The Alpha's Mate (5 page)

“I’m twenty six years old. Old enough to make
up my own mind about spending the rest of my life with GW. I can’t
help it if I look like I’m twelve. Mama said I’ll appreciate it
when I’m older, but that don’t help the here and now. Shoot, we
went over to Chattanooga once and I couldn’t even get in a damn
bar, leastways not a nice one. They all said my ID was a fake.” She
poked her chin toward the door. “They all make fun of GW for
robbing the cradle, but the true fact is I’m two weeks older than
him.”

“I see. So you might say the true fact is GW
has a taste for older women.”

Max’s head bobbed and she laughed. “Exactly.
But don’t be saying true fact anymore. It just doesn’t sound right
coming out of your mouth. Sounds like Gee Double You.”

Elizabeth laughed, too. “Deal.” The young
woman turned to leave but Elizabeth called her back. “Thanks Max.
Not only for the clothes, but for making me smile. I needed
that.”

Max waved her off. “Smiles don’t cost
nothin’. You get dressed and fix your hair. It’s almost dawn and
they’re fixing breakfast out there.”

Chapter 5

She was spending the night alone. Again.
After the community breakfast in the yard, where’d she’d been
introduced to everyone and couldn’t remember anyone except Max
whose full name was Maxine, Henry, and Ma Gruver, the lady in the
pink smock, Elizabeth went to bed and she didn’t awaken until
almost six that evening.

When she first settled under the covers in
her own boxers and t-shirt which miraculously appeared clean and
neatly folded on her pillow, she didn’t think she could sleep.
There were too many questions rolling around in her mind. She
needed to sort out what she saw and separate it from what she
thought she saw. These people were all so normal and the events of
the night had been anything but. It should have been enough to keep
her staring wide eyed at the ceiling for hours, but she couldn’t
fight the softness of the pillow at her head or the cool sheets
encasing her battered body. She slept deeply without dreams and
felt wide awake when she opened her eyes.

A stranger had kindly washed her granny
panties and bra, another humiliation to be dealt with, and as much
as she appreciated wearing her own undies again – wearing someone
else’s was just eeuw - she vowed she would burn the offending
garments at her earliest opportunity. The shorts Max left were way
too short, especially wearing the granny pants, so she opted for
the jeans she’d worn this morning although she had to lie on her
back to get them zipped.

Her shoulder felt remarkably good, still
tender of course, but the homemade salve Ma Gruver gave her really
was a miracle cure. It had worked its magic on her forehead as
well. The woman should market this stuff. The aroma alone was
soothing.

There was no one else in the house when she
came downstairs, but the front door was open and Marshall’s police
car was parked in front of the porch. She opened the screen door
and winced at the clatter of the spring against the frame. She’d
done that in her panic last night.

In the pasture to the right, six of the
monster horses nibbled on the grass. Four looked full grown and two
as if they had a bit to go. Even from this distance, they looked
huge. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen horses before. She’d gone
through the same horse phase as many young girls did, and had taken
riding lessons for a time, but the tallest horse she’d ever been on
was a mere fourteen hands. These looked closer to twenty with backs
as wide as tabletops.

The barn doors were open and she wondered if
Marshall was within repairing the damage. If he was, he certainly
didn’t need her interference. But, as usual, her curiosity won out
and she walked to the barn, treading carefully in her bare feet,
and peeked in the door.

The area where the fire had occurred was
cleared and clean. Only a few blackened boards gave evidence of
what had happened the night before. There was a faint odor of
burned straw mixed with an antiseptic smell she couldn’t
identify.

“Come on, my beautiful girl. We’re almost
there. Give us a big push.”

Elizabeth thought she might have interrupted
someone’s private moment and she started on tiptoe for the
door.

“You’ve done this before, Daisy. Another push
and your baby is born.”

Elizabeth stopped, pivoted, and tiptoed in
the direction of what she now recognized as Marshall’s voice. The
stall door was closed and she peaked over the edge.

Marshall was kneeling on the ground, stroking
the distended belly of a horse lying prone on the straw. She could
see the head of a foal protruding from its back end. Two tiny feet
were pointed outward under its chin. When the head was fully
exposed, Marshall moved to the foal and cleaned the fluid from its
face and nostrils. The mare extended her neck to sniff at her new
creation.

“That’s it Daisy. Your new foal. Now you have
to finish the job.”

One snort, one toss of the head and Daisy’s
great sides heaved. The foal slid out onto the straw. Marshall
wiped it down with towels and treated it with the contents of the
bottles lined up and waiting against the wall. The mare expelled
the remaining placenta and he cleaned that up as well. All the
while he spoke to the mare, comforting and encouraging her.

The resting foal began to struggle and
Elizabeth caught her breath.

Marshall looked up at her and smiled, not at
all surprised by her presence. He’d known she was there all along.
He nodded at the foal.

“This is my favorite part,” he told her.
“Watch how she struggles, how determined she is.”

He stood and backed away from mother and
child. The foal struggled up, fell and struggled up again. Front
legs up, rear down. Rear up, front down. It finally got all four
legs going in the right direction and stood, wobbling slightly.

It was amazingly beautiful watching this new
life take hold and she told him so.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “I never get tired of it
and then it breaks my heart every time one of them leaves.” He
shrugged. “But that’s life isn’t it. Joy and heartbreak. My mother
would say that life’s pain is what makes its joy all the
sweeter.”

She watched him finish his work with the mare
and foal and thought with a twinge of envy that Henry was a lucky
man to have someone like this in his life.

Elizabeth followed Marshall into the kitchen.
He washed his hands, scrubbing to his elbows, and took a foil
covered plate from the refrigerator He held it out to her in the
palm of his hand.

“Your supper,” he said. “I would have called
you down, but I thought you might need a few more hours sleep.” He
removed the foil and slid the plate into the microwave instead.
“Two minutes ought to do it. Coffee, cola or beer?”

As she walked over to the counter where the
microwave sat, Marshall moved to the other side of the table.

“Any milk?”

He walked around the table, opened the
refrigerator door so that it stood between them and pulled a half
empty gallon from the shelf, removed the cap and sniffed the
contents. “Yep. We got milk.”

She helped herself to a glass from the
cabinet and poured her own.

“I have questions,” she said, moving toward
him. She knew it was foolish, but she was drawn to him, wanted to
be close to him, wanted to touch him. Wanted him to touch her.

“I figured you would.” Marshall grabbed his
duty belt from the counter and stepped back to strap it around his
waist. “But it’s going to have to wait. I’ve got work to do.”

She would have made an issue of it had he not
looked so worn and tired. His face was ashy with fatigue and his
blue eyes were rimmed in red. He’d been up for as many hours as she
the night before, but while she’d slept the day away, he’d
obviously worked. Her hand reached out, needing to stroke his face,
to offer comfort. The microwave dinged and her hand snapped back to
her side. Glancing nervously around, she spied a towel on the
counter and used it to bring the plate to the table.

“This looks delicious,” she said to cover her
discomfort. She eyed the plate heaped with pot roast, mashed
potatoes, green beans and corn. It was true. It did look delicious
and there was enough to feed her for her next three meals. “I’ll
never be able to eat all this.”

“Thank Henry.” Even his laugh was tinged with
nervous exhaustion. “He cooks, he cleans and he decorates. Don’t
let him do your laundry, though. Last time he tried it I wore pink
underwear for a month. Other than that, he makes a great little
housewife.”

“There’s nothing little about Henry,” she
laughed back.

Though she’d met him only briefly that
morning, he wasn’t someone you’d be likely to forget. He was a
great bear of a man; maybe five nine, at least two hundred and
fifty pounds with a frizzy mass of hair that hung to his shoulders
and a beard that hung halfway down his chest. He’d hugged her like
a long lost friend and told her he was happy she’d arrived.

“You got that right. He’s a good man to have
beside you.” Marshall picked up a rifle from the corner.

“I suppose he is,” she said, although she
wished he was beside someone other than Marshall. “Are you going
out to hunt wolves?” She couldn’t help it, she smirked. “Or maybe
they were deer or bear.”

He didn’t apologize for his earlier
disbelief, but he did color a bit and grin sheepishly. Now that she
was sitting at the table, he seemed more at ease.

“No, they weren’t” he said, “But telling me I
told you so will have to wait. I’ve got a lead on some growers that
need to be taken care of first.” He answered her question before
she asked. “These hills are a great place to grow marijuana and we
don’t want the Feds sticking their noses where they don’t
belong.”

Elizabeth eyed the rifle and holster at his
hip. “You don’t actually shoot people with those, do you?” she
asked in a horrified voice.

He hefted the rifle. “It’s one of the perks
that come with the job, though I don’t usually take advantage of
the privilege,” he laughed and then relented when he saw her
distress. “Not tonight, though. Not unless they shoot first. I need
to find them. See how many and how they operate. Then I’ll decide
how to take care of the problem. Dead growers can draw attention
same as the live ones.” He started for the mudroom and the back
door.

“Wait! What about the horses? What time will
you be home?” She didn’t want a repeat of the night before.

“The barn door’s padlocked. No one can get in
there and after the hell you gave them last night, those wolves
won’t be back.” He turned his back and said over his shoulder,
“Anyway, you hear something out there tonight you stay inside where
it’s safe.”

“But the horses!”

“Are horses, Lizzie,” he said. “I love them,
but you’re worth more than they are. I won’t be home until late.
You just relax and get some rest.”

“Fat chance,” she said to the closing door.
Drug runners, wolf packs, horses with hooves as big as her head.
What was waiting out there tonight? Dracula and his band of merry
vampires? To hell with the Silverton Citizens Against Guns. The
closest they ever came to the viciousness of nature was watching
Lanie Pendleton’s cocker spaniel chase chipmunks in the
backyard!

She went to the mudroom and took down the
shotgun she’d used last night, loaded it and set it next to her
plate on the old oak kitchen table and patted it
affectionately.

She took a few more bites of her dinner
intending to put the rest away, but the pot roast had a unique
flavor she’d never tasted before and the gravy was to die for.

She had to find some paper, make some notes.
It was the best she could do until she got her things back. Someone
- George? - promised they’d pull her car out sometime today and tow
it to the garage in town. Tomorrow she could get her things,
although how she was supposed to do that she wasn’t sure. Somehow
Rabbit Creek didn’t sound like the kind of place you’d find one of
the car rental agencies her insurance company approved of.

In the meantime, she could do some work.
After all, it was her reason for coming here. She rummaged around
in the kitchen drawers and came up with and old steno pad and two
pens, the kind you found in hotel rooms that rarely had a full load
of ink.

Write about what you know. Isn’t that what
all the authorities said? Well, she didn’t know about any of this,
but she was learning fast. She already had the beginnings of a cast
of characters. Marshall, of course, was the handsome hero whose
tortured heart would be healed by the beautiful, witty and
confident Cassandra who was, in this case, the fantasy image of
herself. And, of course, since this was her fiction, the Sherriff’s
poor tortured heart would definitely be a hetero one. Henry would
remain as he was. She would simply replace his lover. She’d find
him a wonderful man to partner with. It just wouldn’t be
Marshall.

Her mind skipped right over the plot to the
sex scenes. What was a romance without sex? Elizabeth grinned. A
common assumption was that librarians only read high toned
non-fiction and classic literature. She couldn’t speak for all
librarians, but for herself, she devoured the paperback racks and
read every steamy romance before it hit the shelves. It was her
secret vice and could be found somewhere on her mother’s list of
Things Well Bred Women Don’t Do.

Cassandra’s breasts were just spilling from
her lacey bra into Morton’s – she couldn’t call him Marshall –
worshipping hands, when she thought she heard something out on the
front porch. Gun in hand, she checked at the window. Two squirrels
were arguing over some kind of nut rattling across the wooden
boards.

Twice more Cassandra and Morton were
interrupted before Elizabeth decided to do her writing on the front
porch where she could keep an eye on things and finish her
daydreams, uh, scene writing.