Blue Moon Saloon Box Set 1

by Anna Lowe

  “What we have to do,” Lana said, “is change the way some packs think.”

  Ty snorted. “That’s like asking my father to change.”

  “He has changed,” Tina insisted. “Well, a little bit.”

  Ty held his fingers a millimeter apart. “About that much, and that’s taken years. Some old coots will never change.”

  “Victor Whyte will never change,” Soren said, and the room went still.

  “Victor fucking Whyte,” Ty muttered, finally breaking the silence.

  “Him, you can kill,” Lana said.

  Even Tina pinched her lips together and didn’t protest.

  Kill, kill, kill, Soren’s bear growled. Victor Whyte had ordered the massacre of his entire bear clan in a cowardly ambush. Victor Whyte had had the entire Black River wolf pack wiped out in Montana. Victor Whyte had ordered his men to trap Sarah and her parents inside their house and burn them alive.

  Victor Whyte wanted to kill Sarah and the baby, his bear grunted.

  Victor Whyte, he was definitely going to kill.

  He and Simon had talked it over a hundred times — going after Whyte before the extremist could claim any more innocent victims. But with the saloon just finding its feet and Jess and Janna joining them, they’d kept deciding to wait for the right time. Rushing off in a rage would leave their fledgling clan open to ambush, so they needed to plan carefully.

  “You said you’d be gathering intel,” Soren said to Ty, trying hard not to bark the words. Ty was alpha here, and he’d already done plenty for Soren’s growing clan.

  Ty glared at him then redirected the anger in his eyes to the map. “We have. We’ve tracked the Blue Bloods to a home base near Hope, Utah.”

  “Hope?” Tina shook her head. “They have the nerve to settle near a place called Hope?”

  Soren thought of a thousand ways he could rip, tear, and pummel that kind of hope right out of existence.

  “But if we go in there on a mission to kill the Blue Bloods, we’re no better than them,” Tina pointed out.

  Soren fought the urge to volunteer to be the bad guy, just this once.

  Ty dragged his nails across the map, showing the same kind of frustration Soren felt. How to do the right thing without stooping to the level of his foe?

  “Which is why we’re waiting,” Ty grumbled. “We’ve got our own contacts, believe me. The second Whyte and his leadership team stick out their necks, we’ll be on them.”

  “And until then?” Soren demanded.

  Ty locked eyes with him. “We protect what’s ours, and we wait.”

  Ours, his bear growled, having no problem conjuring up an image of whom that might be.

  Chapter Eight

  Contrary to Sarah’s fears, the next couple of days passed quickly. Easily, in fact, except maybe the few times she bumped into Soren on the way to the bathroom or on the stairs.

  But boy, did those moments stand still.

  Her heart would pound in her chest, the blood rush through her veins, and her breath catch in her throat. She and Soren would both freeze for a minute, staring into each other’s eyes, and it was like they’d vaulted right into the past, when everything had been promising and golden and good. Her whole body would warm up with hope and love and the energy that seemed to pulse between them like an electric field. Like magic. Like true love. Like…like destiny.

  Then Soren — it was always Soren who snapped out of it first — would blink and lean away. His eyes would grow distant and cold, and it would be over.

  Until the next time it happened, and the next, and the time after that. Little blink-of-the-eye moments she’d started to live for between the rest of the hours that seemed to drag by.

  Not that she didn’t like the cashier’s job at the café or the women she worked with. It was just that everything paled in comparison to those fleeting moments of love and light and hope.

  “Wow,” Jessica said one morning. “Can you believe the café has already been open for a week?”

  Sarah mulled that one over for a while, because it meant she’d been there for a week, too. Then another couple of days passed, making it two weeks, and she realized how much of a routine she’d fallen into. Work in the mornings, naps in the afternoons, followed by an hour or two at a desk in the back of the café doing the books, and finally, an early bedtime. And the next day, it would start all over again.

  The routine became comfortingly familiar in its own way, as did her cosy bedroom and the comings and goings of her housemates. It was a funny little arrangement they had going, and a funny little gang. Two couples shared the apartment over the saloon with Soren — Jessica and Simon, plus Janna and Cole, with everyone spread out in their own subsection of the place. Everyone but Cole worked in the café or the saloon, but the close quarters seemed to work harmoniously. Of course, the two couples were both head over heels in love. Soren was the only single of the bunch.

  Soren and her. And it seemed he went out of his way to avoid her as much as he could.

  She tried switching all that off when she went to work, though her success rate…well, it was a little low.

  Customers at the Quarter Moon Café were nice and cheery and kind enough not to stare too much at the burn scars on her hands. A crowd of regulars developed, and it started to feel a lot like home.

  “Thanks, Sarah,” Mike of Mike’s Hardware would say on his way through every morning. She didn’t even have to look at what he ordered to ring him up each day; it was always the same. Coffee with a splash of milk and one blueberry muffin.

  “Have a nice day, Sarah,” Pete the carpenter would flash his chip-toothed smile, put a dollar he probably couldn’t afford in the tip jar, and head out with a chocolate-raspberry muffin and a couple of sandwiches to go.

  The tip jar was Janna’s idea, and it filled up every day, especially once she drew a little stork carrying a baby on the front.

  “Looking good, Sarah,” Jessica’s friend Tina said one day, giving her a satisfied nod.

  Sarah didn’t know about looking good, but she sure felt better than when she’d first arrived at the Quarter Moon Café. Stronger. Surer. Rounder, too, because the baby seemed to be thriving with her new lifestyle.

  “It’s all the smoothies, wraps, and spare ribs I’ve been wolfing down,” she said.

  Tina stopped short, and for an instant, it seemed like half the people in the café froze. Jessica halted dead in her tracks as she carried another rack of muffins out from the back. Janna’s head whipped around instead of taking a customer’s order. The tongs Emma had been using to reach for a muffin clattered to the counter, and Sarah looked around.

  What? What did she say?

  A second later, everything was back to normal, and she spent the rest of the morning wondering if she’d imagined the whole thing.

  Every once in a while, her old fears would catch up with her, and she’d peek nervously out to the street. She’d spent the past months on the run from an evil band that seemed intent on hunting her down. Would they find her here, too?

  But fear became a passing thing instead of the constant, nagging companion it had once been. Jessica was right. This place had a safe, secure feeling to it. Jessica, Janna, and Emma were all tough, country girls who could hold their own, and it sure didn’t hurt Sarah’s peace of mind to have the burly Voss brothers nearby. There were always a couple of strapping young bucks from the local ranches hanging around the café or saloon, too. They’d settle in at a corner table by the window, eat enough for a platoon of marines, and shoot the breeze pretty much from the time the café opened to the time it closed.

  The second a stranger walked into the place, though, they’d drop their happy-go-lucky veneer and stiffen like bodyguards on high alert. Sarah swore they’d sniff the air, too, as if their noses were keen enough to draw any conclusions from a person’s scent. But a second later, they’d lapse back into lazy-cowboy mode, and again, she wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing.

  On the other
hand, there might be some truth in her bodyguard theory, because “the boys” — as Jessica called the gang of towering cowboys who rotated through regularly on their days off from work on the ranch — were always there. And Jessica had instructed Sarah to charge half the usual price while serving them twice the usual amounts. It really did feel as though they were there to keep an eye on things.

  “You sure you boys are all right?” Jessica would check in on the men periodically. “Not getting bored yet?”

  “If you think this is a hardship, ma’am, you come try the food on the ranch. This here’s a vacation for us,” they insisted with their special brand of cowboy charm.

  The boys read the paper. They played cards — until Jessica asked them to save it for the saloon. They told funny jokes with animals as characters, and bears always seemed to get the short end of the stick.

  “How many bears does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” the one named Jake started.

  “What did the bear say to the firefighter?”

  “A bear and a hedgehog are walking in the woods, and one of them says…”

  “Hey!” Sarah finally protested, calling across the café. “I like bears. How about you make cowboy jokes sometime?”

  Everyone laughed then abruptly clammed up, and Sarah turned to find Soren glowering in the kitchen doorway, where he stood with a muffin halfway to his mouth.

  Newspapers fluttered high as the cowboys suddenly found something very, very interesting to read — or hide behind.

  The clock ticked loudly in the heavy silence that ensued, and when Soren looked at her and tilted his head, she swore she could read his thoughts.

  Bears, huh?

  The left side of his mouth curved up a tiny little bit, and she went warm all over to see the old Soren peek out for a brief instant. Serious on the outside but laughing on the inside. Happy. Smiling. Hers. It was another one of those golden moments when she could believe that somehow, everything would work out.

  Yes, bears, she wanted to say. You know I have a thing for bears.

  His eyes twinkled, and she smiled, slipping away on memories. They’d gone to the county fair together each year, and every year, Soren had looked on as she shot her way to a prize at the target booth. It was the only way all the rifle practice her dad had insisted she put in paid off.

  Which one should I take? she’d asked Soren the first time she won, looking at the prizes. The panda, the duck, or the bear?

  Soren had answered immediately. The bear. Definitely the bear.

  It went the same way the second year, and the third, and she’d ended up with a collection of bears that crowded the lower part of the bunk bed her dad had built for her as a kid.

  Soren stood in the doorway to the kitchen of the café, watching her with what seemed like bated breath. His eyes seemed to glow at her — a hallucination, probably, which either meant she was still crazy in love with him or about to faint from exhaustion.

  Still crazy in love, she decided.

  The corner of his mouth crooked a little higher, and she nearly sighed.

  Then the bell over the door chimed as a new customer stepped in, and when she turned back to Soren, he was gone.

  Sarah shook her head to clear all the crazy thoughts. Maybe pregnancy wasn’t just messing with her body. Maybe it was messing with her mind, too.

  Chapter Nine

  Another few days passed, and just as the crazy rush of a Sunday morning in the café faded, business over in the saloon started booming.

  “Gotta love the NFL,” Janna sighed, heading over for her shift in the saloon.

  “Installing those widescreen TVs in the bar was your idea,” Jessica pointed out.

  “Widescreen TVs, football, and Soren’s special-recipe spare ribs. A deadly combination for the tiny bit of free time we have. We really, really need to get more help.”

  “You do,” Sarah said. She nearly said, We do, but caught herself in the nick of time. She was just passing through. Sooner or later, she would have to hit the road.

  But God, she sure liked the idea of leaving this safe haven later. Much later. Life was good here. She’d settled into a simple, honest routine that reminded her so much of home.

  “You two are working too hard,” she added. The Macks sisters had been working back-to-back shifts nearly every day at the café and the saloon.

  “Until we find more help…” Jessica trailed off.

  “And if we’re ever going to get a second bathroom and renovate upstairs…” Janna added.

  “Jess! Janna!” Simon’s voice boomed from next door, and they both took off.

  Sarah and Emma were still closing up when Jess popped her head in. “Uh, Emma? Can you help out in the saloon? Looks like the sports bar across town has a technical problem, and all the customers are rushing over here.”

  Sarah nodded toward her. “I’ll close up,” she offered.

  “Are you sure?” Emma and Jessica asked at the same time.

  “It’s the least I can do.”

  They made her swear not to clean the floors, only to close out the register and do the books. By the time she finished, the saloon seemed busier than ever, so she went over for a look.

  “Whoa,” she murmured, standing just inside the swinging doors of the saloon, beside the faded old sign that said, Check your guns at the door.

  The place was packed, and the football game was still in the first quarter. The poker tables in the middle of the saloon were crowded with extra chairs, and the booths lining the sides were packed, too. All she could see of the bar at the opposite side of the room was the top section — her favorite part — carved with a scene that might have come straight from home. A bear waded through a stream, a wolf howled at the moon, and an eagle soared over their heads. The whole bar was a masterpiece carved by some expert decades back — maybe as far back in time as the antique Winchester that hung high on the wall above the intricately carved shelves glittering with bottles of booze. The varnish gleamed with the light reflecting in the mirror centerpiece, and she suspected Soren, who loved woodworking, was responsible for that.

  “Can you believe this?” Jessica bustled by with a tray of drinks, shaking her head.

  Sarah spotted Janna and Emma hurrying through the crowd, too, delivering orders. Simon and Soren were both busy behind the bar, which Simon usually ran on his own. Even Cole was flipping burgers in the saloon kitchen, as she noticed when Jess rushed through the door. Everyone was helping.

  Everyone but her.

  Sarah bumped her way from the door to the bar, where Soren stood. His brow furrowed deeply as he juggled an overflowing beer glass, a bill, and a customer’s credit card.

  She slid in behind the bar and plucked the credit card out of his hand. “I got this. You concentrate on the bar.”

  “But—”

  “I got this,” she said, tapping away at the register.

  Simon pushed a spare barstool in her direction, and she took a seat to ring up the payments coming through. It was just like the café, except with bigger orders, higher bills.

  That, and when the cash drawer slid open, something else slid, too. A couple of rolling cylinders clinked and clanked in a subdivided section of the drawer right above the dimes.

  Sarah handed a customer his change, then picked up one of the cylinders.

  A bullet. She held it up to the light and gaped. A silver bullet?

  She peered up at the antique rifle hanging over the bar. A .44 Winchester, by the look of it. A furtive glance at the Voss brothers showed them both busy pouring drinks, so she jammed the bullet back in the drawer and slid the till shut. Out of sight, but not out of mind. Why on earth would the Voss brothers keep silver bullets around? A whole handful of them, not just a single lucky charm.

  The next couple of customers paid with credit cards, but whenever anyone used cash, she snuck a peek at the bullets rattling in the back.

  “Everything okay?” Jess asked the next time she swung by for drinks.

&nbs
p; “Sure,” Sarah replied, trying to get her mind back to work.

  The noise in the bar ebbed and peaked. Simon’s deep voice would call out occasionally beside her, while Soren stuck to nods and intense looks. Good old Soren, communicating more with his eyes than his mouth. He’d slam a glass on the bar, fill it with scarcely a splash, and slide it all the way down the varnished surface of the counter.

  No wonder customers loved the place. There was even a pianist, hammering out a jaunty ragtime tune that could barely be heard above the crowd. Live music was another of Jessica’s new ideas they were trying out for the first time. The football game was muted, and if Sarah looked away from the screen, the scene was as Wild West as she could imagine, right down to hand towels hung at intervals along the bar — the type used in olden days to wipe handlebar mustaches — plus a row of brass spittoons. Thank goodness the customers didn’t actually use those, except for the occasional tip.

  “Spare-rib special for table four,” Jess hustled up to say.

  “Pitcher of beer for table seven,” Janna added a second later. “Can you bring it to them, guys? I have to get the food.”

  Simon looked blankly out over the saloon.

  Sarah pointed. “Table seven — over there.”

  “You already know the table numbers?” he gaped.

  “Sure.” She counted them off. “Don’t you?”

  The brothers exchanged weary looks. Soren went back to pouring drinks while Simon went off to deliver the beer, murmuring something about women. Or had he said wolves?

  “Another couple of hours like this, and we’ll be able to afford that new bathroom,” Janna noted the next time she swept by.

  Another couple of hours did pass, and they flew because Soren was right beside Sarah, practically brushing her elbow. In spite of her weary feet, her aching back, and the ringing in her ears from the hubbub all around, it felt good. They didn’t exchange a word — probably couldn’t have, given the noise level — or look at each other. But that just made it easier. Each of them went about work quietly, but that was enough. Something deep inside her hummed with sheer pleasure, as if they were cuddling on the mattress in the old cabin they used to sneak off to and not standing behind a bar.