Authors: Josie Walker
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CHAPTER TWO
S
traight after school she’d had to hustle in order to arrive in time for her shift at the dry cleaners. She was so stressed out about the money that she felt like she was going to burst out of her skin or something equally disgusting. By the time the clock struck ten o’clock Michelle was no longer just panicking, now she was a seething, boiling, mass of rage.
She was so worked up that not even changing into the comfortable stretch knit dress made her feel better, although she tugged it on anyway. Her foster sister had effectively crapped all over her attempts to make a better life for herself, and now her feeble sense of security was shot to hell as well. All day she’d wanted to drop everything and hunt her down, but it was stunts like that that got you fired.
“I’m gonna drag your butt to rehab!” she threatened the empty air. When logic reminded her that she couldn’t afford a fancy health clinic she came up with a new threat. “I’m gonna lock you in a room until you puke all the drugs out of your system and stop being such an idiot,” she tried next.
A man walking up to wait for the bus gave her a weird look but he didn’t say anything about the fact that she was talking to herself. One of the cardinal rules of using public transportation was NOT to engage with the crazies. The fact that she was carrying on a solo conversation like a lunatic was not lost on her. It was times like these when she really wished that she had a car. There wouldn’t be anyone to gawk at her for yammering on like a psychopath. There would also have been the added bonus of having somewhere to sleep tomorrow when her grumpy landlord kicked her big butt to the curb.
Her battery was getting low thanks to the excessive use, so she kept her phone tucked in her backpack as she stalked the less than savory streets of downtown Chicago. These were the parts of town that anyone in their right mind would know to avoid after dark. Too bad that she didn’t have the luxury of sanity at the moment. She knew for a fact that people bought drugs in this neighborhood. Now she just needed to find Grace before she blew all of their money. The fact that she was probably already too late wasn’t about to stop her from trying. The song wasn’t over until the fat lady sang.
The temperature had dipped down to the point where she was shivering and wishing that she hadn’t stripped out of her hideous albeit warm work pants. She heard shouting as she turned the corner. Feeling uneasy, she pulled off her backpack and started digging around for her canister of mace. She couldn’t believe she’d been too scatterbrained to remember to unearth it earlier. She should have had her self-defense spray in hand before she even disembarked from the bus, this was just that type of neighborhood.
As she was digging through her bag she realized that she’d forgotten to file one of the claims tickets from the dry cleaners when it slipped out of her pants pockets. She had no idea how it had wound up there, but given how birdbrained she’d been all day it wasn’t really all that surprising. At this rate she was going to be lucky if she didn’t lose both of her jobs in addition to her apartment and her chance at a college degree. She planned to make a quick stop by the dry cleaners to file the receipt properly before the angry customer could show up and complain, but first she needed to find Grace.
She clutched the mace tightly and was about to close up her bag when a gust of wind sent the claims receipt sailing around the corner. She lurched desperately to grab it, rounding the corner just in time to witness a nightmarish sight. Two men were down on their knees in front of at least half a dozen others. They looked like gang members, although she didn’t recognize their colors. A man who she could only presume was their leader was pacing back and forth in front of them, yelling about something.
Whatever his exact words were she couldn’t have said, but she was pretty darn sure that she’d just stumbled upon a drug deal gone wrong. She was planning on backing silently away, because this was the type of crap that got innocent bystanders killed, but suddenly the leader let loose an animalistic snarl. His flesh quivered as fur shot through his pores. She could hear the bones snapping even from a block away as the man’s body reformed into a new shape that she could only describe as a tiger.
Her mouth dropped open in horror as the tiger lunged at one the men, biting down savagely on his throat and sending a geyser of red blood shooting into the air. Then the rest of the men started shifting as well, well everyone but the two guys who were kneeling anyway. The guy who still had his throat intact was too busy screaming his head off.
When the entire pride of shifter tigers turned in unison to look at her she realized it wasn’t the man who was screaming, it had been her all along. “I’m so not making it out of here alive,” she wailed as she turned and started running without a backwards glance. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” She’d seen enough nature documentaries to know that the antelope never survives a nasty game of tiger tag.
She spotted the lights of an approaching bus and practically flung herself through the open door in her eagerness to get the heck out of there. Only once she was seated did she dare risk a glance out the window. What she saw made her blood run cold. If it weren’t for the fact that she was already dehydrated she just might have peed her pants right there on the bus seat.
A brutishly tall man with a thick mane of chestnut brown hair was staring at her. There was no ignoring those piercing yellow eyes, because they were staring straight at her, as if he was committing her face to memory.
At first Michelle couldn’t understand why he wasn’t trying to get on the bus, but then she realized that he probably wouldn’t want any witnesses for what he had planned for her. She wondered if he’d be waiting to pounce whenever she got off. He wasn’t sitting on the bench, and he still hadn’t made any move to get on the bus. He raised his arm in a mock salute and she saw that he was holding a small scrap of paper. He held the paper up to his nose and took a deep wiff, and his eyes rolled back in his head as though he was overwhelmed with pleasure. Her spirits plummeted as she put two and two together. He was holding the claims receipt from the dry cleaners, the one that had blown down the alley from her bag.
It would only be a matter of time before they tracked her from the dry cleaners back to where she lived. These weren’t the type of men who were afraid of a little breaking and entering. These weren’t the type of men whose questions people would dare to refuse. She quickly weighed her options.
She wanted nothing more than to go running straight to the police, but deep down she knew that they would NEVER believe her if she told them that a gang of men had shifted into a snarling pack of furry orange and black tigers. Nope, that conversation was bound to get her locked up in an institution. She’d seen every single one of those Terminator movies, and she knew exactly where telling the truth had landed Sarah Connor, the nut house.
It would have been great to go home and pack up her scant belongings, but she was afraid to risk it. There had been so many tigers. They could be waiting for her anywhere. Once again the fact that she couldn’t afford a car of her own seemed downright unfair.
When the bus stopped a few yards away from a Greyhound bus terminal she assumed it was divine providence and scampered off right away. She only had ninety bucks to her name, so when she saw that going to Grayslake would only cost seventy dollars she knew it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.
Even better, the bus was leaving in exactly ten minutes. She gazed longingly at the vending machines while she waited, trying to ignore the sickly growling sounds coming from her stomach. She’d missed the most important meal of the day… and every other meal that followed. It would have been so easy to blow a buck fifty on a bag of chips, but she only had twenty dollars to her name, and who knew what would be waiting for her when she arrived in Grayslake. “Stupid me for not having any freaking credit cards,” she muttered to herself.
It was supposed to be a sixteen and a half hour drive so she looped her backpack around her arm and then laid down on it as if it was a pillow. Correction, it was the world’s hardest most uncomfortable pillow, but at least this way no one could try to steal her stuff while she was sleeping. As things played out comfort wasn’t her only problem. She was so worked up that she found sleep to be an unruly dragon. She just couldn’t fight her way in.
How could she sleep when she was finding it impossible to shut off her brain? Said brain kept reminding her how she didn’t have any money. She doubted her landlord would wait so much as a week before he sent in a crew to move out all her crap and repaint. He’d no doubt send all of her worldly belongings to the local thrift store without even feeling conflicted about it.
She couldn’t believe that after all her years of sacrifice she would be starting over again from scratch. She wanted to scream and rage at the injustice of it all. More specifically she wanted to tear Grace a new one. After all, her junkie roommate was the reason she’d been in that alley in the first place.
All of a sudden Michelle panicked and bolted upright in her seat. “When they go looking for me they will find Grace,” she whispered, horrified. She speedily shot off yet another desperate text to Grace, even though her foster sister hadn’t responded to any of her earlier attempts at communication.
Grace. Don’t go home. People are trying to kill me. This isn’t a joke. I’m serious. It’s not safe there.
She stared numbly at the screen long after it went black, feeling uneasy and more than a little worried. Grace was the closest thing she’d ever had to family, and she honestly didn’t know what she’d do if something happened to her foster sister.
CHAPTER THREE
W
hen the bus came to a sudden stop she was surprised, because as far as she could tell they were smack dab in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t even look like it was an official Greyhound bus stop. She was the only one getting off, so she asked the driver once more and he assured her that this was indeed her stop.
She descended into rural USA and felt the immediate and overwhelming desire to run back to the bus driver and beg him to let her back on. But the bus had already sped off by the time she turned around. The afternoon heat was brutal which only exacerbated her thirst. Soon it would be night and she had nowhere to go. It would have been so easy to just roll up into a ball and give in to the pity party of the century, but that just wasn’t in her nature. It was time to find herself a new job.
Over four hours later she was right back where she’d started, hungry, thirsty, and still unemployed. She hadn’t thought it would be this hard to land a job, yet apparently not a single business in town was hiring. “Stupid small towns,” she thought ungenerously.
She plopped down on a bench and tried to find a passably comfortable position but she wasn’t having much luck in that department. It was dark out so she was hoping that no one could see her. She didn’t want to be the focus of anyone’s pity. What she needed was a job, not a handout.
‘You can’t sleep there,” called a gruff voice from across the street. It seemed as though her run of bad luck was far from being over.
Michelle turned her head to the side and snorted irritably. Of course the stranger would have to be hot, because somehow the fact that he was OOZING sexuality made her desperate situation seem ten times worse. Even in the fading light she could detect his strong chiseled male features. There was a faint stubble dotting his face, and his chin had a wickedly handsome cleft in it.
The man’s hair was so thick that she wouldn’t have been surprised if a camera crew showed up and started shooting a Pantene shampoo commercial. It was a light brown with blond highlights, and as she was staring at him the breeze picked it up from where it rested at shoulder level and blew it out around him making him look even more like an underwear model.
He looked to be in his mid to late thirties, which would have made him perfect for her. But that was assuming she was crazy enough to think that any man that gorgeous would ever bother to give her so much as a second glance, which she wasn’t. His tight white t-shirt could barely contain the bulging muscles of his deliciously ripped arms. If the man wasn’t at least six feet tall she needed to get her vision checked.
“I said you can’t sleep there,” he repeated arrogantly.
“And then he had to ruin it by speaking,” she whined as she turned away from him and pressed her palm over her eyes in frustration. She muttered softly to herself, “Stupid freaking men morphing into freaking tigers, and now I’ve lost everything and I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere and I’m probably going to die of starvation, or worse, be mauled by animals. And now I’m being rudely lectured by a dumb model with a God complex.”
Trying in vain to keep her dress from riding up because she didn’t want to flash him her underwear she wiggled stiffly into an upright position. She stood suddenly, but didn’t manage more than two steps before she passed out. The summer heat combined with nothing to eat or drink in over twenty-four hours had finally caught up with her. If she’d still been conscious she’d been mortified about passing out, even if it was from heat stroke.
***
Parker Holmes lurched across the street, letting his inner animal lend him an extra dose of speed. He managed to snatch her just before she hit the ground, pulling her easily into his arms as though she were a small child and not a full figured woman. He gazed in wonder down at the beautiful creature in his arms, feeling as though she had materialized out of thin air.
When his parents had ordered him to come home he’d been less than thrilled about the visit, but he’d come all the same. Now he found himself in a bit of a pickle. Thanks to his extraordinary hearing, enhanced auditory function being just one of the many perks of being a bear shifter, he’d heard every single word she’d just muttered under her breath.
While being labeled a dumb model was offensive he could easily have ignored the insult. But she’d said so much more when she’d thought he couldn’t hear her.
His bear sniffed deeply, savoring the unique aroma that was hers and hers alone. He knew what he had to do now, the shifter law was abundantly clear on the subject. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t feel conflicted about it!
Humans weren’t allowed to know about shifters as that knowledge would threaten their whole way of life. For whatever reason she had learned of their kind, and now she would be faced with two drastic choices. She would have to mate with an unclaimed shifter or die a swift death.
His bear snarled fiercely at him, violently opposed to the thought of anyone harming this lovely bundle of curves. It didn’t make any sense, but for whatever reason his bear kept roaring MINE inside his head. It didn’t matter that she was a total stranger, or that he didn’t even know her name. He’d learned a long time ago that it wasn’t wise to deny his inner beast, because the bear was generally right.
Parker glanced around in order to ensure that no one was watching as he reached down to snag her backpack by a strap. Then he strode across the public green space until he reached where he’d parked his truck on the other side. He opened the door and reclined the seat, situating her carefully on the rich black leather as though she were a priceless and fragile collectible. Before he turned the key in the ignition he shot off a quick text message to his sister Sophia.
Tell mom I’m bringing home a guest… and that she’ll be taking the room next to MINE.
He didn’t even realize that he’d capitalized all the letters in mine. It was just his beast declaring it’s claim on the human. While he navigated the short distance to his parents’ home he studied her profile out of the corner of his eye. A few minutes ago he’d been dreading going home. He was sick of receiving lectures from his mother about her unendurable lack of grandchildren.
Over the years he’d heard enough about his parents’ fairy tale romance. He was sick to death of hearing about “fated mates” and “true love.” As a teenager he’d considered pouring bleach down his ears at one point to block out the sounds of just how “in love” they were, but his Uncle Isaac had managed to talk him out of that ill-formed plan.
He’d never doubted that his parents were deeply in love, but somehow he’d never expected to find such a love for himself. Before tonight he’d never met a woman who could please both him and his bear, but now he felt as though everything had changed. He’d never been one to back away from a difficult situation, which was a good thing. Because now he was about to face down the biggest challenge of his adult life. He was going to convince this woman that he was indeed the man for her. Because his bear would never willingly let her go.