“Say hi to the McCoys for me! Them are some good folks,” Rick said as she headed out.
“I sure will!” Clover said with forced cheer. Hmph. They might be good to some people; they certainly weren’t good to her sister.
Clover headed over to the McCoy farm, praying her thirty-year-old junker of a van wouldn’t die before she got there.
Her air conditioning didn’t work. She cranked the window down and, as usual, after a few turns the handle came off in her hand. She tossed it onto the seat next to her with a muffled curse. No big deal. It was a beautiful May morning, the air warm and fragrant, with no hint of the blanket of wet heat that would descend next month.
She was actually glad that she’d ended up in Blue Moon Junction of all places. Most of the people here were decent, and she had some fond memories of growing up here.
When she’d been forced to rush to North Carolina to pick up her brother and sisters after her parents’ latest disaster, she’d debated where to go. Her family had been renting a rundown old house month to month; they couldn’t stay there. They’d gone to her sublet apartment in New York while she tried to figure out her next move, but it was way too small for them. Then Sapphire had called her up weeping and wailing about Jeffrey, so she’d packed them all up and headed to Blue Moon Junction to see what she could do to help.
The McCoy property had changed since she’d last lived here. Flint McCoy, a successful entrepreneur, had come home to help his family expand their business, shipping their gourmet jams and jellies worldwide. The dirt road she remembered had been widened and paved over, there were more houses on the property, and off in the distance she could see the small factory that the McCoys had built.
The main house still looked the same, a three-story white clapboard-sided house with a wraparound porch. That was where Pete and Blue McCoy, Sam’s aunt and uncle, lived with their kids.
She passed their house and kept on driving. Sam’s family had lived towards the back of the property, and she’d been told that his office was near his house. At the end of the road, she came to a small office building with a paved parking lot, and parked in front of the door.
She climbed out of her van and glanced back at it, thinking about the impression she must give off. An old VW van held together with rust and duct tape. She wore thrift-store jeans, a white T-shirt, and blue plastic flip flops that had cost her ninety-nine cents at the dollar store.
Well, she wasn’t here to flirt, no matter what Autumn had said.
“Pardon me, do you know where I can find Sam McCoy?” she asked a human who was trimming a hedge in front of one of the buildings. He pointed to the building. “Through that front door and down the hallway to the left,” he said. “There’s a sign with his name on it, on the door.”
Sam McCoy was in charge of security for the McCoy clan. Blue Moon Junction had a sheriff named Loch Armstrong who was a wolf shifter, but shifter species liked to police their own as much as possible. That was why Sam had been the one to run her aunts and uncles and cousins out of town.
She found Sam McCoy’s office and flung the door open with a dramatic bang.
Sam was standing next to his desk, talking to a bear shifter she recognized as Flint McCoy. The furniture in the room was dark cherry wood and leather, and framed family pictures crowded the walls, along with pictures of Sam and his brother hunting and fishing. A police radio sat on Sam’s desk, its red light blinking. There was a tray sitting on Sam’s desk with several open jars of honey on it, a spoon sticking out of each jar. The sweet smell tickled her nostrils, but she ignored it and glared daggers at Sam.
Sam and Flint turned to look at her, and she felt her heart stutter in her chest for a minute. Sam had gotten even more handsome. He had the faintest hint of stubble on his strong jaw. He now stood about six-foot-ten, typical for a male bear shifter. His lips still had that amused quirk to them, and his eyes still had that devilish gleam. His brown hair was thick and shiny, begging for fingers to run through its silky strands.
He wore faded denim jeans and a blue denim shirt that buttoned up the front.
His eyes lit up when he saw her, as if he’d seen something even tastier than the jars of gourmet honey on his desk. Yeah, right. She was hardly his type. She was no skinny bleach-blonde debutante; she was a round-faced, big-hipped bear shifter with frizzy hair and murder in her heart. And this jerkwad was not going to charm the panties off her the way he had with every single member of the cheerleader squad, the pep squad, and the drama club. Or so she recalled from when she was a twelve year old with an aching heart and an unrequited crush.
“Well, hello. I don’t believe we’ve met.” His deep voice boomed out, and he stuck out his hand to shake hers. “Sam McCoy, head of security for the McCoy clan. And you are?”
She hauled off and slapped his smug, smirking face.
“I’ll tell you what I am. Really, really pissed off,” she snapped.
