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“That’s a long day.” He studied me with concern. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do something less active after all those hours on your feet. You must have started at what, four or five this morning?”
We were walking side by side to the door, but I reeled back at his words. “How do you know what time I started?”
I almost caught something off in his eyes, but he answered quickly. “Just a guess that you have to get in pretty early to be in charge of the morning shift at a place that opens so early. You are in charge, right?”
“Oh…that’s okay, then, and yes, I am. Usually the owner opens herself and I come in later to relieve her, but once in a while I help out this way.” Why was I being so defensive? “I don’t mind.”
“Your boss is lucky to have you,” he reassured me. “Why don’t we make it an easy hike, and I’ll pack us a picnic, and it will be fun.”
“I think that sounds nice.” I stepped aside so he could open the door. “You can pick me up at home. I live at…what?” He was looking at me funny.
“Nothing, where do you live?”
I told him my address, and he grinned. “You live really close to me. Amazing we’ve never met.”
“Yeah, in this town you usually run into everyone eventually. And most people in here.”
“Well now you’ve met me, in here. Have a good morning.” Gods, had he actually leaned in for a kiss? No, of course not. And then he was gone and I was left with hours’ worth of restaurant management until I could get home and shower off the fryer grease then put on something nice. Not nice, nice because we were going hiking but a nice T-shirt and shorts and my boots and socks. Five o’clock okay? It will give us some time to hike and eat and whatever before sundown.
Or whatever… I began to rethink my decision not to go swimming. I might be self-conscious about me in a swimsuit, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Tom in one. Clearly I had been possessed by a whole different kind of woman since I got up this morning.
As it turned out, a small disaster in the kitchen kept me at the diner until four thirty, and I didn’t have much time to get ready. I showered. It was that or sweat fryer grease when we hit the trail, but I didn’t have time to do anything more than that.
I plaited my hair in the two braids that every female hiker seemed to wear lately, grabbed a clean T-shirt and shorts from the laundry basket, and was tying my shoes when the knock came at the door.
Chapter Eight
Tom
When I left the diner, I got in my car and drove away but not far. After all, despite having breakfast with Emmalise and acting like an average guy who met an attractive woman who to his shock and amazement had been willing to set a date with him, I was on the job. I parked around the corner and considered how to get the bag of leftovers to Abuelo before they spoiled. After weighing several plans and tossing them aside, I went with the logical choice and called him.
He never even asked me what was going on, and his sedan pulled up next to me and facing the other way in ten minutes. The window rolled down to reveal a dignified alpha who looked younger than his years. Not that I knew precisely how many that was because he kept that information private. Shifters often outlived humans and many aged slowly. Abuelo Luis was one of those. Rumor in the pride had him pegged at close to two hundred years old. At thirty, I was barely considered into adulthood.
“So, why do you have all this food from Off-Main to give me?” He held his hand out for it, and I picked it up from the seat and passed it across the short distance between the cars.
“I had breakfast there.”
Abuelo leaned into the window, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “For all these years, I ask you to go to eat with me at the diner and you refuse. Why did you go there today?”
“Maybe I decided you were right all along?” I shrugged. My assignment was confidential, or at least I couldn’t tell the protectee about it.
“Or maybe you got a look at that Emmalise girl and recognized your mate?”
“What?” Only to my grandfather did I ever squeak any words. And only when he did this. “Why are you saying she’s my mate? What makes you think so?”
“Why do you think I kept inviting you to come and eat there? I am your alpha, and I know things. One day you will take on my position, and you will inherit the same curse.”
“It sounds like a great benefit to the pack,” I protested. “But I may not inherit any of it. There are a lot of cousins who would love to be pack alpha.”
“And my choice is not them. It is you. So, what made you get up before dawn and prowl then return home, dress like this”—he waved at my button-down and jeans—“and then go eat at the one restaurant in town where you never have? If it was not for a woman?”
I let out a sigh. “Okay, it is about Emmalise, but she is an assignment. Remember the training I underwent with the PDA? I have been assigned to watch over Emmalise because she is in danger.”
He set the bag down on the seat next to him and faced me again. “What danger? Is this related to her mother’s disappearance?”
“Maybe. Probably. But my boss has given me a lot of confidential information I cannot pass on. Not even to her.”
His eyes glinted in his wrinkled face. “So, you have no personal interest in the girl? Are you telling me your lion has not been insisting you mate her right away?”
