Despite the pain, she threw her arms around Scar’s neck and sobbed into his wet fur. “Don’t you ever, ever do that again! Do you hear me, you brave beast? What were you thinking?”
Scar licked her face, driving his head into her arms, bringing tears to her eyes.
“Scar! Easy boy,” Jagger reminded him, pulling Viv close and resting his chin on the top of her soaking-wet head.
He was naked again, the poor man, his skin like ice. However, they had some things to clear up. “Where’s Miranda?”
His sigh was audible, his chest heaving against hers. “She’s gone. I’m sorry, honey. So sorry.”
“You,” she responded on a sharp wince of pain, “have some explaining to do, Boo-Boo.”
His chuckle was a deep rumble. “Ah, there’s my girl. You’re right, but first, we need to get you back home and warm. Then we need to brush this rat’s nest you call hair. I had hope for you this morning after our shower, but this afternoon brings with it the dashing of my dreams. You’re a mess. Who’s your hairstylist anyway?”
Viv giggled. “Take me home and I promise to dig my brush out.”
Jagger scooped her up in his arms, taking care to be as gentle as possible and, naked as the day was long, he carried her back to the van, where he put her in the passenger seat with great care and ordered Scar to get in beside her.
Derrick and Max followed with Jerry and Hector in tow, handing Jagger his clothes so he could dress.
There was a moment when she remembered the sight of Miranda’s body, still in bear form, a massive lump of brown with crimson spatters surrounding her body.
But she chose to look away, lifting her chin to instead peer out the window on the drive back to her cottage.
Scar snuggled her hand, his big, goofy head never far from her fingers, and Jagger kept looking to his right to check on her.
Derrick and Max wrapped blankets around her, and Jerry squeezed her shoulder with his usual compassion.
They were silent for most of the ride—despite a victory, a death had occurred, one she’d always remember with great sadness.
But when Jagger pulled into her driveway at the cottage, she sighed in relief. The timer on the Christmas lights had turned on, leaving that beautiful glow to welcome her.
This had become home.
She hoped to wash away the sadness of today with the beauty of the promises tomorrow held.
Chapter 12
Two days later, Viv sat on her couch, admiring Jagger’s handiwork.
“That’s some Christmas tree, Dr. Dubrov. I think you might have missed your calling. Thanks for doing this, seeing as I’m broken.”
The tree glowed with starry lights and fat, round ornaments in all colors. They’d strung popcorn and made row after row of garland with the kernels mingled with cranberries.
Jagger pressed a kiss to her lips before handing her a cup of coffee laced with whiskey, which helped the pain of her three cracked ribs, sprained ankle, endless cuts and bruises, stitches in her forehead, and a sore jaw.
He sat down next to her on the edge of her couch and smiled. “I’m a man of many talents. It can’t be denied.”
As they sat, soft Christmas music playing in the background, lights glowing from the tree, and Scar and the cats curled next to her small fireplace on the hearth, she knew it was time to finish up the conversation they’d been avoiding.
The elephant in the room was still Miranda. He’d briefly explained Miranda’s role in his life as he’d hovered while the local doctor wrapped her ribs and cleaned her wounds.
Miranda had been a vet tech at the practice Jagger had left.
But he hadn’t said much more, and she hadn’t pressed because just breathing at the time was a chore.
“So let’s talk. I’m not much for keeping things bottled up and I don’t get the impression you are either. Tell me about Miranda.”
He sat forward and let his head hang for a moment before he said, “I told you that night, she was a vet tech at the practice I worked for. But she always seemed a little off. She was, as you know, pretty great looking. Milo, my boss, was blown away by her, maybe even a little infatuated with her sunny personality and good looks. So he hired her.”
That made sense. Tiffany/Miranda had sucked her right into her vortex of charm with the ease of a sociopath.
“So this relationship she had with you really was all in her mind?”
“She’d made her interest clear from the start, asked me out, but I ignored it for the most part. I was at the point in my life where I was done with New York, but still coming to grips with it. It wasn’t the right time for me to be involved. She was a nice woman at first. Good with the animals, efficient. There was always just that something…something I couldn’t pinpoint.”
Running her palm over his wide back, Viv pulled him back against her chest, fighting a hiss of pain to wrap her arms around his shoulders and rest her cheek on his head.
“So you sensed something, and your refusal to date her agitated her?”
Jagger let go of a sigh. “It did. The more I avoided, the more she was in my face. She’d do all sorts of things just shy of bringing me a mixed tape. She made cookies for me at regular intervals because she knew I loved white chocolate macadamias. She left me notes of encouragement if a pet didn’t make it through a surgery. She left me voice mails on the regular. Then one day…”
Viv squeezed his arm. “You don’t have to if this is too much, Jagger. I think I get the gist. I just didn’t know how to connect the dots between her making someone turn her into a shifter for you. But it can wait.”
“No. Let’s just get it done. I don’t want there to always be questions in your mind about her. Miranda found out I was a shifter quite by accident. Apparently she’d been spying on me at my house in Brooklyn. She’d set up some kind of webcam and she caught me on camera shifting. There aren’t a lot of places to shift in New York, so for the most part, I’d take ski trips up north on long weekends to find some freedom to roam, but sometimes, just because the urge got away from me, I’d do it in my house.”
Viv stiffened in horror. Miranda had been more mentally disturbed than she’d realized. “I’m guessing she confronted you?”
“She did. She said she was going to tell everyone if I didn’t go out with her. And I, before I knew how unstable she was, told her she was crazy. I don’t regret anything as much as I regret that damned statement. I’ll have to live with it forever.”
He tensed beneath her hands before gripping them in his.
“How could you have known she was that disturbed?”
“It doesn’t matter now. But she had proof—viable proof I was a shifter. Proof I worried about for a long time. Still, I told her there was no way I was going out with her. She fired back with something along the lines of how it was just as well because I disgusted her. She went from one heightened emotion to the next during our conversation, but I ended it after she said that. The next day, I was handing in my resignation anyway, even with the proof she had, I just wanted away from her.”
“Weren’t you afraid she’d give you up to someone? Tell someone what she’d seen?”
Jagger shook his head with a rasping sigh. “We have people who deal with that. Someone was sent in to steal the video from the webcam and eradicate all traces of it completely.”
“You have people?” Good to know there were paranormal cleaners, so to speak.
“We do. It’s rare they’re necessary, and they’d never have hurt Miranda, but it had to be done…”
“So no more contact from her after that?”
“Once or twice over the course of these last months, always tear-filled and apologizing for calling me disgusting, wanting to know how I’d gotten my hands on the video. So I changed my number, moved here, and heard from Milo she’d quit. I never thought it would come to this. I’ve never killed.”
Jagger had his own burdens to bear over Miranda’s death. She knew it pained him. She’d saw it in his eye
s as he cared for her when he thought she wasn’t looking.
“There was no choice in the matter, Jagger. It was her or you—us. I won’t shower you with praise because I know you hate it, but it was kill or be killed. She was out of control She killed your best friend and his wife.”
“I spoke to an old friend of my folks last night about how helpless I felt when I realized this was someone I knew, but couldn’t smell. Not even Max or any of the others could smell her. I worried I wouldn’t be able to identify something like this in the future. I couldn’t smell her on the bites on Mookie or Levi. It bugged the hell out of me. But my contact says a shifter bear born of a bite can be volatile, unpredictable—or so legend has it, which explains her erratic behavior. Not to mention, they lack a defining scent. So I was lucky I caught a whiff of Kamchatka at all. I couldn’t pinpoint the rest because Miranda was, in essence, created. Sometimes, that leaves a big biological mess. I’ve heard of it happening through stories we’re told throughout childhood, but I never thought I’d see it up close like that…” His jaw clenched then, clearly unable to say any more.
“And it’s over now. Now it’s over,” she whispered against the top of his head.
Jagger stiffened. “Dale and his wife…I didn’t even know they were back from Nigeria. I wish…”
“That’s because she texted you as Dale. You couldn’t have known what she was capable of—how far she’d steeped herself in this madness, Jagger.”
“Dale was a good guy. He’d have done anything for Marie. I can’t even imagine what they suffered.”
The anguish in his tone tore at her heart. “At least the authorities have been contacted so they’ll have a proper burial,” she whispered.
Max had placed an anonymous call to the police in Brooklyn with the whereabouts of Dale and Marie’s bodies so there’d be no investigation of Cedar Glen and Jagger, and Miranda had no family to speak of to contact.
Somehow, that felt like a gift in light of her tragic demise. No parent or sibling should ever have to live the rest of their days with the kind of horror Miranda had created.
He and Max, Derrick, Hector, and Jerry had buried Miranda’s body, marking her grave with flowers and a small service provided by one of the other pack members.
Because he’d said he couldn’t stand to leave her out there in the woods all alone with no one to remember her. Because that was the kind of man Jagger was.
The kind of man she was rapidly falling in love with.
His silence prompted her to ask about his parents. “So did you get in touch with your mom and dad?”
Jagger tilted his dark head up and looked her in the eye. “Finally. Those two are killing me. They’ll be here for Christmas. How do you feel about meeting the wandering Dubrovs?”
“Are we at the stage where you introduce me to your parents already? Wow. You move fast, buddy.”
He winked and grinned. “It has been a week and a half. In bear-shifter time we should be married and planning our first child by now.”
Viv chuckled despite the twist in her ribs and outlined his lips with her fingertip. “Oh, fine. I’ll meet them if I have to,” she teased.
“Good to know. Now, word of warning.”
“About?”
“The Dubrovs are Christmas fanatics. It’s all Christmas, all the time from the day after Thanksgiving on. Lights, color, sound, movies, sleigh rides, tubing, ice-skating, ugly Christmas sweaters, presents, more food than twenty families can eat combined.”
“Ohhh, I can’t wait!” She could use a bit of Christmas cheer. She’d been a little weepy since that afternoon, missing her parents and wondering what her first holiday without them would be like.
“Glad to hear it, because…”
Viv tilted her head in question, her eyes narrowing. “Because what?” she asked suspiciously.
He held up a large hand with three fingers upright. “Because three, two, one.”
Her doorbell rang, making Scar sit up and yawn and the cats all stand at attention.
Jagger sat up and twisted around. “I think I’d better get that,” he said on a grin, dropping a kiss on her lips before rising to answer the door.
He opened it with a flourish and two people poured in. People who looked suspiciously like Jagger. And true to description, they were all lights, sound, and food as they dropped three bags each on her floor and waved, big, welcoming grins on their faces.
“Mom, Dad! Glad you could make it!”
Jagger’s mother, a robust woman with hair as dark as her son’s, threaded with gray and cut in a pixie, threw her arms around him. She wore a Christmas sweater beneath her bulky jacket with a big snowman on it, surrounded by bluebirds in reindeer antlers.
“I’m so happy to see you, honey! Your father and I were worried sick when you told us what happened. We can’t wait to get to know Viv and help you get her right back on her feet!”
Jagger’s father, tall and burly like his son, grabbed him up in a hug, clapping him on the back with a hearty slap. “Son! Merry Christmas!”
She looked down at her footie pajamas and up at Jagger peering over his father’s shoulder, and ran her finger across her neck, mouthing the words, “You die.”
Jagger’s mother turned to get her first long look of Viv, her smile wide. “You must be Viv! I’m Norma. It’s so good to meet you! Oh, you’re just as beautiful as Jagger said you were!” She held out her arms as Viv tried to slide off the couch to greet her.
“No!” She held her hand up before grabbing Viv’s, holding it near her heart. “Stay put. Don’t move a muscle. We’re here to help. Now, you just rest and I’ll go see about dinner. We have plenty of food. Melvin? Say hello to Jagger’s beautiful girl.”
Melvin reached down and scooped up Howie, who was chasing after his untied shoelace on his boot, and tucked him under his chin as he made his way across her crowded living room. He, too, wore a sweater matching his wife’s.
“Just like my Norma,” he said with a grin, gripping her hand and giving it a firm squeeze. “Pretty as a picture! Now you sit right there and we’ll fix you right up. We’ve got food, and movies, and all sorts of things to help you recuperate.”
Viv’s heart tightened in her chest as Jagger gave her a sheepish glance over the tops of his animated parents’ heads, but she smiled and held out her hand to him as his mother and father made their way into her kitchen.
He eyed her skeptically. “Is this a gesture of good will, or are you going to chew my arm off?”
“I’m in my pajamas, Dubrov.”
“That’s okay,” he whispered in her ear. “I’ll take them off you later and then you won’t be in your pajamas anymore.”
Her heart chugged and tightened in her chest. “At least I’m not naked this time.”
“Also a good thing.”
The tone in his voice roused her suspicion. “Because?”
He winced and bit his bottom lip. “Because in three, two, one.”
The doorbell rang again and Jagger ran to grab it before she had the chance to ask questions. When he opened it, he smiled at her and winked, letting the door fly open wide to reveal her parents, covered in snow, the wind whipping at their coats.
And that was when she knew there was no doubt in her mind. If she had the slightest niggle before, it was obliterated by this gift he’d given her.
Maude and Ben flew across the room, hopping over cats and Scar, giving her gentle hugs, her mother wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes with a tissue Norma handed to her.
As her parents were gathered up in the storm that was Melvin and Norma, off to get to know one another as they cooked, laughed, and drank a bottle of wine the Dubrov’s had brought all the way from the farthest regions of France, she had to wipe tears of her own away.
“Hey, now. No crying there, pretty lady. You’re already a hot mess. You don’t want to make it worse, do you?”
She eased with care off the couch and wrapped her arms around his waist, letting her
cheek rest against his chest. “You flew my parents here?”
“Damn. Is that why you’re crying? I thought you liked them. You want I should send them packing right back to where they came from?”
She barked a laugh amid the chaos, music and chatter filling the small cottage. “I don’t know what to say…”
Bracketing her face, he smiled. “No one should be without their family at Christmas, Crazy Cat Lady. I figured it’d be a nice Christmas surprise after a really rough week.”
“The best Christmas surprise ever,” she whispered, unable to say the proper words to express her joy.
“Even better than Skipper heads and ketchup?”
She poked him playfully in the chest. “Oh no, buddy. You’re not getting out of the Skipper heads. You owe me hazard pay.”
He shrugged his wide shoulders. “Ah, well. It was worth a shot.”
She rose on tiptoe, ignoring the pull in her ribs and kissed him softly. “Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Jagger pulled her closer.
They stood that way for a little while…
Listening to the sounds of their families getting to know one another.
Watching Scar, the BSB Boys, and JT tussle then snuggle down once more on the hearth in front of the fire.
And it was good.
So, so good.
Epilogue
The Following Year—Christmas Eve
“Jagger Dubrov, if this is like last year’s surprise and you didn’t warn me to change my puke-covered shirt before you gave me a surprise birthday party I spent the entirety of, smelling like the inside of an airplane bag, I’m going to wring your neck!”
She wore a blindfold and they were somewhere cold and windy after a ten-minute drive, wherein she’d demanded he tell her what was going on, and he’d laughingly refused.
It had been the most amazing year of Viv’s life, full of her and Jagger building his practice, falling in love, making plans, and laughing. There’d been so much laughter.
Moves Like Jagger (Wolf Mates Book 4) Page 11