by Dani April
Sarah had impressed him and touched him. Most females, especially human females, would have been after him to spill the beans and nagged him until he provided all the details. They would have misunderstood his pain for a reluctance to share with them. Sarah was surprisingly connected with his feelings though, and the soft comfort of her small hand held inside his much larger one was all he needed to feel strong and make the painful memories recede into the background.
“I was here with my mate,” he said, feeling a need to talk to her all of a sudden.
“You have a mate?” Sarah started to flinch away from him.
He squeezed her hand and kept her in place. “Had,” he corrected himself. “She’s dead.”
“Lance, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s been almost ten years now. We were both very young.” Lance realized he should have told her he was over it, that he had been strong and gone on with his life, should have tried to show off his macho cowboy image for her benefit. With another woman that might have been necessary, but not with Sarah. Though they had not known each other very long, she seemed to have the ability see past his external façade down to the emotions that made him tick, and for better or worse made him the man who had come to New York to find her.
“We were on our honeymoon when we came to New York,” he began to open up to her.
“Was she…” Sarah didn’t know how to continue, but Lance knew what she wanted to ask.
“She was a shifter like me,” he told her. “Most of us don’t get married. We think it’s an old-fashioned, strictly human institution. But my mate and I were childhood sweethearts. She had been in my life ever since I could remember. First we were friends. When we got older we became lovers. The marriage vows seemed like an emblem of our love for each other. So even though there was a lot of grumbling in the pack we drove into town and said the words. Then we were off on a wild adventure to see the world together. The first stop was here in New York. Later we flew over to Europe and saw London and Paris and the south of France.”
“It sounds beautiful.”
“It was. We were very happy.”
Sarah seemed to be thinking on something and brought up her courage to ask him whatever was on her mind. “Was it just the two of you?”
Lance nodded that it was. “If she had met another mate and wanted to bring him into our relationship, I would have gladly accepted that. Since she was a shifter female living in the middle of a wolf pack mostly dominated by males it probably would have happened if we’d been given enough time, and I have every confidence she would have chosen good men to bring into the relationship with us.”
Lance looked out at the waves and the slightly overcast summer sky above them. “It was a day much like this one the last time I was on the Boardwalk,” he mused. “And I was with a beautiful woman that day, too.”
The emotions that were coming back to him were painful, but Sarah kept holding his hand and somehow he sensed there was healing bundled in with the pain. He had needed to have this conversation with someone for a long time, and it felt good to finally be talking. But until he met Sarah he had not trusted anyone well enough to open up.
“The two of us had less than a year together after we were married, and she was pregnant when I lost her.” Lance stopped and looked down at Sarah’s understanding and accepting eyes as he came to the horrible part of the story.
“Oh my God. How did she die?”
“She was murdered by humans.” Bitter bile rose in his throat. “That’s why I still hate humans to this day.”
Chapter Thirteen
They had dinner at a pier-side restaurant on the Upper West Side and sat outside under a table umbrella to enjoy the warm summer air. Overhead the skies above the skyscrapers were turning a bright orange as dusk was approaching. Out on the Hudson River boats were slowly making their way past.
Sarah had said little after Lance’s revelation about his wife. She had almost cried but now knew the reason behind his serious and sometimes forbidding exterior.
His story had taken all the air out of her sails. The last time he had walked the streets of this city it had been with a woman who loved him, who wanted to bear his children and have a life together. Now he was only with her, and she was a poor substitute. About all she could offer him was friendship and understanding, and compared to what he had lost that wasn’t much at all.
Lance was such a smart, capable man who had so many gifts and such passion inside. He deserved a far better fate than the one life had laid out for him.
“Hunters shot her.” Lance filled in the blank spots on his wife’s death. “They thought she was a wolf. She was out for a run on pack land, and the hunters who were trespassing thought they were protecting themselves from a she wolf who had wandered into camp by mistake. Damn humans,” he swore under his breath. “The hunters were never punished under the laws of humans because as far as the world knew they had just killed a wolf and not my wife and unborn baby.”
“I’m a normal human, Lance,” Sarah reminded him. “I hope you don’t hate me.”
Lance sighed and took a sip of the beer he had ordered. “No. I seem to have made an exception in your case.” He reached out to her across their table and grabbed her hand, giving her fingers a squeeze. “Thanks for listening to all my bullshit, Sarah. Believe it or not it’s really felt good to unload all of this. Normally I’m not very good at sharing my feelings.”
She covered his hand with her free one and gave him a squeeze back. “Thanks for trusting me enough to let me in.”
“You know, Sarah…” He looked down to the table. When he looked back up she noticed how expressive his sad eyes were, and her heart swelled from a mix of emotions. “It’s rare for a male shifter to meet two women he wants to mate with in his lifetime. When I lost my wife I thought I would never feel that spark inside me again. Until last week when I saw you standing in the Circle T corral, I thought a part of me was dead also.”
“I thought we were both life-hardened pragmatists,” she told him, but there was a frog in her throat. “You and I aren’t supposed to be romantic, Lance.”
Lance gave a melancholy laugh. “Romantic is about the last thing anyone who knows me would ever accuse me of being.”
“Since we can’t be romantic, can we be friends instead?”
“I don’t have many friends, and the ones I do have aren’t human.”
“You made an exception and decided not to hate me. Why don’t you make another one and be my friend? I don’t have many friends either, and I think you’d make a nice one.”
Sarah wasn’t sure she was being entirely honest with him or with herself in her declaration of friendship. She suspected there was a lot more in the offer than just the friendship itself, and she knew Lance read her well enough to see through her lame attempt at trying to extend their relationship.
In the past she’d had a few guys in her life who were strictly friends and nothing more. But she’d never felt the chemistry with them that she had felt with Lance from the start. Friendship was a nice place to begin however, and damn it, if only she could get one of these stubborn shifter cowboys to move to the city they might be able to have so much more together out of life.
“You know we’re kidding ourselves, don’t you, Sarah?” Lance asked in a rough voice. “I’m going back to the Circle T on Monday and not likely to ever head back up this way again. I’m not very good with phone calls or writing letters or sending texts and e-mails, and don’t look for me on Facebook because you won’t find me there.”
“But it doesn’t have to be that way,” Sarah protested.
“I don’t know any way around it.”
Sarah’s mind worked overtime to think of an alternative. “Okay, so you don’t like the city,” she admitted. “But I did like the Circle T. Maybe I can get out there to see you all from time to time.”
“You wouldn’t like it for long,” he told her directly and took another swallow of his beer. “All t
hree of us want you. We don’t want to be your friend. We want to be your mate. We want to fuck our pups into your belly and grow old together.”
Sarah exhaled out of frustration and put her hand up to her forehead to swipe back some falling hair on her brow. “Yeah, and I’ve already slept with two of you and got a painful bite on my shoulder as a result. I think you’re right. We should all just forget about each other and move on with our lives.”
He held her stare. She could see as well as sense a fountain of lust building in him and between them. Though they didn’t physically touch she could feel a current of electricity sizzle across their table. She was glad she had ordered nothing stronger to drink than a diet soda because she knew she was going to need her head about her before the night was over.
“I want you to spend the night with me, Sarah,” he said in a husky voice that was full of meaning and more command than request.
* * * *
“I’m not going to sleep with you tonight, Lance,” she told him for the third or maybe fourth time since they’d left the pier-side restaurant. He had lost count.
Lance knew he was a little out of touch with women, but he didn’t think he had misinterpreted the signals coming from Sarah. Not to mention he was a shifter with heightened olfactory senses and he could smell the arousal seeping between her legs and knew her panties were already wet for him.
“I know you want to.” He didn’t argue with her. He merely stated a fact.
“If you bring into this what I want then I’m going to lose the battle.” Sarah laughed. It didn’t seem like she was objecting too hard to the idea of what would probably amount to a one-night stand between them. After all, they both knew sex wouldn’t change anything in the morning. It would just feel good tonight.
They were strolling through Greenwich Village. It was Saturday night after dark, and the streets were crowded with carefree people out to have a good time. For once Lance didn’t mind all the people around him. He had Sarah walking at his side, and even though he was going to lose her in a day he would take the moments he was given with her and relish them.
All the other couples they passed on the street were holding hands so Lance ventured down to pick up Sarah’s in his. She did not pull away, and they walked hand and hand and let the streets pass them by in no hurry to get anywhere. Lance didn’t care if they just walked the streets all night. He wanted to be with Sarah anyway he could have her. For those few minutes he felt like he had returned to the world of the living, and he wasn’t going to surrender this newfound happiness without a fight.
“Where are we going?” she finally broke down and asked him after they had paced off a dozen blocks.
“I don’t know the city. I don’t even know where we are right now. But any place I can spend time with you is where I’m headed.”
“There’s a pretty good jazz and blues club down the street.” Sarah looked up at him uncertainly. “Are you into jazz?”
“I am tonight.”
Sarah tried paying for the cover entrance fee, but he pushed her money aside and put it all on his gold card and started a tab for their drinks.
The place was jam-packed, but Lance tipped one of the staff with a couple twenty-dollar bills, and after ten minutes a quiet table in the back was cleared for them. It was dark, and two flickering candles in the middle lit their faces.
Lance supposed the entertainment up on the floor was good, but he hadn’t come here to listen to music. Sarah’s face glowed orange from the tiny flames dancing on their tabletop, and she had never looked more pretty or desirable to him. He made up his mind that moment he was going to have her that night even if it killed him in the process.
“You haven’t exactly been fair to me today, Sarah,” he said as he watched the rise and fall of her breasts under her pink top and craved the wonders that were hidden beneath.
“Why do you say that?”
“I’ve bared my soul to you. Yet I still don’t feel I know you at all.”
This seemed to make her shy. “Nothing in my life compares with your experiences, Lance.”
“You mentioned a bad relationship. Why don’t you tell me about that?”
She looked down at the tablecloth. Clearly this was not a topic she wanted to broach with him, and he doubted she had discussed it much with anyone else. In most things Sarah was open and adventurous, fun loving, and the most congenial companion a man could hope to find in a woman. But when it came to talking about that one particular relationship in the past, she was closed tighter than a drum, and he didn’t think she had let any sun illuminate those memories in a long while.
“There’s nothing to tell really,” she dissembled.
“Why don’t you tell me anyway,” he insisted.
“It was two years ago, and I was engaged to be married. My guy and I were going to have a big spring wedding.”
“So what happened? Was this man a jerk? Did he do you wrong?”
“No.” Sarah shook her head. It was obvious from the reddening of her face that she really didn’t want to talk about this and was having a hard time with what little she was able to say. “He was a decent man.” She let it drop at that and didn’t say anymore for a while as the jazz music soothed them both to quiet.
Lance wasn’t going to push her, but he wanted her to share with him, thought it would be an important connection for the two of them. Finally after she spent a few minutes enjoying the saxophone on stage and nursing her wine cooler, she turned back to him.
“You still want to spend the night together?” she asked out of nowhere, and he could see what she was trying to do. A distraction at this point would make the pain go away.
“We two only have a short time together, and after that we know we’re not going to see each other again. I want to spend that time getting to know everything about you so I’ll have a clearer memory to take home with me.”
Sarah wiped a tear off her cheek. “I’m going to tell you my silly story, but after that I’m not going to want to be alone.”
* * * *
The quiet corner Lance had gotten them in the back made Sarah feel as if they were the only two people inside the club, as if it was their own private place. The surroundings were so cozy, and the candlelight so relaxing that she felt her guard dropping with him and knew he was a friend who was safe to talk to.
She knew without question she and Lance were going to go to bed together that night. Fight against it as she might, when he had stepped into her apartment that morning, it had become a forgone conclusion. No longer was it a question of if but only when. There was no reason to fight against the inevitable. She had three men who were all trying to woo her. They were all pretty great men at that, and tonight she felt like Cinderella. Only thing is come Monday morning the fantasy would end and she’d be thrust back into the real world, the men would leave, and the relationships would be over. No one was telling any lies here, and sometimes the truth hurt.
In the interim she was going to enjoy what she had and if possible let it heal her.
“My fiancé was from a very old east coast family. They were very religious and had strong political views. I on the other hand come from a family that doesn’t go to church very often, and doesn’t really understand or care about politics.”
“If this man left a beautiful woman like you, Sarah, for those reasons, then he must have been very weak,” Lance interrupted her. There was a scowl on his face. He was on her side 100 percent, and he was angry for her. She reached out and touched his hand indicating he should let her finish, but felt grateful for his unwavering support.
“He fought his family for me, told them he loved me and he didn’t care if I graduated from a community college instead of an Ivy League. His parents grudgingly gave us their blessing, and we set a date for our wedding. We lived in his apartment together on the Upper West Side. We were happy and we were in love. Since his family was traditional, we had to do everything by the book as far as planning for the wedding went, and i
t kept getting postponed for one reason or another.”
Sarah swatted at another tear that tickled her cheek as it made its way down her face. Seen from the distance of two years, her breakup with her fiancé seemed inane, just one of those things that happened to people as they live their life. Why she had let it sidetrack her for two years she couldn’t say, but knew it was more an indication of her own internal weakness than anything her fiancé had done to her.
“Anyway, one time the minister was on vacation,” Sarah continued. “The next time the church was going to be in use. The third time his best man was out of the country. Finally after the fourth postponement, we didn’t set a new date. We were growing apart. The differences in our past lives were coming out.” Sarah smiled and took a sip of her wine cooler. “He had promised to take us to a dude ranch out west. We thought maybe that time alone together could reignite the spark between us that had been there when we first met. We never got to take the trip, but that’s where I got the idea to ask my travel agent to book me a cabin at the Circle T.”
“At least something good came out of it,” Lance commented and gave her a smile which was rare for the tough cowboy. “And you got on with your life.”
Sarah shook her head. “No, I haven’t done a good job on that front.”
“You met three cowboys who are crazy about you and would do just about anything to get you to share their bed at night,” Lance countered.
Sarah allowed a smile to light her face. “You men aren’t exactly what I’d call getting on with my life,” she corrected him kindly. “I still want to have a family and a house in the suburbs and the whole bit. That dream’s just on hold for a while until I meet the right person.”
“There are three men who want to make your dreams come true if only you’d let them, Sarah.”
She didn’t want to have this discussion with him again. She just gave him a sad smile and kept her silence.