Page 11 of Shifter Mates for the Single Mom

“You. What the hell’s the story with you and the new client, anyway? Besides her being smoking hot, I mean.”

“That’s Ben’s widow,” he snapped as he poked through the cooler. He grabbed two longnecks and passed me one.

“Ben? Our old liaison with the Navy Brass?” That was a surprise.

“The very one. Aidan’s his kid.” He cracked open his beer and took a swallow. “And yeah, she’s smoking hot.”

“I’m surprised you never slept with her,” I breathed, still remembering the sway of her ass as she walked up the stairs.

He shot me a sharp look. “Ben wasn’t poly,” he stated. “That made it out of the question. We probably would have if he’d been all right with it, but he was strictly monogamous, and she was loyal.”

“Damn. That must have been frustrating.” I opened my own beer and let it fizz up and settle before taking my first swallow. “But you can do something about it now.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t think that would be appropriate under the circumstances.”

“Come on, man, I see the way you look at her. If the two of you keep building up steam like this and don’t do anything about it, the sexual tension’s going to distract the hell out of you.”

He shook his head, rolling his eyes a little. “Jamie. Mind your own business, all right?”

I snickered and he eyed me in irritation. “All right, all right, I’ll back off. But think about what I said, okay?”

“You act like the thought’s never crossed my mind before.” He sniffed, took another swig, and looked at me. “The Sheriff’s Department will have some paperwork for us so we can operate in this area without any issues. See what kind of details you can get out of them while you’re there. On your way back, case the town some and then bring us back more beer.”

I looked out the window at the blinding day and my smile faded a little. At least my truck had air conditioning. “You got it, Boss. Anything else?”

“Yeah. If you catch sight of the subject or learn where he’s hiding, I want to know immediately.”

“Of course.” I finished my beer in a few long swigs, belched, and stood up, leaving the tablet with him. “If you need anything else, text me.”

I had only been parked in the driveway for a few hours, but the cab of my truck already felt like an oven inside. I sat with sweat trickling down between my shoulder blades as the air conditioning roared, waiting to be cool enough to focus on the road. This is the one goddamn thing about the Southwest I never will get used to.

I was from Seattle and badly missed it in the height of summer. But where my Pack went, I went.

Finally, the air conditioner started properly cooling the inside of the cab, and I could focus enough to drive. I pulled my car out of the driveway and watched the automatic gate close behind me.

It was a few miles to town. I put on my classic metal and got going, sometimes screeching along to AC/DC. Nathan’s dilemma was still rolling around in my head, amusing the hell out of me.

I had been telling the truth. The guy should just hop into bed with Madelyne. If it was just an itch he’d carried for years, he could scratch it and focus back on the job. She’d get the taste of Matthias out of her mouth in the process, so it was a win-win.

If it wasn’t just an itch, well… that would be good for him too. Nathan had always been kind of uptight, but he wasn’t quite that way around her and her kid. It was almost like she was a missing piece in his life.

Friends with benefits or committed lovers, I didn’t care as long as he did something about it. Nathan had a way of stewing over things that he didn’t resolve, and I could always see it. That was the last thing we needed right now.

Anyway, once he got the matter out of his system, that pretty, poly lady would probably be a lot more relaxed, too. Once it was more or less resolved, I wanted a chance to shoot my shot. but no way was I messing things up for our Alpha and one of my best friends in the process.

Any guy who thinks single moms can’t be hot is a goddamn coward. I hadn’t had much experience with kids, but Aidan seemed like a neat little guy, and we were going to have to all get used to each other either way. The only problems in the equation were Matthias and his crazy family.

A goddamn Tiger. Magic powers, a criminal mind, and an appetite for human flesh. I hated killing shifters–any shifter with ethics would–but this time, the guy could fucking burn.

I pulled into the Sheriff’s Department parking lot twenty-five minutes later, looked around at the baked-looking landscape, scowled, and put my sunglasses on before I stepped out. The heat hit me like I’d just opened an oven in front of me. Fuck. I can’t believe people actually choose to live out here. But I was going to have to get used to it somehow.

Inside, the air conditioning was nowhere as good as in my truck. The window unit was humming loudly as it fought as hard as it could to keep the heat at bay. I rolled up to the scratched wooden front desk and showed my ID. “Hey, there. Jamie MacMillan, Desert Guardians security. I was told to come down to do some paperwork for you?”

The deputy behind the desk was a tired-looking brunette woman with two of her fingernails colored in sloppily with marker. Mom of young kids, my inner detective noted. She looked me up and down, that same curious once-over I got whenever a human realized I was a shifter. “Yeah,” she said finally. “The Nilsson place murders?” I nodded. “Okay, hold on here for a minute.”

She disappeared into the back, and I heard the sound of metal drawers rolling open and then closing again. Paper shuffled. I looked out the window at the highway, watching the heat shimmer over the asphalt. Then she was back with a thick folder in her hand.

“Nasty business, all of that. That guy’s been a pain in the ass for us for months. Nearly everyone suspected him of something, but until he went and started killing people, none of us knew he’d really done anything. Or that he was a… a shifter.”

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