Redemption: Reckless Desires (Blue Moon Saloon Book 3) (7 page)

“Killing isn’t the answer,” Tina insisted.

“No,” Rick agreed, “But it’s not like they’ll respond if we go ask nicely for them to cease and desist.”

“The underlying problem,” Lana said, “is pack structure. Or lack of structure, I suppose. The more old-fashioned packs there are out there, chasing out any young males who might threaten the alpha’s reign, the more the Blue Bloods find fresh recruits ready to fight for their cause. For any cause, really.”

Much as Soren preferred the kill-them-all approach, Lana was right. Too many wolf packs — and even some bear clans — were ruled by alphas with iron fists. Twin Moon pack taught its next generation to respect, not resent the alpha, and the leaders made every effort to ensure that young males grew into fulfilling roles that contributed to the group. But that wasn’t the case in every pack. More often than not, promising young males were chased away and forced to wander on their own.

Tina nodded. “The same kind of young wolves we’ve found to work honest jobs…”

Soren looked at the floor. When he and Simon had first wandered into Arizona, they hadn’t been much different from rogues. But Tina had set them up with the Blue Moon Saloon and gotten them back on their feet. They owed her everything.

“…but rogue bands like the Blue Bloods seem to recruit them faster,” Tina sighed.

He drew a foot across the worn floorboards. At least there’d been no danger of him and Simon wandering down that path.

“That’s the thing — getting these guys before they’re too far gone,” Rick added.

Soren looked at Rick, owner of the ranch that bordered on Twin Moon property. He and Rick shared the same chronic problem — finding enough shifters to run their businesses properly. Hiring humans brought too many problems.

And shit, Soren had hired a human just that morning. Sarah.

Sarah’s different,
his bear said.
Sarah is special.

Of course, Sarah was special. She’d always felt half shifter to him, with her love of the outdoors. And she’d always had a thing for bears that went beyond little-girl, teddy-bear stuff. They’d run across bears lots of times in their wanderings together, and there hadn’t been a single time Sarah looked scared. On the contrary, the sight of bears seemed to fill her with wonder every time.

So why hadn’t he ever told her who he truly was? Why hadn’t he mated with her years ago?

“We’re doubling the number of guys we send over to keep an eye on things in town,” Ty said, interrupting his thoughts.

Rick nodded his assent; Seymour Ranch was providing back up, too.

Soren wished the saloon and café didn’t need their protection. But it sure didn’t hurt to have a couple of Twin Moon wolves hanging around, just in case. Janna and Jess were tough, but another ambush could come any time. And Sarah — Jesus, with Sarah around, the stakes got that much higher.

“What we have to do,” Lana said, “is change the way some packs think.”

Ty snorted. “That’s like asking my father to change.”

“He has changed,” Tina insisted. “Well, a little bit.”

Ty held his fingers a millimeter apart. “About that much, and that’s taken years. Some old coots will never change.”

“Victor Whyte will never change,” Soren said, and the room went still.

“Victor fucking Whyte,” Ty muttered, finally breaking the silence.

“Him, you can kill,” Lana said.

Even Tina pinched her lips together and didn’t protest.

Kill, kill, kill,
Soren’s bear growled. Victor Whyte had ordered the massacre of his entire bear clan in a cowardly ambush. Victor Whyte had had the entire Black River wolf pack wiped out in Montana. Victor Whyte had ordered his men to trap Sarah and her parents inside their house and burn them alive.

Victor Whyte wanted to kill Sarah and the baby,
his bear grunted.

Victor Whyte, he was definitely going to kill.

He and Simon had talked it over a hundred times — going after Whyte before the extremist could claim any more innocent victims. But with the saloon just finding its feet and Jess and Janna joining them, they’d kept deciding to wait for the right time. Rushing off in a rage would leave their fledgling clan open to ambush, so they needed to plan carefully.

“You said you’d be gathering intel,” Soren said to Ty, trying hard not to bark the words. Ty was alpha here, and he’d already done plenty for Soren’s growing clan.

Ty glared at him then redirected the anger in his eyes to the map. “We have. We’ve tracked the Blue Bloods to a home base near Hope, Utah.”

“Hope?” Tina shook her head. “They have the nerve to settle near a place called Hope?”

Soren thought of a thousand ways he could rip, tear, and plummet that kind of
hope
right out of existence.

“But if we go in there on a mission to kill the Blue Bloods, we’re no better than them,” Tina pointed out.

Soren fought the urge to volunteer to be the bad guy, just this once.

Ty dragged his nails across the map, showing the same kind of frustration Soren felt. How to do the right thing without stooping to the level of his foe?

“Which is why we’re waiting,” Ty grumbled. “We’ve got our own contacts, believe me. The second Whyte and his leadership team stick out their necks, we’ll be on them.”

“And until then?” Soren demanded.

Ty locked eyes with him. “We protect what’s ours, and we wait.”

Ours,
his bear growled, having no problem conjuring up an image of whom that might be.

Contrary to Sarah’s fears, the next couple of days passed quickly. Easily, in fact, except maybe the few times she bumped into Soren on the way to the bathroom or on the stairs.

But boy, did those moments stand still.

Her heart would pound in her chest, the blood rush through her veins, and her breath catch in her throat. She and Soren would both freeze for a minute, staring into each other’s eyes, and it was like they’d vaulted right into the past, when everything had been promising and golden and good. Her whole body would warm up with hope and love and the energy that seemed to pulse between them like an electric field. Like magic. Like true love. Like…like destiny.

Then Soren — it was always Soren who snapped out of it first — would blink and lean away. His eyes would grow distant and cold, and it would be over.

Until the next time it happened, and the next, and the time after that. Little blink-of-the-eye moments she’d started to live for between the rest of the hours that seemed to drag by.

Not that she didn’t like the cashier’s job at the café or the women she worked with. It was just that everything paled in comparison to those fleeting moments of love and light and hope.

“Wow,” Jessica said one morning. “Can you believe the café has already been open for a week?”

Sarah mulled that one over for a while, because it meant she’d been there for a week, too. Then another couple of days passed, making it two weeks, and she realized how much of a routine she’d fallen into. Work in the mornings, naps in the afternoons, followed by an hour or two at a desk in the back of the café doing the books, and finally, an early bedtime. And the next day, it would start all over again.

The routine became comfortingly familiar in its own way, as did her cosy bedroom and the comings and goings of her housemates. It was a funny little arrangement they had going, and a funny little gang. Two couples shared the apartment over the saloon with Soren — Jessica and Simon, plus Janna and Cole, with everyone spread out in their own subsection of the place. Everyone but Cole worked in the café or the saloon, but the close quarters seemed to work harmoniously. Of course, the two couples were both head over heels in love. Soren was the only single of the bunch.

Soren and her. And it seemed he went out of his way to avoid her as much as he could.

She tried switching all that off when she went to work, though her success rate…well, it was a little low.

Customers at the Quarter Moon Café were nice and cheery and kind enough not to stare too much at the burn scars on her hands. A crowd of regulars developed, and it started to feel a lot like home.

“Thanks, Sarah,” Mike of Mike’s Hardware would say on his way through every morning. She didn’t even have to look at what he ordered to ring him up each day; it was always the same. Coffee with a splash of milk and one blueberry muffin.

“Have a nice day, Sarah,” Pete the carpenter would flash his chip-toothed smile, put a dollar he probably couldn’t afford in the tip jar, and head out with a chocolate-raspberry muffin and a couple of sandwiches to go.

The tip jar was Janna’s idea, and it filled up every day, especially once she drew a little stork carrying a baby on the front.

“Looking good, Sarah,” Jessica’s friend Tina said one day, giving her a satisfied nod.

Sarah didn’t know about looking good, but she sure felt better than when she’d first arrived at the Quarter Moon Café. Stronger. Surer. Rounder, too, because the baby seemed to be thriving with her new lifestyle.

“It’s all the smoothies, wraps, and spare ribs I’ve been wolfing down,” she said.

Tina stopped short, and for an instant, it seemed like half the people in the café froze. Jessica halted dead in her tracks as she carried another rack of muffins out from the back. Janna’s head whipped around instead of taking a customer’s order. The tongs Emma had been using to reach for a muffin clattered to the counter, and Sarah looked around.

What? What did she say?

A second later, everything was back to normal, and she spent the rest of the morning wondering if she’d imagined the whole thing.

Every once in a while, her old fears would catch up with her, and she’d peek nervously out to the street. She’d spent the past months on the run from an evil band that seemed intent on hunting her down. Would they find her here, too?

But fear became a passing thing instead of the constant, nagging companion it had once been. Jessica was right. This place had a safe, secure feeling to it. Jessica, Janna, and Emma were all tough, country girls who could hold their own, and it sure didn’t hurt Sarah’s peace of mind to have the burly Voss brothers nearby. There were always a couple of strapping young bucks from the local ranches hanging around the café or saloon, too. They’d settle in at a corner table by the window, eat enough for a platoon of marines, and shoot the breeze pretty much from the time the café opened to the time it closed.

The second a stranger walked into the place, though, they’d drop their happy-go-lucky veneer and stiffen like bodyguards on high alert. Sarah swore they’d sniff the air, too, as if their noses were keen enough to draw any conclusions from a person’s scent. But a second later, they’d lapse back into lazy-cowboy mode, and again, she wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing.

On the other hand, there might be some truth in her bodyguard theory, because “the boys” — as Jessica called the gang of towering cowboys who rotated through regularly on their days off from work on the ranch — were always there. And Jessica had instructed Sarah to charge half the usual price while serving them twice the usual amounts. It really did feel as though they were there to keep an eye on things.

“You sure you boys are all right?” Jessica would check in on the men periodically. “Not getting bored yet?”

“If you think this is a hardship, ma’am, you come try the food on the ranch. This here’s a vacation for us,” they insisted with their special brand of cowboy charm.

The boys read the paper. They played cards — until Jessica asked them to save it for the saloon. They told funny jokes with animals as characters, and bears always seemed to get the short end of the stick.

“How many bears does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” the one named Jake started.

“What did the bear say to the firefighter?”

“A bear and a hedgehog are walking in the woods, and one of them says…”

“Hey!” Sarah finally protested, calling across the café. “I like bears. How about you make cowboy jokes sometime?”

Everyone laughed then abruptly clammed up, and Sarah turned to find Soren glowering in the kitchen doorway, where he stood with a muffin halfway to his mouth.

Newspapers fluttered high as the cowboys suddenly found something very, very interesting to read — or hide behind.

The clock ticked loudly in the heavy silence that ensued, and when Soren looked at her and tilted his head, she swore she could read his thoughts.

Bears, huh?

The left side of his mouth curved up a tiny little bit, and she went warm all over to see the old Soren peek out for a brief instant. Serious on the outside but laughing on the inside. Happy. Smiling. Hers. It was another one of those golden moments when she could believe that somehow, everything would work out.

Yes, bears,
she wanted to say.
You know I have a thing for bears.

His eyes twinkled, and she smiled, slipping away on memories. They’d gone to the county fair together each year, and every year, Soren had looked on as she shot her way to a prize at the target booth. It was the only way all the rifle practice her dad had insisted she put in paid off.