Page 14 of Chased

Everyone was staring at him, mouths open, including Samantha. Although she took the money.

“What?” he said, glaring at them. “Now it’s done.” And he could go home and forget about this woman and the way she made him feel.

The woman said, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Forget it.”

“Well, at least let me pay you back. I can do it a little at a time. My name is Madison Fontaine, and I don’t have an exact address yet because I just got to town. But you can reach me at Outlaw Ridge.”

Matéo choked on his candy bar.

Sanchez’s head whipped around. No fucking way. She was the new office girl? The fox shifter?

Hawk wasn’t even trying not to laugh now, the fucker. He said to Madison, “You’re the new admin assistant Gunn hired?”

“If I still have the job,” she said. “I was supposed to be there last night, and start work today. But my car broke down, and I had to spend the night in it. I walked about sixty-eleven miles this morning, and my phone is dead, so they don’t even know where I am. So I’m probably fired, but in case I’m not, I need to call a tow truck and then figure out some way to get to Outlaw Ridge before it occurs to anyone that I should be. Fired, I mean.”

Hawk’s grin got bigger. “Sheeyit,” he said. “You have had a bad time, and I’m afraid it’s gonna get worse, because Joe from the garage is out on another call with the tow truck. I passed him on my way here. Might be two or three hours before he can get to you.”

The girl said, “I can’t sit here all day. I need to get up to Outlaw Ridge.” She sounded almost desperate. Turning to Hawk, she said hopefully, “I don’t suppose you could give me a ride?”

“No need.” Hawk was still grinning. “These guys work at the Ridge.” He turned to Sanchez. “You don’t mind giving the nice lady a ride, do you?”

Fuck me to the wall.

Chapter 7

Of course they agreed to give her a ride—Breanna would lose her shit if she heard they’d left her new assistant stranded.

Hawk helped Sanchez, Cisco and Matéo load up the truck bed with their grocery order while the girl—Madison—bought whatever stuff she needed and used the restroom, and hopefully just went ahead and called up to the fucking Ridge and talked to Breanna, who of course wasn’t going to fire her for having her car break down.

As they were loading up, Cisco said, “That girl said she’d pay for the smelly stuff. Why did you give Samantha all your money?”

Sanchez didn’t want to talk about it. Because he didn’t fucking know. So he said, “I didn’t. You’re going to pay me back, seeing as the whole damn thing was your fault.”

“It was not! She stole my Butterfingers!”

Sanchez said, “And do you want to explain to Breanna how you scared the fuck out of a little tiny fox shifter over some candy bars, and ended up with her covered in hives?”

“She’ll take your cookies away,” Matéo said. “She might take all our cookies away. Then I’d have to bleed you.”

“Shit,” Cisco muttered. “Don’t tell her, okay?”

Like she wouldn’t find out. He wished like hell they could just leave the fox girl here.

Women. Nothing but trouble.

But when Madison came out of the store with her purse and her bag of stuff and walked up to the three of them, he could feel how scared she was.

She tried not to show it—really, she didn’t show it. It was something he sensed on a visceral level—that her animal got to the edges of their wolf auras and screamed, threat. So much that it was all she could do to make herself keep walking.

But she did it. Sanchez respected that.

“Hey, Hawk,” he said impulsively, as the sheriff turned away. “Cisco and Matéo should take a look at Madison’s car. It might be something simple, and then they could get it started and bring it up to the Ridge without her having to pay for a tow. You could take them over to it.”

Madison had shown Hawk on her map where she’d left the thing. It was a long damn way for her to walk—over six miles—but not too far of a drive. And everyone knew Hawk barely had anything to do, except for finding lost cows and breaking up bar fights on Saturday nights.

“Hey,” Cisco said, still pissed about his candy. “You might ask us what we thought about it.”