What the Flock Read online

  What the Flock

  Vivienne Savage

  Domino Taylor

  What the Flock

  Swan Lake Mates, #2

  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

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Other Books by Vivienne

  About the Author

  1

  Ellie didn’t think the line would ever end. The people flooding into her bakery were who she considered the “last call” customers, like the drunks who closed down the bar at the end of the night. The rush began around a half hour before their three o’clock closing each afternoon and didn’t stop until Glazed and Confused locked their doors.

  Right now, a family of five waited for their turn at the counter behind a young man in a gray prison guard uniform. He usually popped in at least twice a week to take doughnuts and snacks home to his children after the morning shift. To the rear of the family, two more men stepped inside, a father and son trucker team she saw on occasion, who passed by about three times a month. Ellie grinned and waved. The older man waved back, a big smile on his face. His twenty-three-year-old son was sweet on her, but way too young.

  “Crap, I’m sorry, Ellie,” Samantha said as she came hurrying back to the counter. She’d gone out for just a few minutes to take out the trash and then suddenly they were swarmed. Most likely, Sam had hung around for a few minutes to take a smoke break—Ellie smelled it on her. Some aspects of her swan maiden nature crept through to her human body.

  “No problem,” Ellie said as a car slid in front of the drive-thru window. “Get that for me?”

  “Sure.”

  As much as Ellie loved having a successful business, she really needed at least two more employees. Expanding the shop into the adjacent storefront for dining in and adding to her menu had made business explode in the recent weeks. She rang up the young man then passed him a dozen doughnuts. He had even more people waiting behind him.

  “Thanks, ma’am. You have a good afternoon.”

  “No problem, Rodney. Same to you.”

  The next customer stepped up, smiling brightly. “Have you given any thoughts to expanding your hours, too? You make the best sandwiches, Miss Ellie.” Her kids each picked buns stuffed with ham and cheese along with their choice of doughnuts.

  “It’s in the works, Maggie,” Ellie replied cheerfully. She tried to pass the woman change.

  Maggie waved it off. “Keep it.”

  The extra three dollars and change went into the tip jar on the counter. All employees split that at the end of shift.

  “Hi, Miss Ellie,” Stu greeted her warmly. “Looks like we picked a bad time to be passing through. Didn’t think we’d make it before you closed for the afternoon.”

  “Hi, guys. The usual?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Roger replied, making her inwardly wince. Man. Way to remind her that the big three-oh had come and gone. And she was feeling it lately. Widow, mother, businesswoman—responsibilities aplenty and no time to rest lately.

  “Where are you two boys headed this time?”

  Stu started to reach for his wallet, but his son beat him to it and took out a twenty. “I got it, Dad. Uh, we’re hauling to El Paso this time. Suppose we’ll be back around this way in two days.”

  “Nice!” Ellie passed a box of kolaches over the counter. Those were a popular item on the menu, sausage and melted cheese baked inside a fresh footlong bun. She took Roger’s twenty and started to unfold it, not missing the slip of paper tucked inside.

  Shit. Please don’t be a number. Please don’t—

  Ten digits in smeared ink definitely belonged to a non-local phone number. Ellie put a big smile on her face and passed him his change with the paper scrap on top of the bills, beneath the coins. “You two have a safe drive.”

  His face fell.

  Sorry, kid.

  One by one, more customers filed in. She had thirty minutes left before closing and after that any goodies behind the counter went down to one of the two local nursing homes to be donated to the residents allowed to have sweets. Sometimes she traded with the Thai restaurant a couple doors down. Nothing beat a bowl of spicy panang chicken curry after a long day.

  She counted down until closing time, pretending she wasn’t eyeballing the clock whenever she rang up someone’s cruller or chocolate eclair. The bakery operated from four in the morning until three in the afternoon, though she didn’t work the entire shift. She had employees for that, one of them a baker who alternated with her throughout the week.

  One of them came in around two to start the baking process, to warm the griddle and heat the fryer. Cops and correctional officers frequented the establishment most often as her loyal customers, followed by nurses and medical staff from the local hospital.

  The majority of them never popped in on a day off. Except for one of her favorites, and she hadn’t seen him in two days.

  Probably busy, she thought. Crisis wasn’t riddled with crime, but the few cops on the department’s payroll had plenty to do.

  “I am so ready to go home,” Sam muttered during a rare but quiet moment after sending off the last drive-thru order. Usually they were four or five cars deep until three. “So, when are we decorating this place for Valentine’s Day?”

  Ellie groaned. “Must we?”

  “What kind of Southern woman are you, that you don’t like to decorate a place for a holiday?”

  “I dunno. The kind who doesn’t have energy to put up things for a fake holiday only to take them down when there’s so much else to do?”

  “Oh. Well. What if I do it?”

  Ellie could have sagged on the spot. “Oh, would you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Just take some money out of the petty cash box and buy whatever decorations you need from the Family Dollar—”

  “El.”

  “What?”

  “Why are you so cheap?”

  “Because there are only ten days until Valentine’s.”

  “I would have bothered you about it earlier, but you were stressing about other things.”

  “Fine. Go to Walmart. Get something decent, but let’s not go crazy.”

  The girl beamed happily at Ellie. “Way better. Besides, we…” As her voice trailed, Sam’s expression changed, eyes growing wide and mouth falling open. “Oh wow.”

  “Wow what?”

  Ellie spun and saw her favorite customer approaching the glass door, all six feet of handsome man in athletic shorts and a tank that may as well have not been there, as every inch of it clung to the contours of his mus
cular torso from his pecs to the chiseled ridges of his abdomen.

  Before he could catch her gawking, Ellie reclaimed control of her face and managed not to stare at him. “Good afternoon, Chief.”

  “Hi, Chief Montgomery!” Sam piped up.

  Chief Six-Pack beelined to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. “Good afternoon, ladies.” Then he turned those gorgeous, champagne-gold eyes on Ellie and smiled. A trickle of perspiration ran down his neck and slid down his powerful chest, vanishing into the edge of his gray shirt. “Y’all got any ham and cheese left?”

  “Uh.” Ellie’s brain refused to cooperate. A computer would have had a critical error message on the screen blinking in red and white letters.

  * * *

  While confident, Chief Griffin Montgomery wasn’t so arrogant that he assumed the vacant look in Eleanor’s big blue eyes had anything to do with him. The woman worked long hours, and she was probably tired as all get-out and ready to go home.

  When she didn’t answer, Sam nudged her with an elbow and chirped, “We sure do. You want it hot?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said politely, watching color surge to Miss Pryor’s face. He imagined what it would be like to have one of those pretty pink cheeks against his stubbled jaw.

  “Sorry. Zoned out,” Eleanor babbled, meeting him at the register.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  While Sam heated his ham and cheese pastry in the microwave oven, the cute baker rang him up on the register. “Aren’t bread and pastries counterproductive to working out?”

  “It would be if I didn’t run ten miles a day.” He flashed her a warm smile.

  “If only I had the energy to run one mile after a shift here.”

  “Long day?”

  “The longest.”

  For close to five months, Griffin had visited Glazed and Confused at least three days a week, often enough a couple buttons on his uniform fastened too tight for his liking. To atone for his dietary irresponsibility—and because he wasn’t inclined to fit the stereotype of the small-town overweight Southern cop—he’d upped his jogging distance with the good intentions of working off those cream-filled delights and bottled lattes.

  The kids who worked the counter thought he was just another cop infatuated with doughnuts, but the true reason behind his frequent visits was the gorgeous owner. No matter how shitty his week had been, no matter how awful the night had gone, one smile from Eleanor Pryor made his world all right again.

  Last night had been one of those nights. His shoulder still hurt, though it was thankfully only a soft tissue injury, and would heal within a few days. If he was human, he’d be looking at an emergency room visit to have the dislocated joint set.

  Why had he been injured?

  The next time one of his men bitched about a hard shift, he’d ask them when was the last time they’d chased a home intruder full-throttle across a pasture and slipped in a fucking cow patty. He’d been seconds from getting the asshole too. No human had ever outrun him before, which meant they probably weren’t looking for a human lawbreaker.

  For the most part, the shifter community of Swan Lake minded their own business and kept their noses clean, but it wouldn’t be realistic for everyone to be law-abiding citizens.

  Ellie was smiling at him now though, pulling his mind back to the present.

  “Here you go, Chief,” Sam said as she stepped up and passed the bag with his ham and cheese bun over the counter.

  “Thanks. You ladies have a pleasant afternoon.”

  “Same to you, Chief.” Ellie’s smile widened.

  And because he’d once overheard Ellie telling her close friend that she wasn’t ready for a relationship, he said nothing else before leaving, no matter how much he wanted to know more about Crisis’s most driven businesswoman.

  2

  Madeleine returned to the living room with a pair of tall strawberry daiquiris. She placed one in Ellie’s hands and plopped into the seat beside her. Ellie sipped it gratefully, and a little too greedily. Sweet, sweet strawberry pulp and rum coursed over her tongue and down her throat. A few quick sucks of the concoction punished her with a brain freeze.

  “Ahhh!”

  “Go easy on it, lush,” Maddie chided her.

  Ellie grunted. “Are you sure that Dean is okay with watching Emma tonight?”

  “Dean loves Emma. If being our spontaneous babysitter bothered him, he’d say so. Besides, he totally benefits from giving us time to look at my amateur wedding planner ideas since he’s getting married in this ceremony too, and the most help I get from him when I ask his opinion is a, ‘I dunno, baby. It all looks good to me.’ Like, what kinda help is that?”

  Ellie laughed. “Is he not helping at all?”

  “A little. Where it counts, I guess. He helped me look at honeymoon destinations, but that’s it. Oh, and he kind of glanced over the caterer’s dinner options with me. I can always rely on his stomach.” Despite her teasing, Maddie’s eyes twinkled. Those two loved each other, and Ellie didn’t regret nudging them together, giving Dean an advantage—and advice—when it came to wooing her friend.

  Meddling was what a swan did best, after all.

  The best part about living in Crisis now, despite swearing up and down she’d never step foot in the town again, was having a home across the road from her best friend. Rejoining the flock was great and all, but Maddie had been Ellie’s anchor in stormy seas, her rock, her security blanket who welcomed her back to the town. Maddie, her sweet angel, had put the broken pieces of Ellie back together again following her husband’s senseless death at a drunk driver’s hands.

  Without Greg, life had barely felt worth living. She’d gone through a routine, of course, getting up each morning to mother Emma, but she’d been an automaton who read stories and provided food, going through each day with a hole in her heart no amount of snuggles could fill.

  Some days, those snuggles and toddler kisses were the only things that kept Ellie going, Emma’s giggles like air for starved lungs, always one breath away from suffocating beneath the increasingly heavy weight of premature loss.

  When Ellie’s parents gifted her a tract of land next to her childhood home—preferable to joining them in Florida where they enjoyed their retirement—she’d jumped on the opportunity to keep her privacy. She loved her family, but not enough to live under her mother’s roof again. Since they were renting out their home to another family member, Ellie purchased a secondhand manufactured home with part of the settlement from Greg’s death and placed it on the spacious lot on their acreage.

  A year passed before she really began to appreciate Maddie’s urging her to come to Crisis rather than moving in with her mother and father. They meant well, but recently, both alluded to it being time for her to move on and seek a new man in her life.

  That she wasn’t getting any younger.

  That she had a responsibility to her child to provide a father figure.

  As far as Ellie was concerned, no man could ever fill Greg’s shoes, and giving her daughter a father figure wasn’t excuse enough to seek love again before she was ready.

  Parents could be so pushy sometimes.

  So, too, were best friends.

  Though honestly, Madeleine had been an encouraging and patient constant in her life, urging her to find a therapist and talk out her feelings. All things that she’d disregarded while neglecting herself for those months after Greg’s death.

  Ellie sipped from her drink again then set it aside, picking up her iPad instead. She opened the album labeled “Bridal Gowns” and tapped the first photo of Maddie trying on a dress far too tight for her. It wasn’t that she was a large woman, or even a little on the plump side like Ellie, but that all swan maidens tended to be…statuesque creatures in their human form.

  “All right. Since the day isn’t getting any further away, we should probably start by narrowing down your dress selection.”

  “Right.” Maddie leaned against her and peered at t
he screen. She tapped one of the thumbnails. “What do we think about this one?”

  “We,” Ellie emphasized playfully, “think white dresses are unnecessarily traditional and boring. Doesn’t fit you. Plus your hair will be lost in it. Didn’t you like my pink dress?”

  A moment passed before Madeline replied. “I did, but I didn’t want to copy your style. Your gown was gorgeous.”

  “I don’t own the concept of pink wedding dresses, Mads. If pink is the color you want, go for it. If not, maybe a nice baby blue, or…” She closed the album and opened the Pinterest app on the iPad, fetching dresses she’d spent one sleepless night Sunday night tapping and pinning to her board. The images loaded, all of them gorgeous and different. The first was a breathtaking champagne gown decorated with accents of black lace, its train trailing over the floor. The second was a white dress with a strapless bodice, the gown trailing crimson, blue, and gold. It looked like flames. “Look at these.”

  “Whoa!”

  Ellie passed the iPad to her. “Sorry. I know we were supposed to narrow down the dresses you tried on at the bridal boutique, but—”

  “Girl, you don’t have to apologize. These are beautiful, but…aren’t some of them custom? How would I even find a dress like this if it’s handmade?”

  “Well, I happen to know a dressmaker who just opened her own little shop…and if we take Jan a list of ideas and examples indicative of your style, maybe instead of buying a dress designed for any woman, you can have one made to fit your dream wedding.”

  Maddie’s jaw worked in silence, her eyes wide. When she found her voice, she whispered, “I love you.”