Free Mind Mates (Pull of the Moon Book 2) by Mary Hughes Page B

looking.
    Doubt crept in. Worse, he still might not be interested. What then? She peeked at him, at his serious face concentrating on the road. What if, despite the best she could offer, he turned her down?
    What if his last memory of me is me making an utter ass of myself?
    Her stomach churned ice.
    Once she’d started down that path, even more worst-case scenarios occurred to her. What if this wasn’t the last time she saw him? What if she had to go back to Michigan for some reason and ran into him?
    If she’d managed to seduce him, she’d feel awkward. If he turned her down, she’d be mortified.
    Maybe she could work up to it? Find out if he might be interested under the right circumstances?
    Oh hell. If nothing else, it delayed the humiliation of him probably rejecting her.
    “So, um, Gabriel. How long are you staying in Matinsfield?”
    “Depends on how long it takes me to work out my sister’s problems.”
    Emma’s face heated. What was she thinking? He was worried about his sister. Of course he wouldn’t be interested in a vacation fling, or even a quick stop at a no-tell motel.
    She ought to be worried about her family too, her mother and brother. Since her dad died and they’d moved to Wisconsin, family dynamics were strained, but she still loved them.
    Thinking about her mother and brother made her miss the carefree days of her childhood, when the four of them lived happily together in Scottville with the then-Sharpclaw pack. When she’d been the daughter of Ezra Singer and his beloved mate, Shalla.
    Those days Emma had run wild in the nearby Manistee National Forest with her brother Elroy, secure in the knowledge that their father, despite being an iota, was a pack lieutenant and held in highest regard for his talent.
    Until he’d been killed by a new alpha cleaning house. Dickie Bloodfang.
    They lived in modern times, but alphas were still often ruled by ancient necessities, bred in. As the family of a lieutenant in the old regime, Ezra Singer’s dependents were prey for the conquering alpha and his own lieutenants. Elroy might have been killed, both Emma and Shalla might have ended up in a harem or worse.
    Her mother had escaped with Emma and her brother, and Shalla moved them back to her birth pack in Matinsfield.
    Emma shuffled aside the memory of the exact circumstances of having to flee.
    When Bruiser killed Dickie Bloodfang, the Singer family could have returned to Michigan. But Shalla and Elroy were happy in Wisconsin, and Emma didn’t think of going herself until she had to leave town to find work. But that was why she’d chosen the Michigan pack. She thought her own birth pack was safe.
    What a mistake. Her stomach churned, musing about Bruiser, about what had almost happened. What still might happen, if the alpha had friends in Wisconsin who came after her.
    “Hey Emma.” Gabriel broke into her dark thoughts. “Why can’t cats be Techie Titans?”
    She looked up, surprised to recognize the area. They were about half an hour away from town. “I don’t know. Why?”
    “They spend too much billable time playing with the mouse.”
    She smiled. Somehow he knew when she was feeling bad and said exactly the right silly thing.
    Lights flared, high beams or a monster truck headed their way. She froze until the vehicle—it was a pickup truck—passed them fast enough to kick up a buffeting wind.
    “Ass.” Shielding his eyes, Gabriel slid her a grin. “I’ve got another one. Did you hear about the multitasking operating system? It boots and crashes at the same time.”
    She laughed, then said, “Well, did I tell you that I took up cross stitching?”
    “You did?” He glanced at her, surprise flashing across his features.
    “I made a welcome sampler. It says ‘There’s no place like 127.0.0.0’.”
    He barked a laugh. “No place like home, ha. You have the same flawed sense of humor I do.”
    “It’s not a flaw. It’s a feature.”
    He rewarded her with a full belly laugh—cut