by Zoe Chant
Our mate! his hippogriff bellowed. Our mate is in danger!!
Before he could think, Beau had darted out an arm, wrapping it snugly around Annie’s waist, catching her before she could fall. He pulled her against his chest, steadying her, as her right hand grabbed hold of his arm, her left pressing against his chest, while her head came to rest against his shoulder…
Beau had acted entirely on instinct – his hippogriff had driven his movements without him having to think even for a moment about what he was doing. Of course, he would have caught her no matter who she’d been. But his hippogriff’s drive to protect his mate at all costs – even from a relatively minor fall on an icy lake – had completely taken over his mind.
Now that his human consciousness was at the forefront again, Beau realized, gulping, what he’d done.
The feeling of Annie’s body pressed up against him sent a jolt of pure electricity straight through him. Heat raced through him, like lines of fire through his veins, setting every single cell of his body alight with desire…
Unable to move, Beau gazed down at Annie’s face, taking in her flushed cheeks, the disheveled blonde hair that cascaded down from beneath her winter hat and framed her face, her full, slightly parted lips, and her wide-eyed stare as she looked up at him.
And while Beau had been struck by Annie’s beauty from the very first moment he’d seen her at the bakery, her eyes full of determined fire as she’d stared down the man who’d been standing over her, she had never looked more utterly luminous than she did right now.
Kiss her. Kiss her, and show her what she means to us. Show her that she is our mate.
Beau could tell Annie was thinking – well, maybe not exactly the same thing, but very close to. At least, that was what the flush of her cheeks and the way her eyes darted down to his lips told him.
Instinct gripped him yet again. He could only stand to be so close to his mate for so long before he gave in to what he knew to be true.
She’s mine. And I’m hers. We both know it…
At least until Annie blinked and seemed to shake herself off, straightening up and pulling away from him.
“I – I – well, I don’t know that I’m ever going to make much of a skater,” she said, her words coming out in a rush. “I think… well, I think for now I’ll just have a little sit down. Maybe I’m hungry? I haven’t really eaten much today, not since my break. There’s a stand over there. Maybe I’ll see what they have?”
Beau blinked as Annie blurted out the words as if they were all one big sentence, barely pausing for breath. Part of his brain was still stuck in the moment when he’d been just leaning in to kiss her – he was still processing the fact that at the last moment, she’d pulled away.
We haven’t proved ourselves to her yet, his hippogriff said, raising its talons in the air. When we have proved ourselves, then she will know. Then she will accept us, and accept our bond.
Maybe the hippogriff was right, Beau thought, mentally nodding to it. He still needed to work harder to capture Annie’s heart. He’d asked her for three days, after all – and this was still only the first. He still had time.
“Sure,” he said. “Should we go check out the food together?”
Annie bit her lip, nodding, before she quietly said, “I’d like that.”
Chapter 7
What the hell, Annie thought furiously, is wrong with me?
She frantically tied her shoelaces, lowering her head in the hope that Beau wouldn’t be able to see her face.
No, seriously. What the hell?
She straightened her hat, trying to buy herself time to calm both her hammering heart and her facial expression before she stood up.
He was about to kiss me. I know it. And I wanted him to – God I wanted him to. I’ve never wanted anything more in my entire life. So why… why…
Why had she suddenly freaked out like that?!
She didn’t understand herself at all.
Annie stared down at her hands, covered by her thick black gloves.
Maybe it was just how much she’d wanted it that had freaked her out. She’d thought she’d be cool with it – she and Beau would have their three days of fun together, they’d do what came naturally to people who found each other attractive, and then they’d both go on their merry ways, with nothing but a good Christmas memory.
That was what she’d told herself she wanted.
It is what I want! she told herself again firmly, as she finally forced herself to stand up. There’s no point in getting attached to people – they’ll always let you down in the end. It’s easier if you just never let yourself care in the first place.
Annie frowned. That was a very cynical way of looking at the world, she thought, but…
… But was she willing to give it up when she wasn’t sure she could deal with the pain of giving her heart to someone, only for them to end up leaving her?
She couldn’t answer that right now. She’d need some time to think it over. Right now, the only thing she could do was try to look Beau in his beautiful brown eyes, and try to ignore the way her heart melted as she did so, her belly cinching with desperate heat.
“So, food,” he said, his lips quirking up in a smile, while Annie continued to stare at him in what she felt had to be the most obvious and goofiest way possible. “What do you feel like?”
“Uh, nothing fancy,” Annie eventually managed to get out. “My co-worker Christina was telling me the eggnog here is pretty good – but it’s probably not a complete meal. How do you feel about a big old bowl of soup to start off with, and some nog after?”
“Sounds great,” Beau said, nodding.
He lifted his head slightly, and for a moment Annie had the strangest impression that he was scenting the air.
“The clam chowder smells really good,” he said musingly. “And it’s been a while since I had any. Let’s go.”
Annie glanced up at him as they began to trudge toward the food stalls. “How can you even tell they have clam chowder?” she asked him wonderingly. “All I can smell is, like… soup. General soup smells.”
Beau laughed, sounding a little abashed. “I guess it’s a talent of mine – I can smell food from a mile away. But I’ve always liked a good feed.”
“That’s some talent,” Annie said as they reached the eating area; the soup stall had a huge banner reading ‘TRY OUR FAMOUS CLAM CHOWDER’ unfurled across it. Now that she was closer, she could tell Beau was right: it did smell amazing. “Well, since it comes recommended by your nose, I know what I’m having.”
They crossed to the stall, with its large cast-iron pots full of soup, steaming in the cold of the afternoon air.
“Do you mind a short wait?” the stall owner asked as they approached. “We’ve had a busy day, and we’ve just put a new batch on. Shouldn’t be longer that ten minutes though, if that’s okay.”
“No problem at all,” Beau said. “Smells like it’s worth the wait.”
“Well, I hope you’ll think so. If you order and pay now, I’ll give you a token and you can come back and pick it up as soon as it’s ready.”
“Oh –” Annie said, reaching out as Beau took his wallet out of his pocket. “I can –”
“Hey, I’m the one who dragged you out on the lake without getting you a bite to eat first,” Beau said. “At least let me get you the soup to make up for it?”
Annie hesitated, then nodded. “All right, but only if you let me get the nog.”
“If you insist,” Beau said. “But –”
“I insist,” Annie said firmly. She might only work at a bakery, but she could get a hot man some eggnog, surely!
After Beau had paid and grabbed the plastic electronic token, they made their way over to the seating benches, protected from the snow by a small awning, and kept cozy and warm with standing gas heaters, the bright orange flames dancing and flickering in the darkening afternoon.
Despite the beauty of the snow-filled landscape and the frozen lake, Annie
still felt herself drawn to the heat of the flames, and she sat down close to the nearest one, relishing the way it warmed her chilled cheeks and lips.
Beau sat down across from her, putting his phone, wallet and the electronic token down on the table between them. Annie studied his face as he did so, wondering what it was about him that seemed so… different. What it was that made it so hard for her to remember her resolution that getting attached to people was usually a bad idea.
Okay, so he was hot. That was obvious. But Annie didn’t consider herself as shallow as all that – well, she hoped she wasn’t.
And he was smooth, she gave him that, but in a way that came across as completely ingenuous. In the short time she’d known him, Beau had proved himself to be kind, thoughtful, and apparently ridiculously competent at physical activities, from chopping down trees to disposing of creeps.
He’s just… he’s just too good to be true, Annie thought. But I really, really want to believe he is true….
Annie shook her head. That kind of thinking was dangerous.
“So, do you do this kind of thing a lot?” she blurted out, before she could give herself time to consider her words.
Beau cocked his head. “Skating, you mean?”
“No, I mean rushing into girls’ lives and sweeping them off their feet,” Annie replied. “You’re pretty good at it, after all.”
Beau’s impossibly noble forehead creased. “Not really,” he said, after hesitating a moment. “In fact, I’d say this is the first time I’ve asked someone to trust me the way I’ve asked you to trust me. I mean, obviously I’ve been on dates before. But asking someone to give me three days of their time to try to change their mind about something… that’s new.”
Annie blinked, feeling her heartbeat kick up a notch. “I – really?” she asked, hearing the tightness in her own voice. “Then… then why me?”
Beau frowned. “What do you mean? Why not you?”
Annie looked down at her hands sitting on the table, feeling suddenly short of breath.
How can I explain it to him? she thought, feeling desperate and wretched. I’m not the sort of woman men go out of their way for. And even when people have been nice to me, like Mr. Dearborn, it always feels like I’m just waiting for them to realize that I… I’m….
“I don’t know,” she finally said, her voice small. “I just… well, I grew up in an orphanage and in foster homes. I’m not saying it was all bad – some of my foster parents tried really hard to make sure I felt included. But at the end of the day, I was always just a temporary part of the family. Eventually it would always be time to pack up and say goodbye. Sometimes my foster brothers and sisters would write to me for a while, but sooner or later they’d forget about me. It’s not their fault – they were just kids. But it did hurt.”
She paused, taking a shaky breath. She couldn’t bring herself to look up at Beau.
Why am I sharing all this stuff with him? she thought. These were things she’d never told anyone. But somehow, saying them out loud felt… right. Like she was releasing a weight she didn’t even know she’d been carrying until now.
“I suppose I’ve always felt a little like a stranger,” Annie went on. “Like I was on the outside, looking in at other people’s lives and other people’s happiness. Even here, where people are nice to me… I’ve only been here a couple of years, I guess, so I’m still not really considered part of the community. It’s just the way folks are in small towns, I guess. I’m still an outsider, really.”
She took a deep breath, looking out over the lake.
“That’s why I said I don’t like Christmas – I don’t have a problem with the season. It’s just that since I left the foster care, I’ve always spent it alone. I like that other people are happy and having a great time. I just never really felt like I was part of it. So when you arrived, asking me out, asking me to let you show me what Christmas is all about…”
Annie trailed off, uncertain of what she meant to say.
But a moment later, all thoughts fled from her head anyway, when Beau’s huge hand, warm even through the material of her gloves, came down, resting on her fingers.
She looked up in surprise, swallowing, to find Beau’s beautiful brown eyes on her face. She gasped at the sight of them, her breath forming a white cloud that drifted away from her into the darkening afternoon.
“Annie,” Beau said, his voice quiet and tense. “I can’t pretend to know how you must feel. I grew up very differently from that. You know a bit of it – picking out a tree with my family, teaching my nieces and nephews to skate, and the things I’ve told you about how close I am to my family. But… there’s more to it than that. Things that, listening to you now, I wish I’d found a way to explain to you – or that I could find a way to explain to you now.”
Beau paused, his lips tightening. Annie blinked at him, not quite certain she understood what he was saying.
“Something you want to tell me?” she asked, frowning. “You mean something about you? About your family?”
Beau nodded. “Yes.” He hesitated, pulling in a deep breath. “Annie, you asked me how often I do this kind of thing – the sweeping girls off their feet thing, I mean. I told you the truth when I said you were the first. And there’s a reason for that.”
Annie could barely bring herself to breathe in the slight pause that followed. The skin of her fingers was tingling where the warmth of Beau’s hand was seeping through her glove.
“Like you said, it’s to do with my family. We’re not like other people,” Beau said, slowly and carefully. “It’s not the only thing that’s different, but the important one right now is that when we meet someone – I mean someone special –”
Annie leaned in. She found herself hanging on his every word, desperate to hear what he was going to say next. Her heart was hammering against her ribcage, as if it was trying to leap straight out of her chest.
“Annie,” Beau said, his voice serious, his eyes gazing into hers, dark and intense. “I have to tell you that I –”
Annie couldn’t stop the soft, startled cry that left her lips as a sudden, piercing sound rent the air between them, accompanied by a low, growling buzzing noise.
Wide-eyed, Annie whipped her head left then right, wondering what on earth could be happening – what kind of emergency alarm could be –
“Oh.” Beau’s deep voice cut through the fog of her confused near-panic. He held up the electronic token in one massive hand, a small, ironic smile on his lips. “I guess our chowder is ready. I’ll just – I’ll just go get that.”
Annie could only bring herself to nod, her heart still halfway up her throat. She stared after Beau as he stood and made his way back to the soup stall, and not just because she was being treated to an amazing view of his ass in his dark blue jeans.
What – what was that?!
She wasn’t usually this flighty. Even if she had been, she would’ve had to get over it, working in a busy bakery. But Beau had been about to tell her – well, what, exactly?
Why had she been so drawn in by his words? It was almost as if she’d been waiting for him to tell her something she already knew, but had somehow forgotten –
She shook her head.
No, he was talking about his family, Annie told herself. He was going to tell me about the Christmas spirit or something, about how it brings them closer together.
But no matter how hard she tried to tell herself otherwise, Annie simply couldn’t shake the feeling Beau had been a moment away from telling her something far more important than that.
Taking a deep breath, Annie tried to pull herself together. She wanted to have as clear a head as possible when Beau came back, so she could ask him – smoothly, suavely, definitely not desperately – what he’d been about to say.
She was pulled out of her swirling thoughts by a buzzing sound, though a less dramatic one than the electronic token. Glancing down, Annie realized it was Beau’s phone where he’d left it on the tabl
e.
A green text bubble had popped up. Annie blinked as she looked down at it, still startled and lost in her thoughts.
She honestly didn’t mean to read the message – her eyes just flickered over the words automatically, the same way they did whenever she got a text.
From: Court
Hey – since you’re not here, I’m sending you a photo! Guess who’s shifting! And flying!
Guilt immediately flooded through her – she definitely didn’t consider herself the kind of person who’d invade someone else’s privacy by reading their texts! It was a good thing it hadn’t made any sense to her, Annie thought. It must’ve been some kind of family in-joke, or something –
The next thing that popped up on the screen, though… that definitely made her look twice, and this time it was completely on purpose.
At a first glance, Annie just assumed someone in Beau’s family had sent him a photo of a family pet.
A… a kind of weird family pet?
Annie frowned as she glanced down again at the photo. At first she’d thought it was a dog of some kind, judging by the size… but what kind of dog had feathery wings like that?! What kind of dog –
Annie looked away before she could look more closely. She felt bad enough that she’d invaded Beau’s privacy in the first place without scrutinizing the photos his family was sending him.
I guess someone’s just been a little creative with Photoshop as a prank, she thought, though the weird, unsettled feeling in her stomach didn’t dissipate. She wasn’t an expert or anything, but what she’d seen hadn’t looked like Photoshop. It’d been way too realistic for that, though she knew people could do some pretty impressive things these days.
The animal she’d seen in the photo had had four legs – she thought – and it had been standing in a garden, rearing up like a horse, though it had been too small for that.
But… it had wings… I’m 99.9% sure it had wings…
Annie furtively glanced down at the phone again, but by this time the screen had blacked out again and there was nothing to see.