Chapter 19

  Jessie couldn’t believe the guy she’d dated could be that rotten. She knew he wasn’t the one for her. She’d had this sixth sense about him, that something wasn’t quite right, but when the CSF agents had looked into him, and even Flo had, no one had found anything amiss. But he would see Jessie while passing through Loveland and disappear, see her and disappear.

  He had always had good, plausible, work-related excuses about why he couldn’t see her, so she’d told herself she was just being suspicious because he had to keep leaving.

  She and Emerson sat down to have dinner with Uncle Paul and enjoy the tasty steaks he had prepared.

  “We need to tell the bears the news that Smith is the same person that Jessie was seeing at one time,” Uncle Paul said.

  Here she thought they were going to have a nice quiet meal with Emerson’s uncle, but now this business with Smith had reared its ugly head.

  Emerson agreed. “I’ll take a picture of the sketch and send it to Luke and his brother. They can share it with their sleuth and see if Barrett recognizes the man.”

  Though she wouldn’t normally approve of people texting others while they had company and were enjoying a meal, she did in this case.

  While they were waiting for confirmation one way or another with the bears, Jessie asked Paul, “So what is Robbie like?” Even though it seemed Robbie had wanted Paul to return home and not stay with her any longer, Jessie wanted to know what there was about her that must have intrigued Paul enough to go out there and stay with her.

  “She was really funny and had a ton of humorous kids’ stories to tell. She was a retired schoolteacher. I had a lot of hilarious stories to tell about guests at the resort too.” Paul shrugged. “I guess I thought that was enough. At the resort, we had our own places to return to and she was with her girlfriends too. So we didn’t spend a lot of time together alone. I joined them on the shore to cook hot dogs. They had a nightcap at my place. When I talked to Robbie about the dilemma I was in with Emerson and desperately wanting him to come home for good, she said to let things run their course, what would be would be. But I was afraid that meant Emerson wasn’t going to make it back the States alive. She has no family of her own, has never been married, so her life is made up of her retired friends. She didn’t understand what it felt like to lose a mate, a brother and sister-in-law, and only have one nephew left, whom I feared losing.”

  Jessie’s eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t help it. She always felt Paul was like her extended family and she felt she’d failed him by not having more to do with him when she wasn’t at the resort visiting.

  Paul patted her hand in a comforting way. “Not only did I want to ensure Emerson was still with me into my old age, I wanted a mate for companionship. Robbie wasn’t really interested. She was set in her ways and she didn’t like me disturbing her routine. I wanted to go to the park. She wasn’t interested. Too hot, too buggy. So I went by myself. I’ve been doing that for years. I wanted someone who would enjoy doing things like that with me again. The last straw for her was when I wanted to bake cookies for Christmas. I was going to do all the work, all the cleanup and then give them to her friends from us. I thought it would be a really nice gesture and would give me something to do while I did something that felt familiar and I enjoyed doing. But she was really mad at me. You don’t know what a relief it was when you called.”

  Jessie laughed. “For both of you, it sounds like.”

  “Yeah, she couldn’t wait to get me out of there. She didn’t even drive me to the airport. She hired a taxi, just so I wouldn’t change my mind—I think.”

  “Or she wouldn’t change hers? Have a change of heart, realizing how good you really were for her?” Jessie asked.

  Smiling, Paul shook his head. “No. She was ready to celebrate when I was leaving. I overheard her talking to one of her girlfriends.”

  “Well, there are sure to be some other she-cats who would delight in doing some of the things you love to do,” Jessie said. “Even if you don’t find a woman that you can’t live without, you could have fun dating in any event.”

  “That’s true.”

  Then Emerson got a text and he picked up his phone. “That’s him, Barrett said of the picture you sketched. He wants to know exactly where you met him and when, and when and where he came to see you, Jessie, after that first meetup in case we can pinpoint an area he might be from. For certain, Sharp and Smith and Samuel are one and the same man.”

  Jessie felt her skin chill. She really hadn’t wanted to go out with bad guys. They just seemed interesting. Of course all of them had been consummate liars and she’d only known they were rogues after the fact. Now she realized Smith had duped them all. Flo, the CSF agents, Emerson and his team, and Barrett and his. She still didn’t feel any better about it. What if she had raised her concerns earlier on with her family? What if by not saying anything about her gut feelings—since she hadn’t seen the guy in six months—someone with investigative skills might have discovered the truth and the men who had been attacked on Emerson’s team wouldn’t have been?

  Emerson rubbed her back. “Hey, it’s not your fault. I already know you well enough to see that you think it is. This guy fooled us all. But we’re having your delightful cake next, unless Uncle Paul doesn’t want to share any of it, and then we can sit down to figure out what you might know about Smith.”

  Paul smiled. “Of course everyone can have a slice, or two. It’s all about sharing that makes it extra special good. And I agree with Emerson. What Smith did was despicable, and we’ll catch him and put an end to his crimes. You had nothing to do with any of this. Now, let’s have some of that cake.”

  Once Paul carved nice big slices for each of them, they sat down to eat it with glasses of milk. “So if I don’t come home for a while because I’m visiting with some new lady friends down in Yuma Town, are you sure you won’t miss me too terribly much?”

  Jessie sighed. “You will be missed, but we’ll feel much better about it if we know you’re having a good time.”

  “I will be. Besides, I suspect you’re going to need some newly-mated private time together.” Paul cut off another slice of cake. “This cake is so good.”

  “You always love them,” Jessie said. “I couldn’t let you down after Emerson ate your other one.”

  Smiling, Emerson shook his head. “Somehow I seem to remember one pretty she-cat eating some of it and offering more to three male cats.”

  “Yeah. They could smell the cake and I couldn’t let them think we weren’t being gracious enough. As for me, I couldn’t resist eating some myself.”

  “You should have seen me eyeing those pieces they were taking,” Emerson said.

  Paul laughed. “I was just lucky you weren’t around when Jessie was here before, bringing double-chocolate fudge brownies and other treats.”

  “You didn’t tell me that, or that you were keeping Jessie all to yourself,” Emerson said.

  Jessie was so glad Emerson and his uncle had reunited and would be together for Christmas. They really did sound like a father and his son.

  Once they finished eating and cleaning up, though both Emerson and Paul insisted Jessie go off and work on her book, as if she could while the guys were talking to each other in the kitchen—and that cheered her, she finally left them in peace and let them clean up the kitchen. She opened her laptop and checked her emails first and got a big surprise.

  Hey, Jessie, I know it’s been some time, but I was going to be in Loveland around the first of the year and I thought we could get together if you think you’ll have some time. I know you’re probably working on another photo book so you might be off on jaunts of your own. Just checking in. Samuel.

  “He wrote me an email!” Jessie hollered. “Samuel. Smith. Sharp. Whatever his name is!”

  Emerson stalked into the living room to check out her email, his uncle moving in on the other side of her. Sitting beside Jessie on the couch, Emerson got on his phone right away. “Hey, Luke, I need Barrett’s number so I can call him and keep him informed on what’s happening with Smith…okay, thanks. Jessie just got an email from him. Yeah. Okay. I’ll forward it to you.”

  Emerson gave Jessie the email addresses of both Barrett and Luke and she forwarded the email to both email addresses. “Okay, hold on.” He looked over at Jessie. “Do you usually answer him right away?”

  “If I’m not in the middle of something. What do you want me to say?”

  Emerson put his phone on speaker and said to Luke, “He wants to meet with her after the first of the year. Of course, we want him to meet with her earlier, or at least he believes he will be, but we want to end this now before he does any more damage to people who trust him.”

  “Can you lure him up here? Not Loveland?” Luke asked.

  “What about Yuma Town? They have their own cougar force there—sheriff, deputy sheriffs, the CSF agents? He wouldn’t stand a chance of getting away if he was down there,” Jessie said. “We could try and get him down there before Christmas.”

  “You don’t think he’d shy away from coming to a place where your family will be and he might feel like it’s a case of you wanting him to meet your family?” Barrett asked, and they realized he and Luke were on speakerphone also.

  “Okay, after Christmas then? I could say that my family was returning to Loveland, but he and I could get together for a couple of days after and stay at the ranch.”

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid it might scare him off, or he might just plain say he can only come the one time, sometime after the new year begins,” Barrett said.

  “Or it will sound like she’s eager to see him early and that might boost his ego,” Emerson said.

  “She can ask,” Luke said. “If it were me, I would give it a try.”

  “Yeah, I would too,” Nathan said.

  She should have known both brothers would be together.

  “What exactly did you want me to say?” Jessie asked.

  “You need to sound like it’s you—the way you would say things,” Barrett said. “Ask if he can come a little earlier than that. That you’ve missed him, or however you would put it.”

  “I wasn’t happy with him the last time I saw him. He’d been seeing another she-cat and denied it, but he didn’t have a good reason for why he smelled of one.”

  “Then he must have ditched her and wants to get together with you again,” Barrett said.

  “Okay. Here goes nothing.” She typed up a response to Samuel. “I’m so glad to hear from you, Samuel. Merry Christmas! I won’t be in Loveland, but I’ll be in Yuma Town, Colorado. Have you ever been there? It’s just lovely this time of year. Could you meet me there? Maybe right after Christmas? My family will have returned to Loveland so you won’t get to meet them, but we could have fun there. Unless you could come before Christmas, that would be great. I mean, well, during Christmas, if you want to, but it gets kind of crazy with family being all together. I can’t wait to see you. Just let me know when we can get together.”

  Emerson scoffed. She reached over and squeezed his hand and smiled. She was ready to take her hunky cougar to the cabin and make love to him, but she hadn’t wanted to leave Paul alone so soon after he arrived tonight. Maybe they could go for a cougar run in the woods first.

  Since she didn’t get an immediate response from Samuel yet, she forwarded her email that she’d sent to him to Barrett.

  Everyone remained quiet. Come on, come on. She didn’t want to sit at her laptop all night waiting for a response, but she didn’t want to miss his response either or she would be thinking about it all night.

  No response still.

  “Hey, let’s go for a cougar run. Maybe by the time we return from that, Samuel will have answered my email.” She was hoping like crazy she hadn’t spooked him somehow, that she’d tipped him off that something wasn’t right. Maybe appearing to eager to meet up with him when she’d been angry with him the last time. Or maybe he was just worried that she was looking to have him meet with her family, thinking they should tie the knot, or something. Some women could be so forgiving to rats. Not her, but he might not suspect that of her.

  “Okay. We’re going for a run. We’ll get back with you when we return, if we have an email from him,” Emerson told the bears.

  “Did you want to run on your own? Just the two of you? I could watch for an email from Smith and forward it to the bears, if he sends one,” Paul said.

  “No way. You need to come running with us,” Jessie said. “We can run all over the place out at the ranch too in Yuma Town, but we want to run with you here also.”

  “Okay, Fine. I was hoping you would convince me. I need to stretch my legs after that flight,” Paul said.

  Before long, the three of them had stripped and shifted and were running together through the woods in the direction of the craft store, and she thought of the ornament he had ordered that Emerson had bought for her. She needed to thank Uncle Paul for it. She had never run with him as a cougar before. She didn’t want to wear him out, and she was afraid he would feel the need to show off to keep up. So she did side trips, like when she was on a long human hike with her parents and they needed a rest. She would stop to photograph wildlife and nature. She couldn’t do that as a cougar, but instead, she leapt into trees and back down, just playing.

  She swore Emerson would have laughed his head off if he could have, he was so amused. Uncle Paul appeared to be also. She was glad she could entertain them. Though when she was on the ground again, she chased Emerson’s tail and had him going in circles before he just tackled her. She growled at him in playful fun. She loved him for having a sense of humor and that he could be playful like she was. When he had been so dark and moody when she first met him, she had thought he wasn’t the one for her, though she had thought it might have been due to his losing his uncle. She was so glad Uncle Paul was still here and they could enjoy this with him.

  She licked at Emerson’s muzzle and he licked hers back while Uncle Paul continued to walk, as if to give them some time together on their own. They quickly rejoined him and licked his face in greeting, cheering him. She was glad he was happy to be home, though she still wanted to find a mate for him that he loved. Would his deceased mate finally move on then? Jessie hoped so.

  Then she wondered what they were going to do about everyone who believed he was dead. They had to tell the family doctor, at the very least. Who else had believed he was gone? The owner of the craft store.

  She sighed. That was the trouble with telling fibs. When he tried to tell them why he was really still alive, he would have to make up a new lie, because telling everyone he had done it just to protect his nephew from the job he was doing and getting into the business of matchmaking probably wouldn’t fly. She hoped he wouldn’t lose any friends over it. Though probably most everyone would be thrilled to learn he was alive and well.

  She and Emerson raced each other then, and he ran so far ahead of her, probably to show her that he could win, even if she beat him at the lighthouse park stairs run, just because she outmaneuvered him, which she thought was funny. But when she came to the end of his tracks, she immediately looked up at a tree and saw him sitting on one of its branches, waving his long tail back and forth.

  She smiled. She loved him and jumped into the tree to lick his face. He licked hers too and nuzzled her face.

  Then they hopped down and ran off to meet up with Uncle Paul somewhere on the trail behind them, but they couldn’t find him. They found his paw prints had ended at…they glanced up at a pile of rocks and there he was, crouched to pounce. Before Emerson could jump up to stop him, Uncle Paul landed on Emerson, and they rolled around in the snow, playing.

  She wanted to laugh, take a video and pictures, they were so cute. Then they got up out of the snow, their fur covered with it, and shook off. She was glad Paul had played the ambush game with Emerson too. Paul was still just a kid at heart, and she didn’t want him to feel he couldn’t play with them also.

  Then she nuzzled Paul and though she wanted to race Emerson back to the resort, they walked back with him so he wouldn’t feel left out.

  Chapter 20

  When they returned to the resort from the run, Paul headed to his house and Jessie and Emerson returned to the cabin to dress. If they had been alone, they would have skipped dressing and gone straight to bed. He hadn’t had this much fun with his uncle in ages. He never had expected him to ambush him on the cougar run, which had made it all the more fun.

  Jessie put on her hot pink pajamas and her robe and slippers, then checked her phone to see her emails. “Smith hasn’t responded yet. I know you want to talk to your uncle and then you can join me later. You two need to talk. And I’m going to make a list of the times and places I met up with Smith.”

  “Yeah, we do. Thanks for understanding. And great on making the list.” He frowned at her. “Did you see him a lot?” Emerson realized as soon as he asked the question, he sounded suspiciously jealous. He hadn’t meant to, but he did wonder just how many times she went out with him if she couldn’t just tell them already offhand how many times and where it had been. He regretted asking her right away as her lips parted, but then she smiled, a twinkle in her beautiful eyes.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “Just a few times. Maybe five and they were brief. He was always off on a job. He said he was an undercover agent, and he couldn’t tell me what it was all about. I didn’t ask him more than that because I knew it could be important to keep the secret if he was working in dangerous environments. I don’t recall the exact days I saw him. I’ve seen him on and off for the last couple of years. I could guess, but it would be better for me to go through my text messages or emails and see when he contacted me, don’t you think? Bad data can be worse than no data.”