Chapter Three

Corey popped the ice pack and shook it up until the chemicals had a reaction and turned cold to the touch in the plastic bag.

She looked up to the spot of Ace’s fight, where she’d left him, but no one was there anymore.

She frowned and scanned the clearing, but she didn’t see him in the loose clusters of shifters that were milling around. She shut her door and hugged the clipboard to her chest as she strode up the slight incline to where she’d left him.

Another thorough scan, and he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Huh.

Whatever. She shrugged and made her way back toward the trailer to jump back in on her job. Ace was fun to tease, but it wasn’t the end of the world that he’d disappeared. He probably didn’t like talking after a fight, or he wasn’t into humans. Fair enough.

She took her place at the top of the stairs of the trailer and checked that Gunner and Hallie were interviewing someone. Damon Motherfreaking Daye was in with them now, and they were all sitting at the table with one of the shifters.

Damon Freaking Daye.

She shook her head, still stunned at the unexpected events of the day.

“How many more names until Marshall Dillon?” a handsome shifter with sandy-brown hair asked from where he’d approached the railing.

She read the names. “Three more.”

“I have to get to work,” he said. “Can you move me up?”

“We’re all missing work, doucheball. Figure it out,” one of the other shifters called.

“Do any of y’all get along?” she asked curiously. “Or do all male shifters want to kill each other.”

“The second one,” Marshall said.

“Nice. Where do you work?” she asked conversationally.

“A distillery in Saratoga. I asked to come in a couple hours late.”

“Probably call your boss and tell them you’re not coming in today.”

“I don’t have that kind of flexibility,” he explained. “Please, can you just move me up?”

“Darren, Kyle, and Beaver-Jack, do you mind if Marshall moves up? He’s got commitments. Who the fuck is Beaver-Jack? And please tell me that’s a nickname.”

No one answered.

“Beaver-Jack?” she called louder.

“Do you mean Devon-Jack?” someone asked.

She squinted at the name. “Maybe? Sir, you have atrocious handwriting. Do you have a problem with Marshall cutting the line?”

“Yeah, I have a problem with it. We all had to make arrangements to be here. He can wait his turn.”

“Okay, Darren and Kyle, what do you think?”

“No cuts,” one of the men yelled.

“I have somewhere to be too, dickhead,” another one said. “Handle it.”

“Oh, I can handle it,” Marshall said, facing off with the last responder.

“No fighting,” she said.

“What are you going to do, human? Stop us?” Marshall asked.

Corey snorted. “No, I just need to get my camera up. I want to take a video.” She aimed her phone at the crowd. “Okay, go.”

Something about that made Marshall disappear. There was no warning, just poof, he was gone in a cloud of strange black smoke. Weird.

“On a scale of one to ten, how single are you?” the man with the atrocious handwriting asked.

“One being super single—no one in my messages, no one catfishes me on social media or even puts a like on my cleavage-baring pictures—and ten being married?”

“Sure.”

“I’m a one.”

There were a few chuckles from the crowd.

She cocked a smile for them. “And not looking.”

“Careful with words like that. This group loves a challenge.”

“Aaah. Well, I should be upfront then. I like knitting little animals and growing vegetables to sell at the local farmers’ market, where I scare most of my customers off with my awkwardness. I still check my ex-boyfriend’s social media pages because I’m pretty sure I broke up with the one person who could put up with my four personalities, and I don’t put out on the first date or even the second, as seems to be the norm nowadays. I can’t cook, and I hate doing dishes. Once a month I like to wrap myself in a blanket and watch romantic comedies and cry as I eat an entire pint of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Sometimes I drink too much wine and prank call people, and then I have to apologize to my victims the next day. I talk a lot, and I’m not really interested in changing my ways to fit a man. I am fine with spiders and snakes, but have a phobia of worms and will search the ground for them every time we go on a walk, and I’ll scream and run away if I see one. I am clingy and expensive, and I’m also one of those women who will text you in the middle of your most stressful day and ask ‘if I was a slug, would you still love me?’ because I am emotionally needy and at times insecure. I will wake up and require you to listen to every single thought I have because mornings are my favorite. Not all of my thoughts are intelligent. Any takers?”

There was a soft rumble from the crowd, but no one raised a hand to date her.

She nodded and cocked an eyebrow. “That’s what I thought.” She looked back to see the interviewee meandering out of the trailer with a disturbed look on his face. “Darren,” she called.

She looked around the crowd, and someone in the back caught her attention. He was laughing, but the quiet kind where his head was ducked and his shoulders were shaking. When he looked up at her, his bright-blue eyes were dancing. At least Ace found the humor in her admissions. “What kind of animals do you knit?” he called.

“Well, tonight I’m probably going to try to knit something called a beaver-jack. Apparently I can’t read real good either.”

He belted out a single laugh that echoed across the clearing, and dragged a giggle from her.

She was glad her mess could at least entertain someone.

Darren walked past her, and she offered him a high-five. He gave her hand a dirty look and left her hanging. Corey nodded, and clapped her own hand with her other. “Kyle, you’re on deck. Beaver-Jack, you’re in the hole.”

“Devon-Jack,” he corrected her.

“Yeah, I don’t care. Marshall? If you are around, there’s only two ahead of you. Okay boys, carry on. Also, why aren’t there females here trying out for this Crew?” She looked around, but couldn’t find a single woman in the crowd.

“Because women are smarter than men?” one of the shifters guessed.

“Fair enough,” she said with a nod. “I’m going to throw this ice pack in Ace Longshlong’s general direction—”

“It’s Ace Longdong,” he corrected from the back.

“Whatever. I have to warn you all, I played softball up through freshman year in college, but that was a long damn time ago, so needless to say, my throw may be a little rough. Please make sure this gets to him. Ready?”

“Good God, woman, stop talking, just hand me the damn ice pack!” Marshall had reappeared at the front of the crowd, his hand outstretched.

“Rude. But thank you.” She handed him the ice pack, and he turned and chucked it into the woods in the complete opposite direction of where Ace was standing.

She watched it sail into the woods, and then nodded. Sarcasm would be best. “Great aim.”

“I’m going next, and anyone who has a problem can fight me,” Marshall announced.

As Corey slowly pulled her phone up to take video, he jammed his finger at her and mouthed, No.

Fine, she mouthed back. You’re boring.

Marshall disappeared into a cloud of black smoke and reappeared right in front of her, his hand resting gently on her throat. His blazing-green eyes were full of fury.

“Who’s boring now?” he whispered.

He released her throat and disappeared. He reappeared at the bottom of the stairs, and time slowed. Ace was there, right where he reappeared, his eyes blazing blue and looking at something she couldn’t see. Marshall appeared right beside him and Ace was already mid-swing. He clocked Marshall the second he appeared and went down with him, his hand on Marshall’s throat, driving him into the dirt. “You gonna touch the throat of a human woman?” he asked. “Touch my throat. I fuckin’ dare you.”

Marshall lifted his hands slowly. “I’ll go.”

“You’ll go,” Ace agreed in a terrifying voice.

He stood up in the cloud of smoke and took the stairs two at a time. “Mark his name off the list,” he snarled as he walked past her.

Corey was rubbing her throat where the skin still tingled from Marshall’s touch. Her adrenaline was pumping, and her hands were shaking slightly. Truth be told, she hadn’t realized how dangerous the shifters here were, nor how volatile.

It made her tuck the confident parts of herself away and get quieter. Ace stood beside her at the railing. “If anyone else pops at her, you’ll bleed.”

Chills rippled up her arms, because there was something so harsh in his voice. Like he was telling his truth. He would bleed anyone who came for her.

Heart pounding, she glanced back to see the last interviewee leave. She cleared her throat and called, “Kyle. You’re up.”

She dared a look at Ace, who sank down into a lawn chair that sat on the porch, hard eyes trained on the crowd.

“Do you…” she murmured.

“Speak up,” he ground out.

She swallowed hard. “Do you want to do this job? I can leave.”

“You’re doing fine at it. That wasn’t your fault. I’m hanging out like Gunner said.”

Okay. Okay! He wasn’t trying to take over. He was good with her continuing to call the interviews, but he was not going to let the shifters here mess with her. All right.

“That was messed up, and he shouldn’t have done that,” Kyle said as he passed her by.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“I’m not talking about Marshall. I’m talking about that one,” Kyle said, pointing his finger at Ace. “Marshall was putting you in your place and teaching you a lesson on how to act around us. He shouldn’t have stopped that.”

“You want to die?” Ace asked coldly.

“You can go too,” Gunner rumbled from inside the house.

Kyle jerked his attention to the humongous man that took up the entire doorframe. He stepped out of the shadows, and his glowing silver-and-blue eyes were drilling right into Kyle. “Corey doesn’t need to be taught a lesson. You can leave before I beat the shit out of you.”

“Gunner,” Hallie warned.

“Nope. This one is a fair threat. I’m not picking fights.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward, looked right into Kyle’s soul. “But I will end it. Get out of my territory.”

“Do you know what I am?” Kyle asked in a quiet tone.

“You could be a planet, and I would burn you,” Gunner said.

Something about the confidence in Gunner’s voice made Kyle turn around and jog down the stairs, yelling for the others to, “Get out of my way!” as he exited.

“I think I’ve caused enough problems for one day,” Corey murmured. She moved to hand the clipboard to Ace, but he was wearing this strange smile.

“You’re doing well at weeding them out.”

“Next on the list,” Gunner ground out, and disappeared back inside.

Damon Daye was staring at her, from his seat at the table inside, with an unfathomable look. She threw him a little wave, got self-conscious, and looked back at the sheet. “Devon-Jack,” she called, not about to piss any more of these monsters off. She dared a glance at Ace. “Thank you.”

He stared at her. After a few moments, he nodded, but didn’t say any more.

This shifter was very interesting to her now. He was hot, and mysterious, and he could have a sense of humor, and he was protective, but not in an overbearing way.

Okay, hot-boy, she was paying attention.

“I’m sorry about your ice pack,” she said.

“I didn’t need it. My jaw is already healed.”

“Oh, amazing, you’re hot and you have superpowers,” she muttered under her breath.

The chair creaked, and she looked over at him in time to see him lean his elbows onto his knees. “I can hear a bird’s heartbeat over in those trees.” He twitched his chin toward the woods.

“Congratulations?”

“So, I heard what you just said about me being hot.”

The blood drained from her face. Oh, that was very unfortunate. “I said you’re not hot.”

“I can also sense a lie.”

“I feel like my work here is done. Hallie?” she called inside. “Longdong is going to be your new bouncer. I have ramen noodles to make.”

Ace snorted. “I thought you said you can’t cook.”

“Boiling some noodles for three minutes and then adding some chemical flavor packets doesn’t really count as cooking, but if it does, then I am a chef because I have had them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the last three days in a row. I need to go grocery shopping.”

“Okay.”

She handed him the clipboard.

“Did you hear me? I said okay.”

She frowned suspiciously. “Okay, what?”

“We can eat together.”

“Was it…” She was so confused. “Was it the ramen noodles that changed your mind?”

He handed her his phone, his eyes steady on her. The new-contact information screen was pulled up. Oh, this man was smooth. Too smooth.

Still, she was flattered. It had been awhile since a man had shown interest in her. Even if she was just one of a mass of women he would have stored in his phone, at least he found her interesting.

She took the phone and typed in her number, then handed it back to him.

He typed something into it, and her phone vibrated in her back pocket.

She pulled it out and read the text from the unknown number.

This is Ace. Your survival instincts need work.

She pursed her lips against a smile and looked up at him, her cheeks heating with a blush. “I did just give my number to a man who has been in two fights since I met him.”

He nodded. “You did that.”

She shoved her phone back into her pocket and said, “I’m going to ride off into the sunset now.”

Ace jammed a thumb behind him. “Sunset would be that way.”

“Right. I’m going to walk away like a cool girl and not look back. Hallie,” she called. “I’m clocking out. Love you, see you when you have time for me.”

“I’ll call you after we’re done today!”

“I don’t believe you, but I still love you.”

“Love you too!”

Be. Cool.She curtseyed. Oh God. She curtseyed deeper. Stop! Then she nodded her head demurely and said, “I hope your days are filled with sunshine.” Perfect. She took one last mental picture of the confusion on his face, and left. And then she looked back at him four to seven times like the very-uncool girl that she was.

“Nicely done,” she whispered to herself as she gripped the steering wheel of her car.

It was nice to meet you, she texted. Send.

It was weird to meet you too, came Ace’s reply.

And as she pulled away, she thought today was the strangest day she’d ever had, but she wasn’t alone with it. She had definitely given Ace a weird day too.

She was also pretty sure he would never text her again.