Bull in a Tea Shop Read online

  No, cried her heart, but mostly she was just horribly, horribly confused. It felt like the ground had tilted under her feet, like she'd reached for her phone and found out it had turned into a spatula or a bar of soap. "I don't know," she said. "Just ... please leave me alone for now."

  There was an intake of breath like he'd started to say something, and then he said quietly, "Yes, ma'am."

  His feet crunched on the gravel path as he walked away from her.

  Chapter Thirteen: Maddox

  Maddox got dressed on the back patio. He had the presence of mind to retrieve his cane from where he'd left it, what seemed like forever ago now, mainly because his hip ached with a grinding pain that threatened collapse if he tried to go very far on it. And right now, he needed to walk.

  He needed to leave.

  He looked back at Verity sitting in the sun-drenched garden, with her head in her hands. He'd done that.

  We need to go back! his bull protested. Our mate is distressed; we must comfort her!

  Shut up, Maddox thought viciously at it. None of this was his bull's fault, but right now, it felt like it.

  He walked through the shop with its shelves in disarray, and out the front door, askew on its hinges; across the blackened boards of the porch, down to the front walk where her careful plantings were trampled, and blackened streams of dried-up hose water ran from the porch across the sidewalk to the gutters.

  Her beautiful shop was a wreck—he'd done that. He broke everything he touched. It was his one big job skill; why did he think meeting his mate would make things any different?

  He limped away from Verity's house into the sunlit morning. Dimly, he was aware that it was a beautiful day, the sky nearly cloudless but the breeze cool enough to make it pleasant and comfortable. But he registered this with only a dim corner of his mind.

  Several people waved to him and called out greetings from yards and porches. He grunted distracted acknowledgement and limped on, out of the town proper, onto the road to the highway. Past the place where he'd nearly died in the ditch. Onward, to the highway and its gravel shoulder where the truck had let him off mere days ago.

  It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  He wasn't sure where he was going. He just needed to get away.

  On the shoulder of the highway, he stopped and looked back, across rolling ranch country and stands of trees toward the cluster of buildings that marked the town.

  So you're just going to run away, leave them to deal with Ducker all on their own. Leave her to deal with it.

  He wasn't sure if that was the voice of his bull or his conscience.

  I'm not running. I'm putting some distance between me and them—between me and Verity—for their own good.

  He had to take on Ducker himself. It was the only way. And to do that, he needed to make sure that Ducker didn't have anyone to use against him as leverage ... because Ducker absolutely would.

  He started walking again, limping slowly, his hip grinding.

  Could he pull the same thing on Ducker that he had on Hawkins? Just turn into a bull and threaten him? No ... he rejected the idea immediately. He'd read Hawkins as a bully and a thug, who would back down as soon as someone managed to prove they were bigger and meaner than he was, but people like Ducker were different. They were used to throwing their weight around in a whole different way. Maddox thought about what Darius Keegan would do if someone crossed him like that. He wouldn't back down, that was for sure. He'd probably record Maddox's transformation somehow and try to blackmail him. Or he might kidnap Verity and try to hurt her.

  No, he couldn't use violence to get Ducker off his back. He'd only play into Ducker's hands that way.

  So what else can I do?

  He heard an engine coming up behind him, and looked over his shoulder nervously. It wasn't the sheriff this time, just a long-haul big-rig cruising down the highway. Although he hadn't stuck his thumb out, the truck's air brakes hissed, and it pulled over on the shoulder just ahead of him. The trucker leaned out the rolled-down window. "Hey, buddy. Need a lift?"

  He could say yes. For a moment it was tempting.

  He could go wherever the big-rig was going, to Flagstaff or Phoenix or even farther away. He'd have a chance to regroup and consider his options and make plans—far away from Verity, where his presence couldn't put her in even more danger.

  And all Verity would know was that he'd run away.

  No, he thought.

  No, he was done running. He had been running for months, ever since he'd been injured and had quit working for Darius. He had run and run, always telling himself he was going toward something, never quite able to admit he was running away instead.

  He waved the trucker onward. The truck pulled back out onto the highway, and Maddox turned away from the road and limped down into the ditch. He ducked under strands of fencing. There was a cluster of boulders shaded by some trees, and he sat on a big rock and massaged his hip while a cluster of distant cattle watched him curiously.

  As he was sitting there, his phone vibrated.

  His first thought was: Verity! He pulled it out and looked. As if his past had decided to catch up with him in the most blatant way possible, there was a text message from Loretta, Darius's mate.

  He had gotten a couple of texts from Darius over the months since he'd left, most notably an invitation to his and Loretta's wedding, which Maddox had regretfully declined and said he was busy. (He'd been in Montana at the time, and not at all busy, but he couldn't imagine facing them after vanishing for months.) In general, Darius seemed happy enough to let Maddox go his separate way.

  Loretta, on the other hand ...

  She'd never stopped texting, never stopped emailing. Even though Maddox only sent back an occasional, short reply, Loretta soldiered on with the kind of never-say-die persistence that allowed her to be happily married to the most stubborn man Maddox had ever met. He still got a new text or email from her almost every week, a new photo of the half-finished house she and Darius were building to replace their destroyed one, a picture of their cat, a photo of a flower or a sunset.

  She never asked him where he was. She just said things like I hope you're doing well, or We think about you a lot.

  This was another text with a picture attached, black-and-white and blurry. He couldn't even tell what it was, turning the phone this way and that, but it stayed indistinct. He didn't realize what it was until he read her message:

  6 mos checkup went great! We know the baby's sex now, but we aren't telling. ;) Say hi to your godbaby.

  That's right. Loretta was pregnant. This was a sonogram.

  He stared at it for a long while. It still didn't look much like a baby to him. And he thought about Loretta, whose life he'd helped save, and who had never forgotten it.

  Say hi to your godbaby.

  Then he took a slow breath and pressed the number to call her back.

  It rang a couple of times on the other end, and then Loretta's voice, light and warm with a hint of a drawl, said delightedly, "Maddox! Hi! Hold on, let me sit down."

  "I hope this isn't a bad time to call. You just texted me, so I figured—"

  "No—no! Not at all." There was a clatter and thump in the background. "I was just chopping peppers. I'm trying to make ratatouille, because we watched the movie yesterday at the preschool—you know, the one with the actual rats—and the kids wanted to know what it tastes like, so I said I'd make some and bring it in. Except I've never made it, or actually eaten it, and now I wish I'd just done what Darius said and ordered some from a restaurant and brought that instead—" She broke off with an embarrassed laugh. "Maddox, I'm sorry. We haven't heard from you in ages, and here I am, rambling like I do. How are you?"

  Was that ever a question that didn't have a simple answer. The answer just dropped out. "I met my mate."

  Loretta's shriek made him hold the phone away from his ear.

  "That's fantastic!" she was saying as he put it back. "I can't wait to tell Darius. Wo
w. What's her name? What's she like? Is she a shifter?"

  "She's human, and her name is Verity, and ... she's perfect."

  Loretta's delighted laugh burbled up. "Okay, that sounds like a shifter in love, all right. So tell me more about her, other than how perfect she is. Where are you?"

  "I'm in Arizona. A town called Silvermine. Verity runs a tea shop here." Remembering belatedly that he hadn't actually said anything about the sonogram yet, he added, "Thanks for the text. That's, uh, it looks like a great baby. Um. Very pretty?"

  Loretta laughed again. "Maddox, it's a gray blur. You'll just have to take my word there's a baby in there somewhere. I don't even know how the technician who reads the things can find arms and legs, let alone tell that it's a—" She broke off quickly. "But we're not telling anyone that, so you'll just have to be surprised in three months along with everyone else."

  "You know, Maddox is a good name." It was hard not to be drawn along with her playful teasing. "For a boy or a girl."

  "Oh no, if you think I'm naming my daughter Maddox, you have another think coming, mister. You'll have to do that with your own daughter. If you have one. Which you might! Does Verity want kids? Or is that getting ahead of yourselves? I know shifters move fast. Once you find the one, it's the one."

  "We've kinda had other things going on than talking about kids," Maddox said uncomfortably. "She's got one, anyway. I mean, not her actual daughter, but her sister's daughter that she's raising. Her name is Bailey and she's a teenager."

  "Wow, insta-teen! That's parenting on hard mode, buddy."

  "I dunno, I've heard they're a lot of work when they're babies too."

  "You'll have to find out. You're invited to babysit, you know. You have to come meet h—the baby," she caught herself quickly.

  "You're not that great at keeping secrets, Miss Loretta," Maddox said, amusement chasing away some of his gloom.

  "I know. I asked Darius if he wanted to maybe just have the nurse tell him and not me, because there's no way I can keep from telling anybody for three months, and if I tell any of my cousins it's going to be all over the trailer park before you know it, and telling the kids at the preschool, phew, forget it. But no, he said we're in this together, and he didn't want to know if I didn't know." Her voice melted into a besotted tone that Maddox had a feeling was what he probably sounded like when he talked about Verity.

  "How is the boss—er, Darius?" It was still a little difficult, sometimes, to remember that he didn't work for the man anymore.

  "He's good. We're good. Still working on the new—well, he adamantly refuses to call it a lair, but it's coming along." There were clinking sounds in the background; it sounded like she'd gone back to working on her ratatouille. "But Maddox, our lives are pretty boring right now compared to yours! It's just work and construction on the new mansion and me dealing with swollen ankles and fatigue—at least the morning sickness is over, thank God for that. You found your mate! You're in Arizona! You're a kinda-sorta surrogate dad for her teenage daughter! Isn't that amazing? Can you text me a picture?"

  "Not really. Not right now. I kinda don't know if she's going to want to see me again."

  There was a silence at the other end of the line, though cooking-related clinking let him know she hadn't hung up. Then Loretta said, in a voice that was warm and very gentle, "Do you want to talk about it?"

  He hadn't had the slightest intention of getting Darius and Loretta involved in his problems. This wasn't their fight. They had been through enough of their own problems, and now they had a baby on the way and a good life they'd built for themselves in the (literal) ashes of Darius's old life.

  They didn't need to be dragged into something that wasn't their fight.

  But he was just so ... tired, and so desperately, achingly alone. And Loretta had always been easy to talk to.

  "I'm still listening," she prompted in that same soft, gentle voice, and slowly, haltingly, he began to talk, pouring out the story of Verity and the sheriff, Ducker and the town of Silvermine.

  Loretta made occasional sympathetic noises, offering no judgment or advice. Eventually he wound down with, "And now I'm sitting in a field outside town and I think she's scared of me and I guess I'm going to have to go fight Ducker soon."

  "Oh, Maddox." Her voice was so filled with warmth that he didn't even feel embarrassed about having bared his soul to her. If she'd been here, she would probably have tried to hug him, and he thought he would probably have let her. The sound of her voice was almost like a hug. "Maddox. You're part of our family, and you always will be, no matter how far away you go. You don't have to deal with this all alone."

  His throat tightened, and he swallowed, staring across the field until his eyes stopped burning. He didn't even remember the last time he'd cried. When his father died, maybe, a very long time ago. "I didn't want to get you guys mixed up in this."

  "We're in it because you're in it. That's how family works."

  His eyes stung again. "Look, even if you wanted to help, I don't know how much you can do. Maybe back in the old days, when Darius was richer than sin. But he's not like that anymore. I don't think he can take on Ducker in a business kind of way, and I don't want him to feel like he has to ..."

  He stopped, not sure how much Loretta knew of the darker side of her mate's past. She gave a soft, rueful laugh, and he thought, Of course she knows. They were mates. No part of their souls was ugly to the other.

  But knowing it was one thing; bringing it down on their heads was another. Darius's past of violence and bloodshed had nearly gotten both him and his mate killed. And dragging Darius back into that, when he had a new life and a mate and a child on the way, was the last thing Maddox wanted to do.

  "Yeah," Loretta said, as if he'd spoken aloud. "I don't think we want to tell Darius, not quite yet. He's going to need to know, for sure, but right now he'd want to—"

  "Yeah."

  "Dragons and small towns and ... it'd be a mess."

  "Yeah."

  "So it's you and me, then," Loretta said briskly, and now it was Maddox's turn to bark out a sharp laugh.

  "What do you think Darius is going to do if he finds out I got his pregnant mate mixed up in all of this? You stay right where you are, Miss Loretta, and don't you dare lift a finger to do anything that might get Ducker after you."

  "My gosh, you're assertive now that you don't work for us anymore. I like it," she said with a smile in her voice. "Don't worry, I'm not planning on dropping everything and rushing down there. In fact, there's not much I can do directly at all. But—Maddox—don't take this the wrong way, but have you thought at all that maybe we aren't the ones who should be handling this in the first place?"

  "Huh?" Maddox said intelligently.

  "From everything you've told me, Ducker and the sheriff are getting up to a lot that's illegal in that town. Sure, he's not breaking any laws just buying property on Main Street. But there certainly are laws against using the kinds of strong-arm tactics you're telling me about. Arson, for one, and attempted murder. They tried to have you killed, Maddox! There are definitely laws against that!"

  "You're saying call the cops?" It was a completely alien thought to him. He'd spent his entire life trying to avoid law enforcement as much as possible. "But the sheriff is the cops."

  "He's not the only one in the state," Loretta pointed out. "Or the country. This is what the FBI is for. And district attorneys, and that sort of thing. A corrupt sheriff isn't allowed to run a town as his own private little fiefdom. That's not how this country is supposed to work."

  "Huh," Maddox said. He genuinely hadn't even thought of it. "But why didn't Verity do that?"

  "Maybe she was scared. Maybe she didn't think it would work. Maybe she didn't even think of it. Why don't you ask her?"

  The thought sent a wave of simultaneous delight and despair through him. "She said she needed time."

  "That doesn't mean go away forever, Maddox. You turned into a bull in front of her. She's going to
need some time to process that. Ask me how well I dealt with Darius turning into a dragon in front of me for the first time. Or I should say, snatching me out of a burning building without my clothes. At least you didn't do anything like that to Verity."

  Although Maddox had been around for most of Darius's courtship of Loretta, this was the first time it really hit him how disturbing and frightening it must have been for her to have her entire worldview turned upside down. Admittedly a bull, even a large one, wasn't quite as startling as a dragon. But Loretta and Darius had gotten through that, and now she was carrying a half-dragon baby.

  His heart began, tentatively, to lift. Maybe he and Verity could get through this as well.

  "Still there, hon?" Loretta asked, and he realized that, from her end of the line, he'd gone totally quiet.

  "Yeah, sorry. Just thinking about some things."

  "I hope so." But she didn't say it in a mean way; her voice was warm and affectionate. "If she's your mate, Maddox, then the two of you will find a way. Mates always do."

  "So you think she'll listen if I go back and talk to her?"

  "I think if you don't, you'll never know and you'll both regret it for the rest of your lives. You have to have faith in her, Maddox. Faith that she is the person you think she is."

  "I do," Maddox said fervently.

  "So prove it. Be brave. It's a different kind of bravery than fighting, but it doesn't take any less strength." She laughed softly. "More, even, for people like you and Darius. But I know you're up to the challenge. Because I have faith in you, too."

  Maddox took a slow breath. His chest felt too full to contain all the feelings there. "So how about I go back and talk to Verity, and suggest maybe we go to—the FBI, I guess? What kind of feds do you talk to about this kind of thing? It's all foreign to me."

  "The FBI sounds like a good place to start. They're breaking the law, Maddox. And you can do something about it, the right way."

  "The right way," he murmured. It felt very strange, thinking about taking a problem to the authorities instead of handling it the way he'd always handled things, on his own.