The Mate Challenge(8)

She squeezed her way between people, pushing and shoving harder than before in order to get to the back door without the security guards reaching her. Once she reached the girls, they dashed down the back alley to her car. She had the engine going before they even got inside. Everyone piled into the car in a rush. She put the car in drive and floored it. A glance at her rearview showed the two guards running to the middle of the street. Too late. She was already speeding away and there was nothing they could do to her.





FOUR





The following morning, Emma sat down on her sofa with her laptop on and tried to find Aria Valderi. She was not just having shitty luck when it came to that, she was also pissed off because she’d gotten a rash from the stupid wig.

Her doorbell rang and she sighed. “It’s open!”

Nic shoved her head inside, looking all over. “Is it safe?”

Emma nodded. “He’s not here. I don’t know why that would make any difference.”

Nic laughed, carrying a giant bakery box in her hands. On top of the bakery box, she had a cup holder with two tog cups on it. She paused to wipe her feet on the carpet by the entrance. Emma was a stickler for everyone wiping their feet. Or removing their shoes. Sure enough, Nic then went ahead and slipped out of her flats and walked barefoot on Emma’s pristine beige carpet.

She sat down on the sofa across from Emma and opened up a box which contained croissants and breakfast pastries, on the coffee table. “You and Mason make anyone feel like a voyeur when you’re around each other. All that sexual tension. We swear you’re going to tear at each other’s clothes in a public place one of these days.”

Emma bit back a grin and leaned forward to grab a cheese Danish from the box. Those damn things were her favorites. She hoped Nic knew there was no chance in hell she’d get to eat one if there were more in the box. A single bite and she was moaning over the sweet treat. “Thank you so much for bringing these.”

Nic laughed, pulling out the soft insides of a croissant and taking bites. “No problem. So what are you up to? The last few days you’ve been way too quiet and none of the others have heard from you.” She raised her brows in question. “At first we thought you were spending time with Mason, but then we realized there had to be something else going on. So what gives?”

She leaned back, put her Danish on a napkin and sucked her fingers from the sticky sugar covering the pastry. “Nothing’s going on.”

Nic gasped. “Emma Linda Ferro! You’re lying to me.”

Crap. She kept forgetting that her friends were shifters now. Well, most of them. They wouldn’t know if Karla would take to the change until after she had her babies. For the past few months, things had been in an uproar at Blue Creek. First, Jordan mated Aric. That had been brewing for years. Then, Karla and Nate mated and Karla was having his babies. Three of them.

Good Lord, Emma would lose her mind if she were expecting that many kids. She loved kids, but one at a time so she can devote her time to them fully. Any more than that and she’d feel like she was only giving half herself. At least that’s how she felt in her classroom. Though she did have it down packed. Who else had a group of eight year olds call her “Drill Sergeant”?

After that, the team went to Vegas to have some girl time and give Jordan a proper bachelorette party for her upcoming wedding. What followed was a comedy of errors. Nic ended up marrying Jake in a drunken stupor. The proposal got tons of hits on the internet.

Then, Nic went on and killed the Vegas Alpha which would eventually bring some kind of problems but nobody knew for sure. Jordan saw her mother in the hotel and somehow got some closure. Eventually she finally married Aric and now they were all back. Except for the newlyweds. The original ones, anyway. Nic and Jake said they’d wait to go on a honeymoon once things settled down with the Rahound pack.

“I am,” she admitted and clicked the keys furiously. Something had to come up on Aria Valderi. “I have a student whose sister is missing.”

Nic frowned and picked up a cup, offered it to Emma and then grabbed the other and took a drink. “Is it Maria Smith?”

Emma gave a sharp nod and took a sip of her chai. She loved Vanilla Chai. It was one of her weaknesses. “Her other sister, Kelsie came to me for help.”

“Isn’t Maria like seventeen?”

“Yes, so?”

Nic shrugged. “What if she’s with some friends? Or what if she’s visiting someone? Her not answering her cell doesn’t mean there’s necessarily foul play, you know.”

Emma knew that. She also knew that was probably the reason nobody in the entire town did anything to go look for the girl. “Something’s happened to her and I need to know what.”