Creatures of Habit: Chosen Book 27

by J. D. Light

  Copyright © 2019 J.D. Light

  Edited by Ann Attwood Editing and Proofreading Services

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Next Up in the Series:

  Meet all my books!

  Chapter One

  I readjusted the arm wrapped around my throat and smirked, as yet another set of arms wrapped around my legs, while I continued to work on the speaker I was installing in the main area of the daycare.

  I cringed when a fist flew through the air and nearly got me in my no zone when a spinning bundle of coordination spun a little too close, and I stepped out of the way until he passed.

  "Alright," Wynn said as he came into the room, hands on his hips and lips pursed. "You guys are supposed to be outside burning off some of this energy on the playground. You can't climb all over Mr. Donovan like that. He'll stop coming to help me all the time."

  He reached out, peeling the kid with the stranglehold from off my back, and setting it on the ground before doing the same to the two wrapped around each leg. When the dervish tornadoed by, Wynn reached out and snatched him off his feet and slung him over his shoulder, making the now cross-eyed Lenny laugh, before setting him on the ground right outside the sliding back door, and holding his hands out to make sure the kid was fine before he shooed him away as well.

  I chuckled when the kid started leaning and nearly tripped on one––I wasn't entirely sure which since I couldn't tell them apart––of the triplets.

  "You should start bringing Teddy," he said, when he came back in the room, leaning on the counter next to where I was working and pressing his side into mine. "It would give them something else to fawn over and leave you alone."

  "Teddy is hyper," I said, putting the last screw in the base that would hold the camera. "He'll jump on the kids"

  He gasped, reaching out to smack my side… and pretty hard too. Sometimes I forgot he was a shifter and was surprised by his strength. "Teddy is a perfectly well-behaved sweetheart. He listens to me without any complaint."

  I frowned, pointing my drill at him. "That's because you bribe him. He came home with pot roast breath this morning. Any idea why that might be?"

  "Yes," he said, pulling his shoulders back and thrusting his nose up in the air, clearly trying to prove that he didn't at all feel guilty for his actions. "I didn't clean the pan up before bed last night, and I accidentally dropped some on the floor of my kitchen when I was scraping it into a scrap pan. Teddy was ever so kind enough to clean it up for me."

  I blinked at him dryly, setting the drill down and picking up the face of the base. "You blush when you lie."

  "I do not," he grumbled as I popped the face into place. "I was blushing because I was clumsy."

  Once secure, I turned to face him, pressing my hip against the counter and crossing my arms over my chest. He was standing a little closer than was necessary, a habit that I had struggled to get used to—not because I didn't want him standing close to me, but because every time he did, I thought about things I shouldn't. Inappropriate things that I definitely shouldn't be thinking about in the middle of a daycare with a bunch of kids running around.

  He leaned his head back, looking up at me. I wasn't normally a man who craved much else outside of a good fuck every once in a while, and in all honesty, not even that lately, but when he looked up at me like that, drawing attention to the cut of his jaw and the muscles in his neck, I found myself having the oddest urge to press my mouth to his neck and work my way up, tasting everything between there and his full pink lips. When I didn't focus on his neck and mouth, I'd get caught in those pretty gray eyes, nearly destroyed by the sweetness I'd see there. I'd found that the best way to keep my focus on whatever it was that we were talking about at any given moment was to focus on his eyebrows, and how one had the smallest nick in it.

  We were friends and neighbors. We'd been the latter for months, but the former was a new development, and though I'd spent those months watching him through my window and sometimes my front yard when I was letting Teddy out to do his thing, and I was thinking, wishing for some not so wholesome things, the friendship that we'd developed recently had become extremely important to me. Me. A man who'd only had a handful of what I'd call actual friends my entire life, none of whom I would ever have been all that bothered by if I lost them, had a friend who was actually important enough to me that I actually felt it might seriously hurt to lose.

  And we'd gotten to this point so quickly. It had barely been a full two weeks since we'd officially met, yet I somehow knew I would struggle with simply walking away if he ever told me he didn't want to be my friend anymore. Which was why I couldn't act on the need I had in me to lean forward and steal a kiss from his pretty lips, or taste the skin of his neck, and jaw. It was why I couldn't act on any of the things I was dying to do… and why I had to concentrate on the…

  Well, fuck. I kinda wanna kiss that too.

  Wynn's head snapped in the direction of the backyard where the playground was located, just before the sliding back door opened, and a terrible wailing sound made me cringe. I could only imagine how Wynn was handling it considering his sense of hearing was far better than mine.

  "What on earth?" Wynn asked, when two little girls walked in, one in a frilly bright-yellow dress and a backwards baseball cap with her arm around the other squalling and rubbing her arm while tears rolled down her bright red cheeks, her overalls looking like she'd rolled around in the dirt a few dozen times, and her hair was definitely wind-blown. "What's wrong, Tate? Why is Glo crying?"

  That is not crying. That is something else entirely.

  "Well…" Tate started to say, and I'd been around her enough lately to know whatever was about to come out of her mouth was going to be a complete and utter stretching, tearing shredding of the truth.

  "No lies," I grumbled, pinning her with a hard stare. "If you've done something you shouldn't, own up to it. Lies make things worse."

  She pursed her lips, glaring up at me for a moment. "I wasn't going to lie," Tate said, rolling her eyes.

  "Yes, you were," I answered back, giving her a stern look.

  Two huge, wet eyes met mine in awe as the wailing trailed off to a few stuttered breaths, Glo's little body shaking with her hiccups.

  "So, what happened?" Wynn asked as he knelt down, gently taking Glo's arm in his hands, checking it over with lightly probing fingers, all while the girl focused on me with her unblinking eyes. "I don't think it's broken."

  "We were swinging..." Tate started, her fingers fidgeting with the frilly trim of her dress, "...and I tried to give her a big push and she fell out backwards."

  I shook my head, raising my eyebrow at the girl when she glared up into my face. "You went under her swing and held on too long, so she fell out."

  "No, I didn't," she said indignantly, just as Glo asked with a large amount of awe in her voice, "How did you know that? Can you read minds?"

  I blinked down at her, and then at Wynn when he turned to look at me with the same amount of awe on his face. Sighing, I rolled my eyes. "No. I just heard Olivia getting on to you two for doing it last week, and Tate was already winding up to lie, which tells me you guys were doing something you weren't supposed to, and she doesn't want to get in trouble."

  Wynn cleared his throat, looking back down at the two girls. "Where is Miss Olivia? Why didn't she take care of this?"

  "She got a phone call and said if you can sit in here and flirt with Mr. Donovan all morning, then she can answer an effing phone call," Tate said, smirking at Wynn, clearly approving of Olivia's actions.

  "Wha…" Wynn
squeaked, his face flaming bright red as he stood quickly, walking over to the cabinet that held the first aid kit. "I was not flirting. I was helping."

  Olivia was Wynn's cousin, and though she was a sassy as they got, she and Wynn were a perfectly synchronized team, who managed to take care of the eighteen children aged three to twelve with very few problems, and now that school had started, they were thinking about taking on more and hiring another body. I wasn't sure what to make of the looks I got from Wynn every time he said that. I was beginning to worry there might be a hint in that.

  In all honesty, it was probably about time I took a job of some sort, since I was living off my retirement, but I'd bought my house outright and rarely needed more than groceries and to pay my utilities, so I definitely still had time before I needed to make decisions like that.

  Working with Wynn day in and day out would probably be great, especially since not being around him left me feeling oddly hollow, but I wasn't sure if spending any more time with him than I did on a daily basis would be a good idea. I struggled enough as it was to keep from doing or saying something that would make things awkward in our friendship.

  I tried not to laugh at the look on his face when he came back with a large Band-Aid and some antibiotic ointment for the scrape on Glo's forearm. His nose was even higher in the air than usual and he walked with a stiffness that he normally didn't have in his limbs unless he was feeling insecure.

  I decided not to dwell on why he would be so uncomfortable with the idea of someone thinking he would flirt with me. I was struggling enough to keep my hands off him without the added hope that maybe he was as attracted to me as I was to him.

  Tate shrugged, clearly not caring one way or another whether he was flirting with me. Instead, she gave me her most intense look, her eyes narrowed on my face. "What am I thinking right now?"

  I groaned, rolling my eyes, but three sets of curious eyes were focused on me now. Licking my teeth, I leaned down close to Tate, looking into her skeptical blue eyes. "Is it that you hope Mr. Patterson doesn't find out about the lizard you have in your bag?"

  Glo gasped, and Tate's eyes widened for a short moment before narrowing again. "What lizard?" she asked, almost sounding innocent, but I didn't miss the glance she threw in the direction of the hooks where all the kids put their bags when they first arrived in the morning or after school.

  "Alright," Wynn said, securing the Band-Aid in place and pressing a kiss to his fingers before putting them to the Band-Aid. "You're all patched up, Glo." He pointed a finger at both girls, moving it back and forth between the two of them. "No more underdogs."

  "But they make you go so high," Tate whined, letting her arms flop at her sides.

  Wynn stood, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring down at the mischievous girl. "Go."

  Glo nodded, giving me a wide-eyed smile and scampering off toward the playground again, while Tate trudge-stomped her way outside, throwing another skeptical look at me over her shoulder before going through the door and sliding it closed.

  "Is there really a lizard in her bag?" Wynn asked, turning his own wide-eyed look on me.

  I shrugged, glancing over in the direction of the bag. "Pretty sure. She's got a pocket full of bugs, and I saw her dump a few in her bag earlier. Plus, she put her toys on the floor earlier under her bag instead of in it."

  I guess it could have been a frog or even a bird or something, but I was willing to bet lizard with the complete stillness of the bag, and the fact that I'd seen three skitter across the front step when I was walking in earlier.

  "Huh," Wynn said, pursing his lips as he looked over at the bag. "I guess I didn't notice."

  "Of course not," I said, awkwardly reaching out to reassure him by patting him on the arm. "You were too busy getting Jemma down from the top of the bookshelf. You would have noticed by the end of the day when she tried to leave and had an arm full of toys and a bag that was practically empty."

  He bit his lip, the corner of his mouth twitching as he looked at my giant paw on his thin shoulder, obviously finding my attempts at comfort as pathetic as they probably were. "Yeah, I guess," he said, as I dropped my hand back down to my side. "You and Teddy still coming over for dinner?"

  Dinner. My favorite and least favorite part of every day for the last two and a half weeks. Because that was how long Teddy and I had been going over to Wynn's for dinner, starting with the night that I'd first started this revamp of his security system.

  I would never admit it out loud, but I'd maybe gone a little overboard when it came to the whole thing. The only real probable he'd had, was actually with the intercom system, and it had basically been one little wire that had been munched on by a rodent. It had taken less than five minutes to fix once I had my wiring kit handy. I'd stripped a bit of the wire on either side of the sever, stuck them together and screwed a wire nut on, and boom, done.

  The ten cameras I'd installed to replace the five I'd taken down had probably been a little more than he needed, even though he'd been the one to ask if I knew of a better system since you couldn't really see faces all that well on the ones he'd had. And the locks on the doors were probably completely unnecessary considering the ones I'd gotten were less likely to give than the door itself if someone decided to kick it in, but I'd just wanted more time with him, and that had been my excuse. I'd covered the extra costs, fibbing a little myself when I told him that I'd gotten a really good deal on it all, so he was really only paying for the five cameras he'd asked to have replaced. He wouldn't even be paying for them if I thought for a second, he'd believe that I'd gotten the whole system for free, but I seriously doubted I could get that one over on him.

  "Yeah," I said finally, turning away so he didn't see how happy it made me that he still wanted me to come over every single night after all this time. I figured he would have gotten sick of my slightly stoic, far-too-literal ways by now. Everyone else in the world would be.

  Dinner at Wynn's meant eating whatever it was that he'd made, since he never let me cook for him, and then sitting around watching sitcoms while he let Teddy sit all over his furniture, and snuck him snacks, though he wasn't great at sneaking, and my dog was definitely a smacker, so neither of them were all that good at hiding it from me.

  It was always fun… and a bit torturous, since it felt a little too domestic at times, and though I'd never been in a relationship and didn't know the first thing about how to act in one, the urge was growing to pull him directly into my lap when he sat next to me on the couch, or put an arm around his shoulder and pull him into my side, or simply pin him to the couch and kiss him with all the desperation I felt every time I looked into his eyes.

  It was getting steadily worse with each day. Since I'd worked around the paranormal for a while in the FBI, I couldn't help but feel like there was a possibility something like that was at play here. This gnawing need I had inside me to be with him constantly, and the way I felt when I wasn't, just didn't seem possible in such a short amount of time.

  I looked at the camera, easily connecting it to the magnet on the wall and moving it around to get what I hoped was the best angle. I nearly jerked the damn thing back off the wall when a loud shout came from the direction of the front door.

  "Wynn! Where are you? I'm in a hurry to get home."

  I turned to find a man not so steady on his feet, striding in from the entryway, clothes messy and riding askew on his body, his face a little too flushed to be from the seventy degree temperature outside that had been a pleasant surprise after the slightly warm days we'd been having.

  "Mr. Bradley?" Wynn asked, glancing up at the digital clock above the desk. "What are you doing here? Mrs. Bradley should be picking Erika up today."

  He sounded completely professional and pleasant, but I didn't miss the worried look he sent the playground area, probably catching on to the odd behavior that was no doubt an effect of the alcohol he'd likely consumed, even if he was trying pretty hard to look normal.

  The
intoxicated man's eyes narrowed on Wynn, immediately putting me on edge. I stepped forward, not wanting to draw attention to myself, but needing to be closer to Wynn, not liking the way the man was looking at him.

  "She's my daughter," he said, enough of a growl in his voice to let me know I hadn't been wrong to worry about his intentions or his anger. "I can pick her up whenever I want."

  Wynn nodded, moving toward the back door, pretending to look outside, but I saw him click the lock on the handle before he nonchalantly closed the curtains.

  The man was clearly doing his damndest to look completely sober, but the slight swaying that was going on anytime he stood still was a pretty good giveaway, though I had no doubt he thought we were buying it.

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Bradley, I'm afraid I can't let Erika go home with you at the moment," Wynn said, lacing his fingers together and letting his hands fall in front of him, making him look innocent and unobtrusive, probably knowing better than to do anything that the man would see as a threat, or become enraged over.

  "The fuck you can't," the man bellowed, his face going an unhealthy shade of red.

  Well, clearly that worked.

  Logically, I knew Wynn could take care of himself. He was probably actually stronger than me, but I couldn't stop myself from stepping closer to him, needing to know that if anything happened, I could get to him quickly.

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Bradley, but I can't let her go anywhere with you when it's clear you're intoxicated and plan on putting her in a car."

  "I've only had one beer," Mr. Bradley said, scoffing.

  Wynn's eyebrows went up, clearly not believing it any more than I did, but he still turned to look at me with questioning eyes.

  "What?" I asked, wondering if he was expecting me to make some kind of decision about Erica and her father, or just toss the man out on his ass. The first wasn't happening but the second would be my fucking pleasure.

  Wynn shrugged, giving me a smile that told me he wasn't at all worried about Mr. Bradley and his temper. "I was just wondering if he was lying."