COWBOY ROMANCE: Justin (Western Contemporary Alpha Male Bride Romance) (The Steele Brothers Book 1) (14 page)

Chapter Seven

“And if you look at it that way,” Barrett was saying, his arm slipped through Jenna’s as they walked, the sunlight slanting toward dusk, “it’s—”

The bear rose out of the tall grasses with a suddenness that made Jenna take a step back, nearly stumbling over her own feet. Barrett caught her, held her steady.

“Slow,” he said, voice low. “Just back up slow.”

She knew that. Jenna took a step back, Barrett matching her, and from the corner of her eye she saw Arthur do the same. The bear snuffled, rising up onto his hind legs, where he towered over Arthur. Though he took another step back, Jenna thought Barrett looked surprisingly calm. Maybe he was just a better actor than she was. Her heart was racing, her stomach twisting sickly. When the bear took a step forward, Barrett’s arm suddenly left her own, pushed her back behind him. Arthur, ahead of them both, growled, and for a moment she thought it had been the grizzly, but it was definitely Arthur, standing there with his shoulders squared like he intended some kind of challenge. 

The bear paused. Looked at Arthur. Then, as Jenna watched, it shifted, and shrank, and became a man. Her jaw dropped open.

“Arthur,” the man who had been a bear said, shaking shaggy blond hair back out of his eyes. “Barrett. Didn’t know you two were back in the park.” He grinned, his eyes sweeping over her. “And who’s the lovely companion?”

Like Arthur and Barrett, he was built big and muscled, though he was heavier than both of them, like he’d been bulking up. Or, she realized, like he was preparing for hibernation. He was also completely naked, and she was glad for the long grass that covered him to the waist.

“Sloan,” Arthur said, polite if a little tight in his throat.

Barrett was looking at her sideways, then back at Sloan and Arthur.

“Jenna,” Arthur said. “This is Sloan. Sloan, this is Jenna, who up to this moment was not aware of the existence of our kind.”

Sloan had the grace to look a little embarrassed. Jenna wasn’t thinking about that. She was thinking about
our kind
, about the way Arthur had growled at Sloan and the bear paw tattooed on his chest. She looked at Barrett, whose open expression gave away the rest. Both of them, then.

“Okay,” she said, pleased with the way her voice came out even. “Explain this to me.”

“Well,” Barrett said. “Um.” He looked at Arthur.

“It’s pretty simple,” Arthur said, turning to meet her eyes. He didn’t look upset at being found out. “We’re shape shifters, as you’ve now guessed. Bear shifters, if you want to be exact.

Why didn’t you tell me?
The question was almost on her lips before she realized she already knew the answer. Why should they have, when they’d only known her for a week and a half? Sure, she’d told them things about herself, and they’d told her about themselves in return, but she hadn’t told them the secrets that she kept a little closer. Hadn’t told them anything that was likely to upset the easy balance of their camaraderie. Of course they hadn’t told her.

“Okay,” she said again. “That’s… It’s a lot to take in.”

Barrett was looking at her like he wanted to come closer but wasn’t sure he was allowed, and she wasn’t sure if she was going to allow him, understanding of the secrecy or not. But for a grown man who could apparently shapeshift into a bear, he did puppy dog eyes really well. She sighed. Who was she kidding? She lifted a hand and beckoned him closer.

He was there an instant later, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into the warmth of his body. It felt, she thought, the same as it had every other time she’d touched him, and she wondered if she had expected him to feel different now that she knew. As though somehow something of the bear would be suddenly obvious. But the only kind of bear he reminded her of at the moment was a teddy bear. Laughter bubbled up suddenly in her throat.

“Of all the things I expected on this vacation,” she said through it, “
this
was definitely not on the list.”

Arthur was chuckling, obviously relieved with how well she was taking the news.

“But then,” she admitted, “neither was meeting you.”

Sloan had apparently taken it upon himself to give them privacy, because he’d ambled off a little way, and she watched as between one step and the next man became bear, dropping down to all fours and strolling through the high grass toward the mudflats. Jenna stared after him for a moment, not sure if she was actually calm or if she was just in shock, before she pulled her attention back to Arthur and Barrett.

“You two have a lot of explaining to do.”

Chapter Eight

Arthur did most of the talking as they walked back toward camp, explaining how shape shifters existed in the legends of nearly every culture, sometimes good and sometimes bad. Most real shape shifters were just people, trying to get on with their lives. There weren’t many of them, he told her as he continued. And there were even fewer who moved between worlds the way he and Barrett did. Many tried to stay completely human, for fear of being discovered changing. Others, like Sloan, took it the opposite direction, living almost entirely as animals. He had grown up on Admiralty Island, among shifters who lived that way, but the human world had always intrigued him too much for him to leave it entirely alone.

“That’s why he’s bigger,” Barrett said, the curve of his mouth a little rueful. “He grew up on the Alaskan coast.”

“I happen to like you the size you are,” Jenna said, pleased to see his expression brighten.

She had a lot of questions. Wanted to ask them what it was like to be a bear. Whether they still thought like humans in their animal shape, or if it was harder. Arthur told her that in the bear shape thoughts took simpler forms, and the longer a shifter stayed as a bear, the longer it took them to come back to human thought patterns. Some of them, the ones like Sloan, eventually chose to never come back at all.

They made dinner, cooking out over an open fire rather than over her camp stove, and when it was cleaned up and they had returned to the tent, they stretched out on the sleeping bags side by side, and Jenna’s thoughts turned from bears to Sunday, when she would be leaving.

She didn’t want to go. There was still so much to see. So much to learn about the men she was coming to think of as hers. So much to share. As though he knew what she was thinking, Arthur rolled over and wrapped an arm around her, drawing her close. Barrett slid nearer on her other side, curling his arm over her stomach, below where Arthur’s arm rested.

“What are you thinking about?”

Jenna took a breath and let it out again slowly. “About having to leave,” she admitted. “I don’t want to.”

They looked at each other over her head for a moment, and then Barrett leaned down and kissed her, slow and soft, his palm against her cheek. When he pulled back, he smiled, small and a little crooked, but there.

“I’ve never been to Iowa.”

Her eyes lifted to his face. “Would you?”

“Of course we would,” Arthur said from her other side. His arm tightened. “I don’t let go of things I want that easily.”

Jenna looked up into two pairs of brown eyes, both of them looking back at her with an affection she had hoped she wasn’t alone in feeling, and she drew them down close to her.

“My home will always be open.”

And maybe it wouldn’t be that simple, she thought, tipping her head back against the sleeping bags as Barrett pressed his mouth to her throat, the motion echoed by Arthur on the other side. Relationships were never simple, not with two people, certainly not with three. But that was the beauty of them, wasn’t it?

She lifted her hands, tangled them in thick, soft hair as the kisses continued, moving slowly downward.

Maybe in two months they would realize that it didn’t work. That the time and the distance were too much, or that a shifter and a human couldn’t really work out. But for reasons she couldn’t really put a name to, Jenna didn’t think that would happen. What they had here, right now, it was something special. She raised her arms so they could lift her shirt over her head, wrapping them around two pairs of broad shoulders as she lowered them.

Arthur, the photographer, so focused; Barrett, so surprisingly sweet behind that shy exterior; and her, the soon-to-be ranger who’d stumbled upon more than one completely unexpected thing in a windswept park on the southeastern tip of Alaska—they made something good together. Something right. And whatever happened tomorrow, she thought as she lifted her hips for Arthur and Barrett to skim her jeans down her legs, they had today. These hours in a tent in bear country.

And then she stopped thinking about tomorrow, and about next month or the month after, and gave her attention to the moment, and the men who were leaning down over her, their touch warm on her skin. She smiled into two pairs of brown eyes, and gave herself over to the hands and the heat and the soft sounds of three people together in a tent—warm and lit against the chill fall night. Thinking could happen later. Right now, there were better things to do.

THE END

A Werewolf Romance

Rescuing a Werewolf

Chapter One

"Okay, boys. Tell me what we've got."

Erin Rivers stood with the doctor just inside the ER doors where the ambulance made its deliveries, the shifting red and blue illumination of the emergency lights rolling over them both. The EMTs wheeled the stretcher up from the vehicle and into the ER. Erin, who wasn’t exactly tall, moved quickly to keep up.

"John Doe. Found by a couple of cyclists out for a night ride on the edge of town. Pretty beat up. Some bad lacerations. Bruises. Cracked or broken ribs. Broken fingers.”

Erin spun on her heel to follow them as they started down the hall, headed for one of the treatment rooms.

The man on the stretcher was big—tall and broad-shouldered with brown hair and a tan that said he spent a lot of time outdoors. His shirt had been cut off him, and she could see the gauze that had been taped over his chest, already spotted with blood, the pressure bandage wrapped around his rib cage. The guy was out of it, totally unconscious.

"Was he awake when you picked him up?"

The nearest EMT shook his head.

"Nope. He's been out since we arrived. Guys who found him said he was down for the count when they got there. Don't know how long he's been unconscious."

That could be bad. Erin nodded.

"Get him on the bed and we'll take a look at him."

Between the two of them, the ambulance techs laid the guy out on his side, and the doctor stepped forward to look him over while Erin set up the IV. She watched as the doctor removed the gauze that had been hiding the wounds on the men’s chest. 

He had four lacerations that cut from sternum to navel, all running parallel to each other, ragged along their edges like they’d been opened with something sharp only at its tip. Deep, but they didn’t look life-threatening. They hadn’t cut through to any vital organs.

The bruising was pretty bad. There were huge purple black marks along his ribcage. Looked like boot marks, and she wouldn't be surprised to find they were. The injuries had the air of something done deliberately.

"Any identification on him?" Erin asked the EMT, who was standing to the side filling out the paperwork on the new arrival.

"Nope. And no name from the callers, of course."

A John Doe, then. They'd find out who he was when he woke up.

When the doctor took the gauze off his back, they found similar wounds to the ones on his chest. A double set of long cuts, raked down the length of his back.

"What happened here?" she asked the EMT. "Any ideas?"

He stepped around to stand with her, looking at the wounds.

"Our best guess?" he said, looking at her sideways. "They look like something with claws took a pretty strong disliking to him. Except that those are definitely boot prints. So, we really have no idea.”

“Wolverine?” the intern who’d just walked in to observe suggested.

"Claws," the doctor said flatly, ignoring the attempt at humor. 

The EMT nodded.

That was, Erin decided, what they looked like. Four parallel marks, opened by something with a pointed tip. But there were the bruises, which were definitely boot imprints.

The lacerations needed to be cleaned and sutured, and bloodwork sent to the lab. When that was done, the doctor and the intern left, and Erin was alone with the patient. She checked the IV levels, made sure he was resting peacefully, and stood for a moment, silently studying him.

He was a good looking guy, even bandaged up and laying in a hospital bed—strong cheekbones, a straight Grecian nose, a thick head of curling brown hair. Erin turned away. She had other patients to see to, after all.

Chapter Two

Back in high school, Erin had a friend who'd confessed a secret to her.

She remembered the day all too clearly. They'd been sitting outside on the swings behind her house, swaying gently back and forth in the slanted golden light of late afternoon. The day was warm, but not hot, one of the last good spring days before summer would set in and fry everything to a crisp. It had rained in the morning, and everything felt fresh and new and clean. The flowers were blooming in the flower beds, and the trees were in blossom.

"I have to tell you something," Jenna said very quietly.

Erin turned to look at her past the chains of the swings, her hands curled around the plastic-covered part of them. They were really getting too big for these things, and the seat wasn't exactly comfortable. The edges cut into her hips.

"Tell me. You know you can."

Jenna was looking down at her lap, where her fingers were twisting together, her dark hair, a contrast to Erin’s blonde, pulled forward over one shoulder. She tugged at her lower lip with her teeth.

"Yeah. I know I can, or I wouldn't have said it."

She took a breath and let it out again slowly. In the little copse of trees to their left, birds called back and forth. Erin waited for her to speak.

"You know how I'm always missing school for a few days every month?"

Erin knew. She'd asked about it before, and Jenna always had an excuse, but she'd never given her a straight answer. Erin felt her heart beat pick up a little, and at the time she hadn't been sure why.

"Well, there's a reason."

"What?"

Jenna was silent again for a long moment, swaying restlessly.

"I…" She seemed to have trouble getting the words out, stopping and clearing her throat. Cleared it again. "I'm not sure I know how to say this," she confessed after a moment.

"Just tell me, Jen. I won't tell anyone. I promise."

Erin lifted her hand and drew an X over her heart. They hadn't done that since they were ten, but she hoped it would let Jenna know that she was telling the truth. Jenna could tell her anything. They'd been friends since kindergarten, and she didn't like the distance that had been growing between them over the last couple years, since Jenna had been in that accident while she was camping.

"It's hard," Jenna said, hardly more than a whisper. "I mean, I've never told anyone this, Er. And telling you could get me in a lot of trouble."

"Only if someone knows you told," Erin argued gently. "And I'm not going to tell them. Really. I promise."

What could be so big that Jenna couldn't tell her?

"This is going to sound stupid."

"I don't care how it sounds."

Jenna nodded, the motion of her head abrupt and jerky. Nervous. Erin was growing nervous too, watching Jenna's hands twist in her lap, listening to the too-quick sound of her breathing.

"So. Um. The days I'm gone. They're always the full moon."

Erin blinked. She looked at Jenna.

"The full moon?" she echoed, to be sure she was hearing it right.

Jenna nodded.

"Is that… What exactly are you trying to say?"

Jenna opened her mouth to answer, but the honk of a car horn stopped her. She looked up at Erin, apology drawing her eyebrows down and twisting her mouth.

"I'm sorry. That's my mom. I have to go."

"Wait. Jen—"

But she was already up from the swing and running across the yard, her ponytail swinging.

Erin never had found out what Jenna was going to say. She hadn't come back to school after that. But she'd turned the words over and over in her mind, trying to see the conclusion they came to, wondering what they could mean that wasn't totally out of the realm of possibility. It always came back to one idea, though. An idea that couldn't possibly be right.

It was a strange thing to be thinking about, that day in her backyard, as Erin went about her rounds. She hadn't thought of Jenna in a long time. But for some reason the memory was teasing at her, pricking her thoughts. She shrugged and continued on to the next patient.

-------

When Erin returned, the recent John Doe arrival was awake, sitting slightly up in bed. She was on her way out for the night, but she’d wanted to check in on him and see how he was doing. He looked groggy, and it took a moment for his eyes to focus on her. When they did, he frowned.

"What happened?"

"A couple of bikers called in a finding of an unconscious man on the side of the rode. You're in the hospital."

His expression shifted from confusion to alarm.

"The hospital?"

Erin’s eyebrows lifted. "Yes."

He moved to rise from the bed, and she hurried across the room to stand over it.

"You shouldn't get up yet," she chided. "You have broken ribs, and there were some pretty bad lacerations on your torso."

The expression on his face said he'd discovered the broken ribs when he moved, but he shook his head.

"I really can't be here."

"You want to explain just what you mean by that?" she asked.

The John Doe took a sharp breath, like he was trying not to say something angry.

"I'm checking myself out," he said, voice even.

She couldn't stop him. It wasn't as though he was dying in the bed. But when he stood, she saw him sway, clutch at the railing of the bed for support. For all his size, he looked almost fragile in the paper hospital gown, with his hair ruffled and his face sheened with sweat. The faint flush in his cheeks concerned her.

"I really can't advise that," Erin said firmly. "You're not well. You look like you have a fever, and you're only going to make yourself worse if you go running off right now."

"Where are my clothes?"

Erin huffed, but he didn't seem to hear it. She turned and pulled his bagged effects from the cabinet next to the bed. His shirt, of course, was gone. They’d cut it off of him to check his injuries. There had been a wallet in his pocket, but no ID. No credit cards. She handed the bag to him.

He took it and glanced through it, making sure everything was there.

“I’ll say it one more time,” Erin said, more gently than she had spoken before. “Checking yourself out will be against the advice of the hospital staff, and you should reconsider staying.”

He pulled on his clothes under the paper gown, grimacing as the movement pulled at the sutured lacerations and jostled the broken ribs. Erin gave him a look that was definitely of the ‘I told you so’ sort.

“I can’t stay,” he said, and his expression was almost apologetic.

“Care to explain to why?”

“That’s not really something I’m at liberty to share.”

Erin’s lips pressed into a thin line. “You have boot marks on your ribs and claw marks on your chest and back. They're a little contradictory. If I guessed your reluctance to stay has something to do with that, would I be right?"

He stopped fastening his jeans under the paper gown and looked up at her. His head was tipped slightly to the side, his expression searching.

"I'm more open-minded than some, I think," Erin said, hoping to encourage him to speak.

"And what do you think would cause my injuries?"

Erin took a deep breath. She wasn't going to say it. No matter what she had wondered since Jenna had disappeared that day in high school, she wasn't going to admit it out loud. Certainly not to a stranger who was her patient. Or not her patient, for much longer. She shook her head. She shouldn't have pushed it.

"You think you know, but you're too afraid to say the words," he said, pulling the hospital gown up over his head and dropping it on the rumpled bed. Even with the bandages on, she could see the cut of his muscles. He was in good shape. He would heal quickly. She supposed that was something to be happy about if he was checking himself out of the hospital's care. But he still looked ill and hurt, and she didn't think it was a good idea.

"Tell me what happened," she said.

He shook his head. "I can't. If you don't know it, then I can't say it. And I have to go. I don't have time to stand here arguing with you. Sorry."

He stepped past her, his shoulder brushing lightly against hers. His skin was very warm. Too warm. Erin turned and followed him from the room.

"You have a fever," she said as he walked ahead of her, straining her legs a little to keep up. She wasn't a short woman, but he was well above average height, and he moved with long, easy strides, even with his injuries. She was forced into a near jog to walk alongside him.

"I have a fever," he agreed. "It won't kill me."

She let out her breath through her nose, and then considered the fact that he was
absolutely
infuriating. She didn't have to follow him around, or try to make him see sense. If he wanted to check himself out and drag himself home to suffer alone, that was really his problem. Erin was off duty. She was supposed to be home watching TV and eating takeout, not chasing a John Doe around the hospital trying to make him stay in bed.

"Your choice, I guess," she said.

Erin turned and walked in the opposite direction. It wasn't her responsibility. It wasn't her problem to take care of. She told herself that over and over as she walked out to her car and slid into the driver's seat, then turned the key. She sighed. He was clearly in pain, and clearly afraid of staying in the hospital. Her memory and his injuries kept sliding to the forefront, trying to tell her something she was refusing to acknowledge. It was silly. It was absolutely fantastical, and she was a grown woman. She should not be entertaining children's fancies.

But he was injured.

Slowly, Erin turned her car back toward the hospital and drove around toward the main door. As she pulled around the corner, he was walking out. She saw him sway, saw him catch himself and stubbornly continue on, though his body language and gait said that he was in pain. Stubborn. Bull-headed. She didn't even know his name. She rolled to a stop and hit the button for the window.

"Can I give you a ride somewhere, at least?"

He looked at her, a bead of sweat sliding down his temple.

"Get in the car. I'm on my way out of here anyway."

Another moment of hesitation before he carefully opened the door and settled into the passenger seat, relaxing back against the leather cooled by the air-conditioning.

"I just need the nearest cheap hotel," he said. "And I'll pay you back for the gas."

Erin frowned at him in the rearview.

"Don't even think about it. And I am not dropping you off in one of those dirt-covered, roach-infested places down on the strip. I won't be responsible for your death of some horrible infection. I took an oath."

He huffed a laugh, then winced when it jostled his ribs.

"You're really something else. Has anyone ever told you that?"

"I'm an ER nurse," Erin answered, voice flat. "Of course I'm something else."

She glanced at him as she pulled out onto the street.

"You haven't told me your name," she said.

"No."

"I'm doing you a pretty big favor. You should probably tell me your name in return."

Another quiet, careful laugh.

"Is that so?"

"It is."

"Fine." He looked over at her, and though her own gaze was on the road, she could feel his eyes on her face. "It's Devlin."

"Devlin." She wasn't entirely sure that was his real name. "Nice to meet you. I'm Erin. Erin Rivers."

The blatant hint didn't draw anything from him, and she gave up on it for the moment. 

"So,” she asked again instead. "Why did you end up bleeding on the side of a road?"

He shook his head. "I could tell you, but I won't."

"That isn't very nice." There were restaurants coming up along the side of the road. "Are you hungry?"

Devlin looked out the window at the fast food places sliding by, and he nodded.

"Famished, actually. But you don't have to pay for me. I've got cash."

"We'll stop, at least. How does Chinese sound?"

When he nodded, she pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall where her favorite Chinese restaurant sat. But he didn’t come in with her. She looked over at him, sitting shirtless in the passenger seat, and ordered him to stay in the car.

"To go," she told the man behind the counter as she gave her order.

"So," she said, when she was back in the car, waiting for their food to be brought out. "I'm going to do something really stupid."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "And what is that?"

"I'm going to ask you to come home with me for tonight. I have a couch that's pretty comfortable, and you can sleep there where it's clean, and you won't get something that's going to make you sicker than you already are. I can take a look at your injuries in the morning, and we'll decide where to go from there."

Both eyebrows snapped upward.