“Yes, sir. Does Kate have any enemies?”

  Brenda came to mind, but there might be others he had no idea about. “Let me get back with you on that.”

  Derek knew if there was anything shady on Lars, Callahan would learn of it.

  Chapter 22

  When Derek called Kate to ask if she had any enemies, immediately she thought of Brenda. Sure, Kate might have made other enemies. But since she’d had trouble with stalker exes and ex-girlfriend stalkers, it was on her mind. Brenda could definitely be a stalker ex-girlfriend. What if Brenda had hired the guy to harass Kate?

  Now, Ryder and Lexi were giving Kate grief for not telling them about the first incident—if this black pickup was the same one involved the last time. Crazy drivers were on the road all the time, so she really hadn’t believed he had targeted her. She hadn’t looked for his license plate that time, but the two incidents were so similar, she imagined it could be the same driver.

  “Maybe you need a bodyguard to be with you twenty-four seven,” Ryder said, sounding serious.

  “I am a bodyguard,” Kate reminded them.

  Tilting her head to the side, her chin down, Lexi looked exasperated with her.

  “Derek said he has hired a PI and he’ll learn who the guy is and what his involvement in any of this is.” Kate hoped that would make everyone chill. Though she had to admit she’d been shaken by the event, as much as she was trying to put on that she was fine.

  “You had this happen to you with stalker exes before,” Lexi reminded her.

  “I know. That’s why I took up martial arts.”

  Then Mike and Cliff arrived. The police were right behind them. Kate sighed and told everyone the story all over again about how this guy, if he was the same one, had harassed her before. And no, she didn’t know any Lars Gnoffo.

  After the police left, Cliff said, “We don’t need to safeguard Derek’s house while he’s gone if you could use us here. Or at least one of us can stay.”

  “No, thanks, I’ll be fine,” Kate said.

  “Why don’t you all join us for dinner,” Lexi said, “since you’re here now? Mike and Ryder were going to put some hamburgers on the grill.”

  “I need to put my groceries away,” Kate said.

  “We’ll stay for dinner, thanks, Lexi, and we’ll go with Kate for now and help her with her groceries,” Will said.

  “Thanks.” She really didn’t feel she needed them to, but she knew everyone would feel better if she took them up on their offer.

  “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay the night?” Cliff asked as they unloaded the groceries from Kate’s car.

  She was glad she had insulated grocery bags for the foods she needed to keep cold for all the delay in putting them in the fridge. “Yeah, really. Mike and Ryder are so close by, they’ll be here in a jiffy if I need them.” She wasn’t reminding them again that she was a trained bodyguard herself. Though it was nice having the guys’ help with unloading her groceries, and then they walked back to Lexi and Ryder’s house.

  “What about tomorrow?” Will asked.

  “I’ll be at Lexi’s house all day working.”

  Then they had an enjoyable dinner with Lexi and Ryder and Mike, and she finally headed home, with an escort, naturally. After Cliff and Will checked out her house to make sure it was safe, they looked reluctant to leave her alone. She gave them both hugs. “Thanks, guys. I’ll be fine.”

  “Call us if anything happens,” Cliff said, and then they finally took off.

  Once Kate had settled down at her place for the night, she called Derek. “Hey, I just wanted to let you know I’m home and getting ready for bed. If you were here, it would be so much better. Not just because of this incident, by the way.”

  “Is Mike with you?” Derek asked, skipping the part about her wanting him in her bed. He sounded more concerned for her safety.

  She appreciated Derek for that. “No. He offered, but he’s only a skip and a hop away from my place. Cliff and Will offered too. I’m fine. They have Gnoffo locked up anyway. At least I hope he’s not getting out anytime soon.”

  “You call everyone at any hint of trouble. I wish I was in your bed with you too.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I think I’m falling for you.”

  He chuckled. “Good, because you’re taking me with you.”

  After talking forever, they ended the call and she tried to sleep, but she kept seeing the events of tonight repeat in her mind—the bright lights in her rearview mirror, the black truck bearing down on her and then sailing past her, his red brake lights coming on and Kate slamming on her own brakes. Then it was morning again.

  All Tuesday, Derek checked up on Kate too. She didn’t find his concern suffocating, like she might have thought, but endearing. “Lexi won’t let me leave the property until you’ve returned home,” Kate said, giving Lexi a wicked smile as they sat down to have lunch with Ryder and Mike.

  Lexi was so lucky that Mike and Ryder were always trying to outdo each other at making the most astounding dishes. They were having honey-garlic shrimp over rice. She wished Derek was here with them having a lovely lunch poolside.

  “Good. I hope I’m not bugging you too much with all the texting and phone calls.”

  “Not at all. It shows you care.” She suspected he would have done just as much texting and calling even if Lars hadn’t been an issue, and that was nice too. She welcomed his attention. Besides, she was sending animated GIFs to him throughout the day too.

  ***

  Wednesday afternoon while Derek and Rafe were at a luncheon, Derek got a call from the PI concerning Lars Gnoffo and said, “Hey, Rafe is here with me at a luncheon. We’ll move this to someplace more private.”

  “Okay, do you want me to call you back?” Callahan asked.

  “I’ll call you as soon as we’re in my room.”

  Then they ended the call. “That was Callahan,” Derek told Rafe as they made it up to Derek’s room.

  “Hopefully he has news about Gnoffo.”

  “Yeah, I hope we can learn if there’s something more sinister going on with regard to Kate.”

  When they arrived at Derek’s room, Rafe took a seat in the living area of the suite while Derek called Callahan back. “I’m putting this on speaker so Rafe can hear you too. What do you have?”

  “Lars Gnoffo has been in trouble with the law for several years on several different counts of B & E, burglary of stores and homes, possession of a stolen car and other property, all kinds of moving violations. Seems he has a bit of a drug addiction. Anyway, he’s on probation for the last stunt he pulled. I dug into the family background, and lo and behold, the name both you and Kate gave me—Brenda Connors—came up. She’s Lars’s sister-in-law.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Derek was certain that was no coincidence.

  “It sounds to me like Brenda put Lars up to it,” Rafe said.

  “Yeah. That’s what I figured right away. I went to talk to him in the holding cell, and he told me she hired him to scare Kate Hanover off,” Callahan said.

  “Scare her off from what?” Derek asked, knowing Callahan meant that Lars tried to scare her off from seeing Derek further, but how would harassing her on the road convince her of that?

  “Dating you. I asked him how threatening her on the road with his truck would have thwarted her from seeing you,” Callahan said. “He said Brenda told him to take more drastic measures if that didn’t work.”

  “Did he give you any details?” Derek would ruin Brenda.

  “He said Brenda wanted Kate out of the way. Gone. Permanently. By any means necessary. If Lars hadn’t already confessed, they record everything in the holding area, so he’s confessed now. Brenda gave him Kate’s address and told him to watch her at all times and, whenever the opportunity availed itself, to take it. He wanted more money for the job because he was spending a lot of time just waiting for the perfect moment to go after Kate. He said most of the time you were with her or she wasn’t going anywhere, but it meant he had to sit around watching for her to make a move all the time.”

  “Was he paid any money for the job?” Derek asked.

  “A thousand down and nineteen thousand when Kate stopped seeing you. I’m sending you a photo of him that you can share with Kate and see if she recognizes him.”

  “Okay, thanks. He seems familiar, but I can’t place where I’ve seen him before.”

  “Let me know what else you need me for. I have a detective friend at the police station, and he said he and his partner are going to question Brenda within the hour. He knows I’m discreet and wouldn’t share it with anyone but you and Kate, not realizing we’re wolves and protecting one of our own takes priority. I’ll let you know if I learn anything from him. You probably want to wring her neck, but let the police handle this. If they don’t take care of it like they should because she has more influence, then it’s your call.”

  “Thanks, Callahan.” They ended the call, and Derek got ahold of Kate and shared the picture of Lars and other details he’d learned with her.

  “Ohmigod, that’s the waiter who shot the chandelier with the champagne cork! And I thought I saw him at the zoo watching us in the restaurant. He was wearing mirrored sunglasses, so I couldn’t be sure. Now I think that was him.”

  “Hell, I never noticed him.”

  “You were paying too much attention to me.”

  He smiled. Yeah, everything about Kate fascinated him. “I thought I recognized him from somewhere though. I should have connected him with the champagne incident.”

  “The comments Brenda made to friends on social media showed she was willing to do something more than just talk about it.” Kate sent Derek the screenshots she had taken.

  Frowning, he read through the messages Brenda and her friends had posted to Facebook. “You didn’t tell me about this.”

  “I didn’t think anything would come of it. In the posts, she’s not really threatening to take action, but her friends are goading her on to do it,” Kate said.

  “Which could be enough to push someone over the edge to do it who was teetering there already. It’s good you took screenshots of her conversation to show to police if anything more happens and she decides to delete them. The police can still get them from someone else, but this makes it easier. I might have been able to convince her to give up this notion of us getting back together had I known what she was capable of.”

  “If you said something, she might have reacted worse. Who knows her frame of mind and what she could be capable of?”

  “You’re right. I’ll let you know what I learn as soon as I discover anything more.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  “Rafe is here with me,” Derek said.

  “Okay, I’ll let the two of you get back to work on whatever the two of you were doing.”

  He was still worried about Kate. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, thanks, Derek. I can’t wait to see you on Friday.”

  “Earlier, if I can get in on time Thursday night. I won’t be in until ten, but if you’re still up…”

  “Oh, if you’re coming in, I’ll be up.”

  He smiled. “Good. I’ll let you know if we have trouble getting in on time.”

  When they finally ended the call, Derek told Rafe what was going on as far as what Kate had also seen on social media and showed him the messages she had shared with Derek.

  “If Brenda wants to play hardball, I have a whole team of black ops wolves at my beck and call, and they can make life difficult for her without her even knowing what hit her,” Rafe said.

  Derek knew he would too to protect one of their own. “Yeah, I was thinking of that and also of ruining Brenda’s social standing in the community. That might have even more of an impact on her.”

  “For someone like Brenda who is all about making an impression to show her in a good light, I agree. That’s what she lives for. It appears that you and Kate are headed in the right direction though.”

  Derek smiled. “I sure hope so.” Then he frowned. “But no way did I want to put her life in danger because of an ex-girlfriend.”

  “It’s happened to Kate before, but I’m sure it’s not something anyone would ever get used to,” Rafe said.

  “Oh, she hadn’t told me that.” Now Derek felt worse for having put her in that position.

  “She didn’t tell me, but she talks to all the ladies, and Jade told me what had happened. I was ready to take care of the problem people in her life, but it was a nonissue for her at that point.”

  “Good.” Because Derek was ready to do the same for Kate. “Did you want to return to the luncheon?”

  “Yeah, let’s go.”

  After their busy day was over, Derek talked to Kate until they both went to bed. He wanted this connection between them always.

  Thursday, he called Kate early before they both were busy, and throughout the day, he texted her, and she texted him just as much whenever she had a free moment before he had to leave with Rafe to return home.

  Then Derek finally called her when he was ready to leave. “Hey, honey, we’re at the airport, and we were getting ready to leave, but thunderstorms are over the area, so we may be delayed.”

  “Okay, don’t take any risks just to get home to see us.”

  “All right.” Though he felt the same as Rafe, that they wanted to see their significant others tonight if they could, to make love and enjoy the rest of the night with them.

  Chapter 23

  The next morning, Kate was getting ready to go to work, but she wanted to check in with Derek to see that he had arrived home okay. She found a text on her phone that said he’d gotten in at two in the morning. Relieved, she called him, hoping he wasn’t still sleeping because he’d arrived so late.

  “Were you still sleeping?” she asked.

  “No, I’ve been up for a little bit.”

  “I’m glad you got in okay,” she said to him.

  “Yeah, it was wild last night. We were afraid the storms would never blow out of the area and we’d be stuck there until morning. But we finally had a clearing that was supposed to last for a brief time and got the okay to take off. I texted you as soon as we got in to let you know we made it in safely.”

  “I must have been sleeping so soundly, I didn’t even hear the text notification. You could have come by. Though I’m sure you were as busy as me all day, and I know if you had come over, we wouldn’t have gotten much sleep.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you. We have a long night ahead of us what with the 1920s party, and I want to thoroughly enjoy that with you.”

  “Same with me. I’m going to let you go. I need to run to Lexi’s house to get started on our day. You probably need more sleep.”

  He chuckled. “To talk with you, I would happily give it up. I’ll text you later.”

  Which of course he did, and he had Lexi laughing every time Kate received a text that day.

  “You’re going to have to just mate him,” Lexi said.

  That was exactly what Kate planned to do.

  That night, Kate was so excited. She’d missed seeing Derek, even though they’d talked daily, several times a day, amusing Lexi when he checked in with Kate while she was working. That was one thing about working with Lexi. She didn’t mind at all.

  Tonight, Kate was wearing a gold flapper-era gown, the fringe bouncing off her legs as she walked. She also had a gold jeweled headband adorned with feathers. Her faux-pearl necklaces hung down her front between her breasts. She loved the idea of this themed dinner dance.

  She had decided tonight that she would ask Derek to mate her. She had already packed her bag with changes of clothes for the whole weekend. She wanted to stay with Derek the whole time. She wanted to mate him. But she wasn’t sure he was ready. She would just play it by ear. It really depended on how he was feeling about her and making a permanent commitment to her. But she didn’t want to presume anything. She wondered if Brenda would finally give up her quest to cause trouble for her if they announced their engagement. Kate was almost nervous about asking Derek to mate her, afraid he would turn her down. Her hands were clammy, and she wasn’t even going to ask him yet. Not until after the party. Then she was going home with him and mating him if he was agreeable.

  “You look beautiful in your flapper-era gown. I love it.”

  “You look most dapper in your dark-gray pinstriped suit. Very handsome.”

  He was wearing a black Homburg hat, a dark-gray striped suit, a silk vest, suspenders, and a white shirt. He was so cute. He was so much fun to be with. His black-and-white two-tone shoes, dark-gray leather gloves, and smart-looking walking cane finished the look.

  “Does that have a weapon?” she asked, pointing at his cane.

  Derek smiled. “Naturally, though I doubt I would ever have to use it.”

  “Well, you look really great. This is exciting. I couldn’t wait to do this. And to be with you, of course. I was surprised Lexi didn’t want to go to it because she’s usually always eager for themed parties. She just wanted to chill with Ryder, and I can understand that too.”

  “Maybe next time they have a themed dinner dance, we can convince her and Ryder to go with us.”

  “We’ll have to. How was the rest of your conference?”

  “I worried about you. The rest of the conference was boring compared to being with you. You make everything an adventure.”

  She smiled. “Well, Lexi and Ryder, and Mike too, had me eat dinner with them every night, just to make sure I remained safe. Once during the night, I had to get up to get some water because we’d had pizza for dinner and it always makes me thirsty. Anyway, I looked out the window and saw Ryder walking around the property as a wolf, keeping an eye out for anything that looked suspicious. Then he curled up to sleep on my front doorstep. I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to do that, but knowing him, he did it for his own peace of mind.”