No Fox to Give Read online

  No Fox to Give

  Vivienne Savage

  Domino Taylor

  No Fox to Give

  Swan Lake Mates, #1

  By Domino Taylor

  All material contained herein is Copyrighted © Lady Raven Press 2019. All rights reserved.

  * * *

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your preferred e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  Other Books by Vivienne

  About the Author

  1

  Dean Callahan knew he was in for a storm of trouble the moment he saw a sign welcoming him to Crisis, Texas.

  Who the fuck named a town Crisis?

  Praying it wasn’t foreshadowing of his untimely demise, he frowned at the yellowing grass fields, isolated storefronts, and abandoned buildings bordering the highway until they reached the town proper. The settlement wasn’t much to look at, situated within spitting distance from the Trinity River and Lake Livingston. A little green city limits sign had boasted a population of 1988 unfortunate souls doomed to a mundane life in a place with two stoplights.

  On the way down the single main road, they passed three crumbling gas stations and the smallest grocery store Dean had ever seen. An old-fashioned red sign hung above the automatic doors, declaring the business’s name: Nathan & Brothers Grocery, established 1915.

  Christ. It was obvious the owners hadn’t changed the exterior since 1915, either. He wondered if they’d have an ancient register at the checkout, too, with an annoying ding sound whenever it opened.

  “That’s where you’ll be getting your groceries for the foreseeable future. Excited yet?” his older brother asked from the driver’s seat.

  “Fuck you,” Dean replied without any real heat, because he owed the guy everything, including his life. It sounded melodramatic in his head, and he’d vowed not to say it out loud, but every word was true. If not for his big brother swooping in to the rescue, he’d be a dead man. Someone would have found his body floating in the Mississippi or another body of water—assuming his corpse was found at all.

  Hindsight was a bitch. If he’d known going home with Sarabeth—his smoking hot, trouble-magnet ex—would end with her dead and him in a knock-off of the witness protection program, he would have told her to beat it and find another dick for the night. But no, he’d been having a long dry spell and was eager for the easy lay. He hadn’t listened to his gut.

  Serves me right.

  Maybe if he’d declined her invitation, she’d have still been out on the prowl for a muscled body to warm her bed.

  What good was all that Army training when he’d just stood there, paralyzed?

  Maybe if he’d—

  No. He couldn’t blame himself for what took place that night. Numerous cops, FBI agents, and members of the DEA agreed wholeheartedly there wasn’t shit he could have done to save her. Sarabeth’s death was not his fault. Regardless, she’d been one bad decision in a string of fuck-ups that led to his older human half-brother taking care of him. It should have been the other way around, instead of Pete using his work as a federal agent and personal connections to protect him.

  “You ready for the nickel tour or do you wanna explore on your own time?”

  Dean sighed. “Hit me with it. Can’t be much to see.”

  “There really isn’t.” Pete raised a hand from the wheel, gesturing left toward a brick single-story building tucked beside a hair salon, barber, and dentist’s office. “Post office. Cops are that little building right behind them.”

  “Wow. What do they have? A police force of five?” He didn’t hide the sarcasm in his voice.

  “Six and the chief. But one only works weekends.”

  And I’m totally a dead man. “Are we not going to talk about the irony of you sending me to hide from a pack of murderers in a place called Crisis, Texas where the police department is effectively six and a half people?”

  “You’ll be fine. Crisis is about the last place I’d expect anybody to look for you. As long as you keep your head low and mind your business, police won’t be necessary.”

  “Yeah, sure. You say that now, but I hope you have your suit picked out for the funeral. Just bury me in blue, dude. It’s my color.”

  Pete grimaced. “We won’t be burying you any time soon, man. I’m telling you, there is nowhere safer than this place. Besides, the dickholes looking for you aren’t going to come here hunting for you. They think you crossed the border into Mexico.”

  “Maybe I should have.”

  His brother ignored that. “Anyway, a good friend of mine is letting you stay out in his trailer home. You technically won’t even be in Crisis.”

  Dean snickered. “Sure. But where am I going to be if I’m not going to be in…” He paused, swallowing the chortle of humor fighting to surface from his throat before continuing, “this city? Town? Village?”

  “You’re going to a subdivision beyond city limits. And yes, you were correct the second time. It’s still a town as long as it has over one thousand occupants. Crisis has got nearly two.”

  “Oh.” Nearly two thousand. Big difference.

  “You’re gonna love it. You’re right on the edge of the fucking Sam Houston State Park. Lots of open land and fresh air, and nobody’ll think twice if they see you. Do your magic thing and yiff into the woods as much as you want.”

  “I don’t yiff.”

  “Whatever. Just do fox things, mind your own business, and try to take care of this place you’ll be staying at. I told my acquaintance that you’re good with your hands.”

  “You hoing me out now, bro?”

  “You know it.” Pete gestured toward the right side of the street as they came up on a Lake Prairie Bank with two deserted drive-thru lanes tucked beside a diner. “Bank’s over there. Chugga Chugga Cafe has the best cup of coffee you can get for a buck, and the eggs ain’t bad either.”

  They turned off Main Street and crossed the train tracks, leaving behind civilization in favor of a narrow road bordered by dusty buildings from the last century. To their left, Dean saw a two-story building decorated with the silhouette of a man on a bucking horse. Sunset Cowboy Church looked like the kind of place where half the congregation dipped snuff and snuck whiskey from pocket flasks while the minister preached about eternal damnation.

  “The hell is a cowboy church?”

  “A church for cowboys,” Pete replied.

  “No, seriously. Do they ride up on horseback every week for the sermon?”

  His brother shrugged. “Maybe they ride their tractors. Safer than that death machine behind us.”

  Dean chuckled. His brother had never liked his motorcycle, and he’d had to move heaven and earth to authorize new VIN numbers, allowing Dean to hold on to it whil
e in protection. With a new paint job, it didn’t even look like his old baby.

  They pulled off the narrow two-lane road and paused in front of a wrought iron gate sporting the black outline of two swans. Their graceful, long necks formed a heart.

  Pete leaned out the window and typed in a code on the box. The gates swung open. “The code is for visitors only. Head over to the office first thing on the next business day for a clicker to let you inside.”

  “Right.”

  They’d arrived on a late Saturday afternoon, and the weather was lovely enough that there was no shortage of children playing in yards beneath sprinklers, walking dogs, playing street hockey, and even riding on their ponies. A pair of fair-haired twins bicycled past them.

  There were a lot of blond kids, actually. A disproportionate amount, ranging from a platinum shade of almost silver to white-blond. A man slid his pickup truck into the drive of a single-story ranch house. Also blond. A black woman carried groceries on one hip and a child on the other, both of them fair blonde.

  What the fuck? Had he seen her alone he’d have thought she had one hell of a Storm cosplay for Comic-Con. But after spying so many others, he blurted out, “Did you bring me to the Village of the Damned?”

  “No, jackass. Think about the name of where we are.”

  Dean stared at him. “We’re at Swan—fuck. Really, man?”

  “Hey, nobody expects you to hide a fox in a henhouse. Or in our case, a bevy of swans.”

  The shock faded as they rolled to a stop in front of a beat-up old trailer home that needed a coat of paint and some structural work. Looking at it from ground-level, Dean spotted a few missing shingles on the roof. The scraggly yard was about a month overdue for a mow, peppered with knee-high weeds and tiny yellow flowers.

  Groaning, Dean pushed a hand through his hair, dyed black to conceal his natural ginger. “How much is it going to cost me to live here?”

  “Covered.”

  “For real?” He shifted in the seat and popped the belt, ready to hop out onto the pebble drive.

  “For real. The state sets aside money for situations like this. We’ll keep you fed and comfortable. You won’t be living the life, but you won’t suffer for lack of food.”

  “I’m guessing that means there’s no liquor allowance.”

  “You’d be guessing right. Now, you ready to quit flappin’ your gums so we can get this shit into your humble abode?”

  “Let’s hit it.”

  2

  Madeleine counted the number of hours she wasted in bed staring at the ceiling or glancing at the clock on her phone because it wasn’t quite time to get up for work. No matter how much she tried to rise, her body wouldn’t comply. She’d been awake all night working to fulfill an order.

  But she’d wanted this, praying for help, begging, and even taking out multiple credit cards when the bank loans fell through. All to run her own business and learn the hard way that the life of a starving artist was quite literal. But it was all worth it when she didn’t have to wake at six in the morning to report to a school where only a handful of children appreciated her.

  Of course, she missed those talented sweethearts, but she did not miss working for the school district as their underpaid wage slave. Crisis Independent School District was at dire risk of losing its accreditation. She also did not miss providing the art supplies out of her own meager check and watching a few entitled bad eggs intentionally ruining them for other students.

  What she did miss was a reliable paycheck, benefits, and insurance. And she was a hairsbreadth away from crawling to her uncle for a loan if she didn’t pull herself out of bed to complete an enormous order.

  Fast as a debt collector seeking payments for overdue student loans, she rolled off the mattress and to her feet. While tea heated in the electric kettle, she showered and completed her bathroom routine, emerging in shorts and a thin tank top to combat the summer heat.

  Thank God for central air conditioning. She’d die without it.

  After guzzling tea and devouring a microwaved breakfast sandwich, she ducked into the pottery studio. Maddie called it a pottery studio because it made her feel fancy, but in reality, it was only an additional room constructed by her father a few years ago, containing tables for drying pottery, several shelves of glazes in a multitude of colors, hundreds of dollars in tools, and the electric kiln she’d charged to a credit card three months ago when she made the big decision to leave her teaching job at the end of the semester.

  Her future was ensconced in this room. If she failed, she’d never have the opportunity to try again unless she married a wealthy billionaire or a mythological Prince Charming with a fat bank account. She certainly couldn’t count on her wealthy mother to give her a hand.

  Maddie was the shame of her mother’s life, therefore no accomplishment, regardless of the difficulty, would ever be enough for Giselle Broussard to take pride in her only daughter. Her mother now lived in Venice with her new husband and two human sons, pretending she’d never birthed a thirty-one-year-old daughter for whom she’d done the absolute minimum when it became painfully apparent Madeleine would not be a carbon copy of her.

  These days, her mother owned an art dealership. Giselle did not create art; she purchased it. She did not appreciate art; she loved the high price a good piece demanded.

  And when Maddie had said she’d wanted to earn an art degree, Giselle laughed. Then a few months ago, she’d made another mistake by daring to share her plans for the future with her mother. That was a decision steeped in regret.

  Maddie shed her exhaustion and dumped a chunk of clay from a metal container. It hit the wheel with a satisfying slap, then she removed the plastic that kept it moist and workable. She had an order to fulfill for 150 hand-glazed coffee mugs, all identical and boring and lifeless because that was what the client wanted, and what the client paid her to make was what she had to give. The first hundred were drying on a pallet near the wall and wouldn’t be ready for glazing for a couple weeks.

  Eager to finish the initial stage of her first big order, Maddie planted her ass on the stool and started up the kick wheel. It took her roughly five to ten minutes to make one cup, and a couple minutes longer to affix its handle. Then she set them aside, getting into the rhythm of throwing one cup after the next until her right thigh was screaming with the need for a break. The spinning clay on the wheel had a sort of hypnotic rhythm to it, a tranquil quality once she was in the groove.

  This wheel was her baby, and while it was an antique any collector would pay thousands to own, she’d never give it up. Maddie had discovered it collecting dust once while out at an estate sale four years ago. She purchased it after begging her father for the cash. Then she restored it with love and tenderness. In return, it hadn’t treated her poorly. Sometimes the old ways were the best ways, and she preferred the old-fashioned kick wheel over the overpriced electric models.

  And now that Daddy was gone, it meant even more to her, because he’d refused to let her repay it from her tax refund, insisting she’d needed it, so it was hers. The wheel had been a final gift from the man she loved most.

  “Alexa, play my ‘Chill Out’ playlist.”

  “Your playlist, ‘Chill Out’, on Amazon Music.”

  And then the husky voice of Ruelle filled the room with “Madness”, the first of a four-hour long playlist she’d put together for long sculpting sessions. Long after noon, Madeleine finished. She toweled her hands off and marveled over the result of three days work. Her uncle could never say she wasn’t working hard to succeed at her new business.

  Smiling and daydreaming, she jumped a mile when a fist rapped on the door. Maddie hurried to the front of the house and stepped outside onto the porch to greet the mailwoman.

  “Hi, Susie. How’s it going?”

  “It goes.” Susie passed over a stack of envelopes and a cardboard package. “Having a good day?”

  “The best,” Maddie lied.

  “Hey, looks like
you have a neighbor moving into your uncle’s old place. Who is he?”

  “Huh?”

  Maddie glanced to her right. She’d been holed up in the art studio for so long she hadn’t noticed the glossy black Dodge Ram parked outside her uncle’s ancient trailer home. It looked new, too expensive for anyone in Crisis. “Well.”

  “Noticed them when I came up the road. Martin renting the place out?”

  “I guess so.” She squinted at the Texas plates, lips pursed. “Nobody I know from that plate. Must be a friend of—”

  The hottest guy to ever step foot in Maddie’s busted little town emerged from the trailer at a jog, loping down the three cement steps. Sweat glistened on his naked chest, gleamed across his broad shoulders, and when he picked up the next load from the bed of the truck his biceps bulged. Maddie felt her mouth dropping open, but she couldn’t will herself to look away.

  “If I were about thirty years younger,” Susie said, sighing.

  “If I were a little hotter.”

  “Girl, please. You are gorgeous.”

  “Hardly gorgeous.”

  “If you aren’t considered beautiful by today’s standards, the rest of us don’t stand a chance.” The mailwoman gave her a parting smile before making her way back to the postal service vehicle.

  Her new neighbor had a helping hand from a scrawny, fairer-skinned man clothed in T-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap. The object of her attention, however, had all the traits of a fitness model on a magazine cover.

  And he was looking right at her, while she was in the most undesirable state of all time, with her unwashed hair pinned up on her head, no bra beneath her tank top, and the tops of her plump thighs streaked with drying smears of clay.