by Edith DuBois
Rugged Savage Valley, Colorado 2
Rugged Return
Michelle Andrews needs a break. After years of catering to her sister’s every whim, she’s lost herself. So she drags her sister away from the country music limelight and heads for Savage Valley, looking to catch some hard-earned R&R.
What she catches instead are the hearts of charming bear-shifters Elias, Thomas, and Franklin Ashley. The brothers recognize something beautiful and good in Michelle, but they know she’s fragile. As they help her stand up to her sister and rediscover her strength, land-hungry NormCorp plans to unsettle the peaceful town.
But will NormCorp’s violent scheme expose Savage Valley’s most treasured secret?
Genre: Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Shape-shifter
Length: 56,916 words
RUGGED RETURN
Rugged Savage Valley, Colorado 2
Edith DuBois
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
RUGGED RETURN
Copyright © 2011 by Edith DuBois
E-book ISBN: 1-61034-919-9
First E-book Publication: October 2011
Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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DEDICATION
For anyone who has disappeared and then found herself again.
RUGGED RETURN
Rugged Savage Valley, Colorado 2
EDITH DUBOIS
Copyright © 2011
Chapter One
“Oh!” Her sister’s sudden exclamation made Michelle Andrews jump and jerk the steering wheel. The vehicle tilted in a stomach-lurching manner for a small moment.
Once she had regained control of the car, she glared at Marina in the passenger seat and sucked in a breath to stuff down the boiling anger. “Don’t do that when I’m driving, please.”
“Michelle, turn around.” Marina’s head craned around to look at something on the side of the road. “Turn around! Turn around! We have to go back.”
Michelle slowed the black Cadillac Escalade, alarmed by Marina’s panic. “What is it? Did you lose something?” They’d been riding with the windows down, so Michelle thought maybe something had flown out.
“Hurry. Pull over, Michelle!”
“I’m pulling over as quickly as I can. Give me one second.”
Marina beat on her door, impatient for the SUV to come to a halt. “Come on!” She looked at Michelle, annoyance written across her beautiful, doll-like features. “Pull over.”
“I am, Marina. I said give me one second.”
Marina rolled her eyes, huffed, and turned to look out the window. Before the Escalade came to a full stop, Marina opened the door and hopped down into the tall grass that edged Highway 40. They were on their way back from Denver, from an uncomfortable meeting with Marina’s therapist, and Michelle felt less accepting of Marina’s behavior than usual today.
After putting the SUV in park, Michelle climbed out of the driver’s seat to see if Marina needed help looking for whatever she had lost. Marina bounded ahead of her, and a passing semi blasted its horn. Michelle jumped, anxiety spiking inside her at the loud, disconcerting noise and the violent whoosh of air that smacked into her.
As she neared Marina, who searched determinedly through the tall grass, Michelle asked, “What are you looking for?”
Marina didn’t answer and kept swatting the grass out of her way.
“What is it, Marina?” Michelle halfheartedly poked at the grass, hoping that she would know what she was looking for when she saw it.
Marina put one hand on her hip and then used the other to wipe her long bangs out of her face. The wind from a passing car blew them right back in her eyes. After the car had passed, Michelle heard a small noise. Marina must have heard it, too, because she perked up and began her search anew.
“Marina, what exactly are we looking for?” Michelle had an ominous feeling in the pit of her stomach and began swatting at the grass again.
Then she saw it. Its furry, little body quivered and trembled, crouched low in the grass and looking up at Michelle with big, brown, take-me-home-please eyes. “Oh crap,” she whispered to herself. She squelched down her instinct to pick up and cradle the little thing in her arms. After Marina’s appointment, Dr. Brine had pulled Michelle aside. She’d said Michelle needed to work on subduing her motherly instincts, needed to rein in the urge to control everything and everyone. Looking at the little body in the grass now and keeping Dr. Brine’s advice in mind, Michelle said, “Tell me that this is not what you had me pull over for.”
Marina ran over, a look of excited expectation lighting up her already brilliant features. “Oh, did you find him?” She reached Michelle, squealed, and then scooped the wayward puppy up into her arms.
He had white fur with a dark-brown stretch of fur covering his eyes and part of his ears, making him look like a masked bandit. He
had one large brown spot on the right side of his ribs, and one black spot splashing over his butt and the base of his tail.
“You are so adorable,” Marina crooned. She touched his nose in affection with the tip of her finger, rubbed his ears, and lavished kisses all over his tiny shaking body.
“Marina, don’t. He probably has fleas and ticks and who knows what else kind of disease. Put him down. Come on. Let’s go back to the car.” She knew it sounded harsh, but she needed to get Marina away from the puppy before her sister’s pleas to take him home could change her mind.
“Hell no.” Marina pulled the puppy closer to her body, and then with a gasp, she began stomping through the grass again. “What if he has brothers and sisters?” she asked, stricken. “We have to make sure. We have to find them. Yes we do. Yes we do have to find them.” She had turned her attention back to the puppy and was speaking to him in a high-pitched, coddling tone. “You don’t want to be all alone in this big, bad world do you, little fella? No you don’t. I know.”
She rubbed him and kissed him. Michelle watched her with arms crossed, her irritation rising. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel sorry for the puppy. A puppy on the side of the highway was always sad. It was only that Michelle knew Marina. Even though she was completely smitten now when the puppy was helpless and pathetic and in dire need of a rescue, Michelle knew that tomorrow when he needed to go pee at four in the morning, Marina wouldn’t be the one hauling her ass out of bed to let him out.
“Come on, little fella. Let’s help Mama look for your brothers and sisters.” Marina moved through the grass.
“Marina, we’re taking him to the vet, and we’re leaving him there. We’re not taking him home.”
“How can you even say that? You know what they do to animals there when they can’t find a home for them.” She kissed the puppy again. “Don’t listen to your crazy Aunt Michelle. You know Mama would never let that happen to you. No, I never would. I’m going to protect you. I’m going to keep you safe from everything.”
A million retorts rose to Michelle’s lips.
You can’t even take care of yourself. What makes you think you can handle a puppy?
And what about feeding it? And bathing it? And making sure it gets its shots and checkups? It needs exercise and attention and so much time.
And when it poops on the floor, you’ll be too drunk to deal with it.
Michelle cringed at that last thought, despite the truth of it. She hated thinking of her sister as a drunkard, but after their meeting with Dr. Brine that afternoon, Michelle didn’t have the energy to deny it anymore. Despite all of these thoughts, she held her tongue. She kept her mean retorts inside. No matter what Marina did, Michelle harping on her wouldn’t solve any problems.
Taking a deep breath, she said, “I’m taking this dog to the vet, Marina. I know he’s cute and helpless, and you want to make sure that he’ll be all right, but we can’t keep him. Please don’t argue with me about this.”
Marina stopped her puppy talk and stood facing Michelle. There was a certain set of her shoulders and the way her chin jutted out ever so slightly that told Michelle her sister had made up her mind. “Michelle,” she said, her tone cautious. “I’m supposed to be taking on responsibilities of my own.”
So Dr. Brine’s words were on her sister’s mind as well, Michelle thought. She had wondered. Marina never said much about their appointments or the therapist’s request that Michelle attend every week. Today she’d stared out the car window from the moment they left the clinic, only once moving to change the radio station when one of her songs came blasting out of the speakers on a Top 100 Country Hits show.
“Please, Michelle. I’m asking for a chance on this. I want…” She struggled for a long moment, her features shifting, ephemeral and shimmering as she grappled for the right words. “I want to be better, Michelle. I want to feel better.”
A passing line of cars behind Michelle on the highway cut off the end of Marina’s sentence, but she knew what her sister had said. Michelle waited a long moment, waited until the traffic had passed and all was quiet between them.
Then she looked at the small, now-wriggling, body in her little sister’s arms. “Okay,” she said, her breath coming out in a defeated puff.
“Okay? As in okay okay? I can keep him?”
Michelle nodded and turned back to the Escalade.
Please let this work, she thought to herself as she trudged back through the grass. Please let this be the time.
* * * *
“Mr. Pecksniffian?” The blonde-headed receptionist working at the front office of the vet eyed the occupants of the lobby, waiting for Mr. Pecksniffian, or his owner at least, to speak up. Michelle watched a middle-aged woman lead a curmudgeonly miniature Schnauzer up to the front desk. The slim blonde peered over her desk. “Excellent,” she said. “Please wait in Dr. Ashley’s office. He will be with you shortly. Thank you.” Without further ado, the receptionist returned to her business at the computer, and Michelle settled back in her seat, disappointed that her name hadn’t been called.
She held the little rescue puppy in her arms, afraid to let him loose in the lobby. Marina hadn’t bought a leash for him yet. In fact, Marina hadn’t done much of anything for him yet. They’d found him on the road on Friday, and it was the following Monday. Michelle had gone through a weekend filled with irregular sleeping patterns, tamped-down ire at finding yet another puddle in Aunt Agnes’s kitchen, and chewed-on undergarments that Michelle had left in the basket to fold.
Michelle rubbed the little puppy between the ears. When she’d asked Marina what she wanted to name him, her sister had said, “We can’t rush it. It has to come to us,” and then she’d flitted off, leaving Marina to take him on an evening walk.
The one thing Marina had done was make the appointment with Dr. Ashley, and that was because Michelle had forced her when they got home with the puppy. The only opening was at eleven in the morning, and of course, Marina had overslept. Michelle didn’t feel like rousing the beast from her cave, so now here she was, waiting in the vet’s office with a nameless puppy that she hadn’t even wanted in the first place.
Michelle played with the nameless pup, teasing him by touching his nose or tickling his ears. His adorable eagerness took her mind away from troubling thoughts until the scrupulous Mr. Pecksniffian returned with his owner, nose poking high in the air and mustache a-quivering as he strode through the lobby. Michelle waited for the blonde to process Mr. Pecksniffian through, and she was about to announce the next patient when Dr. Franklin Ashley himself ambled through the door, one hand in his pocket and the other holding a clipboard.
“Miss Andrews, I believe you’re up next.” Dr. Ashley smiled at her.
Her stomach muscles clenched. Did he remember her? They’d met briefly a few weeks ago at a barbecue out at his house. Aunt Agnes had insisted they go. It was their first day in Savage Valley, and Michelle remembered being inordinately flustered most of the time, trying to get Marina up onstage and having to meet so many strangers at once.
Of course, out of everyone she’d met that day, she hadn’t forgotten the Ashley brothers—Elias, Thomas, and Franklin. She doubted any hot-blooded woman, or cold-blooded for that matter, could easily forget the awesome exhibit of man-body on ostentatious display in the Ashley brothers. And not only were they decadently attractive, but they were smart, rich, and welcoming on top of all that sexiness.
Michelle tried to squash down her nervousness as she gathered the puppy up to her chest and headed for the smiling man waiting for her.
“It’s so good to see you again, Miss Andrews.”
She smiled wanly, not sure how she should respond, especially when her initial reaction was to shove the puppy into the nearest bystander’s arms, wrap her body tightly around his, and bump up against him in a really fast way.
“Do you remember me?” he asked at her hesitation. “We met at the barbecue.” His smile wavered a tiny bit.
“Yes,
I remember.”
His smile jumped back to full wattage at her words. “Excellent. All right, well, if you’ll follow me.” He led her down the hall to a cracked-open door. Shoving it wide, he motioned her in. “This is my assistant, Becky.”
Another gorgeous assistant, Michelle noted to herself. This one had orangey-red locks pulled back in a low, curling ponytail, and despite her scrubs, it appeared she was in possession of quite a buxom figure.
“Hello,” the woman said, barely noticing Michelle.
“So who do we have here?” Dr. Ashley asked, taking the puppy from Michelle’s arms. His fingers brushed across her chest, and a ripple echoed across her flesh. She had to focus on not leaning into him and letting her whole body form to his. He gave the puppy an affectionate rub behind the ears before placing him on a metal table.
“So far, this is Nameless Puppy,” Michelle answered, speaking past the sudden husky rasp in her voice. “My sister found him on the side of the road, and I want—I mean, we want to make sure he’s all right and get him any shots he may need.”
“Good, good,” he said, checking the puppy’s vitals and muttering things to Becky to jot down on her clipboard. After taking the puppy’s blood sample, he handed it off to Becky. “Run this through. After we know how old he is, go ahead and begin preparing his first round of shots.”
“Sounds good,” the gorgeous woman purred up at the doctor. As she swished by Michelle, a wave of tropical, fruity perfume hit her in the nose.