HunterUndone Read online

  “Sold me. I’ll take a cottage.” He reached for his wallet, and then frowned a little. “Do you have weekly rates? I’m not sure I will be here that long, but that would probably be the simplest way to do it.”

  “Absolutely, Mr.…?”

  He pulled his credit card and license out of his wallet and laid them both on the counter. “Wade. Tyler Wade.”

  She blinked. “I know that name.”

  Tyler sighed. It seemed no one was going to let him exist in peace while he was in this town.

  Her tired eyes went bright with recognition, lighting up her pretty face. “You’re Gemma’s boy.”

  “Yes.”

  She deftly grabbed his card and identity off the counter. “You poor child.” She glanced up at him while writing his name in the ledger. “So what brings you to town, Mr and Mrs Tyler?”

  He blinked at the ‘Mrs’ part, before he snorted out a laugh and pushed the sign in book toward Malia. “Not married.”

  “But you’re sharing a room?” Her brilliant smile dimmed when she realized he wasn’t going to be more forthcoming with gossip, but she shrugged as she handed him back his cards. “The price is $900 for the week.”

  Tyler didn’t even blink as he nodded. “Perfect.”

  She handed him an old fashioned key with a pale blue ribbon wrapped around it, before she started toward the back of the house. “You’ll have your own private entrance. You’ll have to go through the garden gate, but there are solar lights that line the path, just follow the round ones.”

  “What about internet?”

  “It’s included, as is your cable.”

  They walked in silence for a few, before a cross between a carriage house and a typical English cottage appeared in front of them.

  Donna opened the small, white garden gate and led them to the front door. “Shall I wait in case you have any questions?”

  “No, thank you.” He slipped the key into the old-fashioned lock, but as he turned the handle he hesitated and glanced at her over his shoulder. “We’ve been in town for total of an hour. What’s there to do around here?”

  She smiled, already heading back toward the main house. “In the evenings? Finnegan’s Pub. Their hamburgers are even better than ours, and one of the local girls sings some evenings, so it’s usually standing room only. I’d suggest getting there early if you want a table.”

  He nodded as he let himself and Malia into the cottage, absently shutting the door behind them as he studied his new surroundings.

  The one room building was as quaint as the outside had suggested, part isolated hunting lodge, part English countryside manor. He shuddered, but he tossed his backpack onto the rose-vine patterned bed anyway and opened it, pulling out his laptop. As he booted it up, he shrugged out of his leather jacket and tossed it onto the wingback chair opposite the bed and laid his gun on the nightstand.

  Malia wandered the cottage, before she sank down on the edge of the bed and blew her bright red bangs out of her face.

  “Maybe I should go help Leith. At least his personality doesn’t creep me out. He just treats me like I’m breakable.” She stared straight ahead, before flopping back on the room’s only bed. “And no offense, dude, but I’m not sharing a bed with you again. Last time, you kicked me off the mattress in your sleep.”

  He snorted.

  “Who said I was sleeping?” Dragging a hand down his face, he sighed and sat back in his chair. “I doubt there’s a job in this town, and I’m only staying to get to the bottom of this Shay chick’s agenda. Take my truck. I’ll text you when I’m ready to bail.”

  Relief flashed over her face, followed quickly by the excitement she didn’t want him to see. Deep down, under all their arguments and bickering, Malia and Leith couldn’t stand to be apart for longer than a day or two. She snagged his keys out of the air when he tossed them to her. “Thanks, Ty.”

  “Whatever.” He pointed at her, all easiness gone. “You scratch my truck and I will hide your Doc Martens all over the goddamn country. I mean it.”

  “That’s low,” she muttered, even as she leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Try not to let this town get inside your head, all right?”

  He nodded, but his mind was already back on Shay Evernight. He’d missed something on his first background check on her. Because he’d been focused on statistics and finding her connection to his mother’s disappearance, he hadn’t delved too deeply into her.

  She wanted him in town, that much was clear, and she knew things about him that shouldn’t be possible. She was offering him her help, but when he’d been about to walk away, she’d been prepared to let him. She hadn’t begged, and she hadn’t pleaded. She’d simply asked him for a week.

  Tyler shoved both hands through his hair as he ran her name though a search engine. While he was ninety-nine percent certain there wasn’t a demon problem he needed to deal with here, something wasn’t right in this town or with her. He wanted to know what it was before he got himself in any deeper.

  He couldn’t get the panic he’d glimpsed in her eyes out of his head, and he wasn’t going to be able to rest until he got to the cause of it.

  ***

  Shay was nervous, which was ridiculous. She saw dead people. Hell, she talked to dead people on a daily basis and she’d been raised by Phoenix Evernight. Being nervous about being on Tyler Wade’s doorstep was just silly.

  But still, she paced outside his rented cottage, a plate in her hands, and had to remind herself to just keep breathing. He was hot. He thought she was bat-shit crazy, but that didn’t surprise her. People always thought she was crazy. Even after they got to know her, she could tell there was usually that one small niggle of doubt that never fully left them.

  Not that she let it bother her, really. The people in Willow Creek were good people, loyal, and Shay knew they loved her as much as she loved them. So she could handle the doubt.

  Tyler, however, was something altogether different. He intimidated her. He was scary and huge, and he didn’t trust her. She had no doubt he could crush her like a cookie if he felt like it. Which was exactly why she was there, instead of at home studying before she went to her second job: something about him made her want him to like her. It was a silly, totally female reaction on her part, but there it was, anyway. He was hot, and she was ridiculously attracted to him. So yes, she needed him to trust her, but damn it, she wanted him to like her, too.

  Raising her hand, she finally convinced herself to knock lightly on the door. What was the worst that could happen? He could tell her he was busy or didn’t want to talk to her, or slam the door in her face. Nothing she couldn’t handle.

  Until he opened the door looking like he’d just stepped out of the shower. His sandy hair was still wet and curled over his brow in a way that only a man who looked like him could pull off, somehow adorably boyish and sexy as all freaking hell at the same time. Water beaded over his hard, wonderfully muscled shoulders and dripped down his perfectly sculpted torso, then disappeared beneath the large white towel that hung low on his hips. Good Goddess, how was it legal to have a body like that?

  “Shay.”

  Her mouth went dry at the way he drawled her name, all steamy sex and wicked nights, and when he leaned casually against the doorframe, not at all embarrassed about being mostly naked in front of her, and anyone else wandering the property, she had the damndest urge to drop the gift she held and just leap at him. To see if he really did taste as dangerously sinful as he looked, and as perfect as she imagined he would. And she had one very active imagination.

  She bit her lip. “Mmm.”

  He cleared his throat quietly, but it was the low chuckle that rumbled in that gorgeous chest that pulled her from fantasy. The one where she licked him all over, inch by glorious inch.

  He chuckled again and braced a hand above her head, giving her an up-close look at those muscles in action. “Can I help you, Shay?”

  She held out the plat
e in her hands. “Cookies.”

  ***

  Jesus, this wasn’t good. Tyler groaned and stepped back from the door. He wasn’t sure he wanted Shay in his space, but if she didn’t stop staring at him while wearing that skin-hugging red dress, they were going to be naked and panting before he ever found out why the hell she was here.

  Not trusting himself to speak any more at the moment, afraid he’d give away the lust that was grinding in his gut, he turned and walked away from her, leaving her standing in the doorway. He grabbed his clothes off the bed and stalked toward the bathroom.

  After debating for half a second over whether or not he should take a cold shower, he told himself he wasn’t some randy teenager with out-of-control hormones. He could handle a woman with a body like hers in a dress like that without making a complete ass out of himself.

  He pulled on dark sweats and a white T-shirt and, after shoving his hand through his hair to get it out of his face, he opened the door, his body bracing. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, another argument, another hit of Shay’s raw sexuality, or something else entirely. But with her her perched on the edge of his bed, the plate of cookies on her lap, and nervousness in her whiskey eyes, it wasn’t lust that slammed into him. It was something else, something far scarier. He associated her with sex and insanity, and pure stubbornness of will. The nervousness threw him off balance.

  “What do you want, Shay?” His voice was harsher than he’d intended it to be

  She held up the plate.

  “I baked you cookies.” Her smile was slightly crooked, as different as the seductive smile he was used to seeing on her beautiful face as the moon was from the sun. “As a peace offering.”

  He cocked his head. “Are they poisoned?”

  “I thought about it,” she murmured, humor brightening her eyes as she stood up and moved over to set the plate on the small table, “but then I remembered how well I bake. Poison probably isn’t necessary. If my baking itself doesn’t kill you, I doubt poison would do much good.”

  Intrigued, he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest, telling himself firmly the shyness was an act. “So you brought me really awful cookies to convince me to, what? Not hate you? Not try to have you committed?”

  After a brief hesitation, he shoved off the wall, walking over to unwrap the plate. He grabbed two cookies and offered her one. She took it and nibbled at it, all while glaring at him.

  Her nose wrinkled as she chewed. As he watched, the glare melted into a look that suggested she was chewing ground-up bones instead of a chocolate chip cookie.

  “Damn,” she muttered, “that’s bad.” Before he could taste for himself, she reached out and snagged his out of his hand and tossed it onto the plate, where it landed with a pretty decent thud.

  He coughed to cover his laughter.

  She winced. “Okay, so baking isn’t my strong suit, but the point is, I’m sorry for getting us off on the wrong foot. You have every reason not to trust me and to think I’m some backwoods nut job. You probably researched me before you ever decided to come. You know the family I come from.”

  He frowned but didn’t say anything. She was on a roll, and he tended to get more information when he let the other person babble. That she had a voice that belonged in his wet dreams wasn’t a factor. Really.

  She paused, then took a step forward, holding his gaze steadily. “I am not like them, Tyler. I am…more. I have visions. I see dead people, and I talk to them a lot. I believe stones and crystals have healing powers, and I think I own about two hundred candles. But I don’t practice magic, and I would never deliberately hurt anyone.” She reached up and curled her fingers around the pale purple crystal that hung off a long silver chain around her neck. “Your mom needs my help, and I plan on helping her even if you shut me down again.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged, her gaze troubled for just a second. Then she shook her head. “Because she needs me to, and because I think, deep down, you need this solved, too.”

  He told himself not to buy into her shit. He was from New York, for chrissake. He should know a charlatan and con artist when he saw one, but whether his instincts were screwed up or he just wanted to believe her, he couldn’t make himself dismiss what she was saying. It intrigued the hell out of him. For a woman who talked like she belonged in the nearest nuthouse, she seemed to be as stable as he was.

  Which wasn’t saying much, once he thought about it. Most days, as he dug into his mother’s disappearance, he felt like he was one second away from being totally and completely cracked.

  “Fine,” he finally sighed through gritted teeth. “I’ll listen. But that’s all you’re getting from me right now.”

  A brilliant smile slowly spread across her face. “Really?”

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat and decided to change the subject, though he had no idea where the next words came from. “Where do you go for dates around here?”

  The excitement froze in her eyes, before she glanced at the slim silver watch on her wrist.

  “Finnegan’s. Which reminds me, I’m late, and need to go.” She tilted her face up to smile at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  Jesus, she was beautiful. A low, almost savage sound rumbled in his chest as he nodded, ignoring the part about her having a date. “Yeah. Tomorrow.”

  She beamed at him again, before she snagged the plate of cookies and walked out, leaving him standing there, deciding maybe he would go to Finnegan’s tonight after all.

  Chapter 5

  The night was perfect. While a thunderstorm built over the lake, the late summer breeze was warm, carrying a hint of roses with it. The mood inside Finnegan’s Pub was as celebratory as usual on a Friday, between the promise of Hayden Winters singing and three dollar beers on tap.

  While the bar had scarred wood floors worn almost down to the plywood beneath and tables that looked like they hadn’t seen a good day since the seventies, it still had a feel-good, downhome comfort to it. The servers and bartenders were friendly and engaging, the photos that lined the wood-paneled walls were all of Willow Creek through the decades, and not only were the drinks not watered down, the food was always wonderful.

  Yeah, Shay thought, stifling a yawn into her hand as the man sitting across from her carefully studied the menu in front of him. It was a perfect night.

  Her date for the evening, Brian, was turning out to be a perfect gentleman, unfailingly polite and charming. He was the clean-shaven, businessman type. His dark hair was carefully messy, his smile easy-going and flirtatious enough to let her know he liked what he saw in her. At least he wasn’t treating her like a freak.

  And for reasons she didn’t currently want to contemplate, she was bored out of her mind.

  He closed his menu and leaned forward, bracing his arms against the table as he smiled into her eyes.

  “Maybe we should have gone someplace quieter,” he said with a chuckle over the noise of the packed tavern. “This is a hard place to have a conversation.”

  Shay smiled and told herself to give him half a chance. Just because she had Tyler Wade on the brain didn’t mean Brian deserved less than her full attention. He’d been right on time picking her up and hadn’t once gawked at any of the pretty women that bounced by their table. Men didn’t ask her out often, and he’d made her smile the first time they’d met.

  Smiling her thanks at the waitress as the willowy blonde set her lemon drop martini and his beer on the table, she forced herself to re-focus on Brian.

  “I like it here.” She took a sip of her martini and had to stop the soft moan that wanted to escape at how wonderful it tasted. She grinned at him suddenly. “Have you ever heard Hayden sing?”

  He smiled tightly, showing off the dimple in his right cheek. “I can’t say that I have, no. This isn’t my normal hangout.”

  Deciding to ignore his slight edge of disbelief that she’d ever assume he frequented a place s
he loved so much, she shrugged and took another sip of her drink. “She’ll knock your socks…” Her heart—damn it—leapt into her throat as Tyler walked in looking like seven different kinds of sin on a stick.

  He covered her hand with his as he craned his head around to see what she was gaping at. “Shay?”

  She nodded at Brian, but her attention was glued to Tyler. A full head and a half taller than everyone in the pub, he drew attention like he was a roaring fire on a frigid winter day. His dark blue long-sleeved Henley stretched tight across his mountain-sized shoulders, a sharp contrast to the bright blue of his eyes, surfer-boy golden hair tucked behind his ears, and five o’clock shadow. His dark jeans fit him like they’d been made for him, hugging and emphasizing in all the right, and most interesting, spots.

  His eyes scanned the crowded bar and packed table and booths, ignoring all the women trying desperately to get his attention. Shay, a little worried he was specifically looking for her, considered hiding behind a menu when that intense, heated gaze landed on her from across the open-air dining room.

  Blazing at her, his eyes tracked down, landing on where Brian’s hand still covered hers. Amusement lit in his eyes before meeting her eyes again and giving her a look that suggested he knew she wasn’t having fun.

  “Shay,” Brian snapped, drawing her attention back to him, even as he glanced over his shoulder again. “Do you know that man?”

  Shooting Tyler a dark glare for distracting her and looking so damn good, she shook her head and smiled at Brian. “No. Where were we?”

  His smile was indulgent as he leaned across the table to brush a non-existent stray curl out of her face. She was aware it was a power play, his way of letting Tyler know who she was with, and she had to bite back the flash of temper over being a pawn in a pissing match.

  Every time her gaze drifted back to the bar, she found Tyler watching her, his brow furrowed like he was trying to piece together a puzzle.