Shadow of Doubt - Hailey Edwards Page 0,13
my inner wild man is concerned. I don’t mean to snap and snarl, but those same instincts make it hard when another male is encroaching on my territory, so to speak.”
“You haven’t snapped or snarled.” I gave credit where it was due. “You’ve been downright kind to me, but you will have to work on your Midas fixation. I’m starting to think you’ve got a crush on him.”
“All that golden hair, those flowing locks…” Ford batted his eyelashes. “He’s so dreamy.”
Despite the reason for our early-morning trip, I burst out laughing. “You’re horrible.”
“Yeah, well. Every pretty girl wants an equally pretty boy, and he’s as pretty as they come. I don’t have to want to date him to be honest with myself. Doesn’t hurt I’ve heard dozens of lovelorn women ticking off his attributes over the years. I could recite them for you, and you could write them down. Just think of all the time you’d save not making your own list.”
“Jealousy is poison.” I gentled my tone to avoid coming off as reprimanding. “It warps your outlook on life and the object of your envy.”
“Voice of experience?”
“Oh, yeah. I had a friend like yours. The best, the brightest. I wanted everything she had. Her magic, her status, her family, her whole life. I made a bad bargain to get a poor imitation.”
Tension shot through his shoulders. “Not with Linus?”
“No, not with Linus.” Ford must have superpowers that caused you to blab your darkest secrets. That, or I had starved myself for companionship until I was ravenous enough to vent a year’s worth—a lifetime’s worth—in one go. “He saved me, in more ways than you can imagine.”
As his posture relaxed, he pointed toward the creek. “That’s our destination.”
A petite woman stood where he indicated, arms crossed over her frail chest, delicate hands cupping her opposite elbows, bony fingertips digging into delicate skin.
“That’s Bonnie Diaz.”
I jerked my head toward him. “The same Bonnie from the Faraday?”
“Yeah. She’s Midas’s new PA. He’s not thrilled about it, but she has office experience. She suggested it, and he didn’t have the heart to turn down the offer.”
Mud had soaked through the hem of the ankle-length dress she wore, cream with tiny pink flowers, and her shoes were ruined. Her cardigan was a complementary petal-pink shade, and her hair was bunned up so tight it gave me a headache looking at her. Her face was scarred, a cruel swipe of claws across one cheek, but she was lovely, and she trembled when she spotted Ford.
“I got a t-t-tip.” Head down, she kept her eyes averted. “I followed up before bothering anyone.”
Ford gawked at her. “Alone?”
Bonnie curved her shoulders inward, making herself even smaller, and whispered, “Yes.”
I couldn’t say why I did it, except I had often wished for help that never came, that I never dared ask for, but I stepped between them and wrapped a supportive arm around her narrow shoulders.
“Ford isn’t mad at you,” I soothed in tones that would have calmed me back then. “He’s just worried. No one wants to see you get hurt.”
Happy to plaster herself against my side, she turned her face into my shirt.
“I didn’t want to lose my job,” she mumbled against me. “I just got hired, and I need it to stay in the pack. Everyone has to contribute. Everyone. Alpha Tisdale told me so. If it had been a crank call and Midas came out for nothing, he might…”
The sentence hung there unfinished, and I hoped I read her implication wrong.
“Midas doesn’t hurt women.” I repeated what he’d said to me because I believed it. I wasn’t sure how she could doubt him after spending any amount of time with him, but past trauma had a way of coloring the present in shades of the familiar. “You come tell me if that ever changes.”
“I c-c-can’t do that.” She shivered at the sound of his name, or maybe at the thought of standing up for herself, and she burrowed close enough it felt like I gained a second heartbeat. “You’re not p-p-pack.”
“You’re right. I’m not. I’m the POA’s apprentice. I operate outside pack law. That means if the pack ever gives you trouble, right on up to the alpha, you come to me, and I’ll keep you safe. I will set you up with a new job and arrange a place for you to live.”
The Office of the Potentate did more than enforce Society law. We protected all those who were subject to them, regardless of