoice in that, because her debate with Duncan started after a short break between events. She’d grabbed spare minutes to speed-read the rest of his book, but she hadn’t laughed at any of his attempts to be funny this time. For all she knew, he’d made up every story he told, anyway. She felt like such a fool as she remembered all the times she’d complimented him on his integrity. Yeah, right.
And yet, while she hated him with a white-hot passion, she couldn’t stop thinking about him sitting over there only one six-foot table away from her. She’d noticed his little confab with Howard before the event started and assumed Howard had read him the riot act.
Yet Duncan had made no move to speak to her, no attempt to apologize for his egregious behavior. Not that she would accept his apology, but now that he’d been forced to take down that blog, he must realize what an ass he’d made of himself by putting it up.
Well, good. Let him suffer. If he was too proud to apologize for what he’d done, then she’d mark that down in her growing list of his sins. And when they had their debate, she would do her very best to eviscerate him. In a classy way, of course, so Grandma Elizabeth wouldn’t give her another lecture. She wanted his blood on the floor, if not literally, then figuratively.
“That looks like the last of them,” Heidi said.
Kate tossed down her pen. “Then I’m going to disappear into the ladies’ room for five minutes. I need a moment.”
“You bet.” Heidi gave her a quick smile. “I’ll tidy up here and haul out your notes for the debate. Go take a few calming breaths so you can come back and kick his ass.”
“You know it, girlfriend.” Leaving her chair, Kate headed for the nearest exit. From the corner of her eye, she saw Duncan get up, and she moved faster. She did not want to deal with him now.
Unfortunately, he had longer legs than she did and he beat her to the door. “Kate, please listen for a minute.”
“I don’t care to listen.” She avoided his gaze. “Now please move so I can take a bathroom break.”
“It wasn’t me, Kate. I didn’t put that blog up there. I don’t know who did, but Aidan is looking into it.”
Rage gripped her and she finally looked into his eyes. “Of course you put it up there.” Her chest tightened and she had trouble breathing, but she wasn’t going to let him wiggle out of this disaster by claiming he’d been the victim of a hacker. “After last night you had all the information about Penny. And on Friday night, I conveniently mentioned my crush on the guy who stars in The Force. My picture’s on my blog, and I’m sure his picture is everywhere on the Internet.”
Pain flashed in his gray eyes. “I didn’t do it. I would never deliberately try to hurt you, Kate.”
“You seem sincere enough, but then so do all psychopaths. Everyone thought Ted Bundy was a nice guy, too.”
“Kate! My God! How can y
ou say something that horrible, lass?”
“How could you put that picture on your blog, Duncan? And then drag my sister’s name into it? How could you?” Unshed tears made her eyes ache and if she stood here much longer, she was liable to cry. Damned if she’d let him see that. “Either you move or I’m calling for help to physically move you. I’m sure I could find several Howlers who would love to do that.”
“Aye. I’m sure you could.” He moved aside. “But search your heart, Kate. You’re a good judge of character. You didn’t misjudge me before, but you’re doing so now.”
“I wish that were true.” She hurried past him and out the door before his soft, low voice could seduce her into believing in him again. He’d fooled her once, but he wouldn’t fool her a second time.
Chapter 17
Sniffer Update: @newshound—Sitting ringside as the great debate begins! MacDowell versus Stillman! Room is packed! #suspensemounting
Duncan’s vain hope that Aidan would arrive in the nick of time and make some grand announcement about the hijacked blog didn’t materialize. None of the Wallaces were in the room for the debate, so maybe they were all working on the problem, including Emma. He appreciated that, but he wished they’d hurry up.
Elizabeth Stillman sat in the back of the room looking regal as always. When her gaze fell on him, he expected to feel a chill wind blowing his way, but her expression was neutral. Maybe Howard had told her that Duncan appeared to be innocent. That would be helpful.
A second lectern had been brought in so that he and Kate could each have one from which to speak. Or to hide behind, in his case, if angry Howlers started throwing things. He’d never experienced standing in front of an audience where some of the listeners were openly hostile.
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