For Love of Grace [Werewolves Wanting Love 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  She wasn’t completely sure living with her grandpa would work, but by the time she arrived at his property her little apartment should have been delivered. Having her own place where she could walk in and lock the door meant a lot to her. The old man was doing his best to help her adjust to living in Arizona with him. It was only fair she do her best as well.

  She pulled into her grandfather’s driveway around ten in the morning. She could have easily arrived the night before, but chose to have one last night alone. This was pretty much the first vacation she’d had since she was a child, and she’d enjoyed it very much. It was the only vacation she’d ever designed herself just to suit her own needs. Pleasing herself instead of doing what other people wanted might be selfish, but she’d sure as hell enjoyed it.

  Grace didn’t really think her grandfather needed her to be nearby. Not now that he was well again. But she could understand his wish to see her because she was the only remaining member of his family. His wife had divorced him after only three years of marriage. Her grandmother Julie had hated the noise and presence of other people nearby. She was a child of the desert, although human, and didn’t cope well with the constant presence of a husband and a little boy.

  Grace’s father had traveled between his parents, living with them by turns but eventually choosing to stay in the desert. Grace had been born there, but her parents had moved to a small town to find work and she’d grown up spending all her spare time wandering in the desert, and avoiding group assignments and team sports at school. She’d chosen her career purely because it was something she could do alone at home, and didn’t need to be in a town sitting in an office cubicle with a dozen other workers.

  Grace grimaced. Now she was here at Vulture Valley she’d have to start working again. She’d told her clients that she didn’t know how long she’d be away from her desk caring for her grandfather. She just hoped they hadn’t all found a cheaper, better, graphic artist in her absence. She had a small annuity from her grandmother but she still needed to work at least part of the year.

  Well, Vulture Valley was a tiny town in the desert but it did have Internet. As soon as she set up her computer she would check her e-mails and accept a few contracts to pay her bills. She also needed to return the trailer. The nearest place was fifty miles back down the road, but she could take a dirt bike in the empty truck and ride back. She’d enjoy that, too. It’d been a while since she’d been out riding.

  She drove around back of her grandpa’s house and smiled. The cabin was small but definitely there, in the corner of his yard. Her home. Her very own home. She jumped down out of the truck and ran across the dusty ground to open the door. It was perfect. One main room with a tiny bathroom and an even smaller kitchen.

  She stood in the center of the empty space imagining where she’d put her furniture. The bed against the back wall, the table by the kitchen. And the couch and television closer to the door.

  “We’ve come to help you unload the truck,” announced a deep, cheeky, sexy voice.

  She swung around and saw Jarin Proctor standing just inside the door, with Mark Hamill right behind him.

  Oh yes. The very reason why she hadn’t wanted to come here. Mr. Dead-Sexy-but-Way-Too-Demanding in person.

  * * * *

  She looked so very beautiful standing there. Jarin couldn’t believe how much he’d missed her since she’d gone to collect her possessions. But now she was back and this time she was staying permanently. He rushed across the room and opened his arms, wanting to grab her to him and hold her tight.

  Instead she put up her hand in a stop sign and said coldly, “I don’t believe I invited either of you people into my home.”

  “The door was open.” Jarin couldn’t understand what she was complaining about. He needed to hug her, to welcome her back here. To invite her into his arms forever.

  “Next time I’ll remember to lock it.”

  Jarin was aware of Mark leaving the room, but the man had always been a weakling. Grace obviously didn’t understand. Maybe she’d been so busy looking around she hadn’t heard them. “We’ve come to help you unload your things. We’re here to carry your furniture inside for you.”

  “Thank you for your concern but I don’t need help. The truck is equipped with a wheeled luggage trolley.”

  “But your bed, your refrigerator, your couch. You can’t possibly move such big, heavy items alone,” argued Jarin. He didn’t understand her attitude at all. He and Mark were here to do the heavy labor for her. All she had to do was tell them where to place each item.

  “Very well.”

  Grace seemed to deflate before his gaze. Her happy smile and the aura of excitement that had surrounded her when he arrived had gone. She was cold and closed off now. But she’d agreed to let them help, so it was all good.

  She turned the U-Haul truck around so the back faced the door of her home and there was not much distance between the two, and then stayed in the apartment directing them where to place her things. She wouldn’t let them move her boxes of possessions though, insisting they stay in a stack against the wall. Long before Jarin was ready to leave, long before the room was in any semblance of order at all, she shooed them out of the apartment and took them to her grandfather’s house.

  She put the coffee pot on for them, and then hugged her grandfather. “Thank you for the apartment. It’s perfect.”

  Jarin watched the interaction between the two Pattersons. The old man was cantankerous, but it was clear he loved his granddaughter. Jarin could understand that. He loved her, too. It seemed to him he’d loved her forever. When she’d visited Vulture Valley as a teenager he’d been enchanted by her golden hair and the way she understood the desert. As they’d both grown older his love for her had deepened. Now it was almost a physical pain in his heart that she didn’t seem to understand how perfect she was for him and how much he needed her.

  She went out to her father’s kitchen and brought in the coffee and a plate of cookies. “Grandpa, where’s the key to the apartment, please. I want to lock the door.”

  The old man frowned. “Oh, yes, it did come with keys. But no one needs such things out here. I put the paperwork in the filing cabinet. Perhaps they’re in there.”

  Instead of sitting down to talk to them, Grace disappeared from the room again. About ten minutes later Jarin watched her go over to the apartment and lock the door. Then she went around to the lean-to beside the house and took out her dirt bike. She started the engine and rode it around the backyard a few times then rode it up the luggage ramp and into the U-Haul truck. Next she put the luggage trolley back into the truck, packed up the ramp, and closed the door.

  Jarin was confused. Surely she wasn’t going joyriding on the dirt bike right now. He’d planned to follow her to the next town in his truck and bring her home after she returned the U-Haul. That would give him an hour or seventy minutes to convince her to let him date her. But no. Before he could even get his thoughts together, the truck bumped its way out of the backyard and was gone.

  “What the fuck?” he exploded.

  “There are only three coffee cups. If you’d paid attention, you would have known she wasn’t coming back right now,” said Mark quietly.

  “But I wanted to go with her to return the truck.”

  “I think we can safely assume that she wanted to go alone.” This time there was a hint of laughter in Mark’s voice.

  Jarin jumped to his feet, ready to punch the stupid, smart-ass grin off Mark’s face, but Mr. Patterson said, “Boys!”

  “I haven’t been a boy for ten years,” he grumbled, sitting down again and snatching the last cookie off the plate.

  “Well stop acting like one then,” said the old man.

  Jarin bit off a chunk of cookie then drew in a deep breath to control his anger. All that happened was a bunch of cookie crumbs went down his throat the wrong way and he ended up coughing and coughing, until his face was red, and his eyes were watering.

  Mark left t
he room and came back with a glass of water and a handful of tissues for him, but he had no breath left to thank him if he’d wanted to. Which he didn’t.

  He’d just gotten his breath back and was sipping his water when Glen said, “You two boys aren’t paying attention at all. She went to that mating party thing, remember? Where a lot of the women mated two or even three men. Stop trying to win her over one at a time. Your attempts are a waste of effort. Instead, if you can figure out a way to work together to both mate her, you just might succeed. Now off you go and learn how to do it. Don’t come back until you’ve gotten a proper plan.”

  Jarin stared at the old man. “Two men? A ménage? Both of us together?”

  “Exactly. Now go away and don’t come back until you know how to succeed.”

  * * * *

  Jarin’s face was such a picture Mark could hardly hold in his laughter until they’d left Mr. Patterson’s house. He stood on the walk out front and laughed and laughed until he had to bend over and put his hands on his knees to get his breath back.

  “What’s your problem?” asked Jarin, his voice so grumpy it almost set Mark off laughing again.

  “You are. Oh my god, I wish I could have taken a picture of your face when the old man told us to share her. It would have gone viral in no time at all.”

  “You’re only happy because you had no hope of winning Grace yourself. You think with my help you’ll get her.”

  Mark nodded. “Exactly. Because you wooing her has been so incredibly successful. She rushed right into your arms glad to see you today, didn’t she?”

  Mark thought for a moment he might have pushed Jarin too hard. He looked really fierce and very much the vulture there for a moment. But Mark was a wolf. He could deal with the bird if he needed to. Besides, his own careful following of Grace’s rules and instructions hadn’t gotten him into her pants anymore than Jarin’s cheekiness had been successful for him.

  “Let’s go to my place and see if we can put a plan in place to woo her together. All joking aside, neither of our methods has worked as yet, and if we want to make her ours, if she hankers after a ménage, we’d better get on with it.”

  “Do you really think she wants a ménage?” Jarin sounded serious, as if he was genuinely curious, so Mark answered him carefully and truthfully.

  “The short answer is, I don’t know. But the longer answer is if she wasn’t sincere about having a ménage and about mating a wolf, she would never have agreed to go to that party. Therefore it makes sense for us to try to win her together.”

  “A fucking wolf.” Jarin shook his head in disgust, but he followed Mark down the dirt road in the direction of Mark’s home. Mark hid his grin and loosened his shoulder muscles. He and Jarin had grown up together. Vulture Valley was a damn small town and they were born just six months apart, so they’d been together all their lives. Mark was certain that even Jarin’s family didn’t know Jarin as well as he did and the same was likely true for Jarin and him. If any partnership could work together to win Grace, it would be theirs.

  Besides, Grace might like the idea of mating with a wolf, but the facts showed that not one of the two hundred eligible men at the mating party had successfully attracted her attention. He thought likely she did have a soft spot in her heart for Jarin. So what they needed to do was leverage her interest in Jarin, plus her liking for wolves, into a mating with both of them. It was basically up-selling, something every kid was taught in business school.

  They were both young, good looking, fit, and smart. How hard could it be?

  * * * *

  It was lucky that Jarin had been walking to Mark’s house all his life, because right now he was too busy thinking about the concept of sharing Grace to look at the ground or where he was going.

  Of course he knew about ménages. He was a virile male vulture. He was also a Dom who’d visited a BDSM club all through his time in college. But he’d wanted Grace for so long, craved her body so deeply, it hadn’t occurred to him he might need to share her.

  I guess that makes me stupid.

  However, the thought of having to share her was incredibly painful. Especially having to share her with a fucking wolf.

  No, that wasn’t fair. If the only way he could have her was by sharing her, at least Mark was an honorable man and one whom he could trust. It could have been a hell of a lot worse. He might have lost her to any of those unknown men at the mating party. When she’d returned he’d been so sure she’d mate him. He’d been positive she would have compared him to all those wolves and realized a vulture was so much better.

  But she’d refused to spend time with him. Refused to even consider him as her mate. He’d thought his heart would break when she’d left again without his collar around her neck or his ring on her finger at the very least.

  Mark’s ancestors had lived in this area almost as long as the vultures had been here and his house dated back almost that long as well. It was by far the oldest homestead in the valley, and from a distance, it was almost impossible to tell it existed. It was delightfully cool on the hottest day, and never cold even in the middle of winter.

  Jarin shook his head as he walked across the dusty desert heading for a low hill. He needed to be thinking about Grace, not Mark’s fucking house. This was all about Grace, his woman. His!

  Ahead of him Mark walked down half a dozen steps and opened a wooden door set into the side of the hill. It was pitch dark inside, but Jarin didn’t need any light to know not to walk forward, but to immediately take three steps to his right, and then two forward, before moving left.

  “They were a tricky lot, your ancestors,” Jarin said, unerringly taking the necessary number of steps in the blackness to where he knew there’d be a couch. He sat down just as Mark opened a pair of heavy wooden shutters, letting light stream into the living room.

  “Yes, well, they’d have had a collective heart attack when my great-grandfather cut these windows into the wall if they hadn’t all been long dead by then. But it worked. They lived, they survived, there are several families of wolves still here in this valley.”

  “And you still keep the chicane at the entry painted black to confuse people.”

  “It works,” Mark repeated.

  “Do you have any ideas for how we can woo Grace?” Jarin hated asking, but he was shit out of ideas. Nothing he’d tried so far had been successful so he was ready to listen to Mark. Not agree with him necessarily, but to listen.

  Mark spoke slowly. “I’ve been very careful to obey her instructions. She hates noise, and she hates being crowded. Now, you might say it hasn’t worked because she hasn’t dated me, but she also hasn’t been angry with me and pushed me aside as she’s done to you.”

  Jarin felt himself filling with anger at the thought of Mark, a mere wolf, belittling him, a vulture, but he managed to get a grip on his temper. He’d asked Mark the question and it was true Grace liked silence. She’d never liked loud parties or loud music. That was one reason why he couldn’t understand why she’d gone to the DADISP. Surely that week was just one long loud party?

  “Why did she go to that fucking mating party?” he groaned. It wasn’t really a question, but Mark answered anyway.

  “First, because the old man wanted her to, and she loves him. Second, because I think likely she’s ready to settle down. When Julie was dying she would never have left her. But the old lady’s been gone for a while now. And Glen is healed. Of course, he’s old, but he doesn’t need her the way he did when the wound didn’t heal.”

  “If she wants to get married, why didn’t she accept me?” Jarin’s cry was heartfelt and it embarrassed him that he’d given away so much of how he was suffering to Mark. But he could trust Mark. Mark had always had his back.

  Mark leaned forward and stared right back at him. “I think you need to accept there might be a few things you need to change. It’s pretty clear she thought she might find someone she preferred at that mating party. And it shows crystal clear she’s happy with
the idea of a wolf or two.”

  “Fuck!” Here he was, a young virile vulture, and she was thinking of fucking wolves.

  Finally he sighed. “I get it. We need to compromise. I’m definitely prepared to promise to have the house quiet for her. I understand that. No parties at the house. We can hold them some place she can leave if she needs to. I could build a room in the basement for her which would be quieter than in the house itself. Nail up carpet or rugs to the walls to cut the sound even farther.” Jarin smiled. That was better. That was a solution.

  What else could he do to show her he was serious about compromise and pleasing her?

  “It would also be good to ask her what she’s looking for in a relationship. What she herself wants,” said Mark.

  Ouch. What if it was something he didn’t want to give up? Jarin groaned. He guessed the situation was quite clear. They didn’t have her now. She wasn’t prepared to be with them. The only way to get her was to work out what she needed, and then figure out how to deliver it to her.

  “Right. We’ll ask her what she wants.”

  * * * *

  Her bed was already made up and her toothbrush had been in the bag beside her on the front seat of the truck. Grace had an awesome ride back from town on the dirt bike, cutting across the desert on little-used tracks whenever she wanted to. All she had to do when she returned was take a shower and crawl into her bed. Of course, that meant the next morning she couldn’t even have breakfast without unpacking a few things, like a bowl, and a mug, and her microwave oven. But that didn’t matter. She finally had a little house all to herself and it was the best feeling ever.