Chapter 6

6

Five kangaroo construction workers turned out to be a magic number because they finished the wall repairs by mid-afternoon. They left early because they had a show that evening, and I refused to let them practice their stripping in the front yard.

But they promised to return tomorrow with the paint Farley and I chose. It was a shade lighter than the kitchen cabinetry, which seemed like it would be soothing to a guest.

I spent the afternoon in the kitchen, where Harrison entertained me with his plate-setting and napkin-folding skills. He could fold the material into swans, snakes, and all sorts of cute designs. I put all his examples in a box and stored it in the pantry. They would get me through the fairy's visit.

Later, Garrison brought me a dozen documents to review. He'd driven here in a vehicle that functioned as a mobile office for him.

Some pages were contracts for the work. Another was a summarized list of supplies. Yet another was a report of problems found during wall repairs that would need to be solved before the inn could pass inspection for multiple guests.

Harrison made us tea while I perused Garrison's papers. It tasted every bit as good as Carol's had.

"Your tea is better than mine. You should open a restaurant," I told him.

Harrison shrugged. "It would hurt Deedee's feelings. She runs the diner."

I sipped. "Diners close early. Yours could be a specialty place with reservations only and evening service. Even people in Podunkville must celebrate anniversaries and birthdays. They'd probably fork over some bucks just for being able to dress up and eat out someplace nice."

"Maybe. And it's not Podunkville. The town's name is Assjacket. That's what Zelda calls it."

Ignoring the correction, I pointed to his brother. "Get Garrison to handle the money for you if he has time. Do you guys have other jobs?"

"I work remotely for MIT," Garrison said.

"I'm CIA," Harrison said with a grin. "I'm not a field agent, but it's still interesting. Humans don't know I'm a bear. I've learned to blend right in."

Garrison grinned at me. "By interesting, Harrison means he mostly does the job because of the many opportunities he has for dating human women. They get new crops of agents coming in all the time. His looks draw them to him like honey draws bears."

Harrison opened his mouth to argue but then shut it. "Yes, that's true."

I laughed at them both. They looked the same but seemed very different. Garrison hadn't once bragged about his prowess. "Aren't there any women at MIT, Garrison?"

"Not any that I'm interested in," Garrison said with finality.

Harrison whispered to me behind his hand. "He doesn't like girls. He likes Paul ."

I stopped and stared at Garrison. "Kangaroo Paul—that Paul ?"

Garrison sighed. "Yes. I like a man who doesn't know I exist because I don't dance."

"Well, that's pretty stupid of him," I said. "You're gorgeous and look like a Viking. I'd go out with someone who looks like you just to stare at a handsome man all night."

Garrison leaned on the table. "Are you trying to flirt with me, Selene?"

Harrison chuckled and threw a swan at him. "No, dufus. She's saying she likes to look at Farley, who just happens to look like us."

I giggled. "Yes, I actually was saying that." I sighed as I thought about him. "What does Farley do for a living?"

His siblings looked at each other and then at me. "Anything he wants," Garrison said with a shrug.

Harrison smiled. "After Mom and Dad Chuck died, he went through a phase of developing plasma weapons. The tests went better than planned, but the weapons were eventually banned for their too-reliable destruction capabilities. Farley created them to kill all the badgers because our biological mother hired some of them to kill Mom. It took Auntie Carol two whole days to talk him out of his badger-killing plan. She convinced him Mom would never have wanted him to condemn the whole species for the acts of a few."

She blinked at the seriousness in their tones. "Did Farley really invent a new set of physics theories?"

"Yes," they both answered.

"Is he right?" I asked.

I got two sets of shrugs in answer. "Stanford University seems to think so," Garrison said.

"But Oxford disagrees," Harrison added. "They want him to come to England and work for them so he can build some credibility. Farley told them he couldn't go live there."

"Why?" I asked with a laugh. I enjoyed listening to their stories about him.

"You," Garrison said with a soft smile. "He was waiting for you. He had a dream about you when he was twelve."

"During puberty ," Harrison said with a laugh. "It was a wet dream, not a vision."

"It was a vision," Garrison insisted. "Farley had a vision of a woman who was a little bit mean and a whole lot of fun. So every woman he came across after that was a big nope."

"She was a what?" I was full-out giggling now. "Did he say that to them?"

"In his Farley way," Harrison said.

"Should I be flattered that he hasn't said I was a nope?"

"Yes," Garrison said with a laugh matching hers. "You're a yep."

I giggled into my teacup. "What's a yep?"

Garrison held up a finger. He lowered his voice to sound like his Dad Charlie... and a lot like Farley.

"Well, boy? Was the innkeeper the woman from your wet dream?"

"Yep. And it was a vision, Dad."

"Was she everything you wanted her to be?"

"Yep. Now stop asking me questions."

"Are you going to chase her until she promises to stay with you forever?"

"Yep."

I pushed my teacup away and stood up. It was hard to do when I was laughing so hard. This was the most I'd laughed in ages. Farley's brothers made me miss my own siblings.

I might have been the woman from Farley's wet dream, but I was not the one he'd spent his life looking for. While he'd been waiting for Ms. Right to show up, I'd been living life as fully as a witch could. As smart as he was, Farley would figure that out eventually. It was too obvious for him not to.

My incarceration was turning out to be a more pleasant experience than I expected, but that didn't mean I wasn't eager for the month to pass.

If anything happened between Farley and me, it would be with the understanding that I was not any male's answer to anything permanent.

I was a witch with a life of my own.

I didn't need to take on anyone else's problems. Nor did I need to spend my time worrying about Farley possibly blowing up the planet with something he made from his new physics.

That's what his family was for, right?

"I'm not a yep," I said.

"Nope," both his brothers said. And then they burst out laughing.

I fisted my hands on my hips and glared at both of them.

"Wait for it," Farley demanded.

He walked away from me and turned a switch until lights lit on the porch and down the stairs. "What do you think?"

The bear was treating me like we were an old married couple. Farley had stuck around after everyone else left to show me some lighting he'd connected at the front of the house.

I rolled my eyes when he wasn't looking. "The lights are very nice, and I agree they make it safer to walk up the rickety stairs. However, I still want Paul to fix them for real. Not everyone can skip over them the way you can with your three-foot stride."

Farley scratched his head and pushed up his glasses. "You're probably right."

"Let's talk about this tomorrow. Are you staying for dinner? I found a sizeable piece of salmon in the freezer. It's supposed to serve four people. I'm one and figured you could eat the other three portions."

"Does staying for dinner constitute a date?" Farley asked.

"It could be a date or just a delicious salmon dinner between friends." I waved a hand at my dusty, stained clothes. "These aren't exactly my date clothes."

Farley raised his head from checking out his own clothes. "What do you consider date clothes?"

"I'm too tired to do that much magic tonight. Can I show you some other time?"

Farley raised an eyebrow. "If we'll have a date at another time, we should probably call this a friendly dinner then."

"That's probably a good idea," I said with sarcasm I knew by now Farley didn't understand.

I laughed as I carefully climbed the still-broken steps. "What were you doing this afternoon?"

"Coaxing your lawn into smoothing out and talking to the trees."

I stopped in the hallway and turned as he closed the door behind him. "You were talking to the trees? Did they answer?"

Farley rolled his eyes. "You sound like my brothers."

"I spent the afternoon with them. I like your brothers."

"More than me?" he asked.

I looked over my shoulder and grinned. "Are you jealous?" I asked.

"No. I have triplet insecurity," he answered. "We all look the same."

"At first glance, that's true," I said. "All of you are very handsome, even your father. But Garrison has a hard jaw that he uses to prove his masculinity, and Harrison looks like he's always ready to laugh. Neither of them has your sexy teeth, so I'll never be interested in them."

"Plus, you're not Garrison's type."

"I know. He likes Paul, which I do not understand because Paul is weird. Sure, he has a six-pack, but he shows it to the world."

"Garrison must truly like you to tell you about Paul."

I slid the salmon I'd seasoned earlier into the oven. "And I bet Harrison doesn't have a type. Who joins the CIA to pick up women? He may need therapy for that."

Farley chuckled. "I'm sincerely sorry I missed that conversation."

"They told me you invented weapons of mass badger destruction."

Farley closed his eyes. "Well, I may be inventing one for mass sibling destruction soon."

I laughed. "Your brothers are great, and they think you rock."

"Can't a man have a rock collection without people assuming he's strange? I study the piezoelectric properties in the rocks I collect."

"Your brothers didn't tell me you had a rock collection. They said you rock , as in a rock-in-roll kind of rock."

"Oh. Metaphor time." Farley said with a low grunt.

"Metaphor time?" I asked.

He waved his hand. "I'm not good at them. I'm not good at common sayings. We had metaphor time during dinner three times a week. Someone in my family would toss out a saying that made no sense, and they would ask me to guess what it meant. The rest of the meal was spent with everyone explaining the nuances of it to me. My IQ is higher than my entire family's all put together."

"So you're a genius then," I concluded.

"Auntie Carol doesn't like that word. She said it was too limiting for me. She describes me as a high-functioning prodigy with a limited ability to focus on anything that doesn't lead to solving the world's problems or destroying all of humanity."

"Because of the badgers?" I asked.

"Because of the badgers," he agreed. "I was around eighteen then. All shifters go through a killing time.

"Stick to calling yourself a genius. It's much easier to explain."

"Does my intelligence scare you?"

I burst out laughing. "Are you full of yourself or truly asking?"

"Must I explain metaphor time again?"

I laughed at the genuine concern in his voice just as the oven dinged.

When I pulled the salmon out, I heard a growl. It made me laugh. "Dinner's ready. Yum." And then I heard a knock on the front door.

I sighed as I looked at Farley. "Who would knock on my door during dinner?"

Farley shrugged. "Want me to kill them so we can eat?"

I punched his arm as I walked by. He pretended it hurt and flashed me his sexy teeth. The smile on my face faded to a scowl as I trudged to my door.

Prepared to blast whoever was there, I opened it to find Lady Meagan on the stoop.

I narrowed my eyes and blocked her entry. "Did you come to make sure I was being punished?"

"No. I came to see why you kicked my son out without listening to him. He said he tried to apologize and that bears ran him off."

"It's too late for Ethan's lame apology. And I'm not going to stand in this hallway and debate what your loathsome son would do or not do. I know what he did , and I'm not sorry I shrank his man stick. I've accepted my punishment, so go home and leave me be."

"Take him back, and we'll drop the charges."

"No. It's too late for that," I said. "As I told Ethan, I've moved on to better and bigger men—much bigger ."

Farley walked down the hallway to join me. "Visiting hours are over for the day," he said over my head.

"Who are you?" she asked, looking up with her head tilted all the way back.

I snorted. "This is my probation officer, Farley. He's a real bear and already pissed about Ethan coming here. Keep this up, and the Baba Yaga will keep me here until this whole damn place is finished."

"How can he be anything to you? He's not magical. He's a bear."

I turned and looked up at Farley, winked, and looked back at Lady Meagan. "He's more magical than you realize. Now, please don't make me be redundant and have to tell you to leave again. Farley's not letting me out of his sight, and we just sat down to dinner. If you have an issue with my incarceration, please see the Baba Yaga. I have twenty-eight days, five hours, and thirty-eight minutes to go."

Closing the door in Lady Meagan's face was the most delightful thing I've ever experienced with another woman. I smiled at Farley. "Let's eat before someone else shows up."

My Viking Bear was still staring at the door. "Was that the mother who defended what your ex-boyfriend did instead of scolding him for his unacceptable behavior?"

I waved her presence away. "Yes, but she's not important. What's important is dry salmon. If we don't eat it in the next couple of minutes, it won't be edible."

"Are you allowed to zap her if she tries to force her way into the house?"

I thought about that as I plated our food. "Carol said I should ward and protect the inn. I hadn't taken the time yet."

"I don't like the idea of you being here with your enemies wandering in. Do you care if I sleep on your porch tonight?"

I jumped on the segue. "You could share my bed instead."

Farley sighed. "I'm prepared, but Dad Charlie reminded me of something called the three-date rule."

I palmed my forehead and stared at the table. "You're being cockblocked by your father. Do we need to do a metaphor time for this?"

Farley picked up his fork. "No," he said sadly. "But he's my dad, Selene."

"Ah..." I said, realizing I had it all wrong. "It's not you. Your father is pussy-blocking me. He wants to keep me from using you."

Farley's face wrinkled in confusion. " Pussy-blocking? What do Fat Bastard and his friends have to do with my father? Do you think they're all conspiring to keep us apart?"

He forked a bite and made a humming sound as he ate. "This is delicious. And I want you to use me, especially in all the ways Dad is worried about."

He stopped eating to flash me that fanged smile of his.

That was the moment I finally realized that the man of my dreams was a genius bear shifter who didn't have a clue what pussy-blocking meant.

And I didn't care one bit.