His wolf stirred within him at the memory of kissing Poppy.
To this day, simply kissing her had been a bigger rush than he’d ever experienced with another woman. And boy, had they done a lot of kissing back in the day. But when it came time for them to move to the next step—when they’d both finally been ready to take that leap in their relationship—his wolf had picked then to rear its head. He’d nearly shifted forms in the middle of the hotel bed.
He’d planned the perfect weekend away with her.
When he’d gotten leave, he’d flown to Connecticut and gotten a hotel near her university. He’d taken her out for dinner and back to the hotel with him. They’d both been consenting adults, so he saw nothing wrong with it. Hell, they’d waited longer than most young people did back then to have sex. He’d been twenty-one and she was just over two years younger.
He’d spent months preparing for it all. Excited to get leave to be able to do what he wanted to do. And while finally getting to have sex with the woman he loved and had been dating for years was very high on his priority list, there had been something even higher.
Asking her to marry him.
He’d saved his money and had bought her a ring. It had been in his pocket the entire evening. He’d probably touched it a good hundred times that evening, nervous to propose out of fear of what her response might be. She was in college then, with aspirations of being a doctor. He was in the service, and at the time, assumed it would be for life. Plus, there was the huge elephant in the room—the fact he wasn’t human and hadn’t ever told her as much.
But still, he’d planned to ask for her hand in marriage.
He wanted a life with her.
But he’d lost control of his shifter side just as he’d finally gotten totally naked with her for the first time in their relationship. He’d been just about to do the deed when pain had shot through his back and down his legs. His body had convulsed, and he’d rolled off the bed, onto the floor of the hotel room, already knowing what was happening to him—an unplanned shift.
Those could be deadly for everyone involved.
He didn’t want her to learn what he was that way and knew there was an extremely high chance he’d lose control to the point nothing human would be left of him. If that happened, he could kill her.
Not an option.
He’d picked fleeing in place of possibly harming her.
He’d snatched his pants, wallet, and keys. He then ran for the door, yanking on his pants as he bolted from the room, running far and fast into a darkened parking lot.
There, he’d lost it and shifted fully.
It was nearly three hours later when he finally returned to human form and to the parking lot to get his things. By that point, Poppy had left the hotel. As much as he wanted to go after her, the fact he’d lost control when trying to bed her made it too dangerous for her if he continued to have contact with her. So, he’d done the only thing he could. He cut all ties with her by way of a letter.
It was shitty, and he wasn’t proud of how he’d handled it, but he’d kept her safe.
Then, two years later, he’d confessed to his father what had happened. His father looked him dead in the eyes and then slapped him upside the back of his head, informing him the reason he’d lost control with Poppy was because she was obviously his mate.
Of course, Brett hadn’t believed him.
She wasn’t a shifter.
But then he began to hear stories about mated pairs who were cross-species. And while Poppy had never shown any signs of possessing magik like the rest of the Proctor family, she was born from their line. That made her fair game in the supernatural mating department.
It meant she really could be his mate—his special person.
He’d wanted to go to her and make everything right between them, but terrorists picked then to fly planes into the World Trade Center, and everything had changed. His special ops team had been pulled in straight away. By the time Brett was stateside again and able to track down Poppy, he found she was not only living in California, but was married with two small children.
He’d seen it all with his own eyes.
He’d watched her from afar as she’d run, pushing a double stroller made for jogging. Her children had been adorable and looked just like her. She’d somehow managed to be even more beautiful than the last time he’d seen her. Every ounce of him wanted to go to her, fall to his knees, and beg for forgiveness, but he wasn’t a home-wrecker.
He didn’t need to bring drama into her family dynamics.
She was happy, and while the guy she’d married came off as a douchebag to Brett, Poppy seemed to like him. That was all that mattered.
That should have been the end of it all.
But it wasn’t.
Brett found himself flying out to California any chance he got, even going so far as to get stationed near there for a period of time, the urge to check on Poppy and her children so overpowering that he couldn’t ignore it.
He knew why that was.
Despite her finding happiness elsewhere, she was and would forever be the only woman for him. It didn’t matter that the children she’d had weren’t his own. The fierce need to be sure they were safe and well was the same as if he’d fathered them himself.
Social media had made it so he was able to check on Poppy through his mother, who was active on all the platforms. For a woman in her sixties, she was very tech proficient. She knew he worried about Poppy, so she’d send him any updates that she noticed being posted. She also would have made a great special operative because she drew information from Poppy’s mother whenever she could, assuring Brett everything was fine and well.
The twins were now in college—attending the same one Poppy had gone to. Brett had men whom he’d served with keeping an eye on them, making sure they were safe. The world was a dangerous place, and if the children were like Poppy, they were unaware of the supernatural and the threat it all posed.
If anyone ever tried to harm them, they’d find themselves dealing with a bunch of trained men who were anything but human.
And if that rich douchebag Poppy had married ever did anything to hurt her, he’d have Brett to deal with.
Four
Poppy
Present Day, South Carolina
As I approached the exit ramp for the town of Grimm Cove, I had a hard time believing it was finally happening—I was finally moving there for good. Not just a summer. Though, if the road trip from California to South Carolina was an indication of what was to come, I could table my enthusiasm.
So far, I’d had a flat tire back in Oklahoma, a cracked radiator just outside of Memphis, a broken tie-down in Mississippi, and a faulty fuel gauge in Alabama.
And on three separate occasions on the trip, I’d thought for certain that I’d seen my ex-husband’s live-in girlfriend.
Once had been at a rest stop, when I’d glanced into the mirror while washing my hands and for a split second thought I’d seen her standing behind me. Of course, she’d not been there, but still.
Then I thought I saw her while I was pumping gas at a small station that I’d needed to drive twenty miles out of the way just to get fuel at, since two others had been closed. But like before, it had been a play of my imagination.
Marla hadn’t been there. It wasn’t like she was hard to miss. She had deep red hair that she kept in an asymmetrical bob and ran around in barely there dresses and heels that I’d break my neck in.
The last time I’d thought I’d seen her had been in my backseat, of all places. I’d been driving along, glanced in the rearview mirror, and nearly wrecked when I’d thought I’d seen her in the backseat. Thankfully, I’d managed to maintain control of the truck.
As if that wasn’t enough to indicate I was clearly stressed, I thought I’d seen the same group of young men numerous times over the course of the long road trip. Since I was about to turn forty, I found that every guy under the age of thirty kind of looked alike to me, and they a
ll appeared to be twelve. So I wasn’t the best at telling “boys” apart anymore.
I wasn’t sure what the universe was trying to tell me, but it felt a little like it wasn’t so sure Grimm Cove was the best move for me. Maybe I needed to check myself into a spa or a hospital for some much-needed rest and relaxation.
Would the town of Grimm Cove still hold the same charm it had when I was younger—less beaten down by life, less jaded?
Was it still themed around its rather gloomy-sounding name?
I’d always loved the way the entire town seemed fully dedicated to creating a tourist haven that was a spook-tacular good time, as noted by one of their posters once. One that, like Salem, was themed. Where Salem had just about everything one could think of named witch or something witchy, Grimm Cove had a variety of supernatural-named businesses and areas.
I used to love Wolf’s Moon Bar and Grill. It had the best pizza I’d ever eaten and some pretty great lasagna too. It used to have four arcade machines that teens would all gather around to see who could beat the high scores.
My grandmother used to take me to the Dream Weaver’s Corner. There, we’d get various yarn, threads, material, and whatnot and work on making things together.
Hobgoblin’s Dairy Hut (Gobbs) had been a place I’d not only loved going to as a small child with my grandfather to get an ice cream cone, but one where I’d worked summers at while in high school. The hats bordered on ridiculous, with elf ears sewn on them, but it had been fun. I’d made a few friends while working there. I regretted not staying in touch with them and planned to look them up now that I’d be living in Grimm Cove full time.
On Friday nights, Gobbs’s parking lot would be full of cars and teens, sitting on the hoods of their cars and the picnic tables, all hanging out while they ate ice cream or had floats or milkshakes. Music used to play from outdoor speakers mounted on the small building that was made to look like a woodland cottage, completely themed with fake toadstool mushrooms and all.
It wasn’t just the place I worked while in my teens. Gobbs had been where I’d first met Brett.
He’d been well over six feet tall when he was only in his teens. He’d been a lot of legs and arms back then, but even with that awkward stage of growing, he’d still made my breath catch. There was something about tall, dark, and handsome that I found hard to resist.
I’d been embarrassed to meet the handsome stranger while wearing an elf-ear hat, but he’d just laughed and said the ears were cute on me.
He’d been a jock and traveled with others like him, but they hadn’t been cruel like the ones from my high school. They’d been a nice group of teens who had filled my summers with laughter and excitement.
We’d toilet-papered houses, spray-painted the underside of a bridge (a story that I did not share with my own children for fear they’d repeat my actions), held more than one séance, hung out in cemeteries after dark, and a lot of other things that, when I was young, seemed like fun, but looking back made me shake my head.
It was hard to deny how much fun I’d had back then, or how much Brett had meant to me. I’d even grown close to his family. His sister, Brianna, who had been ten when I’d first met her, loved teasing Brett about having a girlfriend. His father had been chief of police. His mother taught school. She and my mother had graduated together and had been friends way back when. My grandmother had shown me pictures of my mother with Brett’s when they were young. They looked happy.
I knew my mother still kept in touch with Angela, but I wasn’t sure how often they talked. I’d asked that she not bring up Brett to me since it still hurt so much thinking about how he’d dumped me so quickly and without any real explanation.
Every now and then over the years, I’d wonder what became of him and considered lifting the gag order I had placed on my mother—and my grandmother when she’d been alive—but I held strong and didn’t. I did wonder if he was still in the military. He used to talk about wanting to go into law enforcement, like his father, and he never made fun of me about my love of plants or the fact I wanted to study them at college.
He was forty-two now since he was a little over two years older than me and probably had grown children and was happily married. He was the kind of guy who’d make some woman a wonderful husband.
Strong.
Caring.
Protective.
Courteous.
Loyal.
But then again, in the end, he’d left me too.
“I sure know how to pick them,” I said with a snort, shifting in my seat slightly.
My vintage 1967 Ford F-250 wasn’t exactly known for its comfortable ride, but she was tried and true—if you didn’t count the flat tire, radiator issue, and fuel gauge problems. Plus, she’d been something of a source of pride for me. I’d bought her back when I was in high school with the money that I’d made working at Gobbs, and I’d fixed her up with the help of my grandfather. He and I had named her Geraldine.
A lot of good memories were associated with Geraldine.
I patted the steering wheel. “You’re a good girl, aren’t you? You can’t help you’re getting up in years. We all start to break down at some point in our lives.”
I’d let Thomas talk me into storing her in our garage for years while I drove what he thought I should be driving. The minute we separated, I pulled the cover off the old truck and had a mechanic friend I’d met through my business take a look at it. I’d supplied his wife with oils that increased bedroom activities, so he’d been more than willing to lend me a hand with the truck. He’d gotten Geraldine running in no time flat and then made sure she was street legal. I’d then packed up what I didn’t sell, or ship out ahead of time, and loaded it in the back end.
My cell phone rang in my bag, which was next to me on the front white and red leather bench seat. I grabbed it from my bag and answered, setting the phone to speaker before tossing it into my bag once more as I drove. “Hello?”
“Are you walking here instead of driving?” asked Dana, her voice even. “You have to be walking. There is no other explanation for why you aren’t here yet.”
“I’m almost there. I swear,” I said with a laugh.
“Pinkie swear on Richard Marx,” she said.
I chuckled. “Your love of him is kind of awe inspiring and off-putting.”
“Fine,” she said with an exasperated breath. “Pinkie swear on George Michael’s memory that you’re really close and not just pulling my leg.”
“Moment of silence,” I said, meaning it. I loved George Michael’s music. I also loved Richard Marx’s but admitting as much to Dana would only encourage her.
She was quiet with me. “Okay. Are you really close or just trying to keep me from bugging you?”
“I am. I ran into a small issue with the fuel gauge.”
“I thought it was the radiator,” she said.
I sighed. “That was yesterday.”
“That thing is falling apart around you,” said Dana. “Probably because you drive a truck that was made somewhere around the dawn of time. It’s older than we are. Geraldine is geriatric.”
“Hey, you leave my truck out of this. Geraldine is a keeper and we’re not spring chickens ourselves here,” I said with a snort. “Besides, we can’t all have sports cars with rag tops like you.”
She laughed. “Well, yeah, because it wouldn’t be very functional for you with all those plants and bags of fertilizer you’re always hauling around. Have I mentioned how freaky it is to have it be over eighty degrees in May? I’m so very used to New York weather.”
I smiled. She’d grown up in New York City and had returned there after graduating law school. I never in a million years thought she’d join me in a move to the South, but she had. Time would tell if the “Yankee” would survive or not.
She was one tough cookie, so my money was on her making it work. I just felt a little bad for the town of Grimm Cove. They had no idea the tornadic force I was bringing with me.
�
�Any more suspected sightings of the barely legal trollop?” asked Dana.
I grinned. “No. Just the ones I told you about earlier this morning when you called again to check on me. Am I losing my mind?”
“Hon, that happened years ago to us all. You’re just finally admitting it,” she returned.
I chuckled. “Thanks. I keep reminding myself that if Thomas carries through with what he mentioned—marrying her—she’ll technically be my children’s stepmother. I need to stop thinking of her as the enemy. I want them to have a good relationship with her.”
“News flash, Pops,” she said, using a nickname only she called me. “The twins think less of her than I do. Which is saying something, since I like the random white boob hair I keep getting better than her.”
I sighed. “I’ll see your boob hair and raise you a reoccurring chin hair. Gross.”
“I’m Italian. Those happen to us at birth.”
I smiled more.
Dana cleared her throat. “Poppy, are you having guilt about the kids and how they’re being to Thomas right now?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you are. It’s moments like this I wonder if you and Marcy weren’t separated at birth. Thomas made his bed. The kids aren’t really kids anymore. They’re adults. And right now, they’re hurt on your behalf. They have a right to be. They love you and think he did you wrong. I agree. Plus, Pepper downright hates the possible stepmother. Tucker says he gets a migraine around her and that her very voice grates on his last nerve.”
“I don’t want that. I want them to be close to Thomas, like they used to be. To understand that we just grew apart as a couple.”
Cloudy with a Chance of Witchcraft: A Paranormal Women’s Fiction Romance Novel Page 4