Moon Glamour by Aimee Easterling (books to read to be successful TXT) 📕

my door, close enough so I could smell the fur of wolf about him. He cocked his head. “You really don’t remember me? We met less than a week ago.”

I noted the elegance of the man’s posture. The darkness of his skin.

His face, like everyone’s, told me nothing. But, yeah, this probably was the fourth member of the Samhain Shifters. The one I’d spent the least time around. The one whose name didn’t match him at all.

“Butch,” I acknowledged. “What are you doing here?”

Keys twirled around his pointer finger. “I’m here to take you to camp.”

“Come back later then. I have places to be.” The list in my head was long enough to use up most of the remaining daylight hours. I needed to hit the bank to deposit Marina’s second check and figure out how much longer it would be before the first registered in my balance. A bit of shopping after that would make sure the kids thought spring break was an adventure rather than forced boredom. Then off to Highlands to gather up my sister and Clara while (bank willing) paying ahead for the rest of the school year.

Plus, I needed a bit of time to figure out whether this really was Butch. Face blindness didn’t usually cramp my style, but I wasn’t about to invite a stranger into my apartment without being utterly certain of his identity.

“Anywhere you have to go, I’ll drive you,” Maybe-Butch said, just as I’d suspected he would. He didn’t seem the type to let small matters sidetrack him from his chosen destination. Which raised the stakes—now I’d be risking my sister’s safety on my faulty ID skills.

Meanwhile, as Maybe-Butch spoke, the keys snagged on his fingers and stopped spinning. No, not on his fingers. They’d caught on the seam of the soft leather gloves that fit his hands’ shape and color so well that I hadn’t at first realized his fingers weren’t bare.

But why wear gloves inside a heated hallway? Without a coat or a hat to suggest the weather had chilled down outside?

Phantom fingers squeezed my throat, a memory of last night’s altercation. Gloves would prevent leaving fingerprints. And Rowan might not mind sending an underling to break his word to Lupe, not if it meant regaining the upper hand....

I took a step backward into my apartment...and the stranger caught the door before I could slam it in his face.

Chapter 15

“What are you doing?” Maybe-Butch had appeared deceptively slender from a distance. Up close, I could see the strength of his arms. The cat-like grace of his movements.

Whoever this was, I’d recognize him if I ever met him again.

“Packing,” I answered, turning the excuse into truth before I spoke it. If this really was Butch, I’d need to gather up my clothes and toothbrush before moving in with his boss for the foreseeable future. “It might take awhile.”

“I’ll wait inside, if you don’t mind.”

He brushed past me. I can’t explain how exactly. It’s not as if I was a slave to politeness. But one moment I was blocking the way into my apartment, the next moment Maybe-Butch was settling down cross-legged on my couch.

Now I was the one to ask: “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” He was in full-on lotus position, middle fingers touching thumbs while hands rested atop his knees. His eyes were closed.

“Meditating?”

“Very astute.”

Dismissing me, he began to hum softly. If this was Rowan’s choice of enforcer, he was a very strange one.

Still, I did my due diligence. Turning my back on Maybe-Butch raised hairs on my neck, but soon I was alone in my bedroom. There, I dug through dirty laundry until I found the business card Tank had given me. Then I keyed his digits into my phone.

I didn’t call, though. Instead, I snuck back out to snap a surreptitious shot of the man meditating on my sofa. Maybe-Butch’s eyebrows rose even though he couldn’t have seen me through his closed eyelids. My inner wolf whispered: Run.

Instead, I shut the bedroom door, attached the photo, and texted Tank. “This is Athena. Is the photo Butch?”

Tank’s answer came quickly. As if he’d been waiting by his phone to hear from me...or was hiding his face in the screen so someone wouldn’t wince at his features. “He’s your ride for the day.” A pause then, as if he’d reread my text. “Yes, that’s Butch. Why do you ask?”

“Long story,” I typed. Then, despite myself: “I’m a bit face blind. Makes recognizing people difficult.”

And why did I tell him that? Face blindness was a weakness. I’d be working alongside Tank for the next five days. I needed to keep my guard up.

But Tank’s answer had no crow of victory about it. Instead, the text came slowly, as if he’d taken a moment to google before typing out his reply.

“Noted. Thank you for trusting me. Please let me know if I can lend a hand.”

Trust. I blinked. Did I trust Tank?

I crept back out into the hall and glanced at the meditating stranger that another near-stranger had vouched for. Then I accepted the inevitable.

“Five minutes,” I told Butch, “and I’ll be ready to go.”

BUTCH WAS ENDLESSLY patient as we worked through my long list of responsibilities. He didn’t, however, put the top up on his convertible despite the cold wind that made me snuggle deeper into my sweater. So maybe that explained the gloves?

I had enough oddities of my own that I chose not to remark upon Butch’s. And within a few hours, thoughts of his affinity for gloves faded into the background.

What didn’t fade into the background was Nick, immediately apparent as we pulled into the visitor lot at Highlands. My stepfather sat on the stone wall outside Harper’s dormitory, licking ice cream out of a triple-decker ice-cream cone as if he was a kid and this was summer instead of nearly the end of October.

I must have breathed funny at the sight because Butch asked, “Someone you