Jared opened the door just as Jace responded, “Because then we won’t have room for the crib.” He followed it up with a sexy smile, and Jace’s arms wrapped around Piper’s waist. His brother was going in for a kiss, and she was giving him a dead-sexy, encouraging smile.
Jared cleared his throat, and they both jumped. He smiled at them. “Hate to interrupt your baby-making plans, but I need a minute of your time.”
Piper glared at him. “Jared, your timing sucks.”
He just laughed. “People have said much worse things about me.”
Jace just stared at him with open-mouthed wonder, then he said to Jaxson, “What the hell happened to him?”
Apparently, the changes Grace had wrought in him were that obvious.
Jaxson brushed past him on his way into the cabin, then set down the shelving boards. “I don’t know, but I like the new Jared a lot better than the old Jared.”
Piper was studying him with a gleam in her eye. “This is about the girl, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Jared closed the door behind him, then turned to their expectant faces. “Here’s the thing: she’s willing to come out to her father as a wolf. She thinks it will embarrass him, but even more important, she thinks she can use it to talk him out of the legislation. Make some argument about not putting her under the scrutiny of the law or some such thing.”
Jaxson looked skeptical. “But you don’t think it will work?”
Jared folded his arms. “She wants to appeal his sense of decency. I’m not entirely convinced the man has one. You should’ve seen his supporters at this anti-shifter rally today.”
“I heard about that on the news,” Jace said, releasing his hold on his new mate. “Something about a shifter gang crashing the rally and making threats?”
“That was all a setup.” Jared shook his head. “The Senator orchestrated the whole thing.”
“That’s… disturbing.” Jaxson rubbed the stubble on his chin, thoughtfully.
Jared nodded. “Grace saw right through it. And I told her about the experiments. I think she believes me, but she still wants a chance to talk her father out of the legislation. So we’re waiting until morning. I came back here to check in and find out where you were with your side of things.”
“Well, Olivia’s got everything ready to roll out to the press,” Jaxson said. “She’s got shifters lined up to talk about it on camera, and she’s alerted her friends in the media that she might be calling a press conference. She’s just waiting for us to give her the word.”
Jared nodded. “I just need a little more time. I don’t want to throw Grace and her father under the bus with a press conference. Especially if we don’t have any more evidence connecting him to the experiments. That might just force his hand into something more drastic.”
“We do have something on him,” Piper said. “I tapped a hacker—someone Olivia knew—to breach the Senate’s email server. Got a raft of documents to sort through. But I’ve already found a couple emails between him and some guy named David Alcore. We think it might Agent Smith. There’s probably more, once we dig through it all. Got several shifters working on it.”
Jared sucked in a breath. “That’s good news. And if we’ve got evidence against the Senator, we’ll use it. But I trust Grace to help us—she wants to stop him as badly as we do.”
Jace and Jaxson exchanged a look of concern. “Are you sure about that?” Jace asked. “This is her father we’re talking about. She might not be willing to do what it takes to bring him down.”
“I trust her.” That was one thing Jared was sure about. “But I know she’s emotionally compromised in this situation. She needs my help to get through it.”
Piper’s eyebrows lifted, and Jace and Jaxson looked surprised as well.
“So… sounds like she trusts you.” Piper nodded approvingly. “You’re more than just her bodyguard now, aren’t you?”
That he could feel at all defensive about that surprised him. “I’m not going to let her get hurt. She knows that. And I’m helping her, well, to explore her wolf side.”
Jaxson broke out into a grin. “Damn, Jared. Sounds like you’ve been busy.”
Shockingly, this made heat rise in his face. “We’ve been getting to know each other.” He wasn’t going to tell them all the details—they could figure that out for themselves—but they needed to know she was something special.
Jace shook his head. “Are you sure about this? She could be playing you, Jared.”