Chapter 215

"Mom!" Hayden calls as he let himself into the house, he had told her he would come to visit today plus she never left the house without locking up. "Mom? I brought cookies!"

"I'm out back, baby, just give me a couple minutes!"

He heaves a sigh of relief at her confirmation, Grammy and Aunt Candy have been clamoring to see him ever since they heard the news and as a heavily pregnant Aunt Candy couldn't make the drive down, he would go over instead.

He didn't mind, it had been a while anyway. Hayden isn't sure what to expect when his mom makes her way in, he hopes she's not covered in twigs and leaves or something similar.

"I had almost forgotten to water the plants." She bustles in, looking spick and span.

Hayden frowns, he hadn't seen her doing any watering when he came in. "Watering? What plants?"

"I planted some more at the back, you should come see them some time but now we had better be on our way if we don't want to sleepover."

Hayden chooses to drive them there while Renee digs into the cookies, Aunt Candy can't have them, and neither can Grammy.

"You didn't open up the bookstore today?"

"No, although Jennie kept pouting about it." He lets his mom put a piece in his mouth.

He wasn't exaggerating about his work partner, she loved the store even more than he did and that's saying a lot.

"You should have let her." Renee says with a mouthful.

"She should get a life outside of the bookstore, I appreciate her dedication but it's been a full week and I come in the mornings to find her either at the bakery or cafe, waiting for me."

"You sound like an upset parent." Renee teases. "And if you just gave her a spare key."

"Then knowing her she'd spend her nights there, reading." Hayden rolls his eyes, tapping his ringed finger against the steering wheel.

"That sounds like a healthy past time." Renee shrugs.

"Mom!"

"Alright, fine, I know." She waves his look of disbelief away. "Try getting her engaged somewhere else, like the Pack House."

Hayden hums thoughtfully. "That could work, she adores Apple and any other pet that walks into the store, maybe I could get her to volunteer at Suzie's place."

"See that's a settled now, Aunt Candy doesn't want to miss your wedding." His mom sighs.

Hayden glances briefly at her. "I know, that should work out fine because things are all up in the air back at the Pack House."

"That deal about those Realtors?"

"Yeah, everyone's so busy there's barely any time to plan a wedding, I wouldn't want her on the road so close to her term or immediately after she gives birth." He reaches back to push his hair out of his eyes. "Virgil doesn't mind, in his opinion, we're already married."

"Mmh." Renee simply hums.

"Don't eat up all the cookies, you'll get sick." Hayden scolds when he glances down to see that she had almost gone through them all.

Renee looks betrayed. "Why give them all to me if I can't eat them all?"

"Just keep the rest for later or you'll spend the rest of the trip with your head down a paper bag."

•~•

"Why am I not the one driving?" Erin complains.

"You'll drive on the way back." Ian says simply, concentrating on the road again.

She glares at the back of his head for a while, conceding with difficulty. "Fine." She bites out. "But why did you make me stay in the backseat when the passenger seat is perfectly empty?"

"It's easier to ignore you."

Erin clenches her jaw, glaring harder, the only reason she had agreed to this team-up was because Dale had asked personally.

She huffs and looks out the window with her arms crossed, two could play that game, she would make him sit in the backseat too when it was her turn to drive.

The car lurches violently and although she had her seatbelt on she was still thrown slightly to the side.

"What the fuck? Don't you know how to drive?" She sasses him.

"Shh." He hushes her, more of that violent lurching.

"Okay, stop the fucking car, I'd rather hitch a ride than sit here in this deathtrap with you."

"You know, you curse a lot." Ian notes, balancing out the car with ease.

Erin gapes at him, the nerve of this geek but she refuses to let him ruffle her feathers, it was just a simple trip to the city.

They had the address of Old man Mason, they just had to check the place out and approach him with their case, report back to the Alphas, and then she could put this ugly road trip behind her.

"Aren't you supposed to be ignoring me?" She scoffs, crossing her arms again - she was usually a very nice person but the annoying Werewolf just made all that fly out the window.

"Shh." He hushes her again and Erin sends a death glare his way, this was one of those days that her earphones would come in downright handy but she had chosen to leave them in her office, as a work ethic and now, she was really regretting that choice.

The rest of the journey is spent in silence, Erin refusing to look anywhere but out the window side although if you asked for the life of her she couldn't recollect what she had been staring at, maybe trees, a couple houses, some people.

As annoying as Ian was, he had a lead foot because in no time they're pulling up into the fancy beach house street.

Erin isn't sure what to expect but it's definitely not a fancy fence that doesn't protect or give the huge house behind it any privacy, even worse when Ian parks the car a little way ahead so it doesn't get in the way, the gate isn't locked.

"Should this be happening?" She asks in concern, worrying at her bottom lip with how easy it was to access Old man Mason.

Ian just shrugs, unperturbed. "Don't think so but it's to our advantage." 

Erin is even more doubtful now but isn't one to chicken out especially when Ian is striding up the walkway packed with beautiful white pebbles like he owns the fucking place.

So she hurries on after him, grateful that she had gone for flats today even if it made the other secretary tower over her, the last thing she needed was her heels sinking into the holes in the ground and slowing her down.

"Strange, it doesn't look lived in." Ian murmurs when Erin finally catches up to him and she looks around the house, wondering how he came to that conclusion.

"How..." She starts to ask but someone else beats her to it.

"Elo!" A man in a wide-brimmed straw hat greets them cordially, bushy mustache streaked grey and jovial dark eyes smile out at them from a weather-beaten face. "Looking for someone?"

Erin flinches, they looked out of place in their formal attire and she just wants to tell Ian that they would probably be better off ignoring the nosy Gardener and ringing the bell.

"Yeah, we're looking for Old man Mason." Ian calls back without hesitation and Erin panics.

While what they were doing certainly wasn't illegal, it wasn't totally allowed either.

"Really, old acquaintances of his eh?" The gardener clucks sympathetically. "You might be a couple of months too late then, he passed a while ago." He says without pompadour, taking off his straw hat to show his respects.

Erin gapes slightly at the thick braids of shiny dark brown hair that falls down his shoulders at the action.

"You young pups are far from the wolf town, if he was that important to you, I can tell you one thing." He places his hat back on his head and places a well-shorn stick back in his mouth.

"Most people think the Old man didn't have any family but some foreigners did come here not long after he died, they looked French and looked awfully heartbroken about his death, might be his distant relations." He shrugs, turning around, no doubt to get back to work. "You won't be getting any answers from him anymore that's for sure."

Erin stayed quiet throughout the entire narration while Ian looked brooding.

"Let's get back." He finally says, leading the way back.

Erin had tons of questions but decides to keep her yap shut, things were about to get more complicated if Old man Mason was dead but the gardener had mentioned something about foreigners coming over so there was a good chance that his properties didn't get turned over to the government.

Erin was so lost in thought she didn't remember getting in the back seat until the car was already well on its way out of the street.

They had more pressing issues at hand than who would drive the car back to Pine Creek so she didn't complain, bringing out her pad to take down some important tidbits so she wouldn't forget them.

She also had to go through tons of celebrity pages, there was a lot of information freely given on those sites that one couldn't simply find on the net.