BEASTLY LOVE BOX SET: Romance Collection

by Lindsey Hart

  “Owen? Where are you going? You’re not scheduled to leave for days yet.”

  Owen barely managed to keep his seething anger in check. He was amazed that when he spoke his voice was entirely controlled. “I heard everything. I’m not going to stay around, and be used a second time. I might have been stupid enough to fall for it once, but it’s not going to happen again.”

  Maren’s face fell. She looked absolutely devastated and the fact that it mattered to him made him even angrier. “That’s not how it went, Owen. We both know that.”

  “No… no, you don’t get to speak for me,” he growled. His hand gripped the handle of his suitcase so hard the leather bit into his palm.

  “Hettie might have her opinion, but it was never my intention to use you like you think. I know what it must sound like, but I swear, I was never going to ask you to invest or to be a partner. At least, not like you think. I would have told you, eventually, but I was going to leave the decision up to you. At least I thought so at first. Now that we- uh- it would have been complicated. Please believe me, Owen, I would rather lose this place than hurt you.”

  He wanted to laugh, not the cheerful kind either, the derisive, bitter sound would have been far more correct. “You can say whatever you want, Maren. It doesn’t matter one bit. You don’t matter one bit. So, we slept together? So, what? It doesn’t mean anything.”

  His words cut deep and hurt flickered over her face. Her eyes flooded with tears and he hated himself. “I- Owen- I’ve- I’ve felt something for you from the first day I met you. All those years ago. I’ve always cared.”

  This time he did laugh, and the sound was absolutely horrible, even to his own ears. It shattered Maren and when she blinked, the tears streamed down her cheeks in silvery lines. “You’re just the same as Chelsea was. You were her best friend. Why should I have expected any different. I should never have come back here. Your feelings have no bearing on reality.”

  “Owen- I- I love you.”

  That set him back on his heels. He let his suitcase fall from his hand. It hit the floor with a dull thud that seemed to echo through the silent house. “Love? Are you insane? Love doesn’t mean anything. It’s a fairy tale and a fantasy. I don’t believe in it and you, you definitely shouldn’t either. There isn’t anything about me to love.”

  “Owen, please!” She moved closer, reached out to touch him, but he pulled away, fearing her hand as though it was a viper. He couldn’t let her through him. One gentle touch could undo everything he believed. It could soften even the hardest of walls around his heart and he knew it. He had to leave.

  He grabbed up his suitcase, turned and threw the heavy front door open. It had a stopper on the other side that it banged against. Maren trailed behind him, like the foam the waves brought in. it remained on the beach, lonely and forlorn.

  His car was waiting for him in the same parking spot he’d left it. He threw open the door and slammed his suitcase into the passenger seat. He started it and it roared to life with a sound that was absolutely satisfying. He tore out of the spot, promising himself he wouldn’t look back.

  Of course, he did. Maren was there on the porch, looking for all the world like a broken fairy or a shattered goddess. She was leaning up against one of the wooden columns, her hair a red, unearthly glow about her face, her strange grey eyes haunted. It was the tears that he’d remember most, he knew. He could see them even as he drove away, even as she faded into the distance, those shimmering tears standing out wet and so very real on her porcelain cheeks.

  CHAPTER 13

  Owen

  Owen wasn’t sure why he expected to find joy anywhere, let alone back in Seattle. His old house was sold, the one he shared with Chelsea. He thought he would find a semblance of normalcy in his new home. It wasn’t a fresh start as he thought. It was filled with ghosts, though it was brand new. It was even emptier than before. He found out the hard way that it wasn’t the building that was the problem. It wasn’t any physical space. The problem was inside of him, his past, his memories.

  The house had five bedrooms. Why he’d bought a new construction with so many rooms, all of them empty save for the few pieces of furniture he’d amassed since he moved, he couldn’t say. It was just something he did. He had the money. He liked the neighborhood. It just made sense.

  Instead of being haunted by Chelsea’s face and memories from their shared past, he was now haunted by Maren. He dreamt of her at night. He saw her body, shimmering in the moonlight, her crown of hair illuminated in the silvery glow, her delicious, womanly body on display on the beach, standing there so confident, as though she really had just been born of the sea. He replayed that scene over and over. He’d thought that by going to Monterey he could banish his ghosts, but instead, he’d just exchanged them. Chelsea for Maren. She was with him wherever he went.

  There was no escape. How could one escape their own mind?

  Owen climbed into his king-sized bed at the end of a long day of meetings. He was exhausted. He hadn’t had a proper sleep since he left Monterey and it was showing. The deep purple smudges under his eyes were growing more pronounced. His secretary at work had asked him several times if everything was alright.

  Out of desperation, he’d brought a glass of whiskey to bed, hoping that would put him to sleep. A sleep in which he didn’t dream, a sleep that wasn’t haunted.

  He sipped back the glass, which he’d poured to the top. The amber liquid sloshed when he brought it to his mouth and tipped it. The first sips burned, but after that, the rest of the glass went down smooth.

  He’d hammered the entire glass back in a few minutes. He wasn’t even buzzed when he shut his eyes. He was so tired that sleep came easily. The blackness closed in right away. He didn’t fight it.

  I love you. Maren’s voice, so soft and calm and pleading, drifted through his brain, cut him to shreds. He wasn’t sure if he was sleeping or awake.

  All of a sudden, the darkness shifted. It wasn’t the black tide of sleep, but the black depths of water. He was sinking, struggling, his lungs filling up, burning, screaming for air. He was sinking, the undertow ripping at his swim shorts, tugging at his skin. He knew he was going to die.

  His vision closed off, blackness dancing around his head, his eyes, his entire body on fire, burning with the pain of a thousand stabbing daggers, burning, burning. It was strange how drowning felt so much like flames licking his skin.

  And suddenly she was there. Dainty arms closing around his chest, his shoulders, hauling him upwards. Those arms were so thin, so pale, but so strong. They were his hope and he floated with her, back up to the surface. The blackness closed in again and he felt nothing. He had the sensation that he was being dragged through the waves, the water sloshing over his head. He still couldn’t take a breath. Couldn’t open his eyes.

  Her voice echoed through his head, through his mind, ripped his soul to shreds. Hang in there. We’re almost there. The shore is so close. Just hang on. Stay with me. Owen. Stay here with me. Just a minute more.

  Maren’s voice. It broke through every single defense he tried to resurrect. His heart was as pain filled as his waterlogged lungs. She broke him and put him back together, sundered him to pieces and reassembled him.

  He felt nothing, nothing until he was suddenly awake on the shore, the sun warming his icy skin, coughing, retching up salt water, gasping for air, coming back to life. Her arms were around him. No, when he looked up into the face it wasn’t Maren at all. It was Chelsea. She had her arms wrapped around him, the dark tendrils of her hair only damp at the ends.

  The ends.

  Owen shot up in bed. His heart hammered so violently it was hard to breathe. He stared at the bedside clock. The glowing digits told him he’d been asleep for just over two hours. He’d knocked himself out with the whiskey, but it hadn’t kept the dream at bay. It came, with more lucidity than it ever had.

  He searched back in his memory, sure that the dream had lied. He must not have recalled correctly wh
at happened. The dream was different, clearer than all the rest. It was always Chelsea who saved him in his dream. But this time, it was Maren.

  He tried so hard to remember. And when he did, he realized he’d been wrong for years. He remembered, in stark detail, every single aspect of Chelsea’s face that day. Her clothes were soaked, but her hair was only wet at the ends. The crown of her head was dry.

  He remembered glancing over at Maren, who sat, chest heaving a few feet away. Like she’d just swam hard. For her life. Or rather, for his.

  “No. That can’t be true.” His words bounced around in the silent bedroom. His pulse jumped at his jaw. Blood surged through his veins, stunningly violent in intensity.

  All those years, he thought it was Chelsea. It wasn’t. It was Maren. My grandma used to say that I was part fish.

  Could Chelsea even swim? It suddenly made sense why she never wanted to go to the beach or even in the pool. He hadn’t seen her swim once since that day he’d assumed she’d saved him.

  Why hadn’t she said anything? She’d had every opportunity over the years to set the record straight.

  Maren as well could have told him that day, but she’d let silence rule. She’d saved his life and he’d never even thanked her.

  She’d told him that she loved him and he’d stood there and mocked her.

  Her silence spoke volumes. She’d sacrificed herself for her friend. She’d seen the way Chelsea looked at him. Maybe Maren was right and Chelsea had loved him at one time. Maybe she still did. Maybe people like her, people who were broken early on in life, always searching, searching for something they would never truly find, loved the best they could. Maren had said that about Chelsea. Maybe it was true. She’d seen her friend’s happiness, she’d watched them fall in love and she’d said nothing.

  She knew it would have ruined it for them if he knew Chelsea wasn’t the one who had saved his life. For him, that was half of what made him fall in love with her.

  Maybe it was me. Maybe I was the one who could never truly love Chelsea. Maybe she knew that and she got away, found someone who could.

  Maren had saved his life. He was sure of it. She hadn’t told him, even when it could have saved her Bed and Breakfast because she knew it would change his mind. She could have obligated him, in a way, to help her. He’d accused her of using him, or of trying to when she hadn’t done it at all. He should have listened to her when she was trying to tell him the truth. She could have called in a favor, knowing he wouldn’t turn her down. She hadn’t.

  She loved that place. That building was in her blood. Monterey was in her blood. It was all that she had left. Losing it would be like losing her one last remaining family member. It would be like losing all her memories, her grandma, her grandpa, hell, even probably her mother, all over again.

  She’d saved his life and he’d done his level best, unknowingly, to destroy hers.

  Owen threw back the covers. When his feet hit the floor, he was already running. He grabbed his cell off the charger in the kitchen and even though it was just past three in the morning, he dialed anyway. There were some calls he could make. He had favors of his own to call in. Maybe he still had time to change things.

  CHAPTER 14

  Maren

  The sun was just setting in the distance, a glowing orange ball of fire that seemed to dip into the very water itself. The glow was painted over the water’s surface, the sky blazing with wild streams of pink and purple, orange and red. Truly an artist’s pallet. The breeze was stiff and though Maren was cold, she didn’t go inside to get a sweater or to warm up.

  She’d stood, in the exact same spot where she’d dragged Owen from the water that day. Stood there for hours, staring off into the horizon. It had been weeks since he left. Weeks since she’d admitted her deepest secret, her love for him. Weeks since he told her it meant nothing.

  Maybe it didn’t mean anything. She could live with that. She just didn’t like the way he left. She couldn’t forgive herself for the fact that he felt that she’d used him. Slept with him just because she wanted something. She should never have let Hettie bring up the subject, but she thought that he’d been sleeping and once Hettie was off on one track, there was no getting her off of it. She honestly thought that even if Owen had overheard their conversation, that her refusal to indulge in Hettie’s plan would have spoken for itself.

  Clearly, she was wrong. She’d hurt him, wounded him in a way that she wondered if he’d ever recover from. The sharp sting of being the one to devastate someone else, even if it had been a misunderstanding, didn’t sit well with her.

  The crunch of leaves and the first muffled footfalls in sand brought Maren’s head around. She stared with bleary, watering eyes as Hettie shuffled onto the beach. The old woman smiled a huge, wrinkled smile and offered the knitted wrap that she had in her hand. She wore a matching wrap, in pink instead of blue like the one in her hand. Below that she had on a white blouse tucked into green pants, the kind with the elastic top. Her hair was done up in curlers with a shower cap placed over top. Maren wasn’t shocked at all to see her like that. That was just Hettie. It was evening, and she was probably just about ready for bed, but she’d seen Maren out there alone and had come out because she cared.

  Maren smiled back warmly. She didn’t blame Hettie. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Owen had been burned before and he was overly sensitive. He made what he wanted to out of the conversation and what had happened between them. She couldn’t change his mind and that’s all there was to it.

  “Thanks, Hettie,” Maren whispered. She slid the thick wrap over her neck. It was like a double shawl, with an opening for her head. It wasn’t knit well, there were stitches dropped all over the place and it wasn’t by any means symmetrical, but it was knitted by Hettie with love and that was all that mattered.

  “You’re out here all by yourself again. I’m worried about you, honey. I- I saw the for-sale sign go up this morning.”

  Maren sighed. She knew she would have to tell Hettie soon. She should have figured the old woman was far too wily not to notice it, even if it only had been a couple hours.

  “Yes, that’s right. It just went up. I signed all the papers this morning. Finalized everything.”

  “And if it sells? Where will you go then?”

  “It will sell eventually.”

  “I’m sorry, Maren. I’m sorry I came over that day and said anything at all.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” Maren blinked tired, dry eyes. “If he didn’t want to listen to the truth, there was nothing that I could have said that would have made a difference or changed his mind.”

  “There was one thing.”

  “I couldn’t tell him that. Not then. Not in the heat of it. I told him something else. I told him that I’ve loved him since that day.”

  Hettie’s gasp of surprise was so loud and pronounced Maren had to smile. “Yah. He didn’t want to listen to that. I don’t even know that he would have listened if I told him that I was the one who had saved him. He probably would have called me a liar and walked out the door.”

  “Or he might have listened.”

  “I wouldn’t have wanted him to listen to me or do me any favors just because I was the one who pulled him out of the water, not Chelsea.”

  “She can’t even swim.”

  “No, she could swim. Just not well. I swam out and I saw her coming and I told her to go back. It was why she was soaking wet. I reached him and swam with him. I was so scared that he had died already or that he was going to die before I got him to the beach.” She shuddered. “I was so exhausted when I got out. I dragged him up onto the sand and I started CPR. He wasn’t breathing. I kept going, refusing to give up. I was so tired though… Chelsea came to take over. Right as she reached him he took a breath. I let her have him. She turned him over, let him cough up all that water. She held him, soothed him. I just sat there and watched. And when he opened his eyes and looked at her… I’ll never forget the
way he looked at her. Or the way she looked at him. Chelsea never had anything in her life. She never had anything constant, never anyone to love her. I wanted her to have that. I couldn’t take it away from her.”

  Hettie shook her head sadly. “My god, child. She had you. You were her constant. You loved her. You were always her friend. You gave her a place to live, a place to work. You sacrificed your own heart for her.”

  Maren’s soft smile never faded. “Maybe. But maybe not. Owen chose who he wanted to love. It wouldn’t have made a difference who actually saved him.”

  “You say that now, but I can tell you it would have. He was enamored with her. He thought he owed her his life. I saw the way he looked at you when he was here. He was enchanted with you. It was like he was seeing you for the first time, seeing the one he should have been with. He recognized the connection you shared, that connection you’ll always have because you were the one who gave him his life back. Even if he didn’t know it.”

  “Oh, Hettie.” Maren sighed. The soft wool wrap rose and fell with her shoulders.

  “You could always come live with me you know.”

  “Thank you.” Maren looked right into the old woman’s kind eyes. “Thank you, really. I appreciate that more than you will ever know, but I’m going to leave. I just have to go someplace else. I don’t know where, just somewhere that isn’t here. I’ll be alright. I’ll call and send letters. I promise. Maybe I’ll even come back to visit, you know, make sure the new people are running the place right.” Hettie cackled at that and even Maren laughed softly.

  “Maybe you can find some nice place in a big city and I’ll be the one to come live with you. Get my old tired bones out of Monterey for the first time in my life.”

  Maren just kept on smiling. She crossed the sandy beach, her legs tired and wooden from standing in one position for so long. She knew that Hettie would never leave her house. It was special to her. Like Maren, it was a part of her, part of her blood and bones and her very marrow. It made her who she was, helped shape her.