Page 11 of Black Moon

Maybe he was attractive and damned well new it, but the look on his face wasn’t flirty. It was sharp and intelligent.

“Your friends left you all alone,” he pointed out, his voice a sweet purr.

I held up my hands. “Apparently I ask for difficult drinks.”

“Mimosa?” he asked, one corner of his lips quirking up. “Tough to get this time of day.”

“I’m more of a Bloody Mary guy,” I countered. I didn’t really drink at all, but at least tomato juice was healthy...ish.

He turned up his nose. “Ugh. Savory drinks? I don’t think so.”

“Need another drink?” Shiloh asked him as she returned, handing me a mug. “Your cider, Linden.”

“If you don’t mind. But...” He looked at my mug, then back at the tables. “That’s what they were having at the other table, isn’t it? Cider?”

“Not Linden’s cider,” she said, shaking her head. “Everyone else gets the hard stuff. Linden doesn’t drink.”

I winced at a stranger being told that. Sure, fine, it wasn’t a great pack secret—I was a doctor, and any possibility of inebriation made me a liability at my job, so instead of planning around imbibing, I just forewent it altogether. But it kind of made me sound like a kid, and I was thirty-seven damn years old.

The beautiful man turned a smile on me, and there it was—amusement. “At all?”

“I’m a doctor.”

“That’s very conscientious of you,” he answered immediately. The amusement was still in his eyes, but at least he wasn’t laughing. “I know doctors who spend all their free time drinking.”

I shrugged and took a deep drink of the cool, crisp cider. “Nothing wrong with the hard stuff, it’s just not for me.” I held the mug up. “Why would I need it when we make the best fresh cider in the world here in Grovetown?”

The smile he gave me was odd, lopsided, like he wasn’t sure what to make of me, but before I could get too distracted, or act like I was drunk and lean in to catch another whiff of that deep, spicy, apple scent of his—like a goddamn creeper—Zeke called from across the room. “Were you nine or ten when you got your brother caught stealing that pie?”

I scowled across the room and hopped up from the barstool, grabbing my mug and heading toward Zeke. That had been his intention, of course, but I couldn’t let this lie. “I was seven and you damn well know it. And I didn’t ‘get him caught;’ I didn’t know he was stealing it!”

Damned Aspen, caught stealing a pie for our mother, for her birthday. It had been the story of his life. Always caught doing the worst possible thing for the best possible reasons. And then me, nosy little Linden, always the one catching him at it and getting him in trouble for not following the rules.

Why the hell did Zeke think I’d make any kind of alpha?

6

Colt

When Skip followed up lunch and a drink with the offer of another, I couldn’t pass that up.

And one more drink turned into two, until my brain was buzzing, and my head was easily turned by tall, countryside-preppy doctors in sweaters and slacks.

Linden—I’d filed the name away when Shiloh gave him his drink—smelled strange. He was obviously an alpha, but over that alluring, masculine smell of crisp fall leaves and warm fires, he smelled sterile, like rubbing alcohol or something. Definitely a doctor, and uptight at that. Worried about his pack, maybe.

I raised a brow at Shiloh over the bar. “Linden...”

“Grove. Linden Grove. Alpha’s son.”

“They still work the apple orchard, the Groves?”

She nodded, turning a rag over and wiping up a ring of water on the counter. “Juniper, mostly. Rowan does the baking. They sell his pies and stuff at the orchard’s shop. Linden’s the only town doctor we’ve got, so he’s only involved when there’s a festival or something. Then they’ve got another brother—skipped town and joined the navy, that one.”

I thought, given a bit of time, I could’ve gotten all the information I needed for my piece out of Shiloh Morgan alone. But soon, another woman came out from the back, her dark brown hair in corkscrew curls, her eyes a light hazel that pierced me discerningly.

“You need a hand, Shiloh?” the woman asked, wandering to her side.

The way she angled her body to the bartender signified interest, or maybe worry. She stood up tall and smelled of alpha. Shiloh’s returning smile was weak.

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