Shifters After Dark Box Set: (6-Book Bundle)

by SM Reine

  ~ ~ ~

  Outside of our brief conversation, Mom had no insight as to why else my dad would have kidnapped her. Deep down, he must have loved her in some irrational way, but his reckless actions had put our lives in danger and it only fueled my hate for him even more. Now that I knew he wasn’t my real father, it was easier to hate him. Because he was Maizy’s, I didn’t say anything out of respect, even though she didn’t know him. I didn’t want her to have memories of me slamming him, because one day she would find out for herself what kind of man he was.

  I spent the entire afternoon with my mom, but I couldn’t get the shop off my mind. Ben and Wheeler ate their hamburgers and headed out. When I asked where Ivy had gone, Austin explained he had begun the process of officially claiming her with one of the head Packmasters in the territory, and the man’s wife wanted to speak privately with Ivy.

  It was sometimes customary for the women to open their door to one another, and perhaps she wanted to make sure there was nothing being forced on this young woman.

  Just after sunset, I headed back home alone. Mom agreed to stay with Austin until they caught my father. While Ivan had retracted his offer to help us any further, Lorenzo hadn’t ended his search. I knew because I’d kept my promise and called him earlier that day.

  “How did everything go?” I asked April over Lorenzo’s phone. I was beginning to think having one of these phones would come in handy. I ascended the stairs and twirled my keychain around, looking for the key.

  “Um, you could have told me you were sending two hunks over.”

  I snorted. “Really? I didn’t think they were your type.”

  “Well, kind of not. They’re eye candy, but not really my kind of candy. One of them stared at my ass and the other guy didn’t say much. The store is so clean you wouldn’t believe it! Some of the canisters I’m not so sure they’ll be salvageable. Have you heard from Charlie? What happened?”

  I slid the key in the lock and glanced over my shoulder. “Cancer. I’m going to try calling around to see where he’s at; his neighbor said they took him away in an ambulance a few days ago.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed when I heard her sniffing over the phone. We really liked Charlie and were fortunate to have a boss like him, even though he had quirky ways about running his store. “Hopefully he’s okay, but I need to get a hold of him so I can find out what to do about the power. Until then, just lock everything up and take off for a few days. There’s nothing we can do at this point. We’re not getting a paycheck this Friday, so you’ll need to let the girls know. It’s not going to hurt them as much as it will us.”

  “Gee, I didn’t think of that. I need to be honest and tell you I might be able to let one paycheck slide, but that’s it. I mean it, Alexia. And I’ll need reimbursement for the missed week as soon as the funds are available.”

  I opened the door and flipped on the wall switch that connected to a lamp in the living room. Then I gasped.

  “What happens if you can’t find him? Alexia?”

  “Um, April, let me call you back…” I hung up the phone.

  My feet floated toward the dining room as I admired the most gorgeous flower display I’d ever laid eyes on. Seven clear vases of varying sizes were perfectly arranged in two rows, filled with red roses of such a lush shade that I drew in a deep breath and sighed. There was no baby’s breath—instead, white lilies filled all the open gaps. A silver balloon hovered above the table, tied to a chair, with “Happy Birthday” written in elegant letters.

  The closer I got, the more I began rubbing my eyes to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. A note was strategically placed in the center of the table, and while I should have been upset someone got into my apartment, I wasn’t. My birthday was actually the next day, and the only men who knew were Austin and Beckett. This sure as hell didn’t look like something Beckett would dream up.

  My heart did a flutter, and I tore open the seal and pulled out the card.

  Nashoba,

  I could give you a garden and it would pale next to your beauty.

  So let me give you the world.

  Lorenzo

  “Holy shit,” I murmured.

  No one had ever given me anything like this before, and then the note? Once the shock dissipated and I sat down, I realized that as beautiful as they were, the gift didn’t floor me like it should have. Lorenzo didn’t know a damn thing about me if he thought he could woo me with flowers. The note was the only thing that earned him brownie points, because you had to respect a man with a poetic heart.

  Last year on my birthday, I drove with Maizy out to a diamond mine. They plowed up the dirt every so often, and you could rent a shovel and other supplies and dig in the dirt looking for treasure.

  Supposedly, small diamonds were found all the time. The only thing we found were a few rocks that we brought home as souvenirs. It was the best time, and I packed a picnic lunch on the way home after picking up a few things at a local supermarket. Maizy had wanted to give me a diamond for my birthday and was upset. I reminded her that expensive things didn’t make people happy, thoughtfulness did. And she was my diamond because I’d gotten to spend my entire birthday with her.

  Still, the flowers were beautiful, and I wasn’t about to be ungrateful for such an extravagant gift. I wondered how he managed to bypass the camera outside, but Lorenzo seemed like the kind of guy who could get away with anything. Probably had the flower delivery guy talk the landlord into letting him in.

  I admired the delicate petals for a few minutes before changing clothes and pulling out the phonebook for a listing of hospitals. I made a few calls, but due to certain laws, I couldn’t obtain any information since we weren’t related. I collapsed on the sofa and nodded off for a few hours.

  After I woke up, I tried calling a few more places. They would have admitted Charlie by now, so perhaps they’d moved him to another facility. His sister was from Ohio, but I had no idea if they shared the same last name. I had searched on the Internet but came up with too many listings. Without knowing her first name, it would have been a waste of time.

  A light knock tapped on the door and it swung open. “How many times have I told you to lock your—” Naya gasped. “Honey! Who are the gorgeous flowers from?”

  She practically squealed, running in short steps across my living room to the table. Naya had just gotten off work and hadn’t taken off her impossibly high gold shoes.

  “Someone adores you enough to send you all these? Oh, you need to marry him right this minute,” she went on, burying her nose in a bouquet. After circling around the table to admire each one individually, she finally stood back and soaked it all in.

  “I’m quite sure I’m not going to marry a man over a silly display of peacockery,” I added.

  “Pea-whatery?”

  A grin slid up my cheek. “When guys think they can show you all their fancy feathers and you’ll just fall at their feet.”

  “So he’s thoughtful and rich?” She looked skeptical that I could reject the two things at the top of her checklist for the holy grail of a perfect man.

  “He’s got money.”

  Her eyes brightened. “How much money? I call dibs if you throw this one away, but don’t you dare or I’ll tie your shoelaces together and hang you from the nearest telephone wire.”

  She lifted the card and I tried to grab it from her.

  “Lorenzo. Is he Spanish? I love Spanish men.”

  “You love all men.”

  “Italian?” she asked hopefully.

  “No, I think he’s Native American.”

  ~ ~ ~

  It didn’t sit well with Austin when Lexi went home alone. While there were still surveillance cameras, he couldn’t get to her quick enough if something happened, and they weren’t watching her twenty-four hours a day. Worry nestled in his head like a seed and began to take root until he finally told the boys he was heading out there for the night. He didn’t plan on going up to her ap
artment, just sleeping in his car and keeping an eye on things.

  During the drive, he thought about her situation at the store and located another candy shop in town. He talked with the owner about cost-related factors and inventory. Then he noticed an enormous display of suckers. They were Lexi’s favorite—round and colorful with an assortment of flavors from watermelon to gourmet coffee. A mischievous grin surfaced because Wes had once revealed how he bribed his baby sister.

  Her birthday was tomorrow and Austin had been thinking about getting her something special. He never bought birthday gifts for anyone; it’s not something the Cole brothers did. But Lexi always loved her birthdays and he wanted to do something special to make up for lost time.

  “Do you make arrangements?” Austin inquired. “I mean, can you take some of these and make it look like… hell, I don’t know. Something girly?”

  “Certainly,” the man replied with confidence. “I have several containers in the back with foam, unless you want them tied in small bundles. I can do lots of creative things with these—you’d be surprised.

  “What about a bouquet?”

  “I designed one for a wedding two years ago, believe it or not,” he admitted with a chuckle. “Let me know what you want, or how many, and I’ll put something together.”

  He sure did.

  When Austin arrived at Lexi’s apartment, he was beaming with pride. He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when he gave them to her, not just because of the way they were arranged, but no one would have thought to get her something like this.

  Austin walked quietly up Lexi’s stairs with the heavy bouquet in his right hand. The man had done an excellent job, somehow attaching them to a ball in the center so that they stayed in place and gave it a handle that he could hold on to. It looked just as good as any flowers, and a delicate white ribbon wrapped around the bottom. The man urged him to fill out a card, but Austin found out he had more to say than what would fit on a small note card. He ended up writing his message on a sheet of paper that was folded up and burning a hole in his back pocket.

  “Lexi, these are just the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen!” he heard a woman exclaim through the cracked door.

  Austin eased up at the entrance, holding the bouquet behind his back. He peered in and his jaw slackened when he saw the obscene amount of roses all over her table. The woman in the tall shoes he recognized as her neighbor.

  “Lorenzo,” Naya said, holding a card. “Is he Spanish? I love Spanish men.”

  “You love all men.”

  “Italian?”

  “No, I think he’s Native American,” Lexi replied with her back to the door. She touched one of the flowers. “They are pretty, aren’t they?”

  “Pretty penny,” Naya agreed. “And the note! Totally swoon-worthy. I can’t imagine a man topping an offer like this, Lexi. You should take it. If he’s good-looking, then that’s just icing on the cake, but you already have my approval,” she declared, placing her hands on her hips and jutting them out.

  Lexi shouldered her and they both admired the roses. Austin’s nose filled with the smell of defeat and he stepped back.

  One of the suckers clacked on the concrete beneath him and Naya said, “What was that?”

  “You left the door open,” Lexi chastised. “Always lecturing me about locking up and you get all swept up by flowers and lose your mind.” They giggled and Austin quickly backed away, hurrying down the stairs.

  His chest actually hurt. Like someone had a grip on his heart and was strangling the breath from his lungs. It felt like the walk of shame across that lawn as he heard the door shut behind him. Austin squeezed the handle to the bouquet even tighter and wanted to throw it, but it would have scattered a hundred suckers across the lawn, leaving evidence he had been there.

  Instead, he tossed the cheap bouquet in the passenger seat and moved his Dodge Challenger into a less obvious parking space. As he watched Naya leave her apartment, Austin glanced at the candy beside him and then back at her window. The lights eventually dimmed and he rolled down the car window, wishing he had a shot of something strong.

  It was a stupid idea to give her cheap candy. They weren’t kids anymore and she would have been insulted.

  Lexi deserved to be taken care of. There was no rule that she had to be mated to the Packmaster or anyone else in a pack in order to be part of the family. It didn’t stop how fiercely protective he felt of her. How when another man’s eyes roamed across her body, Austin wanted to rip them from the guy’s sockets. Lexi wasn’t abrasive like many of the female Shifters, and that made her vulnerable. Growing up in a pack (and within the Shifter culture), a woman learned how to talk to men and get what she wanted. Ivy was an exception with her shyness, but he could sense a tough girl beneath her quiet exterior.

  His father had warned him that a pack without balance turns on itself, and women provide the harmony necessary for a family to sustain itself over the years. Austin hadn’t been raised in a pack environment. His parents had forbidden them from going rogue, and the only way to leave the family unit was to join a pack or become a bounty hunter. Too many bad things happened to rogue Shifters. When Austin stepped up in his alpha role, his parents made the decision to move on. It wasn’t ideal for parents to be under the leadership of one of their children.

  The idea of having Lexi’s family living with them, even if they weren’t Shifters, was appealing. Someone also needed to protect that little girl, and he didn’t have a good feeling about leaving her and her mother alone. Bringing them into the pack was exactly what his men needed to shape up.

  Damn Lorenzo. Even early on, he was always a man who did anything it took to get what he wanted. Now that he was advancing on Lexi, Austin was feeling more possessive and territorial.

  He turned off his radio since the noise was distracting. The CD player was a nice addition to the car. The guy who sold it to him had a gift and could have converted a car into an airplane if you gave him enough money. He’d installed a CD player along with new speakers and did a little work restoring the body to maintain the vintage appeal.

  Austin slid down in his seat when Lexi emerged from her apartment and noticed a piece of candy on her doormat. She glanced around before hurrying down the sidewalk that led to the mailboxes. While she checked her mail, Austin leaned down to read his text messages, not wanting the light from the phone to draw any attention to his car. He sent one to Reno to make sure they had everything under control at the house with Lynn. After several minutes, he sat up and rubbed his eyes.

  A few fireflies lit up and Lexi paused on the way back, scooping her hand in the air to catch one. He laughed quietly, eyes sliding down to her hips as she jumped in the air and the bottom of her shirt came up just enough that he could see her belly button.

  Then he shifted in his seat, because the thoughts racing in his head were sending blood to all the wrong places. He needed to stop thinking about her in a sexual way.

  That’s when he glanced to the right and saw something out of place. An expensive Jaguar blocked the fire hydrant—a car that had no business in this thirty-year-old complex. The driver appeared to be sleeping, and knowing a Mage was hunting her father, Austin launched himself out of the car to confront him.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  After Naya left, I went to check my mail and found a lollipop outside my door. She wasn’t into eating candy, so it was an odd thing to find. I shrugged it off, but on the walk back to my apartment, I stepped on something hard and bent down to pick up another one. It was my favorite brand, and I looked around in bewilderment without knowing what I was really looking for.

  Candy Claus? Sent to deliver all the good Shifters a bucket full of sweets in the middle of summer?

  I laughed and swung open my door, stepping into the living room. My bedroom light cast a dim glow in the apartment and the smell of flowers filled my nose. When I turned the first lock, a shadow moved behind me. My heart did a flip-flop and I got that prickling
sensation you get when you’re not alone.

  “I missed you,” Beckett said, wrapping his arms tightly around my body from behind.

  I squirmed, trying to break free, but his pythons were constricting. He loosened them just enough so I could turn to face him.

  “You’re drunk,” I accused, smelling it all over his breath and seeing the glazed look in his bloodshot eyes. Not to mention his eyes were bruised; someone had finally given him a dose of his own medicine.

  “Like what your boyfriend did to me? See what kind of man you got? What the fuck are those?” Without removing his eyes from mine, he pointed his heavy arm at the roses.

  My mouth wasn’t working and all I could do was open it and shake my head.

  “You belong to me, Lex. Not some pussy fucking roses man,” he slurred. “You got flowers and I got eighteen stitches in the back of my head,” he spat angrily.

  “Those flowers aren’t from him, Beckett. Please, go home and calm down. You’re worked up and I don’t want to fight.”

  His slobbery mouth kissed my cheek and his broad chest pinned me against the door so I couldn’t move.

  “You can’t tell me what I fucking need, because I need you. I’ll forgive your slutting around, but you tell that motherfucker you’re coming home with me,” he said against my cheek. “Pack up your shit; this game is over. I fucked one girl, big deal. I could have fucked a whole lot more if you want to know the truth. But you were always the one I wanted to come home to.”

  My chest tightened and the heat made it difficult to breathe, as if I’d been running a marathon. Beckett had never behaved this way toward me and I was scared, but still unsure of his intentions. I thought I knew this man. He’d never once raised a hand to me or threatened my life if I left him. Those were the Lifetime movies I’d catch on the weekend and thank my lucky stars that I wasn’t with a psycho like that.

  Beckett was barely lucid as his rough mouth moved across my jaw, whiskers scraping like sandpaper against my skin. His breath smelled of whiskey or something much stronger than the beers he usually preferred.