Page 7 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)
LEAH
Leah’s hindbrain was fully unprepared for the sight of Fawkes taking off all his clothes right in front of her. It was like a direct wallop to the libido.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
Not helping, Shrew.
She wondered if she ought to politely look away, but he hadn’t asked her to, and honestly, given the way he’d complicated her life, she figured she was owed a little ogling. Most shifters weren’t very body-conscious anyway.
But most shifters weren’t built like—well, okay, most shifters probably were built like that, because they tended on the whole to be in good shape and well muscled. Still, she was riveted.
Beneath his shirt, Fawkes was lean and muscular. He had a thatch of dark chest hair and a treasure trail pointing down to what Leah realized, her cheeks heating, she was about to see as soon as he got done taking everything off.
He was also, she found out, a boxers guy.
Fawkes glanced at her and gave her a sideways smile, at which point her brain shorted out, just before sliding his boxers down his narrow hips, which did away with any remaining coherence that she had managed to hold on to.
Then, of course, he turned into a raccoon.
She had known it was coming, but somehow had managed to forget it around the time that he started unfastening his jeans.
Even remembering that the shift was the point, however, probably wouldn’t have prepared her for the mental whiplash of going from ogling a hot naked guy, to having forty pounds of rotund trash-eating omnivore drop into the middle of Fawkes’s discarded pile of clothing.
The look he gave her this time was distinctly smug before he began sniffing around the chairs.
“You jerk,” Leah said weakly. She wondered if taking a break from the clue search to go have a cold shower would be reasonable.
But she found herself caught up in watching Fawkes quest around busily, sniffing under chairs, standing up on his back legs, and eventually starting what was obviously a search grid around the set.
It was clear that he had done this kind of thing before, which was giving her a lot of unanswered questions about his exact skill set.
Abruptly Fawkes made a beeline for something and pounced on it.
Leah came over to see what it was, just as Fawkes shifted back and straightened up.
He had an object in his hand, which Leah had absolutely no interest in, as her eyes were wildly trying to find somewhere to rest that wasn’t totally ripped manflesh.
“Found this,” Fawkes said cheerfully.
Leah grabbed his pants and threw them at him. “Put these on and we’ll talk.”
Fawkes snorted and set down the object he’d found, something crumpled and silvery. “I’m not done looking yet. I just wanted to show you.”
“Is that a cigarette pack?” There was no answer from Fawkes, who had gone raccoon-shaped again and was sniffing around in a widening spiral.
“Fawkes, this isn’t really a clue. Several people in the cast and crew smoke, including Gloria, although she doesn’t want anyone to know.
Any of them could have dropped it. In fact, at a guess, I’m going to say these are probably Gloria’s and she had them stuffed into one of the props so she could have a quick smoke without anyone noticing.
As if we don’t notice anyway,” Leah muttered.
Fawkes’s only response was to scuttle up to her, swiftly drop something else at her feet, and hurry off again.
“And this is a—” She picked it up. “An empty orange soda can. Fawkes, are you bringing me trash?”
It soon became clear that this was exactly what he was doing. In short order, he brought her a crumpled receipt from an auto parts store, a candy wrapper, a cheap rhinestone from a costume necklace, and a few other items.
By this point Leah had become tired of standing, which was hard for her to do for long periods of time, and went to sit on one of the prop chairs while a small pile of trash accumulated at her feet.
Fawkes’s latest acquisition, which he hopped to her awkwardly carrying against his chest while walking on three legs, was something metallic and shiny.
Leah reached for it after Fawkes dropped it, but he hastily moved a paw in the way.
It was very strange watching a raccoon do something so deliberate, but not nearly as distracting as when he shifted back, naked and kneeling.
“Don’t touch that; there might be fingerprints. Right now the only fingerprints on it are a raccoon’s.” Fawkes shook his left hand as if it hurt. “My kingdom for an actual opposable thumb. Raccoons have hands, but not thumbs.”
“Thank you for the anatomy lesson, Dr. Doolittle.” Leah leaned over to look. “Is that a pair of scissors?”
“Shears,” Fawkes said.
“They’re probably from the costume trailer. You found them on the ground?”
“Shoved under some leaves.” Fawkes pointed up. “I’m gonna guess this is what was used to cut those ropes.”
Leah looked up into the treetops, which was the only thing preventing her from staring at a very naked Fawkes. “You’re probably right. Now can you put some pants on, please ?”
When she dared to look at him again, he was buttoning his jeans, though still distractingly stripped to the waist.
“See if you can find something to wrap around our piece of evidence.”
“Your shirt?” Leah suggested, half-jokingly.
“You’re right.” Fawkes shook out his shirt.
Leah experienced an instant in which her baser instincts, most of which were screaming at her in high-pitched shrew voices, nearly overcame her common sense: namely, the idea of Fawkes walking around shirtless all afternoon.
Then she realized the fact that the Menagerie consisted about 95% of women and gay men would result in her shrew wanting to fight people constantly, which was always exhausting.
“I have something better,” she said as Fawkes bent to collect the shears. “Here.” Delving into her purse, she took out a small snap-seal plastic bag.
Fawkes turned the bag inside-out and used it like a glove to scoop up the shears without touching them. Leah presented the purse, and he sealed the bag and put it in.
“Not to throw shade on your excellent suburban-mom preparedness skills, but what all else do you have in there?” he asked, peering curiously inside.
Leah snapped her bag shut. “The interior of my purse is not for the merely curious,” she said loftily, then let her haughty mask slip as a mischievous smile peeked out. “But I am willing to trade information if you answer a few questions yourself. Want to buy me a coffee in the hotel restaurant?”
With the increased business for the lodge, Hester now had a couple of employees, unlike the bare-bones nature of the place when Leah had first come there at Christmastime a couple of years ago.
However, they still didn’t open the restaurant for lunch, instead offering a self-serve buffet of snacks, sandwiches, and a coffee urn kept constantly full and hot.
Now regrettably re-shirted, Fawkes filled two paper coffee cups while Leah picked up a handful of muffins and sandwiches.
If Fawkes was like the other shifters she knew, shifting would have cost him energy and he’d need something to replenish his reserves.
Everything was wrapped in plastic, so she could easily slip them into her purse for transport.
“If you don’t mind a question,” Fawkes said, “how do you carry drinks? Open-topped, I mean, like a coffee cup.”
“With great care and only when I have to. Usually I put liquids into screw-top thermos bottles.” She nudged her purse with her hip. “Which I keep on hand in case of need.”
“So now I know one other thing that’s in there.”
Leah hid her smirk as she selected a table by the window. “You’re right. At this rate, you’ll have a full accounting of my bag’s contents by 2049.”
“I look forward to the challenge,” Fawkes said. He pushed a cup of coffee toward her across the table. “I forgot to ask how you take it, but I grabbed a handful of creamers and sugars.”
“That’ll do.” She unloaded her selections onto the tabletop. “I guess I didn’t ask what you wanted from the buffet, but if you’re allergic to blueberries or something, you and your two fully functional legs can go grab something else.”
Fawkes made an OK sign with his fingers and nabbed the blueberry muffin.
“If I have to ask you to repeat yourself, by the way, it’s because of my shrew,” Leah added, stirring sugar into her coffee. “Imagine having a hyperactive, sugar-addled toddler screaming in your ear at random intervals. That’s what it’s like.”
“Uh—that doesn’t sound fun.”
Hmm, put that way, she did make it sound like kind of a drag now that she ran the words back in her head. “No, it’s fine, I like it. I mean—my shrew loves things, just absolutely loves them, like on a primal basis. It makes me feel everything twice as much. Isn’t your animal like that?”
“My raccoon does love some things,” Fawkes said carefully, “but it mostly loves trash.”
Leah stifled her snort. “I’m sure it was having a great time today, then.”
“You have no idea.”
“Well, it’s nice to be able to talk to you openly about it—the shrew thing. Most of the people I work with outside of the theater are human, and I think they consider me a total space cadet. Which is fair, I am a little bit of a space cadet, but it’s not just me, it’s?—”
“The sugar-addled toddler screaming in your ear?” Fawkes asked with an incredibly sexy sideways quirk of his mouth.
EEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!
“Yes,” Leah said with all the dignity that she could muster while her shrew was, to put it simply, going out of its tiny mind.
“That is absolutely correct.” She cleared her throat and added a creamer to her coffee.
“So, cards on the table time. What exactly are you doing here at Fated Mountain Lodge, where you’re definitely not sneaking around at night? ”