Redemption: Reckless Desires (Blue Moon Saloon Book 3) (12 page)

The doctor stuck a pair of glasses on her nose and turned to the screen.

Soren had no clue if the baby was a shifter or not, and he had no clue if shifter babies were recognizable in ultrasounds. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to find out the hard way. He wrapped a foot around the power cord to the monitor and yanked it out of the socket.

“Oh!” the doctor cried, watching the screen go black.

“Oh?” Sarah looked at the doctor, more anxious than ever.

Soren kicked the cord out of sight as the doctor went around the room, flicking the lights on and off.

“We didn’t seem to lose power,” she murmured.

God, Soren hoped she was better with babies than she was with circuitry.

Two more women hustled in and started rooting around. And Jesus, there was poor Sarah, high and dry on that damn examining chair, worried and helpless and alone. He grabbed her hand and shoved her clothes at her.

“We’re out of here.”

“Soren!” she protested.

“We’re out of here.”

“But…”

“We have to go.”

“But why?” Sarah pulled back.

He ground his teeth. “We have to talk.”

“Talk?” she gaped at him. “You want to talk now?”

* * *

He drove clear out of town and up into the hills, wondering desperately how he’d start the talk neither of them wanted to have. His inner autopilot led him to the state park he usually headed to when he needed to let his bear out, where he parked and led Sarah — tight-lipped, angry Sarah — out to the first of two lakes. The water was blue and calm, reflecting a gorgeous Arizona sky, the red rock outcrops, and the green of the pines on the surrounding hills. It was one of this favorite places — so calm and serene. Which didn’t seem to help, though, because after pacing for a few minutes, he ended up blurting it out.

“Who’s the father?”

Sarah closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Sarah, I need to know.”

Her eyes flew open, and boy did she look mad. “Why would you
need
to know?”

God, he wished he could just speak the truth.
Because if that baby is a shifter, it changes everything.

If the baby is a shifter, there’s nothing stopping us from getting to keep you forever. Both of you,
his bear added breathlessly.

Soren kept his mouth shut and waited her out.

A bird sang in the bushes, and a light breeze whispered through the trees. A fish splashed at the surface of the lake, sending ripples in ever-widening circles across the wobbly reflection of the sky. And for some strange reason, he thought of the baby, bumping his hand.

If that baby was a bear shifter, it was his to take care of as part of his clan.

If the baby was human, he would have to stick to the original plan of finding Sarah a place far away to live her life without him. It would be safer for her and the baby not to mix with shifters and draw the attention of the Blue Bloods.

I want it to be a shifter,
his bear whispered inside.

I want it to be, too,
he found himself agreeing.

But if it was? Crap, how would he ever explain?

“I’ll tell…if you promise to listen,” Sarah said quietly. “You have to promise to listen to everything.”

He stuck out his jaw. Shit, he didn’t want to listen to how she’d screwed some other guy.

“All of it,” she insisted. “From beginning to end.” She waved a hand. “I mean, why. Why it happened.”

He stared at her. What did she mean, why?

“Promise,” she insisted.

His heart ached, because they’d never made each other promise anything before. They’d always just trusted each other. When did that end?

He figured out the answer a moment later. It ended the night he’d told her he was leaving. The night he’d forced himself to tell her it was over, even though he wanted her more than anything else.

God, what a mess.

“I promise,” he said in a choked voice.

Sarah stared a minute longer, then started pacing along the trail at the edge of the lake.

“A little while after you left for the East Coast, my cousin Ginger came to visit. You remember her?”

He scowled, walking alongside her. Yeah, he remembered Ginger. The one with the bad dye job who’d come on to him the second Sarah turned her back. As if he’d be interested in anyone but his mate.

“Ginger said I’d done enough moping about you, and I needed to have some fun. That it was your birthday and you left me alone and you were probably out partying with someone else…”

He scowled deeper. He’d spent that night alone in the woods, longing for his mate.

“…so I should have some fun, too. So she took me to Lafayette. To that techno bar.”

He stopped short. “Dart’s?”

She nodded.

A thousand alarms went off in his mind. “Jesus, Sarah, don’t you know how many women get their drinks spiked there?”

She looked straight at him without saying a word, and his heart sank. Her drink had been spiked while she was there?

“No, I didn’t know. Well, I didn’t know at the time,” she said bitterly.

Well, Soren knew all too well. He’d heard of the place through a friend of a friend. A place to keep clear of, from the sound of it, if guys were slipping women who knew what kind of drug. Not just the usual date rape drugs, but aphrodisiacs, too, according to the rumor mill.

“These guys kept coming on to us, buying us drinks,” she started.

Jesus! Todd was supposed to keep an eye out for that kind of thing. Where the hell had Todd been?

“They were totally not my type.” Sarah rolled her eyes. “But they were Ginger’s type, apparently.”

“Ginger,” he couldn’t help cursing. He’d never liked her.

She gave him a sharp look and spoke in a hushed voice. “Ginger was staying over at my house when it happened — the fire. She died in the fire.”

Soren ran a hand through his hair. Shit. It’s not like he would wish that on Ginger. Not Ginger, not anyone.

His mind flashed with an image of the smoldering remains of the shop and the body bags being carried out. Three of them, making him think Sarah had died.

“Well, Ginger eventually took off with a guy that night,” Sarah said, resuming the story. “The other two guys…” She spoke so quietly, he could barely hear. “Well, I don’t know. Somehow, I…”

He clenched his fists to keep his bear claws from breaking out.

“Anyway, the whole thing was a mistake. Ginger went off with one guy, and there were these two other guys and I…I…”

Soren kicked at the ground, scattering gravel.

“God knows what I would have done if Todd hadn’t come along—”

His heart screeched to a stop. “Todd?” His cousin and best friend, Todd?

At first, he was elated. Todd had prevented a terrible crime. But then it hit him that Sarah wasn’t done with the story yet.

“It was my fault,” she said, walking slowly as if in a trance. “He said we shouldn’t. Couldn’t.”

Soren flexed his fingers and clawed at thin air.

“But I pushed him hard enough that he wanted it, too. God, Soren. I missed you so much, and I don’t know — with the full moon and the drinks and missing you so much… I wanted you that night more than ever.”

He’d wanted her that night, too. Bad enough that he’d jerked off, pretending it was her. And for a while there, he’d convinced himself it was. It felt that real, that good. Until it ended and he was left empty and alone.

“I had my eyes closed the whole time,” she said, barely above the breeze.

He squinted at her. She’d always kept her eyes on him, every time they’d been together. Every single time.

“Pretending it was you… For a while, I even believed it was you, touching me. Whispering to me.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “And afterward, all I could do was cry, because it felt so wrong.”

She walked a few more steps, but Soren stood rooted to the spot as his mind spun.

Not about Todd. Not about spiked drinks. About something completely different.

What was that old legend he’d heard told, long ago? What did they call it?

Moonlust, that was it.

“Moon what?” Sarah spun around.

He hadn’t realized he said it aloud, but now he was stuck.

“Moonlust. An old legend.” An old
bear
legend, but he left that part out. It happened to mates, they said. The closest, truest destined mates. But how could he tell her that?

“What legend?” she asked, irritated.

“When two people…when two people who are destined to be together think of each other at exactly the same time on exactly the same night, and they… Well, they…”

He let that part hang, because surely she got it by now. When destined mates dreamed themselves right into each other’s arms and made a connection that erased the space between them.

“Tell me,” he said in a raspy voice. “Tell me what I said to you that night.”

She tilted her head at him. “What you said?”

“Tell me what you heard, Sarah.” He was speaking too loudly now, and his voice carried across the lake. But it was important. God, everything hinged on what she said next. Had she really heard his thoughts despite all the distance between them that night?

Sarah faced the lake, closed her eyes, and stood silently for so long, he was sure she was never going to speak.

I’ll love you forever, my mate,
he’d told her that night. That night and that night only, because he’d never risked the word
mate
with her before.

She stooped, picked up a stone, and sent it skipping across the lake. The clouds reflected in the surface scattered and overlapped, suddenly more storm than peaceful afternoon. Fitting for his mood, and for Arizona — a place that could change in the blink of an eye.

Slowly, the blue of the water and the white of the clouds settled back to their respective places again, which meant he was the only one trembling now.

“I’ll love you forever, my mate,” Sarah whispered. So quietly, he nearly missed it.

Soren stared at her reflection. Stared at the truth, in a way.

Mate,
his bear hummed dreamily.
Mate.

Between the Moonlust and drinks and whatever drug she might have been slipped that night, Sarah had ended up sleeping with Todd. Which was as much his fault as her own, because if he’d worked himself half into a frenzy, imagining he was with her, it would have been the same for Sarah.

Maybe fault isn’t the word,
his bear said.
Maybe it was destiny.

Sarah skipped another stone, and Soren stared at the wobbling reflection of the two of them standing side by side. Destiny sure seemed intent on steering them down a twisted path — but to what end? Would it ever let them come together, or would it keep them forever apart?

Sarah stared at the clouds, rippling across the mirror of the lake, then strode away. She didn’t look at Soren. She
couldn’t
look at Soren. Her vision blurred as she walked, desperate to escape all the mistakes she’d made. She didn’t get far, though, before the gravel next to her crunched and Soren took her gently by the hand.

“Over here,” he said in a voice so soft and gentle, she could have cried.

She did cry, all the way over to the bench he led her to. She cried enough to fill a third lake beside the two shining so blue and innocent under the spring sky. Not that she saw much of the scenery between her tears. Mostly, she just saw the past.

She cried and talked, and talked and cried, because now that the dam was broken, she just couldn’t stop the deluge. She started from the time Soren departed for the East Coast and babbled on and on, all the way up to the time when she’d wandered into the Quarter Moon Café, not long ago.

And the whole time, Soren held her and stroked her hair and whispered quietly in her ear.

“It’ll be okay,” he said, over and over. But how could anything be okay after all that had happened?

“Todd started coming around after you left, but I swear we never did anything except that one time. We never even thought about doing anything. He felt as bad about it as I did. I swear…”

She shook, just thinking about that crazy night. Her body might have been with Todd, but her heart and mind had been with Soren. God, how different things would be if she’d been more careful.

But somehow, she’d gotten all mixed up and let things go too far. Between the drinks she’d consumed and whatever had come over her, she hadn’t exactly been herself. Plus, Todd was so much like Soren — big, strong. Silent. Mysterious, somehow, like all the folks who lived on Soren’s side of the mountain.

Soren was special, though. His own type of enigma, with his own broody charm. He’d been her closest friend for years. God, how could she ever have let him let her go? If she’d figured anything out in the past few weeks, it was that something had forced Soren to break up with her. When his eyes locked on hers, they filled with love and laughter and hope. When they drifted out of focus, though, they grew bitter, and he’d glare at something in the past.

Soren held her without saying a word, and she wondered when he’d push her aside and stomp away in anger. But he didn’t.

“Then that night…that awful night of the fire…” Her whole body tensed at the memories. “I woke up in bed, smelling the smoke. Thank God I smelled the smoke. But the door was locked, and I couldn’t get out. And I couldn’t get to my parents because the fire was spreading fast. There were flames everywhere…”