The pack members couldn’t have been more pleased with the way the sisters had renovated the place, keeping the old Victorian look but adding special touches. Like the two wrought iron and wood-slat benches in a parklike setting out front, with the bench seats held up by wrought iron bears.
Tom turned back to CJ. “Darien said—”
“I know what Darien said. My brothers and I were getting under the women’s feet. They didn’t want or need our help. Don’t tell me we can’t participate in the grand opening.” Even though CJ would be busy directing traffic for a little while, he intended to stop in and check on the crowd inside the hotel to ensure everyone was behaving themselves.
Sam delivered their beers in new steins, featuring wolves in a winter scene etched in the glass, along with sandwiches and chips on wooden Christmas tree plates. He gave CJ a look that told him he’d better not make a comment about the plates or steins. CJ was dying to ask Sam how domesticated life was, but he bit his tongue.
“I’ll be setting up the bar for the festivities,” Sam said. “Silva is bringing her special petit fours, and she’s serving finger sandwiches. The hotel had better be ready to open on schedule.”
“Do you think any of the guests will run out of there screaming in the middle of the night, claiming the place is haunted?” CJ asked. It was something he’d worried about. He wanted to see the sisters do well so they could stay here forever.
Sam shook his head. “Blamed foolishness, if you ask me.”
Sam didn’t believe in anything paranormal. Some might ask how he could feel that way when they were lupus garous—wolf shifters. But then again, their kind believed they were perfectly normal. Nothing paranormal about them.
Someone called for another beer, and Sam left their table to take care of it.
“When you were over there getting underfoot, did you see anything?” Tom asked, keeping his voice low.
“Nothing unusual.” Even though they’d been best friends forever, the ghostly business with the hotel was one thing CJ really didn’t want to discuss with Tom. Neither of them had, not once over all those years.
CJ took another bite of his sandwich, hoping now that the hotel was opening, he could finally start seeing Laurel MacTire in more of a courtship way. He would never again make the mistake of mispronouncing her name. Who would ever have thought that a name that looked like “tire” was pronounced like “tier”? He couldn’t know every foreign word meaning “wolf.” But he did love that she was a pretty redheaded, green-eyed lass. She had been born in America, but she still had a little Irish accent, courtesy of her Irish-born parents. He loved to listen to her talk.
The problem was that she and her sisters, Meghan and Ellie, acted wary around him and everyone else in the pack. In fact, they didn’t seem like the type of proprietors that should manage a hotel, since they were more reserved than friendly or welcoming. He wasn’t sure what was wrong. Maybe they’d never lived with a pack before. He had to admit that everyone had been eager to greet them, so maybe they felt a bit overwhelmed.
The pack members were so welcoming because fewer she-wolves were born among lupus garous than males, and many of the bachelors were interested. The women in the pack were also grateful that they had more women to visit with. Besides that, the wolf pack’s collective nature was such that its members openly received new wolves.
After eating the rest of his sandwich, Tom leaned back in his chair. “The two painters working on the main lobby left prematurely yesterday after demanding their pay for what they’d finished. They said that when they returned from a lunch break, their paint cans had been moved across the room, their plastic sheeting was balled up in a corner, and an X was painted across the ceiling in the study.”
CJ frowned. “None of the sisters saw or heard anything?”
“The sisters had returned to their house behind the hotel to have lunch.”
“Could it have been kids? Vandals?” CJ figured that what had happened wasn’t the result of anything supernatural.
“Who knows? If we discount the ghostly angle, could have been.” Tom finished his beer.
“Did the women smell the scent of anyone who had been in there earlier?”
“Not that they could say. So many people have been traipsing through the hotel, finishing up renovations, that maybe