Emotion welled up inside me at her genuine concern. Ididn’t trust myself not to cry, so I just nodded again and swallowed at the brick in my throat.
“If Rhy and I find out who did it, we’ll take him out behind the woodpile and?—”
“Reece, please,” Jada said, giving him a stern look and then glancing at the girls.
After everyone went back to eating and talking, she turned to me again. “So, how did you sleep last night? And how was that mattress? It only arrived a few days ago. Poor Travis has been sleeping in the apartment out in the garage. Not exactly appropriate quarters for the pack’s new Alpha.”
I bit my lip. “Um good. It’s really... comfortable.”
As Jada reached for the syrup, I saw a knowing spark of amusement in her eyes.
I ate my blueberry pancakes slathered in whipped butter and maple syrup, while Travis sat opposite me and ate his. He was having a somewhat passionate discussion with one of his little brothers about some sports team I’d never heard of, but every so often, he’d glance over to check on me and I’d see a flash of that dimple again.
“I hope this,” I said to Jada and twirling my finger to indicate Travis and me, “doesn’t mess up the contest.”
“Not at all.” She consulted a small notepad on the table next to her plate. “We only have two days of filming left, anyway. The group dinner and then the final charm ceremony. Although it’s probably best if you don’t share this,” she mimicked my twirling finger gesture, “with any of them.”
I thought about Mia and the others. “Definitely not.” I was glad I wouldn’t have to lie to Sarah. She was on a weeklong guided rockhounding trip, courtesy of Date-A-Wolf, and was currently on the other side of the island.
After we finished eating, Travis and I cleared the table while Jada and Matthew loaded the dishwasher. We had just finished tidying up when the front door opened at the other end of thehouse. We could hear someone rustling around in the entryway, probably taking off their shoes.
Travis looked at Jada. “You expecting anyone?”
She shook her head. “It can’t be Mom. She’s still on the East Coast. And the kids are outside on the sport court.”
He called out, “Hey, Rubes, is that you?”
“Trav-ey?” A moment later, a woman about my age came bounding into the room. She threw herself into his arms and he spun her around. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
“Yeah, well, there’s this crazy dating contest our older sister cooked up,” he told her, finally setting her back on her feet.
“Of course, I know about that, silly.” She pulled off her beanie and shook out her long, auburn hair.
So this was his little sister, Ruby. Not his fiancé like I once thought. I bit back a smile at the wrong conclusions I’d jumped to in the emergency room.
“I just wasn’t expecting you to be here on the ranch and not—” She spotted me and stopped mid-sentence. “Oh my gods, are you Daphne?”
I stood there, feet rooted to the floor. How did Travis’s little sister know about me too? Had Jada told her? Had Travis? “Depends on what you know and who said it.”
She grinned. “All I know is that Jada messed up and accidentally invited a human that Travis then fell for.”
As she came over and hugged me, I thought about how astonishing it was that yet another member of his family knew how he felt about me.
Travis shrugged. “That’s pretty much it.”
I needed to set the record straight for Jada’s sake. While Ruby made herself a latte, I told her about my former addiction to online quizzes and how I’d used my secretly supernatural friend’s wi-fi.
She took a sip of her oat milk latte. “Jada is Miss Perfect all the time, so it’s fun to point out when she’s not. Imagine if shewere your big sister and you had to live up to that in school.” She set down her mug and put her hands to her mouth like a bullhorn. “It was torturous.”
“Don’t listen to her, Daphne,” Jada said from the table. Helena was on her lap and she was braiding her hair. “She’s the dramatic one in the family.”
And as I thought about Travis’s beautiful, boisterous family, who seemed to know everything about each other, I couldn’t help remembering how Gavin hadn’t told any of his relatives that we were even engaged until a few weeks before the wedding. It was a surprise to all of them.
I put my hand to my chest, expecting to feel that familiar pang of not being enough for someone else to love me, but surprisingly it wasn’t there.
When Ruby found out that no one had shown me around the place yet, she took it upon herself to be my tour guide while the boys planned to shoot hoops.
The Big House was an impressive old lodge with lots of wood and high beamed ceilings. Worn leather chairs and sofas adorned many of the rooms as did several deer heads and mounted antlers. I wasn’t a fan of dead animals, but it worked with the decor. They were a family of werewolves so I guess that meant they killed things.
