Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

P enny looked so shyly hopeful that Ashely immediately felt guilty for snapping at her. She held her breath a moment, mumbled, "Sorry for growling," and then after another holding of her breath, said, "I would appreciate any ideas."

She'd completely lost her mind already, after all. There was no way Penny had really thought she needed to return the t-shirt, which meant the Sixty Pix drummer had been looking for an excuse to come talk to her. It was apparently one thing for Ashley to approach Penny, even if she was her fated mate. If Penny came to her, well. It would be rude not to flirt. And Penny had looked so cute , admitting she would listen to Ashley read a phone book. And suggesting she could find something better for Ashley to read aloud.

Ashley really, really wanted to find out what Penny had in mind.

Which she absolutely couldn't do right now. Thinking about how she'd leaned in to Penny, who was so tiny it was easy, was a distraction Ashley didn't need. The fact that Penny had been wide-eyed and receptive was definitely a distraction Ashley didn't need. At least, not while Laurie was right there, making her life even harder than it had been five minutes ago.

"We have tents," Penny said. "Venue tents, not just, like, tents for camping in. The band does, I mean. Huge ones. Wedding-sized tents."

Ashley saw where she was going with it, but said, " Why ?" almost plaintively. "I don't think bands normally have venue tents, do they?"

"No." Penny hesitated, glancing between Ashley and Laurie, whose expression was still stricken. Ashley almost felt sorry for him. She could believe he'd been trying to be helpful. But she could also believe he really, really hadn't been thinking anything through, so 'almost' was as far as she went with the feeling sorry. Penny shrugged, a big loose motion that drew Ashley's attention back to her. "We've played a lot of weird venues, is the thing. In a lot of bad weather. And we have some really enthusiastic fans, see…"

"The Fits," Laurie said. Ashley quirked her eyebrows at him and he spread his hands. "The Sixty Pix's fans call themselves the Fits."

"Because they pitch sixty fits when they get to see us," Penny said, embarrassed. "Anyway, so we were performing at a festival a couple summers ago and the weather was incredibly bad, and the Fits decided they'd just make themselves comfortable and bring tents. Somebody worked for a company that provided festival tents, and these ones were being retired because they'd gotten torn up a bit, so the fans rescued them, fixed them up, and after the festival asked if we wanted to keep them."

"You have somewhere to store venue tents?" Ashley asked faintly. "That must take up a lot of space."

"Myles owns a warehouse in an industrial park. Because ," Penny said as Ashley and Laurie both boggled at her, "because he wanted somewhere to practice bass when he was a teenager, so he developed an app, some kind of game, and it did well enough that one of the big tech companies bought it, so he had money when he was like, seventeen."

"And he decided to spend his life trying to make it in a band ?" Laurie asked incredulously. "I would have written another app and made bank."

"He did," Penny assured him. "And he's worked in the tech industry since, but yeah, in his off time, he plays bass in the band. It's not a big warehouse," she said, almost defensively. "But it's big enough to hold the band's gear. Including venue tents."

Ashley laughed. "Your lives aren't normal, Penny." Not that she should talk, she realized. She, after all, was the one who could turn into a bear whenever she wanted to.

"Most of the time they're very normal," Penny promised. "It's just this one aspect where it gets weird."

"Normal people haven't written game apps that get snapped up by big companies," Laurie pointed out, then looked hopeful. "What game is it?"

"Oh, God, I don't know, I don't play phone games. It's one of those geocaching things where you run around collecting digital prizes and fighting other teams. Anyway," Penny said strenuously, "I could drive back over to Denver tonight and get the tents, if you could get the parking lot cleared to pitch them. Maybe the back lot? It's big but not as many people park there. So you could host the charity event and not risk the bookings you've already got for the main building. And I can get a lot of volunteers on short notice, although it might mean me and Gwen have to do a pick-up gig to say thanks and I should check with her first."

"What a good idea," Ashley hissed, "checking with the rest of the team before making any promises."

Laurie, who was two inches taller than she was, cowered at her tone. "I said I was sorry!"

"No you didn't!"

Her cousin froze, rolled his eyes like he was reviewing a transcript of their conversation, and winced. "I'm sorry."

"Thanks, but it doesn't help. A bunch of tents for an outdoors venue in December in Colorado doesn't seem like a great idea."

Penny, quietly but with determination, said, "Beggars can't be choosers, can they? This charity thing, they've got to know they're in a bind, right? Obviously an outdoors venue isn't ideal at this time of year, but they're good tents, they've got sides, so body heat and space heaters can help keep them warm-ish. But what choice do they have? Is there really any chance they'll find somewhere else on barely twenty-four hours' notice?"

"No! That's why I said we could do it!" Laurie hunched his shoulders apologetically again as Ashley gave him another glare. "Well, it is."

"Ashley!" The staff door flew open and Jon came through it, stopping abruptly to find Ashley, Penny and Laurie all crowded into the hall just a few steps beyond the door itself. He double-took at them, said, "What's going on?" and then skipped over his own question to say, "Ash, did you know the rest of your family is coming down from the mountain for the week? And that so are Uncle Richard and Aunt Pam with their crew and Uncle Dave and his kids? And that Steve and Charlee might be coming in from Virtue?"

"What? No. That's ridiculous, we just all saw each other in June at Steve's wedding. And Mom and Dad never come down from the mountains in the winter. They like to hibernate."

Penny bit back a laugh, although Ashley was completely serious. Since her youngest brother had left home a few years earlier, their parents had decided the winter months were their time to relax completely. Ashley was certain they'd slept through Christmas entirely the year before. Not that Penny could possibly know that.

Jon shrugged. "Well, Uncle Rich and Dave thought it was so great that they decided we should have another family reunion and now they're trying to get Aunt Carol and Uncle Phil to come down from wherever-the-hell-Alaska that they settled in?—"

"Shkalnik," Laurie said under his breath.

Jon ignored him. "So now Mom and Dad think we should close up the pub on Christmas Eve for a family reunion."

Ashley snapped her teeth shut on her first protest, which was that they had events booked for Christmas Eve. That wasn't true, though. She'd decided that the staff deserved their holiday evening with their families, and hadn't let anybody book anything that night. There were only a couple of people scheduled to work at all, and the pub would be closing early anyway. After an incredibly long moment of trying to think of a way out of it, her shoulders slumped. "It's their pub. I guess I can't really say no."

Penny was counting on her fingers. "Pete, Richard, Dave, Phil, and…your dad, Ashley? There are five Elder Torben brothers?"

"Phil is Aunt Carol's husband. She's the Torben. Her and Aunt Rachel are the two girls, and then there's, yeah. Four brothers. And I only have a brother and a sister, but everybody else has at least four kids."

Penny went back to counting on her fingers. "So you have twenty-one cousins?"

Ashley sighed. "Twenty-three, actually."

"But that's just on the Torben side," Laurie said. "Mom's got three sisters and they've all got two or three kids. Except Aunt Lily. She's just got Ollie, and moved to Australia."

"You have thirty cousins?"

And that, Ashley thought, was why she'd wanted to get to know Penny without the madness of her huge family around. Huge, both in number and in actual size: there were several cousins shorter than she was, but none of them was less than five ten. Penny, at barely over five feet, would actually disappear into the crowd. She said, "Lily and Mom's other sisters aren't coming, are they?"

"I don't think Aunt Lily is ever leaving Australia again," Jon said. "She moved there to get away from all of us, and since Ollie found his maaaaarriage partner at Steve's wedding she doesn't have to fly back to the States for any of that kind of thing."

Ashley bugged her eyes at him, and he bugged his back. Shifters weren't usually so careless about mentioning fated mates in front of true humans, but there weren't usually three shifters and only one human hanging around, either. When there was, the one human was often someone's mate.

Which, of course, Penny was. Ashley just hadn't told her that yet. Ashley hadn't told her anything, because she was a big wobbly coward, and now poor Penny was going to be overwhelmed with Torbens and run away to be a rock star without ever wanting to see Ashley again.

Ashley's bear gazed at her patiently until she stopped running in mental circles like that and sighed. Okay, fine, but really, nobody should be subjected to forty or fifty Torbens before a first date!

Then you should take your mate on a first date, the bear said calmly.

"I don't have time!" The words burst out, aloud. Both her cousins grimaced at her, clearly understanding she'd been arguing with her bear and had slipped up, but Penny, who had no idea what was going on, patted Ashley's arm sympathetically.

"You're right, you really don't. It'd be bad enough getting a charity event dumped on you?—"

Jon's eyes widened. "What? Oh, the swans thing? I heard about the fire at their venue. We're hosting it? That's great! Thanks, Ash! The Faire folk are going to be really relieved, they've been setting up for this for months. They've even got a celebrity guest. Do you know, uh, oh, what's her name." He dug his phone out, saying, "The professional wrestler with All-Arena Entertainment? Maggie somebody. Ross!" he said as his phone gave him the information he was looking for. "Apparently she's really into swan conservationism, who knew? I didn't even know they were endangered anywhere. Anyway, that's really great, Ash, you're gonna be the hero of the hour!"

Ashley very carefully didn't look at Laurie, who was beaming hopefully at her and wasn't even trying to take credit for thinking of having the pub host the suddenly-unhoused benefit event. Probably wise, because she would have tried flushing him down a toilet, or something. "I guess."

Penny, whose sympathy had gotten entirely run over by Jon's enthusiasm, gave Ashley another pat on the arm. Her hand was small and warm, and Ashley had the impulse to take it and kiss her knuckles, but that would have opened her up for so much teasing from her cousins, and she couldn't explain about the mate bond right then, with Penny standing right there. "Okay," she said to Penny, stiffly. "I guess I'm going to have to take you up on the offer for those tents, but only if you're really, really sure. It's a long drive and it's already getting late."

"It's fine, really." Penny smiled up at her, a bright generous expression. "The truth is I'm great in an emergency, and I was feeling weird and awkward about crashing your family's Christmas already, so if I can help then that'll make me less weird about it all."

"Please don't ever feel awkward," Ashley said quickly. "You have no idea how nice it is to have you here. Everything else aside, there are so freaking many guy cousins. Any extra women make it better, and you're really great."

"Oh." Penny beamed. "You're great too. Look, it's already seven so I'll probably drive to Denver, go to sleep, and get the tents early in the morning and drive back. Will that be okay?"

"It will be," Laurie blurted. "It'll be perfect. It's amazing. Thank you so much. Ashley, I'll be here first thing in the morning to clear the lot, okay? I promise I won't make it any more work for you than it absolutely has to be."

Jon, obviously sensing he'd missed some things, cautiously said, "And I'll tell everybody the pub's closing at five on Christmas Eve, and do all the setup for the family reunion?"

Ashley flung her hands upward. "Okay, fine! You've got it all under control! That's great! Go…go do the thing!" She felt far more exasperated than she should, given that her cousins were doing literally what she'd asked them to, which was pick up the slack. But she hadn't asked them to also add a ton of work to her schedule, either. Although she guessed a last-minute family reunion was her aunt and uncle's fault, not her cousins'.

Either way, they scattered like they felt like they were lucky to escape with their lives, and Ashley was left with Penny smiling up at her again. "If the charity's other venue was planning a big event, they've probably got a lot of the staff lined up already. If you can check about that and then text me whatever you find out, I'll get volunteers for—oh, I better talk to Gwen. Come with me?" She tilted toward the door, smiling hopefully, and Ashley, enthralled, walked after her in a daze.