Shifters of Grrr 2 (60 page)

"I knew you'd figure it out eventually," she said. "There's no real reason.
 
Everything has just happened so fast that it wasn't foremost on my mind."

She pulled away from him because it looked like he was about to kiss her.
 
She wanted to keep her head together until they both signed on the dotted line.
 
Then she could relax.

Sheila had been right.
 
Carly was falling in love with the Alpha.
 
And, if there was one thing she had experience with, it was that she always got the short stick when it came to love.
 
If Carly gave her heart to a man, she always ended up hurt and abandoned. That was why she had played hardball with this contract.
 
If she wasn't good enough to actually be the Alpha's wife, she would make sure that if her heart got broken in the long run, she would at least be set for life.

Carly left Jason to confer with her own lawyers in another small room.

Jason watched her walk away before he went to meet with his own lawyers.

When they were alone, his head attorney flipped through the last two or three pages of the draft, then took off his reading glasses and leaned back in his seat.

"So, I have one question for you Mr. Irvine," he said.

"What's that?"

"What happens if you marry Carly Davis?"

Jason paused, caught off guard.

"If I marry her?
 
I don't plan to marry her.
 
I never planned on getting involved with any she-wolf.
 
It's a minor miracle I'm willing to take a concubine."

"Yes, that's what you say now, but things happen.
 
Sometimes beyond our control.
 
And if you change the status of the relationship, that nullifies this particular contract.
 
If you take a look at page 76, this point is made quite clear.
 
If you marry her, she has the right to half your overall assets in case of divorce."

"I don't plan to marry her," Jason said.

"That may be the case.
 
But you can avoid a potential pitfall if you set up a dependent prenup alongside of this contract.
 
But you have to do it now. And it will take two more days for us to draft."

Jason crossed his arms.

"I said I'm not going to be getting married.
 
Not to her or to anyone else."

The lawyer gave him a long hard look.

"Well, then.
 
As you wish."

Jason stood up abruptly.
 
He was feeling antsy.
 
He had to get some fresh air.

He left the room and went looking for Carly.
 
Her lawyers told her she had left.

"She got a phone call.
 
A family emergency."

"A family emergency?"

"Her mother called.
 
Carly left immediately."

"Where did she go?"

"Reno.
 
She said she would call you when she got there."

Jason turned on his heel.
 
He didn't plan to wait for her to call.
 
He already knew her mother's address.
 
He had gotten it from his private investigator.

Chapter 14

Carly avoided coming home to Reno. Her mother was someone she tried to avoid as much as possible, for her own emotional well being. After her father died, they had struggled to survive, but her mother succumbed to alcoholism fairly early on.
 

And she was a mean drunk.
 
She constantly sniped at Carly and insulted her about her grades in school, about her weight, and about what a burden she was overall. An endless array of losers came and went from their trailer, sliding in and out of her mother's bed. None of them ever officially became Carly's stepdad, but some of them started getting ideas in their head about their girlfriend's daughter.
 
Once Carly realized that she wasn't physically safe at home anymore, she ran away.
 

She had been on her own since she was 16.

Out of some kind of ill-defined and unwarranted guilt, she still sent money home to her mother.
 
Occasionally, her mother would end up in a real heap of trouble – beaten up by a boyfriend or having overdosed on some pills – and Carly would go home to try and clean up the mess.

When she arrived in Reno, she cruised slowly through her mother's trailer park until she found the right address.
 

When she parked the car and got out, she saw a crew of scruffy looking boys playing craps at the trailer next door.
 
They could only have been around 11 or 12 years old.
 
The boys were unwashed and should have been in school.
 
Instead, they were shouting and swearing, throwing dice against a cardboard backstop set up against the side of their trailer.

Carly gazed at the boys sadly, knowing that theirs was a certain and sad future.
 
She knocked on the door of her mother's trailer.
 
Hearing a woman's voice weakly call out for her to come in, she opened the rickety screen door and stepped inside.

Bottles were strewn everywhere, and the place reeked of vomit.

An emaciated woman wearing too much makeup, with her hair up in curlers, lay on a couch.
 
She was huddled under a crocheted blanket, and she was sporting a black eye.
 
Her mother took a drag on a cigarette and was fiddling with the TV remote control.

"Hey, mom," Carly said.

"Took you long enough to get here," her mother said.
 
She kept getting snow on the television set and threw the remote down in disgust.

"Here, let me see if I can fix that," Carly said.

She walked over to the TV and tried to angle its antenna until something clear appeared on screen.
 
She didn't have much luck.

"So, what happened, mom?"

"Gerry took off with the rent money."

"Is that how you got the black eye?"

Her mother squinted at her.

"I need to pay my rent," she said.

"Yeah, I know – and I brought you some cash."

"Leave it on the counter," her mother said.

And that was that.

Carly hesitated, frozen.
 
Her mother was never one for family interaction.
 
She should have known better than to come out in person.
 
She could have just sent her a check.
 
But her mother had sounded hysterical on the phone, like she may have needed to go see a doctor.
 
She demanded that Carly rush out to Reno as fast as she could. But now her mother was complacent and disdainful.
 

She didn't even want to talk to her daughter.

Carly pulled an envelope out of her purse and placed it on the counter as directed.

"Bye, mom," was all she said on her way out.

Her mother didn't even say goodbye in response.

Carly stepped outside into the unforgiving daylight, the heat of the desert.
 
The foot of the Sierra Nevada loomed in the distance.
 
She gazed towards the mountains, and then she gazed back at the boys next door, still gambling for cigarettes and quarters.

She felt weak and despondent, frozen on the steps of the trailer. She realized she had a life to get back to – one that was taking her far away from here, well beyond Reno and Las Vegas, to Palm Springs.
 

There should be no reason for hesitation.

"Hey, Carly," she heard, over her shoulder.
 
She turned and saw Jason walking toward her.
 

"How – how?
 
Did you follow me?"

"I had the address.
 
Your mother's not hard to find."

He put his hands in his pockets and shrugged.

"Why did you run off?
 
Why didn't you let me drive you out here?"

Carly sat down on the front steps.
 
Jason sat down next to her.

"I didn't think to.
 
I'm used to dealing with things on my own."

Jason nodded.

"I understand
that
," he said.

He took her hand and laced his fingers through hers.

"You're not alone anymore, though."

Carly looked at him.
 
She gave him a soft, but quick kiss.

"Sure I am," she said.
 
"Let's be honest.
 
I'm still alone."

She then stood up.

"But I'm okay with it."

Jason looked confused.

"Because I won't marry you?" he asked.
 
"That doesn't mean shit.
 
I've set you up for life. The situation we have arranged is a pretty damn good one.
 
Most she-wolves would gladly trade places with you."

"Calm down," Carly said. "I'm not being critical. I said I accept it. We just need to be honest.
 
If I wasn't alone, I would not have needed
a contract
for a relationship."

"That's bullshit." Jason said.

"Is it?" she asked.

Jason looked away and noticed the boys next-door throwing dice. He felt stuck.
 
He wasn't willing to give up his independence, but he couldn't stand the thought of being so close to a woman who fundamentally wouldn't let down her guard around him because, at the end of the day, she couldn't let herself fully trust him."

"Okay – fine – you know what – if that's what you want – then you play me for it."

"Huh?"

Jason already was walking away from her towards the boys.

"Hey kid," he said to the tallest.
 
"Give me the dice."

The boys were startled to have a grown man suddenly in their presence, trying to get in on a game of craps.

Jason realized they would need more convincing. He pulled out his wallet and peeled off a couple of hundred dollar bills.

"Just give me the dice.
 
I want to play a quick game with my lady friend here."

"Sure, mister!" the tallest boy said.
 
He grabbed the money, and the boys got out of his way.

He took a look at the boys.
 
He would have to speak to the current Reno Alpha. It was disgusting that these kids clearly were being poorly taken care of by their mothers.
 
This particular trailer park had always been a crappy place to grow up, but at least when he was in charge, he made sure everyone's kids were in school, got three square meals a day, and were not allowed to drift into delinquency. The Reno Alpha would resent his butting in, but tough shit.

"Jason, what the hell are you doing?"

Carly's voice interrupted his thoughts.

"We each roll the dice," he said. "If you win, we rip up the contract and I'll marry you."

He offered her the dice.

"This was never how I imagined getting proposed to," Carly said. "I feel like I should be insulted."

"I'm not proposing.
 
There are no guarantees yet.
 
You have to win."

He rattled the dice in his loose grip, still willing for her to take it.

She opened her palm, and he dropped them into her hand.
 
Her fingers closed around them.

"I don't usually play dice," she said.

"There's a first time for everything.
 
We'll make it easy.
 
We'll keep rolling until one of us gets Snake Eyes.
 
Whoever gets Snake Eyes wins."

"I'm sorry, I can't do this."

She handed the dice back to him.

"Fine, I'll start," he said.

Jason loosened his tie and then tossed the dice toward the cardboard backstop.

He rolled a five and a two.

"See, this could be you're lucky day."

"How is this lucky?
 
I've got a man who's gambling on marrying me!"

"Isn't marriage always a gamble?" he asked with a smirk.

"Fine."

She took the dice, took a deep breath, and rolled.
 
She got a three and a four.

They each had another go.
 
No one was winning yet.

Carly looked on as Jason rolled what was his fourth try and shook her head. The thought of a billionaire Alpha lowering himself to play street craps in a trailer park was both bizarre and amusing.
 
He was never so handsome to her as he was now – here in this shitty neighborhood wearing his expensive suit.
 
She kept trying to be mad at him, for dangling the idea of marrying him as just part of a bet.
 
But then her competitive nature came out.
 
Why shouldn't she get to marry him after all? So she started trying to put some spin on the dice, hoping that it would make a difference.