CHAPTER EIGHT
Moira~
At exactly six, Moira chased the last indecisive customers out of the art supply store. By six ten she was letting herself into Rosewood Cottage. It wasn’t very big, but it had two bedrooms and it was large enough for her furniture. It was an excellent stopgap.
She had sold her condo, but the furniture had been almost new, bought since her partnership with Whitlock. If she had sold it she would have taken a huge loss. Besides, each piece had been lovingly chosen. Eventually she would have her own place here on West Haven, where her modern Italian furniture would not be a stylistic mismatch.
Aunt Robin had been kind enough to remove the shabby-chic furniture that Rosewood ordinarily came with. The white iron bedstead and slipcovered couch and other things were now stored somewhere in the inn’s outbuildings. Moira kicked off her high heels and padded over the wooden floors in her bare feet.
All afternoon she had fielded questions from various residents who had just happened to find themselves near her store. She had done a brisk trade in those trifles she kept on the counter to tempt the unwary. Sable brushes small enough to be used for makeup, erasers in the shape of West Haven, and other novelties, had added a healthy and unexpected boost to the day’s sales.
The rack of hand-painted cards had been picked almost bare. Good news for her and for the artists who sold them on consignment. She had to remember to call around and order more. She had enough to restock tomorrow, but if she had another day like today, she would rapidly run short.
She glanced at the kitchen clock and filled her red electric kettle. Its sleek design did not fit with the white bead-board kitchen and farmhouse style cupboards, but she loved it and her other red and black appliances. She had time for a cup of green tea before Quinn arrived. And tea would help if she was to be interrogated by Robin.
Now that her parents had elected to sail west, Robin was her closest relative. Moira had been surprised not to already have had a phone call from her aunt. The kettle whistled and she filled her tiny teapot. Sat down at her glass-topped table on the matching chrome chair, and waited for it to steep.
On cue, her phone burbled with Robin’s private chime. “Hey,” Moira said. “How are you, Robin?”
Robin’s silvery laugh was musical. “I’m very well indeed, Moira. I hear you have a hot date with an artist.”
She poured herself a first cup. “Quinn and I are going to the Crab Hut for dinner.”
“I like that young man,” Robin said approvingly.
That was a surprise. Moira had been braced to defend her choice. “Do you? As in you think he’s a good match for me, or as in I need to get out more?” Few people knew that Aunt Robin was the matchmaker behind the old West Haven saying, A match made in West Haven is a match made in Heaven. But for 200 years, Robin had been setting couples up for their happily ever afters.
“Both, actually. How do you feel about him, Moira?”
“Weird. For a drunk, he certainly has a lot of charm.”
Robin made a gentle choking noise that might have been laughter. “Does Quinn drink?” she asked.
“He never seems drunk, but every time I see him, he smells like he’s been on a two-week bender.”
There was absolute silence. “I wouldn’t want you to take up with a drunk,” Robin eventually said. “I suppose I could be mistaken. There’s always a first time.”
Robin did have an impressive track record of happy marriages behind her. Perhaps this meant that Quinn could be salvaged before he drank his talent away. Although Moira had not been thinking of anything that permanent.
More like a summer fling destined to end when winter drew Quinn back to the mainland. After all he was a hunter. Hunters seldom stuck around. And fairies weren’t supposed to marry them. Hunters were tolerated on West Haven, but given the history of the island, it was not too surprising that interbreeding with them was actively discouraged. Ditto marriage.
It was probably natural, however, that Robin was hoping for something permanent. Despite a long-term relationship with Gordon Sullivan, her aunt had never married. Moira was the only daughter of her only cousin. The Fae were picky, not much interested in sexual relationships, and not very fertile when they did marry. Obviously Robin had visions of changing that with intermarriage with a shifter.
“You do know that Quinn is a hunter?” she informed her aunt. She deliberately used West Haven slang for predatory shifters. It was the equivalent of calling the Fae the Little People. Accurate, yet slighting.
There was a longish pause. Robin cleared her throat delicately. “Who told you that?”
“You should have seen him and Lloyd doing that male stare-down thing in the Bean. Lloyd came out of his haze just long enough to inspect Quinn.”
“Does the idea of a hunter put you off, dear?”
Moira thought demonizing predatory shifters was desperately unfair. Not when Owen Haverstock’s breeding partner had been a Fairchild. Not thankfully one of Moira’s forebears – Olivia Haverstock had left no descendants. Yet the horrors of the Haverstock Era reverberated down to the present, prejudicing West Haven attitudes toward hunters.
It seemed even more unfair when you considered that it was an alliance of cougars, dragons, bears and other hunters that had solved the problem posed by the Haverstocks. Their extermination had ended a twenty-year reign of terror during which the Haverstocks had robbed and killed every non-sensitive on the island, and begun to work their violent way through the sensitives.
Owen Haverstock had been a grizzly. A psychopathic grizzly. Although Moira doubted that was a term much in use in the mid-nineteenth century. But long before he started raising little criminals with her, his stolen fairy mate had been the original evil fairy, feared and loathed by her kin and other sensitives. The taint of Olivia and Owen’s murderous offspring still clung after all these years. But not to the Fae. To hunters. Talk about unfair.
Moira said none of this to Robin. Robin knew her West Haven history. She finished the last drops of green tea in her cup. “I better go change for my date.”
“I assume that’s a no?”
“Hmm.”
“You needn’t dress up for the Crab Hut.”
“I just am going to add a wrap for later.” The ocean breezes always picked up as soon as the sun went down. “And find some flats.” In case Quinn wanted to stroll down to the harbor and watch the sea lions. Or something.
“Enjoy yourself, my dear. I’ll call tomorrow.”