Chapter One

JEFFREY FARKAS FINISHED POURING a beer for one of his regulars, Gilbert Carol.

The bar, Wolf 's Moon Bar and Grill, was Jeffrey's pride and joy. He owned and operated it. The place catered to a lot of shifters like Gilbert, which was no real surprise, seeing as how Jeffrey was a wolf-shifter himself.

Like attracted like.

That had always been the way of it when it came to supernaturals and always would be. It was comforting being around others who were like him. And there was something to be said for safety in numbers. Besides, other species had their own hangouts around town, and while they did get the occasional straggler, nearly all were welcome.

There were exceptions to that, as noted by the table full of slayers drinking up near the entrance of the bar. They were only there to start shit, and everyone knew it.

Two nights back, one of the younger wolf-pack males had gotten himself into a spot of trouble a town over. He'd tied on a few too many and ended up in a fight outside a bowling alley. The man he'd traded blows with happened to be a slayer, and he hadn't taken kindly to getting his backside handed to him.

Jeffrey, on the other hand, found great amusement in it all. But he knew the second he'd gotten the call about it the slayers would be an issue. They weren't exactly known for being the forgive-and- forget kind.

And here they were, making themselves known in his place of business. It wasn't as if the town didn't have plenty of other watering holes for them to choose from. Ones they'd be welcomed at, rather than stick out like sore thumbs. Hell, the slayers even had their own bar. One that catered to their kind and was run by a retired slayer, or hunter, depending on who you asked for clarification of their job description or life calling.

They weren't at Jeffrey's establishment to drink and relax. They were there to make a point and provoke an altercation.

Sitting in Wolf 's Moon Bar and Grill was the equivalent to them throwing down the gauntlet and issuing a direct challenge to Jeffrey—the pack alpha. Wasn't the first time their leader, Elis Van Helsing, and he had gone head to head. And it wouldn't be the last.

The two had a long-standing history of pissing off one another to the point fights broke out. It was sort of their thing. And it was why they often found themselves seated before the Council of Elders, getting a verbal lashing and being put on the supernatural version of probation.

By this point, Jeffrey had lost count of the number of times he'd had to go before the council because of run-ins with Elis and his people.

Worth it.

He'd gladly accept any punishment the Elders wanted to hand out if it meant he could go a few rounds with Elis or his bestie, Kellan Harker. Both were assholes extraordinaire. Where one went, the other was sure to follow.

It was a case of the asshole leading the asshole.

Such was the case now.

There was something about Kellan, in particular, that bothered Jeffrey. Part of it was how much the guy smelled like a wolf. That could be easily explained if he had dogs for pets. But still, there was something about him that always left Jeffrey's wolf restless. It was as if his wolf was expecting to be challenged.

That was absurd. Kellan couldn't challenge him for pack leader because the man wasn't a shifter. He'd come onto the scene right before high school graduation and had been a thorn in Jeffrey's side ever since.

Kellan currently sat next to Elis in a show of solidarity. He was tapping on the table while his leg shook, as if he had nervous energy he needed to burn.

As Jeffrey stared over at them, Kellan lifted his bottle of beer and his middle finger. He then grinned before taking a swig.

Jeffrey's wolf stirred within him, wanting to be allowed out to play a fun game of eat-the-asshole- slayer and his equally assholey buddy.

He tempered the wolf down. It took some inner coaxing, but it finally paid off. The urge to shift forms and eat the men subsided, at least for now.

If Maria, the head of the Council of Elders, could see him now. She might just be proud of him. She was always harping on how he had to hold himself to a higher standard. He had to set an example. It was up to him to follow the very rules he was expected to enforce.

Blah, blah, suck-all-the-fun-out-of-the-room talk if you asked him.

But he got her drift.

Grimm Cove was a different kind of town. It was one where supernaturals and anything non- human seemed to congregate. Jeffrey wasn't sure of the hows or whys. It had simply always been that way. And while supernaturals were everywhere, Grimm Cove seemed to have an abnormally high ratio of them.

When Jeffrey had been in the military, he'd seen the world, going to places he'd never dreamed of going. While a number of the locations were spots that he never again wanted to have to visit, some had been nice. They'd even had groupings of supernaturals. But none had been like home.

Like Grimm Cove.

He'd been born and raised in the South Carolina town. His father had been the local wolf- pack alpha, and when he'd stepped down, that title and responsibility had passed to Jeffrey. The men in his family had an age-old tradition of doing what was expected of them.

As pack alpha, Jeffrey was the man in charge, at least in matters concerning wolf-shifters. They far outnumbered the other kinds of shifters in the area. His pack was the largest in the state, which was a source of pride for them. Jeffrey was the alpha in the state the others turned to when something major came up that needed to be handled, or when crap hit the fan.

It also meant he had to deal with assholes like the slayers.

"Order up," said Robbie Helens, the bar's current short-order cook, keeping Jeffrey from spiraling more over the slayers in his bar.

Robbie's brother Ryan picked then to enter the bar, and he gave a small wave in the direction of Robbie. Ryan's hair was wet, and he smelled heavy of soap, even from a distance, indicating he'd just showered and come straight over to the bar.

Stella, one of the bar's waitresses, headed for the kitchen pass-through window just as Robbie rang the small bell on the metal counter. She groaned. "You totally saw me coming already."

Robbie peered through the pass-through, grinning. "I did. But I know the bell annoys you." He then proceeded to ding the bell several more times, laughing as he did.

Stella grunted as she loaded the order of burgers and fries onto a serving tray. "One of these days I'm gonna shove that bell where the sun don't shine."

"Looking forward to it," teased Robbie. "But when you're done, can I shove something up your—"

"Hey now," warned Jeffrey.

Stella lifted a hand. "I've got this."

Ryan chuckled as he took a seat at the bar. "Careful, brother, she's likely to take a chunk out of your hide."

True story, considering Stella was also a wolf- shifter. She was capable of doing a partial shift and it just so happened she could do so with her hands. Never fun to have a woman coming at you with dagger-sharp nails.

"Damn straight," she added and then growled lightly.

"Carry on," said Jeffrey, knowing better than to get in her path when she was in a mood.

"Got a feeling she'd be worth the trouble," added Robbie loudly from the kitchen. "So, about me shoving something up your backside?"

The look she shot Robbie was one that threatened vital parts of his anatomy without saying a word.

He put his hands up. "What? Honest question."

"Get your mind out of the gutter, Robbie," she said, this time smiling. "And if you're a good enough boy, maybe."

Jeffrey just shook his head at their antics. It was like he was privy to some bizarre mating ritual. One minute he was worried Stella might throw a beer bottle at Robbie and the next he was concerned he might have to usher everyone out of the bar to give the pair alone time.

Such had been the way of it since Robbie had been hired on as a cook. Jeffrey would be stunned if they weren't a hot item by the end of spring. The sexual tension between them was thick enough to choke on. There was a pool going on when they'd finally do the deed.

Jeffrey had a few bucks tied up in it all.

"What month did you pick for them to finally do the horizontal bop?" asked Gilbert, who was camped at the end of the bar on "his" stool. For his birthday the year prior, Jeffrey and some of his close friends had gotten Gilbert a shiny gold nameplate for it and everything. He lifted his beer, glancing in Stella's direction as she carried the tray of food to the table up near the front.

Jeffrey snorted and set about pouring Ryan a beer, already knowing what the man wanted. "Next month. You?"

"This one," said Gilbert.

Ryan guffawed and took his beer. "Gilbert might win."

"Maybe," added Jeffrey with an incline of his head.

Gilbert's gaze met his. "You know, people are taking bets on when you'll finally decide to hang your hat on a permanent hook."

Jeffrey lifted a brow. "Meaning when I'll get married because the odds of me finding my mate at my age are slim to none?"

Shifters, like some other species of supernaturals, were said to have a perfect match—a mate— someone who was the other half of their heart and soul.

At least that was what he'd been told. Sure, he knew his parents were mates, and he knew other mated couples, but they all seemed to be older than him—save one. And they'd been mated a long time. Most had met their mates years ago, some in their teens or before.

His best friend, Brett Kasper, had met his mate when he was only seventeen and she was fifteen. Brett and Poppy didn't get their fairytale ending mainly because Brett was a giant chicken shit who blew his chance with her.

Now he pretty much lurked like some creeper, longing for a woman he couldn't have because she'd gotten married and started a family with another man. A very human man. If that didn't make the kick to the balls all the worse.

Watching Brett pine for a woman for over twenty years was very sobering, and not something Jeffrey wanted to experience for himself. Seeing Brett live it was pathetic enough.

If Fate was on his side—which Jeffrey was inclined to believe was the case, seeing as how it had not put his mate in front of him in forty-two years—then he'd just keep on living the high life as a bachelor. He could toss back a beer or two, eat his fill of greasy cheeseburgers, and sleep with whomever he wanted.

"Yes, I mean married, not mated," said Gilbert, yanking Jeffrey from his thoughts. "Seeing as how you won't get a choice in the matter if your mate walks through the door."

The door opened, and in walked Noel Lawson, a were-bear who drove a truck for a living. He'd not seen a razor in a number of years and had a beard that any member of ZZ Top would have been slightly envious of. Noel had graduated high school with Jeffrey's younger sister.

Ryan laughed hard. "Your face! You know you were secretly worried when the door opened that Fate was dropping your mate on your lap."

It's true, he was.

"Unless hairy truckers are your thing, you're safe," said Ryan, still laughing.

"You never know," added Jeffrey with a wink.

Gilbert grinned. "Notice you avoided answering my question on when you'll get married."

"A quarter to never," stated Jeffrey. It was rare to find your mate as a supernatural, and even rarer to find someone who wasn't your mate, but whom you had strong feelings for, and marry them the way humans did. Doing so meant each person in the relationship was running the risk of meeting their actual mate one day. It's why it was rarely done.

He knew a guy who had done it. The guy had thought the woman was his mate, only to learn later that magik had been used to fool his senses. A child came of the union, which was nearly unheard of, considering the pairing wasn't between a mated couple, but it was what it was.

Gilbert set his glass down and wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. "Never say never, Farkas. A woman could always blow into town any day now and knock you off your feet. Could happen."

"Highly unlikely," said Jeffrey with a shake of his head. Gilbert was starting to sound like Jeffrey's mother, who was always after him to go out into the world and find his mate. "They'd have to come in with hurricane-force winds to be able to possibly budge me."

With a laugh, Gilbert nodded. "More like a tornado. A hurricane has more lead and prep time. You need to be caught off-guard."

Jeffrey laughed. "I'll keep one eye on the forecast. If I see the threat of inclement weather, I'm going to hide in my cabin and not come out until the coast is clear."

Ryan lifted his chin slightly, giving a quick glance in Gilbert's direction.

It was easy to see something was on his mind.

"You can talk in front of Gilbert," said Jeffrey.

Gilbert might not be pack but he was trustworthy. Though Jeffrey would cut him off as far as beer soon, like he always did, and see to it Gilbert got home safe and sound. Gilbert seemed to think salvation could be found at the bottom of a bottle. While alcohol was great at numbing life's pain, it was shit at actually fixing the root of the problem. And it was a slippery slope. One that many went down but couldn't find their way back from.

Ryan cleared his throat. "I had patrol duty this evening after work. My section was the woods out near the Proctor House."

Jeffrey stiffened as his pack mate mentioned the woods. "Tell me another body wasn't found."

The town of Grimm Cove had seen a rash of unsolved murders in the last few months; tensions among the various supernatural groups had reached an all-time high. If the murders continued, human authorities would come poking their noses around where they didn't belong. There was a higher-than-likely chance that in doing so, they'd discover a truth Grimm Cove didn't want out there.

Part of Ryan's pack duties were to help with protection, and that included assisting wherever he might be needed. Right now, it was all hands on deck as the pack helped patrol the town, hoping to head off any more murders or body dumps.

Gilbert began to squirm on his barstool, looking uncomfortable with the topic.

Ryan shook his head. "No. Well, maybe, but not by me and not that I've heard about."

"Good," said Jeffrey, meaning it. Already, two pack mates had happened upon bodies. They'd done the right thing, going straight for pack help. He didn't need any more of his wolves involved if he could help it. "What's up?"

"I don't know," said Ryan before taking a drink of his beer. "Maybe nothing, but there was something different about the area near the old caves. Seemed darker than it should be. Gave me the willies too. Anyone else mention it?"

"No, but I'll let Brett know just in case," he said, making a mental note to tell his best friend, who happened to be the chief of police and a fellow pack mate.

"Did you smell anything?" asked Gilbert, perking slightly. "Anything sweet maybe?"

"Nothing sweet, but there was something," confessed Ryan.

Jeffrey watched him closely. "What was it?"

"Nothing," said Ryan.

"I'm not following," replied Jeffrey.

"I didn't smell anything," repeated Ryan. "Like nothing. Not the woods, not the wet leaves, nothing. In that area, there was an absence of scents and sounds. It was eerie…or it was my imagination running away on me. Normally I'd have Robbie with me, but he's working so much here now, I barely see him. Not that I'm complaining. This place is good for him."

"Do me a favor and don't go back out to that area in the woods unless another pack mate is with you," said Jeffrey. "Might be nothing, but if it's something…"

"Understood," said Ryan, tapping the bar top. "I need to hit the head."

"Want chili?" asked Robbie from the kitchen pass-through loudly, looking out at his brother.

"Yep," said Ryan as he went in the direction of the restroom.

"Got yourself a good cook there," said Gilbert with a nod to the opening in the wall that allowed food to be passed from the kitchen to the outer bar area.

"People are loving his food," said Jeffrey. "Tried to offer him the position of manager here but he didn't want it. Seems to enjoy cooking."

"He's doing better then, since he got back?" asked Gilbert.

Jeffrey didn't like to discuss the personal business of his pack with non-pack members, but Gilbert and Robbie had a strange friendship. Though Gilbert had Robbie by a number of years, the two got along well, and Jeffrey knew Robbie often paid Gilbert's cabin a visit whenever the weather got bad, just to be sure the man didn't need anything.

And Gilbert was right. Robbie was doing better than he had been after he'd first gotten out of the military.

"Yeah, things are starting to look up for him," said Jeffrey.

Robbie had suffered something of a setback in the last few months when it came to controlling his wolf side. No one knew how or why things had gotten out of hand, but they had. Jeffrey suspected it might have something to do with his time serving overseas. It's why Jeffrey had reached out to a few of his friends who were trained to help servicemen and women with adjusting back to civilian life. They were also supernaturals, so they understood all the issues Robbie faced.

Robbie was a trusted pack member and held a pretty high ranking. The spot was in jeopardy if he couldn't get his shifter side back under control. For the time being, he was sticking close to Jeffrey, and that meant taking on a job as a cook at the bar. Turns out, the guy had a real way with short orders and was especially gifted when it came to pizza making. He'd been busy instructing the daytime cook as well, making sure the entire food game was upped at the bar.

"Robbie had been doing really good when he first got back. Then it all changed. Can I ask when his problems started?" asked Gilbert, something off in his voice. "About three months ago?"

"Just over, why?" asked Jeffrey, curious as to how the man guessed the timeframe nearly on the nose.

"No reason. Just being nosy," said Gilbert, looking a little green around the collar.

"Want me to have him make you a burger? He made chili earlier. I know you like that. I can put some in a bowl on the side," offered Jeffrey, wondering when the last time was the man had eaten actual food and hadn't just drank his calories.

Shaking his head, Gilbert focused on his beer. "Ever wish you were stronger? That what you were made of was more than it was?"

"You mean do I wish I was more alpha?" asked Jeffrey with a snort, hoping to help lighten the mood.

Gilbert let out a shaky laugh. "Guess I'm talking to the wrong man, huh?"

"Not at all," said Jeffrey. "There are times I wish I had more mettle. That I could be what everyone thinks I should be. The prodigal son and all that shit. Why do you ask?"

Gilbert ran his finger through the condensation ring on the bar where his glass sat. "No reason. Just prying."

"You having some regrets?" asked Jeffrey, wanting to help the man any way he could.

While Gilbert wasn't a wolf-shifter, he was a shifter all the same. Granted, he was a deer-shifter, but still. That meant in some weird way, he was kin.

And shifters didn't let shifters have existential crises alone.

"If regrets were pennies, I'd be a very rich man," said Gilbert, looking defeated.

"Is everything all right with you and yours?"

Gilbert's gaze darted away. "Yes. Ruttin' season will be here before long. Not lookin' forward to it."

As a deer-shifter, Gilbert had a rough go of it from just about every group of supernaturals in Grimm Cove. It wasn't as if being able to shift into Bambi held a lot of pull or anything.

Jeffrey was about to comment on Gilbert's rutting season worries when movement from Elis and his crew up near the front of the bar caught his attention.

His jaw set.

He really hated slayers.

Each and every last one of them.

Especially the Van Helsings.

They were the worst.

Chapter Two

"YOU'RE NOT GETTING any younger, Dana."

Ah, there it was. The ever-faithful reminder from my ninety-year-old grandmother that I had yet to settle down and start a family. The topic wasn't new. It had been a sore point between us for the greater part of twenty years. Right about the time she'd realized that I'd gone to college to pursue a career, not a husband.

Not sure where she got the idea that I'd gone to Yale to land a man rather than a degree in law, but she had. Convincing her of anything different was a lot like trying to talk the spots off a leopard.

Wasn't going to happen.

Over the years, I'd seen her pride in what I did start to show through, especially when I made the paper for putting away a particularly bad dude, but those moments were fewer and farther between than the ones where she pushed at me to find that special someone.

That person who completed me, or whatever else song-and-dance, chick-flick movies liked to pretend happened.

As if there was such a guy.

I liked to think I did just fine completing myself. What in the hell did I need with a man?

I was particularly bitter about the male species in general because one of my two besties was going through a rather ugly divorce at the moment. Poppy had said "I do" and put in her time, only to have it end the way it did.

She'd been married for nineteen years. While I'd never been a fan of her husband, Thomas, they'd seemed happy as a couple. She got into that whole gig of being a mom and a wife. I honestly couldn't understand how or why, but it made her happy so that was all that mattered.

She'd popped out two crotch goblins, Tucker and Pepper, back at the start of her marriage, and they were now freshmen in college. They were also considerably easier to be around now that they were able to form full sentences and didn't want me to pick them up and hold them. Plus, the risk they'd wet themselves had declined dramatically over the years.

That was always nice.

Seeing Poppy's world shatter around her after Thomas announced he'd found someone new, and that he'd been sleeping around on her for the whole of their marriage, was enough to sour me to the idea of happily ever after.

Not that I wasn't already on the side of not needing a man to make my life whole.

I'll admit, there were times I wouldn't mind rolling over at night to find someone I cared about there, rather than emptiness. And there were a few times, every now and again, when I'd like to be held and told everything would be all right. But those times weren't enough to justify the heartache and complications relationships brought.

Back when I was still young and impressionable, I'd let myself fall for a guy's charms. I'd bought into his promises of a future.

Of something more.

Sure, we'd both been teens, but I'd believed in the connection we'd had. I'd trusted it and I'd trusted him. In the end, I'd gotten my heart broken.

That had been the very same day I'd left for college, and it wasn't something I talked about. Poppy and my other bestie, Marcy, knew I'd had a boyfriend all through high school and that it was serious, at least for me. They didn't know much beyond that, which was fine.

The details weren't important.

It wasn't like he was part of my life anymore.

I knew it was silly to hold the entire male population at fault for the actions of one, but the idea of daring to open my heart to another guy always left me going back to how painful it had been to be dumped. And how lonely life had seemed the following months.

That was all in the past.

I'd buried it and focused on getting a great education and landing my dream job. I was an assistant district attorney in Manhattan—the greatest city on earth. As a born-and-bred New Yorker, I loved everything about the city, and was proud to help keep it a little bit safer. And I was damn proud of all I'd achieved in my career.

Yes, I could have done it with a family, but it would have been harder, I'm sure. I saw some of my peers juggling their family lives with work responsibilities. It didn't look easy or fun, but they managed.

The most I had to worry about was checking in on Nonna Wilma, who, while opinionated on my lack of a real love life, loved me dearly. I loved her too. She was all the family I had left, and I didn't like to think about what I'd do when she was no longer with me. Her age made that possibility a daily reality. One I did my best to pretend wasn't a thing.

She was feisty, and I was fairly sure the higher- ups weren't ready to handle her up there just yet. They were probably knee-deep in preparation- readiness drills all geared toward dealing with Hurricane Nonna.

"Well, when is it you plan to settle down?" Nonna demanded as she manned her station at the stove, stirring her homemade marinara sauce with great vigor. Pavarotti's rendition of "Nessun Dorma" played in the background from a CD I'd gotten my grandmother years prior.

Try as I might to get her to move over to going fully digital with her music collection, it never panned out. I counted my win moving her from records to CDs and left well enough alone. It was better for everyone and my sanity. I just wished I could convince her to change the CDs every once in a while. It was a five-disc player, and she'd had the same five discs on rotation since I'd gotten it for her.

It was a darn shame the volume wasn't higher. It could drown out her nonstop pestering on me finding a man.

"You just turned forty, and what do you have to show for it?" she asked, as if on cue.

A fantastic career, my own apartment, a good 401k, and so on, but none of that translated into anything she'd see as value because none of them were a husband.

Generationally, we were worlds apart. It had always been that way and would always remain so. That was fine. Explaining to her my side of things never really got me far. She was a hard-headed Italian woman who wasn't about to change her mind or sway my way anytime soon.

Okay, ever.

To her, women got married when they were young. They had dinner on the table for their family by six every night and they were always dressed as if they might need to attend a nice luncheon at any random moment. They didn't forgo the man and the baby carriage for a career.

No.

That simply wasn't done.

Yet that was exactly what I'd picked. And she was quick to point out I chose the lifestyle—it didn't choose me.

My mother didn't have a choice. She had to go out and work in order to support us. My father, who I knew very little about, had passed away when I was little, leaving my mother and me on our own.

My grandmother had my grandfather's pension, which hadn't been a whole lot, and we'd gotten whatever government assistance we qualified for—which didn't go very far for a family of three in New York City. Money was always tight, probably tighter than even I realized, when I was young.

There were countless times I'd find my mother sitting at the kitchen table with her nearly empty change jar out, counting and recounting the coins as if the second, third, or even tenth time would yield different results. She never let me see her cry, but I could hear her doing it when she thought I was asleep.

She busted her butt waiting tables and serving others for pennies on the dollar. She'd worked long hours and came home with blisters on her feet in order to put food on our table. And through it all, she never let me see the toll it took on her. She kept a brave face and tried her best to make it feel as if we weren't stone-cold broke.

Back then, I didn't realize we were. No one else had much around us either so it felt normal. But my mother would sit with me on the sofa as we watched whatever sitcom was popular at the time. She'd put an arm around me, draw me closer to her, kiss the top of my head, and ask me about school and my homework.

She'd then tell me that an education was key. To get as much as I could. And when it came time to apply for colleges and scholarships, she'd sat at the table with me, going through everything, helping me fine-tune my submissions.

The pure joy on her face when she'd learned I'd been accepted into Yale was something I carried with me to this very day. The memory was strong enough and life-altering enough to help me weather a million Nonna Wilma pushes for me to have a family rather than a career.

I could still vividly recall my mother's excitement—and then the quick deflation of it when we realized the acceptance to Yale hadn't come with the full ride we'd been hoping for. I'd tempered my enthusiasm and cast Yale out of my mind, thinking it unobtainable.

Then, just days later, my mother handed me an envelope. In it was a letter telling me I'd been granted a scholarship that would not only cover my tuition and books, but room, board, and a few extras as well. While I couldn't remember applying to the foundation that had granted me the scholarship, that hadn't mattered. I'd been given my golden ticket to the education she'd always wanted for me, and I hadn't wanted to let her down.

She'd then had to deal with her mother, who, while happy for me, was not thrilled the university wasn't in New York. In fact, Nonna wasn't thrilled with a lot about the situation back then. I'd heard her and my mother arguing late one night about my scholarship. Nonna was of the opinion it had too many potential strings attached. That it opened the door to a past best left dead and buried.

To this day, I still didn't know what she'd meant by that, but my mother had. And my mother had been adamant that my education was worth the price.

So when she was ripped from this world before her time, her burning desire for me to get a formal education stuck with me. It drove me to succeed. To get all the schooling I could and to make something of myself—for her and for me. While she'd not lived to see those dreams come to fruition, I knew deep down that wherever she was in the afterlife, she was proud.

That was enough for me.

And that alone helped me deal with Nonna's endless pushes for me to find a man and get married.

"You're not listening to me, are you?" she asked, rapping her knuckles on the side of her small stove, yanking me from my thoughts.

I smiled. "Of course, I'm listening. Would I ignore you?"

She snorted. "In a heartbeat."

The woman was barely taller than the stockpot she'd been planted in front of since my arrival nearly an hour ago. So far, I'd only been permitted to carry the pot of water for boiling pasta to the stovetop. That was where she'd drawn the line, turning the burner on herself as if I couldn't be trusted to get the temperature right. Basically, I was only good for heavy lifting in her mind.

I wasn't horrible in the kitchen. I just wasn't the culinary ninja she was. She didn't use a cookbook or follow any written recipes. Everything she did was basically muscle memory at her age. She went off sight, smell, and taste. Nothing more. And her food never disappointed.

She never seemed to tire while cooking. While I could cook—thanks to her tutelage—I didn't like to. I didn't confess that to her because it would fall along the same lines as telling her I was off pasta because of the carbs.

I'd tried that once and knew better than to attempt it again.

She'd ranted and raved for days about how she'd been raised on pasta just fine. I'd gotten so sick of hearing about it all that I drove over to her place and ate two huge bowls of it just to get her to let the topic drop.

Nonna didn't fad diet. She didn't jump on any trend. She was old-school in a lot of ways but managed to surprise me in others.

"Nonna, let me get that," I said, making a move to take the twenty-four-inch wooden spoon from her.

She eyed the spoon handle and then me as she continued to stir. Her look was all the warning I needed.

Touch the spoon at my own peril.

She was tiny but plucky. Not to mention, I was pretty sure after a genealogy assignment I was handed in junior high that her side of the family had a long-standing history with the Mafia. Of course, if you asked her, she denied it and then would wink. Apparently, full-fledged Mafia members didn't like discussing it with kids for school projects.

I may have had her by a foot and was fifty years younger, but I was no dummy. I wasn't going to touch her spoon without permission. There was always the off chance she'd follow through on her threat to tan my hide. And at my age, if I was going to be spanked, I wanted it to be by a hunky guy, not my grandmother.

Putting my hands up to signal surrender, I nodded. "You don't need my help with dinner. The kitchen is your domain. Message received."

"Good," she said, appearing pleased as punch. "Now, back to you and finding a man."

I groaned. "I thought we were off that topic."

"You thought wrong," she said with a grin.

"Can we please talk about something else? Anything else?" I begged as I considered making a move to snatch the wooden spoon from Nonna and run through her apartment, holding it out of her reach, just to get her mind off me and men.

I highly doubted it would work, but it could totally be worth her wrath for the sheer amusement factor alone.

She shrugged. "Fine. But we will revisit this."

Oh goodie.

Nonna lifted her head slightly. "When you get a chance, will you look at the table thing again?"

By "table thing," she meant tablet. I'd long ago stopped trying to get her to understand she was saying it wrong. "What's up with it?"

"The Face-a-book is not working," she said, her Italian accent shining through. "It won't let me in. I tried the word-pass you wrote down. It didn't work."

She had a habit of keying in the passwords wrong and getting locked out.

"I'll look at it after dinner," I said.

She eyed the black dress I was wearing and gave a nod of approval. "That looks good on you. Shows your figure. You went with a support bra. Good. You're not as blessed in the chest as most women. Your dress could be a little shorter."

Nothing like being reminded I was a solid B cup. As for my dress, it came to just below my knees when I was standing and when I sat, it rode up slightly. "Nonna, it's short enough for work."

"You have such long legs. Show them off," she said, still employing her cooking genius on the sauce before her. "It would draw attention from your chest. Maybe no one will notice it then."

"My breasts are just fine, Nonna," I said, sounding as tired as the conversation made me feel. I was no Marcy in the chest area, but I held my own just fine. That being said, I found myself adjusting my bra, hoping Victoria was able to work her magik.

Nonna merely glanced at my attempt at fluffing "the girls" and then checked her pot of water. It was nearly to a rolling boil.

"I saw on television they have chicken cutlets you can put in your bra to give you more cleavage," she said.

I couldn't help but laugh. "Chicken cutlets?"

"Something that looks like them, yes," she said, nodding with great enthusiasm. "You should try them."

"To help me land a man?" I asked.

She shrugged as if that hadn't been her meaning all along.

"You do realize that all I do is work. Kind of hard to find a man there."

"Plenty of good boys from the old neighborhood have gotten railroaded through the system. You could pick one of them," she countered, as if my office made a point of seeking out people from my old neighborhood to prosecute.

We didn't.

Can I help that the "boys" she was referring to, who were really grown men, were caught up in racketeering and countless other illegal activities? I wasn't even the prosecutor assigned to their cases. Didn't matter to Nonna.

I checked my watch, wondering how late Marcy planned on being. She always made for a nice buffer between Nonna and me. Nonna often referred to herself as being a witch. The two of them would get lost in conversations about herbs and oils and whatever else it was they liked so much.

Once they'd stopped everything to make soap poppets—whatever those were. It had kept them entertained and given me time to break out my laptop to get caught up on work emails. It also kept me out of Nonna's dating crosshairs.

Her push for marriage wasn't limited to me. She also did it to Marcy, who just so happened to be unwed, but Marcy took her in stride, seeming to enjoy the meddling.

Clearly, Marcy was a stronger woman than me.

Then again, Nonna was gentler with her pushes for Marcy to find a man and settle down. I suspected it had something to do with Marcy's past. It was one we didn't bring up.

Nonna began to hum and rock her head back and forth. It was then I noticed her hair, always dyed ink-black, was styled slightly different from her usual way. It suited her.

"I like your hair. It's styled different but it looks very nice on you," I said, noticing she had on the red sweater I'd gotten her for her birthday. The one she'd informed me would be saved for a special occasion. "You're awfully gussied up for dinner with Marcy and me."

"Am I?" she asked coyly. That meant she was up to something. "You never know who may be stopping by."

I groaned. "You didn't fix me up with someone, did you?"

"I would never," she said.

"Liar," I returned. "You've already tried fixing me up how many times in the past?"

She laughed. "Too many to count. You find something wrong with every one of them. You're impossible to please. At your age, you should be less picky."

"Anyone ever tell you that you're a real confidence booster?" I asked sardonically.

"No," she said with all honesty. "Never."

Shocking.

"I wonder what's keeping Marcy," I said, checking my watch again, desperate for her arrival to help give my grandmother a new target.

Anyone who knew Marcy and me wondered how it was we were friends at all with as opposite as we were. I was a ball-busting assistant district attorney, and she was whatever the ether told her to be at the moment. At last check, that was a yoga instructor, but a few months back it was a massage therapist; before that it was working for an online psychic service.

The list went on and on.

We'd met my freshman year of college when I'd gone off to Yale. It had been hard for me to leave the island of Manhattan. It had been my everything. All I'd ever known. And I'd been incredibly close with my mother and grandmother. The idea of leaving them both to head off to Yale, of all places, had scared the crap out of me (not that I'd have confessed as much out loud).

I'd arrived on the scene, went to my assigned residential college dorm, found my suite, and met my roommates. The suite was made for four occupants, with two per bedroom and a center shared common area. While there had been four of us to start with, Marcy had managed to scare off the girl sharing her room just one night into the ordeal.

Oddly, the university never filled the slot. So it had been only three of us from then on out.

Perfect.

We'd remained close for twenty years, becoming like sisters to one another.

Poppy lived in California. I lived in New York City. And Marcy lived wherever the wind blew her. Right now, the wind had her in New York. I'd offered my apartment to her as a place to crash but she'd refused, staying with a manfriend of hers. I wasn't about to judge her. After all, I'd seen the guy, and I wouldn't kick him out of my bed for eating crackers.

Marcy had a way of attracting very handsome men but never seeming to notice as much. It was part of her charm.

Her charm had worn a bit in the last several days, as she'd been on a kick for me to learn to channel my anger issues and release them. She seemed to think deep breathing would do the trick. That, and lighting incense that made me cough and choke.

Nonna stirred the sauce, and I caught the scent of basil and garlic—all things that made me think of her and of growing up. "It shouldn't be that a grandmother has more male suitors than her granddaughter. If you were nicer to men, they might want to ask you out more."

That made me chuckle. "I'm nice-ish and I date."

"Is that what you call what you do?" she asked, arching a brow in judgment. "Norma told me all about the walk of shame. How many times have you done this walk?"

"Nonna, why would your friend be talking about walks of shame?" I asked, unsure I wanted to know.

"Because she had one after her night with Chester," said Nonna matter-of-factly, as if that sort of thing was common behavior for a woman only two years her junior.

It took everything I had to keep from cracking up as I got a mental image of Norma holding her shoes in her hands as she tried to quietly shuffle out of Chester's room without anyone noticing.

I swear there were some people in the building who camped out near their peepholes, never missing a beat. Very little happened in the building without everyone hearing about it by the next day.

"I thought Chester and Shirley were an item," I said, having a vested interest in the topic. I visited my grandmother twice a week and always got all the juicy gossip.

Nonna waved a hand in the air dismissively. "No. Shirley was playing stuff the cannoli with George."

I gasped. "No. After all that time she spent trying to catch Chester's eye?"

My grandmother nodded. "She was only in it for the chase. After that, the thrill was gone. It was on to the next poor sap. Now George is with Rita."

"But Rita is married to Lou," I countered.

Nonna glanced at me. "They're trying something called an open marriage. Have you ever heard of such a thing? And Lou has an oxygen tank he has to wheel around with him all the time now. He says it gives him more stamina. I just think it means he has to avoid open flames, but what do I know?"

"This place is better than a daytime soap opera," I said, meaning every word of it.

Though it was kind of sad that my grandmother and her cronies got more action than I did. In my defense, I worked long hours and didn't put much stock in the whole relationship thing. If I had the urge for sex, I hooked up with a man for a night, maybe two. Nothing more. I made that clear going into it all.

No strings.

No walks of shame.

When I left, it was with my head held high.

I owned my sexuality.

"There is rarely a dull moment around here," she admitted. "Just wait until I tell you about Betsy's granddaughter and the man she ran off with."

"Stop. I'm not sure I can take all of these developments in one sitting," I said with a smile.

"I'll save that one for another visit," she said.

"What about you?" I asked. "Are you playing stuff the cannoli with anyone?"

She blushed. "No. But I do have a gentleman caller. He's newer to the building."

"Tell me more," I said, grabbing for the small bowl of shaved mozzarella cheese on the counter. I popped a piece into my mouth.

Mischief filled Nonna's face. "His name is Peter Beard."

"How unfortunate for him," I said, partially under my breath.

She kept stirring, used to my quips.

After my mother's passing while I was in college, Nonna had decided she wanted to live in a community of people her own age. She'd told me about three places in the city that her friends said were good senior centers, offering independent and assisted-living options, and I went with her to look at each. That had been twenty years ago.

She'd been here ever since.

In the span of two decades, she'd developed a tight-knit group of friends in her building, each looking after the other, on top of a trained staff available at all hours should the need arise.

The only thing I didn't like about having her in a senior center was that each time I talked to her, it seemed as if someone else had died. Though it never bothered her. At least not that she showed me. Then again, she'd always handled death differently from most.

She went to the small drawer near the stove and pulled out a silver soup spoon. She then gathered some sauce from the pot and held the spoon out for me to have a taste.

Having played the role of faithful sauce sidekick hundreds of times in my life, I knew my job well. At six feet tall in my stocking feet, I had to bend a good deal to be at her level, especially since I was a foot taller than her.

I tasted the sauce and knew better than to lie. She'd know. "Needs salt."

"Good girl," she said, as if she'd been testing me. She then placed the soup spoon in the sink and returned to her post at the stockpot.

I groaned. "Nonna, for the billionth time, just because I work around criminals every day doesn't mean they're corrupting me. I can be trusted."

"It's not the criminals I worry about," she said, her voice even. "It's the other attorneys. Lawyers. They're smooth talkers. Full of empty promises. Silver-tongued devils. The lot of them. You saw what they did to the neighborhood boys."

I let her continue her one-woman diatribe on all the ways lawyers were the root of all evil. When she finished, I looked down at her. "You do realize I'm a lawyer, right?"

"You don't count," she said, adding a touch of salt to the sauce as she stirred.

"Thanks. I think."

"You didn't answer me about finding a man and settling down," said Nonna.

I was hoping she'd forgotten about that.

No such luck.

"We've gone over this before," I said, already tired, and the topic had just started up again. "I don't have time to date."

"Make time," she said as if it were that easy. "You should take a vacation."

"And go where and do what?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Maybe go to South Carolina."

"What?" I was honestly shocked she even knew there was a state called South Carolina. The woman had come over from Italy when she was younger, arrived in New York City, and there she had remained. She didn't travel off the island much, if ever, anymore. To her, everything she needed in the world was in the radius of a few blocks, and the world beyond that was pointless.

I'd tried to take her back to Italy for Christmas one year and you'd have thought I'd threatened to give her secret sauce recipe out on the internet with the way she'd reacted. I'd assumed she'd be thrilled to visit her homeland.

"Why on earth would you suggest South Carolina as a place for me to vacation?" I asked with a slight laugh, picturing myself in the South. I'd stick out like a sore thumb.

She focused on her sauce in a way that said she was up to something. "No reason other than the time has come."

The time had come? What did she mean by that?

"Nonna, what are you up to?" I asked.

Nonna put pasta in the boiling water and ignored my question.

There was a knock on the door, and I couldn't have gotten to it faster if I tried. Tossing the door open, I came face-to-face with someone who wasn't Marcy. Unless Marcy had suddenly turned into a man who looked to be my grandmother's age.

The man stood there in a suit that was a little loose on him, as if it had been from a day when he had more bulk than he did now. He held a bouquet of flowers in his hands and looked nervous. The top of his head was shiny and totally absent of hair. Most of it seemed to have migrated to the sides of his head and his ears.

"You must be Dana," he said, squaring his shoulders and standing tall. Well, as tall as his five- foot, five-inch frame would allow.

I stared down at him and realized why it was my grandmother was so gussied up. She'd planned the dinner so that I could meet the new man in her life. "And you must be Peter."

He gave a curt nod. "I am. It was so nice of Wilma to arrange this dinner. I've been asking to meet you for weeks now. I ran into your friend down the street when I was getting flowers. She said to tell you she can't make it to dinner tonight but to try to remember to work on your breathing exercises."

I was going to have words with Marcy later for abandoning me in my hour of need.

I held the door open for him. "Come on in, Peter. We can discuss your intentions with my grandmother."