Page 25 of Spark
Monday, June 4
“So, how long have you two been dating?” asked Chris’s mom Jenny, over plates of Daniel’s scrumptious lamb tagine served over a bed of couscous.
The Moroccan-style stew was studded with tender chunks of lamb in a spiced tomato gravy, with bits of dried apricot providing surprising nuggets of sweetness.
For Daniel’s monthly pride dinner, an extra-long table had been set up in the great room of Daniel and Margaret’s house. It stretched from the usual dining room area into the living room area. The long benches were crowded with the ranch’s community of sabertooth shifters, and a couple of special guests, including Jenny and Sophie.
Chris had been right about a lot of the Cougar Lake residents wanting to see Sophie and hear about her experiences in Todos Santos.
Before dinner, while Chris and Daniel were working in the kitchen to put the finishing touches on the meal, Sophie had had a long talk with Daniel’s mate, Margaret Swanson, Chris’s dad Pete and his stepmom Kayla, and a few other people that she knew.
Now, before Sophie could correct Jenny’s mistaken assumption, Chris replied in a snarky tone, “Since Saturday, Mom.”
He was sitting between Sophie and his little brother Ryan, and across from Pete, Kayla, and Jenny.
“What?” Sophie turned her head to give him a dirty look. “Not funny, Chris.”
The last thing she needed was a bunch of rumors about her and Chris starting, especially when she was planning to go to the movies with Matt later this week. People noticed stuff like that in small towns, and it kept the gossip mills churning.
Which might not be so bad if shewasactually dating one of them, instead of being permanently friend-zoned.
Being the subject of gossip,andpermanently single at the same time seemed like the worst of both worlds to her.
She turned back to Jenny, and found her, along with Pete and Kayla, looking at her with confused expressions.
“He’s kidding. We’re just friends,” Sophie explained, suddenly aware that her presence at this special dinner could be interpreted in a number of ways. And Chris wasn’t helping right now.
“Oh, I see.” Jenny still looked confused as she glanced from Sophie back to Chris.
She was a lean woman with lined skin pulled taut over sharp features, graying blonde hair worn in a short conservative cut, and the same green eyes as her son.
An eclectic collection of leather-thong bracelets strung with a variety of silver, amethyst, and lapis beads hung on each of her wrists, and her big silver earrings looked like Native American creations, with geometric inlays of carnelian, turquoise, and mother of pearl.
Earlier, Sophie had noticed Chris’s mom nervously fiddling with the beads on her bracelets, and now she was doing it again.Is she worried that he might actually be dating me?
From Chris’s stories, Sophie knew that Jenny was an Ordinary like herself. She had been Pete’s girlfriend back in Albuquerque, years before he met Kayla.
Jenny had gotten pregnant just before Pete had been convicted of numerous crimes. She hadn’t known about shifters before Chris unexpectedly transformed into a sabertooth cub while he was still a toddler.
A freaked-out Jenny, who had been battling a host of problems at the time including drug addiction, had promptly dumped Chris off on his bachelor uncle Daniel’s doorstep, and then vanished out of their lives for years.
With Chris’s dad serving a long prison sentence, single and childless Daniel had ended up raising Chris. Not surprisingly, Chris and his uncle were still really close.
After Pete was pardoned and released from prison, Chris had moved in with his dad and Kayla at their house here on the Cougar Lake Ranch, but he had spent a lot of his free time hanging out at Daniel’s house, learning how to cook from his celebrity-chef uncle.
Jenny had come to Bearpaw Ridge shortly after that, and had finally been reunited with Chris. In the intervening years, she had remained clean and sober, and established a career as an accountant. She had found a job with Tyler Swanson’s construction firm in town, and then worked hard to reestablish a relationship with the son she’d abandoned.
Chris had been wary at first, but he’d slowly come around in the years since. Still, Daniel remained the father figure in Chris’s life, and by default, Daniel’s mate Margaret Swanson had become his aunt and a maternal figure.
“Are you positive about that, Sophie?” Margaret asked from her place a little further down the table, next to Daniel. Her eyes twinkled with amusement as she leaned forward to peer around her mate's tall body. “I mean, we’ve all been wondering why Chris decided to move into my old house at the Swanson ranch, and live with a bunch of bear shifters, instead of staying here at the Cougar Lake Ranch with his own kin.”
“But that happened way before I came home,” Sophie protested.
Everyone at the long table was now listening to the conversation. Worse yet, they were all staring at her with avid curiosity.
She felt a tidal wave of hot embarrassment sweep over her face, and knew that she had turned bright red. Shehatedblushing. It was almost as bad as crying in public, and just as hard to hide.
But Chris just rolled with it. “Dang it, Aunt Margaret. You figured it out,” he said, grinning. “I knew it was only a matter of time before Sophie decided to come back, so I set my evil scheme in motion early.”
