Seth slid his hand from her slackened grip and walked over to Rafe. He tugged on his shirt. Rafe glanced at him.
“It was Empire Strikes Back, not Star Wars.”
“Are you an expert then?”
Seth nodded. “We got their toys for our birthday this year.”
“You sharing?”
Seth glanced at Levi before meeting Rafe’s eyes. “We’re sharing.”
“Do you have any here?”
“Not any of the cool ones,” Levi answered. “We only have some memory matching cards, but…” Levi rubbed at the back of his neck.
“But what?”
Levi shrugged. “They’re for babies.”
“Babies?” Rafe raised a brow. “I have a memory matching app on my phone. Not Star Wars, though. It has different shapes with numbers on them.”
Seth tilted his head and studied Rafe. “Why?”
Rafe thumped his chest. “My cats enjoy it. To them it’s like hunting. They’re very good at picking out details.”
Levi sat on the step next to Rafe. “Do they talk to you?”
“Ours don’t.” Seth took up a similar position on the other side of Rafe.
“No, they can’t talk, but they’ve learned ways to show me how they feel. They’ll smack their tails or nudge me. Sometimes they’ll growl or snarl if they’re mad.”
Seth rubbed his chest. “Or scratch. That hurts.”
“Sure does.” Rafe glanced between them. “Have you figured out how to walk in the field where they live? Not just look at it?”
Eager nods from both boys answered him.
“Mom thinks we’re daydreaming and yells at us to pay attention,” Levi informed him.
“And when I’m talking to you or you’re supposed to be doing something, you can’t be lost in your own world.” She couldn’t help defending herself. Jazz didn’t want Rafe to think she was a bad mother.
Rafe glanced at her and grinned, then focused on Levi. “Well, she’s right. It’s not good to get lost inside ourselves. If we spend too much time in our animals’ world, we forget that we’re people too.”
Seth glanced at the ground, and Levi looked over his shoulder, an apology in his gaze. She gave him a small nod.
“But for short visits it’s okay, even necessary.” Rafe waited until Seth looked up. “We can soothe them so they don’t lash out at us when they get frustrated. Try petting them. Talk to them.”
“But I thought you said they can’t talk to us.” Levi’s narrowed gaze challenged Rafe.
“They can’t, but we can talk to them.”
Levi frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Rafe motioned to the Rottweilers sitting near Megan. “Do you talk to the dogs?”
“Yes,” they both said.
“And I bet they respond a lot of the time too?”
Seth and Levi nodded.
“It’s our tone of voice and our body language that clues them in to what we’re trying to express to them, not our words, but I’m positive mine have come to associate certain words with actions and my moods. They learn, and”—Rafe glanced between the boys—“once they get a little older, they’ll start to show you pictures.”
“Pictures?” Both boys asked at the same time.
Rafe nodded. “It’s not easy for them, but they’ll work together and use our memories to pick out images to express themselves. Say my cats miss one of my brothers. If they want me to go to him, they’ll shove his image into my mind.” He grinned. “Sometimes repeatedly until I give in.”
“That’s cool! Can you help us teach them to do that?” Seth asked.
Rafe ruffled his hair. “Sure thing, kid.”
Jazz would bet money that there was a huge smile on her face. She didn’t care. Rafe was amazing with kids. She could easily picture him with his own.
With theirs.
And… it was best she cut off that train of thought before it could take root, except she feared it already had.
Chapter 21
Jazz’s house looked exactly how she’d left it yesterday. The grass was calf-high because the lawn mower had broken. The siding needed to be scraped and painted. Same with the porch. Cars under blue tarps were stored in the field alongside the garage. And boxes of car parts were piled near the door to be carried up to the loft for storage.
Everything looked the same, yet her life had taken an unexpected turn overnight. None of the concerns that had bothered her yesterday seemed important, not when there was a crazy shifter on the loose who had set his sights on her family. She’d always lived with the worry of attracting the wrong kind of attention. It was why she lived in near seclusion.
Cindy had hit it on the mark the other night. Her life revolved around Seth, Levi, and her garage. And why wouldn’t it? Everything she needed was right here.
Or had she been fooling herself?
She peeked at Rafe’s profile. Maybe she didn’t have to face life alone. Maybe the man she’d always wanted was the one right in front of her, the one who wasn’t really a man but who’d captured her attentions. He’d tempted her from the minute she saw him. Even after learning he was a shifter, she still desired him.
The car hit a bump and dragged her out of her inner musing. Her relationship with Rafe wasn’t the most important concern at the moment. Her family’s safety was her top priority. The problem was, the longer she thought about it, the harder it was to keep the two issues separate. Rafe had a tie to both—the threat to her heart and her life.
Rafe parked in the grass. “Stay here until I can check out the house and the outer buildings. I want to make sure it’s safe before the others arrive.”
She knew that was the plan. Her boys, along with Megan and Josh, would make the trip over to her place after a couple more of Rafe’s brothers showed up. She’d agreed it was best and had planned to use the short drive over to talk to Rafe about Jon. Her wandering thoughts had stopped her.
Watching
