Page 12 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)

“Joy and I lost our parents when we were young,” Leah said.

She paused occasionally to concentrate on her footing, as they were currently navigating a steep stretch in the trail.

“She basically raised me.” That would explain the shovel talk, Fawkes thought.

“Okay, now that I’ve gone on endlessly about myself, what about you? Parents, siblings, et cetera.”

“None to speak of. I was a foster kid, in and out of different homes. Eventually my granddad got custody and raised me.”

That was a pleasant memory, the point when his childhood really turned around.

He remembered with warmth and fondness the farm and the old man, who had been estranged from his own now-gone children; the two of them relearning how to be a family, Fawkes young and angry, his granddad awkward and struggling with simple expressions of affection. They had done it, though, in the end.

“Oh, we’re both orphans,” Leah said. “I didn’t guess that. Is your granddad, um—still?—”

“Oh yeah, he’s fine. Getting up there, but he still lives and works on the farm where he’s spent his entire life.” Fawkes smiled. “I think he’d like you.”

“I would love to meet him,” Leah said. “The way your face gets when you talk about him?—”

Fawkes became abruptly self-conscious about his face. “What’s that mean?”

“Oh, I just meant—soft. You get soft.”

“Uh, thanks?”

Leah laughed. She stopped, turned around swiftly, and kissed him.

“You know, kissing is a great invention for smoothing over awkward moments. I can see why people came up with it.” She resumed climbing.

Over her shoulder, she said, “Joy and I don’t have any close relatives besides each other.

It has always just been us. I’m looking forward to meeting your grandpa.

So tell me more about you. What got you into being a private detective? ”

“Terminal nosiness,” Fawkes said, and was rewarded with a peal of her bright laughter.

“No, mostly I bounced around between different jobs like you did. Farm work was what I knew, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do as a career.

Granddad would’ve scraped and saved to send me to college if I wanted it, but I didn’t want that either, and I felt like I wouldn’t get along well in the military.

So I did different things, slung crates in the back of a convenience store, did night security at a warehouse, learned to type and file so I could do office work.

I ended up working for Sam as an assistant and found out that I liked it. ”

“Sam?”

“My partner in the private investigator business. At the time, he was doing the P.I. thing on the side while working full-time at an insurance company. He needed a stable income because he’s a single dad.

His daughter’s a teenager now. But he hated the work, and we ended up going into business together. It’s worked out well for both of us.”

“Huh,” Leah said. She had turned around completely on the path to watch his face, taking a step backward now and then. “You look happy when you talk about him, too. You’re close to him?”

“Well—I—I don’t think I’d—” Fawkes felt himself trying to duck out of the conversation.

He made himself duck back in. “Yeah, I guess so. He’s a fair bit older than me, about ten or fifteen years.

I guess in some ways he’s sort of the older brother I never had.

He told me I was being an idiot with you, by the way. ”

“So he gives good advice, then.” Leah’s playful teasing tone changed to a wondering one as their path broke out of the trees, and abruptly they could see what they had just climbed. “Oh, wow.”

The treetops fell away below them in a sweep of soft spring green, dotted with the darker and more austere shapes of pines and firs. Fawkes hadn’t realized they had climbed so high; he had been too distracted talking with Leah to even notice.

Although the path had meandered around somewhat, they had ended up almost directly above the lodge.

The roofs of the buildings were clearly visible, as well as the expanse of flower-dotted lawn.

They had a birds-eye view of the sprawling region of trees and campsites that the Menagerie had taken over.

“I need to sit,” Leah said, and suited actions to words by plopping herself on top of a boulder. The trees were thin here, the ground scattered with outcroppings of rocks left over from the mountain’s glaciated past.

Leah opened her purse and took out a small pair of portable birding binoculars. She scanned the view below and then held them out to Fawkes. “Want to look?”

The binoculars, though small, were powerful, and Fawkes mused that he and Sam ought to add this brand to their standard field equipment. He focused on a couple of tiny figures moving purposefully across the lawn—that was probably Mauro and one of the other employees.

He swept the binoculars over to the theater area. The tops of the trailers and the campsites made bright splashes in the woods. He found the set by the masts and trailing ropes of the pirate ship. The cast were breaking up, drifting in small groups toward the lodge.

“Looks like everyone is heading off to dinner,” Fawkes said. He glanced up at the sun and found it was lower than he’d realized. Evening wasn’t far off.

“You know,” Leah said thoughtfully, taking the binocs back and stashing them in her purse. “While everybody’s at dinner would be a great time to check around the trailers while nobody’s there. I’m not saying look in them exactly, but if anyone’s been up to anything nefarious, that’d be the time.”

“It’s both prop trailers and residential ones, right?”

“Yeah, there’s a mix. Maggie’s staying in the lodge, but she also has a trailer in the campground that’s being used as a rehearsal area. So do Halstadt and some of the others.”

“Okay, I gotta know if that’s his first or last name.”

Leah laughed. “Last. I don’t know why we all call him that. I can’t even remember his first name off the top of my head. Paul? Peter? Something like that.”

Fawkes looked down the trail, back the way they’d come. “If it takes us as long to get down as it did to climb up here, they’ll be done by the time we get there. We could go straight down the hill, it looks like.”

Leah looked torn, contemplating her crutches. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea for me. I mean, I can try, but?—”

“Dumb suggestion, sorry,” Fawkes said hastily. “The trail is fine?—”

“No, wait.” Leah glanced up at him, and her gaze turned mischievous. “Want to carry me?”

He had a sudden mental image of staggering into a tree with Leah clasped in his arms, losing his balance, and falling headfirst down the mountainside. “Based on how things went earlier, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I mean, I’d be game for it, but?—”

“I meant as a shrew.” You walnut hung in the air, unspoken.

“Oh!” Now he pictured Leah’s shrew shape, which he had only previously glimpsed in her pile of clothing during her transformations—tiny, soft, and fragile, nestled in the palm of his hand. “Yes. I’d like that.”

“You’ll also have to carry my crutches, clothes and so forth. I have a comfy shrew pocket in my purse, so I can cozy up in there while you do the work. Are you sure you don’t mind being my pack animal?”

Fawkes executed a little bow. “Ma’am, I would be honored.”

Leah rolled her eyes. “Please never call me ma’am again.” But her sense of humor glimmered at him from her eyes, especially when she stood up and began to strip.

He had already seen her naked during her previous transformations, but in those cases, she had simply dropped in and out of her clothing, not removed it piece by piece.

His mouth went dry as Leah’s lean, strong, beautiful body emerged from her clothes.

Her breasts were small and perfect, tipped with upright nipples a few shades lighter brown than her hair.

“Aren’t you supposed to turn your back?” Leah asked archly.

“Right, uh ...” He started to turn, caught a glimpse of Leah grinning, and then there was a little plop as she transformed and dropped to the ground.

Horror rushed through him at the idea of accidentally stepping on her. He put down his hand and carefully picked her up. She was just as small, soft, and captivating as he had thought she would be. Her tiny shrew feet tickled his palm.

Leah squeaked imperatively and began squirming toward the edge of his hand, a weird tickly feeling. Her purse was sitting on top of her clothes. She squeaked again, with surprising volume for something so small.

“Demanding little critter, aren’t you?”

Leah bit him, but it was a delicate nibble, not hard enough to hurt. She squeaked again.

Fawkes opened the purse, tilted his hand, and let her slide off into what he guessed was her shrew pocket. It was padded on the inside, and there was a small porthole covered with plastic so she could look out.

Feeling slightly self-consciously, he slung the purse over his shoulder with the shrew pocket on the outside.

“Is that all right?”

A muffled squeak came from the purse. Fawkes hastily opened the top to make sure she could breathe.

Two shiny black eyes looked up at him. She squeaked and nestled down in her shrew pocket, then stood up again to extract something from one corner.

Fawkes choked on a laugh when he realized that the shrew pocket had an even smaller built-in pocket for snacks.

She held a piece of granola bar in her tiny pink front paws.

Leah began to nibble on her snack, squeaked at him, and pressed her nose to the porthole.

“Right,” he muttered. Closing the top of the purse, he picked up her clothes and her crutches, and started off down the hill.

Walking straight down the hill was challenging.

He nearly twisted an ankle several times, caught the crutches on brush, and had to hold the purse securely against his side to avoid knocking Leah around too much.

But it was fast. He reached the theater group’s encampment no more than ten or fifteen minutes later, slightly out of breath, with leaves in his hair and a rip in his jeans.

In spite of most of the troupe having gone in for dinner, there were still quite a few people around, walking between trailers or sitting outside.

It was evident that a number of them planned to eat in their trailers.

Ignoring Leah’s urgent squeaking, Fawkes walked casually through the camp.

The fact that he was carrying crutches and a large purse earned him a couple of curious glances, but no more than that.

Theater people were used to weirder things, he supposed. He went in the hotel’s side entrance.

“Look,” he said quietly to the frantically squeaking purse.

“I know you want to look around, but there are just too many people. It’s never gonna work, all right?

We’d get caught in a hot minute and have to answer awkward questions.

Let’s go on up to my room so you can get dressed and make a plan B. ”

From the noises Leah was making, she might bite him seriously this time. As soon as he set the purse on the carpet in his room and opened the flap, Leah poofed out to full size, standing with one bare foot in the purse. “You had one job ?—”

She toppled, having badly misjudged how stable she was going to be. Fawkes lunged and caught her. He now found himself with a very pleasant, if upset, armful of naked Leah.

“We had a plan!” Leah said, muffled, into his chest.

“There were too many people around. I told you that.”

Leah heaved a sigh and stretched her arms up to wrap them around his neck. Now her entire naked front was plastered to him. There was nowhere to put his hands that wasn’t naked Leah, not that she seemed to mind. With her usual mercurial nature, she was now grinning up at him.

“Next time,” she said, stretching up to nip at his chin, “talk the plan over with me before changing it.”

“Fair,” Fawkes said breathlessly.

“Could you pick me up? I’m not really equipped for tiptoe.”

“Right,” he breathed, and swept her off her feet, picking her up in a bridal carry. “Where do you want—er?—”

“There’s a bed right there,” Leah said, and nipped his ear—not hard, a gentle nibble, like the way she’d mouthed at his hand in her shrew form. “If we’re not going to be snooping, there are a few other things I can think of to?—”

Fawkes covered her mouth in a kiss, and went on kissing her frantically as he stumbled toward the bed, tripped on her purse, then nearly fell over the crutches.

“Fawkes,” Leah said, breaking the kiss for the second or third time to clutch at his neck. “Do not drop me. You now have one different job, which is getting me to the bed without falling over on top of me.”

“I can’t see my feet!” he protested. “You’re in the way!”

And very, very distractingly so. Every time he tried to look down, all he saw was Leah’s breasts and the rising and falling curve of her stomach leading down to the soft brown tuft between her legs.

“Bed!” she declared, pointing.

They were both laughing by the time they toppled on the bed, kissing again, rolling over and scattering all the decorative pillows that Fawkes had pushed over to the unused side of the bed.

He was worried about accidentally hurting her, but Leah was lithe and strong, and there was nothing at all hesitant about the way she used any part of her body.

She was already trying to unbutton his shirt.

“Wait, wait, pants,” he gasped. “Shoes!”

He rolled off her to try to get his shoes off, while Leah flopped languidly on the pillows. “You have had sex before, right?”

“Of course I have,” Fawkes muttered. He kicked off his shoes, one of which narrowly missed a lamp. “Hang on?—”

Leah giggled and wriggled higher on the pillows. “I’ll help you with that, if you need any—ow!” She pushed herself up on her elbow, wincing. “What the heck do you have in your pillow?”

“My what?” Fawkes asked, in the middle of undoing his pants.

“Your pillow. Do you keep an actual gun in there? Warn a girl first!”

“There’s nothing but a pillow in my pillow,” Fawkes said, baffled, as Leah sat up and opened the pillowcase. It was one of the pillows on the side he didn’t sleep on. “I mean, unless housekeeping put something in there.”

Leah tilted the pillow and held the pillowcase open. From inside, a sparkling mass of gemstones and chains and bits of bright, winking glass slid out in a heap onto the bedcovers.

It was the missing jewelry.