"Me too," Morgan said, ignoring Valerie's startled expression. "Wouldn't miss it for anything. But you all enjoy dinner!" He grabbed Valerie by the hand and dragged her out.
Chapter Six
The shanty town that had sprung up outside Juniper was a far cry from the toney California neighborhood Morgan had grown up in – or anywhere he had ever lived.
Silver Peak and Juniper were now crowded with hotels and resorts and condo buildings catering to all the wealthy humans who were flocking to the mineral springs.
However, there were many people who couldn't afford the high-priced hotels or condos but still needed healing. They'd been pushed out to the outskirts of Juniper, right outside the city limits, and ended up forming a shanty town where they scraped out a living. Many of them worked as handymen or maids or waitresses at the new businesses in town. They lived in tents and battered mobile homes and rickety, hastily erected shacks. Some people lived in their cars.
Valerie had roped Morgan into donating a half-dozen used construction trailers to the shanty town. They now served as a school house, town hall, and rec center/church/soup kitchen/whatever it needed to be.
Valerie was standing there with a small cluster of women from the Juniper Ladies Benevolent Society. The women came by every night with hot soup and grilled hot dogs and hamburgers for the families who couldn't afford their own groceries. Morgan knew that Valerie joined them here on weekends, handing out food and mittens.
There was a folding table outside the rec center, stacked high with pine wreaths, and Valerie and the other women were nailing hooks up outside the buildings, getting ready to hang the wreaths.
Teddy was standing in the snow watching them. She'd walked over toward him, but he'd scowled ferociously enough to chase her off.
Teddy's mother Liane was one of the people who'd come to town for the mineral springs. A former waitress at a diner, she was only forty, but suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's, which ran in her family, Valerie had informed him. Teddy's aunt had come with her to start using the springs as a preventative. She didn't have any symptoms yet, but she was hoping to ward them off. She had eight kids of her own, all by different fathers, none of whom had stuck around. She worked as a maid at one of the hotels in Juniper.
How did Valerie learn all these people's life histories? And why? She was always stumbling across some stray who needed help.
Morgan shook his head. He didn't have time for that kind of nonsense. He had his pack to think of. His family.
The scent of pine needles drifted his way. A memory flashed through his mind, of him and his father marching out into the woods together to cut down a tree for Christmas. Every year that had been their tradition. Every year until … well. Until.
His father had been a good man. A compassionate man.
And look where that had gotten him. And Morgan's mother.
Morgan's phone beeped with a text message from one of his contractors, and he read it and quickly clicked out an answer. Valerie said that he lived for work. What, exactly, did Valerie live for? To needle and nag him, he assumed.
So what would she do to occupy her spare time when she left?
The thought made a sudden chill settle over him, and he shivered for the first time since he could remember. Shifters had a very high cold tolerance, even when in human form.
He tried to think of what life would be like after Valerie left. Quieter. Calmer. Dark and empty.
Well, that was the way it had to be. He had nothing to offer, emotionally. What he had to offer was money and prestige. There were plenty of women who'd be delighted to sign on for something like that. Easy-going, eager-to-please women who'd never argue with him.
As soon as he ended things with Valerie and found a suitable replacement, he'd be mated to one of the women on that list. Women who didn't crowd into his thoughts in the middle of the night, women who didn't make his heart beat faster when they walked into the room. Of course, they wouldn't be soft and round and curvy like Valerie. They wouldn't smell like her. They wouldn't sound like her. They wouldn't-
"Good heavens. Who taught her to decorate?" His mother's voice yanked him out of his reverie. He started and looked around.
His mother and Arthur came strolling up, boots crunching in the hard-packed snow. Arthur shrugged and flashed him an apologetic look.
"Ms. Rosemont wanted to come join you, but she doesn't like driving in the snow," he said. "Sorry, should have called ahead."
"Yes, you should have. What are you doing here?" he demanded of his mother.
She flashed him a poisonous smile. "You've got a new mate. I need to get to know her better."
He scowled at her. Did his mother think he was stupid? "You will not insult Valerie again."
"Who said anything about insulting?" She gave him a polite, wounded blink of her eyes. "I'm just … helping."
Great. Helping.
He shoved his hands into his overcoat pockets and walked over with her as she approached Valerie.
"Goodness. Well, bless your heart, trying to decorate," she said to Valerie in her sweetest voice. He chewed his lower lip but refrained from saying anything. Yet.
"Doing my best," Valerie muttered without looking at her. She hung a wreath on a hook on the side of the rec center, and looked at it skeptically.
Morgan's mother looked over the wreaths. She smiled at Valerie, showing lots of big white teeth. She nodded, "Yes, I can see that."
Great.
Morgan loved his family, but he had to admit it. Nobody did passive-aggressive bitch like Nelda Rosemont.
Valerie stepped back from the window and looked Nelda up and down.
"You know, somebody as well-dressed and perfectly accessorized as you would be so much better at this. Here, you pick out where the wreaths go. No, no, I insist. Maria!" she called out to one of the Benevolent Society ladies. "This lovely shifter Nelda's going to finish up the wreaths for us! Isn't she great? You should tell her all about how you ended up joining the Benevolent Society! In fact, she'd love to hear your whole life story!" She thrust a wreath into Nelda's hands, grabbed Morgan by the arm, and dragged him away.
Nelda stood there, looking horrified and holding the wreath up as if it were roadkill as the bouffant-haired, polyester-clad ladies gathered around her. She was swallowed up by the sea of eager, chatty human women. She frantically looked around for an escape route. There was none.
"Did you just manage and manipulate my mother the same way you do me?" Morgan demanded of Valerie.
Some other secretary might have backed down. Might have melted under his stern gaze. Might have apologized and scurried off. Not Valerie.
"Yep." She kept tugging him along toward the end of the parking lot where volunteers were frying burgers on a donated grill and boiling water for hot chocolate. There was a pavilion set up there with plastic tables and chairs underneath it. And even better, there was mulled Christmas wine.
"Good woman," he said approvingly. "I taught you well."
"Ha!" she said scornfully. "I was born knowing how to bitch-wrangle. Oh, sorry, that's your mother I'm talking about."
"No, no, the description is quite apt," he said.
They each accepted a cup of mulled wine.
"And God bless you for your generous donation of hats and mittens this month," one of the women said to Morgan as she handed him his mug.
He scowled at Valerie, who avoided his gaze. "What donation is she talking about?" he asked her as they crunched through the snow.
"Shut up, that's what donation she's talking about. Finish your drink before it gets cold." They sat on the creaky plastic chairs and sipped, and Valerie enjoyed the pleasant burn of the alcohol.
"Stop giving my money away to poor people," Morgan said, frowning at the raggedy crowd of shanty town residents who were lining up for free dinner.
"Who else would I give it away to? Rich people?" Valerie smiled at him and did the eye-batting thing. "By the way, you can't get away with yelling at me right now, because your mother's here and you have to pretend you like me."
"Where's your family?" he asked, suddenly realizing that Valerie knew all about his family and he knew nothing about hers. He'd only learned about her grandparents when Eileen had mentioned them. He felt a sharp twinge of guilt. Yes, he made it a policy to keep all business impersonal, but this was Valerie.
She shrugged and took a sip of her hot chocolate. It left a mustache of foam on her lip, and he fought a sudden urge to lean forward and lick it off.