rson to doubt. She was scared of her own shadow.
Suddenly, she thought of Luke saying, He likes women who are scared of him.
Maybe Luke hadn’t been as up-to-date on his cousin’s love life as he’d thought.
“Hi, Susan,” Aria said. She forced a friendly, everything’s-fine-here smile.
“Aria!” Susan threw her arms around her, burying Aria in her generous cleavage and the hyacinth smell of her perfume. “Your front door’s just wrecked!”
“I’m going to get it fixed, don’t worry.”
Though telling Susan not to worry was like telling rain not to be wet.
“Anyone could just walk right in! And it’ll cost a fortune to get a contractor to do anything with it... What happened?”
She tested the waters. “Would you believe a wolf ran through it?”
Susan almost flinched backwards, a very real hurt creeping into her expression. “You’re making fun of me. You heard I saw one.”
“I’m not making fun of you,” Aria said. “I promise.” And that was the truth, but she had to follow it up with a lie for good measure. “And I didn’t know you’d seen one! I was just thinking of the old ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down’ story, with the wolf and the three little pigs.”
Susan’s face cleared. She was, as Aria had told her mom, very sweet; Aria wouldn’t have intentionally hurt her feelings for the world, even if Susan sometimes got on her nerves.
“Oh, well, that’s okay, then. But I have seen a wolf, so that’s all the more reason to get this fixed up as soon as you can.”
“We won’t stay here tonight,” Aria assured her. “We’re just going to clean up and then head out.”
She tried to angle her body so that Susan wouldn’t see much of the wrecked living room, let alone the wolf-sized lump under her curtain. She was hoping Susan would just forget that Aria hadn’t explained what had happened. She wanted to explain about seeing a fugitive—that would let her show a picture of Eli and see if Susan recognized him—but she didn’t know how to do it smoothly. Especially since the longer Susan lingered, the more likely it was that she would notice that something really strange was going on.
Still, she took a stab at it. “Before you go, though—I don’t want to scare you, but I’ve seen a guy walking around the neighborhood shirtless lately.” Did shirtless sound more plausible than naked? Hopefully. “White guy, tall, dark hair, stubble? Sort of mean-looking, with really sharp features? Have you seen anybody like that?”
Susan’s eyes had gone perfectly round. “No, I haven’t, but that’s terrifying. I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for anything like that. We can’t just have sex maniacs roaming around. There are children here! You can’t have that around Mattie! First the wolves and now this. I don’t know what’s going on here lately.”
“Maybe it’ll all be over soon,” Aria said.
“I hope so,” Susan said. Her voice was aching with sincerity. She gave Aria another one of those smothering hugs.
Then a tall, Armani-clad wall seemed to loom up next to them.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” their new arrival said. He had a warm, flawlessly courteous voice. “I’m a Deputy US Marshal. You seem distressed, and if there’s anything I can do to help...”
He drew Susan away from Aria’s non-existent front door, talking comfortingly to her.
“I heard Theo,” Colby said, resurfacing.
He’d joined her again just in time to get tackled by a pretty, petite woman with a sleek pixie cut—and apparently with enough strength and determination to give a bear-hug to a werewolf.
“God, Colby,” the woman said. “We send you off on your own for two seconds...”
“I’m fine, Gretch.” He patted her back. “I’ve got a few busted ribs, though, if you could loosen up a little.”
She separated herself at once.
“Sorry. We were just worried.”
“Oh.” Colby sounded genuinely flustered by that. “Well—thanks.”
He turned instantly to Aria, like she was his solid ground—and while she had to admit she liked that, it made her heart ache a little that he wasn’t willing to trust that his friends really cared about him.