by Lynn Howard
“I think we’re okay. And again, thank you for everything.”
“You don’t have to keep thanking us,” Daxon said. He had an overwhelming urge to shuffle his feet or fidget. So, he shoved his hands in his pockets instead. “Do you have a cell phone?”
“Of course,” she said with an awkward shrug.
He pulled his phone out. “What’s your number?”
She frowned at him but didn’t answer.
With a chuckle, he shook his head. “I’m not going to call you in the middle of the night or send you dirty texts. I figured it’d be easier if I sent you a text in case you needed to get hold of us later. In case anyone bothers you. Or you need anything.”
Her eyes darted back up to Campbell and Charlie in the doorway. He didn’t look back at the two female Pride members, but whatever they did reassured her. She rattled off her number and Daxon tapped it into his phone. He simply texted, It’s Daxon. Call or text if you need anything.
The phone dinged in her pocket and a small smile tilted the corners of her dark pink, full lips up.
That was the closest to a smile he’d seen since she’d come barreling onto the road.
“Thanks.”
He opened his mouth to remind her she didn’t need to keep thanking him but snapped it shut. Maybe she was one of those people who needed to make sure anyone who helped her felt appreciated. Or maybe she didn’t know what else to say.
Daxon knew the feeling. He stood there with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t want to leave. But there was nothing else for him to do there.
Ryanne shifted her weight to her other foot. The silence was going into the land of the awkward. It was time for him to hit the road.
“Have a good night,” he said, and mentally smacked himself on the forehead as he turned on his heel and stepped through the front door. “Make sure you put on all the locks after we leave.”
Campbell gave him a look indicating she’d thought he’d lost his mind. Charlie, on the other hand, smiled reassuringly at him. She came just shy of raising her hand and giving him a thumbs up.
While the panthers tended to limit interactions with females, specifically mated females, for fear of disrespecting them, both Charlie and Campbell had made it their life’s missions to change their habits. They touched the males who weren’t their mates, hugged them, even demanded eye contact when they spoke.
What could he say? Both women had become like sisters to him. They were quickly changing the dynamics of the Pride.
“Goodnight,” he said, pulling the door shut behind him.
He was so damned tempted to look through the glass panels to make sure she locked the door after putting Penny to bed. But that would look creepy if she came down the hall to find him standing there staring inside like a stalker.
Campbell descended the three steps leading from the porch. Charlie walked beside Daxon. He could see her glancing at him every few seconds.
Finally, Daxon glanced down at her. “What?” he asked, and winced at how shitty his tone sounded.
“She’s pretty,” she said with a shrug of her narrow shoulders.
Charlie had finally put weight back on after her attempted abduction last year. That was how they’d met her. They had come upon her using her magic, using her wind to throw the bastards away from her.
And then she and Ravenwood Pride’s Alpha, Aron, had fallen in love, become mates, then had a small ceremony in Big River territory.
That had been Nova’s idea. Nova was Big River’s Alpha’s mate. And she loved anything to do with romance. And spending money.
As Daxon climbed into the front seat of the SUV that Aron had vacated – more than likely to be near his wife – he did his best to ignore the questioning looks of his Pride.
When Daxon didn’t say anything, Mason put the vehicle in drive and aimed for home.
Trees blurred past the side window but all Daxon could see was the beautiful woman he’d left standing in her living room.
Could he handle being a father figure? Penny had quite a while before she could head off on her own. And it would be just as much his job to protect her as it would be Ryanne’s.
And why the hell was he even thinking about his life with Ryanne in the future? There was no guarantee she’d felt the same pull he had. Just because his panther wanted to crawl out of Daxon’s skin and leave his mark and scent on her didn’t mean she or her animal side wanted that.
The further they moved from Ryanne’s house the more pressure built in his chest. Staying away from her would be hard as fuck.
And that was if he was able to stay away from her at all.
Chapter Three
It was Sunday. They were officially supposed to be returning from their camping trip this morning. Instead, Ryanne found herself looking out the window for the millionth time since Daxon and his friends had left Friday night. Or had it been Saturday morning?
All she knew was it was super late. And, since Penny was a five-year-old morning person, Ryanne had had hardly any sleep.
She also hadn’t had much sleep since. Every single sound outside her house made her sit straight up in her bed and grab her phone in case she needed to call for back up.
How pathetic had she become? She’d been successful in keeping herself and her baby sister safe all these years, and now she was ready to call in some big, bad man to help.
She had to give herself a break. It wasn’t like there was a single person after her. She’d been chased by four males. Four males who had turned into big ass wolves. And her lynx was not only on the smaller side but submissive, as well.
Every single male in that SUV last night had felt heavy. They’d felt like predators and dominant as hell.
Would she and Penny still be at risk? She had contemplated moving away as she laid in bed staring at the ceiling Friday night. But where could she possibly go? Not only did she not have the money to uproot them, but there were bad people all over the world.
She was as safe right here in Cedar Hill, Missouri as she would be anywhere else in the world.
At least here, she had a few new friends who actually cared about her wellbeing.
Ryanne might have looked out the window a million times, but she’d picked up her phone with the intention of texting or calling Daxon at least a million and one times. She kept trying to come up with excuses as to why she should call him. In reality, though, she just wanted to hear his deep voice.
He had asked her if she wanted him to stick around until after she’d gotten Penny in bed and locked up the house. It had taken every ounce of energy to tell him no when all she wanted to do was beg him to crawl into bed with her and hold her. She would’ve felt so much safer with him there all night. Or all weekend. Or maybe a whole week.
She couldn’t think about Daxon that way, though. She had Penny to worry about. And he was a single, childless man. At least she thought he was.
Ryanne was a package deal. She might not have been Penny’s biological mother, but she loved her more than their mother ever did.
Could Daxon handle having a child in his life? As much as she told herself she didn’t need to think about him that way, she couldn’t help herself. Her damn lynx was purring simply thinking about him.
Setting her phone on the table, she headed to the small, narrow kitchen and pulled out a box of macaroni and cheese for lunch. “You hungry, munchkin?” she called to Penny, who was watching a cartoon.
“Yep,” she answered without turning her eyes from the screen.
They had already played outside for two hours before Ryanne would let her sister plop down in front of the boob tube. She wanted Penny to grow up enjoying the outdoors the way Ryanne always had. The difference, of course, was Ryanne’s ability to Shift into her animal form and run the woods for hours.
As she waited for the water to boil, she glanced at her phone sitting on the counter for, well, the millionth and second time. Only this time, it dinged.
Ryanne started at the sound. Slowly
, she shuffled to it and glanced down. Daxon. He’d texted her. It was like she had telepathically convinced him to contact her with her thoughts.
Hey. Just checking in to see if you need anything.
Should she answer? Of course she should. If she didn’t, he might think something was wrong. But what should she say? Tell him they were fine? Ask him for help with the roof? No. That sounded like she was using him. Tell him she’d thought about hardly anything but him since he’d left her house?
As she argued with herself over what to text back, her phone rang. Daxon was calling her.
Now she was panicked.
Glancing at Penny to make sure she was settled and not paying attention to the fool Ryanne was about to make of herself, she took a deep breath and hit the green answer icon on the screen.
“Hey,” she said. Did she sound breathless? She definitely sounded breathless. Dang it!
“You okay?” he asked in that baritone voice of his.
“Yeah. You?” Ryanne slapped the palm of her hand to her forehead.
A deep chuckle echoed over the line. “I’m fine. You didn’t answer my text. I got worried.”
She frowned as she stirred the boiling noodles.
“I…” Lie. Lie, damn it. “I didn’t know what to say.” Or tell the truth and sound like a weirdo.
“About what?”
“What?”
“You said you didn’t know what to say. You didn’t know what to say about what?” he asked. She could hear the smile in his voice. She hadn’t seen him smile the one time she’d seen him. She found herself desperately wanting to see his smile.
“I didn’t know what to say to your question. I didn’t know what to say to you,” she admitted.
There was a beat of silence. And then he sighed, the air distorting the sound of the phone. “We usually check in on the women we help. But…”
“But what?” Did he not want to check on her? Was he calling out of obligation?
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he confessed.
And then Ryanne’s tongue stopped working. She literally couldn’t form a word. It had been a long time since a man was able to render her silent.
“Should I not have said that?” he asked. He cursed under his breath. “I’ll have someone else check on you from now on.”
“No,” she said a little too quickly and a little too loudly.
Penny looked at Ryanne over the back of the couch. Ryanne smiled at her and pointed at the small butcher block table she’d scored on someone’s curb a few months back.
As she mixed in the milk and butter and scooped some macaroni and cheese into a bowl for Penny, Ryanne couldn’t stop smiling.
He’d felt it. He had felt that odd supernatural connection or whatever it was between Shifters.
So…now what?
She wasn’t into insta-love. She knew her kind didn’t form relationships like humans, but she wanted to truly get to know Daxon before she committed to anything.
“I have Penny,” she blurted out. She needed to make sure he remembered there was a child in her life. She couldn’t simply get cute and run out to a bar on a whim. She couldn’t Shift with him and run the woods all night and leave Penny alone in the house.
“Yeah?” he said as though the statement confused him.
Ryanne sighed. Making sure her sister was set for lunch, she stepped onto the front porch and pulled the door closed behind her. “I just want to make sure you’re not…I don’t know, looking for a fling.”
He huffed out a surprised laugh. “Furthest thing from it, actually.”
Oooh. That sounded like he was definitely looking for a mate. Or maybe he was having as hard a time fighting the pull as she was.
“Look,” he said after a few more beats of silence. “I have no idea what I’m doing. And I’m not saying we need to be mates or whatever. I only know you’re the most beautiful and courageous woman I’ve ever met in my life.”
Her heart thundered in her chest at his words. “Thank you?” she said. “I mean, thank you.”
That chuckle again. Even his laugh was sexy.
She just hoped this connection was real and not her hormones. She let lust lead her down the wrong path before. Luckily, it had been before Penny had been born so she hadn’t been caught in the crossfire.
“Is there any chance we can hang out?” he asked. He sounded so shy and unsure of himself as he asked.
Ryanne looked through the glass at her sister, who was watching TV while she ate.
“We’d have to do it here. I don’t want to take Penny out in public yet. She knows how to keep a secret, but I don’t want her accidentally slipping about the bad guys who chased us.”
She’d had nightmares Friday night, but had only mentioned it in passing since. Unlike Ryanne, Penny didn’t appear traumatized by the experience.
“Do you like dogs?” he asked.
“Dogs?”
“Yeah. Do you like dogs?”
“Well, yeah. But they don’t like us,” Ryanne said with a frown.
Birds chirped in the trees. Ryanne watched a dragonfly dip from the sky as it caught its lunch.
“Remember Campbell? The woman who was with us Friday night?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s got this huge dog. A Rottweiler, I think. The dog loves everyone. Literally, everyone. And he adores kids. Our friends, the wolves down in Big River Pack, have two little girls and they play with him.”
“Really?” That was surprising. Most domesticated animals tended to steer clear of Shifters. It was like they could feel the predator living inside Shifters’ bodies.
“Big River has a cookout just about every Sunday. They’re having one today. Would you want to come? And Penny is definitely invited. The little girls there are a couple years younger than her, but they have plenty of toys to play with.”
“You’re inviting us both?” she asked. That had been the main reason she hadn’t dated in years. She had never hired a babysitter for Penny, and she didn’t plan on starting any time soon.
“Well, yeah. She’s a huge part of you. I’m not trying to get in your pants or whatever, Ry.”
Daxon had called her Ry. She hadn’t been called by that nickname in years. Not since she was a young girl.
“Package deal, right?” he said with a soft chuckle. “Besides, I think you both need a fun day after the crap you went through Friday.”
She could definitely use a day off. A day where the only thing she had to worry about was eating too much or getting sunburned.
“What time?” she asked, looking at Penny through the door again.
Ryanne jumped when she realized Penny was standing on the other side, a wide grin on her face. Frowning at her with her own smile, Ryanne wondered how much Penny had heard. No way could she hear Daxon’s side. But had Ryanne said anything that would indicate they were doing anything out of the norm?
“Around two.”
Ryanne pulled her phone away from her ear to look at the time. That was in two hours. Part of her wanted to hang up the phone and spend the next two hours primping herself, taming her curls, and applying a hefty amount of makeup.
But it was a simple cookout. She didn’t want to look out of place or like she was trying too much. Besides, she rarely wore makeup. No reason to be someone she wasn’t simply to get Daxon’s attention.
It appeared she already had his attention and he’d seen her at one of her worst moments.
“I can pick you two up,” he said when Ryanne didn’t say anything else.
“We can drive. You don’t have to go out of your way,” she said. She was grinning like a fool now at the thought of seeing Daxon again.
“It’s not out of my way. It’s actually on the way. You live about two miles from Big River territory.”
She’d known when she moved here that Cedar Hill was a large Shifter community. She hadn’t realized she was so close to a wolf Pack, though.
“Okay. We’ll see you at two, the
n.”
Neither of them hung up. Neither said goodbye. She suddenly felt like a teenaged girl. You hang up. No, you hang up.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
“Bye,” she said.
“Bye.”
Ryanne ended the call, then hugged the phone to her chest as she leaned back against the door.
“Where are we going?” Penny’s high-pitched voice said from behind her.
Ryanne headed into the house and smiled down at Penny. “Remember those people we met Friday?” Penny nodded. “The lady that gave you a piggyback ride has a big dog who wants to play with you.”
“A dog wants to play with me?” Her smile was so excited and hopeful. They hadn’t been around any dogs or cats…well, ever. But poor Penny had always wanted a dog and had asked Santa for a puppy for Christmas for the past two years.
“Yep. Remember Daxon? The big guy we met?”
She pursed her lips in the cutest expression as she looked up like she was going through her memories of that night.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, he’s coming to pick us up in two hours. See the clock,” Ryanne said, pointing at the digital clock she’d bought to help teach Penny how to tell time. “When that says two, zero, zero, it’ll be time to go. So, finish eating your lunch and we’ll get cleaned up. Okay?”
“Yay!” Penny hollered as she hurried to the table to finish scarfing down her lunch. The baby didn’t understand two hours wasn’t exactly soon. But at least there wasn’t a fight about whether she was hungry or not for once.
****
Ryanne had changed her clothes at least four times in the last two hours. In the end, she opted for a pair of jean cut offs and a tank top. With a bra, of course. Her girls were a little too big to let them flop free.
Slipping her feet into some flip flops, she smiled as Penny exited her bedroom in the cutest sundress ever. Sure, she was probably biased, but her sister was adorable.
“Pig tails or braid?” Ryanne asked her as Penny handed her big sister a hairbrush.
“Umm…braid,” she said with a nod, mind made up.
Penny sat between Ryanne’s knees and waited patiently as Ryanne French braided her hair then wrapped a hair band around it.