SwitchBack: A Paranormal Werewolf Romance (Knightsbridge Canyon Series Book 1)

Life is really a pain in the butt right now.

Now, before you start going off on me, let me tell you that this pain is not metaphorical. It’s not merely because I’ve been relegated to staying with my identical twin sister back in our hometown of Knightsbridge, California, for the first time in years, or having to figure out how I feel about my old boyfriend Will.

No, this pain is due to some overenthusiastic animal control officer with a dart gun, plus poor adherence to Steam Room Sterilization and Sanitization Techniques by an unnamed resort and spa somewhere near the border of Idaho and Washington State.

So, armed with a secret I can’t tell my other half and a chunk taken out of my derriere that hurts like a son of a bitch, I’m playing invalid to my own twin version of holiday misery.

Let’s just hope we make it to Christmas alive.

“Amber, you give me back that ruler or so help me…”

“What? Like you’re gonna take me? In your condition?” Amber smiled and turned to her partner Elle, who was planted on the plush and comfy davenport, remote control in hand, trying to catch up on NFL scores. Elle was in her late thirties, which kinda made Amber a trophy chick, I guess. Booby prize, maybe?

“Honey?” My twin flashed Elle that dazzling Scott smile.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Elle wryly dribbled from the side of her mouth without taking her eyes from the split screen ESPN channel. “I am not falling for that one again.”

Amber furrowed her brow, frustrated for the moment.

“Amb, don’t frown,” I said, mock-sweet. “You’ll need to get Botox before you’re thirty.”

My sister turned to me with a flip of the bob she had going this week and sighed. “And
you
need to keep all sharp objects away from your rear. At least until that butt wound…”

“Bullet wound!” I interrupted.

“Fine. Bullet wound. Only you would manage to get shot in the ass by a hunter’s ricochet, hiking around in God-Knows-Where, Idaho.”

That was my story, anyway.

My twin tossed her head again and rolled her eyes. “Until that heals…” She turned to J.R., her five-year-old son, my nephew, and tickled him.

Seriously, who names their kid after a nighttime soap opera character from the eighties? Okay, it was short for John Robert, but still. At least it wasn’t “Junior.”

“We’re locking up the cutlery until your Aunt Ashlee is all healed up,” Amber said. J.R. giggled as my sister tickled him. Then Elle decided to join in on the fun and took playful swats at him with the rolled-up sports section while he shrieked in fun.

I, on the other hand, seized the moment’s distraction to drag myself painfully upstairs to my room – well, the guest bedroom I occupied – while the girls got domestic. Yuck. Sometimes being around the Gordon-Scotts was so sugary I thought I’d develop a whole mouthful of cavities.

I tried to sit on the bed, but having to favor one cheek didn’t make things easy, so I rolled over and lay on my stomach. Besides, it still itched like crazy…and then came a knock at the door.

“Hey, Sis.” Amber poked her head in. “You know, the sooner you heal up, the sooner you can be back doing what you love to do.”

I cocked my head, threw back my own Jennifer Aniston locks, the ones that somehow managed to put Amber’s to shame despite sharing a gene set, and said, faux-sweetly, “Don’t worry. I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

Amber’s eyes narrowed. I knew she’d get the dig. She wasn’t happy with her latest stylist and it took time for her hair to grow out. We both used to have the same length tresses, but this year she’d opted for what was supposed to be a hot shoulder-length bob, and it just wasn’t quite working the way she wanted it to.

Trying to recover, she turned and tossed over her shoulder, “Yes, well. Remember what I always say.” She looked back just as I was pushing the door closed with my foot, which in turn pressed on her retreating Bebe-branded ass.

“I know, I know. Guests are like fish and family.” I smiled back at her.

We finished in unison, “They both stink after three days.”

“Remember what else they say?” I yelled as she retreated down the hall.

“What’s that?” my sister yelled back.

“You can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your family.”

“That makes no freaking sense. Kleenex!”

Sigh. By the time I get out of here, I’ll probably be ripe as rotten fruit and smell just as bad. So, tell me, God, what the hell did I do to deserve this?

No answer.

See, I’m a werewolf.

Scratch that. No, it’s not supposed to be a pun. Never mind. Okay, s
trike that.
I’m technically a lupine. A lycanthrope, some might say.

I had researched the subject after my first change, and gorged myself on as many werewolf tales as I could get my hands on. In my favorite, the goddess Hera was supposed to have made twin girls into wolves to protect a Thracian poet as he wandered the Earth spouting prophecy and oracles to the masses, until they fell prey to the wiles of Romulus and Remus. Something like that anyway. Hey, I’m not a big reader of the classics.

Well, there isn’t any Thracian poet in my life, and the only oracle I consult is my daily horoscope when I want an uneasy laugh, and I’m sure not wandering the Earth as much as I’d like to right now. No, the closest thing to any Thracian poet I know is my editor, and he’s not too happy with me lately as my galleys keep coming back redlined with chunks of text missing.

See, I’m a travel writer. Ashlee Marie Scott by name and pen. Twenty-nevermind years old, and terminally single according to my dead mother. Unlike, that is, my vacuous sister Amber Michelle, who got married young and had a son before deciding she wanted to bat for the other team. I might have that out of order, but you get the idea. They divorced and then she fell in love with a lesbian chief-of-police-turned-high-powered-city-attorney. Makes her, well, whatever. In love, I guess. I wouldn’t know. Never really been. Not for sure.

I, on the other hand, specialize in luxury health spas of the high seas and high mountains, the cities and the coasts. My latest find had me a third-world country, also known as Idaho, with a wicked staph infection and an HMO surgical team determined to turn a pound of flesh into an ounce of cure. Thus, as I mentioned before, I am now grounded, stuck in my hometown of Knightsbridge, California, staying with my sister, her partner and my five-year-old nephew in a house that could be photographed at any time of the night or day for
Good Housekeeping
.

Not my idea of comfortable living: a place for everything and everything in its place. I’m more the bra-on-the-doorknob kind of girl, at my loft back in the City.

Did I tell you that I hate my sister even while loving her? No, really I do. She’s perfect. Even my parents think so. Except for the fact that she’s bisexual in a lesbian phase, but they’re slowly coming around to that, too.

Oh, did I tell you I’m also a werewolf? Right. I did. Must be the medication. Snort. Wonder how that one’s gonna go over with the in-laws? Oh, right. I don’t have any. Never mind. So, let’s just say, at certain times of the month, Mother Nature’s even more of a bitch with me than with most women.

I’m sure you’re wondering about that bullet wound, so I’ll tell you a long story short before the short story gets long.

I was doing a piece on Pacific Northwest spas. Hardship, yeah, but the job paid diddly squat so I might as well enjoy the expense account. Besides: cold,
bad
. Heat,
good
, and every now and then I meet a cute guy. I mean, I can rock a bikini with the best of them, and nobody expects me to have perfect makeup in a spa.

But I digress.

For the story I got the full package, comped for the magazine of course. Steak and lobster, Eggs Benedict, and one of everything on the spa menu. It was glorious. I took pictures and my editor got his five thousand words, for which he paid me almost nothing, but that was the deal. Live high on the magazine’s dime, cheap on my own.

The resorts all knew who I was, of course, and were happy to oblige. How else would I get the freebies? And I wasn’t writing exposés after all. My job was to sell magazines, whether print or online editions, which sold advertisements to paying customers.

Long story short, yeah, yeah.

So I worked my way through lockers, changing rooms and the amenities therein to the pools. I did a full set of lap work to check the workout box for the day and then, ah, the fun started. Sauna, cold dunk, heat lamp, cold dunk, steam bath with herbal infusion, and so on. Wonderful. After that came a mud bath, hot rock massage, lunch at the wine bar, mani-pedi, facial – you get the picture. Most fun a girl can have alone.

I spend a lot of time alone, I guess.

On the afternoon in question, I hurried upstairs to my room and banged out a rough draft, quick and dirty because tonight was MoonFall; that is, a full moon, which for me makes the usual girl’s monthlies seem hella tame. Anyway, I packed my day pack – okay, night pack – with the stuff I’d need – change of clothes, wipes, water and food, handheld GPS – what a godsend – and so on.

My usual MO was to hike to a landmark before sunset, like a mountaintop or tip of a lake, load it into the GPS, clip the little unit to a collar and put it on. Then I’d have a nice dinner, a tiny fire if I could, get naked and wait for the change.

After doing it for years, I was pretty lucid in wolf form, but I could easily get distracted, which was where the GPS came in, just in case I changed back somewhere other than the campsite. It would help me sneak in the buff across country to my stash. Either way, I’d clean up and get back to the other twenty-seven days of my life before the next change.