A Green Valley Christmoose Disaster Read online

  Would he want it?

  She gave a sparkling, practiced laugh. “It would be much easier with an animal in my head saying yes or no. I honestly don’t know, darling.” There was no way she would ever know, because she hadn’t been born a shifter.

  “Can we do presents yet?” Aaron was standing in the doorway and from behind him, Andrea called, “I told you not to bug them yet!”

  “I certainly think we should do presents,” Linda agreed. “I know it’s hard to be patient when you’re little.”

  Aaron gave a whoop of joy and fell over backwards. There was an answering shriek of delight from Trevor somewhere back in the house.

  Shelley gave Linda a hard look, but Linda shrugged carelessly at her and went back out to the living room, where her heart sank to find Turner putting on his coat. “You’re leaving so soon?”

  “Presents aren’t really my part of this,” he said sensibly. “I’ve got a six-pack of homebrew for Dean at the station, but his real gift was when I canned him from the force. I want to swing by the police station before it gets too late and see if Officer Stakes has turned up yet. The troopers said they’d be by tomorrow if he hadn’t checked in.”

  Dean was being mobbed by the boys as he was cutting open a large shipping box from some distant relatives and he paused to laugh and say, “And I only got you socks!”

  “IS IT OPEN YET CAN WE OPEN PRESENTS WHAT DID THEY SEND US?” It was hard to tell what was Aaron and what was Trevor as they spoke over each other.

  “Anyone need another drink to get through this?” Shaun offered. “Thanks for coming, Turner!”

  “I appreciate the food!” he replied. Then he looked at Linda and added quietly, “And the company.”

  Dean had opened the box at this point and the boys’ squeals as the presents and freezer bags of cookies began to emerge nearly drowned out Turner’s words.

  Linda didn’t notice their din. She felt a little like the rest of the room went away as she stepped closer to Turner. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said automatically. “I had a lovely time.”

  That was what you said to company, right? But Turner wasn’t just company, and Linda suddenly knew that she couldn’t let him walk out that door alone.

  CHAPTER 9

  “I’ll walk you out,” Linda said, pausing at the closet for her coat and, to Turner’s surprise, her boots. Over her shoulder, she called, “The boys can open gifts without me!”

  The boys cheered, drowning out Shelley’s half-hearted protest, and Linda closed the door behind her.

  It was quiet outside on the covered porch, though they could still hear the Christmas cheer from inside. It was starting to snow, with big fat white flakes covering all the dirty old snow and bare branches. Everything looked very blue in the evening gloom, and holiday lights up and down the block sparkled against the fresh white.

  “This was really unconventional,” Linda said apologetically. “I dropped an impromptu Christmas dinner on you and my ex showed up with a wife I didn’t know about and are you a shifter and am I your mate?”

  Turner had to stare at her for a moment, because he had been expecting at least a little polite conversation to wade through and he’d been trying to decide if he should volunteer the information about being a shifter now or try to get a goodbye kiss before he dropped that bombshell on her.

  He slowly smiled. He should have known that the perfect woman for him would be honest and forward and ask the questions on her mind. He loved that about her already.

  There were moments in life worth taking risks, and this was one of them. Turner closed what little space was left between them and took her face into his hands to kiss her deeply.

  Once he’d started, there was no stopping...mostly because she slipped her arms up around his neck and pulled him closer, kissing passionately back.

  She tasted like pie spices and a little bite of rum from fruitcake, and Turner could not hold her close enough or kiss her hard enough and it was hard to believe that this beautiful, sophisticated woman might be his, but he knew in his soul that she was.

  Was this what a Christmas miracle felt like? It was as if all the pieces of his life were falling together perfectly, despite all of the questions he had left.

  “Wow,” she said, when he finally released her. “Wow.” She sounded shaky and uncertain, which was strange after all of her confidence. “I guess that’s a yes?”

  “Yes,” Turner said, smiling foolishly at her. “You’re my mate.”

  Saying it out loud with her family had been one thing. Saying it to Linda was like unlocking a box full of sunshine. She was his mate.

  “Well,” she said sensibly, straightening the hat on her head. “Then I guess we have a few things to talk about. Would you like to show me around town? You said you needed to go to the police station, we can start there.”

  “Right now?” Turner glanced at the house behind her. There were still muffled sounds of merriment from inside.

  “I don’t need to sit through the opening of presents,” Linda said dismissively. “They weren’t expecting me and it would only make them feel guilty that I have nothing to open. You and I, on the other hand, have a great deal of ground to cover and I would like to get started. Is it far? Can we walk?”

  She tucked her arm into his elbow commandingly and steered him off down the snowy sidewalk.

  “You’ll have to tell what kind of animal you are,” she ordered him. “I’ve known Shelley was a lion for almost as long as she has, and Damien is also, of course, because I’m certainly not. Dean is apparently a bear and—” she cut herself off. “How secret is all of this here? In the city it was completely unspoken. Do all the shifters in Green Valley know each other? Do you have a secret handshake?”

  “There are a lot of shifters in this town,” Turner explained patiently, leading her towards town. “It’s a quiet place where development and technology aren’t really encouraged, with plenty of forest and local wildlife. Most of us don’t know each other for sure, just have a lot of suspicions. As the vice principal at the local high school, I run into more of them than usual.”

  “I imagine that new shifters are not great at keeping their heads down.”

  “There are a few normal reasons I might find a naked kid behind the gym,” Turner explained. “Hazing. Sex. But here in Green Valley, it’s usually that someone found out they weren’t just from Kansas. It involves a lot of uncomfortable conversations and I’ve gotten good at figuring out who is who before it turns into a problem. Also, I make sure I have a good range of spare clothing in my office.”

  “You haven’t said what you are,” Linda pointed out.

  “Moose,” Turner said shortly, and he glanced sideways at Linda to see what her reaction would be. A moose wasn’t a glamorous apex predator.

  “Oh,” she said with interest. “I understand those are quite...large.”

  Her coy look in return suggested that she was not disappointed.

  “No one has ever complained about my size,” Turner said just as slyly.

  There was a promise of a laugh dancing at the corner of her scarlet lips. “I’ll have to judge that for myself,” she said, tossing her head. “Now, what else do I need to know about you? Do you have family that you will be dragging me to dinner with in return for tonight?”

  “Only you,” Turner said before he could stop himself.

  Linda came to a stop and Turner halted with her. They were standing at an empty intersection, a single street light illuminating her like she was an angel.

  “Where do you see us going?” she asked softly. “Do I live...here? Do you come to the city with me? You have a career, I have a social circle. Where do they overlap?”

  “These are smart questions,” Turner conceded. “And I don’t have easy answers for them. I only know that when I look at you, I know that the place they collide is where I’ll be, and I will never be happy without you.”

  “You aren’t just a vice principal, you’re a poet,” Linda breathed.

  Saying something that romantic clearly called for another long, breathless kiss, standing on that corner in a pool of magical holiday light.

  They walked hand in hand after that, close together as they shyly spoke over a range of topics—she’d gone to private school, Turner grew up in Green Valley and attended the same school he now ruled over. They talked about favorite foods and hobbies—she liked to cook and he brewed beer.

  “I am now picturing a mad scientist’s basement with tubes and bubbling vessels,” Linda said.

  Turner laughed. “More like a few glass carboys in the corner of the pantry. It’s not fancy,” he said, feeling a little shy. Linda probably drank cask-aged bourbons and sparkling wines. “But it won’t make you go blind like some moonshine.”

  “Is it legal?”

  They were standing, appropriately, in front of the police station.

  “I promise that it is entirely legal,” Turner said. The front door of the police station was locked. “Let’s go around by the alley. One of the windows in the back doesn’t latch.”

  “You make legal homebrew, but know how to break into the police station,” Linda said with her warm chuckle. “You are indeed a complicated man.”

  Fortunately, the back door was unlocked altogether, so Turner didn’t have to climb into a window, which he suspected would be rather undignified.

  “Hello?” he called. “Stakes?”

  The police station was barely big enough for the name. There was an office, a holding cell, a break room even smaller than the one at the fire station, and a bathroom. The evidence locker was a literal locker. The building was empty, and there was no sign of a struggle or anything out of order. Stakes kept a tidy place.

  “Can you hack a computer?” Lin
da asked, looking at the desktop.

  “Probably not,” Turner admitted. “But Office Stakes doesn’t really use it. He’s an old-fashioned guy who uses old-fashioned methods. Ah-hah!”

  There was a note by the phone:

  Dec 22, 9 AM

  Stanley -

  ice shack @ Mueller’s Pond

  Animal spirits

  Alien artifact??

  “Who is Stanley?” Linda wanted to know, looking over his shoulder.

  “Stanley is one of our more colorful Green Valley characters. Kind of a lonely guy, and he tends to ramble. He’s constantly on about conspiracies and the latest government plots and will talk your ear off about discrepancies in history proving alien visitors and how smart phones are the new red scare wire tap something something. He makes a lot of unnecessary calls for emergency services. We’ve pulled his truck out of more mud holes than we’ve put out fires in the last year. Technically, he calls himself a farmer, but he mostly rents his fields and complains about taxes. He sometimes chases fads—at one point he tried raising emus, and he had alpacas for a while. It’s even money on whether he’ll fall for a scam and we’ve bailed him out more than once.”

  “A shifter?”

  “I’d guess not,” Turner said. “But there’s no way to know. This note would have been just before Stakes disappeared, I wonder if Stanley knows something about where Stakes went.” He checked his phone. “It’s too late tonight, I’ll swing by tomorrow before the festival and see if he’s got any clues.” He poked around at the other notes on the desk, but nothing else looked more recent.

  “Detective Turner, on top of fire chief and vice principal,” Linda teased. She sobered. “You’re worried about him.”

  “It’s not like Stakes to up and disappear like this,” Turner said honestly. “He’s a stand-up guy and this is really out of character.”

  “Where’s his deputy?” Linda wanted to know. “Small towns have police chiefs and deputies, right?”

  “Green Valley isn’t big enough for more than Stakes. He doesn’t even let us call him chief, says it seems too proud.”

  “Aren’t there things you are supposed to have two cops for?”

  “Stakes has a list of reserve officers. If he needs back-up, he calls or drives around until he finds one that can join him. I’m one of them.”

  “This...is a very small town,” Linda observed. “And you wear a lot of hats.”

  Turner glanced at her. She was frowning seriously at the corkboard hanging by Stake’s desk. There was a map hanging there, with some lost dog reports, along with a few complaints of nuisance.

  “How many people are in your fire department?” Linda asked.

  “Me, Carter, Jamie. I canned Dean, but I could count on him in a pinch if we needed help. Carter’s wife is making noises about retiring him, and Jamie wants to do summers in Alaska, so it might be just me in the spring, depending.”

  “Can you recruit someone new?”

  “Not a lot of draw in a small town like Green Valley. It’s a volunteer position, and there’s not a lot of work here.”

  Linda looked at him thoughtfully, probably thinking that there wasn’t a lot of anything here.

  “Our tour isn’t over yet,” he said lightly. “Wait until you see the picturesque downtown Green Valley. All two blocks of it!”

  CHAPTER 10

  When Linda had said they had ground to cover, she hadn’t really intended it literally, but she and Turner walked several miles through Christmas card neighborhoods and a charming little downtown with closed shops and a cafe named Gran’s Grits. He showed her the high school, which was much larger than she expected (it apparently served many outlying farms and communities), and the fire station, which was much smaller. There were four quaint churches, a library, five bars, a playground, and two grocery stores (both closed).

  “This time of night, you might have to drive out to the gas station on Wickersham if you need something. They have an all-hours convenience and liquor store by the highway.” Turner pointed out a big brick building with a bank sign. “Marta lives there. She converted it into a house. Her closet is in the old vault.”

  “Where is the bank, then?” Linda wanted to know.

  “There’s a credit union on Jefferson,” Turner said. “But mostly people can bank online now.”

  “I feel like I’ve stepped back in time,” Linda said with a sigh. “I can see the appeal of this place.”

  “It’s a good place to live,” Turner said simply.

  “Good for shifters,” Linda agreed. But she wasn’t a shifter.

  She shivered, and Turner took his scarf off and wrapped it around her neck, tucking it carefully into her coat. Even through gloves, his hands were nimble and, despite the cold, Linda rather wished that he was taking clothing off of her instead of the other way around. It was fully dark now, the sky above them a deep shade of murky black.

  There were no stars, and the streetlights made puddles of light in regular intervals as they walked. Most of the sidewalks downtown were shoveled, but the maintenance got spotty as they moved further out into the neighborhoods.

  “Where is your house?” Linda wanted to know.

  “A mile west past the fire station,” Turner said. “It’s small and bachelor. Like one of those fashionable tiny homes without a drop of fashion.”

  Linda laughed because he said it so drolly, but understood the implication at once: it wasn’t a home for her. It wasn’t as if she had expected him to have a surprise mansion with empty rooms and a staff waiting to spring into motion, but she was still a little disappointed.

  “Will you come to Cancun with me?” Linda asked impulsively. “I know it doesn’t answer the long questions, but there are a lot of things it would be nice to figure out on neutral ground.” She couldn’t help but imagine what it might be like traveling with Turner, walking on the beach with him, making love to him in a private courtyard.

  Turner drew her to a stop. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’ve got responsibilities here. We aren’t going to solve every problem tonight.”

  Linda looked up in astonishment. “We’re back at Shelley’s!” She’s gotten turned around somewhere, and hadn’t realized that they’d made a loop.

  “It’s a pretty small town.”

  “Your fire truck is still at Shaun’s.”

  “I’ll walk from here,” Turner said gruffly. “But your feet are killing you.”

  “Boots this cute are rarely comfortable,” Linda confessed. “Can you tell because I’m your mate?”

  “I can tell because you’ve been walking slower and slower as we go,” Turner said with a chuckle. “It’s not magic.”

  “Maybe I don’t want this evening to end,” Linda said. She could hear the invitation in her voice, even if she wasn’t quite sure what she was inviting. Shelley and Dean and Aaron were probably already home and it wasn’t like the guest room would offer that much privacy.

  “I don’t, either,” Turner agreed, his voice low and gruff.

  Linda wasn’t sure if he failed to invite her to his house because he was embarrassed of it, or if he was just a gentleman who didn’t think it was appropriate for a first date, but she wasn’t going to force the issue if he wasn’t going to make an offer. It felt like a real courtship, a slow burn, and Linda found herself savoring the anticipation. This was her mate and there was no need to rush to the finish line like teenagers.

  “You’ll be at the show tomorrow?” Turner asked.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Linda promised. “Apparently I have two grandchildren in it.”

  “It’s not the theatre you’re used to,” Turner warned. He was drawing her into his arms now.

  “I’m not sure it has to be.” Linda was pretty sure that neither of them was really talking about the pageant as she tipped her head up to meet his kiss. “Maybe we could get a nightcap, afterwards,” she suggested, when she had breath again. Then, feeling daring, “Maybe you should get a hotel room.”

  His arms tightened around her and he brushed her lips for a last, lingering kiss. “I’d like that,” he said.

  Linda had never looked forward to a second date so much.