The Sea Wolf's Mate Page 14

  “No.” Talking won’t help. She dropped her hands in her lap. “Oh—you’ll want to turn here. If you go in on the main road, you’ll get caught up going through all the rest of town before we make it to the sheriff’s office.”

  “You know, sometimes I’m happy to live in a town with a single two-lane street, and some days I’m downright ecstatic.” Harrison turned into the street Jacqueline had indicated. “It took Lainie a few weeks to really get her head around the idea that there’s no ‘next block over’ in Hideaway. Things are either a ways down the street, or a few hours’ drive to the next town.”

  Jacqueline closed her eyes briefly. I can see where this is going. “Next right,” she said out loud.

  “Thanks.” Harrison was quiet for a moment. “You know, some things take time to…”

  “Please don’t. Whatever you’re about to say.”

  Harrison sighed. “The Sweets are… well. Difficult. But not everyone in Hideaway Cove thinks the way they do. Whatever happens, Lainie and I will have your back. And Arlo will, that goes without saying.”

  Jacqueline didn’t know what to say. Lainie and Harrison didn’t know a thing about her, but they were on her side? There was no one in Dunston she could expect that of.

  Because they still think you and Arlo will end up together. Jacqueline couldn’t speak past the lump in her throat. Harrison thought Arlo would have her back?

  She had his. That’s why she was doing this. Better to cut it off now than leave things to fester.

  “Th-thanks,” she managed. “Sheriff’s just up ahead.”

  Harrison pulled up outside and Jacqueline almost jumped out of the car, she was so glad to exit the conversation. Movement flickered behind one of the front windows and Jacqueline waved.

  Home again.

  Her whole body felt heavy, but it was easy to plaster on a smile. After all, this was no worse than coming back to work after Derek left, was it? At least no one here knew that she’d failed to make the grade for another man.

  The office was quiet; just Deirdre at the desk, with the green reflection in her glasses giving away the fact that she was playing bridge on her computer, not doing work, and the sound of Reg somewhere in the back. Jacqueline interrupted Deirdre long enough to introduce her to Harrison and was about to ask after Eric when Reg burst through the door.

  “There she is! You’re here for the runaway?” Reg didn’t wait for her to answer. He swept past her and pumped Harrison’s hand. “And here’s the man to complain to, I’m guessing. Harrison Galway? Pleased to meet you. Reg Hunt. So, you’re mayor down there these days, eh? How you finding that in, ah…”

  Talking to Reg was like having a train bearing down on you. A train that occasionally needed a nudge back onto the tracks.

  “Hideaway Cove,” Jacqueline muttered.

  “Cove! Just the word I was after.” Reg snapped his fingers. “And what brings you—ah, yes, of course. Sending the big man to give the truant a hard word, eh?”

  He punched Harrison on the arm and then gestured for them both to follow him. Jacqueline almost lost her professional face as he pushed through the door to the cells.

  “Boss, don’t tell me you’ve been holding him back here all weekend?”

  “Well, you asked us to keep an eye out for him,” Reg replied, winking.

  “Not to lock him up!”

  “Is that really necessary?” Harrison asked Reg.

  “Nowhere else for him,” Reg announced cheerfully. “It’ll do him good, anyway. Scare him back on the straight and narrow.”

  Anger pulsed in Jacqueline’s temples. “Really.”

  And now I get to explain to the poor guy why calling me for help got him put in the lockup for the weekend. If I’d only come back sooner, not spent the extra night in Hideaway. I could have gotten this one thing sorted out without hurting anyone.

  Except then I’d still think I had a chance with Arlo. At least this way, I’ve gotten that over with.

  Reg was still talking. “You know kids—well, no, maybe you don’t. If you had your own, you’d understand. Tough love, that’s what they need.”

  Hang on—kids?

  “Here we go. The Lost Boy himself. Say hi, kid.”

  Jacqueline’s heart sank as she saw the figure sitting in the cell. “Eric?”

  The man raised his head and Jacqueline’s heart sank even further. Eric wasn’t a grown man, no matter what the Weaver kids had said.

  She rounded on Reg. “You’ve had him here all weekend? He can’t be more than sixteen!”

  Reg’s eyebrows almost shot off his head.

  That must be the closest I’ve gotten to raising my voice at him all the years I’ve worked here, Jacqueline thought. Well, he deserves it!

  “Nineteen, it says on his license,” he replied. “Which is somewhere about.”

  And how real is that license? Jacqueline wondered. From the expression on Harrison’s face, he was thinking the same thing.

  Harrison cleared his throat and walked over to the cell.

  “Hey, Eric. My name’s Harrison. I think you and Ms. March here have already spoken.”

  Eric looked confused. “On the phone,” Jacqueline prompted, and relief and anxiety flooded across his face in equal measure. He stood up and hurried to the bars.

  “Did you—” he began, and then anxiety won the battle. He fell silent, eyes huge.

  “They’re all waiting for you in Hideaway Cove,” Jacqueline reassured him. “Tally, Dylan and Kenna.”

  “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.” Eric’s head dropped against the bars. “I’ve been so worried. I only meant to be gone a few nights. I only meant to go for groceries but my car broke down after the storm, and I got a lift to just out of town but I—” His eyes slid sideways past Jacqueline, to where Reg was leaning against a desk. “I guess I didn’t explain my problem very well,” he muttered.

  God, the poor guy. He’s the one who’s been holding the kids together for the last few months? I thought he sounded young on the phone, but I thought that was just the panic making his voice squeaky.

  He wasn’t another Weaver sibling, that was for sure, with his dark skin and eyes. His hair was cut close to his scalp, which was probably meant to be part of his looking-older-than-he-was act. He had huge, puppy-dog eyes that he kept squinted half-shut as he looked between Harrison and Jacqueline, probably for the same reason.

  Eric was tall and loose-limbed, with the sort of lanky build that must have his parents worried how much more growing he had to do. Except he was here, locked up in Reg’s drunk tank, and he’d spent the last how-many weeks on the run with three shifter kids.

  Parents probably not in the picture, Jacqueline determined, wrapping her arms around herself. There is far too much of that going around.

  “Let’s get you out of here and back to Hideaway Cove,” Harrison said garrulously.

  “But I’m not from—”

  “Back home,” Harrison said, with emphasis, and Jacqueline got the feeling he backed it up with some mindspeak reassurances. Eric’s eyes un-squinted again and he nodded vigorously.

  “Now, Sheriff…” Harrison began, and within ten minutes had somehow managed to smooth everything over. Somehow even Reg not being able to find a pen or remember his computer password to log Eric in the system turned into him maybe letting the whole thing slide this time after all.

  Jacqueline would have been seething—he’d had Eric in lockup overnight and hadn’t even booked it?—but this was a good result. Eric was going back to Hideaway. All the kids would have a new life there. A fresh start, around people who knew how to look after them.

  Gravel crunched under her shoes as she followed Harrison back out to the car. The kids would have a new start. But none of the plans Lainie, Harrison and Arlo had made to house them would work. Not with a sixteen-year-old Eric. Hideaway Cove was strange, but somehow Jacqueline knew it wouldn’t be letting-kids-live-on-their-own strange.

  No. They would need an adult guardi
an. Or guardians, plural. Mr. and Mrs. Sweets…

  Jacqueline grimaced. The idea of the sweet, enthusiastic Weaver kids under the influence of Mrs. Sweets and her sweetly acidic tongue was enough to make her break out in hives. If only—

  She shook her head. Hideaway looked after its own, that’s what Arlo said. And Eric and the Wheelers were Hideaway’s own, now. The Sweets might be sour assholes to anyone who wasn’t a shifter, but Arlo didn’t seem any the worse for wear for having the Sweets look after him when he was younger.

  And she wasn’t going back, anyway.

  The house seemed bigger than ever.

  It had grown like this once before. Right after Derek left. Jacqueline had left the lawyer’s office in a daze, driven home, and found herself in a house that didn’t fit properly. The rooms were too big and there were too many of them. There had always been too many of them, ever since she found out she couldn’t have kids, but she hadn’t been prepared for it to be just her, rattling around in the place she’d planned to build so many memories in.

  And now it was just her again.

  Jacqueline jumped as though she’d stood on a thumbtack. She started moving. She had to move, she knew, before the thread of regret she was tugging on like a loose thread unwound her entire life.

  She had to move. And the house was empty, and there was nothing else to do, so she cleaned.

  Jacqueline dusted. Scrubbed. Mopped. Swept the ceilings and light fixtures and then mopped again because of all the dust that fell down. Scrubbed more things until she realized she was scrubbing the outsides of her kitchen storage tins and rearranged them instead. Then the cutlery drawer. Then the china she only took out when her in-laws came over and why did she even still have it when she hadn’t had in-laws in three years? Back in the cabinet.

  Or she could throw it all out.

  She paused, and that was a bad idea. Moving good. Stopping bad. She left the good china where it was and headed for the bathroom.

  By the time she’d run out of house to clean, it was getting dark. She stood in the front hall, panting.

  Moving good, stopping bad. Except when she was exhausted enough that stopping meant falling asleep, not just sitting gnawing over everything that she’d done wrong in her life.

  She should shower. Eat something. Go to bed, wake up, go to work… oh, shit, she still needed to call a tow truck to pick up her poor car…

  Jacqueline closed her eyes and leaned back against the front door. Her fresh start was going to have to wait a bit longer. She couldn’t even bear to think about her old plans now. Parties. Cocktails. Sexy one-night stands…

  She winced.

  The first time she’d come home like this, to a suddenly too-big, too-empty house, she’d wanted to rage. To smash all the evidence of the way she’d hoped her life would go until it was all in as many pieces as her heart was.

  She’d pushed the anger back, folded it small and tight and put it away where she couldn’t feel it anymore.

  But this time, there wasn’t any anger. Damn it, she was ready for some anger now, some break-shit-now juvenile impulses, because she was done with this house, this town, all her stuff, she was going to throw it out anyway and repaint the walls realtor-friendly white and—

  And she just felt small, and tired. And very, very alone.

  She’d been so close to having, not everything she’d ever dreamed off, but things she’d never dreamed of at all.

  Being with Arlo would have been… She didn’t have the words to describe it. Magical wasn’t enough, because magic made her think of flighty, floaty things, and Arlo was so real it took her breath away. If they stayed together, she could have seen the Weaver kids settle in Hideaway Cove and watched them grow up—making sure they had time to be kids, first.

  Instead…

  She groaned. “There you go,” she murmured to herself. “Moping again. Shouldn’t have stopped to think about it…”

  She was about to step away from the door when someone knocked on the other side.

  18

  Arlo

  He knew before the car even came into view that Jacqueline wasn’t in it.

  The Sweets had left soon after Jacqueline and Harrison. Lainie had muttered something about them not having any reason to stay now they’d done their dirty work, and Arlo…

  Arlo shook his head. There was some sort of misunderstanding. There had to be. Ma and Pa were the way they were because they wanted the best for Hideaway Cove. Because they wanted the best for shifters.

  Didn’t they?

  He stood in front of Harrison and Lainie’s house and watched the Land Rover crest the far hill and wind down the road towards town.

  It was mid-afternoon and the streets were busy, at least, busy for Hideaway. People turned towards the car as it drove past. Arlo was too far away to see their faces, but their interest was obvious. A newcomer in Hideaway was always exciting news.

  Arlo frowned. Eric. No last name. Who is he? Some irresponsible oaf who left the kids to fend for themselves when they needed him most. And now he’s going to get a hero’s welcome in Hideaway, and Jacqueline…

  His heart ached. Jacqueline was gone, fleeing Hideaway as fast as she could, and he had no idea what had gone wrong or how to get her back.

  “Arlo?” Kenna poked her head around the door. “What’s going on? Where did Jacqueline go? Ms. Eaves wouldn’t—”

  Her eyes widened and excitement and relief rolled off her in waves. “Eric! That’s Eric! Dylan, Tally, Eric’s back!”

  Arlo bit back a growl of frustration.

  Dylan cannonballed out the front door, skidding on the path as he raced over to Arlo.

  Lainie was right on his heels, Tally crowing in her arms. “Kenna, I told you not to bother Arlo right now,” she began, but broke off when Tally abruptly shifted. “Oh, bother,” she gasped, fumbling to keep from dropping the seal pup.

  Arlo braced himself. Tally’s psychic voice was louder when she was in seal form, and this close, any strong emotion would feel like he’d taken an anvil to the back of his head.

  But Tally’s joy didn’t hit him like a ton of bricks. Instead, he felt buoyant, as though her happiness was lifting him up. Her human and seal emotions swirled together with a single thought at the center:

  Pack!

  He shut his eyes briefly. Of course Eric was the kids’ pack.

  He hung back as the Land Rover wove its way up Lighthouse hill. The air was thick with the Weaver kids’ joy, and if he stayed too close to them, he thought he might choke on it. They deserved better than that. He wouldn’t ruin their alpha’s homecoming with his own bitterness. Eric might be a pathetic pack leader, but there would be others to make sure the kids had everything they wanted here in Hideaway without breaking those pack bonds.

  Unless this Eric, whoever he was, wanted to start anything. Arlo’s wolf bristled. If Eric wanted to have words about how Arlo had stepped into his place these last few days…

  The Land Rover growled to a halt in front of the gathered kids. The passenger door burst open, and any thoughts Arlo had had about telling Eric exactly what he thought of a shifter who left his pack alone evaporated.

  He’s just a kid!

  Eric half-stumbled getting out of the car. He was better at keeping his emotions private than the Weaver kids, but Arlo still caught the edge of his bone-crushing relief as they all screamed and leaped on him.

  “Eric! Where have you been!”

  “We went on a boat!”

  “We found Hideaway Cove, it’s really real, you were right—”

  “Ahhhhhhh!” Tally screeched happily. *AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!*

  Eric hugged each of them in turn and straightened, his eyes shining. “I can’t believe you’re all here. Mr. Galway told me—”

  Standing, he topped Kenna by more than a foot. He caught sight of Arlo over her head. Even ten feet away, Arlo could see him gulp.

  A heavy weight settled over Arlo’s shoulders as he watched the young man pull himself t
ogether.

  He’s just a kid, Arlo thought again. Look at him now. Gathering his courage to come talk to me. Trying to do the right thing.

  He crossed his arms as Eric approached him, then thought better and put his hands in his pockets. Unthreatening and open.

  He’s trying to do the right thing. The least I can do is not terrify the pants off him.

  “Mr. Hammond?” Eric asked, his voice cracking at the end. He stopped, looking horrified, and cleared his throat before he started again. “Mr. Hammond. Sir. I’m Eric Potts. Mr. Galway said you got the others from the marine reserve and brought them here.”

  “That’s right. It’s good to finally meet you.”

  Eric looked thrown by that. “I, um, thank you. For looking after them. You and Ms. March. I wasn’t even sure we were in the right place…”

  “You were close enough. We just stepped in to get you the rest of the way.”

  Arlo held out his hand and Eric shook it, eyes wide. His grip was firm, but the next breath he took was so heavy he rocked back on his feet.

  “I’ve got experience working in shipyards, and on boats. I can fish and I can fix an engine, sometimes, if I know what’s wrong with it. And nets. I’ll do about anything, I don’t mind—”

  “Hang on, hang on. I don’t need your whole resume.” Arlo raised his hands and frowned. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I need a job.” Eric looked as confused as Arlo felt. “I don’t mind what it is. I don’t even need pay, just somewhere for the kids to stay, and food. I’ll do anything.”

  Arlo stared at him. There was something flickering behind his dark eyes. Arlo’s wolf pricked its ears up and the flickering stopped, as though Eric’s animal had noticed it was being watched.

  His wolf barked softly and Eric blinked. “Uh, hello as well to your, um, to…”

  “I’m a wolf shifter,” Arlo explained.

  “Woah.”

  “And you don’t need to get a job. How old are you?”

  “Ninet—Uh, eigh… seventeen?” He drew himself up. “You gotta understand. I said I’d look after them. I know we’re not the same shifters, but I made a promise. We’re in this together.”