* * *
Pita ran around in circles barking. It was cute, but annoying as hell. Chay wasn’t a decent chef at the best of times and the pup wasn’t helping him concentrate on reading the recipe with all that yapping. Keaton had called earlier to inform him that he’d invited Jake and Tina to dinner tomorrow night. Chay was delighted Bit was making friends. He was relieved to find out Jake was acting as Bit’s bodyguard, that had made the tension he’d been feeling ease some. But no way in hell was he going to get stuck cooking for company. Fair was fair. He was going to play the but-I-cooked-last-night card and he was going to play it to the hilt.
He’d run into the kitchen and pulled out the cookbook while still on the phone with Bit. Fifteen minutes later, he was off the phone and he’d made no progress. Every time he settled on a recipe and took out ingredients, he realized he lacked a key item that made up the dish. He shook his head, picked up all the ingredients from the last no-go, stepped over Pita and put them back. They needed to go shopping. They were, apparently, out of everything.
Chay grabbed the cookbook and strolled to the pantry for one last check.
Pita bit the leg of his scrubs and started tugging.
Maybe he could order take out, toss the containers and pretend to have made it. It was a thought. Chay jerked his leg back up next to his other one. “Give it a rest, pup.” The question was, could he pull it off without actually lying to Bit? Nah, probably not. Chay sighed and flipped through the book again.
It appeared as though he had everything for the recipe on the second to last page. He couldn’t pronounce it, but it looked edible. He reached for the flour when the sound of a car brought him up short. “Crap.” Out of time. Chay grinned, anxious to see his mate. He swooped the growling puppy up and went to the garage to open the door for Bit. He should buy an automatic garage-door opener. A trip to Sears was definitely in order.
He lifted the door open with one hand and…no Bit. He could have sworn he heard a car. Glancing over in front of the house by the curb, he saw John and Mary Carter getting out of their car.
“Hi, Chay.” Mary waved and rushed forward.
John followed her carrying a big box. “Hey, Chayton.”
“Hey, guys.” Chay motioned to them to come on through the garage. “I thought you were Keaton. What brings the two of you out this way?”
Mary hugged him. “We brought you and Keaton some things,” she said, petting Pita’s head. Beating Chay to death with his tail, the mutt ate the attention up.
Chay’s eyebrow shot up as he closed the garage door. “What kind of things?”
They trailed behind him into the kitchen, almost tripping over the excited puppy.
Mary smiled and patted his arm. “We wanted to do something nice. You being newly mated and all.”
John set the box on the kitchen table.
Chay grinned. Apparently, he wasn’t going to have to tell anyone about him and Bit. It would seem his dad had taken care of it.
Mary dug into the box, pulled out a smaller white box and set it on the table. “I brought you guys a cake, and some towels and a fruit basket.”
John shook his head, grinning, as Mary continued to pull things out of the box. “We figured there wasn’t likely to be a wedding. And all new couples deserve gifts, so we brought a few things. I tried to talk her out of the fruit basket.”
Mary snorted. “Yes, he did. He said I should get a meat tray.”
Oh wow.
How cool was that? Chay chuckled. “Mary we
are
wolves,” he joked. “Thanks, guys. I can’t believe you did this.”
John slapped him on the shoulder. “Your father is one of my oldest friends and my Beta. You didn’t think we’d just ignore the fact that you finally found your mate, did you?”
Chay shrugged. “Well considering… Yeah, I guessed it would pretty much go unnoticed or unacknowledged anyway.”
“Nonsense.” Kissing his cheek, Mary continued, “Everyone who knows you knows you’ve always wanted a mate. So what if your mate’s not quite what we all expected. He seems like a nice young man and you are obviously happy, so we are too.”
Man.
Hugging Mary back, Chay grinned. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” they chorused.
John leaned against the table, suddenly looking serious. “I’m sorry your mother isn’t taking it well. Rest assured you’ll get no grief from the pack. This isn’t unheard of. I know of two other similar cases. A friend of mine in Texas is mated to another wolf. He’s actually married and he, his mate and his wife are all quite happy together. They have four kids between them and when I talked to Emilio last, he and Michael had two grandsons and another grandchild on the way.”
Chay cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, I doubt seriously Bit, er, Keaton is going to let me have a wife.” He chuckled nervously. “I hope you aren’t expecting kids or anything. I mean—”
John laughed. “No, no, not at all. I was only pointing out that there are other wolves who have male mates. That just happens to be how Emilio and Michael deal with it. They’ve been together for over forty-some-odd years. Since they were children. Sarah has been with them for over thirty. I also know of another couple, though I don’t know them as well. It’s only the two of them. Devlin is Alpha of their pack, and Laine is actually his Omega.”
Feeling better, Chay nodded. It was nice to know they weren’t expecting him to chase after women even though he was mated. Because it wasn’t happening. He wasn’t sharing his Bit and he knew darn well how Bit would feel about sharing him, especially with a female. Even if Bit were attracted to women, he had never gotten past the “girls have cooties” stage. “Would the two of you like something to drink?”
Mary made swishing motions with her hands. “Oh no, we aren’t staying long. We’re on our way to a dinner party. We just wanted to congratulate you and throw in our support.”
Chay smiled. “It means a lot to me, thank you.”
Grabbing Mary’s hand, John pulled her to his side. “You let me know if you find out anything else about who is trying to hurt Keaton. I have Jake Romero looking into it and watching Keaton while he’s at work.”
“I appreciate that. Keaton met Jake today. He invited him to dinner tomorrow evening, so I’m going to go over some things with him and see if between the two of us we can’t get Keaton thinking. He has to know who’s doing this. I’m betting it’s someone from his old pack.”
John nodded. “I’m betting you’re right. Is he okay? Doc Baker called us last night to let us know what was going on. I’d already decided to assign Jake to watch his back when your dad called and asked me to make the arrangements.”
“I appreciate it, John.”
“We take care of our own, Chay. You know that. I expect to be kept up-to-date and if you need anything, I expect to know about it.” He offered his hand and Chay shook it.
“Yes, sir. Thank you again. For everything.”
He saw them to the door. John stopped him again, waving Mary on to the car. Waiting till she was out of hearing, he took an envelope from of his pocket and tucked it into Chay’s hand. “Sorry about the girly towels and stuff. Here’s a gift certificate to the mall. You boys go get something you want, something fun.” He winked and strolled to the car to open his mate’s door.
Well, son of a gun.
Didn’t that beat all? Chay stood there flabbergasted as John and Mary both waved and pulled away from the curb. Chay smiled and shut the door.
He glanced at the clock on his way to the phone.
Where was Bit?
He wasn’t too late, but Chay was already paranoid with the recent attempts on his life. He’d driven Keaton up the wall with his phone calls today, but that was tough. He wasn’t going to stop worrying until they found out who wanted to kill Bit. He picked up the phone and began dialing Keaton’s cell number when someone knocked on the door.
Chay frowned and sniffed the air as he headed to the door. Whoever it was, was a wolf and didn’t smell familiar.
Pita ran through the doggy door barking and beat Chay to the front. He immediately started growling.
Chay blinked. Pita growled a lot, but it was usually the hey-play-with-me-aren’t-I-cute growl. This growl was mean, cute—because Pita was too little to be vicious—but mean. Chay picked him up and peeked out the peep hole. “Shh. Quit growling, pest.”
Chay didn’t recognize the man, but he looked harmless enough. He looked like… Chay opened the door. “Hello?”
“Hi, is Keaton here?”
Chapter Seventeen
“Wilma. I’m home!” Keaton giggled as he set the bags of food on the counter.
Ha.
Chay hadn’t gotten dinner. Which meant tomorrow was Chay’s turn.
Yes.
Keaton grinned. Why hadn’t Chay and Pita come to greet him at the back door like they usually did? Surely they’d heard his car pulling up and him opening and shutting the garage door.
Ooh, what’s that?
There was a box on the table. He breathed in. A cake? He strolled over and started going through the brown box, inside was a smaller white one—definitely a cake box—he inhaled again. Chocolate. And some towels and fruit and…had Chay gone shopping?
“Bit, we have company.”
Keaton turned as Chay came into the kitchen carrying Pita. He was frowning.
Uh-oh.
Keaton walked up to him, raised up on tiptoe and kissed his chin. He scratched Pita’s head and got puppy kisses on the hand. “Who is it?” He sniffed.
His eyes widened. What the hell was
he
doing here?
Chay wrapped an arm around him and hugged him, dropping a quick kiss on his lips. “I’ll put the food in the microwave so it will stay warm.”
“Yeah. I’ll go and see…” Keaton rubbed his sweaty palms on his slacks. “What does he want?”
“Says he came to see you.”
Why?
In a daze, Keaton went into the living room. He stopped in the doorway.
Aubrey wandered around the living room, his back to Keaton. He looked a little broader through the shoulders and his golden hair was longer than the last time Keaton had seen him. Sensing his presence, Aubrey turned. One side of his mouth lifted up in a half-smile. “Hello, little brother. Looks like you’ve done okay for yourself. I have to admit, when you wadded up your trust fund statement and threw it in Dad’s face I really expected you to come running back in a matter of weeks. But it looks like I was wrong.”
“How did you find me and what the hell do you want?”
Aubrey’s blue eyes widened a bit, then he smiled, showing straight white teeth. “Is that any way to greet your older brother?”
Keaton squelched the urge to scream and pull at his hair. He wasn’t going to let Aubrey get to him. It had been almost two years since Keaton had left Georgia for good and in that time no one in his family had made an effort to contact him. Of course, he hadn’t exactly told them where he was going. “I seem to remember you telling me I was dead to you. Therefore I have no brother. What do you want, Mr. Reynolds?” Yeah, it was juvenile, but what the hell? He’d just as soon make this short if not sweet and leave no room for doubt in Aubrey’s mind that Keaton didn’t want anything to do with him.
Aubrey chuckled. “Still have an attitude problem I see.” He walked back to the couch and sat down. “Well, apparently you aren’t in a forgiving mood, so I’ll get right to the point. Mom and Dad want you to come home.”
“Excuse me?” Keaton raised a brow, going for the “superior” look that Aubrey always hated.
Aubrey’s gaze darted over his shoulder as Chay came to stand behind Keaton.
Chay’s hand settled on the small of Keaton’s back. Pita growled.
Keaton kept his attention on his brother but took comfort in the solid presence of his mate. “Why would Mom and Dad want me to come home? They disowned me.”
Aubrey gritted his teeth and rolled his eyes. “Not exactly.”
Interesting.
“Not exactly?”
“They hired a private detective to find you. They want you to come home. It’s a long story but no one expected you to take off and—”
“I’m not coming home. If they want to see me so bad, they can come to me.”
Chay rubbed between his shoulder blades and leaned in close. Pita licked Keaton’s ear.
Keaton sighed and stepped out of reach of the puppy’s tongue. Yes, he knew he was being a dick but that was just too bad. Damn, he was getting a headache. Keaton pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is that all you want, Aubrey?”
“I came to offer to take you back.”
“Ah, how sweet… But no thank you.
If
I decide to go back, it will be on my own terms. Now, if that’s all you wanted…piss off.”
Glaring, Aubrey stood up. “You know you ought to follow your boyfriend’s example. He’s much more polite than you are.”
Keaton stalked over to the door and jerked it open. “Yes, well we can’t all be perfect. But he is my mate and I love him anyway.”
Aubrey snorted and walked out. Turning back, he looked past Keaton to Chay. “It was nice meeti—”
Keaton slammed the door shut, strolled up to Chay and took Pita. “Come on, pup. I brought you some French fries.” His food was getting cold. Arguing with Aubrey wasn’t worth eating cold hamburgers for.
Chay bit his bottom lip to keep from laughing.
Holy shit!
He’d forgotten how cold Bit could be. Damn, his mate had a temper.
He’d been surprised to see how much Aubrey looked like Keaton. He had the same platinum curls, the same pretty blue eyes. His face was shaped the same, but he had a different nose, not near as nice as Bit’s cute little upturned one.
He walked into the kitchen to find Bit at the table with a hamburger in one hand, feeding Pita fries with the other.
Bit held the burger up. “Sorry. I just… Sorry, I should have waited for you to come eat. I poured you some tea.”
Chay sat across from Bit and took a swig of his tea. “No problem. Thanks for picking up food. Everything I tried to cook, we didn’t have. We are going to have to go to the grocery store tomorrow.” He pointed at his mate and glared. “Speaking of which, you cheated. You brought food so I’d have to cook tomorrow.”