Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Renny set a single cardboard box, about the size of a case of copier paper, down on the floor of her new and starkly bare bedroom. She hadn’t needed to carry it up a bunch of stairs—since Molly’s apartment occupied the bottom quarter of an old Victorian house just a few blocks from Alpha’s main street—but she still felt the need to catch her breath. It wasn’t every day a girl learned that all she had left in the world was a folder of cash and identifying personal documents, a single pair of jeans, one pair of battered hiking boots, and an even more battered copy of the Poems of Robert Frost. Everything else was toast.

Well, that wasn’t precisely true, although Renny had briefly contemplated setting the remains of her car and her life on fire rather than taking the time to clean it up. Instead, she’d loaded the debris into plastic trash bags, which were currently on the way to the town’s small waste-processing center. Molly had helped with the cleanup, and her angry chatter about what she’d do to Geoffrey’s minions if she ever got her hands on them had gone a long way toward cheering Renny up during the sweaty, stinky task.

The car had been totaled and towed back to Alpha’s lone garage for scrap. As Molly had observed, all the windows had been broken, and the hood had either been beaten in with a baseball bat or jumped on like a trampoline by five coyotes in a killing rage. The upholstery was shredded, along with most of her clothes, and all of it stank of wild canine urine. It had really pissed Molly off that the bastards had marked the inside of the poor Nissan, and somehow that made it easier for Renny to let go of her own anger.

Without the other woman’s company, it would have taken her a lot longer to shake off the impulse to wallow in boohoos for the rest of the day. Self-pity wouldn’t accomplish anything, and she already had a lot to do. She had to build a new life for herself, here in Alphaville.

“I know it’s kind of small, but it’s all yours. I just painted it a few weeks ago, and I never got around to moving any furniture or anything back in. It’s almost like I knew you were coming.”

Renny turned to find Molly standing in the open doorway, wearing her trademark smile and jingling a set of keys in one hand.

“I asked the landlord to drop off another set of keys for you. The solid one is for the front and back dead bolts, and the one with the cutouts is for the storage room in the basement.” She shrugged, looking sheepish. “You might not need it right away, but you never know what might come up.”

Renny smiled. Already, the lioness had done so much for her, bending over backward to make Renny feel welcome. She couldn’t begin to express her appreciation.

“It’s amazing,” she said, squeezing Molly’s hand and smiling at her with sincere warmth. “You have been amazing, Molly. I already owe you so much, I’ll be turning over my firstborn child just to make a dent in my debt.”

Molly wrinkled her nose. “Um, no thanks. I don’t do diapers. Keep the kid, just fill me in on how things went with you and Mick last night.” She wriggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Renny tried to laugh it off. “What things? We pretty much went straight to bed.” Catching herself and Molly’s wide grin, she hurried to clarify while her cheeks flushed. “I mean, he went to bed, and I slept on the sofa. Sort of. That is, I didn’t get that much sleep. Too much to think about. And I already told you what happened this morning.”

Molly grimaced in sympathy. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m not trying to make light of your situation, especially not after seeing what those assholes did to your car. It’s just that in all the time I’ve known Mick, I’ve never seen him react to anyone the way he does to you.”

Renny tried not to squirm. Part of her wanted to change the subject, since the only reactions she’d gotten from the alpha wolf had told her just two things: one, that the attraction between them was mutual; and two, that he’d rather chew off his own paw than give in to those feelings.

Unfortunately, the other part of her—specifically the furry part—wanted nothing more than to pump Molly for every scrap of information they could get on their destined mate. She might know his backstory, but she wanted the details. She also wanted to know who he was now, not who he’d been before he’d lost his first mate and turned his back on a lifetime of memories.

“How long has it been?” The question popped out without her permission. She might not be the cat shifter in the room, but her wolf was apparently as curious as one, at least when it came to their mate. “Since you met Mick, I mean?”

The blonde didn’t appear the least bit surprised by the question. “Gah, it’s been … what? Ten years now? Almost that, anyway. My family is one of the ones that settled in Alpha early, so Zeke and I actually grew up here, unlike at least half the town. Most people move here once they’re adults, like you did, though I admit”—she smiled—“most don’t do it with quite your dramatic flair.”

Renny made a face. “Yeah, that’s me. I love it that my life has become a bad soap opera.”

Molly immediately stepped forward and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry, sweetie. You’ve been through a lot, especially the last couple of days. You don’t need me digging for gossip when you’ve lost everything you brought from California.”

“It’s not like I had a lot with me anyway. You can only fit so much into the back seat of a 2007 Nissan.”

Molly frowned. “Still, if I ever get my hands on one of those coyotes, I’m going to introduce them to a vet student friend of mine. She needs to practice her neuter surgery.”

The blonde’s expression of evil delight made Renny laugh. “Wow, remind me not to get on your bad side.”

“Impossible. Didn’t you know? You’re my new bestie, and as such, I refuse to allow you to live in an empty wasteland.” Molly glared at the bare carpet and empty walls of the bedroom as if they should be ashamed of themselves. As if they could be ashamed of themselves. “Which is why I’m not being a nice, considerate roommate and giving you your privacy. We need a plan so we can deal with the basics.”

Renny blinked. “The basics?”

Molly planted a hand on her hip and gave Renny a dubious look. “Sweetie, I know that minimalism is all kinds of in right now, but even you can admit that this is ridiculous.” She gestured around them. “You can’t live like this. You need furniture, curtains, posters, bedding. We have to set you up. I mean, I’ve got the kitchen covered, dishes and silverware, things like that, and you can worry about putting your own stamp on the common spaces later, but for now, you’ve got to at least make this room livable for yourself.”

“Molly, I’ve been on the run for months, living out of my car and cheap motels.” She rolled her eyes. “You’d be surprised at what I consider ‘livable’ these days. Hell, the carpet looks cleaner and softer than some of the beds I’ve slept in lately. I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t be stupid. My mother would skin me if I let you sleep on the floor. You at least need a bed. Come on. I can help you pick one out.”

Renny laughed and grabbed Molly even as she headed for the door. “Hold on a minute. I don’t think shopping for furniture is in my immediate future. I’ve got other priorities. Alpha has a hardware store, right? I can pick up a cheap air mattress for tonight and worry about the rest of it later. How about we work on the plan first, and shop later?”

“I’m not suggesting we hit the mall and empty your bank account,” Molly said. “Who wants to drive all the way to Redmond?”

“Who has a bank account?” Renny countered. “Running from a stalker, remember? I closed all my accounts to make it harder for Geoffrey to track me. I’ve been living off cash and off the books as much as possible. Which is why planning all this out is going to be so important. I need to prioritize so that my money holds out until I can find a job.”

“Well, that’s not going to take long.” Molly’s eyes twinkled. “Marjory Caples has been planning her own retirement party for the past five years.”

“Who is Marjory Caples, and why does her retirement affect my employment status?”

“Because she runs the Alpha Public Library, and she’s been complaining about the problem of finding a replacement who meets all the job requirements set by the city council, and who is willing to live in a small town in Washington State. Apparently, there aren’t as many non-urbanite librarian shifters out there as you might think.”

Renny’s head had begun to spin. She had spent all of her time in recent months living under a constant weight of stress, waiting for the next thing to go wrong, for the next time that Geoffrey or his enforcers found her. She’d forgotten what it felt like to hope that good things might be on her horizon, and yet coming to Alpha seemed to have opened up more possibilities to her than she had even let herself dream.

Calm down,a voice inside her said sourly. Remember that the special corollary to Murphy’s Law is called Landry’s Law, and it states that after anything that can go wrong has, the solution to fixing it all will never be as easy as it first appears.

She shook her head. “Just because I have a degree in library science is no reason to think the city council would automatically offer me the job, no matter how badly Mrs. Caples wants to retire. They’d need to interview me, see my résumé, review my qualifications, check my references. That could take weeks. Or even longer. And I’ve already agreed to live in your apartment when I don’t know how I’m going to pay you rent.”

Molly reached across the space separating them and bonked her on the head with an open hand. Renny jerked instinctively, then gaped at her new friend. “Hey! What was that for?”

“Did you hear me say anything about charging you rent? Or about anyone owing anything to anyone else?” the blonde demanded, scowling. “No, you did not, because I never would have been such an idiot. Friends help each other out, Renny, and they don’t worry about keeping score.”

“But—”

Molly spared her a warning glance. “Don’t make me bonk you again, young lady, because I will. And then I’ll be mad, because I’ve been working hard at curbing my violent tendencies. After growing up with a big brother like Zeke, they’ve become somewhat overdeveloped. I, of course, blame him.”

Feeling a little as if she’d just been run over by a steamroller of openhearted generosity, Renny blew out a resigned breath and forced herself to relax. If Molly was willing to use physical force to make her accept the help she was offered, perhaps she should just surrender to the inevitable. From what she could tell, its name was Molly Buchanan.

“Okay,” she muttered. “But I will pay you back, pal. Whether you like it or not.”

Mick had always known Fate was a bitch, but he hadn’t guessed She still had a taste for his tired ass, not after all these years. He also wouldn’t have predicted that She’d have turned his own friend against him. And the mayor. And what seemed like every damned person in Alpha and undoubtedly included everyone who had met Renny Landry. It felt like a fricking conspiracy.

He slid into a booth at Al’s Diner that put his back up against a wall. Literally and figuratively. Zeke and Jaeger had ended their meeting in the mayor’s office with a not-so-subtle invitation to breakfast at the popular eatery and had somehow herded him out of the one building and into the other without giving him so much as a sliver of room to protest.

Which was part of the reason he found himself glaring at men he normally considered his friends while they cheerfully ignored him and thanked the young waitress who had come to fill their mugs with strong, dark coffee. The two of them chatted with her as though they didn’t have a care in the world, while Mick tried to think up an excuse that would let him escape their subtle plan to kidnap him and force him to eat bacon.

Sure, he liked bacon just fine. Loved it, in fact. What wolf didn’t? But he knew both the other men well enough to realize that they hadn’t dragged him to the diner just for the pleasure of his company and crisp, smoked meat. They wanted to talk to him. The bastards.

The last thing Mick wanted was a discussion, especially one about a certain red-haired she-wolf. He’d much rather be at home, at his drawing board, working.

Hell, he’d rather be getting an un-anesthetized lobotomy with a grapefruit spoon. If someone offered one to him right now, he couldn’t guarantee he’d refuse.

Zeke leaned back in his seat and eyed him over the rim of his coffee mug. “You gonna sit here and pout through our whole breakfast? ’Cause that just might kill my appetite.”

“Men don’t pout,” Mick shot back, ignoring the smirk that decorated the face of his so-called friends. “We brood. But I’m not doing either.”

“Suuure,” Jaeger drawled. “Your lip’s just hanging down to your knees because your team lost their chance at the playoffs last night. I get it.”

Mick curled a lip but refused to answer. What was the point in arguing? Stubborn jerks would think whatever they wanted anyway. They always did.

Zeke smirked at him, then looked at Jaeger. “So, do you believe our friend here when he says he really didn’t even take a nibble last night?”

The mayor quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t know, Zee. That pretty little female spent all night in his house throwing off pheromones thick enough to paint the walls with, and he’s trying to tell us he didn’t even lay a fang on her?”

Mick glared across the table at them. “She was fucking injured, assholes. I’m a wolf, not a dog.”

“You’re a guy, and the two of you were shooting sparks off each other the whole time we were there,” Zeke countered. “I’m still shocked the damn curtains didn’t catch on fire.”

“You’re imagining shit.”

“Yeah, my olfactory imagination has a mind of its own.” Zeke rolled his eyes. “Dude, I can smell attraction when it’s right in front of me, especially when it’s pouring off both sides of the equation. She was just as into you as you were into her.”

“No one was ‘into’ anyone.” He took a slug of coffee, but honestly, there wasn’t enough caffeine in the world to help him handle this shit. “Don’t you two have official duties you should be dutying, or something?”

Jaeger shrugged. “I don’t know about Zeke, but I’m officially pointing out what an asshat you’re being.”

That earned the mayor a full-on snarl. “What?”

“You heard me,” Jaeger said. He had that look on his face that said he was just as alpha as the wolf across from him, and Mick had better brace himself for some hard truth. “You’ve got your head wearing a very posterior look right now. The woman tried running from her problems, and that clearly didn’t work. She needs help, and she’s landed in Alpha, so we’re the ones who are going to have to give it. Since she’s a wolf, like you, but clearly not alpha like you are, she’ll need protection and she’ll need the feeling of a pack. You’re our resident alpha wolf, so what are you going to do? Step up, or leave her twisting in the wind?”

“There aren’t any packs in Alpha,” Mick grumbled. “The town is its own pack.”

Zeke made a rude noise. “Save it for the Chamber of Commerce, dude. You want us to be blunt here? We’ve known you for nearly ten years now, and in that time, I’ve seen you hook up with a few women and avoid anything that hinted at a relationship like the plague. But I have never seen you react to any female the way you did to that little she-wolf. That tells me something.”

“What? To mind your own damned business? Because that’s what I’m going to tell you.”

Jaeger added his voice to bolster Zeke’s argument. “It tells everyone that it’s time you stopped mourning the mate you couldn’t save and start working to protect your new one.”

Oh, no, he thought. If the she-wolf and her delicious lips hadn’t been enough to make him admit he’d found a new mate, then Larry and Curly over here sure as hell weren’t going to manage it.

He bared fang at the two of them. “Wolves mate once in their lives. I had mine. She’s gone. That’s it. I’m done.”

“Bullshit,” Jaeger said. “Wolves mate for life. There’s a difference.”

“I shouldn’t have even survived Beth’s murder. Most wolves don’t. Taking a second mate is a one-in-a-million thing, and I ain’t that special.”

Zeke raised an eyebrow. “Really? Bestselling graphic novelist in history? Local celebrity? Survivor of a damned blood war in your own pack? You ain’t special? Thanks for the clarification. I must have been getting you confused with another Michael Kennedy Fischer I know.”

“Screw you.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll leave that to our newest resident.”

Jaeger nodded, his expression so falsely innocent that he looked like a demon whose homemade halo had spontaneously combusted. “We can’t let our forbidden passions interfere with a true mate bond. Our sordid affair will have to end.” He sighed and fluttered his eyelashes. “At least we’ll have our memories.”

Mick swallowed the urge to rip out the throats of his friends. He might regret it later.

Possibly.

“I hate you guys.”

Zeke grinned from ear to ear. “Aw, we love you, too, Rover.”

“But not like Renny will,” Jaeger said, nodding. “You know, with all the nekkid and stuff.”

Mick closed his eyes and let his skull thump against the wall at his back. “Why the fuck didn’t I just stay in California?”

Five hours after letting her new roommate drag her out of their apartment, Renny couldn’t remember when she’d ever acquired so many things in such a short span of time in all her life. Not even on her best Christmas morning. In fact, she couldn’t imagine anyone had ever gotten this much stuff in just a few short hours. This must have set some kind of new record.

Molly stuffed the last of the bulging bags of clothing into the back of her truck with a satisfied grin. “This was a total success.”

Renny ran her hand over the end of the wooden headboard that managed to peek out from behind all the fabric and imagined reassembling the old-fashioned tester bed it belonged to. Okay, reassembling and repairing, since the frame had seen better days. But then she imagined stretching out across it for her first good night’s sleep in months and her smile couldn’t be repressed. “Absolutely. I can’t believe she just gave us the bed frame. And the mattress. She wouldn’t even take twenty bucks for it.”

Her friend snorted. “That’s because Cathy Reynolds is not an idiot. If she’d taken any money, she would have to explain to her husband why she had sold their old bed after he had specifically told her she was not allowed to buy the brand-new bedroom set she saw at the store in Redmond. Bill hates spending money, not matter how easily he can afford to and no matter how past time it’s gotten. But now, Cathy can paint him the heartwarming picture of a selfless act done to benefit a young woman in need. This bed represents the first step on your journey to a new life. Twenty bucks wouldn’t even represent the fine they’d have to pay when the neighbors reported their fight for violating the local noise ordinances.”

“That’s brilliant,” Renny allowed. “And slightly terrifying.”

“So is Cathy. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

She tried to recall the woman’s face, but frankly she had met so many people over the last few hours that they all kind of blended together into one amorphous blob of friendly welcome and unexpected generosity. By the end of their excursion to the four corners of Alpha (and, if Renny had guessed right, ninety percent of the points in between), the women had managed to buy, scrounge, borrow, or liberate (from curbs and such, no felonies involved) a new start’s worth of clothing, home furnishings, and decorations.

Okay, so Renny’s bedroom would still probably look a bit Spartan compared with the cheerful clutter in the rest of the apartment, but as Molly had said, minimalism was in. And besides, Renny didn’t need much.

Though you wouldn’t guess that by looking at the packed cargo area of the burly SUV. Molly’s behemoth of a vehicle made her poor, totaled little Nissan look like a Smart car.

She stepped back and bit her lip. “Do you think I went overboard? This is an awful lot of stuff.…”

“Bite your tongue,” Molly said, closing the rear hatch with a solid thunk. “It only looks like a lot because it’s all crammed into the back of one car. You barely got the necessities today. You need someplace to sleep, right? And these bags from the consignment store are absolutely required. Or did you want to start a movement to turn Alpha into a nudist colony?”

When she heard it put like that, Renny tried to relax. Honestly, when she thought about it, she really hadn’t spent much money for what she’d acquired. Molly knew all the best bargains in town, from the Newcomers Committee, to the secondhand shop, to the homes of the local residents with junk they were holding on to until the summer garage sale season. And all of them had been happy to help Renny supply herself for a new life in Alpha.

Just a few hundred dollars had netted her a bed and an end table–cum-nightstand for the bedroom, as well as a pair of lamps to go with them. An army of plastic and wooden hangers of all shapes and sizes would fill her closet, and she had bags of jeans, tops, and like-new clothing suitable for work that she’d unearthed from a variety of new and used shops and outlets. Honestly, she owned more now after one shopping trip with Molly than she had before the coyotes had destroyed her car.

Her only big splurge had been the fifty dollars she had gladly handed over for a delicate old vanity table and stool she had found in the back of the same store where Molly had bought a vintage glass vase. The swivel-mounted oval mirror needed to be re-silvered at some point, and some wood glue would probably make a big difference in the way the legs of both the table and the stool tended to wobble when they took any weight. The white paint had chipped badly, but underneath, Renny had spotted grains of antique elm. Her fingers itched for a can of stripper and a putty knife. When she was finished, she felt sure the set would be a showstopper. And it was hers. For her new home.

Emotion welled up and threatened to spill out her tear ducts. She really didn’t have to run anymore. Her life could finally start again. The only fly in her ointment remained a stubborn alpha wolf with a chip on his shoulder and a justifiable fear of commitment.

One thing at a time, girl,her inner voice reminded her. Remember: baby steps. Look what you’ve managed to grab hold of in less than twenty-four hours. If you can manage all this, that male doesn’t stand a marshmallow’s chance in a campfire.

Just wait and see.

Molly bumped her shoulder and smiled. “Come on, roomie. Let’s haul our treasure home and start getting you settled in. I can’t wait to see how that little tapestry looks against my expert paint job.”

“Me either.”

Renny was still grinning, still wrestling with her first experience with optimism in more months than she cared to count, when the fingers closed in her hair and jerked her backward.

Shit.