Things were falling into place.
She followed him down the street and toward the little house. He maintained it because it was what people expected from someone like him. A person who expected to work in the community, to be received by the community, had to live in the community as well. As it was, he had a hard time being accepted by the others. He needed all the help he could get. Though, in truth, when he was in town he spent his nights in the office, prowling, waiting for the moments he could be back in his true home. He was never at ease, always looking toward the mountain and the open sky.
The door unlocked easily, like it had been just waiting for someone just like Paulette. He pushed it wide, ushering Paulette and Abigail into the little house in front of him.
It was neat and clean, with few furnishings, and looked decidedly unlived in, but even so, it was more than Paulette could have imagined having just a few hours earlier. She had gone from having nothing but her name and her child, to having a job and a place to live, and she was beyond grateful for that.
“This will be perfect,” she said, turning toward Zed, her eyes bright with something like relief and excitement.
Zed nodded. He was captivated by them, their very color, like the color of the ocean where it met the sky, at once bright and bottomless. “Very well,” he said, clearing his throat and trying to convince himself that she was just a woman. Just a human, like any other. There was nothing special about her. “We’ll work it into your compensation. I’ll draw some papers up and get you settled in the office and then I’ll be on my way.” He was already moving toward the door. Even when feet separated them, when they were too far from one another for him to actually see her eyes, he could remember them, their shape, that color, the emotion in them.
Burned in his mind.
He couldn’t wait to get out of there. The room seemed much too small, like there wasn’t enough space for the three of them there.
But at the same time, he realized he was dragging his feet. They should have already left the house. There was nothing left to see. He should have pointed her down the street to the woman he knew spent her days watching other people’s children. But instead he was standing there in the small room, watching Paulette as she walked around its perimeter, poking her head through the doorways and into the other rooms, running her hands along the wood walls, the back of the chairs.
She was compelling, in her way. Every move she made was swift and delicate, tentative and sure at once. He knew with certainty he could spend all day watching her.
He gave his head a shake. Women were not something he spent his time thinking about. He had no use for them, and they certainly had no use for him. This woman would be no different, he assured himself. Whatever was happening to him when she was close could be controlled.
“Are you ready?” he asked, and his voice was hard and strained, and even to his own ears sounded angrier and more aggressive than he had intended.
But if she was put off by his words or tone she did nothing to suggest so, just turned toward him, her smile radiant, and said. “Yes, quite ready,” before crossing the room toward him.
3
He wasn’t sure when or how it had happened, exactly, but somewhere between leaving the house and arriving at the office, Zed had gone from feeling that having this woman as a tenant and employee was the best plan of action, to thinking that what he really needed was a woman who could be portrayed as his wife.
Yes, that was what he really needed. An employee, a tenant — those things were nice. They would help his cause, certainly. But the best case scenario would be if he had a wife. Not just a wife— Paulette.
In name only, of course. He wasn’t looking for anything other than a woman the world would perceive as his mate. Another little checkmark they could place next to his name. Just your every day, average broker who happened to be a little eccentric and spent the bulk of his time meandering through the mines. An instant family.
Now, he wasn’t as good at the whole human thing as he probably should have been. He’d spent many years away, and to be honest he hadn’t missed humanity much while he was gone. Even with him limited experience, he didn’t expect Paulette would jump at his offer.
He was still mulling over the best way to approach the topic when he shut the door behind him, closing the two of them off from the rest of the world; the perfect time for the conversation he knew he had to have.
“So, Paulette,” he said, trying to source every ounce of gentility, every bit of finesse he had. He just hoped he had enough in him to pull off the proposal. “Tell me about how you came to be here.”
Her shoes. Her dress. Her hair. Even her name marked her as East Coast. Zed didn’t have a lot of experience over there — in fact he predated the existence of the area and had never been — but he saw many of those New Englanders slip through the town, soulless after their journey, weighted by the seen and unseen, burdened by what was in front of them as well as what they had left behind.
“I came with my husband.” Her voice was hollow, and she didn’t offer any more information regarding him.
Zed bristled at the mention of a husband, though he should have hardly been surprised, with the young in hand. It did make the most sense.
And yet, she had not mentioned a husband previously. She had said there would only be the two of them — Paulette and Abigail.
“What has become of him — this husband?” Zed asked, convinced he needed to know the answer before he broached the next part of the conversation.
“He was killed on the journey here. But we were too far from home for me to return with Abigail.” She seemed to look through him, past him, into yesterday. “If only we’d been closer to home when it had happened. I could have returned to my mother and father. They would have taken me. A respectable widow.” She shook her head, as though she were dispelling the memory, and then seemed to pull herself back together, pushing the past away from her and returning to the present.
There was a long pause as he ran her words over in his mind. Even with his limited recognition of social nuances, he was able to pick up on how she had not said she’d wished it hadn’t happened at all — only that she’d wished her current position could have been different. That she could have been back home with her family.
He nodded, but couldn’t follow her sentiment up with much more than that. He knew he had nothing helpful to offer there.
He clasped his hands behind his back, pacing from one end of the room to the other. The baby began to fuss in Paulette’s arms, and Zed wasn’t sure if it was his pacing or something else that had set the baby on edge.
“Paulette,” he said, pausing in front of the door to look her squarely in the face. “There is something I am in even more need of than a tenant, than an employee.”
Her head tipped to the side in question, and he tried not to study the long, graceful curve of her neck. He drew a hand quickly across his mouth, eager to erase the sudden need he felt to expose his teeth at the wave of desire. “I need a wife.” He was surprised at the growl beneath his words, the sudden urgency, the feeling that accompanied the action of saying those words aloud.
He had never felt he needed a wife. In all his years on earth, awake and asleep, human and non, he had felt many things for women, but never once that he should want one as a wife. A mate.
“Now,” he hurried on. “I would not expect…such wifely duties from you.” He waved his hand toward Abigail, finally soothed, her body pressed into Paulette’s. “But, it would be a great service to me if you would appear as though you were a wife to me, to those inside and outside this town. Of course,” he rushed to assure her, “I will maintain you as though you were my wife in every manner. As though your child were my child. You will be provided with food and clothes, and of course, the small house we just came from. I will not reside there with you. When I am in town, I will probably stay here, in the office. But mostly, I will stay in the mountains. It is where I feel the most peace and where I
am the most needed.
“In addition, I will pay you a salary, just as though you were strictly my employee, and I will put no stipulations on what you can and cannot do with that money — and whatever you find you need, you shall ask me for and I will provide it.”
He waited for her rejection, already sifting through what other things he could possibly offer to her in that case. Now that the idea had come to him, he had latched completely onto it, confident there could be no better way — no other way — than this one.
She seemed to consider his words a long moment, her teeth pressing down on her lower lip while she thought. “I believe we can make that work,” she said finally. “If you will agree to care for my child as though she were your own, and that she should lack for nothing, even should something happen to me.”
He eyed her more carefully, appreciative of her shrewdness. An insurance policy. That’s what she was looking for in him.
Her easy acceptance pleased him, and he was more than happy to agree to those terms. He reached out his hand toward her, and she did the same, not hesitating, certain this is what she wanted for her daughter.
Their hands met, and there it was again, that little jolt of energy passing between them, igniting something deep within Zed he couldn’t name, didn’t know.
“I will draw up those papers, then.”
If his voice sounded more gruff than it should have, a little mean, she certainly showed no fear of it.
He wanted her the more for it.
4
Paulette was on his mind.
Constantly on his mind.
Had he realized how much things would change when he offered her the role as his wife, he might have considered it a little more carefully, weighed the pros and cons a little more heavily.
That was what he told himself. But the truth was, he never once believed he would have been happier the way things had been before she’d stepped through his door.
He spent his hours in the caves, sleepless. Moving through the rooms and corridors, his hands running around the precious things he’d kept safe and hidden for generations in the depths of the mountain.
When she occupied too much of his thought, when the sudden need to see her behind the desk — Abigail safely tucked away in the Moses basket near her feet, or down the street in the arms of the local caregiver —Zed let himself leave the cave, picking his way down the mountainside and back toward the little street his office sat on, the warm glow from within more welcoming than it ever had been before.
With a little growl of frustration and impatience ripping from his throat, he set off out of the cave and down the narrow path. Now was such a time. He wanted to see her, hair swept back, the high collar of her dress hiding the pale, sensitive skin of her neck, her hands delicate and gentle.
The path was treacherous, and Zed knew that was why the men had ambushed him down below, where it was easier going, where there was less ledge and more even ground. A coward’s way.
He may have been a creature of habit, but he had taken to altering that last leg of his journey, no longer following the path worn from use, but trail blazing, following the little trails that may have been created by deer or fox, or even something smaller. Some were overgrown and out of use, others still carried the fresh scent of animal.
He picked his way down the path easily, in a way no mere human ever could, and when he emerged from the mass of hillside and rock and dirt through an opening that could barely be called such, it was well past the first shade of evening.
Paulette would be home, he thought, studying the stars as they began to appear in the sky. The office would be closed for the night, and she would be moving through the small house, putting Abigail to bed for the evening, a bucket of wash near the fire, ready to be set out and to dry overnight.
His pace quickened. Anticipation, he thought, though he couldn’t pinpoint what it was he was anticipating. He only knew he wanted to get to the house as quickly as possible.
Zed knocked, quietly, in case Abigail had already settled into sleep, and waited to be admitted. He had meant what he’d said when he told her he wouldn’t stay the night in her house, and he respected the fact that the space was hers. He was the perpetual visitor.
She pulled the door open, Abigail still in arms.
“Evening,” she said, and her voice was soft, like maybe she thought any moment now would be the one that Abigail would let her eyes drift closed, slipping into the sleep that would free Paulette from the child’s needs for a few hours.
It was just as he had hoped it would be, thought it would be. In the safety of the house, Paulette had forgone the bonnet, her hair loosely pulled back, locks of blonde hair slipping down from the knot, framing her pretty face. The light from the lit lanterns was yellow and warm, the whole space suddenly filled with that lived-in, comfortable feeling that had been missing from the house before Paulette’s arrival.
He nodded, because he didn’t trust himself to speak, wasn’t sure what to say, didn’t want to lull the baby out of the space between awake and asleep.
It was seeping into him, the ease that came from being near her. The contentment he previously only felt when he was with his hoard, the pieces sliding between his fingers, the sharp smell of metal in the air.
Paulette had moved away from him, toward the bassinet, her head tipped toward the baby, so he could admire the curve of her spine, the way her waist narrowed before the skirt draped in a gentle fall past her hips and down to her feet.
With the fire in front of her, she was surrounded by that glow, her brightness dulled by the intensity of the flames’ light, and she was at one blinding and subdued.
He felt another lurch, a tightening in his loins.
Zed put all the pieces together for the first time. The longing. The anticipation.
Desire.
He didn’t want her to be the woman the world saw as his bride.
He wanted her to be the woman he kept close to him, in his arms, against his body.
He heard himself growl, but Paulette was far enough away she didn’t seem to hear the sound.
Zed made a fist, like he could as easily squelch the want that had reared its head within him. Human women were forbidden to him, and there were few of his kind left. He stretched his shoulders, rotating them back the way he did when he was thinking of his other self, the one he barred from existence when he was in his human shell.
Being a dragon had its benefits.
And it had its drawbacks, and whether he liked it or not, one of those drawbacks was that he was destined to live a life alone, mating only with others like himself during the rare breeding season, and only to reproduce.
There was no reason for him to feel the longing he did for Paulette. She could never be his.
Never.
And then she was bending to lie the baby gently on her bed, turning toward him and stepping forward, an easy, open smile on her face.
“Have you eaten?” she asked, her body moving easily, uninhibited by Zed’s sudden realization, his understanding of the hunger he was feeling.
He shook his head, knowing he should leave, before that need to have her overwhelmed him, before he did something that would endanger them both.
There were a hundred reasons he should leave.
But there was one reason to stay, and it called to him more strongly than all the other reasons in the world.
Paulette was watching him expectantly, waiting for his response. There was still some leftover stew, and she was happy to put a bowl together for him if he was interested.
He stopped by the house in the evenings often enough that she’d started to make a little extra, just in case he came by. And true to his word, he never stayed in the house or made her feel uncomfortable. He just stopped to share the air with them, sit with her at the table, eat the food she’d prepared. And then he was gone. She would slide the bolt in place after he left, watch him fade into blackness as he disappeared back to the mountain.
He had yet to say anything, but she’d also come to expect few words from him. At first, she had thought maybe she was doing something to put him off, that perhaps there was something about talking with her that made him uncomfortable. But, it soon became clear that it was just his way. He had little need for words. When he finally nodded, she pulled the lid off the cast iron pot, the scent of the meat, potatoes, and carrots filling the air, making Paulette think she could use another serving herself.
Funny, but she was beginning to think that ache in her center was something other than hunger for food. She recognized it vaguely, like something she should have been feeling previously, like it was something she had been missing out on.
And she was fairly sure it had everything to do with Zed. The way his dark hair fell carelessly away from his face, the sharp angle of his cheekbones, the hard line of his jaw. When he came this late in the day, the shadow of an even darker beard on his rich honey colored skin. It was almost breathtaking, the picture he made, strong and regal.
His eyes were dark, hooded, and hard to read. She found herself looking into them more than she probably should, but there was something about them that invited her to melt into their depths, to keep searching for something she hadn’t yet found. There was something otherworldly to them, that she couldn’t name or place, that tugged at the edge of her memory.
She’d agreed to this sham of a marriage with barely a moment’s hesitation. Of course she had. He was offering her everything she could hope to have. A roof over her head, money in her pocket, a promise that her baby would be well cared for — if not loved — in any event of her absence.
She wasn’t sure when it had happened; it had snuck up on her entirely — when she had started to appreciate him for things other than that. For the heat that started in her core and worked its way through her when he was near, for the way she saw him watch the baby with curiosity and respect.
Bear Outlaw (She-Shifters of Hell's Corner Book 4) Page 27