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When Fowler found out that Amy was his mate, he ordered her around like she was a simpleton.Then, when she couldn’t take it anymore, she got her revenge in a sweet way.It was a wonder to all of them that they’d ever been able to make it work between them the way that Fowler had been acting.Now they were not only good paired mates, but he thought that they were best friends as well.And that was the kind of relationship he wanted with his mate.To be friends as well as lovers.

By the time the meeting ended, he was all right with the way things were going.He must have reassured Tabby as well because she was no longer glaring at him but smiling when he asked a question.He’d had plenty to ask her, too, since he’d gone over the paperwork.He knew about as much as she did about the plant and its profit margins over the next few years.He was actually excited about the venture now that he knew he could if she would allow it to work side by side with her if she needed him.

Waiting to talk to her after Amy did, he looked around the room at the state of affairs it was in.It needed to have an overhaul.There were also cobwebs in the corners and some dust over the light fixtures.It wasn’t gross by any means.He had a bit of dust in his apartment, too.But the carpet needed to be replaced, and a few of the tables were wobbly.Yes, the room needed a makeover.He’d talk to the—

“Did you want to talk to me?”Tabby speaking to him pulled him away from what he’d been thinking about the room.“I’m wanting to go home and go to bed if it’s all right with you.”

“I’m sorry you’re here so late.I did want to talk to you, but it can wait until you’re rested.”She told him to tell her what was going on earlier.“I came to a realization.What do you know about shifters in general?”

“A bit.We have a lot of them that work for us.”He nodded.He could smell them on her.Bear,tiger, and a wolf.“What’s your point?”

“I belong to you.I mean, we’re mates.”Nodding when she shook her head, he told her that they were.“I’m not as positive as I might have been earlier, but now that I’m standing next to you, I’m sure.Your scent calls to my other half.”

“Not that I believe you, but what sort of shifter are you?And if you tell me that you can’t discuss this with me, I’m going to smack you around like I did with my brother.”He asked her why he’d not be able to discuss it with her.“We have this one shifter that works for us, and he claims that he isn’t supposed to tell people what he is.I know what others we have working for us, but he’s so secretive about it that it makes me want to fire him.”

“Have you been around him much in the last few days?”She said that just before coming in here, she had gotten the files from him.“May I smell your hands?I can tell what he is without him knowing.”

Not only did he smell her hands but the file that she had in her hands, too.It took him two tries until he finally was able to tell her that he was nothing more than a human.

“Why would he tell me he’s a shifter then?”He said he didn’t know but asked her a couple of questions so that he might be able to tell her why he was doing that.“No, he doesn’t ask for special time off, but I’ve never seen him lift anything more heavy than a ream of paper.And he complains about that.”

“I have no idea what sort of worker he is, but I’d get rid of him for the simple reason that he’s lied to you.If you can’t trust him, then that is as good a reason as any to get him out before he does something to harm your business or you.I’m a dragon, by the way.”She nodded, then looked at him with a cocked brow.“You don’t believe me?I don’t think your dad did either.He thought it was too funny for me to be one.”

“I have no reason not to believe you, but I know nothing at all about your kind.”He told her that few people did.“I guess I can understand that as well.The less people know—don’t tell my brother Tommy.Here, of late, I don’t trust him with a lot of things going on around me.Also, I don’t really care how you feel about this, but I have a daughter.She’s my number one priority over anything else.”

“As she should be, and I will protect her like I will you.But about your brother, that’s not good.If you don’t mind me asking, what has he done to lose your trust?”She pointed out tonight for one thing and that he keeps doing things to upset the normal way of things going on at the first warehouse.“You mean the buying of the days-old fruit and the salmon?”

“One of many, yes.”He told her that he’d look into a couple of things and get back with her.“All right.But what about us?I mean, I’m not even sure there is an us, but I’m too busy to try and figure out what you want from me.”

“Nothing at all that you’re not sure you want to give me.”She looked skeptical.“Why don’t we talk more tomorrow.You’re exhausted, and I need to get some things finished up, too.I’ll be in the hotel lobby tomorrow, and the three of us can have breakfast together.All right?”

She agreed, and he followed her out.But he kept an eye on her brother.There was something off about him, and he’d figure it out for her.Tomorrow.He needed to get home, too.

Chapter 2

Earl watched his brother while he was in the warehouse.He’d come home only this morning with him, and he was talking about how he wanted the business to be run better.He couldn’t get out of him how it was going to be run better, just that he did.As far as Earl was concerned, Tommy had been let go of the company so that he could pursue his own dreams.Whatever that might be.

“Did Tabby tell you how much we made off the day-old stuff I got for nearly nothing?Then there was the fish.I didn’t know it was salmon, but she was able to sell it all off to one person.They knew they were getting a good deal too and bought it all up.”Earl asked him what that had to do with running the business better.“We could make a lot of profit off of buying and selling some of the fruits and vegetables that are sitting on the dock for too long.”

“Yes, but we make a good profit off of selling fresh too.I don’t want to be known as the man who sells old stuff when we have a business of selling good fruits.It’s called Reader’s Fresh for a reason.”Tommy said he wasn’t seeing the whole picture.“I don’t think you’re seeing anything but profit, and the little bit of profit that Tabby made off of the stuff you got was because one person bought it all.Had we had to be selling it out by a person that just happened to come by, we might well have been in the hole.”

“I sent out flyers on the websites to all the people that we work with.”He told his brother that Tabby had had to put up with calls all day with people wanting her to sort through it all and take out the good stuff.It interfered with her work.“She wouldn’t do it.She told people, our customers, that she wasn’t going to go sort through the pallets to see what was out there.That’s pretty shitty of her if you were to ask me.”

“Why didn’t you stick around and do it for her?You’re the one who bought the stuff.You should have been the one to deal with it if you were to ask me.”He pointed out that she was here.“So were you, Tommy.Why did you even do it in the first place?You know that we don’t sell old stuff.That was pretty shitty, as you said of you to drop that onto her plate when she was getting orders sorted that people pay us to do.”

He waved him off.“Well, as of two days ago, I’m in charge of this warehouse, and Tabby is in charge of the one in Ohio.Don’t do that again.I won’t allow you to go out after you bought it.If you buy shit like that, you’re going to be dealing with it.And there will be no charging things to the company again either.We still haven’t been able to get an invoice from the company you purchased that stuff from.”

“Dad said that I was off the hook for being responsible for the things that come and go here and there.But I’m still a working family member, Earl.Don’t forget it.”He asked him if he was threatening him.“I don’t think that’s the way I meant it, but if you’re going to treat me badly, I’m going to start working badly around here.”

“Go home, Tommy.”He just sat there.“I mean it.Go home and talk to Dad about what you’ve been doing here.I bet he’ll say the same thing.Not to do it anymore so that we’re not left holding the bag—or, in this case, a lot of things that we can’t get rid of before it all goes bad.”

When he finally left after sweeping paperwork to the floor, Earl cleaned up his mess and finished with the orders that were to go out tomorrow.They had to be at least a day ahead on the things going out and coming in, or they’d never get any work done.Just as he was closing the office for the day, hardly realizing that it was well after seven, he got a call from his dad.

“Not that I believe him, but Tommy told me that you ran him off when he was working today.Good for you.”He said that he had run him off, but he wasn’t working.“I didn’t think so.You’d not do that to him.He also said that he was going to go up and work with his sister.Tabby won’t put up withhim either.He’s saying some very strange things about how Tabby works.”

“He told me too that he’s not happy with the way Tabby handled the day-old stuff that he got for the warehouse.He seems to think she did him dirty by not going out and separating out the stuff for customers when they asked.I can imagine what she said to him, too.It was his mess, and she wasn’t going to go the extra mile in doing work for him.What’s with him lately?”Dad said he didn’t know, but he was starting to notice that he wasn’t working out very well.“Speaking of not working out very well, I’ve fired Shamus West.He’s been telling us that he’s a shifter since he’s been working here.He’s been lying about a lot of things about himself.And I got rid of him this morning when I came in.He was pitching a fit about how he was forever the only one that worked around here.I didn’t fire him for not being a shifter but for lying all the time.I didn’t want him in the office if I can’t trust him.”

“Good.I know that Tabby was thinking of doing the same thing to him.Good thing that Edgar told her that he was only a human.Can’t trust people to work in the office if you can’t trust them to be truthful about what they are.”Dad must have gone someplace quieter because it suddenly got quiet where he was.“I have a couple of things that I need to talk to you about.Now, I’m not blaming anyone about this, but there are over ten grand missing from the ledgers from last month.Have you seen Tommy with a lot of cash?”