Page 13 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)

LEAH

Leah was vaguely aware of Fawkes saying something as she stared at the jewelry spilling out of the pillowcase.

“What?” she asked absently.

“I said, it’s not mine.”

“Well, obviously it’s not yours. I didn’t think you owned a pair of yellow rhinestone earrings with a matching necklace. It’s really not your color.”

Leah spoke on autopilot. She was mesmerized.

She had never seen this many sparkling, gem-encrusted items together in her life.

Even knowing that a lot of it was probably glass gems or inexpensive lookalikes for pricier jewels, she couldn’t stop staring at it.

Suddenly she understood why someone might want to be a jewel thief.

She dipped a hand into the mass of glittering necklaces and bracelets, feeling fine-linked chains slip between her fingers. Some of the gems were green. Were those emeralds? She didn’t know how to tell. She had never seen a real emerald in her life.

And then she began to wake up to the meaning of finding this here. With her hands still buried in the cool, slithery, prickly mass, she looked up at Fawkes.

He was staring at the jewelry, and at her. “I don’t know how that got here,” he said.

“Really? That’s the story you’re going with?” She was almost disappointed. The least he could do was make up some kind of convincing lie.

“I’m serious. I’ve never seen any of that before.”

“Right.” Leah shook out the pillow and began scooping the heap of spoils into the empty pillowcase. “You got up this morning and when you came back, your pillow was full of stolen jewelry.”

“I know it doesn’t sound very convincing?—”

“It really doesn’t. What am I supposed to think, that housekeeping put it here? That Hester did?”

“Anyone who can break into locked rooms and steal people’s things can break into a room to put something in it,” Fawkes pointed out. “Anyway, why would I bring you back here knowing all of that was there?”

It was a reasonable point, which made her even madder.

“You weren’t planning to bring me back here in the first place.

And if I hadn’t gone headfirst into the pile of pillows, I would never have found it.

I’m the one who told you to put me on the bed.

We both know you lose your common sense when I’m naked. ”

“Hey!” Fawkes protested.

“Gimme my clothes.” Dragging the jingling pillowcase behind her—all together, the jewelry amounted to a lump the size of both her fists—she scooted to the edge of the bed.

“Leah, no, don’t leave. Where are you going with that? Are you planning to turn me in?”

“No,” she said. “Not yet. I need to think about it. Clothes!”

He’d put her clothes on the floor, and he hastily transferred the pile to the bed, then thoughtfully leaned her crutches up next to them.

This was followed by her purse. She opened it and stuffed the pillowcase inside.

Even with the purse’s capacious roominess, it barely fit and some of the case spilled out the top.

“We should photograph those,” Fawkes said.

“There is no we at the present time.” Leah hitched up her hips and scooted into her pants. “I said I need to think about this, and I meant it.”

“I did not put that there, I swear. I have no idea where it came from or why.”

“I wish I could believe that, but until I decide whether or not I believe that, I’m keeping this with me.

” Leah pulled on her shirt and slid her hips off the bed, swinging upright on a single crutch.

She hung the purse over her shoulder. “I’m not going to tell Hester yet,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “But I need to think.”

“I promise I had nothing to do with it,” Fawkes said. “But I’m going to find out who did.”

“Good.” With the rest of her clothes stuffed under her arm, including her underwear, she crutched toward the door, peeked out, and marched firmly out of his room. It wasn’t a walk of shame if no one saw her.

She went to Joy’s room, because doing a walk of shame down the hall was one thing, but crossing the parking lot and the entire campground with her panties under her arm and a purse full of stolen jewelry was something else entirely.

Joy had given her the spare key, and she found it eventually after feeling around the bottom of her purse for several nervous moments, hoping that she didn’t spill priceless jewels all over the hall.

After getting dressed properly, she turned down the bedspread to expose the white sheet and spread out the jewelry for a better look. Whatever else was going on with him, Fawkes was right about photographing the pieces, or at least figuring out what she had.

She realized about halfway through laying out the pieces that she was completely destroying any evidence that might be on them (fingerprints? DNA?). Hastily she scooped the remainder of the pile back into the pillowcase and decided to leave it like that for now.

For the rest, she took pictures with her phone.

It was a wild variety, everything from well-worn rings that didn’t look valuable in the slightest (silver and turquoise, large stones that even she could tell were probably glass, et cetera) to slim sparkling pieces that Leah could easily imagine shining at her from an ad in one of those types of magazines that advertised Rolexes and expensive colognes.

One of those might be the diamond choker Fawkes had mentioned.

Others with green stones could be the emerald necklace, or some other emerald necklace.

What on Earth was it all doing in Fawkes’s room?

For all her fantasizing about Fawkes as an international jewel thief, she couldn’t quite wrap her head around the concept.

He must be the world’s best actor to have fooled her all this time.

Was it possible the whole fumbling, losing control of his tongue in her presence thing was an act?

It had certainly distracted her. It seemed genuine, but then, it was exactly the reason why she was currently doubting that he could possibly be the thief.

If I was a thief, convincing the most suspicious person in the room that I can’t lie to save my life is exactly what I’d do.

There was the sound of a key unlocking the door.

Leah gave a sudden wild jerk of surprise, causing the bracelet she was holding to fly into the air and bounce off her forehead.

“Ow!” she yelped as she hastily began to scoop the jewelry back into the pillowcase.

She had just finished flinging it under the bed when Joy came in, looking sweaty and disgruntled.

“Oh, there you are,” she said, scowling at Leah. “What are you doing up here?”

“I needed to use your bathroom,” Leah said.

“Yeah, well, I missed you at dinner and walked out to your campsite but you weren’t there either, and nobody had seen you since rehearsals earlier. Didn’t you get my text?”

Leah had noticed a few text alerts while she was photographing jewelry, but had ignored them. “Uh, no. Sorry.”

“Next time, tell me where you’re going so I know you aren’t lost in the woods. And please answer if I text you. Did you eat at your campsite?”

“No, I was just about to go down to dinner.” Where Fawkes was likely to be.

Urgh. This was so awkward. “Joy, do you know if, uh ...” Leah hesitated.

She hated to get Joy involved in case Fawkes was innocent, but she needed someone to talk this over with.

Someone who wasn’t Fawkes. What came out, however, was “Do dragons hoard gems?”

“Huh?” Joy said, blinking.

“Hoarding. You’re married to a dragon. I thought you might know.”

“A dragon shifter ,” Joy pointed out. “And not really, not that I know of. They’re very territorial, in an instinctive kind of way. Bar gave me part of his land as a betrothal gift, and apparently that’s a very big deal for dragons. But I don’t think they hoard gold and stuff, like in folklore.”

“Hmm.” That would have been a possible explanation for the thefts. She didn’t know the shift forms of everyone in the theater company. And she also wasn’t completely sure that Fawkes might not have a second one. Maybe he was a raccoon-dragon.

“Why are you asking?” Joy asked, her eyes narrowing in that Leah, you are definitely up to something big-sister way. It was so annoying when she did that.

“No reason,” Leah said. “Just exploring a hunch. I’m gonna go eat. You want to come?”

“No, I just ate and I need to get off my feet.” Joy frowned down at Leah’s bare feet. “Speaking of which, you might want to put on shoes.”

Fawkes was not in the dining room. Neither were most of the Menagerie, as it was toward the end of the dinner service.

Leah’s opportunity to explore had definitely slipped away.

And it had been Fawkes’s idea to change the plan.

Which, Leah thought, might be because he didn’t want her snooping around.

But no, that made no sense, because if he knew the jewelry was in his room, that should be the place he’d want to keep her away from, not the theater trailers.

“I am so confused,” she said to no one in particular.

After eating, she wandered sadly out to the theater area and let herself be commandeered to run lines with Halstadt in his trailer until it was nearly dark.

The sound of voices, hammering, minor explosions, and occasional cursing echoed through the trees all evening as the crew worked late into the night getting the bugs ironed out for their opening tomorrow evening.

Leah thought about going over to help once she managed to escape Halstadt and his work ethic, but she wasn’t sure how much help she’d actually be.

She was sad, distracted, and kept thinking about Fawkes even while she was trying to do Pan’s lines with Halstadt.

The problem was, leaving aside the problem that he might or might not have been successfully lying to her, Fawkes as a jewel thief made a disturbing amount of sense.

(It was also regrettably hot.) He had all the skills; she knew that already.

He had a shift form perfectly suited to sneaking around; in fact, she already knew he used it for that exact purpose.

And she only had his word for it that he used it to snoop on the bad guys rather than being one of them.

If Fawkes was the thief, though, he certainly wasn’t the person sabotaging the set—at least, not for any reason that?—

“I said, inside the crocodile?”

“Right,” Leah exclaimed, pulling herself back to Halstadt. “I, uh—give me the line again?”

Halstadt laid down the broom he had been using in lieu of a rapier. “You’re getting tired. That’s the third cue in a row you’ve missed. Let’s call it a night.”

Leah bid him good night and went back to the hotel past the campsites and trailers, answering cheerful greetings and good-nights called to her.

She didn’t want it to be any of these people, she thought sadly.

She liked these people. But she also liked Fawkes.

Maybe more than liked Fawkes. Definitely more than liked Fawkes. He was her mate, for goodness sake.

She really needed to talk to him.

Inside the hotel, Leah went upstairs and knocked on Fawkes’s door. There was no answer. She sighed and leaned against the door.

“Fawkes? Are you in there? Are you avoiding me? I just want to talk.”

There was no answer.

Leah was about to lie down and peer under the door to see if she could get any hint of whether he was in there or not when a sudden, shrill scream tore through the upstairs hallway.