ROMANCE: Lion Protector (Paranormal Shifter BBW Military Romance) (Shapeshifter Alpha Male Short Stories Book 2) (110 page)

THE END

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Every morning, every noon, and every night Annabelle served a meal. They were mostly easily prepared, and she knew it was her contribution to the ranch, so she always told her husband that she was happy to do it. But some nights, when the men were talking amongst themselves while she got around to serving up all their plates, she could admit to herself she had never really wanted to be a cook for the hired hands of her husband’s ranch.

She was barely listening, thinking for the hundredth time about the warm bed she had in the big house and the view of the land from their bedroom window, when a word cut through the haze.

Chris
.

There was more than one Chris in the world, Annabelle knew, but it always struck her when she heard the name anyway. There was only one Chris to
her
, and there probably always would be, she’d thought idly and resignedly from time to time. Involuntarily, she found herself listening to their conversation.

“And when is he supposed to get in?” one was saying. At the beginning she’d diligently learned all their names, but now she only did so if she thought there was some reason she’d need to know them, and Flannel-shirt Long-hair wasn’t going to be important, she suspected.

“Tomorrow was what I heard. He’s from here, I gather. Grew up in this town and went to high school here before he went off and joined the army five years ago. No one thought he was going to be coming back, but here he is.”

Annabelle’s hands froze. She had to stop herself from correcting them. It’s been the Navy, he’d left for. It’d been the Seals. And it wasn’t true that no one thought he was going to be coming back.
She’d
thought he was going to be coming back.

“Annabelle?” Flannel-shirt Long-hair was questioning her and her ladle, that hung frozen in the air where it had been when she’d put together that he was coming back.

Flannel-shirt Long-hair was expecting an explanation, but she gave him none. She could only manage a slight grimace and a nod, and finished serving up his dinner.

The rest of the line went agonizingly slowly. There weren’t so many men. The ranch was large, but it was a tough season for hiring out there, and she knew that her husband’s wages weren’t exactly on the competitive end of the scale. But still it was hard even to give the limited focus necessary to spoon out roughly even portions in the general vicinity of the bowls.

Had it really only been five years? She counted them in her head. Annabelle remembered each spring, each blistering summer, each fall, and each dark winter. It felt like more, but it had to be right. The first year she’d been mostly refusing to believe he’d left. He would be back, she was certain. She’d not yet graduated, and she remembered now thinking that that had something to do with it. He was only doing this while she was busy, she’d said to herself. He’d just gone off while she was finishing up school, and surely when she was done she’d get letter after letter, telling her where he’d been and what he’d been doing. Inviting her out to whatever base he was at, where she would get a little apartment and maybe go to community college, and wherever they sent him she’d follow.

But Chris’ letters never came. Annabelle never received a single one. She only even knew it was the seals when she’d broken down after High School graduation came and went and she’d still heard nothing, and went to visit his family home.

“He’s a
seal
now,” Chris’ little sister had said, “I’m sure he doesn’t have time to be thinking about anything back here.”

Chris’ sister had clearly been impressed that he’d made the grade and joined Special Forces. But she wasn’t surprised, and she wasn’t proud. She only felt hollow, and a little bit glad that at least if he wasn’t writing to her, Chris also wasn’t writing to his family.

She’d been listless all that summer. Chris had always been the one with the plans, and she’d always listened to them noncommittally. She remembered now, again, as she had so many times, when they were laying beneath their tree – the tree where she’d first given herself to him. He wanted to go away – to take her to California.

“You’d go with me, wouldn’t you?” he’d asked. “You could sing. You’re good at singing. Or you could find something else to do, I don’t know. There are a lot of things to do in California. We’d find something.”

She hadn’t answered him. She just left the sentence hanging in the air between them just a little bit too long to go unnoticed. Then she’d tried to kiss him, to end the conversation. They were laying side by side and she sat half-way up to be able to reach his lips. But he’d grasped her wrist before she could plant her hand on the ground beside him to support herself, and tossed her harshly back into the scattered grass.

“Chris!” she’d called his name, but he didn’t seem to hear. He was gone.

As were the ranch hands, now. She’d been standing there, lost in thought, idly stirring the pot, for the entire meal. Had they thought she was strange? It hardly mattered. She didn’t much care if they did or not. They’d be gone in due time anyway.

There wasn’t much to do, so she idly watched TV with Jason, her husband. They sat on separate recliners as they always did, alone in the big house, while the hired hands slept crowded in little rooms in their quarters.

“It’s so empty in this house,” Annabelle heard herself say, to no one in particular, after the final credits of an episode of House Hunters where a family of six were looking for an improbably cheap house in a crowded market.

She hadn’t really even directed it at Jason, but here he was now, crouching at the side of her recliner, and taking her hand in his.

“It’ll happen for us, Annabelle Lee,” he said. Then he drew her hand to his lips and kissed it. She watched him, as though from a distance, observing him.

Had she ever loved him?

She asked herself this as he drew closer to her, and kissed her neck.

“We just have to keep trying,” he was saying now, and she knew where he was going.

So she let it go, as it had so many times, changing nothing and meaning nothing.

After it was done she looked at him in his sleep. He was a little older, and his hair had gone salt and pepper. Maybe she had loved him. She’d loved that about him, at least, once. And the length of his smooth jaw.

He turned over in his sleep, away from her. She felt accused, as though he must have felt her judgement. He wasn’t a bad man. He’d never been a bad man. But it had never felt to her entirely as though he were
her
man.

It took Annabelle what felt like hours to get fully to sleep. She kept thinking of the last time she’d seen Chris. She kept trying to convince herself that there was some way it could not be him. Maybe the ranch hands had heard it wrong. Maybe his name was different, and it was six years, or three, and he really had joined the army, and he has nothing to do with Annabelle and the man she had loved the way only teenagers who have never seen a love go wrong are capable.

When Annabelle finally did sleep, she dreamed of Chris. He was looking away, wearing a uniform and staring off into the distance. She kept trying to turn his head, so that she could look at his face and be sure it was him, but he wouldn’t turn. So she tried to walk around him, so that she could see his face that way. But wherever she walked, however she tried to get around him, his back was always to her.

She awoke frustrated and alone. Jason was no longer there, and that was her first clue that she’d overslept and breakfast wouldn’t be served to the hired hands on time. Oh well. This had happened before. Year three had been a hard one for her, and she’d missed breakfast almost more often than not.

Annabelle lazily stretched and craned her neck from the position she was laying in to be able to see the alarm.

10:34.

She shot out of bed. Missing breakfast was one thing. Missing
lunch
because she overslept was another entirely. In her hurry, at first she threw on an ordinary, everyday outfit. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. Just what she wore because she had to wear something. But at the doorway, with her hand on the knob, she stopped. She was remembering her dream, and the frustration, and it reminded her of watching him walk away under their tree.

So she went back to her wardrobe and took a good hard look, and found a dress she thought she’d thrown away years ago. She’d worn in that summer, and she knew he’d liked it. She tried to remember if she’d worn it since and could not.

On her way downstairs she heard voices. The same ones as always. At first Jason was talking, in words she couldn’t quite make out. Then Steve, his staff manager and second in command, was saying something about taxes, and then…

And then Chris was speaking. And she saw him, as she came around a corner, simultaneously. It was the back of his head, as it was in her dream. But it was undeniably him. He stood up a straighter, now. But the dimensions of his torso, his arms and legs, hadn’t changed. The curve of his neck, and the three little dots on it, right in a row, were the same as they had always been, though his hair had been cut short in military style.

She couldn’t make out his words. She was looking at him.

“You look nice, Annabelle.”

Jason was speaking again, and his words triggered Chris to turn. Annabelle thought it was a bit too fast. Immediately she was paranoid.
They’ll know!
She wanted to shout at him. Then felt silly. What would they know? What could they know? There was nothing between them, now. Their history was years ago.

Then he was holding his hand out to her, for a handshake.

“Annabelle?” He asked. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Chris.”

And in those few words, he’d made them conspirators, and Annabelle knew there was, and always would be, something between them to hide.

She shook his hand, and mumbled some helloes and vague introductions. He shouldn’t even have been here in the house, she thought angrily. Usually hired hands never visited the main house, especially when they were just being brought on.

Annabelle made her excuses and went to go begin preparing lunch. She cut her hands twice, and each time cursed herself, and used language Jason didn’t like hearing come out of her mouth.

But she didn’t care right now. She was an honorable woman. She’d always been an honorable woman. She’d been raised to be an honorable woman. Then why had she not said, immediately on their introduction, that they’d known each other before. Why didn’t she laugh it off like some kind of a joke and ask Chris if he didn’t remember her? 

Lunch seemed insufficient. It was what she’d planned to serve, and what was on the schedule she’d drawn up and shopped for, but she wished now it was something more. Meals for the men was all she had to show Chris of what she’d done with the last five years of her life. The least she could have done was make it more impressive.

But it was what it was, and she carried it out to the men’s dining, where she fiddled with the cups and glasses, and unloaded the bowls from last night from the dishwasher, even though they wouldn’t be needing them for lunch today. She was preoccupied, and preparation went by in a blur. Everything was a blur until she saw him again.

Then he was there, in line. She’d barely been able to look at him in the main house. And now she couldn’t without it being too obvious, so she could only sneak intermittent glances in his direction. He was looking at her, too, she knew. He wasn’t hiding his glances nearly so much as she was. He was making it more obvious than she would dare.

The last five years was written all over him. Aside from the changed posture that she’d noticed before, and the hair she’d loved that he had removed, there were changes in his face that were harder to quantify. He looked firmer, now. She could see where his muscled bulged beneath his clothes, but it was a different kind of strength that showed in his face. He was harder, and more resolute. But there was also a weariness to him now that she had to stop herself from running to him to kiss from his face.

When he reached the front of the line, and she was dishing up his meal, she noticed a tremor in her hands that she had to focus herself hard to stop.

“Hello again, Mrs. Lee,” Chris said, and she barely recognized it as her own name. When she looked at him she felt as though her name were still her old name, before she’d let Jason take it from her.

She mumbled out a “hello” somehow, and he continued.

“I had a question about what I am authorized to do with my accommodations,” he said, strangely formally, “and I was told you would be the correct person to address my questions to. Would you be so kind as to let me show you what I’m thinking after you’ve finished dishing up lunch, so that I can get it cleared by you?”

He’d never spoken this way, and it felt foreign to hear. But it was also right he wasn’t being himself. More and more she got the sense that he was here under cover, and nothing he said to any of his fellow workers would be anything close to the man she knew.

She mumbled something about that being all right, if he ate quickly and was ready to show her when she was done serving and putting the leftovers away.

The upstanding part of her was upset that she said it, but she couldn’t stop herself, just as she couldn’t stop herself from being jittery and excited the rest of serving. Just like that, after having been here a mere few hours, he’d arranged for her to come meet him in his room. He’d got the two of them alone together with a deft and sure touch.