Authors: Cara Adams
Tags: #Romance
“Not if there’s any customers.”
“Okay, I know that. I’m not stupid.” But Wynn wasn’t cross. Keelan couldn’t help thinking of him as the younger cousin. Besides it was still the middle of the night and they both needed a few more hours’ sleep yet.
Wynn felt sorry for Keelan who had to open his store at eight. He went back to bed and set no alarm clock and slept until after nine. Of course, then he had to write up all the interviews from the previous day. Likely that would take him several days, and when he finished he’d need to cross-check everything with Georgia. Meanwhile, he would enjoy lunch with Keelan. He ran down to the food court and grabbed a burger, then took the glass-walled elevator up to the third level.
Vaughan was just leaving so he’d timed his arrival perfectly and there was no one in the store. Although that wasn’t necessarily good. Selling stuff was what Keelan had to do to make a living.
Keelan had a sandwich spread out on a paper bag on the counter and a notebook and pen in his hand.
“Have you thought of some good ideas?” Wynn asked.
“Not really. I was hoping you had.”
Wynn had only had one idea. It’d sounded good to him at six this morning, but he wasn’t so sure about it now it was the middle of the day. But he trusted Keelan not to laugh at him. Well, not to laugh in a cruel way, that was.
“Those spirals with the hearts that you designed on the ring, could you draw them bigger?”
“Sure. What for?”
“I was thinking maybe we could have them on pink paper on the table for our meal, and again on the bed. Kind of like a theme, I guess.”
“That’s a great idea, Wynn. But not pink paper. Pink isn’t the right color for Quintana at all. Remember she said emerald was her favorite color? She’s more an emerald-green person, or perhaps topaz.”
“Topaz? That’s kind of gold, right?”
“It’s a shade between orange, gold, and brown. Here, I’ll show you.”
Wynn looked on as Keelan pulled out a chart from under the counter. “If I’m supposed to be buying craft paper for you to make these, what color do I ask for?” he asked helplessly.
“You don’t ask. You go to the shelves and pick the one that looks closest to that. And an emerald green. Three or four sheets of each color. If I’m making them you can do the fetch and carry.”
Wynn laughed. That was the Keelan he knew so well. Offloading half his chores onto him.
Two middle-aged men came into the store then, and Wynn sat silently and out of the way as Keelan served them, maintaining complete silence until they’d left the store.
“What else do we need to plan?” he asked after the customers had gone.
“Food. You can choose that as well. Something I can just put in the microwave or that we can eat cold. Tasty food, not just beer and pretzels, but easy to produce so we can concentrate on getting her to agree to mate us, not on cooking and washing dishes.”
“Okay, I can do that. Today will be too soon for our date. We need to get ourselves organized and anyway she’s certain to say no. What about tomorrow?”
“We’ll ask her for tomorrow first. I don’t think I can wait too long to hold her all night again.” Wynn heard in Keelan’s voce exactly what he was feeling himself. He slapped his cousin on the shoulder. “You and I, we’re an unbeatable team. She has to say yes.”
“I hope to hell you’re right.”
* * * *
Quintana wasn’t surprised when the two men were standing outside the boutique as she locked it that night. She was determined to go straight home and catch up with her paperwork and household chores, but at the same time she was glad to see them. Strangely, she missed them when they weren’t around. And that was crazy because she’d been alone for years and it had never bothered her before.
It’s because I love them. This is what love is.
The aching emptiness when they aren’t around as well as the intense pleasure when they are.
“We hope you’ll join us for dinner tomorrow night,” said Keelan.
Tomorrow night.
“I’d like that, thank you.”
“Have you had a good day today?” asked Wynn.
“Yes, thank you. Busy, but good. I need an early night tonight though.” She wasn’t going to allow the date to be moved up to tonight. She really had to check her books.
“No, that’s okay. I still haven’t finished typing up all my notes from the interviews yesterday and then there’s all the cross-checking after that. It’ll take me all of tomorrow I reckon,” said Wynn.
“Did you get some good leads?” She suddenly felt a bit mean for thinking only of herself. Of course Keelan hadn’t had much sleep and Wynn had work to do. It wasn’t a date for him yesterday, it was a job.
“Yes, I did. There were a few links I need to follow up. But I’m hoping for even more when Georgia and I go back there next week and talk to Elsie and Jeanie.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said.
“We’ll walk you to your car,” interrupted Keelan.
They were so protective. It was no use arguing with them so she nodded and headed up to the fourth floor and then out and up the stairs to the fifth-level parking lot. The men stayed beside her all the way to her car and bracketed her body when she went to open her car door.
Keelan pulled her into his arms and kissed her, leaving her breathless, then Wynn did the same.
“Wow. Good night.”
She slid into the car and had to take a big breath before putting her key in the ignition. Talk about ignition. Their kisses sent her from zero to combustion in a nanosecond. It was just as well they had things to do tonight or all her good resolutions would be flying out the window.
* * * *
Wynn worked until late that night on the project, and then slept until after nine. As soon as he was showered and dressed he grabbed his notebook and wrote himself a shopping list. He needed to get the colored craft paper for Keelan fairly soon so he would have time to draw the designs. And since he was going shopping he might as well get the food. But what would they eat? Something easy that didn’t need a lot of cooking or preparation, but not just football snacks.
He sat and stared blankly into space, thinking for a while, then had an idea and Googled aphrodisiacs. Now he knew what to buy.
At the stationery and office supplies store on the second level of the mall, he walked up and down the aisles for a long time before he found the right place and the colored heavy-duty paper. Four of each color, Keelan had said, but that didn’t look like enough to Wynn, so he bought six of each. Maybe Keelan wouldn’t have enough time to draw any more than eight designs. Wynn supposed it depended on how busy the store was today. It was no use him offering to watch it for an hour or two so Keelan could work on the drawings because he had no idea where anything was and couldn’t answer any questions.
In his wanderings around the office supplies store he’d seen confetti in all different colors. He went back there now and looked for boxes in topaz and emerald. He grinned at his thoughts. He was even thinking in jewel colors now. Only a few weeks ago he’d have said, “tan and green” not “topaz and emerald.” But Keelan was correct. The colors were perfect for Quintana.
Wynn delivered the craft paper to Keelan, who was replacing a battery in a watch for a businessman, and then headed down to the food court. Pumpkin seeds, hummus, asparagus, and oysters were at the top of his list. He also picked up some flatbread to wrap the asparagus in, and dip into the hummus. Chocolate was next on his list, and he got a box of chocolates as well as the kind of chocolate to melt, plus some strawberries to roll in the melted chocolate. He wasn’t sure about how to incorporate honey in the meal. Maybe spread it on the bread? Or perhaps pour it on Quintana and just lick it off her? They could figure that out later.
He took the shopping back to the genealogy office. Willow and Hawthorne were both there by the time he returned and excited about the new leads he’d found.
“If Elsie and Jeanie are from another different pack there’ll be more links still to come.”
“But everything we discover still indicates a shortage of females. There’s no pack with an abundance of girls,” said Willow.
Having these women on the team was a great help to him and Georgia. Up until Willow and Hawthorne had arrived, most of the help had come from college students on vacation, who’d visited various packs and helped by interviewing people. But the Cunliffe women were trained scientists with specialist knowledge in genetics, able to pinpoint things the students would definitely have missed, and quite likely he and Georgia would have missed such tiny clues as well. But there was still no solution for the werewolves.
“The more data we can collect the better our knowledge becomes though. And from Lewis we got an idea of packs gradually dying out, their last few members being absorbed into other packs,” added Hawthorne.
This work was so important. The future of werewolf shape-shifters all around the world relied on discovering why there were so few female wolves being born and reversing the trend. Wynn couldn’t bear the thought his species might die out completely.
Just before six, Keelan looked up from putting some of the jewels in the safe and saw Wynn, surrounded by shopping bags, leaning against the outside of his store. He waved to indicate he’d seen his friend, and then continued slowly and methodically putting everything away and locking it up. His final action was to take the ring he’d made for Quintana out of the safe and put the little box safely in the inside pocket of his jacket. Keelan picked up the emerald and topaz pictures, switched on the security alarm, and walked out of his store, locking the door and lowering the metal gate behind him.
“Vaughan has already left?”
“Yes we had some parcels to ship, so he took them to the post office before it closed.”
They walked briskly back to the professional suites and to his apartment. Keelan had set the table before he went to work in the morning, so now he placed some of the designs on the table, and took the rest to put on the bed. Wynn followed him and showed him the boxes of confetti.
“I thought we could sprinkle this around your designs.”
“Good idea. Here, let me.” Keelan took the box and sprinkled the emerald confetti in a growing spiral around each picture. Then, with the topaz, he added tiny hearts to the design. It wasn’t as accurate as drawing, of course. The only way to get it perfect would be to lay each piece of confetti down by itself and he didn’t have enough time to do that. But it looked all right, he thought.
While he was finishing off the artwork, Wynn had set out the food on the table, and taken out a pot to use. “What are you cooking?”
“I’m melting chocolate. I’ll do that while I wash the strawberries. That’s for dessert.”
“What else are we having?”
“There are oysters, hummus, and asparagus in the refrigerator, and flatbread and honey on the table.”
“Am I seeing a theme here?” Oysters, chocolate. It sounded like Wynn had been reading up on aphrodisiac foods to him.
“You absolutely are.”
“Okay let’s get down to the store and meet Quintana. Do you know which one she’s at right now?”
“No, but she was at the boutique yesterday afternoon, so my guess would be the other one today.”
That sounded reasonable to Keelan. But when they got there the store was already locked up and the lights were off.
“Fuck. I hope we haven’t missed her.” Wynn turned on his heel and almost ran toward the moving walkway. Keelan wasn’t really the kind of person who ran places, but he walked faster than normal back to the third floor. Fortunately Quintana was still sitting behind the counter there, working on the computer.
“I need to finish this. Meriel had an upset stomach and went home at midday, so I didn’t get all the accounts done.”
“Can I help you? They can’t be too different from mine,” said Keelan.
She smiled at them but shook her head. “It’s something I like to do myself. If you want to help you can vacuum the floor and hang up the clothing in the change room. It has to go back in exactly the correct place though. If you can’t find the right rack to hang it on, just put it back in the change room.”
“I’ll vacuum. You can hang up. You’re much more a fine detail person than me,” said Wynn.
“Nothing’s changed. You still always choose the easy job,” Keelan complained. But he didn’t really mind. He took the armful of garments from the change room and sorted them by type and then by size. The severe business suits were easy to locate, and so was the only rack of black pants. The system with the evening dresses confused him for quite a while, but he eventually figured it out and then he had only a couple of skirts to replace and he was done.
The noise of the vacuum cleaner had ended a little while ago, and he was amused to see Wynn in the tiny back room scrubbing out the coffeepot and filling it with clean water. Well, well, well. The man really was house trained after all.
Fortunately, just then Quintana logged off her computer and they could leave.
“Thanks for all your help,” she said looking around the store critically.
“It was something different, and I was glad we could help. I hope Meriel is better tomorrow.”
“Shit, so do I.”
They all laughed. “Oh dear, that sounded bad, but I do mean for her sake as well as mine.”
Laughing and talking, he and Wynn tucked Quintana between their bodies and took her upstairs into his apartment. They walked her over to the table and sat her at the seat facing the pictures and then stood at the other end of the table where they could see her face.
She traced a finger through the confetti, following the spiral swirl design, and then picked up the drawing on the emerald paper.
“It’s the same spiral, but with three tiny hearts intertwined in the center. It’s us.”
“Yes it is. The five spirals are you, and the three hearts are all of us.”
“You designed this yourself, Keelan.”
It was clearly a statement, not a question, but he answered anyway. “I did and Wynn has organized our meal.”