Dreaming of the Wolf (Heart of the Wolf #8)(61)

Chapter 14

When Jake and Alicia finally went down to breakfast, Tom and Darien both looked up at them as Jake steeled his expression and guided Alicia into the dining room, the large picture window facing out onto the woods, Jake’s photos of woodland flowers hanging on the walls, and the long oval table covered in golden sunflower place mats. Alicia’s attention was riveted on his floral photographs, and he saw real admiration in her eyes. But his brothers exchanged looks, and Jake knew that despite trying to keep his expression neutral, he’d conveyed strife in paradise.

Both observed Alicia, and he imagined they could tell she’d been crying.

“Good morning,” Darien said to Alicia, and Tom echoed his words, although Darien gave Jake a harsh look as if he’d been to blame for Alicia’s upset.

“Good morning,” Alicia said quietly, avoiding looking at them, while Jake only nodded.

Lelandi came out of the kitchen appearing tired. Jake imagined that the babies kicking in her belly were keeping her awake, although her expression brightened when she saw Alicia. A flicker of concern fluttered across Lelandi’s face when she noticed Alicia’s red eyes, but she quickly smiled and motioned to the table—where the yellow ceramic serving dishes were filled with eggs and ham, biscuits, and cantaloupe, watermelon, and honeydew melon.

“Have your pick,” Lelandi said cheerfully.

After Jake pulled out a chair for Alicia, she took her seat, and he sat beside her.

“I’m dying to hear about your chosen profession as a bounty hunter,” Lelandi said, her enthusiasm contagious as she took her seat next to Darien.

Jake thought Lelandi was the perfect person to help get Alicia’s mind off her troubles. Maybe the psychology courses were part of Lelandi’s need to analyze and try to help anyone in need, although he suspected those traits had more to do with her nurturing personality.

“You would not believe the kinds of cases I’ve been involved in.” Alicia forked some fruit onto her plate, and for the first time she seemed at ease.

“Coffee? Tea?” Jake asked her.

“No, neither.”

That surprised Jake because she’d had tea when she’d eaten breakfast before.

“Juice? Milk?” Lelandi asked.

“Milk.”

Lelandi returned to the kitchen and soon popped back into the dining room with a glass of milk. She handed it to Alicia, then sat across the table from her. “Okay, tell us about this bounty-hunting business of yours. It sounds like it could be fascinating.”

Alicia’s choice of beverages made Jake wonder if maybe there was something more to her being pregnant. He again glanced down at her waist, but she wasn’t showing yet. Too soon, he suspected. He wondered how he could get her in to see Doc Weber. Surely Doc could tell whether she was or not. Especially since seven weeks had passed since Ferdinand Massaro had turned her.

Alicia held up a finger as she finished chewing a sausage link.

Jake’s brothers had finished their breakfast, and it was past time for them to be on their way. Although as efficient as the pack was at running the town and the Silver businesses, they didn’t need the pack leader and his sub-leaders micromanaging any of it. Still, Jake had hoped they’d leave so he’d have more alone time with Alicia.

But they didn’t appear to be in any hurry to depart. He suspected that since Alicia was newly a member of the family, they wanted to know everything about her.

“Once,” Alicia said, “I was supposed to arrest a woman who’d stolen a good deal of money from the department store where she clerked. She would give a refund to a customer, then pocket a refund herself. It was a one-for-you, one-for-me kind of affair. She was addicted to gambling and was a habitual lottery-ticket purchaser. But besides the obvious shortages in her register at the close of her shifts and the camera’s catching her pocketing the money, she skipped her trial. I had the job of serving the warrant, but her family was hiding her. So I put out the word that she had won a lottery ticket.” Alicia smiled. “That did it. I delivered the search warrant in place of the winner’s fees and escorted her to jail.”

“Goes to show gambling doesn’t pay,” Lelandi said, smiling.

“Yeah. Most of the cases I’ve dealt with were petty criminal cases. One was a car thief who failed to see his parole officer and was ordered back to jail. I found him hiding underneath a mattress. Really brilliant since the one side of the mattress was elevated so high that any fool could have seen someone was wedged in between the mattress and the box springs even though he was fairly scrawny.

“Another time, I found a woman hiding underneath a flipped-over swimming pool in the backyard, while the dog stood wagging its tail at me right beside the plastic blue pool. Another time a guy hid in the attic. In his panic, he stepped through the ceiling. By the time I had him in plastic ties, he was a mess and covered in itchy insulation. I was lucky that I never had to arrest anyone really dangerous, though.”

Jake raised his brows at her. Her gaze shifted to him, knowing he would have something to say about that.

Looking a little flushed, she buttered a biscuit. “Until now. The bondsman I work with liked to give me cases where he needed a woman rearrested, so that there could be no threat of someone screaming about sexual misconduct. Or cases where the perp was not a member of a gang or anything. One of the other bounty hunters I knew had gotten into a real bind trying to take down an individual who was a drug dealer and had ended up in a house full of methamphetamines, money, drugged-out wackos, and guns.”