Waking Hearts (11 page)

Ollie kept his eyes on the road. “You think me and Sean sit around painting our nails or something?”

“Of course not,” she said. “I thought you two were getting together for beard-care spa days or something.”

“Please,” Ollie grumbled. “Sean only wishes he could grow a beard like me.”

Allie laughed. Sean and Alex had both been growing their beards out and had taken more than a little teasing from their friends about competing with Ollie for the mountain man look.

She turned toward him, watching his profile. “Your beard is a thing of manly magnificence, Oliver Campbell.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Don’t be jealous just because you can’t grow one.”

“But I am. So jealous.”

“I can tell. If you make me brownies, I might tell you my conditioning secrets.”

“Motor oil and hamburger grease?”

“Damn it,” he said. “Who told you?”

“I’ll never tell.”

He chuckled, and Allie realized she’d heard him laugh more in the past few days with her and her kids than she had in the past year.

The road to the Quinn place took a sharp left after Sandy Wash, then they were crawling up an even steeper hill with rocks dotting the road, so she had to keep her eyes straight ahead or get really carsick as Ollie swerved to avoid them.

Ollie had always been a quiet man, but the past couple of years, he’d been heading almost into antisocial territory. He was discreet about his dating life, worked a lot, and kept busy taking care of his extended family. Though he was an only child, he had first and second cousins who were all close. The bear clan wasn’t big—not anywhere near the size of the Quinn or McCann clans—but it tended to stick closer to home. Anyone who didn’t live in the Springs lived in Palm Desert, Indio, Barstow, or Vegas at the outside.

“How’s your family?”

He glanced over. “My dad and Ashley?”

“Mm-hmm.” She didn’t know what had happened to Ollie’s mom, other than that she’d left the Springs when Ollie was young, but Nathan Campbell had met his new wife when Ollie was a teenager.

“They’re fine,” he said. “Roaming around in Canada right now. They’ll point the bikes south now that the temperature’s dropping up there.”

She glanced at her phone. “One hundred and one today. It could be winter anytime now.”

“I’m with you.”

Yeah, I wish you were.

She sighed and tried to get her mind off it. Ollie had been flirting with her a little, but it could mean anything. He could be trying to mend the gap that had grown between them. He might just think she needed an ego boost. Sean flirted with her, but Sean flirted with everyone.

“Hey,” he said. “Where’d you go?”

Nowhere. I’m going nowhere.

“Just wondering what you think the Quinns might know. And wondering when we’ll know for sure. I know that’s part of the reason Kevin snapped on Friday. He and Mark are both on edge, waiting to hear about their dad. I probably shouldn’t have told them.”

“And if they’d found out later, they’d have been angry. Your kids are smart, Allie. Give them as much honesty as they can handle.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He reached over and took her hand. “You’re doing great.”

“There’s no manual for this,” she said. “I lost my own mom when I was Mark’s age, and I still don’t know what to tell them if Joe’s really dead. It’s not the same. My mom loved us and died in a car accident.”

“Loss is loss, no matter what. They’re already dealing with some of it with him being gone. You’ve done the best you could with that. Trust me, I know how hard it is when a parent leaves.”

Allie bit the edge of her lip and Ollie squeezed her hand.

“What?”

“I will never in a million years understand your mother, Ollie. Never. How she could leave her own child—”

“How could Joe? How could a father leave four kids? It doesn’t make sense either way.”

“If she ever came back to town, I’d hit her.” Allie grimaced. “Maybe Kevin got the violent tendencies from me.”

He smiled. “Don’t fool yourself, we all have them. And you don’t have to worry about my mom coming back. She’s well and gone.”

“Did you wonder?”

He nodded.

“How long?”

“Years. But I always had my dad, Pop, and Yaya. And I always knew they loved me. Then my dad met Ashley, and I saw how happy he was. Saw how devoted she was to him.
And
me. She’s not my mom, but she’s family. Ashley put things in perspective.”

“How?”

“Made me realize how insignificant my mother really was in my life. How she was the one missing out, not me. Ash wasn’t even my mom, and she liked hanging out with me. Liked going to my football games and making cookies and doing all that ‘mom stuff.’ So I couldn’t be all that bad, you know?”

She said nothing. Ollie was still holding her hand, and she didn’t pull it away. It was too nice to let it lie there, being all big and warm and comforting. If he wasn’t pulling away, she wasn’t either.

The car bounced over a particularly rough patch, and she gripped his hand tighter.

“My kids will be okay,” she finally said. “Whatever happens will hurt, but they’ll be okay.”

“Yeah, they will.”

She dashed the tears from the corner of her eyes and asked, “So, the Quinns and Joe, huh? Not all that surprising, I guess. What have you heard from your biker friends?”

“Nothing yet.” He glanced over. “They don’t really keep what you’d consider regular hours. It might be weeks before I hear anything at all.”

“Weeks?”

He shrugged. “If I don’t hear anything by next week, I’ll give Tony a call. Maybe remind him how many free beers his boys have drunk.”

Allie felt the color drain from her face. “Ollie, I didn’t even think about this costing money. I don’t want to cost you money—that’s not fair.”

“It’s not money, it’s favors. Don’t worry about it.”

“But—”

“Pop would have asked me to look into it anyway, darlin’. Don’t worry about it.”

“What do you think the Quinns know?”

He cleared his throat. “You know Joe liked to gamble?”

“I have the bills to prove it.”

“He didn’t just like casinos. He was actually a hell of a poker player. Did you ever play with him?”

She shook her head. “Never gamble with a coyote.”

Ollie laughed. “That’s the truth. I did, and I lost. He was really good. He only got sloppy when he drank too much.”

She leaned her head against the window. “And he was almost a full-blown alcoholic by the time he left.”

Another hand squeeze. “Yeah. But the Quinns didn’t care about that. I know for a fact more than one of them won money off of Joe, but even more lost it.”

Her eyes went wide. “You don’t think they had anything to do with his death, do you?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can’t be positive until I talk to Old Quinn. But very few of them are violent. It’s more… petty shit. Cons. Stuff like that. But even more…”

“What?”

“Let’s face it, Allie. If the Quinns killed someone, the body would
never
be found.”

ALLIE saw Sean Quinn standing in the front yard, tossing a baseball back and forth with a boy around Chris’s age when they pulled up. Sean had the lean, whipcord-strong build typical of most of the snake clan, along with the dark Irish coloring that made him stand out like a black slash in the red rocks around his great-uncle’s house. His natural form was a diamondback rattler, but Sean was one of the most versatile shifters Allie had ever known. From the time he was thirteen, he’d honed his abilities to an astonishing degree and was able to shift into more reptile forms than anyone Allie knew.

Old Quinn hadn’t laid gravel in over twenty years, so they kicked up dust as soon as they pulled in. Sean and the boy turned their heads, squinting into the sun as they waited to see who had arrived.

“You gotta get the old man to lay new gravel,” Ollie said.

The boy grinned up at Sean. “Told you, Uncle Sean.”

“Get outta here.” He batted at the brim of the boy’s hat. “And make sure all your homework gets done before you open
Harry
Potter
.”

“Yessir.”

They watched the skinny boy scramble over the rocks beside Old Quinn’s house and up to the road that ran along the top of the ridge where many of the poorer Quinn families made their homes.

“Told you what?” Ollie asked.

“That’s Aiden.” Sean tapped his temple. “Let’s just say he’s… perceptive.”

Allie’s eyebrows rose. “Like Bear?”

Jena’s youngest boy, Aaron, was called Bear, even though everyone suspected he’d shift toward his father’s clan, which had been wolf. The boy also had an uncanny way of perceiving things that he shouldn’t have known.

“Maybe a little,” Sean said. “He said we’d have visitors today and one of them would be a bear.” He winked at Allie. “And the other one would be a fox.”

Allie smiled and took the arm Sean held out. “You’re making that up.”

“Only a little. He mentioned the bear. And I’m taking note of the fox.” He nudged her shoulder with his. “You look gorgeous today.”

“That’s ’cause I got dressed up for church, you heathen. You should try it sometime.”

“Quinns get struck by lightning if they enter that chapel anytime Father Heney isn’t in residence,” he said. “Everyone knows that.”

“Lying’s a sin, Sean Quinn.”

“Good thing I’m not lying about how pretty you are.” He looked over his shoulder. “Hey, Ollie.”

“Oh, am I here?” the man growled.

“Yeah, but you’re not as cute as Allie.” He grinned at her. “Where’re the kids, gorgeous? You finally leave them with their grandpa so we could run away together?”

“Sure. Right after we question your uncle about what my cheating, lying ex-husband was up to and why my son started beating up your cousins over it at school.”

Allie heard Ollie stop behind them, and she turned her head. “What? Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out after you decided we needed to come up here? I know my son, and I know what sets him off. Those boys were talking about his dad, right?”

Ollie pursed his lips together. “I can’t say.”

“I can,” Sean said. “I already talked to them. Uncle Joe had them cleaning out their grandmother’s attic yesterday. Hot. As. Hell. They won’t say another word to any of your boys.”

Allie hugged his arm. “Thanks, Sean.”

“Now, let’s go get some sweet tea and talk to the old man.”

OLLIE had been right. If Allie hadn’t been with them, Old Quinn probably wouldn’t have let them through the door. There was a natural animosity between the bears, the largest and most protective of the shifters, and the Quinns, the smallest in shifted form and also the most frequent troublemakers. The fact that Ollie and Sean had remained friends through high school was considered something of a miracle. And a scandal.

“Okay,” Old Quinn settled into his seat with a mason jar of sweet tea in his hand. “What do you want?”

Ollie said, “Be polite, old man.”

“Why am I interested in doing your work for you?”

“Please.” Allie leaned forward. “Uncle Joe, if you know anything about what my ex was doing, I really need to know.”

Old Quinn looked kindly at her. “You’re better off without him. You can start over. Bright young thing like you—”

“He’s my kids’ dad,” she said. “We need to know what happened.”

The old man scratched his chin, thinking. “It’s not good, Allie.”

“You think you’re gonna surprise me at this point?”

He frowned. “Probably.”

Allie sat back in her seat, knowing that yeah, there was probably stuff she didn’t want to know about her ex-husband, especially if it involved what he’d gotten up to after he left her, but that didn’t mean she didn’t need to know.

“You think I’m gonna break down or something?”

Old Quinn leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You? No, you wouldn’t break down. Still hate being the one to put that burden on you. There are some things a woman doesn’t want to know about her man, even if he isn’t her man anymore.”

She glanced over at Ollie. “Would you tell Ollie?”

Old Quinn sneered.

“Please?”

Old Quinn tapped his foot. “You should let things lie, Campbell.”

Ollie said, “I know you don’t like me, but Allie came to us for protection. You know that means we’re looking out for her and her family. If you know anything that might help us keep those kids safe—”

“Fine,” Old Quinn said. “I’ll talk to the bear.”

Allie smiled. “You can talk to us both.”

“Nope.” Old Quinn shook his head.

“Seriously?”

“Sean, take Miss Allie out on the front porch. Keep her company while Campbell and I talk.”

Allie narrowed her eyes. “You’re an old sexist, Joe Quinn.”