The Alpha's Daughter (14 page)

"Damn, Donna, and here I thought you didn't
like me," Jazz laughed.

"I didn't, but Ellie does and while she's a
mite soft hearted, she's still a good judge of character. She says
you're okay. You did all right tonight too, with all of us piling
in on you."

Well, she didn't expect hugs and kisses, did
she? Donna didn't pull her punches and neither would she. Jazz
stacked the last dish in its place in the cupboard. "Thanks. I
wasn't so sure about you either, but you saved my ass, I mean butt,
tonight. Griz, I mean Doc, isn't real happy about hosting this
frolic thing and I don't know the first thing about it. What does
the Alpha expect?"

"Oh, honey, you don't have to do anything
more than you did tonight. Everybody will bring something, even the
beer," Ellie patted her hand reassuringly. "Everything will be just
fine."

"The hell it will," Donna said bluntly.
"Women folk are gonna be in and out of this place, upstairs and
down, sticking their noses into every nook and cranny. I caught
Betty Calhoun twice tonight trying to get herself a peek," she
informed her sister and then turned to Jazz. "Nobody's been in here
since old man Hurley died excepting the twins and maybe the Alpha.
Rumors abound and the twin's aren't helping any. You want to do
right by your Griz…" She winked at Ellie. "You've got to get this
place straight. Move that bed out of the living room and paint the
place up. Those blinds are carrying enough dirt to choke a horse.
We'll see about finding you some curtains."

"I don't know how Doc's going to feel about
that," Jazz told them. She was careful not to call him Griz and
didn't much like Donna calling him that either.

Both women laughed.

"Most men don't care what you do to their
house as long as you don't ask them to do it," Ellie said with the
wisdom of a long mated lady. "We'll come over as soon as the
laundry's done and get started."

"Now you know why you don't eat supper on the
front porch," the Griz grumbled when Jazz closed the front door for
the final time and leaned back against it.

"Then you damn well better move those pigs,
Mr. Grizzly Bear." Jazz danced over to him and took his hand, doing
a little rock and roll while he stood still. "You had a good time.
You can't fool me. I watched. I saw."

"I was polite."

"You had a good time." She twirled under his
arm and let his hand go. "What were you and Harvey and RJ, right?
What were you three conspiring over out in the field?"

"Just a little business," he said evasively
and because she was raised in her father's house, she didn't
question what business.

Instead, she asked, "RJ's the one lost his
mate when their baby was just a few month's old isn't he? Car
accident?"

"Yep. He forgot to bring home coffee and she
was running down to Little Market to get it. Drunk driver decided
to pass her as she was making the left turn into the parking lot. I
don't think poor RJ's ever forgiven himself for forgetting that
coffee." Griz was staring off into the past as he told her.

One of the women, Betty was it? had mentioned
it when someone said it was good to see RJ out and about. She'd
said it was Doc who pronounced the woman dead and made the
arrangements with the coroner to bring her home.

"That's a shame," she said. "It was the
drunk's fault, not his."

"Sometimes what the head knows, the heart
can't fathom," he said and turned toward the office door. "I'm
going to work for a while."

"Oh no you're not." Jazz spoke in no
uncertain terms. "You're going to bed. You can sleep on your side
and I'll sleep on mine. You can't keep going on like this, working
to all hours of the night then working all day, too. You take me
out for our nightly stroll and then you get to bed. I mean it,
now."

She thought he'd argue, but he only laughed
and shook his head. "Nobody likes a bossy woman, Hellcat."

"You do," she said as she reopened the
door.

Later, in the middle of the night when he
rolled to her back and snaked his arm around her middle, she
whispered to herself, "You do like me, Mr. Grizzly Bear. You just
don't know it yet."

She was growing attached to her grizzly bear.
He didn't live right. He didn't eat right. He sure as hell didn't
look right, but the glimpses she'd had of the man underneath all
that intrigued her. He was like no man she'd ever known and she was
beginning to think she wasn't far wrong when she called him a
one-in-a-million guy.

The house renovation plans had to be put off for a couple of
days. Early the next morning, Jazz received an invitation, a
summons really, to have tea with the Alpha's Mate. This didn't
cause anywhere near the concern Jazz felt when summoned before the
Alpha. She'd already met the woman, however briefly, and the Mate
exuded a warm friendliness that made her difficult to
fear.

Jazz was, conversely, concerned about what to
wear. Donna and Ellie laughed it away.

"The Mate isn't like that. You saw her. No
frills on her."

Ellie came up with a pair of dress slacks
which needed the hem let down and a pretty blouse, both items were
gifts to the teenaged Livvy who'd said thank you, but never wore
them. Shoes came from Ellie's closet. Knowing how tight money was
in their household, Jazz tried to refuse, but Ellie wouldn't hear
of it.

"Hand-me-downs are a way of life around
here," she laughed, "I'm thirty-six years old and still wearing my
sister's. Sometimes I think she buys things just so she can pass
them down to me." She finished with a meaningful look directed at
Donna.

"I do no such thing," the sister scoffed, but
Jazz was beginning to see that beneath the gruff exterior, Ellie
wasn't the only soft hearted one in the family. Donna could be
blunt and her words could sometimes be hurtful, but beyond that lay
a good woman who loved her family.

The Mate had the door open before Jazz could
knock.

"Come in, come in," she
greeted. "I've been watching for you. We don't get as many visitors
as we used to and this is a treat for me."

The Mate led Jazz into a
small sitting room where she had a table laid with matching teapot
and china cups with an embroidered tablecloth beneath.

"They were my mama's and
her mama's before that," she said in answer to Jazz's compliment.
"They're the only fine things she ever owned and probably are mine,
too. I always bring them out for visitors because fine things
should be shared." Her gnarled fingers held the teapot with care.
"The kettle's already boiling. Make yourself comfortable and I'll
be right back."

Like the Mate, the room
was neat and tidy and old. There were photographs everywhere in
every description of frame, from sterling silver to one made out of
Popsicle sticks with the stain from the frozen treat still intact.
Jazz recognized some of the faces as those she'd met and assumed
the rest were of pack members, too.

"We used to have visitors
all hours of the day and night it seemed," the Mate said as she
returned with the full pot. "It was getting to be too much for
Leonard and me both. Doc's coming here has been a godsend for the
pack, but especially for me and the Alpha. Folks feel comfortable
turning to a doctor with things they used to bring to us. I still
feel them," she said, tapping her chest over her heart, "And Lord
knows the weight of the mantle still lies heavy on Leonard's
shoulders, but at our age, it's a blessing to be relieved of the
burden of their words and troubles, if not their feelings. I'm Miz
Mary, by the way. Young and old, that's what they call me. Been so
long since I heard my last name it's a wonder I don't forget
it."

They talked of this and that, Miz Mary
telling Jazz about things she'd seen and heard over the years and
asking Jazz about the people in the pack that she'd already met. It
was an easy meeting and Jazz felt comfortable by the time they got
around to more serious matters and the questions that would come
with them.

"So, I suppose you could
say we've talked ourselves down to brass tacks," the Mate finally
said. "You mind telling me how you come to be hiding out here with
my pack?"

It was put in the gentlest
way and yet they both knew that when the Mate asked a question, you
were expected to answer whether you minded or not. Jazz had already
decided to tell as much of the truth as she could without telling
the whole of it.

"In the pack I come from,"
she said, giving Miz Mary the name and location, "Most matings are
arranged, usually with someone from another pack that does business
with ours. My father, being high up in the pack, pretty much put me
up for auction. I didn't want to be auctioned off like
cattle."

"And your mama? What did she have to say
about it?" Miz Mary prompted.

Jazz frowned, but told the
truth. "My mother died when I was young, but if she hadn't she
wouldn't have said a word. If she had, she would have been beaten
to a pulp just like I was. In my fa…" She began again. "In our
pack, a woman doesn't say no. I said no once and then I ran
away."

"Oh, my Lord," the Mate
breathed out on a sigh. "I knew, or at least Leonard has come back
with stories about packs different from ours, but I don't think I
ever realized what it could be like. You poor child," she said and
Jazz could hear the pain in her voice as she repeated, "You poor
child. What an awful way to grow up. What an awful way to live. I
always thought that kind of mating would still be done with love
and kindness."

"Love and kindness were never a part of the
deal."

"Why would the women put up with such a
thing? Why wouldn't they leave? Why wouldn't they send their
daughters away?"

The questions weren't
asked with disgust or condemnation. Miz Mary wanted to understand.
Jazz didn't think someone who thought in terms of love and kindness
ever could.

"It's what they're raised
with. It's not that they enjoy it, but that they expect it." She
thought of some of the comments that were made behind Moose's
mate's back. "For a lot of them, they don't see getting hit as
abuse. They see not getting hit as neglect. It's what a man does
and if he's not doing it, it's because he doesn't care enough about
you to do it."

She'd had those feelings
herself when she was growing up, when she'd push her father to
anger. It was better than being ignored. Then Margie came and Jazz
got used to being ignored and decided she liked it.

Jazz thought the Mate
would say something like, "how ridiculous!", but Miz Mary only
nodded her head, trying to understand what must be incomprehensible
to her. And, Jazz realized, this was why the pack loved this old
woman, because she tried so hard to understand.

Miz Mary finally looked up. "But you were
different," she said in a way that made Jazz suddenly alert. "You
knew your worth." She picked up her cup and brought it to her
lips.

"Not that different and not worth that much
either," Jazz lied. As a potential Alpha's Mate, she'd been worth a
lot.

Mary sipped her tea and her eyes smiled over
the rim of the china cup. "I know what you are, Jasmine Phillips.
Same as you'd know what I am if I met you on the street. And what I
know is you're an Alpha's Mate."

"You must be mistaken. My
father is a wolver. I'm not human." Most Alpha's Mates were
human.

"The Alpha wolver, you
mean," Mary laughed, "And your mother was a Mate. You're an Alpha's
daughter, a rare breed or so I hear. We Mates tend to bear sons.
Leonard's mother was a daughter, you know."

"You don't know that. You can't know that,"
Jazz said belligerently. She'd told no one who she was, what she
was.

The Mate reached out and
patted Jazz's knee, not the least put off by her rudeness. "Child,
I've been a Mate for a good long time and I'm a-telling you, like
calls to like. I knew you the moment I saw you. How many Alpha's
have you met? Not the little ones, the big ones."

In spite of where this conversation was
leading, Jazz smiled to herself. She knew the Mate was talking
about the difference between an alpha wolver which could be any
strong male and The Alpha, the leader of a pack, but she couldn't
help thinking about the Griz. He was a big one no matter how you
looked at it.

"Get your mind out of that man's pants and
look at me," Mary laughed.

Jazz felt her face color. "I wasn't…"

"Don't tell me you wasn't. I was young once
and I still ain't dead. Doc's a fine looking wolver, but we're not
talking about him. We're talking about you. How many Alphas have
you met?"

It was no use. The woman knew. "Four maybe
five. Why?"

Mary watched her closely. "You touch any of
them? Any of them unmated?"

"Maybe. I don't know. Why?" What was the
woman getting at?

"The call, child, the
call." Mary laid her gnarled old hand across her abdomen and
laughed. "You know."

"No, I don't," Jazz said, now completely
bewildered and beginning to wonder if the old woman had lost her
marbles. "What the hell's the call?"

Jazz wasn't the only one looking bewildered.
"Didn't your Mama tell you anything?"

"I told you, my mother
died when I was a little girl and my stepmother and I didn't get
along. I don't have a clue what you're talking about." Jazz took
another sip of tea, mostly to subdue the queasiness rising in her
stomach.

The old woman's eyes
softened. "Ah, well then, you poor thing. You're starting from the
same place I did. You don't know anything. After what you've told
me, my guess is your Daddy wouldn't have bothered to talk to you
about it." She leaned in and whispered confidentially, "I don't
think most men would. Even the good ones don't like to think of
their little girls bumpin' uglies with any man."