by Zoe Chant
“Stop staring,” Rose hissed. “He’ll think we’re talking about him.”
“We are talking about him,” Hayley pointed out. “Come on, Rose! We all know that you’ve had a crush on Ash for years. Did you finally tell him? What did he say?”
“Judging from the way he looks like he’s had his entire body Botoxed, I think we can guess,” Chase said. He flashed a warm, sympathetic smile at Rose. “But do not despair, lovely Rose! No doubt he was simply paralyzed by astonishment. Give him a month or five, and he might be able to wrap his head around the idea to the point of being able to articulate a response.”
Rose focused on getting the foaming head of beer perfectly to the top of the pint glass. “Oh, he made his position very clear.”
Griff’s brow furrowed. “That’s odd. Ash is hard to read even for me, but I could have sworn he had a bit of a thing for you.”
“Evidently not.” Rose set the glass down on a tray rather too hard, beer slopping over onto her fingers. “And apparently he doesn’t think that I truly have feelings for him either.”
That still rankled, despite her best efforts to rise above it. It was one thing for Ash to say that he wasn’t interested in her romantically. It was quite another for him to tell her that she couldn’t really be interested in him. As if she couldn’t be trusted to know her own mind.
It was almost insulting. No, it was insulting. Ten years they’d been friends, and he was suddenly insisting she didn’t know him at all?
Griff was studying her expression. He winced. “Oh dear. Ash did not express himself well.”
“For a man of few words, he does occasionally have an uncanny ability to open his mouth wide enough to insert his entire foot,” Chase agreed. “But I’m sure he didn’t really mean whatever he said, Rose. Perhaps he finds it hard to believe that a gorgeous, vivacious woman such as yourself could truly be interested in a graying and boringly responsible man like himself.”
“I think he’s scared,” Hayley said.
“Scared?” It was so nonsensical that Rose let out a snort of laughter. “Ash? The man could incinerate this entire city with a snap of his fingers.”
“And I think he works very hard to make sure that he doesn’t,” Hayley said. “He’s so controlled and formal, it’s like he doesn’t dare to let himself feel any emotion at all. I mean, I’ve known him for a while now, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh.”
“You know, neither have I,” Chase said, tilting his head to one side in consideration. “Despite my best efforts.”
“That’s not actually surprising,” Griff said. “Your best efforts generally motivate people to punch you in the face.”
“Which Ash has never done either, despite extreme provocation,” Chase said cheerfully. “So your mate has a point. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”
Rose raised her eyebrows at him. “About Ash not punching you in the face?”
“No, about you and Ash!” Chase grinned at her, waving his hand to indicate not only Griff but the entirety of Alpha Team, oblivious in their corner behind him. “We’re all both your friends, so we’re doubly invested in helping you to find happiness together. Think of us as your improbably muscular and handsome team of fairy godmothers. You shall win your Prince Charming, Cinderella! Or at least Prince Uptight and Stuffy.”
“Oh no.” Rose shook her head firmly as she pushed the tray of drinks across the bar. “No matchmaking, thank you. Ash isn’t interested. He said so himself. That’s the end of it.”
“No it isn’t.” Hayley wound her arm around Griff’s waist. Their mate bond glowed in Rose’s empathic sense, bright and clear as summer sunshine. “This big idiot tried to push me away at least three times, by my count.”
“And the only reason I’m standing here today is because she didn’t let me,” Griff said, smiling down at his mate. “Hayley’s right, lass. Ash has kept himself in such a narrow cage for so long, he’s forgotten how to spread his wings. It’ll take more than just opening the door for a moment to encourage him to fly out.”
“So!” Chase clapped his hands together. “How are we going to get the world’s most pig-headed and hidebound man to open his heart to the jaw-droppingly beautiful and delightful woman standing here before us?”
“I really don’t—” Rose started, but no one was listening to her.
“We need to get his attention,” Griff said thoughtfully. “Make him realize what he and Rose could have together.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” Hayley said, frowning. “You know Ash, he’s not exactly observant when it comes to things that aren’t on fire.”
Chase brightened.
“No,” Griff and Hayley said together.
“Come on, it’s perfect. Can’t you just picture the scene?” Chase held up his hands like a film director framing a camera shot. “A mysterious arson attack…the beautiful maiden trapped by the encroaching flames…the daring Fire Commander charging to the rescue and sweeping her up in his arms—”
“And the pegasus-sized pile of ashes when he realizes you set him up,” Griff finished.
“Oh, Ash wouldn’t burn Chase,” Rose said, glaring at Chase. “There wouldn’t be enough left after I got through with him. Do not even think of setting fire to my pub.”
“Of course not,” Chase said, looking mortally wounded. “How can you even think that I would do such a thing? This is a special place to all of us. Now, a very flammable disused warehouse that no one will miss, on the other hand…”
“Connie!” Hayley called across the room. “Come and tell your mate not to set fire to anything!”
“Don’t set fire to anything, Chase,” Connie called back, pushing herself up from Alpha Team’s table. She was only in early pregnancy, but her bump showed prominently on her short, curvy body, thanks to the fact that she was carrying triplets. She joined her mate at the bar, radiating a mix of exasperation and curiosity to Rose’s empathic sense. “Why do you want to set fire to something, anyway?”
“So that Ash will realize his deep and undying love for our very own Rose,” Chase declaimed, far too loudly.
At the other end of the bar, Wayne lifted his head from his pint. The wolf shifter blinked, his bleary eyes struggling to focus. “Whazzat? Ash ish what?”
“Nothing,” Rose said, her face hot with mortification. She grabbed a beer from the tray and slid it down the bar. “Have another on me, Wayne. And ignore Chase, he’s just being ridiculous.”
“Yes, you are,” Connie told Chase, poking him in the side. “Even more so than usual.”
“Thank you,” Rose said.
“We can’t possibly trap Rose in a fire just so Ash can rescue her,” Connie continued. “How about a charity auction?”
They all stared at her.
“You know, like ‘a win a date with a hot firefighter’ sort of thing?” Connie said, looking round at their blank faces. “And then we pool together our funds to make sure that Rose wins the bidding on Ash.”
“What?” Rose said.
She seemed to be the only person still confused. Everyone else now had a thoughtful look, as though what Connie had just said made perfect sense.
“You know, it has got potential,” Hayley said. “But I’ve no idea how we’d get him to agree to it.”
“Much as I’m delighted by the thought of our rugged leader forced to oil up and sell off his virtue, I concur,” Chase said. “How about—”
“No,” Griff, Hayley, and Connie said together.
Chase looked wounded. “I was only going to suggest that we arrange for them to get trapped together in Rose’s beer cellar.”
Rose looked down at the still untouched drinks on the bar. “Are my prices too high? Did you all get drunk on cheap spirits before coming here?”
“Ash can burn his way out of anything like that,” Hayley said, as though Rose hadn’t even spoken. “I know! We set Rose up with a fake boyfriend, so that Ash will be driven mad with jealousy!”
“And persuade Ash that the only way to keep Rose safe is for him to pretend to date her so that the stalker will be scared off,” Hayley finished eagerly. “And then of course the fake relationship will turn real!”
“Right, you are all being completely ridiculous,” Rose announced.
Gathering up the tray of drinks, she swept past the whole silly lot of them. With her head held high, she marched across the room.
“About time,” Hugh said, as she reached Alpha Team’s corner booth. The white-haired paramedic passed a beer to his mate Ivy and took a whiskey for himself. “I was starting to wonder if you were having to distill the alcohol from scratch, Rose.”
“You can blame your colleagues for the delay,” Rose said, scowling over her shoulder at the group still whispering together back at the bar. “I don’t know what’s gotten into them, spouting such nonsense.”
Red dragon shifter Dai cocked an auburn eyebrow at her as she passed him a beer. “Surely you should be used to gibberish from Chase by now.”
“But not from Griff,” his mate Virginia said, taking a white wine. “What was that about setting fire to something?”
“Just a joke,” Rose said quickly, her face heating. “Here, John, Neridia. I brought non-alcoholic for you both.”
Neridia smiled as she accepted the mixed juice cocktail. Her huge belly barely fit behind the table. “Thank you, Rose. Though John’s not the one who’s pregnant, you know.”
“But I am on duty guarding the most precious treasures in the Pearl Empire,” John said in his melodious sea-dragon accent. He saluted Rose with his own mocktail. “Honor demands that I maintain a clear head.”
That left only one.
Rose cleared her throat, forcing her hand and voice to stay level as she set down a glass of water. “Ash.”
“Rose,” he said, in precisely the same neutral tone.
That had gone well.
Holding the tray like a shield, Rose swung round to flee back to safety—and ran smack into Chase’s muscular chest.
“Gentlemen!” the pegasus shifter declared, draping an arm around Rose’s shoulders before she could escape. “And beautiful ladies, of course. We were just having a very interesting discussion at the bar.”
A desperate smile frozen on her face, Rose stomped hard on his foot.
Chase didn’t bat an eyelid. “On a topic that I’m sure will be of great interest to all of you. I refer, of course, to romance.”
Dai’s forehead wrinkled. “But we’re all already mated.”
Virginia nudged him in the ribs, her eyes cutting across to Ash.
“Oh. Right.” The tips of Dai’s ears flushed faintly pink. “Sorry. No offense intended.”
“None taken,” Ash murmured.
“One word, Chase,” Rose hissed as quietly as she could. If she’d been a mythic shifter, and able to communicate telepathically with the pegasus, she would have been screaming in his mind right now. “One word, and you will never drink in this pub again.”
Chase adopted an expression of exaggerated innocence. “I only wanted to ask them what they thought made the perfect woman.”
Rose stared at him. So did everyone else.
“Indulge him,” Griff said, coming up behind Chase and—suspiciously—boxing Rose in so that there was no chance of escape. “Obviously we all have our own mates—with the exception of Ash—but pretend for a moment that you don’t. What would you look for in an ideal partner?”
Dai exchanged a glance with Virginia, who raised her eyebrows at him in a let’s just roll with it sort of way.
“All right,” the dragon shifter said, shrugging. “Well, clearly the answer is a stunning, brilliant, Anglo-Saxon archaeologist.”
“I think that’s a little specific,” Virginia murmured.
Dai grinned across at his mate, his bright green eyes crinkling. “True, though. But if we’re talking general traits…I’d say intelligence is important.”
“Courage,” John Doe rumbled, taking Neridia’s hand.
“Tenacity,” Hugh said, his voice losing all trace of its usual sarcasm. Ivy met his eyes, her own going bright and soft.
Griff smiled down at Hayley, who was still tucked under his arm. “Compassion.”
“You’re all wrong,” Chase announced. “Because clearly the correct answer is great pragmatism, even greater patience, and the ability to fly a plane upside-down at three hundred miles per hour.”
Connie, who’d just come up to his other side, elbowed him.
“Also, extremely sharp elbows,” Chase added. “To keep you on track.”
“Chase, you are so far off track, I’m not even sure you ever had a destination,” Hugh said. “Is there a point to this?”
“Patience, Hughnicorn,” Chase said, ignoring the death glare that the unicorn shifter shot at him. “Not all of us are as pointy as you. And we haven’t heard from everyone yet.”
Rose’s stomach lurched. She had a sudden horrible certainty as to where Chase was steering this conversation.
“Ash,” Chase swung round to face his Commander, forcing Rose to turn as well. “What do you think is the most desirable quality in a woman?”
She was going to skin the pegasus shifter.
“There is only one.” Ash looked directly at her. “That she is your mate.”
The bottom dropped out of her stomach. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe, hurt beyond words.
“But if, for argument’s sake, you were an ordinary human—,” Chase began.
“I am not,” Ash said, in a tone that killed the conversation stone-dead.
A rather awkward silence fell. Rose’s face burned with humiliation.
“Well, I don’t agree,” Hayley said. She turned to Rose, jaw setting. “Don’t listen to him. Regular people fall in love every day, and it’s no less real just because they aren’t shifters.”
“What’s brought all this on?” Dai said curiously.
“Some jerk rejected Rose last week,” Connie told him. She was very obviously not looking at Ash.
“What an idiot,” Dai said, without any hint of guile. “Well, in that case, I fully agree with Hayley, Rose. Even though your mate’s gone, there’s no reason why you can’t find happiness elsewhere.”
“Hear, hear,” Hugh said, lifting his glass in her direction. “You just need to find someone who appreciates everything you have to offer. Which, if we consider the checklist we’ve just heard, is considerable. Don’t let one stupid bastard get you down.”
From the genuine sympathy radiating from them, Rose was certain that Chase and Griff hadn’t tipped them off telepathically as to precisely who had rejected her. Nonetheless, her face flamed. She didn’t dare glance at Ash.
“There’s no need to be making all this fuss,” she said. She turned away, busying herself tidying up empty glasses from the next table. “I’m fine. Really.”
“She’s not fine,” she heard Hayley whisper behind her back. “That sort of rejection is a slap in the face. Especially when it’s the first time in years that you’ve dared to put yourself out there.”
John let out a low, deep growl. “Who is the cur who has insulted our Rose? I will seek him out and demand that he face me in the duel for such disrespect.”
Now she knew that Chase and Griff hadn’t told their colleagues that it had been Ash. Thank heaven for small mercies. But her heart sank at the loyalty and outrage she could sense emanating from John, and from the other firefighters too.
They were trained to rescue people in distress. Now, apparently, they were determined to rescue her, whether she wanted them to or not.
And when they all found out that it was Ash who’d rejected her…the poor man would never hear the end of it.
She couldn’t be responsible for him losi
ng the tiny bit of peace he had left. She just couldn’t. But how on earth could she persuade the stubborn firefighters of Alpha Team to drop the subject?
“I am fine,” she said firmly, as inspiration struck. She half-turned, glancing at them over her shoulder. “In fact, I’m getting straight back on the horse.”
“Good for you!” Hayley said, exchanging a triumphant glance with Connie. “So you’ll ask him again?”
“No.” Rose pulled her phone out of her pocket, brandishing it at them. “I’m going to set up an online dating profile.”
The Ash-shaped silence behind her was deafening.
“That’s a wonderful idea,” Dai said warmly.
“No it isn’t!” yelped Chase. “I mean, are you sure, Rose? Lots of strange men on those sorts of sites.”
“I am literally an empath,” Rose said. She was already busy typing—partly to prove to them that she was serious, and partly out of fear that she’d lose her nerve if she didn’t do it straight away. “I think you can trust me to be a good judge of character.”
“True,” Hugh said, though he sounded a little dubious. “But still…online dating? What’s wrong with meeting someone the old-fashioned way?”
“You mean on top of an acid-drenched elevator?” Ivy said dryly. “Or amidst the smoldering wreckage of a burning building? There’s nothing wrong with meeting your mate in less dramatic circumstances, you know.”
“I’m not looking for a mate,” Rose said, focused on her phone. “Just a man.”
She wasn’t just saying it to get them off her back, she realized. She did want a man. She’d thought that spark had long since died, but Ash’s touch had awakened a fire in her body again. She couldn’t deny that she wanted more.
And if it couldn’t be with Ash…well, maybe she could still find solace with someone else. Better to cup her hands around a candle than pine for the sun.
“Ash,” Chase appealed. “You don’t think this is a good idea, do you?”
Despite herself, she snuck a peek at him. Hoping for…she didn’t know what. Some kind of reaction. Maybe even a flicker of jealousy.