LITMIR.BIZ

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how badly Buck had treated her. They also knew what a bastard he was. Most of the Smiths were already here for the wedding when my father came into the territory. He found me first. Told me I was his son and that he’d come to take me home with him.” They stopped by a large boulder and Jamie leaned back against it, watching him closely.

      “You know,” Tully relaxed back against an oak tree, his arms crossed over his chest, “it’s one of those things every eight-year-old kid is waiting for when he’s grown up without a father. For his daddy to come back for him. You daydream about it, wish on it, pray for it. And here it was, standing right in front of me. I knew he wasn’t lying, I knew he was my father.”

      “What did you do?”

      He shrugged, not sure even today he understood what he’d done that day. “I screamed for Jack. I screamed for my daddy and he came runnin’. Not seven years later, but right then. The Smith Pack with him. I’d never seen so much blood as I saw that day. Momma got hurt, too, fightin’ by Daddy’s side. When it was all over no one was dead but Buck’s Pack had taken the worst of it, limpin’ off back where they came from. But I knew that day, when Jack had carried me back into town and I saw ol’ Buck watching us from the trees before he headed off for good that I was his enemy now. That I’d crossed a line with him that he would never forgive me for.”

      It sounded like some old tale her great-grandfather—whom the entire family referred to as “Big Daddy” although the man was no more than five-two—would have told her during one of the family reunions when her mother and aunt would drive for two days from Long Island to Alabama with two arguing brats in the backseat. The only difference was that the people in Big Daddy’s stories were always full-human and Tully never ended every few sentences with, “’Cause you know how those rednecks are.”

      It fascinated her even while her mind worked away at the problem.

      “You think he’s back here for revenge?” she asked but Tully only shook his head.

      “Buck Smith is never that simple.”

      “He wants something.”

      “He wants this.” He glanced around at the trees and up at the beautiful blue sky. “He wants this territory. Smithville is prime territory to our kind and the wolf who ran it before me was my Uncle Tyrus Ray.” Tyrus? “Six-foot-seven and three-hundred-and eighty-five pounds of dangerously unstable wolf, but he could be a big ol’ teddy bear when the mood struck him. He died sudden about five years back and one of his sons, Johnny Ray, took over, but that didn’t go well. He was pushy and testy and one day he just got on my nerves and I…”

      “Beat the hell out of him?” she slipped in when he seemed to be searching for the right phrase.

      “I prefer ‘slapped some sense into him.’ But whatever. Bottom line was when I woke up the next day I was Alpha Male and mayor.”

      “That’s how you became mayor?”

      “No. I was voted in as mayor of Smithville but Johnny Ray got on my nerves at my inauguration party.”

      Fair enough.

      Gazing off, Tully murmured, “I gotta tell Daddy that Buck’s back.”

      “Then what?”

      “I don’t know.” His gaze moved over to her. “What happened when they checked in?”

      “Nothing. Other than I had to walk away and let Sen handle the check-in.”

      “Why?”

      “Wanda…she was wearing that”—Jamie shuddered—“patchouli oil.”

      “Lord, woman, what is your thing about that?”

      “I hate it! It’s my kryptonite. As are women like Wanda.”

      “Women like Wanda?”

      “Yeah. Those hippie, dippy, New Age females I always want to stab in the face. The truth is if I hadn’t met my coven in junior high, I would have been a solitary practitioner. So would Mac. I swear nothing gets on my nerves faster than those Artemis-worshipping, Patchouli-wearing, need-a-goddamn-haircut, shave-your-pits-once-in-a-while, still-driving-a-love-bus, insists-on-calling-me-sister, pains in the ass.”

      Tully stared at her. “But not like you have any strong opinions on the subject or anything.”

      “Maybe a little one. But it’s because of those types that my coven is banned for life from the Green Man Festival.”

      “And I’m sure it had nothing to do with what you were probably up to at the time.”

      “Maybe a little,” she shook her head, “but I still say they were being irrational. I mean they’re all so busy saying they’re drawing down the moon, but they get completely freaked out when someone actually does it.”

      Tully blinked. “You moved the moon out of orbit?”

      She snorted. “Of course not.”

      “Oh.”

      “I just moved the earth a little closer to it.”

      Tully’s arms dropped to his side. “You did what?”

      “Don’t get hysterical. I moved it back.”

      Tully didn’t think it would be possible. Didn’t think anyone was capable of doing it. But Jamie Meacham had managed the impossible. She’d gotten him to think about something other than his father.

      “You’re crazy,” he accused, which was something he didn’t toss around lightly considering his own family history.

      “Not crazy. Just a bit of a show-off. I get so tired of them talking, talking, talking, but not doing. Don’t talk about drawing down the moon. Fucking do it. If that doesn’t work, move the earth closer. Not brain surgery, people.”

      “Did it ever occur to you that moving any planet out of its orbit could cause huge ramifications globally?”

      “I was never really into science,” she said dismissively.

      “Oh. Well then…”

      “Besides, I moved everything back and stopped most of the tsunamis, tornados, and spouting volcanoes before I lost consciousness.”

      Lord, now she had him laughing. Laughing so hard he couldn’t even stand up straight. He didn’t think it was possible. Not until his father was long gone and all was right in the town he loved. But somehow one full-human witch had managed to do the impossible yet again.

      “Yeah, sure…laugh. But let me tell ya, all those hippie-dippy witches with their ‘love solves all’ platitudes and their ‘make love not war’ philosophies are at their very core—totally Stalin.”

      And ten minutes later, when the Elders had finally tracked them down, desperately concerned about what they’d heard through the town rumor mill and wanting some answers from Tully and Jamie on what they were planning—they seemed really concerned when they found Tully rolling around on his back laughing and Jamie snarling at him, “It’s not funny. They were really mean to me!”

      Chapter Six

      “Tell me again,” Jamie murmured softly near his ear, her gaze examining the County Hall boardroom with its fine cherrywood furniture and board table, “why the Elders insist on meeting at the junior high when you have boardrooms like this one?”

      “Because if they use it too often, it won’t still look so shiny and pretty,” he whispered back. “Duh.”

      They both chuckled, their gazes briefly locking, and Tully couldn’t explain what passed between them, but he’d felt it as surely as if she’d touched him with her hand.

      “Are you two done?” Jack Treharne snarled. Of course, he snarled most things but until this was all settled, until his mate and the town he loved was safe from Buck Smith, the man would

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