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She walked to her bag and pulled out the thick novel, opening it to page 337.
Just as she took the slip of paper in her hands, there was a loud knock on the door.
“Ten minutes!” her father boomed.
Quinn fumbled the paper, dropping it onto the carpet. She dove after it, then shoved it back into the book, her hands shaking.
“Okay!” she called, jamming the book back into the bag, under a layer of dirty underwear.
Thankfully, she heard her father walking back to the room next door.
Quinn went lightheaded with relief.
* * *
At two fifty-five,she trailed her parents through the Granite County courthouse. The floors were made of the county’s namesake rock, but the rest of the building had a strangely airy, casual feel to it, a far cry from the brick-and-marble courthouses she was used to in Nebraska.
She followed them through a minor labyrinth of rooms and hallways, trying her best to pretend that she wasn’t there.
Just daydream for an hour or so, and you’ll be fine, she thought. Go to your happy place.
Instead, she thought about George.
It had been three and a half years since she’d last spoken to her brother, when he’d slammed the front door at midnight and then squealed away in his car.
Ever since, her parents had pretended that their son didn’t exist. Quinn had been twenty-two when it happened, and the day after he’d slammed that door, she’d been informed that she was now the webmaster for ShifterSexPerverts.com.
Usually, when her parents were angry with someone, they tried to sue them into oblivion, like they were doing to the shifter lawyer and his partner now. That’s how Quinn had known that what was happening with her older brother was bad — really, really bad. They didn’t try to make George’s life harder, they didn’t try to get money out of him — they just started acting like they’d never had a son.
It was much, much worse than spite.
When they walked into Judge Wood’s chambers, she was sitting behind a huge mahogany desk, half-moon glasses partway down her nose. She had a gray helmet of hair and a no-nonsense expression on her face.
Quinn’s stomach twisted. She had a feeling that she was about to get raked over the coals.
“You must be Barbara, Arthur, and Quinn,” she said. “Please have a seat.”
Her eyes went splint to the cast on Quinn’s wrist, and Quinn felt her face flush.
I wonder if she’s a shifter, Quinn thought. The older judge didn’t look like a shifter, but Quinn certainly wasn’t an expert. Some people you could tell, some you couldn’t, and there were more than enough kinds of shifter to keep it confusing: bears and wolves and lions, but there were also coyotes, hawks, bobcats, and probably plenty of other types she didn’t know anything about.
She could be an owl, Quinn thought. The judge had gone back to looking down at her papers, ignoring the Taylors as they sat, primly, in uncomfortable, straight-backed chairs. I could see her ripping the head off of something small and helpless.
Before Quinn could wonder any further, the door to the judge’s chambers swung open again and the lawyer and his partner walked in.
Quinn stared.
Julius had been wearing a suit yesterday, of course, but she was surprised all over again at how attractive he was. Yesterday she’d had a few other concerns, such as not getting shot, but right now, she was free to appreciate the men.
And they were appreciable. Julius looked a little more comfortable than Hudson in his dark blue suit, but even so, it was obvious that he wasn’t the kind of person who suits were made for. He was tall and wide, heavily muscled in a way that made her think more lumberjack and less lawyer, like his muscles came from hard work instead of the gym.
Hudson, his partner, was a little shorter but even more jacked. As good as he looked in a dark gray suit, there was something about the way he stood that made Quinn think he’d rather be wearing jeans and a t-shirt, like he had been yesterday.
One more time, she replayed their kiss in her mind, and felt the blush creep up her face even further.
Stop it, she thought. They’re shifters. You know it’s wrong.
She turned her head away from them, but not before Hudson caught her eye for a split second.
