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“So how about the pancakes and bacon?”
“You got it, sugar. And Haley’s right—everything here’s the best you ever had, includin’ your momma’s cookin’.”
Leland snorted, tucking his menu back into the holder. “Well, that wouldn’t be a hard standard to beat.” There was a faint tension at the corners of his mouth when he said it that made Haley think there might be a story there, and she didn’t realize where Sally was headed with her train of thought until it was too late.
“Well, at least that means your future wife won’t be intimidated in the kitchen,” Sally said cheerfully, and Haley gave her a horrified look that she didn’t bother hiding from Leland. “Or are you already married, Deputy?”
“Give me the steak and eggs, Sally,” Haley blurted, talking over her, desperate to stop the impending disaster of a conversation. “And coffee.”
“Uh, no, I’m not married.” Amusement sparkled in his eyes as he folded his hands on the table, glancing at Haley, and she wanted to slide right off the bench. “And I’ll have a coffee too, please. Black.”
“Comin’ right up, sugar. Y’all just hang tight.”
Haley shook her head as Sally walked off to put their orders in, embarrassed laughter bubbling up in her throat. “Sorry about that. It’s a small town, and like she said, we don’t get new residents often. People get nosy. You can tell ’em to buzz off, I promise.”
Leland chuckled, leaning back in the booth. “It’s all right. Small towns are like that. At least so far everybody’s been friendly, not like where I grew up.”
“Arizona?” Haley guessed, but he shook his head.
“Nah, Idaho.”
She waited, but he didn’t expand on that. “That’s not too far away from here.”
Sally dropped off their cups of coffee, black for Leland and with a pitcher of cream for Haley, and he hummed, noncommittal, as he picked his up and took a sip. Haley poured the whole little pitcher into hers until it turned light tan and added two packs of sugar. He didn’t seem interested in talking about Idaho, and despite her rampant curiosity, she decided it would be rude to pry.
“Are you staying here in town?” she asked instead. There wasn’t much in the way of lodging for visitors, just the twenty-two rooms at the Sundown Motel, the seven empty RV spots at the Timber Trails Trailer Park, and the three suites at the Carmody Bed & Breakfast. “Or did you get a place in Red Horse River?”
The county seat was where most of the rest of the sheriff department employees lived, although it wasn’t a metropolis itself, by any means.
“I’m renting an apartment here, but I don’t know if it’s ready yet.” He smiled, rolling his coffee cup between his palms. It was already half empty, Haley noticed. “I wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow night, so I might have to get a room somewhere.”
Haley blinked. “An apartment?” In Pine Grove? She couldn’t think of a single place. Maybe someone was renting him a room in their house, in which case she was a little peeved that no one had told her that option was on the table. She had an empty room at her place—not that having him underfoot all the time would be a great idea. She kept catching a whiff of him on her inhales, underneath the coffee and breakfast scents of the diner. The full moon being so close meant that the wolf was right at the surface of her consciousness, harder to ignore than usual, and the wolf thought Leland smelleddelicious.
Down, girl.
“Yeah, it’s a room over the newspaper office, I think she said? The woman I talked to said it hadn’t been lived in for a while.” He took a sip of his coffee, watching her over the edge of the cup like he was hoping she’d have a clue what he was talking about.
“Oh!” She’d forgotten Jo used to put out a community newsletter before she’d gotten too busy with the bed-and-breakfast and then having a baby. There was a one-bedroom apartment above the old printing office that they used for storage now, and Jo must have decided to clean it up and rent it out. “Yeah, Jo used to live there when she put out theHowler. I forgot about that.”
“TheHowler.” Leland smirked. “Sheriff Rylan said you guys have some kind of werewolf thing going on for tourists. What’s that about?”
Haley laughed nervously, clutching her coffee cup. Her mother had always said she was aterribleliar, but when your regional alpha said that the new deputy couldn’t know anything about the pack of werewolves that made up most of the town’s population…well, she’d give it her best shot.
“Yeah, the original town charter has all these provisions for werewolves and werewolf-human cooperation. Nobody’s sure what the founders were thinking, but it gives us a nice little draw for tourist traffic. Gotta pay for the nature preserve somehow.”
“It’s not a federal or state preserve, then?” Leland looked mildly interested at that, fiddling with his coffee cup—empty already, Haley noticed.
“No, it’s private land. One of the town founders owned it and designated it as a preserve about the same time they drew up the charter. It’s officially owned by the town these days. There’s a small American gray wolf family that lives there, so at least there actuallyissomething for the tourists to look at, if they’re lucky enough to get a glimpse.”
Sally’s sudden appearance with the coffeepot as soon as Leland drained his cup meant she was hovering close enough to eavesdrop, but Haley couldn’t really fault her for that. The whole diner was probably listening, putting that wolf hearing to good use. The pack already knew that the new deputy wasn’t being let in on the secret, but it didn’t hurt for them to know what he’d been told. The last time an outsider had accidentally found out about the town’s unusual demographics was still a cautionary tale passed down through generations, and nobody wanted a repeat of that mess.
“Do you think that might have been what attacked Diego?” Leland asked, and Sally almost dropped the coffeepot. So that news hadn’t spread yet, then.
“I hope not,” Haley said, ignoring Sally for the moment. “They’ve never shown aggression toward humans before. We get campers and hikers who try to break the rules and stay overnight in the preserve, but we don’t see many animal attacks. A couple of boys got scared up a tree by a bear last year, but she just ate their food and trashed their campsite before she moved on.”
Leland snorted. “Guess people are the same everywhere. Can’t tell you how many of my calls in Tucson were to rescue people from something that never would have happened if they’d just paid attention to the safety regulations.”
Haley relaxed a little, grateful that he hadn’t pushed her on it. “Yeah, some people are convinced the rules are only there to spoil their fun. In our case, a lot of people think they’re also there to keep the werewolves a secret.” Which was true, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t also for safety purposes.
