Shifters of Silver Peak: A Very Shifty Christmas (3 page)

The rest of the pack trailed out after them, turning their heads to shoot curious stares at Valerie.

“What the hell?” Valerie said furiously to Eileen. Valerie had stormed down the back hallway into Morgan’s office, and Eileen had followed her as Morgan hurried out front after his family. “Why would you do that?”

“Well, for starters, I think there’s something between you two,” Eileen said.

“There is. Barely concealed contempt.” Valerie peered at her friend suspiciously. Brain tumor? Or just a terminal case of the stupids?

Eileen made a gesture of dismissal. “I know you guys fight all the time, but as they say, there’s a thin line between love and hate.”

Valerie stared at Eileen with narrowed eyes. “Who, specifically, says that?”

Eileen ignored her. “I think this is a perfect opportunity to find out if there’s something between the two of you.”

“You always say he’s a jerk,” Valerie pointed out, speaking slowly and enunciating each word, because Eileen had apparently lost about a hundred IQ points in the last few minutes. “Just today you said it. And worse. I believe the words “ass-face” crossed your lips. Why would you try to fix me up with an ass-face?”

“Yes, he acts like a complete tool a lot of the time,” Eileen acknowledged, “but you keep telling me that underneath it all he’s a good person. I mean, I don’t see it, but you’re very perceptive and one of the best people I know, and if you say he’s a good person, then somewhere deep down underneath it all, he must be.”

“What kind of Christmasy treacle is that?” Morgan stomped into his office. “Newsflash. I’m not a good person, I’m an asshole. I make no bones about it. And do you realize what kind of an awkward position you just put me in back there? What the hell were you doing, telling my family that Valerie is my mate?”

“Yes, heaven forbid,” Valerie said bitterly.

He shot her a dirty look. “That’s not what I meant at all. It’s just that you – you’re leaving. You’re quitting.” He scowled at her. “Also, you’ve made it quite clear how you feel about me.”

“Listen up,” Eileen said. “This solves both of your problems. It is a business deal. Morgan, you need a mate. And Valerie’s grandparents need an infusion of cash into their business.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?” Morgan demanded of Valerie.

“I guess we’ve both been keeping secrets,” she said bitterly.

He shook his head impatiently and walked around to his desk. “I’ll just write you a check. How much?” He pulled out a checkbook from his top drawer and looked at her expectantly.

She shook her head. “No, our family does not accept charity.”

Morgan drew in a sharp breath. His voice went dangerously low and angry. “Valerie Dickinson, if I tell you that you will accept a check, then you will—”

“You two!” Eileen yelled. “Seriously, I just want to bang your stupid heads together. Listen. Guys, this is just buying you some time for the holidays. After his pack leaves, he can pretend that things didn’t work out. Human-shifter pairings are pretty unusual. You’ll be able to use that as an excuse. And then, if he wants, he can find himself a mate who’ll accept some kind of business arrangement. Valerie, you need the money for your family. You don’t accept charity, but this wouldn’t be charity. You would be earning every penny of it.”

“I’ll say.” Valerie shot Morgan a resentful look.

“Hey!” he said indignantly. “I’m actually considered quite a catch.”

Eileen ignored their arguments. “And you, Morgan. You need a pretend mate. Someone you can trust, someone who won’t exploit the situation. And you need one right now. You don’t have time to find anyone else who would meet all of your requirements. And also, you own a million subsidiary companies. You can have someone from one of those companies approach Valerie’s grandparents and offer to make them a low-interest loan in exchange for a partial share in their business, and they’ll never know where the offer came from. And then your main company could just coincidentally come along and place a bunch of orders with them, so they’d have plenty of revenue coming in.”

“Well…” Morgan glanced at Valerie. “She actually makes some good points.”

“But it’s… We can’t… I mean…jeez. I don’t know if I should thank you or murder you in your sleep,” Valerie said to Eileen.

“Why in my sleep?”

“Well, I’m human and you’re a shifter. I can’t kill you if you’re awake.”

“I sleep next to a very big, very grumpy shifter who sleeps with one eye open. You’ll just have to thank me, I’m afraid.” Eileen smiled sweetly.

“You’re forgetting something,” Valerie said. “His mother said no.”

Morgan scoffed at that. “I’m the Alpha. Nobody tells me who I can mate.”

He stared off into the distance for a moment, then nodded. “It makes sense. We’ll do it. I’ll arrange to have your stuff moved into my house today.”

“Moved into your house?” Valerie said with alarm.

“Yes.” He glanced at her impatiently. “We’re pretending to be mated, so we need to be convincing. We’ll be sharing a bed for the next month, Valerie.”

Valerie stared up at Morgan’s house, a growing unease swelling inside her. She was doing this. She was actually going to try to pull this deception off, to live a lie in front of Morgan’s family. She’d left behind her small apartment in Juniper, filling up one of Morgan’s pickup trucks with the essentials for the next couple of weeks until Morgan’s family and packmates left.

He lived in a stone-and-timber mansion on the outskirts of Silver Peak. The exterior was hard and imposing. The windows had been coated with weatherproofing film, so from the outside they looked like dark, hooded eyes glaring with disapproval. The balconies had spiky iron railings. The hedges around the house were severely trimmed into geometrical shapes, and thorny.

Morgan’s servants were carrying her suitcases into the house. His family had called to inform him that they would stay at a hotel, in protest of his appalling choice of a mate.

The whole house reminded her of something, she just couldn’t figure out what. “It’s a metaphor,” she said, frowning in thought.

“What?” Morgan said.

She looked at the spiky gates again. “Your heart!” she said. That was what it reminded her of.

He looked at her oddly. “My heart’s doing just fine, thank you.” He headed up the steps to his house.

“I would imagine, since you hardly ever use it,” she said, following him inside. “Speaking of which, I’m adding a condition to our deal.”

“A new condition? No. I’ve already had one of my companies approach your grandparents with an offer, which they accepted. That is what I agreed to,” he said, leading her into the house’s great hall. It had flagstone floors, oil paintings of various ancestors glaring from their gilded frames, and a massive crystal chandelier. There were huge doorways on either side of the hallway leading off to other areas of the house, and at the end of the hallway was a spiral staircase that led to the second floor.

He headed toward the staircase and she trotted behind him, hurrying to keep up.

“Yes, I know, my grandparents just texted me,” she said breathlessly. Damn him and his long legs. “They think it’s a Christmas miracle. Okay, here’s my condition. That painter you were screaming at? He doesn’t get fined. You’re ahead of schedule on the construction of the new spa. It’s not going to kill you to give him a few days. His wife is recovering from a very severe case of pneumonia.”

Morgan paused at the stairway and looked at her stonily. “No. This is a perfect example of why you don’t have a head for business.” He turned away and started walking up the steps.

Valerie let out an unladylike snort of derision as she scrambled up the steps after him. “Please enlighten me, oh wise one.”

“If he can’t fulfill his contracts, he doesn’t deserve to be in business. I don’t give out charity to able-bodied adults. Think about it, Valerie. He’s not a one-man show. He’s got several employees, who could show up and paint if he’s not able to. So the fact that they’re running behind has nothing to do with his sick wife, and everything to do with a man running a sloppy, inefficient business.”

They walked into Morgan’s bedroom. Two maids were in there, putting Valerie’s clothing away for her.

“I’ll do that!” she called out to them. They ignored her and kept unpacking clothing and putting it away in an enormous wooden dresser.

“No, really, let me,” she insisted. The two women glanced at Morgan, who nodded, so they made odd little half bows to Valerie and left the room.

Morgan headed for a door at the far end of his enormous bedroom. The open door revealed an office. Of course. The man who lived for his work.

Valerie ran after him and grabbed him by the arm, and he turned to look at her with an expression of impatience.

“Do you know who Giacomo’s employees are, Morgan?” Valerie said. “No, of course not, because you never get to know the people who work for you. They’re his kids. He has seven children, ranging from age six to twenty-two. Since his wife is sick, his three older kids, who usually work for him, have been caring for the younger kids and visiting their mother in the hospital, and getting as much work done as they can.”

Morgan started making harrumphing sounds. She kept talking. “I already called him and told him that you said to take all the time he needs, and he was very grateful. You’re welcome. I just saved you from being hated by the entire town of Juniper.”

Morgan stood there spluttering for several seconds, then fixed her with a ferocious glare. “I don’t care what Juniper thinks of me, or anyone else, for that matter.”

“I care what they think of you,” she said quietly.

He ignored her.

“When I make a business decision and then appear to back down, it makes me, and by implication my pack, look weak. Don’t do that again,” he said, and headed into his office, slamming the door shut.

“I don’t care what Juniper thinks of me,” she mimicked him in a high, squeaky voice, kicking one of her empty suitcases.

“I heard that!” he yelled from behind the closed door.

“Good! Hound dog! I hope your fleas get fleas!” she shouted back. Then she flung herself down on his enormous four-poster bed and blinked back tears.

It was at times like this that she came perilously close to hating his guts, and she didn’t want to do that. She took a deep breath in through her mouth and let it out through her nose, slowly, like the Stressbusters website suggested. She’d been visiting that website a lot lately.

She leaned back against the big, firm pillows and tried to summon up good memories of Morgan. After all, once this fake mating was over and she’d taken a new job somewhere else, memories would be all she’d have.

Well, one thing about Morgan, he might give her grief all day long, but he never let anyone else speak badly to her. Or of her. One time one of his dates had asked him why he didn’t hire someone prettier to work in the front office. Morgan hadn’t even been aware that Valerie had overheard – but he’d hustled his date out of the office building so fast he’d practically left scorch marks on the carpet, and slammed the door on her so hard that the window had shattered. Valerie had watched through the broken glass as the tall, skinny blonde had stomped to her car and driven off with a screech of tires.

One time when Valerie had been at the local tavern and a man had made a crude remark to her, Morgan had appeared out of nowhere – Valerie hadn’t even seen him come in – and he’d picked the man up and hurled him out the front door.

And he’d stood up for her back there in his office, when his mother had started bad-mouthing her. That was a pretty big deal. She knew men who were married or mated for real who didn’t stand up for their wives when their mothers treated them badly.

She heard his footsteps pounding on the floor, and his office door opened.

Was a miracle about to happen? Was the Big Bad Wolf about to apologize?

“Heads up,” Morgan said, looking grim. “They’re back.”

“Hello, Mother,” Morgan said as his family trooped into the entrance hallway. A light snow was falling, and it dusted their hair and sparkled. In the distance, the sun was plunging behind the mountain peaks, painting their tips gold and giving them the appearance of jagged glowing embers against a darkening sky.

Elmira and the rest of the family were piling out of their cars and heading for Morgan’s guest house, which looked like a mini version of the main house. Their servants were laden down with suitcases, staggering down the snowy path behind his family. “Just make yourselves at home,” Morgan called out with an annoyed look on his face.

“So apparently you don’t answer the phone these days?” Nelda said sharply. Then, with a touch of impatience, she inclined her head to show respect. “Alpha.” The undertone in her voice added “jerk”, but she didn’t say it out loud.

He returned his focus to her. “Not when it’s you calling, after you’ve just insulted my mate.”

“I was
calling
to let you know that Rosemont Resorts is apparently completely booked. And they refused to remove the guests from the penthouse suite for us. Our family hotel.” She looked scandalized. “And every other hotel in Silver Peak and even that human town is booked solid.”

“Yes, I could have told you that. If you’d called to tell me you were coming. And I’m not booting paying guests with a reservation out of their rooms to make way for you when you show up at the last minute like this.”

Homer and Honoria walked in, with their servants trailing behind them lugging suitcases.

“Alpha,” they said.

“Yeah, yeah. What’s this I hear about your grades, by the way?” Morgan said to Homer. “Am I going to need to skin you and wear your pelt for a scarf?”

“I got a single A-minus, in calculus,” he said, shooting his mother an annoyed look. “Every other class, I got an A-plus.”

“Oh.” Morgan nodded his understanding. “From the way Mother was carrying on, I thought you were not only on the verge of flunking but ready to enroll in Remedial Janitoring 101.” He shook his head. “Forgive me – I forgot to account for the Nelda Factor.”

“Very funny,” his mother said in frigid tones. “He’s leaving for college next year, and if he’s going to be guaranteed entrance into Harvard, he needs to be on top of his game. And we are Rosemonts. We are A-plus all the way.”

“Riiight.” Morgan turned his attention to his younger sister. “And Honoria, when Mother says you’ve abandoned school and gone completely boy-crazy, I assume…”

Honoria let out a martyred sigh. “She thinks my study partner, who is the class valedictorian and the son of his pack’s Beta, has designs on me. We’re chaperoned during our study sessions, by the way. We only text each other about schoolwork. My GPA is 4.2. So yes, I imagine I’ll be barefoot, pregnant, and a high school dropout any day now.”

“Do you hear that?” Nelda’s voice rose in dismay. “The Beta! Not the Alpha! And I know how boys are! He’ll be the ruin of her!”

She shook her head mournfully. “Well, maybe it’s not too late to save at least one of my children from complete disgrace. You two go upstairs and get unpacked so I can talk some sense into your brother.”

Ah, yes. This should fun,
Valerie thought.

“And I expect two hours of studying to be completed before you go to sleep!” she called out after them as they trooped up the stairs. “I’ll be checking!”

“We know, Mother!” Homer called back in annoyance.

Nelda waited until they were gone to light into Morgan, who put his arm around Valerie protectively. Valerie started, then made herself relax and lean in to him. She felt a rush of warmth wash over her body, and she could have sworn that she heard him draw in his breath when he touched her. She’d never touched him before. She’d imagined it plenty of times over the years, although always with fewer clothes and without his mother in the room.

“I don’t know what this is all about, but it’s simply not acceptable,” Nelda snapped at Morgan, rudely ruining Valerie’s flight of fantasy. “I have already provided you with a list of eligible candidates for mating. And she doesn’t qualify. It’s not just the fact that she’s human, although that makes it very likely that some of your children will be human, not shifter—”

“Well then,” Morgan said, baring his teeth in a mirthless grin, “we’ll just have to have a whole passel of kids, to ensure that we produce at least one Alpha.”

“I’ve always wanted a big family,” Valerie said, nodding hard. That part was true.

“She doesn’t come from a wealthy family,” Nelda continued.

“And there I was hoping for a huge dowry,” Morgan said, looking bored. “How will I pay the bills now?”

“You, marrying your human secretary? People will talk.”

“I’m sure they will. I’ve never cared,” Morgan said. That was true, and for once, Valerie thought, it was a good thing.

“It isn’t just yourself you need to think about. It’s the whole pack.”

“Valerie would be a fantastic Alpha’s mate. She is compassionate, she is diplomatic, she gets along well with everybody.”

He glanced down at her with what appeared to be real pride. Valerie struggled to keep the look of shock off her face. Morgan had just complimented her? If that had happened at any other time, she’d have assumed that either she was about to be fired or he’d just found out that she had some kind of terminal illness, with days to live.

“That’s weakness,” his mother protested. “We rule by strength.”

As Nelda spoke, she was staring skeptically at Valerie – specifically her midsection. Self-conscious, Valerie tried to suck her stomach in and moved her purse in front of her soft, round belly.

“That’s it,” Nelda said triumphantly, with a gleam of malice in her ice-blue eyes. “She’s pregnant, right? You got her in trouble. All right, we can fix this. You don’t have to mate her. We’ll just pay her.” She looked Valerie right in the eye. “How much?”

“That’s enough!” Morgan’s eyes blazed with rage, and his face went furry. He stepped in front of Valerie with a smile. “Get out.”

“What?” His mother’s vicious smile faded.

He turned to yell at her servants, who were making their second trip in, carrying more suitcases.

“Take those suitcases and get out, now, or your heads will be trophies on my wall.”

They turned and scurried toward the door.

“Stop where you are!” Nelda yelled. They all froze and looked back and forth between Morgan and his mother.

“Morgan,” his mother said, her face pale. “You can’t kick your own family out. It’s Christmas!”

“A season I’ve never been fond of. You do not treat your Alpha or his mate this way. I expect you all to be cleared out of here in the next five minutes.” Morgan’s voice came out in a half-animal growl.

Valerie glanced up at the second-story balcony and saw that Homer was standing there watching them with an expression of dismay on his face.

“Morgan,” she said. “For your brother and sister’s sake, let them stay for Christmas.” She shot Morgan’s mother a look. “And I don’t actually care what she thinks of me. She wouldn’t be the first bully I’ve dealt with in my life.”

Homer was hurrying down the staircase. “We’re not staying?” he called out, looking stricken. “Morgan, you promised you were going to take me hunting this year! When else are we going to get to do it? You were the one who said I needed less time on the computer and more time outdoors.”

Nelda looked at her younger son, and her stony expression softened. A little, anyway.

She glanced back at Valerie. “I went too far,” she said, her voice stiff and formal. “I apologize for what I just said.”

Morgan glanced at Valerie. “It’s fine, I swear,” she said. “Let them stay.”

Morgan’s mother nodded abruptly. “I’ll speak to your chef about tonight’s dinner menu.”

Dinner with Morgan’s family? Like hell. She’d rather go dumpster-diving.

“Oh, I
so
wish I could stay,” Valerie said in tones of syrupy sweetness, “but I’ve got to get down to the shanty-town in Juniper to help decorate their Christmas Village. I promised the Ladies Benevolent Society.”

“Me too,” Morgan said, ignoring Valerie’s startled expression. “Wouldn’t miss it for
anything
. But you all enjoy dinner!” He grabbed Valerie by the hand and dragged her out.