“What?” Taylor scowled. “God no! Eww!”
“I’m just asking. I hear of things on the unit.”
“I bet. No. He’s just like a regular guy.”
“Except when he’s a bear.”
“Yes.”
“When you get married and have children, will they be bears or humans?”
“Humans.” Taylor shoved her salad around in her plate. Her mother’s questions were making her uncomfortable. “I guess. I don’t know. We aren’t getting married.”
Maria set her fork down. “Taylor. I’ve know you for how long?” She held up her palm. “Right. Your entire life. The expression on your face when you talk about him says you care about him.”
“I do care about him.” The words spilled off her lips before she thought about it. She’d barely thought about anything other than him. And he was coming to visit this weekend. Maybe her timing wasn’t an accident. Maybe she wanted her mother’s blessing before she got even more involved with him.
Maybe she wanted her mother to tell her that she was delusional or having a hallucination with regards to Brayden. But instead, her mother had gone along with her. She did that sometimes, only to come back and blindside her with some kind of logic.
Maria leaned forward. “When I was in high school, there was a kid in my grade. His name was Quinn. There were rumors that he was a shifter, but I never believed them. Besides, I thought he was kinda cute.” Maria took a deep breath. “I had a terrible crush on him.”
“What happened with Quinn? Was he a football player like Daddy?”
Maria chuckled. “Quinn was nothing like Daddy. We’d been hanging out some. We talked about things like books and going to college. Things your father didn’t have any interest in. I went to a dance after one of the football games with the other cheerleaders. Most of them had dates, but I didn’t that night. Quinn was there. I’d never seen him at one of the dances before.” Maria’s gazed was focused in the distance, seeing something only she could see.
Taylor didn’t interrupt.
“We talked for a few minutes, then we took a walk outside to get away from the loud music. I remember it was a full moon that night. Cold. We sat on a bench outside the door, so I could still hear the music, but it was in the background. Pleasant even. Then he kissed me.”
“I thought you were going steady with Daddy all through high school.”
“I was. That’s when he was out with a sprained ankle.”
“Mom!”
“I know.” Her mother shrugged. “I was seventeen. Anyway, after he kissed me, he stood up, grinned, and turned into a wolf.”
Taylor’s mouth dropped open. “No. Way!”
“Yeah.” Maria chuckled. “I think I squealed. All I remember is running back inside the building. I stayed in the bathroom until somebody came and told me my mom was there to pick me up.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. “What happened next?” Taylor held her breath. Was Quinn her real father? Maria had only been married for a short time. So short, that Taylor’s memories growing up were only of her and her mother. Her father, Mike, had visited a few times, mostly on holidays, but those visits had finally stopped. He’d never seemed too invested in having a child.
“I never saw Quinn again.” Maria blinked and focused on Taylor. “So, no, he wasn’t your father.”
Taylor let out her breath. At least her father wasn’t a secret shapeshifter. “Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
“He just disappeared.”
“Yeah. I looked for him, but they said he’d moved away.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Maria reached out and put a hand over Taylor’s. “So, even though we have people who claim to be shapeshifters who probably aren’t, I know there are people out there who really are shifters.”
“I never expected you to tell me anything like this.”
“Yeah, well, I never got over him.”
“But you married Daddy.”
“People marry for all sorts of reasons. I think I married your daddy to help me get over Quinn.”
Chapter 29
Brayden found Taylor’s apartment without any problem. Besides GPS, she gave really good directions.
He knocked and waited for her to come to the door. She lived in nicer area of town in one of the newer patio homes. I can’t ask her to leave all this.
When she opened the door and smiled, his world brightened.
His sister was right. Taylor was the one for him. His fated mate.
There was no sense in fighting it. Brayden wanted what was best for Taylor. Whatever it was, he would always want what was best for her.
“You’re here.” Her voice held a breathless note of surprise.
He, too, felt a little surreal about the whole thing. Seeing her here in her own habitat was different from having her in his own cabin.
As he put his arms around her waist and hugged her, her feet left the ground. She giggled against his neck.
This. This was the way it was supposed to be.
He set her down and held her close, her cheek against his chest. “I can’t believe you’re actually here,” she murmured against him.
“I know.” He agreed. “This has been the longest ten days of my life.”
She laughed. “Let’s close the door, and you can meet Lucy.”
“Lucy?” Oh no. Please tell me she doesn’t have a roommate.
“Lucy!” Taylor called. “Come meet Brayden.” She turned to Brayden. “I’ve told her all about you.”
“Great.” So much for his plans for a romantic weekend.
“I’ll go find her.” Taylor left him standing in her living room. It had a comfortable feel. A cozy sofa. A television on the wall. A bookcase filled with books. No clutter. Everything looked clean and tidy, much like Brayden’s house.
A minute later, Taylor came back into the room. “I found her.”
Brayden forced a smile on his face and turned to meet Lucy.
Taylor was holding a solid white Himalayan cat. Uh oh. Cats tended to not like him. Maybe they sensed that he was a bear shifter. He did okay with dogs, but cats had always been problematic.
Lucy purred when Taylor brought her next to him. Brayden held out his hand expecting to be scratched. Instead, Lucy rubbed her head on his hand. Brayden grinned. “She likes me.”
“Of course, she does. She likes who I like.”
“She’s beautiful, like her mother.” Brayden tucked a strand of hair behind Taylor’s ear. “Do you think Lucy would mind if I borrow her mother for a few minutes?”
“I guess that depends on what you have in mind.”
He leaned over and pressed his lips against hers. When he pulled back, her eyes were closed. “Something like this,” he murmured.
She set Lucy on the couch and pulled Taylor’s arms around his waist. This was all he needed in life: Taylor’s lips on his.
He pulled her with him to the couch, and her breath caught when he ran his hands through her hair.
Pulling her into his lap, he locked his lips onto hers and cupped her jaw with his palm. He gently nudged her chin, and her mouth opened to his.
Chapter 30
At one o’clock in the morning, Taylor slipped from her bed and padded to her home office. She had too much energy to sleep right now. She and Brayden had fallen asleep making out. She opened her computer and began deleting emails. She stopped, the mouse hovering over a message from [email protected]. Her hands trembled as she clicked on the message.
OMG. It was a job offer. She read it quickly, then read it again, slowly. No!
Not now. Right now, everything was perfect just like it was. She hit ‘print’ and read the printed version.
She’d gotten what she wanted. A job at the Weather Channel.
In Atlanta.
That meant giving up everything here.
The irony was not lost on her.
When she’d applied for the job in Atlanta, s
he’d been prepared to move, to put ambition above all else, to leave her family, her home.
But now… things were different.
The ambition was still there, but something had been added to the equation. Someone actually. Brayden. He was all she thought about.
She was hooked.
They said shifters had fated mates. Soul mates. Maybe he was hers. Or she was his. However it worked, it had to be reciprocal. Her brow furrowed. Didn’t it?
She laid the paper down on her desk and went to the kitchen to get a drink of water.
As she closed the refrigerator with a bottle of water in hand, Brayden grabbed her around the waist from behind. She squealed.
“There you are.” He nuzzled her neck. “I woke up, and you were gone.”
“I just needed some water.”
“And I need you.” He swept her off her feet and carried her back to bed.
Chapter 31
“You have to go.” Brayden clutched the letter in his hand.
“No.” Taylor snatched at the letter, but he held it out of her reach.
“It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
“It’s not what I want anymore.” Her cheeks heated.
“What changed?”
She ran a hand through her hair, letting it fall down her back. “You,” she breathed.
“I can’t let you not take it.”
“I don’t want to go. It’s not what I thought it was going to be.”
He held up the letter, reading off bullet points. “It sounds like a good offer to me.”
“No.” She insisted. “It’s not good.”
He handed her the letter. “Tell me what’s wrong with it.”
She grabbed it from him. This was not going well. She didn’t want him to want her to go. She hadn’t even planned on telling him about it. “It’s in Atlanta.” She said.
He narrowed his eyes. “You knew that when you applied.”
“I changed my mind.”
He shook his head. “You didn’t change your mind.”
“I did.” Why was he doing this? She felt nauseated. She turned away and stomped back to her office. He shouldn’t be snooping around in her stuff anyway.
“Hey.” He followed her. “Don’t just walk away. I’m trying to help you.”
She stood with her back to him. He wanted her to go. It was a convenient way for him to get rid of her. He could have just said so.
“Go.” She said.
“What? Why?”
She turned and didn’t care that her eyes were filled with tears. She pointed toward the front door. “Just go.”
“Taylor.”
“Just go. Just leave me alone.”
Though she saw the pain in his eyes, she didn’t trust it. He’d been leaving today anyway, so he was already packed.
She watched him walk by the couch and pick up his overnight bag. He slung it over his shoulder and kept walking. He paused at the door, and she thought for a moment he was going to turn around and come back.
Instead, he opened the door and closed it behind him.
What?
What just happened?
With her letter still clutched in her hand, she followed him to the door, turned the lock, and watched through the window as he drove away.
She wandered back to the couch and dropped onto it. Lucy jumped up next to her. As she hugged her cat to her, disbelief morphed into despair and the first tear fell onto Lucy’s fur.
He was just looking for an excuse. Even as she told herself that, her heart shattered into a thousand pieces.
Chapter 32
Brayden drove around the corner and parked the car.
Every turn of the wheel was like a stab in his heart. His one true love had the opportunity to make something of herself. All he could offer her was a cabin in the mountains. Sure, she could commute to the station in Fort Collins, but she’d never have a better offer than to work for the Weather Channel. They would even pay for her to get her master’s degree in meteorology while she was employed with them. That was quite an offer. If she turned it down for him, she’d resent him some day. It was better that she hate him now. They’d both get over it. She’d be successful and find someone else.
Brayden would never find anyone else that he would love as much as he loved her, but he would go on with his life knowing that she was happy. He would never forgive himself if she gave up her dream to be with him.
He took a deep breath and adjusted the air conditioning vent so that the cold air blew in his face. She would thank him one day. One day when she was doing the job that she was meant to do. She would look back and be grateful that he had left before they fell in love.
It was already too late. It had been too late for Brayden the moment he’d seen her. He’d loved her from the moment he’d found her in the tree.
He raised his chin and forced himself to drive away. He tried to ignore the shards of pain that shot through his heart as he moved further and further away from her.
If he had any doubt before that she was his fated mate, that doubt disappeared by the mile. Every mile drove another shard into his heart.
By the time he got back to the lodge, there would be nothing left of him. He would be no more than a shell of a man.
Chapter 33
“You’re an idiot.” Skylar slammed the drawer to her desk. Opened another one. “What’s wrong with you?”
Brayden leaned against the window, his feet on her heater. “What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. I forgot.” She sat up and blew her hair out of her eyes.
“I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“You thought.” She rolled her eyes. “Men. Men shouldn’t think.”
“It’s my job as her fated mate to make sure she’s taken care of, right?”
Skylar clasped her hands in front of her. “So, this girl, the one you love above all others, is telling you she wants to be with you instead of taking a job. And you break up with her. You just walk right out.”
“Well... Yeah, after she told me to go.”
“How does that even make sense to you?”
Brayden stood up and turned to watch two young bears playing rough and tumble in the back yard behind the lodge. He recognized them as his younger brothers Jaxson and Colton.
He hoped Skylar hadn’t been telling them tales of fated mates. Their lives would be complicated soon enough without the expectation that they had only one love in life who would fulfill them.
In the two weeks since he’d walked out on Taylor, Brayden had barely eaten and had hardly slept at all. He hadn’t even shaved.
“You’re going to have to go find her.” Skylar said behind him. “But you can’t go looking like that.”
“Looking like what?”
“Like something a cub dragged up.”
Just think what I must feel like. “I feel ten times that bad.”
“See.” Skylar joined him at the window. “I rest my case. You screwed up. You deserted your fated mate. Do you know what happens to a man who deserts his fated mate?”
“No.”
“I don’t either. Except that you’ve destined yourself to a life of misery. Remember Uncle Bert? Unlike Riley and Tyler who took ten years to get together, Uncle Bert never found his fated mate. He withered away.”
“He had a decent life.”
“Maybe he had a decent life, but he was a lonely man. Having a good career doesn’t make a person have a good life. Love. Love is what gives a person a good life.”
Brayden turned and looked into Skylar’s eyes.
She kept talking. “Are you hearing what I’m saying? You’ve destined yourself and Taylor to a life of misery.”
“She’ll find someone else.”
“She may. She may even get married and have some kids. But there’ll always be something missing from her life.”
“Where do you get all this stuff?”
“I spend time listening to our elders. Since you
don’t do that, you can at least listen to me.”
Between listening to his sister and listening to his heart, Brayden didn’t stand a chance.
He might say his heart was in the right place, but the truth was, he’d been afraid.
He’d been afraid of making a mistake. Cooper had made a mistake. Cooper had thought he’d found his fated mate, but he’d been wrong. And Cooper was a doctor. If Cooper had screwed up and married the wrong girl, who was to say Brayden was making the right choice?
If it turned out Taylor wasn’t his mate and she gave up her dream job, he would never forgive himself. It would be unforgivable. Even as her mate, he couldn’t ask her to give up something like that.
Chapter 34
Taylor had decided to make a minimalist move, without baggage. She’d kept her condo in Fort Collins and had it listed on Air BNB. It seemed to be a smart investment. She already had her first guest booked for next week. Taylor would be staying at the Residence Inn in Atlanta until she found an apartment or maybe even a house.
Her enthusiasm was lacking to say the least. Her boss at the station had sensed her mixed feelings about the move. If you ever change your mind, you’ll always have a job here as the weather girl.
She sighed. The weather wasn’t the issue. Taylor loved the weather. Loved everything about it. But she hadn’t gone to college to get stuck being the weather girl. She needed to at least have the option for advancement. There weren’t many options for advancements at RMTV.
Everything she was taking with her to Atlanta was in the belly of the plane. She’d cheated and left a few sentimental items at her mother’s house. Her mother kept things like her high school yearbooks and a painting of a mountain thunderstorm painted by a guy sitting on the back of a pickup truck at a festival two years ago. And of course, there was a stack of novels that she couldn’t bear to part with.
When her mother had started to psychoanalyze her minimalist move, Taylor had politely, but firmly, stopped her. Taylor didn’t want to think about anything that in any way reminded her of Brayden. Even the good memories brought a stab to her heart. Whoever would have thought that the one time in her life she’d climbed a tree, she’d been rescued by the love of her life?
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