BOX SET: Shifter 4-Pack Vol 2 (Wolf Shifter, Dragon Shifter, Mafia, Billionaire, BBW, Alpha) (Werewolf Weredragon Paranormal Fantasy Romance Collection)

by Candace Ayers

  Her frown turned into a smile as she read the note.

  Heard you were back in town, didn’t know your phone number. Hang out in the usual place?

  Still smiling, Elie set the note on the desk and headed for the shower.

  Hidden Lake is possibly the most liberally and generally applied moniker of lakes the world over, but to Elie, Hemford’s Hidden Lake was the only one worth mentioning. It was a tiny lake, really, nestled in a bowl up here in the Rockies, fed by watershed and emptying into a river at the east end. But it glittered like magic in the afternoon sun as she approached through the trees. It had always been magical, secretive, intimate.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t private today. Someone was already loitering around at the shore. She huffed; not much to do about it. It was a public lake, after all.

  The stranger saw her through the trees and smiled shyly. He waved.

  Elie frowned. “Jake?”

  “Hey! I was starting to worry you hadn’t found my note.” He walked up the shore to meet her; Elie stared.

  Jake Framer was probably the oldest friend she had. In the world of Elie Barner’s love and leaving, this didn’t amount to what it should, but he’d never seemed to hold her wanderlust against her. That was probably why she had always wandered on back down to this lakeshore to meet him, skip some rocks, drink their parents’ alcohol, and dream about the future. Though small and skinny, Jake hadn’t once bent to whims of others, where Elie had a tendency to try anything and everything and decide whether it was a good idea later. He was the rock to her ocean waves.

  Of course, back then, Elie wouldn’t have used a rock as a metaphor; he’d been thin as a waif at their graduation. The man who stood across from her now, smiling through a day’s growth of dark stubble and blinking in the sun, hardly resembled the kid he’d once been. Jake’s shoulders and chest had swelled, although his slim waist hadn’t budged. Veins stood out along his arms, and if the bulging muscles in his jeans were any indication, he hadn’t skipped leg day in five or six years.

  Elie was trying to wrap her head around the transformation when he opened his arms and wrapped her in a great, crushing hug, effortlessly picking her up off the ground as though she weighed nothing. She wanted to laugh, but it came out as a gasp. Wow, he was as strong as he looked.

  “It’s good to see you, Elie” His smile was… exactly as it had always been. Elie smiled back and threw her arms around his neck.

  “What have they been feeding you, growth hormones? I leave for a few years, and you turn into the Incredible Hulk!”

  His muscles (and there were many of them) tensed under her, and Elie slipped away from him cautiously. Jake’s smile had withered a little, but it came back in a flash and he shrugged.

  “Working the logging routes, it does a body good.”

  “Maybe I should go work with you,” she elbowed him in the waist and shivered; he was solid as a tree. “My core could use some tightening.”

  To her surprise and delight, he grabbed her soft waist with both hands speculatively. He squeezed, like he was playing an accordion, and Elie wriggled madly; she’d never tolerated tickling from another man, but Jake had been allowed this privilege since grade school.

  “Still ticklish? I thought people grew out of that,” he teased as they headed back down to the lakefront. There was a wood table by the water, so old that Lewis and Clark might have also used it as a picnic spot, and upon it stood a little Coleman cooler.

  “Never too early for a beer,” Elie agreed. Jake pulled out two bottles and handed one over; Elie looked at the label in surprise. “A connoisseur, are we? Where’d you find something that isn’t called ‘Coors’ or ‘Budweiser’ all the way up here?”

  “I wander into the city now and then,” he admitted, popping the twist-top and taking a sip. “I have to move up my monthly bath and change into my Sunday underwear, but it’s worth the trouble.” He had to finish his sentence through chuckles, because Elie had stuck her tongue out at him at the mention of once-monthly personal hygiene.

  They sat on the table-top, feet propped on the bench, just like always. Perfect. It was a little cold out, but it wouldn’t be right any other way.

  “How long have you been working at the mill?”

  “Some five—six years,” he corrected himself.

  Elie looked out over the lake. “You didn’t start right after graduation?”

  Jake shook his head; his dark reddish hair was a little shaggy, and still damp with recent washing. “I actually tried city life for a couple years. Didn’t work out. Moved back here and they took me on at the mill right away.”

  Elie hummed, nodding. “How’s your mom? I bet she didn’t much care for you moving back.”

  “Oh… Mom passed away a few years ago.”

  Elie turned to Jake, shocked. “How?” Jake’s spitfire mother had been runner since her teens, and she loved to hike and exercise. It seemed impossible, wrong even, that she should be anything less than happy and healthy and still growing tomatoes in pots on her back porch. The thought of her gone…

  Jake took another swallow of his craft brew; the look on his face suggested he’d suddenly lost the taste for it. “Bear attack,” he murmured.

  “I saw a bear! Just down the street from my parents last night!” Elie couldn’t believe it. Gwen Framer? Killed? It was too awful.

  Jake nodded. “They pass through. Fish and Game… figure it’s just a stray male that wanders through town looking through people’s trash. They tried to hunt… A hunt went out for it, but they lost the trail.”

  “Jesus,” Elie exhaled, raising her eyebrows. She took another drink. “I’m so sorry to hear about your mom, Jake. I… I wish I’d been here for you.”

  Jake didn’t answer at first; when he did, his reply was strange. “It’s better that you weren’t here with me, Elie.”

  It was such a strange thing to say, even for a lonely soul like Jake, but Elie was so shocked at the thought—the unwelcome scene unfolding in her mind—that Jake’s bizarre comment flew over her dark hair right off into the forest, unnoticed. Having spent a thousand afternoons, both gorgeous and gloomy, on the Framer’s back porch, it was too easy to see it happen. Gwen stepping out for a hike through the woods behind her house, as she often did. In Elie’s mind, she was wearing her powder-blue windbreaker and a baseball cap. And out of the woods… a shape, hunch-shouldered and growling…

  For some reason, Elie’s mind kept filling in the image of bright red blood on the powder blue windbreaker. She closed her eyes and held her beer bottle against her head; it felt hotter out than it had a moment ago.

  Jake reached out and slung his arm over her shoulder; it was much heavier than it used to be, thick, sinewy and corded. Suddenly, it really was hotter out than it had been, and Elie felt the heat flush up her neck as she let herself be pulled against Jake’s side.

  “It was years ago,” he said softly. “It gets easier as time goes on.”

  He propped his chin on her head; Elie let him. It was comfortable and easy and snug, as if, like matching socks or puzzle pieces, they had been made together and meant to fit perfectly.

  Her eyes fell on the powerful legs in his jeans, and her memory began to unfold another scene, just before she left for France, just after graduation. The last afternoon on the Framer’s back porch, in the middle of a June rain. A skinny kid named Jake had taken a hell of a chance and tried to make her stay.

  He’d kissed her. At the time, Elie had been cruelly amused, childishly. Things had looked so different when she was eighteen, and Jake Framer from Hemford was far below what she had her sights set on.

  The warm ease that had been soothing through her turned cold abruptly. Elie pulled away. The guilt was so sharp she felt like she must be bleeding inside.

  Jake didn’t cling. He let her move away without protest. Like her mother, he’d learned long ago not to try and hold her when it was time for her to leave.

  “So,” he took another drink. “I heard yo
u met Bryan Mosley last night.”

  “Yeah. So?” Was it always guilt that made even the most innocent questions seem like attacks? Elie didn’t know. Neither did she know any other way to respond except… defense.

  “He’s a sorry son of a bitch,” Jake said suddenly.

  Elie stood up, her hackles raised. “Why?” Because he won’t work at the mill like everyone else? Or because he came so close to what you want?

  There was no answer. If there had been one coming, Elie would have gotten it, because she waited for what felt like an hour, staring furiously as her rage peppered out, while Jake just sat there like a blank page and sipped his beer.

  “Well, why?” she repeated. Her voice had jumped a few pitches, and she sounded less defensive and more silly. That, more than anything, made her angrier.

  Through all this, Jake Framer just sat there, untouchable, the sun shooting through holes in the tree boughs overhead to glint red specks from his auburn hair. His great arms and shoulders were relaxed, as if he hadn’t a care in the world; Elie could see them flex easily though the fabric of his t-shirt.

  Without another word, Elie turned and stormed away. It was a little bit of relief, actually, not to have to fight. She should know by now how to handle discomfort without leaning on argument tactics, but Elie didn’t really. At least Jake didn’t slide down that slippery slope.

  Halfway home, she realized she was still clutching the craft beer bottle in one hand. She considered chucking it at a tree; instead, Elie sipped it thoughtfully, balefully, as she walked.

  In Denver, you’d get an interview with the city police it you walked around with an open beer down public streets. That was another great thing—the chances of being picked up over open containers in Hemford was blessedly low.

  Chapter Five

  “I hate being wrong,” Elie muttered.

  Five days had passed since she’d drove past the city limit sign, and beautiful spring-turning-summer days, at that. Elie had spent the last two rooting passively through the usual tracks to procure some sort of summer work. A babysitter. A gardener. A part-time sales clerk. She didn’t need the money, per se, but she hated sitting around. There was the impatience in her, again, stirring her to frantic motion.

  Even in a tiny town like Hemford, there was work to be had somewhere, Elie reasoned. The mill would take her for something (with her father as a foreman, of course they would), but relying on that connection left an unpleasant taste in her mouth. Elie was beginning to think, however, that she wasn’t going to have a choice. She’d been stumbling over more rumors and gossip than job offers.

  “I’d be careful about that Mosley boy, if I were you.” This advice came from Mrs. Fredricks, an elderly manager at the local Jo-Ann fabrics. Of course Mrs. Fredricks knew Elie, remembered her from years back, and wished she had an opening at the store, but she just hired another girl, so sorry. However, even in the absence of a job opportunity, advice was always free-flowing.

  “He don’t work, I swear it, I don’t know where his money comes from,” Mrs. Fredericks sighed, shaking her head; she looked like a sewing-and-crafting version of Mrs. Claus. She looked up at Elie meaningfully. “He goes down to town and I think you can imagine what sort of trouble he gets into down there, especially after he got that poor Langland girl pregnant. Oh, but you didn’t hear that from me. Poor girl—she lives down in a mobile home on third, now…”

  Elie peered over the steering wheel. If it was, in fact, a mobile home, it hadn’t been mobile in a long while. The lattice siding around the wheels was broken down, and Elie could clearly see tires that looked a century old beneath. The whole place looked a little sideways.

  The trailer door was open, as if the place were abandoned, but Elie had seen someone passing back and forth in the cool shadows within. A toddler played out front, in shorts and a tiny Ironman t-shirt. The clothes looked like the only things within twenty yards that had been purchased new in the last year.

  Elie put the Outback into reverse. There was nothing more she wanted to see here. True, she had no proof except the gobbling chatter of a few ladies around town, but she knew. There were men, and then there were Bryan Mosleys. Elie had seen enough of both to know.

  Before the car could move, an adult came down the steps of the trailer, a baby on her hip. She stopped beside the toddler, looking down at him in something like fondness. Really, she just looked dazed. Her faded sundress rippled listlessly in the breeze.

  Elie recognized Brittany Langland right away, mostly because in almost ten years, she’d tried to look exactly as she had in high school. Brit was even thinner now than she had been then, and her pretty face was worn by the rough years, like sandpaper. Thick, dark circles hung under her eyelids and her skin had taken on a pallor.

  Thank God for birth control, Elie thought sadly.

  At that moment, Brittany seemed to notice Elie’s car, but she was too far away to do anything but stare; she seemed too exhausted to even try. She reached up and tucked a lock of blonde hair (light brown roots quite visible at her scalp) behind her ear.

  Her arm was skeletal, but that wasn’t what Elie noticed. It was the dots. The splotches of blackened scars against the once-tan skin.

  “Is that how it is,” Elie whispered out loud. She took her foot off the brake and fled without a backward glance.

  Elie’d never done meth, but she knew it when the signs were so obvious. Just like she knew the Bryan Mosleys of the world.

  Chapter Six

  You were right about that bastard. I thought I’d make it up to you, tonight around ten. I’ll get the beer, this time.

  Elie looked at herself in the mirror again.

  Too much make-up? Not enough make-up? She turned her head, trying to catch different light at different angles. After scrapping the project and starting over twice, she elected to just go with light accentuation. She doubted Jake was into contouring. And it didn’t feel right, meeting up for a lakeside, midnight rendezvous with a quart of foundation and a bottle of mascara on. It felt unnatural and feigned.

  That wasn’t what Elie wanted. No, no. What she wanted was to apologize for yelling at Jake, maybe even apologize for... the other thing. She paled a little thinking about that conversation, but if she was going to run from it forever, she might as well go pull up a trailer right next to Brittany Langland’s. Running blindly always led to sharp cliffs—or at least, it always had in Elie’s experience.

  Why was she even putting make-up on? Elie hesitated again, this time with her hand on her bedroom door. Was this supposed to be a date? She looked down at her clothes. Jeans and a blouse and tennis shoes.

  Should she dress up? With what? She hadn’t exactly brought an array of outfits to choose from.

  No, she decided. Firmly, she opened the bedroom door and shut it behind herself. This wasn’t a date. This was an apology. Meeting a chiseled, smiling, bone-meltingly sweet lumberjack in the middle of the night on a lakeside, so near a full moon, no less, might look like a date, but it wasn’t.

  Alison and Brent Barner were in the living room on the couch, watching a movie; it looked like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but then, all Roger’s and Hammerstein’s pictures looked pretty much the same to Elie.

  “Going out?” Alison asked sleepily. She was reclining on one end of the sofa, against her husband’s shoulder. Brent was already snoozing against the back of the couch.

  Elie opened the fridge and pulled out the six-pack of Narwhal she’d driven down the mountain to retrieve. “I’ll be back later,” she answered. She swallowed back the desire, the need, to avoid the question. Why did that happen? She waved to her mother and ducked out the door before any further inquiries could be made.

  Out on the front lawn, the silver darkness of a clear night wrapped her for just a moment before the motion light over the garage caught her and flooded the driveway. She hurried to the Outback; the darkness seemed thicker when the light was blinding her, and beyond its safe halo Elie couldn’t help but see
bear-shaped shadows. Maybe she was just used to the city lights.

  Had Jake ever gotten used to them? She thought about Jake in the city, and couldn’t quite picture it. He seemed like such a country creature, and he himself had admitted that living among the hustle hadn’t really worked out for him. No, she couldn’t see him in anything but boots and jeans. Or out of them…

  Elie started the Outback and reversed out of the driveway, hopeful that of all the people to have a real adult friendship—or anything—with, Jake Framer would be the one to try.

  It was a long walk, but a short drive to Hidden Lake, and Elie found herself there too soon; she parked the car, shut off the ignition, and waited, blinking in the glow of her gas and RPM gage while the battery idled in accessory. She looked at the pack of Narwhal stout and wondered if he’d tried it before.

  Jake wasn’t here yet; the gravel parking lot was empty. Elie hoped he’d found her note.

  Sudden doubt gripped her by the throat, and she pushed her hair, black in the darkness, off of her face nervously. She’d left the note right on his front door, wedged into the door knob. He couldn’t possibly have missed it.

  The two minutes of accessory ran out, and the Outback flipped into dark silence. Elie didn’t turn it back on. She could wait a little longer in peace and quiet.

  It dawned on her that Jake could have walked; the house his parent’s had left him was even closer to this lake than the Barner’s. He didn’t seem as concerned about the bear as Elie was. The more she thought about it, the more certain it seemed. A big strong man like him wouldn’t worry about a mile’s walk.

  Elie got out of the car, now worried that he, also, had been waiting and had decided to leave. She still hadn’t exchanged numbers with him, and it seemed stupid to have forgotten now that she was wandering around in the night hoping he’d be here. The forest was blacker than oil and full of soft sounds as she went; at a half-jog she reached the picnic area, where the park lights had shut off an hour ago. Moonlight filled the space instead, the world was white and black, and the lake lapped with the wind against the rocks of the shore.