He nodded. “I should go now.” He got up and grabbed his keys from the coffee table. “I’m sorry for bothering you.”
“I…”
Raoulf didn’t wait for her to finish because he was already halfway across her home. He reached the door and pulled it open.
“I didn’t mean to bring you any harm. I wouldn’t hurt you,” he said, before letting himself out and closing the door behind him.
“Wait,” she said, a moment too late.
Raoulf had already cranked up his motorcycle.
She wanted to tell him that he didn’t care that he was a shifter. Discovering that he was more than just a man had just shocked her. The thing that puzzled her more was that as soon as he was no longer in her home and keeping her company, she felt a void.
With the way she questioned him about his scars and acted when she finally realized that her intuitions were correct, he’d probably never return. No matter how well she fed him.
She glanced over at the foyer table where he’d set down two carryout trays earlier to take home with him and sighed.
Chapter 11
“Chestnut Holdings LLP. How may I direct your call?”
Raoulf had been trying to reach Mr. Chestnut for the past couple of hours. The man had resorted to not answering his call which could only mean one of a few things: he was tired of being reassured of imminent case completion with no proof in sight or he was just that damn busy.
“Warren Chestnut, please.”
“Mr. Chestnut is busy, sir. Can I—”
“I don’t care if he’s busy. This is urgent. I need him on the phone…stat!”
“Certainly, sir. Hold the line.”
Classical music flowed through the earpiece, but it did nothing to soothe Raoulf’s rising temper. He paced the small motel room like an aggravated mountain lion ready to spring from his cage.
“This is Warren.”
“It’s Raoulf. I need answers,” he stated bluntly.
“Well, well, well…I thought surely you’d run off with my money. Why does it feel like you’re beating around the bush on what you promised to deliver?”
“I have questions that require answers,” Raoulf stated firmly. He plopped down on the couch, hoping that it would aid him in calming his wolf. “First one: What exactly do you want from Nina Moore?”
“I told you. It’s complicated.”
“Complicated? Right. Everything’s complicated when you can’t answer the question,” Raoulf replied, making no attempts to hide his snide, sarcastic tone.
“I told you about my agreement with her already, Raoulf Justice. You of all people should know that we enter agreements like this to retain what we should be entitled to in the first place. Unlike you and your family, my true nature is still secret. I’m not out as a shifter. None of my immediate family members are. I can’t risk my businesses, my money, my livelihood if, one day, that no longer is the case. Every day I proceed in business as if any and all of this can be stripped away from me at any time. I have humans in place that I trust should this transpire. I trusted Nina to do what I asked,” Mr. Chestnut replied. “When she signed the agreement obligating herself to marry me, I began the process of transferring a very important asset into her name. I was given one month, so against my better judgment, I decided to get things rolling early. I made the call to conduct the transfer before we were legally married. And then she reneged. Our—my asset and my money are in limbo because of her. She needs to fulfill her end of the bargain so that we may proceed as planned.”
“We? Is someone else involved?”
“What does it matter? It’s a family asset. I was just responsible for keeping it in the family.”
“Is there any reason why you can’t just reverse what you’ve done without her?”
“I cannot. Nothing can be reversed without me dragging her back into this again.” Mr. Chestnut sighed. “She needs to marry me or make arrangements to get her ass down here so I can try to reverse what I’ve done.”
“That’s harsh. You shouldn’t be dragging anyone back anywhere against their will,” Raoulf stated.
“You’re right. I won’t. That’s what I hired you to do.”
“We all know that ain’t happening’.”
Raoulf didn’t trust Chestnut. Even if he gave away Nina’s location, how could Raoulf be certain that Chestnut wouldn’t hound her for life while holding a nasty grudge against her? She had been hiding from him for her peace mind. He doubted she’d been trying to keep an asset that wasn’t hers.
“I figured this much,” Mr. Chestnut said. “Of course, there are others in your line of work who’ll do the job without asking any questions.”
“While you keep your hands clean, right?” Raoulf scoffed.
Mr. Chestnut chuckled. “I’m a sanitary person, and I like keeping cleaning.”
Raoulf rolled his eyes. “So what you’re saying is that you want Nina present to reverse your agreement?”
“That is somewhat correct.”
“This isn’t as complicated as you present it to be,” Raoulf noted. “It doesn’t sound like she wants your asset at all. Maybe she just wanted to help you out of the goodness of her heart. I don’t know what transpired between you that caused her to break everything off but your harassment is unwarranted.”
“That too is a complication I don’t have time to get into,” Mr. Chestnut said. “She was my friend. We dated while she worked from my home. She was a woman, I was a man. We had needs. We satisfied those needs. And like I said, I trusted her.”
Something akin to jealousy mixed with rage consumed Raoulf at the thought of Chestnut touching her.
“Well, you should have trusted her enough to ask her like normal people do to reverse your premature transaction.”
“I would have if she stops running from me. She’s afraid.”
“Of course she’d be afraid if you’re hunting her down like a dog.”
Mr. Chestnut chuckled dryly. “You don’t even know the half of it.”
“There’s more?”
There was a brief pause on the line. “She knows what I am.”
Raoulf shook his head and scoffed. “So?”
“Have you not been listening? I’m a Chestnut! We’ve kept our shifter gene a secret. We conduct business as the humans do. We’ve done this for hundreds of years. We cannot risk this now.”
“I doubt she’s going to stand up in front of your business holding up picket signs outing you. She’s not that kind of woman.”
“How do you know? In either case, she knows about me. She wasn’t supposed to find out the way she did.”
“That’s what happens when you plan a marriage with a human.”
“Not necessarily. We’ve been marrying humans for business reasons for decades now. We’ve never had a problem. The divorce rate is high, of course, but these women never leave the marriage wanting for anything else. They sign pre-nuptials and non-disclosure agreements, yet most of them are set for life anyway—even if the marriage only exists for weeks. I promised this lifestyle to Nina. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Raoulf rose from his chair and then bent down to retrieve a beer from the mini fridge. The woman he’d become so infatuated with had almost married this nutcase.
“I don’t understand why you need to press this. If she hasn’t exposed you already…”
“This isn’t just about me, Raoulf. She saw my brother and I shift. I promised Ronald I’d have everything taken care of and that I’d get his asset back and correct this mess. Here I am today with his asset still in limbo and Nina is still missing without a trace. God knows what she’s doing. She could be transpiring against us this very moment.”
Raoulf had paused mid-sip, but suddenly he didn’t care for a drink anymore. “So all of this is about your brother?”
“Yes, it is. This deal was done so that we could liquidate the asset I was holding for him. He didn’t want to marry a human, so I agreed to do it. I already had the
perfect human. My own personal chef. It would have been convenient. After she overheard a conversation that I had with him one day about our planned marriage of convenience, she said she felt betrayed, unsafe. On an evening when I thought she would be out of town, she entered my home early and witnessed me and my brother shifting after returning from a run.”
“You should have explained things to her…” Raoulf dropped his head in his palm.
“I did. She was more upset by me calling her a tool than she was about learning that she’d been fucking a shifter.”
“Careful,” Raoulf growled. “Did you explain that to your brother?”
“I tried. It was too late. Ronald lives by the old code. He wanted her silenced. In the days afterward, while we were arguing about what we should and shouldn’t do, she had already managed to redirect the funds that I had fronted her back to my bank account and skipped town. She just disappeared. Ronald said she was transpiring against us. I said she was just scared. I convinced Ronald to let it go for a while. But Ronald…being the man he is…won’t let it rest. He’s warned me to fix this before he does. I agree…somewhat. If the wrong people have access to the right information, our whole cover is blown. Nina needs to understand that. And I don’t know about you, but I like making easy money.”
“Don’t we all, but something tells me that your brother is a pain in the ass.”
“You’re right. He’s not like me. He still finds issue with the fact that my father cut him out of the will leaving our company and all of its holdings to me. The fact is, if it weren’t for me, Ronald Chestnut would be as broke as the Ten Commandments. It’s because of me that he continues to have any money in his bank account at all.”
Raoulf frowned. “Does he not work or have a trade?”
“Our family trade includes riding the stock market, Raoulf Justice. We’ve been riding it for decades.”
“But you’re the one doing all of the work to keep the family afloat.”
“I’ve been telling them this for years,” Mr. Chestnut said. “They seem to think I go to the beach and play in the sand all day. Nonetheless, and contrary to popular belief, I’m not the bad guy here. I’m just a businessman. My brother is who you need to worry about.”
“Why should I worry about him?”
“I tried doing it the legal way, but I presume that since you’ve been stalling all this time that you don’t plan to deliver on the terms we agreed on. I told you that time was of essence and now my brother is involved. If he finds Nina Moore, there’s no telling what he will do.”
Raoulf slammed his fist into the table. “You can’t control your own goddamned brother?”
“Like I said, I’m not like my brother. Ronald thinks that he’s above the law, and that includes Pack law. In fact, he is without a Pack. He’s been running around with a group of outlawed shifters ever since Father died. You should know how ruthless those gangs are. I understand that you were outlawed and that you rebelled for and against some Pack regulations for quite some time before going back to Aspen Valley.”
The man knew too much about him for his tastes.
“Consider me off this case,” Raoulf stated.
“I considered it the moment you made excuses for not revealing Nina’s location.”
Raoulf grabbed his jacket and keys from the bed. “I’ll have my accountant wire you a refund plus interest by tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, of course you will. But at this point, a refund won’t solve a thing. I’m tired of running after Nina. Maybe my brother will have better luck. You may consider that a warning.”
“Here’s a counter warning for you. If your brother does anything to harm Nina or even attempts to lay a hand on her, he’ll be more than without a Pack. He’ll be without his life.”
Before Mr. Chestnut could utter another word, Raoulf disconnected the call and tugged on his jacket. In less than five minutes, he was on the road headed to his destination. Nina’s home.
Chapter 12
Nina pulled the oversized cooler filled with the trays of frozen lasagna over to the front the door. She ran back into the kitchen to get a bottle of water and a snack. Last night and this morning had been rough. After mulling around in bed and thinking about what happened the night before, she’d rolled out of bed with just enough time to pack the things to take down to the food bank. Thank God she was off from the bakery today. She just didn’t think she’d be able to focus on much of anything. With everything that had been going on, a day to relax and unwind would be in order.
She pushed open the screen door and rolled the cooler across the threshold.
“Can I help you with that?”
She shrieked out in surprise dropping her keys, water, and a bag of chips.
When she turned around, Raoulf was standing behind her looking like a confused and tired puppy.
After catching her breath, she said, “You make it a point to scare the crap out of me all the time, don’t know?”
“I assure you, I don’t.” He picked up her things off the doormat. “You’re safe with me, so you don’t have to fear anything.”
She swallowed. “I’m not scared of anyone.”
“Let me get that.” He grabbed the handle of the cooler and rolled it next to her car.
“You did surprise me though. What happened last night? You just left.”
“I wasn’t ready to tell you about me…yet,” he said.
“Well, I wasn’t going to throw you out of my house or anything. I know about shifters, ya know,” she said, unlocking the trunk.
Raoulf shrugged. “Well, I didn’t know that you knew.” He lifted the cooler with little to no effort and placed it inside.
“Let me guess: you don’t want anyone to know. And you’re here to threaten my life if I tell anyone.”
Her tone was sarcastic, but deep down inside she was worried.
“That’s not it.” He shook his head. “I’m not trying to hide it. I was just a little surprised that you found out so easily on your own.”
“I know the difference between human eyes and wolf eyes. I’ve met people like you before. I’ve even worked with them. Mostly down in Texas—but that’s another story.”
“And you’re not afraid…of me?”
“Not because you’re a shifter, no. I learned a long time ago that being a shifter doesn’t make someone a threat. It’s just what you are. I’ve known since I was a little girl that people like you existed. It wasn’t until later in life that I learned there are shifters who don’t want anyone to know what they are. And they’ll do whatever it takes to keep it that way.”
When he diverted his gaze away from her and didn’t say anything, she continued, “You know, I heard someone outside earlier this morning, but I thought it was the gardener. How long were you here before I came outside?”
He nibbled his bottom lip, and then said, “Not long. I wanted to talk about last night, but I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I’d love to talk and all.” She glanced down at her watch. “But here’s the thing…I’ve gotta go take this food to the bank or people will go hungry.”
“Well, we can talk after you drop the food off,” he offered.
“We can. Now that we’re clear on what you are and as long as you promise not to run off again, we can talk,” she told him.
He smiled. “I’m glad you’re okay about what I am.”
She shrugged. “You could’ve told me all along. I guess I should’ve put two and two together when you mentioned you were a free agent and that you roamed from state to state. Plus I was starting to wonder where you were putting all that food you were eating.”
“I burn calories three times as fast as a normal human. And yes, I needed the food or the wolf gets grumpy. Don’t get me wrong, you’re still a damned good cook.”
She grinned. “I know it.”
“You’re something else, Nina,” he said, and then gestured to the trunk. “Do you need an extra hand getting all of this stuff inside the f
ood bank? I’ve got nothing to do.”
She smiled. “I don’t have any cash on me…so if you’re looking to get paid.”
“No, I’m not looking to get paid. Can’t I do you any favors without expecting something in return?”
“You tell me. I thought everyone wanted something in return,” she said, holding her palm out. “My keys?”
“Not everyone.” He dropped the keys in her palm.
“Are you going to follow me on that speed monster of yours or are you riding with me?”
His answer came shortly after when he walked over to the driver’s side door and held it open for her. Then he joined her, slipping into the passenger side seat.
Chapter 13
The food bank was right around the corner, so the drive took less than ten minutes. With Raoulf’s help, the frozen trays changed hands fairly quickly. With the workers preparing for a big dinner this evening, the back area of the kitchen was congested and noisy. Raoulf must have thought so himself because he retreated outside as soon as they were done unloading.
Cheryl, the clerk on duty, handed Nina a yellow slip. “Here’s your donation slip. As always, we appreciate your generosity.”
They moved outside where a few guys were loading some paper products off a truck.
“No problem. And you know I love to cook.”
“I’ll be sure to let the Director know you stopped by today. She’s been asking about you.”
“I told you that I’d be opening my own catering business soon, right?”
“Really? I always knew you had that entrepreneur spirit about you. Congratulations!”
“Thank you.”
“Also who is that man over there that helped you bring in all the food?” she asked, lifting her gaze in the direction of Nina’s Honda.
Nina stole a quick glance at Raoulf. He was patiently waiting and leaning up against the passenger side door. “Oh, he’s just a friend. He’s been helping with some odd jobs.”
“Just a friend?” She cut her eyes. “Ooo girl, he is fine as hell. Where did you find him from?”
Aspen Valley Wolf Pack (The Complete Series) Page 33
