Sean Quinn stared at the shot of whiskey the bartender poured into his glass. It was shot number three. If he drank it, he’d definitely be looking for a ride home. Two he could handle, especially as long as he’d been hiding out at the Cave, but three? Nope. He’d have to call someone, and calling someone in Cambio Springs meant calling family.
It wasn’t as if the sleepy desert town had more than one taxi driver, though with the new resort opening, more cabs or ride-shares might not be a bad idea. He’d have to talk to some of the younger members of the clan—well, those who’d kept their noses clean—and suggest it.
“Ugh.” He groaned and banged his forehead on the bar.
Tracey, the bartender who was watching the Cave that night, patted his shoulder. “Family stuff?”
“Isn’t it always?” His voice was rough, no doubt from the second shot of whiskey. He reached for the third. To hell with it. He’d call one of the kids to come pick him up. It wasn’t as if younger Quinns weren’t used to scraping their elders off the floor of drinking establishments.
Nice family you got there, Quinn.
Yep. It was great. He should have never come back.
Never ever…
Sean Quinn had never fit into the isolated town of shapeshifters in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and it was impossible to blend in when you lived in Cambio Springs. Everyone knew everyone. Half the town was related to each other, and people who married or moved in knew the score. Everyone had their place.
The wolf and cat clans battled for political and financial dominance. They were the most visible citizens. Doctors, lawyers, business leaders, and teachers. They were proud and fiercely protective of their weird, eccentric little community. The small bird clan kept to themselves, the most likely members of the Springs to roam around the world, though they always returned. The bear clan, who owned the Cave, were the guardians of Cambio Springs, quiet, conservative, and rock steady.
And then there were the Quinns. Cold-blooded reptile shifters; Sean’s clan was smart but conniving. Charming troublemakers who were loyal only to themselves, the snake clan consisted of a strange mélange of reptile shifters spread over Cambio Springs and the outskirts. A few were reliable, but most fell victim to the family“inclination to get what they wanted or needed by any means necessary, which included lying, cheating, gambling, and bullying.
And then there was Sean, who desperately wanted to just go along and blend in.
He was an observer by nature. He loved watching people. Watching nature. He spoke through his camera lens, hoping to connect with those who found beauty in unexpected places. And prior to the year before, he’d managed to do that pretty well, keeping in touch with his closest childhood friends while forging his own path and traveling the world.
And then… it had all turned to shit.
The one reliable Quinn cousin left in town had moved back to take the reins of his unruly family and had promptly been murdered by an ignorant human. That meant the only semireliable one left was Sean. So when the family called, he came.
That was the rule in Cambio Springs whether you wanted to or not: if family called, you came. The clans might squabble among each other, but within each clan, loyalty was sacrosanct.
Fuck. His. Life.
A heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and Sean turned to see Oliver Campbell, one of his oldest friends and the new leader of the bear clan.
“Hey, Ollie. What’s up?”
“I heard you were here.”
“Yep.” Sean blinked to clear his gaze. “Do you know you sound like a tractor engine?”
Ollie hardly ever cracked a smile, so a slight curve of his mouth meant he thought Sean was hilarious. “A tractor engine?”
“Yeah. All rumbly and shit.” He rubbed his eyes. “Is Allie here?”
“Home with the kids.” Ollie slid onto a barstool. “Tracey called me. Said you looked like you needed someone to talk to.”
“Fuck.” Sean sighed. “Yeah, probably. I’ve got three kids in the clan suspended from school right now because they thought shifting into rattlesnakes to scare the new kid in class was a hilarious rite of passage. And now my sister is giving me shit, saying that the boy the kids shifted on was provoking the Quinn kids, calling them ‘white trash.’ Stuff like that. So I don’t know how the hell to deal with any of that. Do you?”
“Huh.” Ollie grunted. “There are three rattlesnake shifters in the same class? That seems like a lot.”
It would be. Usually the more lethal shifters were spread out unless there was some threat to the community.
“Not three in one class. Rattler wasn’t their natural form.”
A shifter’s natural form was whatever they first shifted into when they hit puberty. It was what they transformed into on full-moon nights. It“would always be their most comfortable and easiest shift.
For most shifters, variations on their natural form were possible but difficult. His friend Jena could shift into any number of raptors from her natural hawk form, but it took skill and a lot of energy. Their friend Alex could be a natural wolf or a coyote if he tried.
But among the snake clan, multiple forms were the norm. Sean’s natural form was a diamondback rattler, but he could shift into nearly any reptile he wanted. He’d tried lizards and every slithery thing imaginable. Constrictors and pythons, horned toads and water dragons. He was notorious and famous in his clan for his abilities.
Only his sister Maggie came close, but nearly every teenager in the Quinn clan learned how to shift to a rattlesnake. They were mean and they scared other shifters.
And that was gold for a Quinn kid.
Ollie asked, “So is Maggie right? Were the kids provoked?”
“Man, I don’t know. Half the time with that crew, I feel like I’m bailing water out of a sinking boat.” Sean motioned for Tracey to pour another shot in his glass. “The old man did what he could to raise us, but most all of our parents were shit. It started turning around with the younger kids, but most anyone from about twenty-five to forty is just a mess. And this shit at school isn’t helping. The principal—”
“Cat,” Ollie muttered.
“Exactly. She has no patience for the little shits, and I can’t blame her.” He downed the shot and heard himself start slurring. “And here I am, trying to hold everything together and be a parent to a“bunch of teenagers when I don’t even have my own fucking life figured out.”
Sean could never tell what was going on with Ollie. Marrying the love of his life had done nothing to soften him. He was still about as understanding as a brick wall.
“Maybe I should call Alex,” Ollie said.
“No.” Sean put his head in his hand. “I’m just… venting. I’ll be fine.” I think. “And… I should go home. I have a meeting at the high school in the morning because apparently that is a thing I do now.”
Because fuck his life.
“Need a ride?”
At least there was that. If Ollie drove him, Sean wouldn’t need to call any of the teenagers he was supposed to be setting a good example for.
“Dude,” Sean said. “If you could give me a ride, that would be—”
“Oh perfect.” Ollie hit his shoulder. “Check out who just came in. Destiny is on your side, Quinn.”
Sean turned and blinked.
She wasn’t destiny; she was disaster.
Juniper Hawkins was standing at the bar, holding a couple of bags of what looked like takeout. She’d had blue streaks yesterday, but today they’d changed to gold and red. She walked toward the bar, her steps light and her smile wide. Colorful tattoos decorated her tan arms, and her hair was pulled up into a messy bun.
She was so fucking cute he wanted to bite her.
“Sean Quinn, you still can’t hold your liquor.” Juni cocked her head at him, her smile never wavering. “Ollie, do I need to pour this one into bed?”
“If you could drop him at his place, you’d be doing me a favor.”
“No.” Sean pointed at her food. “You’re heading home. To eat.”
“It’s fine,” Juni said. “Jena and Caleb are gone, so I’m being the lazy auntie. I can drop you off. After all” —her smile turned from bright to mischievous— “we are neighbors now.”
* * *
“You can talk to me, you know.” Juni glanced across the truck cab. “I don’t bite.”
But I do.
“I’m just trying to figure out why you’re still here,” Sean said. “The feature for the magazine was done months ago.”
“And was very well-received. Rani suggested we work together more. Want to go to Costa Rica?”
God yes. “I can’t right now.” He rubbed his eyes. “And seriously, if you’re getting job offers in Costa Rica, why are you here?”
“Maybe I like this place.”
Sean snorted. “Why on earth would you like this town?”
“My brother is happy here. He wasn’t happy for a long time, you know? Our mom wasn’t the nicest to him.”
“I know how that is. He leaned against the cool window of the pickup, pressing his forehead to the glass and closing his eyes to the oncoming headlights.
“I’ve got time right now,” Juni said. “I’m in between jobs, and I’ve got a nice amount of cash tucked away. There’s really nothing else I’d rather do than hang with my brother and his new family, you know?”
“You never mentioned him before.” Sean swung his head around to look at her. “Like… before before.”
Juni’s smile was impish. “So by before before, do you mean—?”
“You know what I mean.”
“But do you mean India?” She batted her eyelashes innocently. “Or Thailand? Or did you mean Kenya, when we were staying at that lodge and there was only one tent so we—”
“I’m not talking about… I mean, yes, that before, but we’re not talking about Kenya. Or Thailand.”
“Or all the times when you completely avoided any and all personal questions and told me” —she dropped her voice— “‘Listen, Juni, this isn’t happening. We work together.’ Only it happened anyway, and you just felt really guilty about it.”
His mouth was gaping. He knew it; he just couldn’t control his mouth enough to close it.
Screw you, whiskey. This was Ollie’s fault. Somehow.
“I didn’t sleep with you,” he blurted out. Probably because of the not-controlling-his-own-mouth thing.
Her eyes flashed. “No, you did not. Didn’t you want to?”
“Of course I fucking did.”
“We were both adults, Sean. So why—?”
His laughter cut her off. “You were twenty-two, hippie girl. I was nine years older than you and we worked together.”
“And now I’m twenty-five and you’re thirty-four and we don’t work together, so what’s your baggage, Quinn?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You have no idea.”
“Fine, be secretive. Just don’t give me shit about not spilling everything about my family, okay? You sit over there being the King of Avoidance and we both know it.”
“Fine.” Sean crossed his arms. “We both have our secrets.” He had so many secrets they threatened to break his back.
“That’s right, we both do. And don’t patronize me again. I may be young, but I’ve been on my own since I was eighteen.”
It was another thing they had in common, but Sean kept his mouth shut. His desire for Juni wasn’t something he could indulge in. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them. He’d once thought that maybe one day they would be able to make something work, but…
Not anymore. Not with Sean being tied to Cambio Springs. Juni might have been parked in his hometown for a few months, but she was not the type to settle down.
She turned off the main road, then took another right after the Black Bird Café, Jena’s diner. She went south and away from the main road, out to the edge of town where Caleb and Jena’s house sat. They had a few acres stretching from the main road to a winding creek where cottonwood trees lined the banks.
Juni—in her apparent quest to drive Sean crazy—had taken the nice, fixed-up Airstream trailer behind Jena and Caleb’s house as her own while she was back in the States and figuring out what to do.
Sean was living in the trailer on the far edge of Jena and Caleb’s property near the creek. He was working on fixing it up in exchange for rent. He owned the title to two houses in town, one of which was massive, but his sister was living in that one with some of the other single Quinn girls, and Marcus’s widow and kids were living in the other. Since it was just him, Sean was camping out at Jena’s.
It had nothing to do with being near Juni. At all.
Of course it doesn’t, you masochist.
Sean would have to be blind not to miss the laser-like eyes of Caleb Gilbert, chief of Cambio Springs Police Department, new father, and Juniper Hawkins’s older half brother. It was probably only Jena’s intervention that had kept Caleb from murdering Sean already.
“So you know my baby sister, huh?”
Sean watched her from the corner of his eye.
Did he know Juni? Not as much as he wanted to.
Not nearly as much.
