SwitchBack: A Paranormal Werewolf Romance (Knightsbridge Canyon Series Book 1) Read online

  I know nonsmokers look at those of us who have a puff in the morning like we’re crazy, but to a smoker the act has the same effect as meditation. Besides, it was nice to not be so distracted by all the other scents that the wolf inside me had access to in its catalog. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re sniffing your way through the neighborhood on two feet. News flash: most smells are disgusting, even the nice ones, if your nose is sensitive enough.

  “Ahem.” I heard a voice behind me and turned. There, staring at me with the most beautiful blue eyes, was the one guy I was most worried about having to face again: my ex-boyfriend and former star of the Spartans football team, Will Stenfield. Six foot two and stocky, without an ounce of fat on him, he still had the prettiest eyelashes you ever did see. I won’t even talk about the abs.

  Anyone who doesn’t believe God has a sense of humor just ain’t paying attention.

  “Got another clove, or aren’t you willing to share?” he asked as I stared at him, speechless. I realized he was just as breathtaking as I remembered. I’d tried to forget. Hell if I would let him know, though.

  “You know, that buzz cut really works for you,” I deadpanned, bracing my smoking arm with the other one under the elbow. Hey, he’d caught me off guard and it was the first thing that popped into my head.

  “Really? Ya think? ’Cause your sister just calls me cue-ball.” He grinned and my knees went weak.

  “At least she’s consistent. She called you cue-ball when we were growing up too.”

  “And you haven’t called at all, Ash. Now, why is that?” Will picked the clove right out of my hands, took a drag, and then handed it back. I stared at the moist filter, thinking of the other places I remembered those lips being. A shudder moved through me for a moment, and then I came back.

  “Poor cell plan?” I cracked.

  No, the truth is, Will was my first crush and longtime on-again-off-again boyfriend from way back. During an off phase, I made the mistake of going out on a pity date with one of my sister’s castoffs, Shane Macdonald.

  Will and I got to be even more off when the guy ended up dead.

  Dad sent me away for my junior year to a private boarding school because of the small-town hoopla and what it did to me. Most thought I was shattered over Shane’s death the night of our date. Some suspected I was pregnant. Trust me, I was not.

  In fact, after the full moon fiasco that set off my first transformation, I was still too messed up to be interested in anyone. When I came back for my senior year, Will and I danced around but never really got back to where we had been. I knew even then that I wouldn’t be staying in Knightsbridge, and he was a small-town boy all the way, always intending to take over the family landscaping business. I remembered a lot of tension when I left.

  I guess Will got over it, because he was talking to me now.

  “I waited, you know.” He said it with a serious look on his face. I believed him, but back then I was running away, and Will, well, he was just part of what I’d left behind.

  “It was never about you,” I told him. It’s amazing how much can be said with so few words when you have that connection like Will and I did.

  Do?

  Maybe.

  “I know.” He smiled. “Can I at least get a hug? I read all your magazine stories about those fancy places.”

  Straight to a writer’s heart that went, so I obliged. Hell, I did more than oblige. When he opened up his arms, I buried my face in his ratty old sweat-stained lawn-jockey t-shirt, smelling of musk and dead leaves, old wounds and memories.

  “So, what are you doing back in town?” Will asked a few moments later as he gently escaped from my clinging embrace and returned to the lawnmower he’d been pushing down the walk.

  “Oh, you know. Just slumming.” I grinned. Despite it being what, five or six years? I’d come back for the summer after high school and seen him a few times then, but not seriously. Now, it was like no time had passed at all. He was still a redneck and maybe somewhere inside me, I was still a redneck’s girl.

  California version, of course. We don’t drawl. We do drink beer and drive pickup trucks.

  I’d heard Will had taken over the family landscaping business when his father semi-retired with a back injury, and more often than not came home smelling of tree sap, grass and loam. It was woodsy, a little nutty and always made my head spin.

  “You doing Parks and Recreation now?” I asked as I watched him load the mower into the trailer he had hitched to his Chevy pickup.

  “That and everything else under the sun. You know, Ash, if you’re not too busy, why don’t you slum with me for awhile?” He cocked his head. “Let’s go hang out. Talk about old times.”

  “I don’t know,” I told him. The pain pill was wearing off and I had no idea how I was going to hobble over to the truck, let alone get up into it. “I kinda had a little surgery.”

  Will put out his hand, reflexively. “Oh crap. Was it something serious?”

  “No. No.” I waved the matter aside. “I got shot in the butt up in Idaho. Just hurts to sit down for long periods of time.”

  “Shot?”

  I fed him the same simple half-truth I’d been using with everyone else. “Just a ricochet off a rock. I was hiking, some asshole was hunting and thought my blue North Face looked exactly like a twelve-point buck, I don’t know. Whoever it was didn’t own up, and I limped back to town, went to a spa the next day and it got infected.”

  He stared at me like I was a bad little girl, which wasn’t all bad.

  “I know, I should have gone in to the ER right away and gotten antibiotics, but…”

  Will laughed. “Butt.” He mock bowed.

  “Hey, staying at Amber’s is penance enough, and sitting down is a real bitch.”

  “Then you can stand on the seat with your head out the roof and hold onto the roll bar. Your chariot awaits, my lady.” Will held out his hand.

  He was so cute, I had to give it a go.

  Chapter 6

  “Elle! You are not going to believe this!” Amber stood on the front lawn of the house, cell phone in one hand, talking while she watered the lawn with the other as we drove up. “It looks like Ash and Will are together again.” I could hear the sounds of exclamation coming from the other end as Will lifted me down from the tailgate.

  “Hi, Will!” Amber called and waved. “I’ll talk to you later,” she told the phone and hung up on Elle. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  “Yes, well I found this poor handicapped bag lady wandering the streets smoking a clove and had to stop and lend her a hand,” Will said to Amber as he walked me over.

  “Don’t let him lie to you like that,” I said quickly, trying to divert her from the smoking tipoff. “It was me who took pity on the poor schmuck, because he had to stop and ask for directions.”

  “Now I know you’re lying. Men never ask for directions. Besides, he’s lived here all his life.”

  “So sue me.”

  The diversion did not work. “Ashlee, I thought you’d given up that nasty habit,” Amber said, so I whacked Will in the back of the head with the palm of my hand.

  “Thanks for spilling the beans, loser.” I turned back to my sister. “Will’s staying for lunch,” I said, hoping to avoid a lecture and almost positive she wouldn’t pull rank and nix his invitation.

  “Oh no he’s not,” Amber said.

  “Oh no I’m not,” Will echoed.

  “C’mon. I bet you two haven’t talked in a while. It’ll be good for all of us,” I said. “Besides, I’m cooking.”

  My sister rolled her eyes. “Now this I’ve got to see.”

  “See, I told you I make a mean pot of spaghetti,” I teased as I cleared the dishes and set another helping of pasta before the man I realized I wanted to get to know better again.

  “Please, Ash. I really couldn’t eat another bite,” Will said.

  "Oh, come on. Just one more wafer-thin mint?"

  Will grinned, deliberate
ly stuck his fork into the center of the bowl and started slurping anyway, much to my delight.

  “Actually, Ash, that wasn’t bad for spaghetti. It was pretty good in fact,” Amber added as an aside to her S.O., who had come home for lunch. Benefits of the small town: short commute. “Wasn’t it, Elle?”

  “It was very good, Ash.” Elle played her role as the grownup to the hilt. “If it wasn’t for Amber, I’d probably be having another helping myself.” Elle laughed as Amber tickled her, pinching the pudge that she never could seem to lose.

  “So, why don’t we go take that drive?” I suggested to Will, who perked up at the sound and put down his fork. I’d taken another pain pill by now, so I figured I could at least make it through a two-hour reunion tour of the hometown, and besides, I didn’t think I could stand the lovey-dovey around here anymore. “Catch up on the dish. Tell me who’s divorced who and who’s still having babies when they should have stopped years ago. And stuff.”

  “And stuff,” Will echoed solemnly.

  “You still have to clean up this mess,” Amber tossed over her shoulder.

  “I’ll handle the dishes.” Elle put a hand on Amber’s wrist and squeezed. “I think Ash could use the time out of the house for a while.”

  Amber got it, smiled and then gave me a quick wink. “Fine. Take your time. Keys still in the same place, and don’t forget to reset the alarm after you come in.”

  “Thanks guys!” I gave them a quick hug and limped enthusiastically out the door toward the pickup past Mervin and J.R., who were just coming home from soccer practice.

  “Hi guys! Bye guys!” I sang.

  “Hey, isn’t that Will Stenfield?” I heard Mervin ask Amber as he handed her J.R.’s muddy cleats, which she took with two fingers and walked them into the garage.

  “I think he dated Denise once,” Mervin commented, referring to Amber’s replacement and J.R.’s new step-monster, then shrugged and walked away.

  “Amber,” Elle said in a warning tone as she poked her head into the garage.

  Amber turned and put her hands on her hips.

  “What?”

  “Love you,” Elle said.

  Hearing that, I was seriously tempted to toss my cookies, but with Will there I was already too far away, reminiscing.

  “So, where do you want to go?” Will asked as he revved the engine while I went through his CDs. I pulled out a scratched-up copy of the Cars’ first album, one that he’d inherited from his dad. I still remember it playing from the work truck as Stenfield Landscaping groomed the school grounds when I was a kid. We both ended up loving the eighties music of our parents, I guess.

  Or maybe it was because Will was frozen in the past and I had no time to figure out “what’s a Bieber?”

  “Can we go by my old house?” I asked. “I want to see how much it’s changed.”

  “Um. Sure.” He hesitated, looking at me funny.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Will laughed as he pulled out onto Walnut Avenue and over to the west side of town.

  “Tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Tell me.”

  “No.”

  “Weirdo.”

  “Freak.”

  “Fine.” I folded my arms and faked a sulk.

  When Amber and I were growing up, we lived on the good side of the bad side of town, a couple houses down from one of the retired mayors. His raised brick ranch-style sprawled out over a half-acre lot and held lemon trees we used to swipe fruit from during the summer. These weren’t the cute little things you get in grocery stores, the ones that look like they were made from plastic lemon molds. These lemons were frickin’ monsters, grapefruit-sized. I had no idea why. Anyway, we had this weird thing about sucking the juice from lemons after coating them with salt, kind of like our older brother Adam did with cold sliced potatoes and equally cold slabs of butter.

  Had to be there, I guess.

  Will drove us down Golden Boulevard, which used to be part of the old highway before they put the bypass through, and pulled into the parking lot of the Boxcar, an abandoned set of railroad cars that had been turned into a nice restaurant. I had worked there the summer I came home.

  For some, Knightsbridge was a college town, for others it was a great place to raise kids, but for single people, it seriously sucked. Just one more reason why I had taken the travel writer’s apprenticeship, seldom went back, and didn’t look people up.

  I know, thin, right? Bad memories, I guess I’ll admit to.

  “Remember this place?” he asked as we stared at the outside.

  “God, yes!” I’d spent that whole summer as the hostess greeter, since I was too young to carry alcohol and too new to serve food and get tips. I did help bus tables. Minimum wage, go me. “I met Palmer Courtland here and he tried to put a hand up my dress. You know, the guy from one of those daytime soaps where no one ever ages? I think he was seventy. Looked forty if he didn’t move his face.”

  “Come on, can you blame him?” Will waggled his eyebrows, mock-lasciviously. Or actually lasciviously. Made me feel all tingly.

  “Guess not, but I’m worldly and wise now. Back then…ew.” I laughed.

  “And what about that Sid guy who used to be the chef?”

  “Omigod! That’s right. He had such a filthy mouth,” I remembered. “If the customers only knew the way he talked about them! They would have just died.”

  “I think he knew it offended you and if I remember correctly, you told me it got even filthier, that is, until I had a chat with him.”

  “That was you? I never knew. That was sweet.” I lay flat on the bench seat, put my head in his lap and stuck my feet out the window, taking the pressure off my ass. “Remember when we all dressed up in white and played croquet in the park?”

  “I wasn’t there for that one, but I remember driving by. You looked adorable in white.”

  He was right. I did. I do. I smiled.

  “You’re still pretty adorable.”

  That made me sit up and look at him, searching his face.

  Will leaned over and put a peck on my forehead. I lifted my face and he kissed me for real this time. Very softly. My mouth parted involuntarily and his tongue flicked in and touched the tip of my own in an intimate caress.

  Was I really doing this?

  “Um. Is it hot in here, or is it me?” I asked as I moved away from him, opened the door and climbed out of the cab. Just down the road from the Boxcar was a place called the Nordic Chalet where they still sold winter sports equipment. I marveled how it seemed some things changed and some things never did.

  “Come on, let’s walk,” I said, just to clear my head, and proceeded to stroll down my hometown version of Main Street USA, Will trailing a bit behind.

  “I can’t believe the Frosty Freeze is still here.” I kept up a running commentary as we walked. “And there’s the studio where Amber and I took jazz class. Knightsbridge School of Ballet was just around the corner, up there in that window, see?” I pointed and Will sneaked up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.

  I folded myself into him and looked up into his smiling baby blues. “What are you doing?” I asked, my heart pounding in my ears.

  “Reminiscing,” he said as he leaned down and kissed me again. Long and slow, and soft, like a lover. My body melted into his. I whimpered as my heart threatened to crack and I knew that I had it bad.

  Where the hell did this all come from? Old flames rekindled from banked fires.

  “Um, that was nice.” I inhaled his scent as I hid my face in the crook of his arm.

  “You’re welcome.” Will laughed and kissed me again on the forehead. Lots of kissing going on here. I liked it.

  This was the last thing that I was expecting. But there’s something about the people in your hometown, something very familiar, the same familiarity that breeds contempt, but when the right strings are played, it makes you feel like they know you inside and out…even when you know they r
eally don’t.

  But you can never go home again, though I thought I could right then.

  I slipped out of his arms and walked a few steps ahead of him again. “I know what you’re doing.”

  “What am I doing?” he asked, daring me to answer.

  “Don’t think you can come in here all hella wonderful and worm your way back into my life that easy.”

  “Hella wonderful?” Laughter from him.

  “I got out of this hick town years ago and I’m not going to be dragged back here in the lined bed of a Chevy with intertwined hearts on it,” I said, referring to the etching on his back window.

  “I never thought you would,” he told me, eyes glittering in the sunlight dappled through the maples. I hated it when men did that, with their eyes. Hated it.

  Okay, I’m lying.

  “Well. Good. So back off, ’cause this girl’s not ready to settle.” I crossed my arms and looked at him defiantly.

  “Since when have you settled for anything, Ash?” he asked and grabbed my elusive hand. “And if I was that kinda guy, I’d be insulted. Come on. I want to show you something.”

  I let him drag me a few paces, then decided that with his bulk it would be a losing battle anyway and matched his steps. Before we knew it, we were in front of Crave.

  Keith and Dawn Snyder had opened Crave Donuts when I was a kid when one of those horrible chain donut shops was the only game in town. Pretty soon the other place closed. How’s that for entrepreneurial? They made the best Bavarian crème I have ever tasted in my life, so when he pulled me in the door, I thought I was going to die.

  “Hey Ash!” came a voice from behind the counter. “I didn’t know you were in town.” Jill Snyder, now Jill Blumenthal, came around the corner and gave me a big hug. I was taken aback for a moment. We’d never been that close in high school, but it just goes to show you that people’s memories of the past are often more rosy than we expect.

  “Yeah. I’m holed up at Amber’s for a few weeks recovering from a surgery. Bullet wound on assignment. I see you’re still in the doughnut biz.”