Ruthless Read online

  Becky smiled “That’s right. Audrey had a baby, too. You’ll be Aunt Natalie to both girls.”

  I stepped back and held up my hands. “Whoa, not sure what Rand told you, but—”

  They grinned at me. “Rand told us you were driving him crazy,” Audrey said. “Nice job.”

  A waitress came to the bar and handed me a ticket. I read it then grabbed a pint glass and filled it from the tap. I glanced at Audrey as I worked.

  “You want me to drive him crazy?”

  She set her forearms on the bar. “Absolutely! Those guys need to work for it.”

  “Can we get an order of the boneless chicken wings with the buffalo hot sauce?” Becky asked.

  “And lots of blue cheese dressing,” Audrey added.

  “Sure.” I went to the computer and put the order in with the kitchen.

  “Besides keeping Rand on his toes, working at this awesome bar, what else do you do?” Audrey added, “I admit, I feel like I’ve known you a long time since we thought Willow was you last summer. Now you’re really here.”

  A few more orders came in, taking me away from answering. A band was setting up on the stage when I finally circled back to Audrey and Becky. “Well?” Becky asked.

  “Oh, um…” I’d forgotten the question. “I’ve been in school in L.A. and finished my master’s in music.”

  “Awesome!” Becky said. She leaned to the side when the waitress dropped off the wings. I grabbed extra napkins from behind the counter and poured them both glasses of ice water. “Do you play an instrument or sing or—”

  “Violin.”

  “Really? You need to meet the Barn Cats then,” Audrey said. She pointed to the men on stage and then waved at one. Obviously, they knew each other. “They played at my wedding reception.”

  The band began to play. Unlike the usual rock cover bands most bars had, these guys were fiddlers. Three fiddled, and one on bass set the deep harmony.

  A forgotten memory of Uncle Adam taking me to see a bluegrass band filtered into my mind. It could’ve been these guys—they definitely looked that old. As old as my great uncle would be if he was still alive.

  I smiled, both at the memory and at the music. This wasn’t the constipated concert violin playing I’d left behind. It was lively and fun. There were mis-strokes played although I was probably the only one who noticed, and it didn’t matter. The crowd loved them, and they were having a good time. There was no professor standing at the podium grading their bowing technique or the perfection of the curve of their fingers on the strings. No conductor. No grades.

  Watching them made me wish I’d never gone to college for music at all. That I’d kept it as something for me. Just for fun.

  Then maybe I’d still love it the way I had when Uncle Adam gifted me that first violin.

  There was a lull at the bar as people made their way in front of the stage to dance, and I leaned my elbows on the bar across from Audrey and Becky.

  Audrey leaned forward conspiratorially. “So the guys were all floored to find out that you and your uncle knew about them all this time.”

  I glanced around. No one was paying us any attention, and the music drowned out her words.

  “Rand told everyone?” I wasn’t sure why that bothered me a little. I guessed because Uncle Adam’s secret had felt sacred to me all these years, and then… bam! It was out there. Or maybe it was because Rand had this whole pack thing going that I didn’t really understand. I didn’t come from a tight knit family. I came from dysfunction. I didn’t have any siblings. No grandparents that I remembered. The only relative besides dear old Mom and Dad was Uncle Adam.

  “I’m sorry if that was private,” Audrey said, immediately catching my reaction. “It’s just from what I’ve heard, your uncle was such a good neighbor and friend to my husband and his brothers for so many years. They were touched to find out he’d felt a connection with them and had protected their secret his entire life.”

  I softened. “Yes, he did. He’d loved a member of their pack, did you hear that part? She broke his heart.”

  Something twisted in my own heart saying the words. I’d been telling myself I didn’t know anything about love because my parents were such bad examples, but I realized I’d internalized Uncle Adam’s story as well. The Romeo and Juliet tragedy where the two sides couldn’t come together because of who they were.

  Maybe that was why I was so daunted by Rand’s insistence that we were supposed to be together. My parents were married but were a horrible couple. Uncle Adam and the female shifter were supposed to get together because they were perfect but couldn’t.

  It was lose/lose however I looked at it.

  “Rand told you things have changed now, right?” Audrey asked, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I mean, if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t be mated and married to Boyd. Rob says Fate alone should dictate the rules of mating not the pack.”

  I shook my head, my chest tightening. All this talk about the pack and mating made me anxious. They were all coming at me too fast. It was too much. I could still feel the echo of tragedy from Uncle Adam’s love story with a shifter. I didn’t want to write my own.

  I’d only talked to Boyd Wolf on the phone when he’d offered to buy my property. He seemed nice. As for the other guys, including Becky’s mate, I knew nothing about them. Were they as possessive and crazy as Rand?

  “Hey,” Audrey touched my arm. “I know how intense these guys are when their biology kicks in. Rand’s desperate to mark you as his and seal the deal, but you don’t have the same urge.”

  “Mark me?” I leaned forward on my forearms. Had I heard her correctly?

  Becky and Audrey glanced at each other. “You explain,” Becky said. “You’re the doctor.”

  “Well, we don’t know the science of it, obviously,” Audrey replied. “But from what I can gather, when a male has found his true mate, his fangs coat with some kind of serum, and he has the urge to bite her to leave his scent in her skin.” She pulled aside her collar to show a pair of scars.

  “Oh God,” I muttered. This was just getting weirder and weirder. Not only did Rand want to control everything from my house to where I slept to who talked to me when I was working, but he’d left out the insanity of his need to bite me. I didn’t even know if the guy loved me let alone if I wanted his scent in my skin. Sheesh. “No, thank you.”

  “If he doesn’t mark his chosen mate, he’ll go m—” Audrey put her hand on Becky’s arm to stop her, mid-sentence.

  “Go where?” I asked.

  Someone waved me down, and I went to fill their drink order.

  Audrey answered my question when I returned. “I’m sorry—you don’t need to know that. I can tell we’ve already overwhelmed you, and that’s the last thing we wanted to do,” Becky said.

  The knot in my stomach grew tighter.

  “I thought it was all nuts when it happened to me,” Audrey confessed. “Boyd was this big player on the rodeo circuit. Smooth talking, good looking. I’m pretty sure he had a different woman in every town. I wanted nothing to do with him.” She picked up a celery stick and dunked it in the blue cheese. “But he kept coming on stronger and stronger. And I felt like it must be some kind of joke. I mean, I was just the nerdy small town doctor. There was no way a guy like him was playing for keeps.”

  Becky nodded the entire time at Audrey’s story. “But they do play for keeps,” she interjected. “A wolf never leaves his mate. Never loses the urge to protect her and provide for her. I found that a little daunting after a bad marriage… before Clint. Like if I jumped into another one—there’d be no getting out. Clint and I aren’t married, like humans. We’re mated, same as Audrey and Boyd. It sounds pretty darn scary, but there won’t be a reason to get out. These guys are totally dedicated to their mates.”

  I loved the story they were selling me, but I just didn’t buy it. “How do you know, though? You’ve only been married—mated, what? A year or two? You’re both still in the honeymoon phase.
And Rand’s not Clint or Boyd.”

  Becky gave me a commiserating smile. “I’d say I know Rand better than Audrey does since he’s Clint’s brother. Those guys have a good family. Solid. Clint’s and Rand’s parents are fated mates. When you meet them, you’ll believe it,” Becky promised.

  “This is too much pressure,” Audrey said, probably reading my doubtful expression again. “We definitely didn’t come to talk you into anything. Only to lend our support if you need it.”

  “Thank you, I appreciate that.” I did. I liked both women, and I believed they meant well, I just didn’t trust this wolf biology thing. I wanted a real relationship based on shared experiences, love and respect. Not on the way I smelled.

  “Just don’t push Rand away if it seems too good to be true. Let yourself have him and all that comes with being with a shifter, if you like it.” Becky winked.

  I smiled reluctantly.

  Yeah, I did like the good.

  And she was right—it did seem too good to be true. How could it be this amazing and be real? Or lasting?

  I was letting myself have it—some of it, anyway. I just didn’t want to trust that it could possibly be forever.

  Not when it was something I didn’t even understand.

  17

  RAND

  * * *

  A few days after the pack meeting, I pulled up to Natalie’s following a day of installing a tile backsplash as the final touches of a shifter family’s kitchen remodel. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her sitting on the porch steps like she was waiting for me.

  The sight made my heart gallup, but I forced myself to act casual.

  But keeping things casual for a shifter who needed to mark his mate was like teetering on the edge of a cliff for hours upon hours.

  Every day that went by without me marking Natalie was a new ordeal. I didn’t tell her this, obviously, or any of the shit with Nathan. Venting any of his issues, which solely revolved around her, was not going to help me with Red. Not one fucking bit.

  But I made it through. It was damn hard to prove my love to someone when I was also supposed to be playing it cool and not putting any pressure on. That made no sense to me, but I wasn’t human. I had shifter parents as role models. I wanted a love like theirs, and while it was based on shifter traditions and customs, it was a relationship. A mating, which was pretty much a wolf marriage.

  But my wolf couldn’t be denied. It was a part of me, and it had to be tamed and only Natalie could do that. I wasn’t about to go moon mad anytime soon, but it was getting harder and harder to not claim her. Even now, sitting here and staring at her, was I blowing it? Was I doing this human thing right?

  Like—how many gifts were too many? How many orgasms? How many fix it jobs could I do at the house without her asking before I seemed presumptuous and intrusive? I had every intention of living here with her. Forever. But she lost her shit over me paying for a fucking fuse box. It was a fine fucking line I had to walk, and it nearly had me out of my mind.

  “Hey, darlin’,” I called as I forced my steps to slow down on the way to her. Yeah, I was whipped.

  She stood. She seemed to be wearing a bikini under her tank top and jean shorts, which made me fucking crazy to pull off her clothes and see her in it. And nothing else. “I was going to go down to the swimming hole to cool off, but I thought I’d wait for you. Wanna come?”

  Fuck, Natalie and the swimming hole? I grinned. “Does a wolf need to run?”

  Her gaze caught mine, curious. “Do you?”

  I’d been trying not to mention my wolf. It was part of my playing it cool act. I leaned down, meaning to just give her a quick peck on the lips, but instead my forearm looped under her ass, and I hoisted her legs up around my waist, bringing her warm center against my middle, her breasts in my face. I nipped one of them through the shirt.

  “When the moon is full,” I admitted. “And when I need to let off steam. It helps keep the wolf in balance. Otherwise, he starts running the show.” I winced, hoping this wasn’t too much again. Fuck, I second guessed every thing I said these days.

  “You mean all this… this alpha-ness is you and not your wolf?”

  I couldn’t help but grin. “Alpha-ness? Darlin’, Rob’s the alpha around here. I’ve got nothing on him.”

  I carried her inside and set her on the kitchen counter.

  “I want to see your wolf.”

  I went still. “You do?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I’ve seen it before. When the tractor tipped over. Then again that night at the swimming hole. Will you show me when we get up there again? This time, no running off.”

  I drank in her warm gaze. “I thought maybe you weren’t so crazy about my wolf.”

  She reached for me, cupping my face. “That’s not it at all. That’s what you thought?” She shook her head. “No, Rand. I love that you’re a wolf.”

  “But…?”

  “But, you admitted you’re all bossy and alpha. I know, not like Rob, but still, I know it’s because your wolf is pushing you. I don’t want to base a relationship on that biological urge. Especially when I don’t have the same one.”

  I gripped her thighs. “You don’t…” I shook my head. Freaking out. After all these days… hell, all these nights we’ve spent together. I’ve shown her how I feel for her. In every action, every word. And she didn’t— “Fuck that. I know you feel something for me.”

  She pulled my lips to hers. “I definitely feel something. I just… it’s too soon to call it love. And I want love. Not wolf lust.”

  I dropped my head in the crook of her neck, stifling my roar of frustration. “I think we’re talking about the same thing. But I’m gonna give you time.”

  I pulled my head back, so I could look her in the eye.

  “So are you… going to show me your wolf?” Her voice held a teasing quality that went straight to my dick.

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll show you my wolf if you play your violin for me.” I knew her feelings about music had taken a nosedive in grad school. I could smell the pain of it on her when she spoke of it. I didn’t want to pick the scab, but if there was any way I could help her find her way back to her love of music, I’d bet she wouldn’t feel quite so lost in Cooper Valley.

  Her eyes widened. “The violin? I thought you’d say you wanted me to ditch the bikini or something.”

  “That too,” I replied, reaching down to shift my dick in my jeans.

  “Why do you want me to play?” she demanded.

  I shrugged. “I want to hear you. It’s a huge part of your life—or it was—and I haven’t heard a note since you were a kid. Please?”

  Her expression softened almost to wonder. “You really want to hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not that good. I mean, I’m okay, but my professors—”

  “I couldn’t give a shit about your professors. I’ll bet you’re incredible.” I stepped back and gave her room.

  She blushed and hopped off the kitchen counter. “Okay, I guess. Right now?”

  “Bring it to the swimming hole. We can pack a picnic. I’ll bet the sunset over that waterfall is magnificent.”

  Her expression went soft again. She rose up on her tiptoes to brush a kiss on my lips. “Sounds good, cowboy. I’ll get a blanket and my fiddle. I’ll play and you can shift and howl right along with me.”

  That idea made me laugh, and for the first time since I pulled up, content.

  “You want to grab some food from the fridge?”

  “On it.” I gave her ass a smack as she left the room and checked her refrigerator. I made us some sandwiches and washed a bunch of grapes. She had a few bottles of iced tea that I grabbed and packed it all in the lunch cooler I took from my truck.

  “Last one there is a rotten egg!” Natalie yelled, racing out the back door ahead of me, her arms laden with the blanket, towels, and violin.

  I laughed and locked her place up before I took off running after her, catching
her easily and grabbing her around the waist. “As if you could outrun a wolf,” I said, spinning her around before I set her, laughing, back on the ground.

  She shoved her red curls out of her face and smiled up at me. The sunlight hit her face, giving her skin a luminous glow. “There’s probably nothing I can do better than you, is there?”

  “A million things,” I said. “Starting with that.” I lifted my chin toward the violin. “Let me carry this.” I took the blanket, towels, and instrument case from her arms.

  “Now you’re carrying everything,” she protested.

  “Yep. And that’s the way I like it, darlin’.” I tossed her a wink, and she shook her head, but she was smiling.

  She jogged ahead in her flip flops looking like a summer dream with her flaming red hair glowing bronze in the sunlight.

  It didn’t take long to get to the swimming hole since it was on her property. I spread out the blanket while Natalie stripped out of her clothes.

  “What I want to know,” I drawled as I strolled over to her, “is if you knew you were coming here with me—why you bothered with this bikini?” I tugged the string on the bow in back, and it sprang free, sending the bikini top flapping. I did the same to the bow at her nape, and the little scraps of navy blue fabric dropped to the ground.

  She grinned. “I wore it in case you didn’t show.”

  “You didn’t wear one the last time you were up here. When do I ever not show?” I advanced on her like she was Little Red Riding Hood, and this big bad wolf was going to eat her for dinner. And I was. I snagged the tie at the side of her bikini bottoms.

  “Never,” she breathed. “You always come. I’m trying to get used to it.”

  “Get used to it.” I captured the last tie, and her bikini bottoms fell away, too.

  Damn. She’d shaved or waxed her trim bare for me. “You do that for me, Red?” I asked, and she blushed, nodding. “It’s the prettiest sight I’ve ever seen.”