by T. S. Joyce
Lesson learned. Time to move on.
Only it wasn’t so easy. She really, really liked him for reasons beyond her comprehension. The second she’d laid eyes on him, her body had liked him in some strange chemical reaction she hadn’t had with anyone else, and then with every second she’d spent with him, her heart had liked him, too.
Of course he was freaking taken!
Today was a light make-up day, wild curls piled into a messy bun, skinny jeans, snow boots, a red sweater, and a thick winter jacket kind of day. No point in dressing up to attract that cheaty little cheater who was still chopping wood outside. Chop, chop, chop. It echoed through the house. Apparently, he had the stamina of a Clydesdale. Annoying.
Blaire grabbed her purse and left the house, trotted down the stairs, almost busted her butt on the icy bottom one, saved her balance, dusted off her jeans primly, and walked to her car, which was still parked in front of Gentry’s cabin.
Gentry stopped slamming the ax into a wooden log, rested his hand on his hip, and leaned the handle onto the chopping block. His chest heaved with the exertion, his cheeks were slightly flushed under his facial scruff, and his breath chugged like fog in front of his face. “Where are you going?”
“None of your business.”
“Uuuh, it is my business, remember? I said it wasn’t a safe time in this town—”
Blaire held her hand up and cut him off. “Save your protective bullcrappery, Gentry. I don’t need a controlling man in my life. You want to protect someone from imaginary monsters? Go protect your girlfriend!”
Was it mature to shout that last word, escape into her car, and slam the door? Nope, but it sure felt good to watch his face go slack.
She waved toodle-loo and then skidded to the exit of the parking lot like she was a stunt driver in a movie. At the stop sign, her tires spun out for a few seconds before they caught, but as soon as she got traction, she cast him a fiery glare and pulled out of Hunter Cove.
What was she up to this fine, blustery, gray-skied, frigid Maine day? Grocery shopping. She needed zero macaronis from Gentry Striker, and yes, that was a metaphor for his dick, too. Even if his dick was like…the biggest macaroni. A world record macaroni. Stop thinking about how big it is.
Blaire was an independent woman who didn’t need a protector and sure didn’t need anything from the man watching her leave.
Project avoid-the-heck-out-of-Gentry-for-the-rest-of-the-week started right now, because Blaire didn’t need a hero.
She could take care of herself just fine.
Chapter Seven
How did one even cook an artichoke? Blaire spun the spikey thing in her hands. She would have to research. Or perhaps get mega-lazy and buy canned artichokes for the pasta she planned on making tonight.
She was an acquisitions editor for a big publisher, so she had a stack of manuscripts to read, a load of time on her hands, and a craving for carbs like she hadn’t felt in months. Her appetite had been crap back home while stressing about work and Matt, but out here, she wanted to enjoy cooking and eating again.
This was going to be way better than the TV dinners she ate at the kitchen counter every night while staring pathetically at the two-person table she and Matt used to eat all their meals at together.
Tables were for families and couples. She’d held onto that old table so hard, but now she was considering selling it and replacing it with something that she picked out, not bought at a garage sale with her ex. Too many memories attached to it. Actually, there were too many memories attached to everything in that house.
Maybe it was finally time to sell it and rent something. A place she could build brand new memories away from Matt.
He’d moved on. It was way past time she did the same.
Relief and sadness welled up inside of her as she settled the artichoke in her cart and rolled it toward the pasta aisle.
She smiled at a couple as she passed, but they only frowned back at her, and the man snarled up his lip like a wild dog. Rude. The people in this store were either friendly or gave her looks like she was a leper. Now she was afraid to give anyone eye contact because the entire grocery store was apparently a mixed bag of nuts.
Gentry fit right in around here.
Blaire gritted her teeth hard to punish herself. She’d sworn not to think of Cheater-McGee while she was out and about running errands, but her mind kept circling back around like a little glutton for punishment.
Bowtie pasta or fettuccine? She scrolled through the recipe on her phone. She could do either. Blaire held up a bag of each and played eeny-meeny-miny-mo.
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
The voice right by her ear startled her so hard she dropped the bowties on the floor and yelped.
She spun, and there was the man of her imaginings himself, now dressed in a green, threadbare V-neck sweater and sex-appeal. Her hormones were fangirling, and it made her even angrier.
“Fiancé then,” she said sarcastically as she bent to pick up the pasta.
Only he bent over at the same time and reached for it, knocking into her shoulder. She went toppling backward. His strong arms gripped her wrists in a blur and settled her upright again so fast it stole her breath away.
He still held her wrists and was standing too close. He smelled like that body spray and mint, as if he’d just brushed his teeth, and this was the first time in her life she’d ever been jealous of a toothbrush. She hated everything. Blaire wrenched her wrists away from him and crossed her arms.
Gentry’s eyebrow cocked up, and his lips curved slightly with a smile. “You’re really cute when you’re mad.”
“I’m not cute. I’m a tornado. I’m an avalanche of fury.”
Gentry pursed his lips, but he was doing a pretty crappy job of hiding his smile.
“Jerk,” she muttered, tossing the fettuccini into her cart and motoring away from him. Only Daddy Longlegs could apparently speed walk and caught up with her in three strides. Obnoxious.
“Stalking is illegal, you know,” she blurted out pertly.
“But you’re so fun to stalk, Trouble. Jailtime would be worth it.”
“Have you been arrested often?” she asked, lifting her chin and taking a left toward the wall of freezers. She was definitely loading up on pizza rolls.
“Have you?”
She tossed him an angry glare. “Of course not, I’m a good girl.”
“I don’t have a fiancé,” he said low. I don’t have a girl at all. I don’t really know why you thought that. If I had someone who was mine, I wouldn’t have been all over you last night. That’s not me. It’s not really possible for someone like me to…you know…”
“Cheat?”
“Yeah. I’m a one-woman kind of guy. Or…” Gentry’s frown deepened. “I was really trying to be a zero-woman kind of guy. I’m shit at relationships.”
“You don’t say.”
Gentry cast a quick glance around and pulled the cart to a stop. In a low voice, he murmured, “What are you angry about, Blaire? Explain it to me, because I have to tell you, women are a complete mystery to me, and you are the most confusing one of all.”
She matched the low pitch of his voice because, apparently, they were telling secrets by the milk case. “I was looking forward to breakfast with you, Gentry. I thought maybe you were different than those guys who fooled around with a girl and bolted, but then first thing this morning, you throw attitude and cancel on me, and now I feel…I feel…”
“What?” he asked, looking utterly baffled. “Say it.”
“I feel dirty and kind of cheap.”
Gentry ran his hand over his head, pulling off his black winter hat, and blew out the word, “Fuck.” He paced off then back and squared up to her even closer, trapped her in that bright green gaze. He lowered his voice again. “You aren’t dirty and you aren’t cheap. Last night wasn’t just some screw-around for me, Blaire. It was scary. I’m not supposed to be with someone like you.”
“
Someone like me?”
“It’s so fucking complicated right now. So complicated, and I don’t want the hole I’m in to rub off on you, okay? I want you to have a good vacation, a good week. I want you to have good memories of this place.” Good memories of me. The words were right there, unspoken but hanging in the air between them anyway.
Blaire was stunned with the honesty in his eyes.
“I didn’t get any sleep last night, and I was moody and pissed at the damn wolf—” Gentry’s eyes went wide as he cut himself off.
“You heard it, too? Gentry, it was terrifying! Howling right at dawn like that. I’ll have nightmares for a week. I didn’t even know there were wolves around here.”
“Shhhh,” he hissed, scanning the store around them. Quick as a whip, he grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her to him, settled his lips near her ear, and whispered, “There are a few newly released into the mountains, but it’s a hot topic with the town. Best not to mention them.”
“Okay,” she murmured, feeling drunk on his smelly-good body spray. She was going to dress as his toothbrush next Halloween.
“Are you sniffing me, Trouble?” he asked, his lips brushing her ear.
No use denying it. “Mmm hmm.” When Blaire clenched the fabric of his sweater in her fists, he reacted with a low, soft rattling noise in his throat that sounded wild and sexy.
“’Scuse me, love birds,” a little elderly lady with thick glasses said.
Gentry backed away from Blaire like she was made of burning buffalo chips. He was pressed against her one second and on the other side of the cart the next, staring at the lady like they’d been caught boinking under the bleachers.
“Gentry,” the woman said cheerfully.
“Nelda,” he muttered, much less cheerfully. His eyes hardened like shards of green glass on the woman.
Blaire cast him a what-the-heck look and apologized to Nelda. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be, dear, I used to act like that with my Ted. It’s good to see young love again. Can you reach that for me?” She pointed at the two percent milk on the top shelf of the refrigerator.
“Of course,” Blaire said, grabbing two, one for her and one for the nice lady.
Finally, someone with manners in this town.
“Thanks, sweetie.” Nelda gave the brightest smile and then turned toward Gentry. In the softest, kindest voice Blaire had ever heard, she said, “She’s pretty. Rhett’s gonna kill you.” And then she shuffled off, pushing her cart, humming under her breath. Oh good, another lunatic.
Blaire blinked slowly and shook her head to rid herself of that ruined moment.
Nelda wasn’t sweet after all.
Nelda was a cock-blocker.
“I’m going to get some stuff for the house,” Gentry said in a distracted voice as he watched the woman walk away through narrowed, angry eyes.
“Don’t forget the macaroni,” she joked.
Gentry huffed the softest laugh and then cast her a quick glance. He looked like he wanted to say something, shook his head hard, then strode off toward the front of the store.
Okay then. Blaire rubbed the edge of her ear softly just to remember what his lips had felt like there. Her body was still revved up, and right now, all she wanted to do was get lost in a hug from Gentry. He wasn’t the public affection sort though, obviously, so she was barking up the wrong tree with wants like those.
Rhett’s gonna kill you. What a strange thing to say. Wait, maybe Rhett was who Gentry got into a barfight with last night.
She frowned at where Gentry had disappeared and then pushed her cart toward the cartons of eggs stacked in an open refrigerator along the wall. She felt pulled in a hundred directions around Gentry. A part of her loved the excitement, but another part of her grew scared of all the mysteries that surrounded him. The more she thought she knew him, the more layers she found, and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out if she liked that about him or not.
One thing was for sure and for certain, though. Gentry Striker was going to keep her on her toes this week.
Thanks to him, her quiet vacation was getting more and more interesting by the minute.
Chapter Eight
Gentry rattled off a snarl as he followed Nelda’s scent outside. Fucking snake in wolf’s clothing would tell Rhett he was breeding a human before the old werewolf even pulled out of the parking lot. He needed to cut her off.
“Knew you’d come for me,” Nelda bragged from where she leaned against the corner of the building.
Gentry gave a stiff smile to the human family walking past him and shrugged into his jacket for show as he settled beside her.
Nelda pushed up her glasses, which were a part of her disguise and she didn’t need, onto her fluffy silver hair and bared her teeth. “What the fuck are you doing, pup? You’re going to get us all found out.”
“It’s not what you think. She’s here for a week on vacation, and then I’ll never see her again.”
Nelda was punching something onto her phone.
“What are you doing? Nelda, Rhett won’t just kill me. He’ll kill the human, too.” God, he hated calling Blaire the human. She was so much more than that.
“I’m not texting Rhett, you dumbass.”
“Then who?”
“Your brothers. Maybe they’ll knock some sense into you.”
“Well,” Gentry said, leaning back against the brick wall beside her. “Good luck reaching them. I’ve been trying for days.”
Nelda’s phone beeped. “Roman said they’re on their way.”
Assholes.
“Look, I hate you—”
“Thanks,” Gentry muttered.
“Everyone does—”
“Is there a point to this?”
“No, just thought you should know.”
“Fantastic.”
Nelda squinted up at him for a loaded moment, then sighed. “I know there was bad blood between your father and I, but that wasn’t all my doing.”
Gentry cast her a suspicious sideways glance. Nelda and Dad had always hated each other’s guts. No female werewolf had ever given him so much trouble in his pack. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, he picked another. I was supposed to be alpha female. I was supposed to be his choice, and he didn’t want me. I never forgave him. Still haven’t. I’m glad the old coot’s dead.”
Nelda pushed off the wall and adopted her slower pace, settled her glasses back on her nose, and wandered toward the parking lot.
“But Dad never chose a mate,” Gentry said, completely confused.
“That you know of,” she answered without turning around.
What the fuck just happened? Nelda hadn’t turned him in to Rhett, she’d contacted his brothers instead, and she’d just dropped this bomb on him. Nelda and Dad? There was an unsettling thought. He’d never met anyone more manipulative than Nelda until Rhett came along. He didn’t blame Dad one bit for turning her down as his alpha female, but him choosing another? That had to be a lie. Gentry’s mom had died when he and his brothers were so young, none of them even remembered her face, her voice, anything. As far as Gentry had known, Dad had decided not to take another mate after Mom passed. So what in the actual fuck was Nelda talking about?
There was a dark-headed woman sitting in an idling truck in the front handicap parking spot. Exhaust fumes plumed across the old brown truck, but it was the woman’s direct gaze that held his attention. She had a round face, pitch-black eyes, and silver streaks in her long, black hair. Full lips, a wide nose, and delicately arched eyebrows. She was in her fifties, or early sixties perhaps. A real looker, exotic, and somehow familiar.
Chills rippled up his spine, and some long buried instinct told him to run.
Wolf didn’t like that and growled for him to posture.
When Gentry stepped away from the building and straightened to his full height, the woman pulled out of the parking spot and drove away, but he could see her gaze flick to him in the rearview m
irror.
“Gentry?” Blaire asked. She stood behind her cart of grocery bags with a concerned look in her pretty green eyes. “Are you okay?”
Wolf’s snarl settled, and he grew quiet, watching her. Gentry had trouble taking his eyes off her to check the direction the brown truck took out of the parking lot. “I’m fine. I just thought I saw someone I used to know.” Or…something. The sense of déjà vu was so overwhelming he could almost see the woman’s face, twenty years younger, right there at the edge of his mind.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Blaire said from right beside him.
God, he wished he could drape his arm over her shoulder right now. He wished he could tell the world he liked her, and that she was his to protect. He wished he could wrap her in a hug until the worry left her voice. He wished he could kiss her lips until the little wrinkles of concern smoothed from her forehead.
Instead, he forced a smile and shoved his hands into his pockets to curb the urge to touch her. “I’m fine. Come on. I have some more errands to run in town, but I can load up your groceries for you.”
“Maybe I don’t need the help,” she challenged him.
Gentry chuckled. “And I like that about you. Fine, I’ll stand back and stare at your ass while you unload the groceries into your car. Better?”
Blaire snorted the cutest little sound and bumped his shoulder as she pushed the cart beside him.
Beautiful girl. Her red curls were piled up high and messy. Made him want to pull the hair band out and fuck her on her back so he could mess it up. She wore hardly any of the make-up she had on yesterday so he could see her freckles. He liked them. She’d put some kind of mango-scented lip gloss on her full lips that he wanted to suck off, and when she turned her head to check if cars were coming, he spied a tiny red heart tattoo right behind her ear.
Blaire wasn’t the good girl she claimed to be. She had some bad girl in her, too. Fucking sexy little tattoo that probably stayed hidden most of the time. He wanted to kiss it and make her let off that soft moan she had when he’d whispered up against her ear in the store. She’d been so wet for him last night. He could smell her pheromones now. She was probably soaking her panties for him, and all he’d done was stand close to her. Good Blaire, reacting to him the way he needed her to.