It wasn’t enough, so she drained the glass and poured another as the oven beeped. She pulled the pizza out and turned the broiler off. Perfection.
He may have looked like a bear, she mused as she puttered around the kitchen, but he didn’t act like one. Her father had been right, Brock was a gentleman. He had caught her, helped her pick up her things, and hadn’t even looked at the tampons rolling across the sidewalk. He hadn’t dismissed her out of hand for working for her father. He’d driven her home, making polite and humorous conversation the entire way. And he was a billionaire. If her father was a successful business man and CEO of a successful company, then Brock was a superstar and his company an empire.
The pizza was still too hot to cut, so she went and changed, still mulling over the oddest part of the day.
“I will shift for you,” he had said. “When you see the bear up close, touch him, let him sniff you …”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to pet a bear. Petting Brock might be nice though. The thought, like the image of him in her bed, came to her suddenly and she pushed it away. They would be working together. She had to remain professional. Besides, no matter how polite he might be, he still had a dangerous animal living inside of him just waiting to come out.
Her alarm went off way too early, but she got out of bed, showered, and made a cup of coffee. She’d tried to go to bed early, but routines were not so easily changed. Having taken stock of the dress code at city hall on her brief visit there the day before, she selected a pair of high-waisted dress pants in charcoal and a black blousy shirt with bright pink and coral flowers. The bright colors brought out her Spanish coloring. Her father was pure Cajun, but her mother’s family had been from Spain. A touch of neutral-toned makeup completed the outfit, and she smiled at her reflection in the mirror. She dumped her coffee into a travel mug, locked up the condo, and headed for work.
The drive was a lot easier at this hour, but New Orleans never truly slept. There was always someone headed somewhere, even in the dead of night. It was no longer dead of night, not with the eastern sky turning rosy hues that matched her shirt.
He was waiting for her, leaning against a pillar chatting with the night security guard. He smiled when he spotted her, finished his conversation, and moved to meet her. “Feeling better this morning?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes, but still pretty embarrassed.”
“Forget about it,” he said. “I remember the first time my father let me talk to the press about some corporate takeover or something. I stumbled over my words so bad I thought I had developed a stutter overnight. My voice cracked for the first time in years, and I tripped over my own feet on the way up to the microphones.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah.”
“What did your father say?”
“That I needed to enunciate better and I should learn to walk.”
She laughed. They had reached the back of the building and he stopped in front of two doors. One had his name on a brass placard. The other said, Administrative Assistant.
“These are the offices.”
“I get my own?” she asked, staring at the door. “I don’t have to sit at a desk in the open corridor?”
“The perks of working at City Hall.” He opened the door. It was a small room with a small desk, a large filing cabinet, three chairs, a window, and a coffee maker.
“Wow. This is a promotion,” she said. There was a second door in the side wall. “Where does that lead?”
“To my office.” He opened it and let her through. His office was big enough to have a small couch against one wall but it was still smaller than her father’s.
“It’s not as impressive as I thought it would be.”
“It’s not the Oval Office,” he agreed. “It might take a few more generations to get a shifter elected president, if it ever happens.”
“We have a black president,” Gia pointed out.
“The world has only known about us for seventy years,” he replied.
“Right. So, who’s to say we didn’t have a shifter for a president sometime before that?” She smiled at him and settled into one of the chairs. “So, let’s get this meeting going then. What does my job look like?”
“All of the mail is opened and sorted by someone else,” he said. “We have someone who deals with certain types of requests, fan mail, that sort of thing. Requests for media interviews, public appearances, etcetera, will be directed to you. You oversee my professional calendar. I will keep you up to date on any personal matters that may interfere with that schedule—appointments and the like. You’ll accompany me to meetings, take minutes, and help me keep all my research notes and what not organized so I don’t make a fool of myself in front of the different committees.”
“The fool leading the fool?” she said with a smirk.
“Precisely. You catch on quick.” He was half-sitting on the edge of the desk and he winked at her. He liked her quick wit. “Also, all emails will go through you. You forward anything pressing on to me, and anything that needs to be dealt with by another staffer gets sent to them. I’m told a lot of it is actually handled by filters.”
“Sounds pretty normal.”
“Great. At six you can go down and get your security card and get yourself set up with the IT guys. This week is already scheduled in, so you’ll want to review what’s going on, and we’ll want to prepare for a few meetings. The preliminary budget meeting is coming up, that’s a big one.”
“Looks like I have a few long days ahead of me. Good thing I brought coffee.”
They smiled at each other.
“Oh, and the full moons have been marked on the schedule. I am unavailable after four p.m. on those days. Absolutely no exceptions for anyone.”
“I understand.”
“Good. I’ll leave you to it. I’ve left my cell phone number on the desk. I have another meeting I need to get to this morning.”
“Did you want me to come along?”
“No. This isn’t a meeting you can be a part of. Don’t worry, it’s nothing illegal, but the people I’m meeting haven’t made their dual nature public yet.”
“I see.” She did see, and she began to wonder just how many of those shifters lived in New Orleans. No one knew for sure. Brock refused to give the media a number, and there was no law in place to force him to reveal that information. “I’ll call you if anything comes up.”
“Thank you.”
Brock didn’t go straight to the warehouse. Instead, he drove down to the courthouse where Officer Jameson was waiting. “Do you think he’ll be here?” Jameson asked.
“He’ll be here,” Brock said. “He wouldn’t dare disobey the clan leader on this matter.”
“I hear he plans to make a plea bargain.”
Brock nodded. “Everyone knows he’s guilty. He’ll enter a plea of guilty for the destruction of property and resisting arrest in return for his identity being kept out of the papers.”
“Any idea why he did it?”
Brock shook his head. “Not yet. But thank you for your assistance in that matter. My friend is working on figuring out if those pills have anything to do with the incident.”
“Just tell your friend to be careful, and you too. If anyone finds out about that bit of help, I’ll be branded a crooked cop.”
“I understand.” Brock held out his hand and Officer Jameson shook it. “If he doesn’t show, call me. I’ll drag him here myself.”
From the courthouse, he went to the warehouse. There was a two-door Toyota sitting close to the door—Remy’s car. Brock wasn’t sure how a man as tall as Remy could drive a sub-compact and not lose his cool, or the ability to use his legs, but the clan leader managed it.
It was quiet inside the warehouse and Brock’s steps echoed in the vast stillness. Remy, the lean, dark-haired leader of the New Orleans werebear clan, held up a small plastic bag with two pills inside.
“Those are the offending pills?” Brock asked as he crossed the r
oom.
Remy nodded. “They do, in fact, contain natural sedatives—lavender, chamomile, valerian.” It never ceased to amaze Brock that a voice so large and deep could come out of a man as skinny as Remy.
“So, Jules was right, herbal remedies.”
“Jules was half right. There’s more to these. The pills are layered.”
“Layered?”
Remy handed over the bag for Brock’s inspection. One of the pills had been cut in half. The outer ring was green-brown, the center was reddish. He handed the bag back.
“It’s a primitive time-release system,” Remy explained. “You swallow the pill and your body digests the outer layer first. The sedatives.”
“What’s in the inner layer?”
“Stimulants.”
“You don’t give stimulants to someone suffering from anxiety, especially not during an anxiety attack.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. There’s a reason we don’t serve coffee at our clan meetings.” Remy eyed Brock’s cup. “How much coffee have you been drinking lately?”
“Too much. But I’ve been doing my tai chi every night.” He wasn’t being sarcastic. The ancient meditation technique helped soothe the bear.
“Well, you know better than I do that we don’t need another public incident, so I’ll trust your coffee intake to you. But this was more than just caffeine. Korean ginseng, black tea leaves, guarana, and a touch of nicotine. Jules took six the day he shifted.”
Brock shook his head. The younger werebear, Jules, had shifted in the middle of the airport. They were trying to pass it off as work related stress and a fear of flying triggered by a bad interaction with airport security. That obviously wasn’t the case.
“The more of these he took, the more severe his anxiety became,” Brock murmured.
“And the more anxiety attacks he had, the more of these he took,” Remy agreed.
“The man who sold him the pills ...?”
“Dead end, like I suspected. Freddie down at the marketing firm was very helpful. Had a name, a meeting place, a cost, everything. He swore he thought the pills were on the up and up.”
“Lying?”
“Not unless the man is a grade-A psychopath,” Remy said. Which meant Remy hadn’t smelled a lie on the guy. It was hard to lie to a shifter. “But everything he’d been told was a lie.”
“Did you get a description?”
“Yup, gave it to the police and to the wolves. They’ve been warned not to get involved in herbal remedies for a while.”
“What about the public? Will this help our cause? Or hinder it?”
Remy shrugged. “Probably help. A mix up in medication that caused a bad reaction. His shifting was a mistake, something he could not avoid, something he did his best to control. Instead of looking like an out-of-control monster, he’s a victim who managed not to hurt anyone during his lapse.”
“Why didn’t you go into politics?” Brock said.
“I did. I just didn’t go into human politics.”
“What are the other clans saying?”
“Same as us—surveillance, close supervision, mandatory changes to release the bear’s anxiety. Nothing extreme.”
There was no central governing body in the werebear community, not like the strict inner and inter-pack structures of the wolves, but the clan leaders were in regular contact with each other discussing rules that kept them all safe. If that conversation had gone bad, or if Jules had hurt a human, the other clan leaders would have called for his execution and would have come looking for answers if Remy had refused without good reason. With the threat of execution passed for the time being, Brock could relax a little. Brock was fond of Jules. He held a special affection for each member of his clan. They were only six now since Brock and Remy’s fathers had died young and Jules’ father had run off to another clan. They’d only be five if Jane hadn’t moved from Quebec a few years earlier. She’d been just in time to meet Brock’s father before the plane crash took him. Not even a shifter could survive a personal jet crashing into the Atlantic.
“So, we don’t have to worry about killing Jules—yet,” Remy said. “But we do have a problem on our hands. Someone gave these pills to Jules, and I’m betting that someone knew what he was.”
“Jules isn’t out yet, and God willing this won’t shove him into the public eye. Who could have known what he was?”
“For starters, everyone in this clan, everyone in his father’s new clan, and everyone in the New Orleans wolf pack.”
“To accuse one of our own of this? Remy, are you mad?”
“I accuse no one. I am simply making a list. We know his employers now know, but when did they find out? Also, your family lawyer knows.”
“He’s getting older,” Brock mused. “I don’t doubt his loyalty, but perhaps someone on his staff does not feel the same way and gained access to privileged information.”
“It is an avenue of investigation at least. Freddie did not know before the incident, and he was not lying on that count either. Once we know who knew that Jules was a shifter, we can narrow the list down to those who could harm him in this way, and those who would want to.”
“Looks like you’re off to a good start,” Brock said. “Make an appointment with Mr. Goldstein. Tell him it’s clan business and he’ll see you right away. And keep your nose open for a lie.”
“Always,” Remy said with a mock bow. Brock knew it was dangerous to give orders to a dominant shifter, but he also knew Remy was likely to take it in good humor, as long as Brock didn’t push his luck. “How is Marsha?”
“Keeping secrets,” Brock growled, not liking this subject any better than the previous one. “Something is wrong.”
“Didn’t she say as much? Some emergency with her sister?”
“If her sister was sick or something, she’d tell me. I know she would. It’s something else. She won’t tell me what’s wrong. She won’t let me help.”
“You are worried, I can see that. Are you worried she’s in grave trouble? Or are you worried that she has stopped trusting you?”
Remy’s words lanced an old wound and Brock turned away, suddenly angry. “I was good to her,” he said. “I was careful, always careful. I never raised my voice, never raised a hand to her, and she told me she loved me. She told me she didn’t care what I was. She said she could accept the bear.”
She wasn’t Marsha in this case. She was Stephanie. Stephanie had come after Belle and a long line of flings. He’d thought she was different, thought she cared, but in the end, they were too different from each other and the relationship had ended. She and Belle were the only ones who knew what he was, and when he announced his plans to run for mayor she had cashed in on his publicity and outed him without his permission. Hell, she hadn’t even warned him. One morning he’d opened the paper and there it was in big black letters, “WILL NEW ORLEANS ELECT A SHAPE SHIFTER MAYOR?”
He had gone to the warehouse that day and the bear had relentlessly torn furniture apart for four hours before he’d tired enough to shift back to human. Once human, he had cried.
“I’ll withdraw my candidacy,” he’d told Remy that day as he dressed again.
MUNDO (BBW Bear Shifter MC Romance) (MC Bear Mates Book 2) Page 39
