Page 3 of A Clutch for Hutch
And then, one day, I was looking up desserts to bring in for a final going-away party for the company…going away for me. They were all staying and were being given raises. I ensured this for everyone, especially Burns. But I accidentally forgot an S, and search engines are creepy, so they pulled up homes for sale in the desert.
I hadn’t even thought of the desert as an option, not for any reason other than I forgot we had deserts here, and the very first house I clicked on was perfect. It would probably need work, but it had so much potential. It also had a lot of acreage, and it was close to Animals, which meant I would never be the only shifter there, even if I were the only dragon.
I called my lawyer and asked him to write up an offer. This place was mine. I could feel it.
Chapter Three
Hutch
When I first set out to start my company, I’d been so cautious. I made plans, created charts, and researched far more than I ever did for anything else in my life. I took everything step by step, not wanting to make a mistake and ruin everything. And ran my company with the same meticulous care. Until the day I sold it.
And now, now I was about to pull into the lawyer’s office parking lot to finalize the purchase of my house, bought sight unseen. I went from planning every detail to jumping in with both feet, and it felt amazing. The Realtor had offered to give me a tour before closing, but my drive here took a little longer than I planned.
The paperwork didn’t take long, especially without a mortgage, and I left a half hour later, keys in hand and the directions pulled up on my GPS. My dragon was already at peace. He enjoyed being out here where he could look for miles in some directions and not see any buildings.
I stopped at the convenience store on the way to grab some drinks and a couple of sandwiches, unsure exactly what I was going to walk into, and then drove the short distance to my new home. The house was set farther back from the road than I realized from the photos, and as it came into view, I knew I’d made the right decision. The people who had owned this before me, or maybe the ones before them, had added on and on and on.
What started as a small home was now one that wandered. I’d never described a house as wandering before, but it was the perfect description. They had just done addition after addition after addition, and it was like a little maze. I loved it.
I walked from room to room, turned on the water to flush out the pipes, and opened a few windows. I checked the electricity, as well. Burns had arranged for all of the utilities to be turned over. He said I didn’t need to be worried about the little details; he’d take care of it as his housewarming present to me. I was going to miss him. He was the one constant in my life back in the city.
“There’s a lot to do here.” I opened a bottle of soda and drank half of it, needing the caffeine. “Let’s start with a list.”
I had to laugh at myself, because all of this was so unorganized, and now suddenly I was back to my old self. I made a list of cleaning supplies and measurements of windows. I could hire people to come in and do all of it, but I didn’t want to. I wanted this place to be mine.
After wolfing my sandwich, I wandered the acreage. It was stunning, and there were plenty of places for my dragon to fly unseen. I still needed to be sort of careful. I wasn’t that far from the road, but it wasn’t like the city where I had to keep him buried inside.
He pushed to get out, and even though I needed to clean all the dust away and make the bed and buy a lot for the place, I took off my clothes and took to the air, letting him soak the whole property in.
It felt like I was only up there for minutes, but when I landed, the sun was setting. I grabbed one of my suitcases from the car and went inside. I wouldn’t be able to stay here for the night, even though that had been my original plan, but I had to change before heading to the local motel, where I could get a decent shower and possibly place some pickup orders so tomorrow, I could make this place habitable.
I didn’t regret it, not even going into that motel as gross as it was, because my dragon, for the first time in years, felt at ease. It didn’t take long to set up some orders for cleaning supplies andsome furniture. I’d left everything big and bulky back in the city. It wouldn’t fit the vibe of this home, and really, aside from my clothes and personal effects, none of the rest of it mattered. And those would all be here in a couple of days.
My stomach rumbled. I thought about heading to the diner I’d seen, the one that had a billboard about milkshakes, and instead decided to go to Animals. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get in. I was hardly dressed for a club, but when I got there, even though there was a line, the bouncer waved me over and said, “Oh, heard you were coming.”
“No, I don’t think so. I’m new.”
“You bought the old Sampson place, right?” He spoke to me as if he truly did recognize me, and then he said the name of my home’s former owners, and I took it back. He was probably friends with the Realtor, a fox shifter. That was the only logical explanation.
“I really don’t know how you learned that—”
A woman came up behind him quickly. “Just go in. Enjoy. We’re glad you’re here.”
I wasn’t sure what kind of shifter she was. She didn’t scent like anything I knew, but she definitely wasn’t human either, nor was she a vampire, because that I would have scented too. I decided to brush it off and went inside, and for the first time in a really long time, I felt like I belonged.
I played darts and pool with random shifters I met, tried the bartender’s drink of the day, and chatted with her three bears. It was a nice night, and when I got back to the motel, I had the best night’s sleep I had in longer than I could remember.
I’d made the right decision. This was where I was meant to be. I still didn’t know what I was going to do for work, or pretty much anything else I was going to do with my life, but I knew this was where I wanted to live it.
Chapter Four
Dirk
I breathed the air of freedom for the first time in over a year. Hoover invited me to meet him at Animals for a week of family fun. I wasn’t sure what that would entail, but I was more than excited to get away and spend time with my niece and nephew and their parents.
With modern technology, we were able to enjoy videos of the kids and watch them grow over the months since they were born. But it was far enough away we didn’t get to see them in person often. Our fathers had recently come back from a visit, and they were so in love with the little ones and excited that they might come to the fluffle sometime and get to see where their daddy grew up and their grandpas lived.
It was their heritage, even if they didn’t live there.
