“Of course,” the old woman murmured. “They?”
“Yes, a few of the cousins and some of their friends.” Eden pulled out a chair with a bright smile. “Sit, sit. Lorelei, could you get some of the sweet tea from the fridge?”
Lorelei flashed her a look behind Mrs. Wilson’s back. “I’d love to.”
Eden bit the inside of her cheek until she was sure she wasn’t going to smile in response. She would not laugh. She would not laugh. “How have you been, Mrs. Wilson? Well, I hope? Any visits from your grandchildren lately?”
“Oh no, dear. Not since last month. They’re back in school now, you know.”
“Of course, how silly of me.” She held the kitchen chair until the old woman had lowered herself into it, then took the seat next to her. “I hope we haven’t been too loud for you, with the renovations.” There. An opening for the woman to voice her complaints. The quicker she got around to it, the quicker Eden could hustle her on back out the door.
“Mostly the coyotes, dear. They’ve been terribly noisy, but that situation should rectify itself once deer season starts.”
Mrs. Wilson had to be mistaking the wolf howls for coyotes. Lord, would the hunters make the same mistake? Surely Jay must know enough to be careful, if he’d been running around Clover all this time without getting shot.
Presumably. Hell, maybe he had been shot, and she just didn’t know. It was one more worry to add to the list. “Of course,” she said faintly. “Well, we should be finished fixing up both houses soon, in any case.”
“Both?” The woman raised an eyebrow. “How many of your cousins have come to stay here?”
Eden ground her teeth together through a smile. “Just a few, but there will be workers too. Putting the farm to rights will take a lot of hard work.”
Lorelei delivered the glasses of tea, and Mrs. Wilson smiled at her. “Are y’all going to grow soybeans like everyone else? I swear, no one does any of the specialty crops anymore. No place to sell them.”
“We’re still debating some of the particulars,” Eden hedged when Lorelei said nothing. “Concentrating on the barn and fixing the place up. We’re going to get a few animals, and one of the girls has a very nice business. Lorelei, why don’t you go and see if Mae has a gift box we could give to Mrs. Wilson?”
“Okay.” Lorelei shot out of the kitchen, leaving Eden alone with the puzzled-looking Mrs. Wilson.
The woman sipped her tea before speaking. “I thought you meant they were helping you get your farm going, Eden, but it sounds as though everyone’s staying.”
Eden met the implied question with a bland smile. “Not everyone, but it’s not just my farm, you know. And I still have a job in town, so I can’t be here to manage things.” Odd, that those words already made her feel vaguely hollow. There would be a time when she couldn’t be here every day to help, and it felt…wrong.
“Oh.” Mrs. Wilson toyed with the lemon wedge on the rim of her glass. “I thought the farm was just yours. I assumed, you know, when Albus died and Zachary didn’t come home for the funeral.”
On paper, it did belong to her. Albus’s last defiant gesture, leaving everything he owned to Eden. As much as she’d wanted her father to reconcile with his brother for his own peace of mind, Eden was fervently glad Zack hadn’t returned for his father’s final, bitter days. Albus’s body might have failed, but his mind and his vicious hatred had stayed as sharp as ever.
“We’re family,” she told Mrs. Wilson, just like she’d told her father. Just like she’d tell Zack. “I may own the farm, but it belongs to all of the Greens. That’s how it should be, don’t you think?”
“But will Zachary ever come back to it?”
The old biddy hadn’t seen him yet. Eden considered lying, but Zack’s presence would come out eventually, and everything she’d ever said on the topic would be scrutinized by Mrs. Wilson and everyone she knew. “He’s already here. Working hard on the barn right now, I think.”
The woman straightened, obviously taken aback. “I didn’t know that.”
Lorelei hadn’t returned. Eden was starting to envy her. “Yes, he’s been here for a few days. He came with Lorelei and the others.”
“I see.”
Silence stretched out, expanding and growing until it was a tangible presence every bit as real as Mrs. Wilson, who stared at her in awkward discomfort, clearly at a loss for words.
Well, words she’d say to Zack’s cousin, in any case.
Eden cleared her throat and gestured to the barely touched glass. “Can I get you some more sweet tea?”
A good deal of the older woman’s indulgent courtesy had chilled. “Actually, I should be going. You will keep the construction noise down, won’t you, Eden?”
You hadn’t even heard it until you found out Zack was here. This was how it would be from now on. Zack didn’t have to do anything to be guilty. If the town couldn’t find a crime he’d committed, they’d make one up.
They always had.
It was hard to smile when she wanted to bare her teeth in a snarl, but Eden managed. She smiled until her jaw ached. “Of course, Mrs. Wilson. Thanks so much for the basket.”
“You’re welcome, honey.” The woman rose and returned Eden’s smile. “And tell your daddy I asked after him, all right?”
“Absolutely. Let me walk you out.”
She kept her smile fixed in place like it’d been stapled there until the door was shut with her adversary on the other side. The wolf stirring inside her wouldn’t view the old woman as anything else, not when Mrs. Wilson invaded their territory and stank up the room with disapproval and chilly disdain.
Too bad for Mrs. Wilson, and too bad for every nosy gossip in Clover. Eden wasn’t a helpless kid this time around, and no one was going to drive Zack away from his home.
Lorelei peeked around the open archway into the living room. “I hid. I’m not proud of that fact, but there it is.”
Eden laughed hoarsely and closed her eyes. “That just makes you smart.”
“I heard bits and pieces. She thinks we’re starting a filthy hippie commune and that Zack’s the Antichrist.”
“They’ve always thought that, ever since he was a teenager.” Eden pushed away from the door and headed back for the kitchen island. “It’s not going to get better once they see him. The tattoos are a bit much for Clover.”
Lorelei lingered, staring at the front door with a troubled expression. “We’ll have to be careful, won’t we?”
It had always been the truth, but maybe the wolves who were used to the city hadn’t understood. “People around here think they have a right to know everything about everyone. And when we start selling soap and lotion and handspun fabric…”
Hippie commune, indeed.
Chapter Six
Jay felt Zack’s approach in the jagged, discordant power that flowed ahead of him, but Eden’s cousin didn’t say a word until he’d dropped a cardboard package of beer down hard enough to rattle the glass bottles within. “Thought you might be thirsty.”
Jay finished hammering in the nail he’d placed to secure the barn window casement. “Thanks. I could use one.”
Zack claimed one bottle and sat in one of the folding chairs situated among the building supplies. “Fair warning. It’s a bribe.”
Interesting. Jay eyed him as he dropped to the other chair. “What do you need?”
“That wolf who’s following me around.”
Fletcher couldn’t have already made an ass of himself, but maybe Zack was looking for confirmation more than anything else. “I asked him to keep an eye on you,” Jay confessed.
Zack stared at empty air and took a slow sip of his beer. “So he doesn’t want to be my new best friend.”
“You sound relieved.”
“Don’t really want a new best friend.” Another sip. “Mine hasn’t been dead all that long.”
Lorelei had explained—in hushed, sad tones—about Zack’s roommate, Noah, and his attempts to hold the pack together after Zack’s abduction and supposed death. “I’m sorry.”
Zack shrugged, his gaze still fixed on that empty bit of space, but not like he was staring forward, unseeing. He could have been looking at something—or someone. “I lost a lot more than just Noah. I’d be watching me like a hawk too.”
Chilling words, nearly the last ones Jay wanted to hear. “You seem to be doing okay, all things considered.”
“All things considered. Maybe I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. Never thought I’d end up back here.”
“Can’t say as I blame you.” The farm was beautiful, but it wasn’t peaceful. It wasn’t settled. “You’ll get past it. You’ve got a lot of good things going.”
“I do, do I?”
“Sure. Everyone’s relatively safe here, and you’ve got Eden and Austin looking out for you.”
Zack’s mouth twitched toward a smile. “Eden looking out for me. God, that makes me feel old.”
“Not the kid you remember, huh?” Jay sobered. “I would have talked to you about Fletcher first, but I wasn’t sure how you’d take it. Alpha to alpha, I mean.”
The smile fell away, leaving Zack’s gaunt face blankly exhausted. “If there’s anything alpha left in me, it’s needing to keep them safe. Lorelei, Mae, Quinn…Kaley. They’re the important ones.”
And yet he’d been the glue holding them all together. Jay shook his head. “You don’t really think it’s that simple, do you?”
“It has to be, for now. I haven’t got a damn thing left to give.”
Oh, but there was plenty his pack still wanted from him—one young alpha in particular. “You think Kaley’s going to want to accept that? Or understand it, even if she does?”