Liam's hand stilled. "Then answer the question."
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" Gavin said.
"I don't know what to do with you. What can I do? I know what happens when someone refutes their mates. It's awful. I don't want that for you. But that doesn't change anything. I'm still scared. I still don't want mates."
After a short silence, Liam said, "I think you're stuck with us. You know, you could always claim us and then if you're unhappy, you could leave."
A shiver went through her when he said that. God, she wasn't even mated to them yet, but the thought of leaving them chilled her.
The men must have seen her shiver, but they didn't mention it.
"Or we could treat this as a business proposition," Gavin said. "Draw up a contract. A pre-nup, if you will. Lay out exactly what each of us wants, what our boundaries are, and what the punishment is for going over them."
That seemed awfully clinical. And yet, oddly appealing. "So, if you dominate me to the point that I become a shadow of who I am, the punishment would be…"
Liam sat up sharply. "We'd never do that."
"The punishment would be a sound beating from your brothers-in-law, followed by you moving in with one of your sisters until we could work it out." Gavin's voice was steady.
She looked at him sidelong. "And that doesn't worry you?"
He sat back, his arm again resting along the back of her seat. "Not at all. I agree with Liam. We'd never do that, so the punishment would never happen. But if it makes you feel more secure to have it all on paper, I'm fine with that."
There was something to that idea. Maybe a pre-nup was exactly what she needed.
"You think about it," Gavin said. "We can talk about it more at dinner."
"I haven't agreed to dinner." When she turned to Gavin, she caught him locking eyes with Liam, as though communicating silently. At least her mates were bonded. Though she wasn't sure why the thought made her feel bitter.
Chapter 5
Oblivious to Bridget's thoughts, Gavin said, "Then this is the perfect time for us to make plans. Let's get together for dinner tonight to talk about the contract and any other options we think of between now and then."
"Then we're driving back to Northern Virginia," Liam said. "We haven't got anything with us, not even a change of clothes. We had to buy these clothes last night." He looked down at the blue shirt he had on. It looked fine, but not quite the same style as the day before. A little too polo and not enough G.I. Joe.
"You're leaving?" She felt surprised when she realized she didn't want them to leave. She couldn't imagine they'd be gone long, not with the way they were pursuing her, but she still felt abandoned.
Yet another feeling she shouldn't be feeling.
Liam kissed her temple. "I know you're going to say no, but just know that you can come with us if you want. We'd love to have you with us."
"Absolutely," Gavin said.
Of course she couldn't go with them. Where would she sleep? In their bed. That's what they were hoping. "I don't know." And where'd that come from? She'd meant to say no. Really, she had.
Their food arrived, which forestalled more discussion. Then Liam got talking about the military and how glad he was to be home. He'd been deployed to Iraq three times. Just as they were finishing their meal, Bridget's family started to arrive.
They had commandeered a large table in the corner, and though they waved at Bridget, they didn't come over to the booth.
Gavin paid the bill for lunch then before Bridget knew what was happening, he leaned over and kissed her again. A long kiss, long and hard and passionate.
"I wasn't sure if I'd get to do that again after we talk to your family, and I couldn't wait for tonight," Gavin said.
Before she could reply, Liam swung her in his direction and gave her an equally passionate kiss. The worst thing was, she responded to both of them. Kissed them back, threaded her fingers through their hair, didn't want them to stop.
When Liam released her, she had to take a second to catch her breath before going to join her family.
Both Gavin and Liam grinned at that.
Bridget sat down between Deirdre and Maeve, glad to finally have a little distance from her mates. The two men sat down across from the three sisters. Deirdre and Maeve's mates had arranged themselves at either end of the table.
Everyone quieted down, and Gavin leaned forward.
***
"A couple of months ago, Liam came to me with a case," Gavin said. "A friend of his from the Army was looking for her birth father and any siblings she might have. When I looked into it, I discovered that her mother had come from Stonewall Pack. She'd left when she'd discovered she was pregnant. As far as I could tell, she never told the father about the baby."
Gavin had decided to tell the story from the beginning, like this, rather than opening with the punchline. "Right before she hired me, she convinced her mother to tell her her birth father's name. Her mother had always refused, not willing to dredge up the past. The only reason she agreed was because she didn't think Fiona would be able to track him down."
"Fiona?" Bridget said. "Is that your client?"
"Yeah," Liam said.
Gavin continued. "So Liam came to me with her parent's names. I discovered that her mother grew up in Stonewall Pack, and from there it was easy to track down her father."
"You're saying we're related to her," Deirdre said.
"Her father is James Connolly. She's your half-sister," Gavin said.
For a few minutes, everything fell still, as though they had all stopped breathing. Then Maeve said, "Are you sure? Papa never said anything to us."
"He didn't know," Gavin said. "And I'm as sure as I can be, based on the information I have. We can always arrange for a paternity test to be sure."
"We don't need that," Liam said. "She looks just like you, like all three of you. You even move the same way. I have no doubt she's your sister."
"What's she like?" Bridget said.
Bridget didn't seem angry, something Gavin felt very relieved about. He'd been scared this would be just one more thing to come between them. Although she'd responded very nicely to their kisses at lunch. Maybe they were wearing her down.
"She's great," Liam said. "Tough. The kind of woman you want to have backing you up in a fight. Really down-to-earth, practical. And a total jokester. You can never get one over on her without risking horrible retribution."
All three sisters smiled.
"Did she say why she wanted you to find us? I mean, what are her plans—what's next?" Deirdre said.
"She'd like to meet." Gavin flipped open his notebook and pulled out a picture. "And I'm allowed to show you this." He tossed the photo across the table.
Bridget pulled it in front of her, so all three of them could see it.
It was a photo of Fiona, Liam and their other best friend, Grady. They wore BDUs and stood in the middle of the desert with their arms flung around each other and grins on their faces. Gavin had never met Grady, but both Liam and Fiona talked about him often.
"She does look like us," Maeve said.
"Does she know Papa is dead?" Bridget slid the photo back to him.
"I've told her. She was sad, but it didn't change things that much. She still wants to meet you." Gavin tucked the photo back inside a pocket in his notebook. "That brings up something else. Your parents' death."
"Carbon monoxide poisoning," Deirdre said. "Bridget and I were lucky we weren't home that night."
"Yeah," Gavin said. "I just have some questions about how it all happened. Because it seems suspicious to me."
Bridget tucked her hair behind her ear. "What do you mean?"
"I took a look at the police report, and the findings from the fire chief. It mostly looks like it's on the up and up, but a couple of notes in the back of the file make me think they initially suspected foul play."
"If that's true, why didn't they investigate further?" Maeve said.<
br />
"I don't know." Gavin closed his notebook. "It's up to Fiona, and now you, whether I continue to look into it."
"Us?" Maeve said. "But she's your client. Why would it be up to us?"
Gavin's gaze rested on Bridget. "You have a much stronger claim on me now."
Bridget blushed, while her sisters laughed at her.
She was gorgeous when she blushed like that, but Gavin didn't want to cause her discomfort. At least not in public. "Are you interested in meeting Fiona? I can set something up for the next time she's in the country."
They agreed. After a few more minutes of questions about their new-found sister, Deirdre said, "Why did her mother leave Stonewall Pack?"
Gavin had been hoping they wouldn't ask that—although it didn't surprise him that Deirdre would get right to the heart of the matter. Still, Fiona had told him he could tell her sisters. She'd said she hoped he would, because she didn't want to do it herself. That didn't mean he had to like it.
"You're familiar with Ted Seabolt."
Maeve made a choking sound in her throat. Yes, Gavin knew exactly how familiar they were with Ted.
"Apparently he molested Fiona's mother when she was a pre-teen. Years later when she found out she was pregnant, she couldn't stand the thought of raising her child in Ted's pack. She left the pack before anyone found out about the pregnancy. That's why she didn't tell your father—she was afraid he might convince her to come back, or that he might try to claim his child."
Maeve had tears in her eyes. "She did the right thing."
Bridget put her hand over her sister's.
Gavin fidgeted with his notebook. That was everything they needed to say. And he wasn't sure what to do in the face of the sisters' emotions.
"You're sure she's their sister?" Jake said from the end of the table.
Gavin pulled the picture out and handed it down to him. "You tell me."
Across from him, the three sisters had their heads together. They weren't talking; he would have heard that. But they seemed to be communicating nonetheless.
Jake whistled.
Sam leaned against Jake as he looked at the picture. "She definitely looks like their sister."
"I can't think of any reason she'd make it up," Jake said. He passed the picture back to Gavin, who pushed it to the other end of the table so Maeve's mates, Damian and Nate, could see.
"Was that everything, or is there more news?" Deirdre said.
"That's everything." Gavin tucked the picture away after Damian handed it back to him.
"Thank you for telling us," Deirdre said. "Let us know what Fiona says about getting together." She stood.
As though that was the signal, the rest of the family stood as well, Gavin and Liam with them.
"We will," Gavin said.
As the family filed out of the restaurant, Gavin snagged Bridget and pulled her aside. "You didn't actually agree to dinner." He kept his hand on her arm, enjoying the way she felt, even if there were a couple of layers of fabric between them.
Liam stood near them and put his hand on her cheek.
She pushed some hair off her forehead. "I don't know. This is an awful lot of togetherness."
Gavin fought to keep from growling. This wasn't anywhere near enough togetherness. "We might not be back again for a few days. At least have dinner with us before we leave. We need to talk about the pre-nup."
He had thrown out the idea at lunch and had been surprised that she'd responded so well. She didn't trust them not to beat her, but thought she could trust them to obey a piece of paper? But at this point, he didn't care if she was being irrational. He'd do just about anything to convince her to give them a chance. Then they'd have a lifetime to make her realize she didn't need a pre-nup or anything else.
"I suppose," she said. "Will you really be gone so long?"
And there she went again, flip-flopping. She didn't want them, but she didn't want them to leave. Couldn't she see she needed them as much as they needed her?
Then Gavin remembered that old adage that 'absence makes the heart grow fonder.' It might kill him and Liam, but maybe the best thing to get her to come around would be if they stayed away for a little while. Just enough to make her crazy.
"Yeah," he said, trying to make his voice sound mournful. "At least a few days. Might even be a week."
Liam opened his mouth. Gavin quickly shook his head.
"Depending on how things go, it could even be two weeks," Gavin said. He tried to say the words without thinking about actually being away that long. 'Cause he'd never make it a whole two weeks without her.
Liam looked a little green, but kept his mouth shut.
"That's so long," Bridget said. Her eyes looked unfocused.
"So, dinner?" Gavin lightly squeezed her arm.
"Yes. I mean, yeah, okay. Dinner." Bridget pulled herself together. "Now I need to get back to work."
The two men released her.
"Of course," Gavin said.
She quickly said goodbye and left.
"Two weeks?" Liam said.
"Did you see the look on her face when I said that?" Gavin clapped him on the back. "Don't worry. I have no intention of even being away for one week. But if it unsettles her that much to think about it…"
Liam smiled. "All the better."
***
Bridget couldn't think straight. She tried to focus on work, but her mind kept wandering. First, why did they have to be gone so long? And why did it bother her so much? She tried to push away those thoughts, disturbing as they were, but they just led to other thoughts.
What if Gavin and Liam were right? What if there really was a reason, buried deep inside her, for why she didn't want mates?
On the one hand, it wouldn't make a difference. Knowing why wouldn't change her mind.
On the other hand, why did she feel so strongly about all of this? Why did the idea of being with them scare her to death—even more than the idea of being without them?
Maeve called her that afternoon and Bridget took a quick break to talk to her.
"What's the problem, Bridge?"
Not her, too. "I've never wanted mates. You know that."
"Yeah, but I also know how strong the mating urge is. It's got to be killing you about now. So what is it that's stronger than that?"
She wasn't kidding. Bridget felt like she'd been turned on since the first second she saw them, and it kept getting worse, no matter how many times she tried to take care of the problem. And it wasn't just the arousal, either. She missed them. Even when she'd just seen them, she craved them. How on earth would she last two weeks without them?
She suddenly pictured herself driving up to Alexandria in the middle of the night, her hair sticking out because she'd been pulling at it, desperate just to see them.
"Bridge?"
Oh, yeah. Maeve. "I don't know. I just—when I think about being with them, it scares me to death. And when I think about being without them, it tears me up. I don't know what to do."
After a beat, Maeve said, "I know a really good therapist in Northern Virginia. She helped me through the stuff with Ted."
"I live in Marysburg." A therapist? Really?
"You could give it a try. I'm sure Gavin and Liam wouldn't mind taking you up there. Or find a therapist closer. The point is you need to talk to someone who can help you figure out what's going on in your head."
There weren't any therapists in Marysburg. Bridget would have to go to a werewolf therapist, and she knew enough about the two packs to know there weren't any. But Northern Virginia? Not exactly an easy commute. "I'll think about it."
"It's not going to go away. You can try to ignore it, you can deny it, but once you've found your mates, you can't undo it. And staying apart will get harder and harder on all of you. You need to find a way to make this work."
Maeve was an expert on all of this, that was for sure. Bridget didn't know how Maeve'd managed to stay away from her mates for ten whole years—Bridget was struggl
ing and it had been little more than twenty-four hours. But then, Maeve had had a much better motivation.
The sisters talked about their new-found sister Fiona then ended the call.
A therapist. Or a pre-nup. Or maybe both?
Chapter 6
Liam and Gavin spent the afternoon digging. Part of their focus was on finding out more about their mate's history, and part on looking into her parents' deaths. They found out next to nothing about their mate's state of mind, but the accident that claimed her parents was another matter.
Liam read over the report about their parents death again. It indicated the investigators had suspected foul play. The house was equipped with carbon monoxide detectors, yet none of them went off. All three were found to be either unplugged, their batteries out, or damaged so they wouldn't work.
The problem itself was with the furnace, which had supposedly leaked carbon monoxide into the house. Except the furnace was only a couple of years old, and had had regular check-ups. No indication of any problems beforehand.
At the same time, the investigators hadn't found any obvious signs of tampering. They'd even dusted the detectors that were unplugged and the furnace itself, but didn't find any prints other than those of two of the parents and the furnace guy. The furnace appeared to have a leak but it didn't look like it had been created by a tool.
It appeared to be a tragic set of coincidences.
Liam didn't like it. He could tell Gavin didn't, either. But why would someone have wanted to kill Bridget's parents?
"We'll have to dig deeper," Gavin said. "Find out who would have had access to the house, and who might have had motive to kill any of the three of them. The other two might have been collateral damage."
Liam's stomach knotted. He couldn't imagine killing one person in cold blood, but to kill two more just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time? Barbaric.
Challenges, fine. Warfare, fine. People went into those expecting to be hurt, and they had a chance to fight back. But to kill three people while they slept…it wasn't just barbaric. It was cowardly. "How do we find all of that out? We can ask Bridget about who came over to the house, but what about motive?"
The Alpha's Secret, An MMF Erotic Romance (The Stonewall Pack Alpha Series) Page 4
