Chapter 145

Sarah POV

The emails had started only a few weeks ago, around the same time Melissa and I started making public appearances together.

I had told Zane that Scott was emailing me. I even showed him the first two, but they were so innocuous, so dull, he’d told me he trusted me to tell him if anything in them changed. I checked my email account, and I saw that the first one had come right before the bomb.

Sarah,

I hope it’s all right for me to address you as Sarah. If I were human, I believe I would need to call you Miss Astor until you gave me permission to call you otherwise. But I am a wolf, and I don’t wish to pretend I’m anything else.

I’m sure you will show this email to Zane, and I want you to. I write with no other hope that the misunderstandings between us can be replaced by a good rapport and a congenial friendship.

Will you be attending the luncheon for the Beta Auxiliary League? I have purchased two seats for myself and a friend, but I will only attend if you say it is all right. If you would rather I didn’t, just do not respond.

Yours,

Scott Cavendish

I didn’t respond. He didn’t show up. I wonder if the bomb would have been there had he been in his seat.

Sarah,

I am so very relieved you are all right. If I’d been there, I would have helped if I could. Instead, I have said a prayer to the goddess for your safety and the well-being of your family.

Yours,

Scott Cavendish

There had been a few after that asking after my health and hoping I was doing well. Then one had come with the heading, Please, Do Not Delete without Reading.

Sarah,

I have now watched that video of you telling off Mrs. Berry ten times. I plan to watch at least that many times again.

I am sure you know that my sire, while he gave me his last name in recognition of our relationship, wanted nothing to do with me, so after my mother, whom I’m also sure you know was an omega, died, I finished my childhood in a boarding school up north. I cannot help but think that you, as an orphan, know what it was like for me, including my interactions with teachers.

I had some teachers who were wonderful, but I also had many like Mrs. Berry, nasty betas who looked down on me because of my mother and delighted in having an alpha child to torment.

I do not know if I ever felt more kinship for strangers than I did for those humans in Mrs. Berry’s class. It was cathartic to feel their outrage and despair and then to join in their shock and joy when you fired their tormentor.

I am now watching your work in helping Zane and Agent Travis to audit public schools, starting with that district. You are remarkable. May the goddess bless you.

Yours,

Scott Cavendish

For the first time, Scott’s email made me question things. This voice he was using in the emails didn’t match up with his previous behavior. I thought about showing it to Zane, but I knew he would just say it was an act and not to be fooled.

May the goddess bless you.

What the hell, seriously? The guy who was probably in on the human trafficking scheme was asking the goddess to bless me?

In the end, I just did nothing. Then another email came.

Sarah,

Your show is wonderful! How did you come up with the name Let’s Talk!? It’s so straightforward, so unpretentious, so “you.”

Do you know that I have an extensive wine collection? I prefer whites, myself, to reds, but Thirsty’s right. (Yes, I do know him, and he’s great fun.) Some wines are better in the human variety, and I would put Pinot Grigio at the top of the list. Did you see the movie Sideways? Paul Giamatti is fantastic, and he has this speech about Pinot. I’m going to look it up to share with you.

So, someone asks him why he likes Pinot, and he says, It’s a hard grape to grow It’s thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It’s not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and thrive even when it’s neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention. And can only grow in these really specific, little, tucked-away corners of the world. And, and only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot’s potential can then coax it into its fullest expression. Then, I mean, oh, its flavors, they’re just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and ancient on the planet.

It’s that beautiful?

Yours,

Scott Cavendish

After that, I realized I didn’t have a close friend, someone who wasn’t a child, or an alpha who made me want things I shouldn’t, or a publicist, or a fellow activist. Melissa was a friend, I supposed, but I couldn’t call her up and ask her opinion about these emails.

Raising Chloe on my own had isolated me with my two jobs and a world completely centered on her. And then my life had been taken over by Zane and his other daughter.

And it wasn’t just that I didn’t have a female friend, I didn’t have a human female friend. Sitting there, looking at yet another email from Scott in my inbox, I felt desperately lonely. I had no one to be myself with, not putting on a mating display in my dreams that sent me recklessly into Zane’s bedroom without so much as checking if anyone saw me, not being the goddess-mother of two future Pack Alphas, not giving a speech or foiling an assassination attempt.

What I would have given right then to have someone I could meet for coffee or a glass of wine and a good old-fashioned gossip. Perhaps a shopping trip where we didn’t really buy anything?

Did Scott sense my loneliness? Did he think it made me vulnerable? To use a wolf term, was I showing my belly?

I looked up and out the open doors to the hedge maze. The girls were in school, so I watched as Mavis took a hedge trimmer to the plants, carefully maintaining their smooth walls.

Hey, Mavis! What do you think about these emails Scott keeps sending? Is he being sincere or full of shit? Am I being an idiot even asking about it?

I clicked on the email.

Sarah,

I believe I’ve spotted a pattern in the attempts on your life and would like to talk with you about them. I know I can’t ask you to meet me, but perhaps a phone call? Zane has my number.

Yours,

Scott Cavendish

Oh, great. Just great.