The Sea Wolf's Mate (Hideaway Cove 2)

Eric was tall and loose-limbed, with the sort of lanky build that must have his parents worried how much more growing he had to do. Except he was here, locked up in Reg’s drunk tank, and he’d spent the last how-many weeks on the run with three shifter kids.

Parents probably not in the picture, Jacqueline determined, wrapping her arms around herself. There is far too much of that going around.

“Let’s get you out of here and back to Hideaway Cove,” Harrison said garrulously.

“But I’m not from—”

“Back home,” Harrison said, with emphasis, and Jacqueline got the feeling he backed it up with some mindspeak reassurances. Eric’s eyes un-squinted again and he nodded vigorously.

“Now, Sheriff…” Harrison began, and within ten minutes had somehow managed to smooth everything over. Somehow even Reg not being able to find a pen or remember his computer password to log Eric in the system turned into him maybe letting the whole thing slide this time after all.

Jacqueline would have been seething—he’d had Eric in lockup overnight and hadn’t even booked it?—but this was a good result. Eric was going back to Hideaway. All the kids would have a new life there. A fresh start, around people who knew how to look after them.

Gravel crunched under her shoes as she followed Harrison back out to the car. The kids would have a new start. But none of the plans Lainie, Harrison and Arlo had made to house them would work. Not with a sixteen-year-old Eric. Hideaway Cove was strange, but somehow Jacqueline knew it wouldn’t be letting-kids-live-on-their-own strange.

No. They would need an adult guardi

an. Or guardians, plural. Mr. and Mrs. Sweets…

Jacqueline grimaced. The idea of the sweet, enthusiastic Weaver kids under the influence of Mrs. Sweets and her sweetly acidic tongue was enough to make her break out in hives. If only—

She shook her head. Hideaway looked after its own, that’s what Arlo said. And Eric and the Wheelers were Hideaway’s own, now. The Sweets might be sour assholes to anyone who wasn’t a shifter, but Arlo didn’t seem any the worse for wear for having the Sweets look after him when he was younger.

And she wasn’t going back, anyway.

The house seemed bigger than ever.

It had grown like this once before. Right after Derek left. Jacqueline had left the lawyer’s office in a daze, driven home, and found herself in a house that didn’t fit properly. The rooms were too big and there were too many of them. There had always been too many of them, ever since she found out she couldn’t have kids, but she hadn’t been prepared for it to be just her, rattling around in the place she’d planned to build so many memories in.

And now it was just her again.

Jacqueline jumped as though she’d stood on a thumbtack. She started moving. She had to move, she knew, before the thread of regret she was tugging on like a loose thread unwound her entire life.

She had to move. And the house was empty, and there was nothing else to do, so she cleaned.

Jacqueline dusted. Scrubbed. Mopped. Swept the ceilings and light fixtures and then mopped again because of all the dust that fell down. Scrubbed more things until she realized she was scrubbing the outsides of her kitchen storage tins and rearranged them instead. Then the cutlery drawer. Then the china she only took out when her in-laws came over and why did she even still have it when she hadn’t had in-laws in three years? Back in the cabinet.

Or she could throw it all out.

She paused, and that was a bad idea. Moving good. Stopping bad. She left the good china where it was and headed for the bathroom.

By the time she’d run out of house to clean, it was getting dark. She stood in the front hall, panting.

Moving good, stopping bad. Except when she was exhausted enough that stopping meant falling asleep, not just sitting gnawing over everything that she’d done wrong in her life.

She should shower. Eat something. Go to bed, wake up, go to work… oh, shit, she still needed to call a tow truck to pick up her poor car…

Jacqueline closed her eyes and leaned back against the front door. Her fresh start was going to have to wait a bit longer. She couldn’t even bear to think about her old plans now. Parties. Cocktails. Sexy one-night stands…

She winced.

The first time she’d come home like this, to a suddenly too-big, too-empty house, she’d wanted to rage. To smash all the evidence of the way she’d hoped her life would go until it was all in as many pieces as her heart was.

She’d pushed the anger back, folded it small and tight and put it away where she couldn’t feel it anymore.

But this time, there wasn’t any anger. Damn it, she was ready for some anger now, some break-shit-now juvenile impulses, because she was done with this house, this town, all her stuff, she was going to throw it out anyway and repaint the walls realtor-friendly white and—

And she just felt small, and tired. And very, very alone.