Shapeshifter Romance: Duty of a Lion (Paranormal Army Hero Navy Seal Shifter Protector Alpha Lion Romance) (Fantasy Military Action Adventure Urban Wolf Romance Short Stories) (26 page)

“How do you like the house?” he said, pouring her a cup of coffee.

“It’s a long way from Quackenbush Avenue,” Alex said, somewhat quietly.

“Your mother is coming from San Francisco with your father today,” he told her.  “They texted me this morning.”

“I’m glad,” Alex said.  “I miss my mother.”

“She always seemed very sad that you didn’t move out here with her,” Thom told her.

Alex said nothing, as she dusted off some hard feelings from her past and put them on a fresh shelf.  Everything seemed different today, she thought.  The world wasn’t as vibrant as it had seemed on their trips together and she wasn’t sure why.

They took the day off, watched a movie, showered and puttered around.  They were both tired from the trip and when Thom sat down to do some work, Alex went and took a nap.

Beth had texted her earlier and Alex texted her back.

“I miss you,” Alex wrote. 

She thought of her father, probably sitting on the couch reading the paper right now, ready to do the crossword puzzle.  She’d spoken to him at least twice a week since she left, but she hadn’t told him she was head over heels with her stepbrother.

When their parents arrived at dinnertime, both she and Thom snapped into a new routine.  They avoided one another’s eyes and they both felt uncomfortable all through dinner at one of Napa’s famous eateries.

Alex pushed the food around on her plate, feeling tired and not at all like socializing.  She did her best to fill them in on the trip and Thom Sr. told her how pleased he was with the glowing reports about her that had come from his son and some of their clients.

Her mother couldn’t take her eyes off Alex.  She seemed older, more confident and measurably more mature and she was taken aback by how absolutely beautiful she was.  And yet, being the same old Alex, she didn’t seem to know it or care.  It was refreshing, and also rare.

When they got home that night, Alex went right to her room to change.  She didn’t understand why she was feeling so uncomfortable.  Maybe all the time changes had gotten the best of her.

Her mother came in and sat down on her bed.

“Everything okay, honey?”

“Yeah, Mom.  I think I’m still exhausted.  But I want to thank you for giving me this chance.  I really love this job.  It was the most fabulous two weeks of my life.”

“I knew you would,” her mother said. “I’ve been trying to find a way to get you involved in our lives and I think this was the perfect opportunity.”

Before she left the room, she turned to Alex and told her to be careful.

“Everything’s new right now,” she said. “Take things slowly.  Feel your way through them.”

It was as if she knew, Alex thought.  But how?  Had they made some blunder?  Had someone her stepfather knew seen them together somewhere?

They were all due to visit a vineyard the next morning---a new account they were coveting and Alex lamented the fact that she’d have to ignore Thom again.  She found herself missing him as she lay in bed, wishing she could reach out and put her arms around him.  She was confused, yes, but one thing was clear.  Thom had become very special to her.  And she wasn’t sure she wanted to live without him, despite what anyone else thought.

She heard a light knock on her door and watched as Thom came tiptoeing in.  Alex had to stifle a laugh, watching as he practically crawled over to her, terrified that he’d be discovered in her room.

“God, I miss you,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “I miss you too.  It’s lonely in bed without you.”

“You’ve been off today,” he said. “Totally not yourself.”

“I know and I’m sorry. I’m just confused.  Sometimes I resent my decision to stay in New York and live without my mother.  And the next minute I miss my father and am glad I spent my childhood with him. I look around and see everything that you have and I feel envious sometimes, as if I am Cinderella, just here to sweep the floor.”

“You have a place in this company,” he said. “Your mother always talked about ‘one day.’ Maybe it’s time you made more room for her in your life. I think you sense that, and it must be confusing to you.  You’d have to let go of other things, like your life in New York with your father, or your dreams of teaching.”

Alex laughed. “All I wanted to do was move to a place like Wyoming and become a teacher.”

“Maybe it was a way to not have to make a decision.  You could choose neither of your parents and live somewhere that was just your own.”

“Maybe,” Alex said, holding Thom tighter in her arms.  “But what I wanted was trees and grass and to get away from the crowded streets of New York.  Maybe that was a way of yearning for my mother.”

“Alex, give yourself some time.  We’ll work for a few weeks and you can go home again.  You can go back to where the old Alex lived and try to gain some perspective there.  You can work from home for a few weeks before I’ll need you out here.  Maybe you’ll decide not to come back at all.  But you get to choose who you want to be.”

“I think I could fall in love with you,” she said.

“I was hoping you already had,” he said, hitting her with a pillow.

“Tomorrow morning,” Alex said, sitting up, “we’re going to go downstairs and tell our parents about our relationship.”

She laid back down in his arms, thinking of her little room on Quackenbush.  It was waiting there for her and always would be. But Alexander Bill was ready to move on to her exotic place near the trees.

Napa seemed as good a place as any.

THE END

Bonus Story 6 of 10

It was 11:25 and Casey Larson had just over a half an hour to finish writing the news for the noon broadcast.

It had been a crazy day, with a car crash on Route 6 that had killed a mother and her infant son and, earlier in the day, one of the state’s senators had held a press conference at the Hyannis Resort Hotel to announce the passage of a new land bank bill that would help to preserve Cape Cod’s wilderness—or what was left of it.

Casey had been working at WCCB for the past two years, and although she loved her job, it was hard to be a single mother and a career woman who devoted her working life to breaking news. Since the major television networks and other big news outlets were located sixty miles away in Boston, WCCB was the only source of local news for Cape Cod. She and Mark Lawson were it. The two of them kept churning out the news, six days a week on the radio.

At two minutes to twelve, Casey ran into the sound booth and turned on the mike, waiting for the news jingle to finish so she could begin her newscast.

“Good Afternoon,” she announced into the mike in the soundproof room. “The time is twelve o’clock noon. I’m Casey Larson. Today in the news…”

When she was finished, she walked back into the newsroom and collapsed into her chair. She put her head down on her desk, her long brown hair falling in tangles.

“Crazy, crazy day,” Mark, her news director, said from his desk across the room. “I hate to leave you with so much going on, but I’m going to stop by the police station in Yarmouth to interview the chief about all of the break-ins there. Then I’m going home, Case. I’ve been here since 5:00 this morning.”

Mark had the morning shift, which was a lot tougher than Casey’s afternoon shift. He left his house in Chatham at 4:00 A.M. and miraculously got the first newscast on at 5:00 A.M. every day except Sundays.

He walked over to her and affectionately patted her head.

“You’ll get through it,” he said. “That’s why we hired you, right? You’re Casey Larson.”

Mark liked to tease her about her big dreams of working at ABC in New York. When things got crazy at WCCB, she’d playfully tease Mark about her low pay and the fact that she should really be at ABC, covering wars and state visits by presidents and kings.

“How did I end up here?” she’d ask, smiling. “I’m supposed to be taking over for Diane Sawyer.”

The truth was, she did have big dreams, but they were as far away now as the moon. She was the single mother of two little girls and they were more important than her old ambitions. She’d tucked those dreams away in her mental trunk where they had gathered cobwebs over the years—up there under the rafters of reality.

“Hey, listen,” he said, handing her a book. “The guy who wrote this book is coming to town tomorrow to do press interviews. Any chance you can skim this tonight and interview him tomorrow for Cape Life? I told his press agent he could come in at 2:00.”

Cape Life was their weekly half-hour public affairs show—a federal requirement for all broadcast stations. They interviewed writers, politicians—just about anybody they could get to fill in the time slot. They’d often tape it ahead of time and then air it on Sundays at 10:00 A.M.

“Mark!” Casey cried. “How am I going to prepare for this interview in one day? I don’t even get home until 7:00!”

“Are you forgetting who you are?” Mark teased. “You’re Casey Larson! There’s nothing you can’t do.”

*****

Casey pulled in the driveway at 7:10 and tucked the book in her shoulder bag. Her upstairs apartment was dark, although the lights in the apartment below were glowing brightly.

Bill and Jennifer Anderson were her landlords and lived downstairs from Casey. She liked them, but Jennifer was nosey. Casey had caught her at the bottom of the stairs listening to her phone conversations more than a few times. Bill was nice enough to her, but he was a grumpy guy who spent a lot of time watching television in his old, weathered La-Z-Boy.

This week was Robert’s week to have the kids, and the apartment was quiet when she walked in. Casey and her ex-husband had joint custody of their two daughters, April and Sarah, and although she missed the girls during her off weeks, the arrangement gave her more time to devote to her job. She’d often stay late in the newsroom, working on stories for the next day.

She’d stopped and bought a sandwich on her way home, and she poured herself a glass of ice tea and settled in on the porch.

As much as she hated renting, she and the girls affectionately named the apartment they lived in “The Tree House.” It occupied the top two floors of a three-story house and they lived up in the leaves, surrounded as they were by trees. They could see Vineyard Sound from the windows off in the distance, and there was a sweet little beach nearby where they’d comb for seashells and have picnic lunches on the weekends.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was home. It was a charming but weathered apartment, and she’d wallpapered the kitchen with a beautiful French country print and she’d used her own money to put in new kitchen flooring. The front porch was their favorite place, surrounded on three sides by three-quarter length windows where nothing but green leaves could be seen in the warmer months. It was stuffed with comfortable furniture that faced the outside. They lived there in the summer, watching boats sail by in the distant bay and camping out on summer nights to squeal at passing thunderstorms with bowls of popcorn.

Casey took the book from her bag and looked at the cover. Her nonchalance failed to reveal the importance of that moment. That book was going to change her life, but sitting on the porch just then, no magic dust fell from the heavens and landed on the pages. She was tired and lamented having homework to do.

The book was titled “Sea Dreams” and Casey immediately became interested when she read the jacket:

Paul Neal tried to sail alone across the Atlantic from England to Maine in a wooden boat he and his estranged wife had lovingly restored together. As he faced the challenges of single-handed sailing, he found his wife’s old diaries stowed in a duffel bag in the cabin. He gathered insight into their failed marriage as he sailed on, coming to terms with himself as his boat began to take on water midway through the trip.

Casey was taken aback by the book’s description, immediately recognizing that Paul was a man of uncommon depth. More than that, he seemed like the Indiana Jones of the sea—a philosopher with a life jacket. His prose was beautifully crafted and she was struck by his intensity. It was hard to believe the story was true or that a man like Paul Neal really existed. Guys like that certainly weren’t a part of her world.

She read the book throughout the night, last looking at her watch at 2:45 in the morning. She fell asleep on the overstuffed porch couch sometime near 4:00, cradling the book in her arms.

The sound of a school bus woke her up just before 9:00 A.M. She only had a few hours to prepare some questions for the interview with Paul and then get ready for work. She made herself some tea and toast and looked over the prepared questions in the press packet given to them by the author’s press office. The questions were for overstressed news people who didn’t have time to read the book, but Casey had read it. She wanted to write her own questions, and she suddenly found that she was making this interview the focal point of her day.

She wanted to probe this man’s mind. She imagined him sailing across the sea, reading his wife’s heartfelt words, lamenting his lost love and then finally, lamenting his lost boat as it sank with a heaving sigh into the Atlantic. He’d been rescued by a passing container ship after he made a mayday call and was lucky to be alive.

This guy was awesome, Casey thought. She hadn’t met many men who were both courageous and sensitive. His bio in the back of the book alluded to an interesting life. He had grown up in London, lived all over the world, and worked some interesting jobs while he was trying to get published—as a cab driver in New York City, a drug runner in the Caribbean, and a sailboat captain who did charters on the island of St. Thomas.

She found herself taking extra care when she got dressed and spent extra time on her makeup. She looked at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t classically beautiful, she thought, but she was attractive. Her straight brown hair rested in a blunt cut on her shoulders, and a light sprinkling of freckles crossed her nose and spread across her cheeks. Her best feature, she’d always been told, were her beautiful blue eyes, which were teardrop shaped and a touch too big for her face. They were the eyes of a sensitive and inquisitive woman.

She threw on a black blazer over her preppy button down shirt and chose black heels to go with her skirt, making her a few inches taller than her usual 5’4”. This was the best she was going to do this morning, she thought, but infinitely better than the average day in the newsroom.

“Okay, Mr. Neal,” she said to herself as she walked down the driveway with her shoulder bag. “I’m ready for you.”

*****

“You look like you might have had an interview at ABC this morning,” Mark teased her when she walked in to the newsroom at noon.

“They keep begging me to take their job offer,” she answered as she settled into her desk. “But how could I ever leave you?”

She took the book from her bag and dropped it on her desk with a thud.

“This book kept me up all night. It was fantastic.”

“What was it about?” Mark asked, only half there as he typed on his computer.

“Um, handsome man sails across the ocean to forget a lost love. Boat sinks. Man is saved. He writes a book.”

“Sounds intriguing,” Mark answered. “It’s going to be kind of slow around here today. Not much going on. Just keep an eye on that hurricane off the coast of Florida. It looks like it might be bypassing the south and heading north. And oh, get ahold of one of our state reps and quiz him about the new fishing regulations. This could turn into a big story here.”

“Got it,” Casey said, paging through the copy Mark had been writing all morning so she could get caught up on what was trending. Her first newscast was at 1:00 that afternoon and she had an hour to prepare for it. She decided she needed to hunt for some fresh news.

Julie was the front desk receptionist, and when she called Casey at 1:45 to tell her that Paul Neal had arrived, Casey was buried in work. She was trying to edit sound bites from some phone interviews she’d done and get the 2:00 on the air. She’d have to go live on the hour rather than tape it beforehand and she’d be a few minutes late for the interview with Paul.

“You know what, Julie? Send him back here,” she said. “He can hang out here with me for a few minutes.”

A few moments later, Paul Neal walked into the newsroom holding a folder and a few copies of his books. He was wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and a pair of loafers. He was a tad bit scruffy-looking in a sophisticated way, but his dark brown eyes were penetrating. He was a questioner, Casey decided, someone who thought and felt deeply about everything. He was a writer inside and out and he looked like one.

“Mr. Neal,” she said, stretching out her hand. “It’s so wonderful to meet you. You kept me up all night with your book. I loved it.”

He seemed pleased that she’d read it and he smiled as he took her hand. “Thank you so much,” he said. “I’m really glad that you read it and liked it.”

“I’m going to be a few minutes here,” she said, grabbing her copy from her desk. “Please have a seat. I’m going to do the news live and then I’ll have time for our interview. Make yourself comfortable.”

She trotted off to the sound booth and closed the door. She could see him from the picture window looking back at her. She put on her headphones and waited for the news jingle to cue her up.

During the commercial break, she turned around and looked at Paul through the window. He was staring right back at her. They smiled at one another.

When her newscast was over, she walked back into the newsroom and threw her copy on her desk.

“You have a tremendous voice,” he said. “It was great to see you doing your thing in there.”

“Years of smoking,” she said with a laugh, not afraid to tell the truth now that she’d quit. “But yes, I definitely have a deep, gravelly voice. Follow me,” she said after she’d gotten two waters from the refrigerator from the hallway. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

They settled into the interview room and Casey got the mikes turned on and positioned on opposite sides of the counter. She cued up the tapes, got her notes in order and didn’t say much as she focused on her tasks.

He was watching her as she did a mike check. He liked to see women in their place of work, in control of their environment, commanding the moment. He thought she was sexy, and she was definitely very confident—something he liked.

She nodded to him to let him know she was recording and then sat down to begin the interview.

“I’m here with Paul Neal,” she said, “the author of Sea Dreams. It’s a memoir about a man who crosses the sea in a wooden sailboat alone. He finds his wife’s diaries along the way, and as he’s coming to terms with his failed relationship, he finds his beloved boat is taking on water in the middle of the Atlantic. Let’s hear more about this intriguing story from the sea captain himself. Welcome, Mr. Neal.”

“Thank you,” Paul said into his microphone, a bit too softly. He cleared his throat and continued. “It’s great to be here with you.”