Dean: Marshall’s Shadow – Jaguar Shapeshifter Romance (Marshall's Shadow Book 2)

by Kathi S. Barton

  Yes, that was it. He’d been terrified of his only son. Not for what he was, because there was no doubt that Hunter was insane, but fear for himself. Because if his son had ever found out, even thought that Fletcher had been in that place, his room, he was sure that he would have ended up with the same fate that the young woman had.

  “Mr. Booth?” The woman’s voice startled him, enough so that his mind took a very sharp turn for the bad. He didn’t think he knew her, didn’t want her near enough so that she’d hurt him either. So he hit out at her, slamming his fists into any part of her that he could touch. “I have you. Don’t hurt me, Fletcher. I have you. It’s Harrison. Remember me? I’m so sorry that I scared you. I have you now.”

  Slowly he began to hear all the things she was saying to him. The grip on his arms was strong, stronger than a mere woman would have. As he settled down, listening to the way she spoke to him, keeping him from hitting her again, Fletcher began to cry.

  “I’m so sorry that I hurt you, Harris. I’m so sorry.” Harris kept telling him that it was all right. It had been her fault. “I’m a mess today, thinking old memories and not being able to put names to faces. Morrison. That was her name. That poor girl.”

  She continued to hold him, Harris telling him about the cooler weather. The way the trees were turning. He was told about the steak dinner that she and her family had enjoyed last night. All kinds of nothingness words that were doing just what they were meant to do. To assure him. To keep him here with her in the present.

  “I’m all right now, young lady. I just, I can’t tell you enough how sorry I am that I hurt you.” He looked at her when she let him go. “I’ve bloodied your mouth. I’m so sorry that I—”

  “Listen, Fletcher, this will go much faster and better if I don’t have to knock the shit out of you for apologizing when I said it was all right. It is. I’ll heal the next time I go playing in the yard with Shep.” He couldn’t help it, he laughed. “There you go. Now, are you ready for some news? If not, then I guess I can come back some other time and have to knock you around again. What do you say?”

  “You’re not rude at all, are you?” She grinned at him, and he couldn’t help but smile back at her. “I’m not sure you should be telling me anything that you want me to remember. If you remember correctly, my noodle is toast. I won’t remember anything you tell me today even after an hour or so.”

  “Yes, but I’ll know that you’ve been told what is going on.” When she shut the door, he watched her carefully. As soon as she sat down in the room’s other chair after closing and locking his door, she laid her handgun out on the table that was between them. “I need to tell you about myself.”

  “You’re Cora Banks.” She might have had the look of surprise on her face, but he couldn’t be sure. It had been there and gone so quickly that he could well have imagined it. “I have friends, or I used to have them, in high places as well. What is it you’ve done to Hunter? Before you answer that, I was just lying here thinking about how much I don’t care. Not just that I don’t care what happened to him, but I don’t love him. Something happened, and he scared me.”

  “You were in his room.” Fletcher nodded, unsure how she knew, but not really caring. “You were afraid that he’d hurt you if he knew. He would have too. Killed you. He would have done it so you would have suffered in ways that I’m sure, as you saw in his room, would have been horrific for you. From your earlier comment, I guess you knew about Dana as well.”

  “I don’t know. At the time I was looking at that particular picture, I think my mind had already been messing up. All I can remember, and that’s all I want to remember if I have to at all, is that there was a lot of blood. I don’t know how I ever got out of that room. I only remember waking up in my room on the floor. I’ve never told anyone that.” She thanked him for trusting her. “You’ve taken care of him, haven’t you?”

  ~*~

  Rocking back and forth in the rocker that had been a part of this porch for as long as she could remember, Bella didn’t speak when the sliding door opened behind her. She could smell who it was as clearly as if she’d looked in his direction. Dean had been checking on her off and on since Harris had left over two hours ago.

  “Harris wanted me to let you know that she’s just left your father. She said that it went as well as you expected. How did you know that your dad was aware of Hunter?” Not answering him, she looked at his wonderful face when he came to kneel in front of her. “You’re worrying your big bad jag of a husband, love. Is everything all right? Do you need me to slay anything for you? I will. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know that. Why did I think that my father knew? That’s a good question. I guess I was thinking about the day that he’d thought you were Hunter. I have no doubt now that that was what he’d been seeing. At some point, he saw him murder someone. It’s been buried, along with other things in his mind, since that time. I didn’t realize until we started living here full time how easy it is to be seen every time you come in and out of this house. Dad had to know something.” She rocked some more, pacing herself and what she wanted to say. “I have come to hate this house. I feel dirty every time I come here. I know that we need to be here for my dad, that the doctor told us how important it was for him to have consistency. But I despise this place and all that it represents.”

  “We can move into my house. I don’t think you’ll like it any better. I’ve got the entire place in flux trying to make it a show house for conservancy.” Bella told him how proud she was of him. “Tell me what I can do, Bella. I’m so worried about you.”

  “There is a child at the hospital where my dad is. I go to the nursery after I visit Dad to give myself better memories of the day. I love my dad so very much, and it hurts me to see him this way. Anyway, there is a child there. The little guy is three months old. He’s been abandoned by his parents. Given up, I guess they call it. The nurses said that he’s in good health if a little underweight, but he’s happy. Every time I see him, he’s smiling.” Dean asked her if she wanted to let her dad think that it was her child. “I thought of that too, but I couldn’t do that. Not to my dad nor myself. In my heart, I want to keep thinking that Dad will recover. But my head, the smarter of the two, is telling my heart that I need to fucking grow up. I’m already in love with the little man. His name is Theo Andrew Miller. They have been calling him Dru since he was brought in.”

  “You want to adopt him.” She nodded at him. “I’m all for it if that’s what you want. But I also don’t want to be taking on this responsibility for you to make your dad feel better about having a grandchild. My grandda wouldn’t care if you got him from the moon, he’d be so happy. But how are you going to feel when your dad can no longer remember him?”

  “Good. I know that I didn’t put this out there correctly. It does sound as if I want to adopt Dru just simply to make a sick older man happy. But knowing that my dad loved this child of ours for a time will create memories that I can hold dear in my heart for the rest of his life.” She smiled at Dean. “They’re going to love each other. The two of them, they’ll get their heads close together, and Dad will be telling him all about me. That—that right there makes my heart about explode with happiness. And maybe, just maybe, my dad will be around mentally for them both to have formed a lasting and wonderful relationship that Dru will remember too. I want both of them to be around forever. If my dad doesn’t remember him later on down the line, I will have those memories that I can share with our son when he’s old enough to understand.”

  “That is about the best reason to want a child that I’ve ever heard. Is he human?” She said he was, but did it matter to him? “Not at all. But I’m going to call Shep up now and see what he can do to make this happen just a bit faster. He and my grandda have been doing work there in the last few months. And my grandda knows everyone. I’ll just ask Shep to make sure that Grandda doesn’t know until we actually have
him.”

  “Are you sure?” Dean answered her with a kiss. “I love you, Dean. And as soon as it’s possible, I would love to have your child. No, I need to have your baby. I want to feel him or her growing inside of me so that I can tell him all about his grandda.”

  They continued to sit out on the decking, and she knew that Dean was speaking to his brother as they did. He would ask her an occasional question about the baby or what she’d call him if she could name him. She loved the name that he had, but he’d be a Marshall. Soon, she knew, it would be time to go inside. The nights were cooling off quickly now.

  Bella was loath to go inside. She hadn’t really thought of this place as a home, not even as a child. Yes, she thought, she had grown up here. Had a childhood here that had good memories. But with this thing with Hunter now, she didn’t want to even breathe the same air he had.

  Her brother was dead.

  They, Harris and Shep, had gone to see Hunter the first night she and Dean had been on their honeymoon. To talk to Hunter and, as Harris had said, to end his madness. However, things went wrong quickly, and neither she nor Shep had come out without injuries that, had they been human, would have killed them both.

  Hunter said he needed to go to the bathroom, Harris had told her. And even with Shep there as his great cat, Hunter had attacked her when he’d been cut loose to go. Harris told her that the entire time that he was trying to kill them with every means that he had around him, he laughed and taunted them both to the point where his sanity had slipped behind the cover that he used to show others.

  “You could see him then. The real Hunter. I have to tell you, Bella, it was much worse than I thought it was. The veneer was completely gone, and the Hunter that had become the monster was no longer hidden away.” Bella cried. Not for her brother, but for the pain he’d caused two people that she had come to love. “Don’t worry about us, Bella. I’m just so very glad that you were not there. Had you been there, there is no telling what he would have done to you.”

  When Hunter had cut her on the face and the arm, it had been all Shep could do to tear him away from her, and Hunter had ended up dead from it. Harris told her that it was quick, his death. Hunter had had his throat cut out and bled to death while she and Shep tried to recuperate from the attack.

  Bella thought that was the main reason that she no longer liked the house. Because Hunter had, in that few moments, hurt her only friends, her new family, and it had soured everything about him for her. She looked up at Dean when he stood up.

  “You want to go and see Dru with me?” She nodded, feeling so happy that Dean had found her. “Good. Shep is going to meet us there with the department head. They want to ask us a few questions before we’re considered. You all right with having an interview tonight?”

  “Yes. Do you think there is a chance that we might not be able to take him? I mean, there is this whole Hunter thing still out there.” Dean said that the department guy didn’t even bring it up when Shep had spoken to him. “If Hunter has ruined this for us, I swear to you, Dean, I will find him, dig him up, and kill him all over.”

  “Honey, if it comes to that, you won’t have to work very hard at it. I’ll help you.”

  They were both laughing as they let the cook know that they were going out. Rosemary, Bella’s secretary, said that she’d man the phone for the rest of the evening, as she had no plans. They were out the door when she went back in to tell Grandda they were headed out for a little while.

  “You need some company?” Did she want him to know? Yes, she decided right then and there, Grandda needed to be one of the first to know that they might be bringing a child home. Besides, if they didn’t get Dru, Grandda would be a good shoulder to cry on coming home. But she wouldn’t tell him just yet. “I’ll even spring for some ice cream if you’re up to it.”

  “Who could turn down an invitation like that? Not this girl.”

  If Dean seemed surprised that Grandda was going, he didn’t say a word. As they drove to the hospital, she thought of her dad and what he might say if she brought a baby to see him sometime.

  Bella had talked herself out of getting Dru. The more she thought about it—and she had thought about it a great deal—she realized that anyone in their right mind would consider them to be bad parent material. Not Dean—his family chain was impeccable compared to hers. Her tree had a murderer and a thief in it. Hunter really was going to fuck this up.

  “You going to see your dad? I was going to see if he played chess. That might be something he and I can do when I’m visiting you two.” They got off on the labor and delivery floor, which was also the floor for pediatrics. “I think we’ve gotten ourselves turned all around.”

  Grandda pushed the button to go up two floors before she could stop him. Turning around to head in the direction of the nursery, she saw the nurse coming toward them with a bassinet. Frowning, Bella wanted to sob. The couple that was with her had taken her son. She just knew it.

  Telling herself to be brave in front of strangers, she was completely blown away when the bundle from the bassinet was handed to her. The nurse was talking, but all she could do was look at the little man. Dru was looking at her with the most beautiful face. Talking to him quietly, Bella went to sit on the chairs in the waiting room while Dean spoke to them.

  “You thinking of taking him home, honey? I’m not sure that they’re going to be happy about that right now.” She looked up at Grandda and told him what they were there for. “What’s the holdup?”

  “I think that couple there is taking him. I’ve been checking on Dru here for the last week, just going down here to talk to him before I went home. I guess we were too late to adopt him. It’s probably just as well. I don’t know what sort of mother I’d make to him anyway. Dean would have to be the one to care for him, I’d think.” Grandda sat closer to her and pulled the blanket further off his tiny body. He told her that she’d make a fine mother, and any child would be happy to have her. “Thank you, Grandda. But he’ll get him a good home and be as happy as he’s supposed to be. Hopefully, they’ll fatten him up a little. I so love a chubby baby, don’t you?”

  “I surely do.” Bella stood up to hand the baby to the nurse when she came to stand by her. “He sure is one lucky little man, don’t you think so, Ruby? To be fought over like this don’t happen every day, now does it?”

  “Fought over? Not that it matters, but he’s going to a great home, and you well know it, Sheppard Marshall.” Grandda looked as confused as Bella felt. “You are still taking him, aren’t you, Bella? I mean, when Shep called and said that you were interested in taking him home with you— Why, I couldn’t have asked for a better family to take this little fellow.”

  “I don’t understand.” Ruby, the nurse, asked her what was wrong. “I thought we were here just for an interview or something. And that those other people were—” She looked around and saw that they were gone. “That couple. I thought they were taking him.”

  “Oh, no. They’re here visiting their friend who just had a baby last night. We’ve got everything ready for you to sign on the dotted line and take Dru with you. We even got you a nice car seat to put him in.”

  They both looked at Grandda when he yelled, “Yippee,” at the top of his lungs. The little dance around the chairs had her laughing until she looked down at her son. Dru had puckered up his lower lip and looked as if he was going to cry when Grandda took him from her and sat down in the chair.

  “You go on ahead and get things signed. Me and Dru here, we’ll get acquainted, and I’ll tell him how in the future I’ll try to be a little less exuberant around him.”

  Grandda was indeed talking to him as Dean took her with him as they went to the offices.

  “I don’t understand.” Dean told her they were parents. “But what about the interview? I mean, they’re not going to let us take him out of here tonight, are they? We’re not prepared yet. We d
on’t even have a room for him.”

  “Honey.” Dean stopped moving down the long hall and looked at her. “Do you want this little boy? Because in the few seconds I got to see him I fell in love with him. And he certainly has Grandda’s seal of approval. My ears will be ringing for a week.”

  “Yes. But—”

  He put his hand over her mouth. He then told her to nod or shake her head when he spoke to her. Bella thought that was somewhat rude.

  “Do you want him?” She nodded. “Good. So do I. Apparently, when I contacted Shep, he spoke to someone here. He knew that we were going to get the baby even before he told me to come here for the interview. So he and the rest of my brothers are buying us a baby bed and a bunch of other things that Nurse Ruby told them that we’d need for a night. I guess she figured we’d go shopping for him tomorrow. So, again, do you want this little boy to be ours forever and ever?”

  She moved his hand away. “I do want to raise him with you, Dean.” She kissed him then, taking her time to let him know that he was the best thing that had ever happened to her. And if he didn’t get it, she’d show him later.

  When they were finished signing everything and were loaded down with bags of stuff to take with them, she went to the waiting area to see her son. Their son, Theo Andrew Marshall, was free to come home with them.

  Her dad was coming home tomorrow, but she couldn’t resist going to see him with the baby at least once while she was there. Traveling up to his floor, she was as nervous as she’d been at her first job as a landscaper. Carefully taking Dru into his grandda’s room, she was disappointed to see her dad was resting. Nearly walking out of the room, Dru made a noise so loudly in his diaper that it not only woke her dad but startled the nurse too.

  “Isabella? What is it you have there?” She came into the room where Dad was, the smell hitting her hard from whatever Dru had put in his diaper. “Oh, honey. Oh my goodness, honey, it’s a little boy.”

  Dad cried when she handed him over to him. Bella let him cuddle with Dru while she tried to remember the steps of changing a diaper. Bella had never done it before and now was ready to cry because it was going to be dirty, too. She most definitely didn’t know anything about that.