Colin: McCullough's Jamboree - Erotic Jaguar Shapeshifter Romance (McCullough's Jamboree Book 1) (3 page)

“We are. We will.” He heard the sirens screaming by the farm and smiled. He knew it would be a total loss, and he was even more glad he’d done it now. “Her name is RaeAnn Richards. When she wakes up and is feeling better, I’ll have someone fix up the paperwork with her a new name and identity on it.”

“Good. She’ll be a Burcher and we’ll love her as our own.” Peter hoped it would be that way, but for all they knew the girl was just as bad as her parents. Then he thought of the hole she’d made.

“She’ll be a good girl. And we’ll make sure she has what she needs too.” Yes, Peter thought as he held Mary, she’d be a good addition to their family. Now he had to figure out how to tell her that her new parents were jaguars.

Chapter 1

“I don’t know.” If Colin heard that one more time, he was going to tear the man’s heart out. “You think maybe it’s because they don’t know what it’s used for?”

“You think maybe they can’t read?” Colin looked at the man standing in front of him then looked at the wall where the instructions were plainly printed and wondered what the fuck he was doing there. Oh yeah, he was watching over a failing plant for the man that had been a family friend for decades. And his dad had asked him to see what was going on. “I want you to find out why someone would sabotage a perfectly good lift for no other reason than they could.”

“How do you suppose they got it to tilt like that? You think they had to bring them in another one to do that?”

Colin just growled and walked away. He was done talking to the idiot for now. Maybe even for good.

He’d asked the man several questions. Who did this? I don’t know. How long ago had this happened? I don’t know. Are there cameras here? I don’t know. Colin was ready to shift and tear the man apart. But he also knew that it would do him little to no good; the man still wouldn’t have the answers he needed.

The forklift—or just lift, as he’d figured out they had called the piece of machinery since his family had come in to help this company several weeks ago—was leaning nearly level with the floor as it rested on a wooden box. The only way that he could think that someone would have been able to do that to it was to have a second lift there to bring it over, and then a third one to lower it to the ground enough that it rested on the wooden crate it was currently on. He had no idea why everyone thought it was funny, but now he was going to have to go over footage of the plant to see who the fuck had just gotten themselves fired. Then call in a crew to set it upright and make sure that no damage had been done to it.

When his phone rang, he jerked it out of his pocket, tearing the seam there, and nearly threw the cursed thing across the floor. Barking his name into the device, he knew the moment he did it that he should have checked to see who was calling him, and maybe he might have lived another day.

“I see. And this is why you’re in charge? You have the meanest, loudest voice? Or is it your lovely temperament? I’m sure that has a great deal to do with it, don’t you?” He started to tell his mom he was sorry, but she was on a roll now. “Or could it be that you’re Colin McCullough and everyone needs to bow down before you or feel your wrath? Is that it? Because, son, I’m not at all impressed with you at the moment.”

“I’m not having a good day.” She tisked at him. “There are people here that I’m going to have to fire because they think that taking a twenty-thousand dollar piece of equipment and turning it into a play thing is funny. Not to mention there is so much that needs to be repaired anyway, that I’m not sure how this place has remained in business for as long as it has. It’s a mess here.”

The loud crash behind him didn’t even make him turn. It had been only a matter of time before the empty shipping crate broke under the weight of the lift and fell to the floor. He moved into his office with extreme care not to slam the door, because he knew his mom could hear it.

“I was hoping you’d be able to come over for dinner tomorrow night. Your dad and I miss you.” He missed them as well. It had been a couple of weeks since he’d been able to leave, and he needed family like he needed air to breathe. “Hawkins is coming home in a few days too. He’s only going to be here for a little over a week before he ships out again, and I thought it would be nice to have the entire family together at least once or twice.”

Hawkins had been gone for a long time this time, nearly two years. He was in the service and had been overseas more than home in the last few years. His brother was going to make a career of the army, he’d told Colin when he’d been home last, and he was happy to know he’d found a home of sorts for himself.

“What time? And I’m not making any promises, but I’ll do my best.” He knew that he’d be there even if he had to close down the plant for a day to make it. “And what can I bring? I’m sure I can find a deli open somewhere that has sandwiches that I can bring.”

His mom did not cook. She could turn on the stove if pressed and could sometimes make popcorn in the microwave if she was paying attention, but cooking was something she’d never been good at. She used to tell them that if they wanted a hot meal for breakfast before the cook came in, there was the microwave to heat up their cereal. But his mom loved with all that she was, and that to him was more than enough.

“Your father is laughing too hard to answer me just now, and so you know, I might beat your bottom when you get here. His too while I’m at it.” Colin felt the stress of the day roll off him. That was what he needed. Family. “I need to speak to you about a few things here as well. Your father and I are making out our will and we need to get some things settled.”

“No.” She asked him what. “Please. Not today. Or when I come home. I’m not ready for that just yet. It’s just too soon. I know that it has to be done, but not just after Great-Grandda died. Okay?”

She was so quiet that he knew that she was feeling the pain of it too. Her grandda had been a solid figure in all their lives since forever. Colin had been named for him. They had been close, and he’d been a spry happy man right up until he’d gone to bed one night and had simply not woken up. He’d been ninety-five years old.

“All right. But we must talk about it sooner rather than later. I don’t want the…you know what a mess he left for me.” He did too. The family lawyer was still trying to sort out what was what. “Just…soon, all right? I don’t want to leave this for you boys to deal with.”

After he hung up with her, making plans to have his house opened up for him, Colin thought of his brothers. None of them, he knew, would want to think about their parents needing a will, much less leaving them. All six of them, including him, needed their parents much like a babe did their mother’s breast.

Colin was the oldest, and he supposed that was why his mom wanted to talk to him. He had no idea why she cared about that sort of thing. All of them were level-headed enough to talk about death and wills. But it was a pecking order, she’d told him once. And he was the oldest rooster she could peck.

Hawkins was next at nearly two years younger than him. He had joined the service just out of high school and had now served nearly seventeen years, most of which had been working to end one conflict after another. But he liked it and seemed to enjoy the rigidness of the daily routine.

Boyd was a doctor in his own practice now. He’d done his time working in larger companies, being one of many that would see patients in a hurry-up-and-get-them-out way. He’d hated it, and at one point had decided to go back to college to become something else. But Great-Grandda had told him to quit, find a building, and remodel it. The two of them had spent nearly a year working on it daily, turning an old grade school into a large daycare center, which he sold and bought another building to work on as he became a doctor he could like again. His practice was booming.

Parker was a farmer. Not just raising crops, but also horses, something that he’d never thought a shifter would have been able to keep. But he’d worked with younger ponies and raised them up to not only not be afraid of him and his kind, but other shifters as well. He had several other kinds of paranormals working with him, and they all helped to make them compatible with their kind.

Larson worked with Colin. When their great-grandda had been alive, he’d opened an investment bank of sorts for paranormals. Back then it had been harder for shifters to get loans to get their businesses up and running, so his great-grandda had decided that he had some money to spare and would help out. Regular banks would take one look at the fact that people who wanted to borrow money were a member of a certain group, namely non-humans, and they would be turned down. The family business had made them very wealthy and well respected.

Colin and Larson had started helping those same businesses when it looked as if they were going to go under. Even some of them that didn’t owe them any more money would ask for help, and he and Larson would gladly assist. Up until recently, it had been a lot of fun to see things work out. Now he simply missed having his great-grandda there to talk to.

Dustin was the baby of the family at twenty-seven, and was still trying to find his way. Not that he didn’t have a college degree—he’d been working toward becoming a lawyer in his own practice—but lately, unlike the rest of them, he’d found that he wasn’t cut out for a certain type of office job.

But Dustin had been working with their dad on revamping houses, buying cheap and selling for a lot more. It worked for them, kept them both out of Mom’s hair, she said, but Colin worried for his baby brother in that he still lived at home and didn’t go out much. Maybe he’d work on that when he got there.

Not that he dated all that much either. At thirty-seven, the appeal of going out every night of the week had finally run its course. He loved women, everything about them. But most of the time he felt bored with them. They did what he wanted, said what they thought he wanted to hear, and seemed to be more interested in their cell phones and taking pictures of anything and everything, so that he’d end up taking them home early and not dating again for a couple of weeks. While he thought the cell phone was very useful, it was also a pain in the ass. His rang just as he was getting up to see if he could find some surveillance tape on the forklift incident.

“Mr. McCullough, Colin McCullough?” The voice was hard and full of something that scared him a little. He told the caller that was who he was. “This is Major General Anthony Phillips. I’m calling about your brother, Hawkins McCullough. He’s been...there’s been a shooting and men are down, and—”

“Is he alive?” No answer. Colin grabbed the side of his desk and asked again. “Tell me, damn it. I want to know if my brother is dead.”

“Yes. He’s alive. Christ.” The man sounded like he was crying, and Colin slid to the floor. If something could make a man that sounded like he’d been around awhile and might have seen it all cry, Colin wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. “His squad is...nineteen of them and only three survivors. Your brother and his CO are being airlifted out now. The last man...we’re not sure he’s going to make it. They walked into some major shit and it went south fast. We’re still working out the details, but so far all we can tell for certain is that there are a lot of dead men here.”

Colin asked where they were. And after he was told, Colin sat at his desk again and started a search. “My brother was coming home in a couple of days. How the hell did this happen? And you’ve not called my parents, have you? Please tell me that you didn’t. I’m not there yet and I don’t want them to hear this right now when they’re alone.”

“No. No, we have…I was given instructions by all the men on who to call and not to call. McCullough’s file says you and only you. I have a few orders like that. A couple of them said they’d hunt me down if I called their mommies. One man said that if I called his mom, he’d sic her on me. Scary thought that…I met her.” The man was babbling, and Colin didn’t blame him. Sixteen dead men. He’d be making a lot of very emotional calls over the next few hours. “I’m making one more call to a family before I…I’m also making arrangements to have family meet up at the hospital that they’re being flown to. When I have the—”

“I have a plane. I’ll make my own arrangements. Just tell me where to go and when.” Phillips said thanks but nothing else. Colin wondered what had happened to Hawkins and how bad it was when the man started talking again.

“Your brother…he’s a good man. And from what I’ve been able to gather, he saved his CO and the other man by pulling them to safety. I don’t know what was going on. Honestly I don’t, but I do know that I’ll get to the bottom of this. Your brother, he’s in a bad way, but I think…what he is, it’s going to help him where it didn’t the others. I lost a good…they were good men, all of them, but this thing…this thing should never have happened.”

“I understand.”

After Phillips told Colin where he could meet them, he hung up. Now he had to make the hardest call of his life. He had to call his mom and dad. Picking up the phone again, he called the plant manager and told him he was leaving.

“Leaving? You can’t do that. I have you here for a week yet.” Colin told him that there had been an accident and he had to go. “I’m sorry about that, but you said you’d help me out. I can’t let you go. Whatever it is, you’ll have to have someone else deal with it. I’m not ready for you to go yet. I’m still losing money here daily, and I’m not letting you go.”

“Well, I guess it really sucks to be you. I’m leaving right now and there is little to nothing you can do about it. Not that I think you can, but I’m out of here.” Colin was out the door when he saw the man coming out of his office. To be honest, Colin didn’t think there was any saving the company, and just knowing that the man was there and not out on the floor with him trying to figure out the business sealed the deal. “You’ll be hearing from my firm in a few days, Mr. Mason. Have a good day.”

Leaving wasn’t as hard as he’d thought it would be. As soon as he was in his car to leave, he put in his ear piece and dialed his dad. Not that he didn’t think his mom could handle the news, but he knew that his dad could work the phone so they could both hear him better than she could. That was another thing his mom hadn’t been able to work well, computers or anything that worked like them. As soon as his dad answered, Colin felt the weight of the world on his shoulders.