by Renee Carr
Wild Temptations: The Holbrook Brothers Shifters
Book 1
Renee Carr
Contents
Wild Temptations
1. Christian
2. Libby
3. Christian
4. Libby
5. Christian
6. Libby
7. Christian
8. Libby
9. Christian
10. Libby
11. Christian
12. Libby
13. Christian
14. Libby
15. Christian
16. Libby
17. Christian
18. Libby
19. Christian
20. Libby
21. Christian
22. Libby
23. Christian
24. Libby
Epilogue - Christian
Author’s Note
A Little Bit of The Dragon and the Singer
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
© Copyright 2019 by Renee Carr - All rights reserved.
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Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Wild Temptations
1
Christian
“Eric, grab the tackle box,” I yelled across the yard to my brother. “It would be a shame to go all the way out to Apple River Canyon State Park to fish, and have no tackle box.”
Eric gave the thumbs up, while my other brother, Brighton, shoved the last of the equipment into the back of the SUV. He stuck his head around the corner of the truck. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world. It’s not like tackle boxes and manufactured fishing gear have been around for all of time. You can catch fish the old-fashioned way.”
Eric shoved the tackle box into Brighton’s chest. “All right, when we get out there, I want you to sharpen the end of a stick and then spear the fish to death, using your all-powerful connection to nature.”
I chuckled as Brighton rolled his eyes, shaking his head and shoving the tackle box in the last empty spot. “All I’m saying is that we have more gear than most people take to live out in the wilderness for the rest of their lives. Remember the old days when we were kids? Dad would take us out camping and fishing, and we literally would have sleeping bags on the ground, a tarp in case it rained, one fishing pole each with a hook, we found our worms, we had to cook our own food, and start our own fire.”
We all climbed in the SUV, me in the driver seat, Eric next to me in the passenger seat, and Brighton in the back. I glanced in the rearview mirror as I put the keys in the ignition. “Yeah, and I fully remember that one time when it rained the whole way and I had never heard you complain so much in my life. Didn’t you get, like, pneumonia or something after that?”
Brighton sniffled, his forehead wrinkled. “Yeah, Mom never let Dad live that one down.”
Smiling, I put the truck in drive and pulled out onto the driveway heading toward the street. “You always were the baby. But hey, we’ll go easy on you this weekend since the trip is to celebrate you graduating from college.”
Brighton grumbled, but I knew he was glad to be back with us. He had accomplished something big, graduating with his master’s degree, something only two people had done in our family, Eric being the other. I took a different route. I never saw myself as the college kind of guy so since my father didn’t have to pay for me to go, he gave me the money to start my own sporting goods store. We didn’t have one in Galena, a town known for its rich history with President Ulysses S. Grant and the numerous opportunities to get out in nature and enjoy what was around us.
Since the whole family was well known in Galena, my sporting goods shop took off pretty fast. I had opened it when I was just 18 years old and made quite a few mistakes along the way, but it had turned into something that I was very glad that I had done. Eric was a photographer and had gone to art school to get his degree. Now all he did was take pictures, but it was what he loved so we all supported it. Just like the guys supported my shop, filled in working when I had an emergency, and celebrated the accomplishments that I had made. It was Brighton’s turn, his master’s degree in business accomplished with honors and intended for use with our father’s business.
The drive to Apple River Canyon State Park was something that we had done multiple times. It wasn’t very far from where we lived, and it was the best place to go for fishing and camping. We had gone there all our lives with our father, and our mother when she was alive. After her death, our father spent a lot of time with us there. I know he liked it there, but I also knew part of it was because he could barely stand to be in the house without her. Cancer was a bitch, and it drastically changed our family. Sometimes I think it was for the worst, with my father’s bout of depression after she had died, but it also brought us all closer together and years later, we were all thriving. We knew Mom would’ve been proud.
Eric turned in his seat, looking back at Brighton. “Now that you have that expensive piece of paper, what’s the next move?”
Brighton took in a long, deep breath and put his arms up on each side of the seat. “Well, I’m going to start working with Dad soon, really learning the ins and outs of the business. I figure, even if something happens along the way where I don’t take it over, I’ll know how to run one successfully. We all know Dad’s a business genius when it comes to that stuff. I mean, hell, he started the business in our garage and what do we have now, twenty-something stores? All across the country?”
Eric nodded. “True. So, if it doesn’t pan out with Dad’s company, what kind of a company do you want to start?”
Brighton shrugged. “I haven’t really given it much thought. I guess my whole life I just assumed I would be working with Dad.”
I snickered. “Well, if things don’t go how you think they are with Dad, you always have a place to work at the sporting goods shop. I’ll give you a free employee T-shirt and a baseball cap to go along with it. Hell, if you want to, you can just buy the thing off of me. I’ll go live it up on some island and drink alcohol out of coconuts. I always did like the idea of living life in board shorts.”
Eric scoffed, shaking his head. “Are you kidding me? You wouldn’t last on an island for two months. All that rest and relaxation, that’s not for you. You need to be in the country, close to the forest, so you can go bounce around and fish and explore like you always do when we’re out there.”
I smiled. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s nice to think about, though. I do have to say, island life wouldn’t last too long. I would explore the whole thing within three days and then be bored. I need a big piece of land with woods and forest, and a stream where I could stand in my waders just dangling my line, waiting for the fish to bite.”
Brighton wrinkled his nose. “You sound like Dad. He swears he’s going to retire one day and just build some small shack by the river and live there, eating whatever he catches.”
Eric and I glanced at each other and burst into laughter. “Dad definitely loves the outdoors but he also loves the food that the chef cooks at the house now. He would last maybe a month eating fish every day. He may be a fisherman, but he’s definitely not a hunter and not a cook. The best thing he ever did was hire that chef. We would’ve starved as kids, growing up on poorly made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
“If he remembered to buy the jelly,” Eric groaned. “I can remember at least a month straight that we ate nothing but crunchy peanut butter sandwiches. That’s when the intervention came. When our grandfather came over and said, hey, you gotta feed these boys more than peanut butter. Dad didn’t even realize what he was doing. He just was happy that we weren’t starving to death.”
We all laughed, our chuckles simmering out to a comfortable silence. “He did what he could. Personally, I think he could’ve done a better job at raising you two assholes, but he did what he could.”
Both of them looked at me and Eric punched me in the side. We laughed back and forth, driving along, talking about the future and the little town of Galena where we lived. It was a great town, very family-oriented, and even an artistic kid like Eric didn’t want to leave. He had a lot of dreams of traveling and big cities, but all his dreams always ended up right back here with us. Personally, I was more than happy where I was. I had my shop, I had my brothers, and I had my house, a big old farmhouse right on the outskirts of town that I had renovated with Dad.
The drive to the park seemed like it was over within minutes and we jumped out, pulling our packs on our backs and grabbing our stuff. We knew exactly where we were going, the same spot we always went right by the river. We had our insect repellent, our tents, and all our gear. Anything other than that, we didn’t need, not while we were out there.
By the time we got to our spot and set everything up, it was midday and the perfect time to go fishing. We had managed to find a spot years before, away from the hustle and bustle of the tourists that walked the trails. We assumed that one day somebody would find our spot, but nobody ever had. It was always exactly the same as we had left it the time before, with, of course, the addition of a few new shrubs.
Out in the river, the water raced around us, and the sun peeked down through the trees, warming our skin. For a moment I closed my eyes, listening to the rushing water, the swaying of the leaves, and the chirping of the birds. I felt like if I spent too long away from that place, I would go crazy, so it was always refreshing when I was able to get back. “I really do love it out here. I still don’t understand why we don’t do this all the time. We have more than enough weekends that we can head out here, even with me running the store. We should be down here once every other month, if not more.”
Eric set his fishing pole on the shore and grabbed his camera. “I have to agree. We should definitely be out here more often. Now that Brighton’s back, we can all be here. And he won’t throw a fit when he finds out we came without him.”
“You know I’m standing right here,” Brighton shouted out. “And I never threw a fit. Am I not allowed to be disappointed when I’m stuck in college and you guys are fishing?”
I chuckled and glanced back at him. “You’re allowed to be envious, but I’m also allowed to come down there and beat the hell out of you because you’re talking so loud, you’re going to scare the fish away. I don’t want to hear you complain when you’re stuck with the trail mix in the bottom of the bag that’s probably been in there since our last trip.”
Eric stood up straight and took a picture of Brighton pouting. He looked down at the screen of his camera and nodded. “This is definitely a keeper. It’s like the mascot to our weekends as brothers. Brighton’s pouting, Christian’s out in the middle of nowhere in his own mind, and I’m just snapping pictures.”
“I told Dad he should come,” Brighton said, shaking his head. “He said he had too much to do, and for us to enjoy.”
Eric snickered. “Yeah and he would have gone upstream about a mile just to get the hell away from us.”
"Or brought back the no talking rule," I laughed. "You remember that? He told us if we talked too much he was going to make us sleep right on the edge of the riverbed."
Eric shook his head, rolling his eyes. "Yeah, and wake up covered in mosquitoes."
Nodding, I pointed at Eric. "That's right. Luckily he was only half serious. Half as in he made us move out there at three in the morning and we were just about eaten alive by the mosquitoes. But we definitely learned our lesson."
The sound of our laughter echoed across the old bark of the trees that lined the riverbed. I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I was in my life, having almost everything I wanted. The only thing I was missing was someone special to share it with.
2
Libby
“Did you hear the patient in room 7B last night?” my best friend, Melissa, asked me as I sat on the phone talking to her. “I thought she was crazy at first, but then when I went in there, she just really liked to sing show tunes. She had severe anxiety and singing the show tunes made her calm down. She really didn’t want to have to take Valium or anything like that, so the doctor allowed her to sing.”
I cringed just remembering it. “Trust me, I heard it. I wish that I hadn’t heard it, but I did. There isn’t a single musical that isn’t ruined for me now. It’s all cool when you have a coping mechanism to deal with your anxiety, but if you are the worst singer to ever grace this earth, you should probably rethink your tactics. I hope she doesn’t have close-by neighbors.”
Melissa giggled. “Me too. Her husband just seemed to ignore it. I wondered if maybe he didn’t turn off his hearing aids. I would. Live my life in silence. Especially if that was my ultimatum. Godawful show tunes all the time or not hear anything.”
I chuckled, shaking my head. “I would definitely choose silence. The one good thing, though, was the fact that every time I felt like I was gonna fall asleep standing up, her singing woke me the hell up. It was like throwing cold ice water in somebody’s face.”
“At least the night shift is over, or the triple night shift,” Melissa grumbled. “I hate those shifts. When you have to do multiple ones in a row, and you end up just working straight through because we all know that shift change does not mean you’re done working.”
I yawned, leaning back against the wall for a moment. “Yeah, but that’s why I volunteer to work during the day shift too. It’s easier to stay on task and function when you don’t have to change over. I’ve kind of gotten used to taking naps in the doctors’ rooms. The beds aren’t the most fantastic but everything’s always clean. And I get to sleep in a bunk bed which I never got to do as a kid.”
Melissa laughed. “You’re the only person that I know that would pick up two extra shifts, just to avoid having to go home, and then get excited to sleep in a bunk bed.”
I shrugged with a smirk. “What can I say? I’m a child.”
Melissa laughed. “You are pretty much the furthest thing from a child that I know. You take care of everyone, except yourself, of course.”
“Speaking of, it’s the middle of the day and I should probably get some lunch going,” I said, looking down at my scrubs. “And change my clothes.”
“All right,” Melissa said with a yawn. “I’m going to take a nap. And then I’m going to get up, eat something unhealthy, watch some ridiculous television, and then go back to sleep. I’m not in for another 48 hours.”
With a smile, I stood up and walked into the kitchen. “Don’t exert yourself too much. We wouldn’t want you hurting yourself.”
“That’s a promise,” she laughed. “I’ll talk to you later.”
I hung up the phone with a smirk and walked over to the window, looking down at the backyard. My mother was down there, her dark hair shimmering in the sunlight, wheeling herself around in her wheelchair near the gardens. We had put a patio in that extended down to the garden path, to allow her to be in her favorite spot. She was always out there, anytime she had the chance. Looking down, I picked up a picture of my father; it was a picture of him and me when he had taken me on a fishing trip one time, in the national forest. It was one of my favorite memories and I felt a pang in my heart missing him. There was no feeling in the world comparable to your father just disappearing and never finding anything out about where he went. It was a cross between sadness and
fear.
Part of me envied Melissa, knowing that she was going to go curl up in her bed and sleep with no stress. I was happy that I got out of the conversation without her giving me a lecture about not sleeping. I should go lie down, but I had far too many things to do to go to sleep during the middle of the day. The laundry had gotten backed up, I had dinner to make, and bills to take care of. Melissa had always gotten on my case for not taking care of myself, but I think she was starting to understand that whether I wanted to be carefree and asleep or not, it really wasn’t up to me. I had to do what I had to do.
With a sigh, I turned around and grabbed the empty laundry basket, walking down the hall into the laundry room. Setting it on the shelf, I bent over and began to take the clean laundry out of the dryer, one piece at a time. Believe it or not, that was my thinking time, folding the clothes and letting my mind just run through all the things that it had been compiling through the course of the week. At work I didn’t have time to think about any of those things. I worked in the ER and even though it was a small town, we were the only hospital for miles. Our emergency room was constantly full. It was part of the reason why I took the job there to begin with. I liked the constant go, the ability to not think for a while.
In fact, while Melissa was off for the next 48 hours, I had picked up a shift for that night. I knew that I would be tired, but it was robotic to me. I would kick into gear as soon as I walked in the door and the adrenaline started running. In the meantime, I needed to get the laundry done and dinner on the stove. I wanted to make sure that dinner was ready so all that my mother had to do was heat it up. She was more than capable of doing those things, or most of them, but I liked to know that she was taken care of. It took the stress off of me while I was away.