“No!” She whispered, “No, I just… Oh God, what was I thinking?”
His confusion fell away and he tried to grab for her. “Don’t.”
“This was… we shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t. Don’t do this. This was not a mistake.”
Jena tried to speak, but the protest was mangled in her throat. She shook her head, fingers digging into her scalp as she backed away from him. What had she done? What was she thinking? Even worse was the growing hurt on Caleb’s face.
Not you, not you! She wanted to cry. Didn’t he realize? He walked toward her and her eyes flew to the sky. To safety.
His eyes followed hers, then narrowed. “Don’t you dare, Jena Crowe.”
She took one more step back and drew in a deep breath.
“Jena…”
She whispered, “I can’t.” Then she closed her eyes and her hawk leapt forward, throwing itself into the night as Caleb shouted beneath her.
“Why are you running away?” he yelled. “Dammit, Jena, get back here!”
She shrieked and circled around, aching to go to him, but as frightened by the thought of leaving him as she was by staying.
“Why?” he shouted again as she wheeled away.
Because I’m in love with you.
And Jena Crowe was scared to death.
She was sobbing when she landed on Ted’s porch, naked and beginning to feel the effects of their frantic coupling. She ached; there would be bruises on her back. Her thighs. And she knew Caleb would have score marks on his back from her nails. Bite marks on his neck. She winced at the thought before she pounded on the door. A few moments later, Ted pulled it open, blinking.
“What are you doing here?” Then her eyes widened. “What happened to you?”
“We… we were up at Old Quinn’s—”
“Did he attack you?” Ted pulled her into the house. “You had to shift? Where’s Caleb? Is he okay?”
“No!” She shook her head quickly. “I mean, yes, we’re both okay. We were driving back and someone shot at us. I shifted and went to look. Caleb ran into the desert. I don’t know why. But a gun went off, and I came back and—and…”
“And what?” Ted’s eyes were wide. “Jena, is he okay?”
“There was a lion on him. Not attacking, just… I don’t know. Crouched. It ran off, but I was so scared. I thought it was going to kill him. I shifted back, but he wasn’t hurt. He kissed me. Or I kissed him.” She closed her eyes, the tears running down her face. “We… Ted, we—”
“Oh, you had sex with him.” Ted pulled her into a hug. “Oh wow. Okay. Just calm down.”
“And—” She hiccupped. “It was crazy. And wonderful and—I mean, it was like nothing—”
“Calm down,” Ted said in a soothing voice. “This is a big deal for you. I know you have some serious feelings for this guy. Forget all the times Allie and I teased you. This is you. And you don’t…” Suddenly, it was like a light switched on. “Wait, this just happened?”
Jena flushed and nodded.
“So, you just had crazy, wonderful sex with a man who is, if not in love with you already, well on the way, and… you flew here?”
She shrank under her friend’s glare. “Kinda.”
Ted shook her head, obviously confused. “What happened? Did he freak out? Say something stupid?”
“No…”
Ted’s eyes bugged out. “You panicked and flew away? Jena!”
“I’m sorry!”
“I’m not the one you need to be apologizing to!”
“I know!”
They both paused until Ted started shaking her head. “Listen, I know you’re Miss Cautious. I know you have trouble accepting that people are going to hang around and not die on you, but you better fly your ass back out there and—”
“I think I’m in love with him.”
Ted’s shoulders slumped and Jena started crying again. “Oh, Jena.”
“I am. And I have no idea what’s going to happen. I don’t know how to do this. I’m scared to death. There was only ever Lowell. And it seemed like we had always loved each other. What if he doesn’t love me back? What if he does, but he doesn’t want everything that comes with me? What if the boys—?”
“Whoa!” Ted held up a hand. “You need to stop right there. You are getting way ahead of yourself and you just left the poor man out in the desert. Where, I might add, he was shot at and attacked by a cougar not long ago.”
Her heart plunged. “And I left him out there alone!”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious. Will you get out of here and go find the poor man?”
She spun around right before she got to the door. “He probably won’t even talk to me. Oh…” She groaned. “He’s going to be pissed.”
“Yeah, no kidding. Get your naked ass out of my house and go find the sexy people-shifter, please? We might actually need him.”
Jena winced. “I’m an idiot.”
“I’m not disagreeing.” Ted slapped her bare butt and shoved her out the door. “Go. Now. Don’t come back unless you’re bleeding from something other than love bites.”
Jena found him stalking back to the road wearing a stormy expression and a pair of torn up jeans. What was left of his shirt was hanging in his hand. He saw her flying above him and stuck one hand out, flipping her the bird as she landed.
“That’s kind of ironic, if you think about it.”
“Take off, Jena. That seems to be the easiest thing for you to do.”
“I’m trying to apologize.” He kept walking and she ran after him, embarrassed for the first time she could remember by her nudity. Shifters weren’t modest, as a rule, and Jena was long past being self-conscious about her body. But now, she felt exposed. Weaker than her mate. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling. “Will you stop?”
“Nope.” He stomped down the path that ran parallel to the wash, still refusing to look at her. She heard him muttering under his breath.
Jena stopped and watched him. He wasn’t hurt—not physically, anyway. He knew where he was going. His truck was just up the road. She should let him go and fly away. Let him lick his wounds in peace and forget about her overly complicated self. The thought pierced her heart with a pain that she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. She barely recognized it, but it was there.
Heartache.
“I panicked, all right?” she yelled out, her voice breaking and tears coming to her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
He must have heard her tears because he paused and turned. He looked like he was about to say something mean. Then he paused and scrubbed a hand over his face in frustration. “Why did you leave? Did I hurt you? Scare you?”
“No.”
He stepped back toward her. “We had… I don’t even know what that was. Intense. Crazy. Wonderful—”
“It was.”
He took another step closer. “Then why? I mean… What the hell, Jena?”
Her heart twisted in her chest, but she forced the words to her lips. “I—I don’t know how to do this.”
Caleb looked her over from the tip of her toes to the top of her head, his hungry eyes bringing a flush to her skin. “I’m gonna have to beg to differ on that one.”
“Not that part.”
Shaking his head, he walked over and draped the scraps of his shirt over her. He buttoned the few buttons remaining, then tugged it to cover her breasts.
“You have to cover up if I’m going to have a conversation with you. This body drops my IQ about a hundred points just by existing.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” she said with a sniff.
He smiled a little, then paused, his hands resting on her shoulders. “Why are you scared?”
“Because you could hurt me.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You’d hardly have to try.”
He frowned. “Why do you think—?”
“Let’s pretend we’re going to go back to my house and spend the night. The boys are over at Al
lie and Joe’s. We could. Say you parked your truck in my driveway instead of by your trailer. No big deal, right?”
“What—?”
“You even get up early to get ready for work. Really early. But not earlier than Betsy McCann. Nope, she’s having her morning walk and she sees your truck.”
He sighed. “Jena—”
“Betsy calls my mother-in-law, real casual like, to say how nice it is I’ve finally moved past Lowell’s death. What a nice man you are. She would, too. She likes you. Then Beverly calls my mom. My mom mentions it to my dad.”
Caleb gave an involuntary shudder as Jena continued.
“And within hours, the whole town knows that you and I shacked up last night. And I’m not the kind of girl who does that as a habit, so they’ll pretty quickly start speculating about Jena’s new boyfriend.” She felt him jerk back a little. “And by the time my boys get to school, kids will be teasing them about their new stepdad.”
His voice was steady, but she could feel his heart racing where his wrist touched her hand. “You’re exaggerating.”
“A little. But not much.”
He took a step back and, just like that, there was a tiny fracture in her heart. She could hardly blame him. Who would want one bout of crazy, I’m-relieved-you’re-alive sex to become a sudden lifetime commitment?
“And let’s face it, you’re not from here.” She let the crack widen a little. “There’s nothing holding you here except a weird magical quirk that you’ll learn to get control of.” She shook her head. “Move far enough, it’ll probably go away all together.”
To her surprise, he stepped back toward her. “Why the hell do you keep moving me away without my permission?”
“What? I’m not—”
“I chose to move here, Jena, before I even knew you existed.” He moved closer and Jena tried to take a step back, but he grabbed her wrist in a firm hold. “I chose to change my life when the fights and the drinking and the stress pushed me to the edge of a place I knew I didn’t want to go. I chose a fresh start. I chose this place. And I’m choosing you. I want to know you better. I want to know your life and your kids and—and what you look like first thing in the morning when your hair’s all messy. What makes you happy and what makes you sad.” He stopped and cleared his throat when his voice got rough. Then he leaned down and pleaded in her ear, “Stop watching me walk away, honey. I’m standing right here.”
Jena blinked the tears out of her eyes. Just like that, Caleb had pulled the crack in her heart closed. Was it really that simple? Could it be that easy? She stepped close, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest. He still smelled like rain and sand, and she still wanted him. But not just his body; she wanted his love. For the first time in almost twenty years, Jena stopped trying to see the end of things and stood right in the middle, warm, steady, and wrapped in Caleb’s arms.
After a few more minutes and a few quiet kisses, he tugged her back toward the truck. “Let’s go home. And don’t worry. I’ll park by my trailer.”
She gave him a rueful smile as they walked hand in hand. “What were you doing out here?”
“Other than worrying about you? I was looking for the rifle that shot at us.”
She halted, but he tugged her forward. “Did you find it? Could there be fingerprints or something?”
“Not anymore. It’s probably halfway to the river by now.” He nodded at the still-running wash. “That big cat jumped on me, knocked me down, then kicked it into the water. Doubt I’ll ever see it again. Certainly not with any evidence still on it.”
“Did you recognize the lion?” She frowned when he burst into laughter.
“Did I—did I recognize it?” Suddenly, Caleb snickered. “Um, yeah, Jena, let me see if I could give you a description… It was a big-as-shit mountain lion.”
She rolled her eyes and continued walking as he bent over, roaring with laughter.
“Let me think…” He gasped. “It had gold hair—I mean fur—and big scary paws—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“And whiskers! That’s right, it had whiskers.”
She shook her head and kept walking as he laughed. “There are certain distinctive characteristics that—”
“And he had really big, giant claws. Know why?”
Jena tried to remind herself why she was falling in love with him. “Why did he have claws, Sherlock?”
Caleb yelled out as she kept walking. “Because he was a mountain lion!”
“Idiot,” she muttered under her breath. “I’ll let Ted explain.” She waited by the crossing where the water met the road as Caleb hopped over and gallantly held out a hand. She took a minute to glare at him, but he was grinning and happy and just too damn cute. Plus, he didn’t have a shirt and that was always a good thing. Jena held out a hand and jumped, squealing a little as Caleb caught her and threw her onto his back. Then he wrapped her long legs around his waist and kept walking down the road.
“My ass is hanging out of the back of this shirt when you carry me this way, you know.”
He reached back and pinched it. “I know. That was part of the plan.”
Jena bit her lip and hid her face in his shoulder. “You’re shameless.”
“I’m also walking out in the middle of nowhere with a gorgeous woman’s legs wrapped around me. I’m gonna say shameless is working.”
“Cocky.”
“I believe you confirmed that earlier, Watson.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Caleb heard the knock at the door and jerked from sleep. He’d been taking a nap on Jena’s couch. They hadn’t had much sleep once they made it back to her place the night before. They’d fooled around some more, but mostly spent the night in her bed, talking, laughing, exploring each other’s minds as they explored the wild attraction between them. It was sometime between kissing her as she slipped into an exhausted sleep and holding her as he watched the sky lighten at dawn that he realized he had taken the plunge from falling in love to just being in love.
It was completely right and completely terrifying all at the same time.
He scrubbed at his eyes and stood, walking to the door, which opened to a tired and irritated Ted.
“You look as exhausted as I feel.”
She waved a hand and stepped into the house. “Par for the course around here. I’m either working at the clinic or making house calls. Last night, after I coached Jena through her panic attack—you’re welcome—I was out at Missy and Matt’s trying to figure out what’s wrong with their newborn and why he’s not nursing right. New moms can be a bit panicky about stuff like that. I’ll admit, it’s weird. This baby was full-term, but he reminds me of a preemie.” She shook her head and blinked slowly. “I’m rambling. Sorry.”
He nodded toward the kitchen. “Coffee?”
“Wouldn’t turn it down.” They walked into the empty kitchen and Ted almost collapsed in a chair. “Where’s Jena?”
“Out at Allie and Joe’s. She’s picking up the boys, then going to the market before dinner tonight.” He’d agreed with her about inviting everyone over for dinner and a meeting to update everyone on Alma’s case, but he didn’t have to like it. He wanted to keep her to himself. Maybe a quiet dinner with her and the boys. Watch a movie. Pack the kids off to bed early so he could fool around with their mom…
“Well, aren’t you two domestic already.” Ted grinned wickedly as he handed her a cup of steaming coffee.
“Is this the part where you warn me not to hurt your friend? That you’ll neuter me with a fork if I step out of line?” He sat down across from the exhausted woman with dark circles under her eyes.
“I am a medical professional, Caleb. I’d use a scalpel. And maybe anesthesia,” she said nobly. “But I’m not worried.”
He smiled a little. “No?”
“No. I have a pretty good idea of how she feels about you, and you’ve made your intentions obvious. Plus, if you screw with Jena, she’s m
ore than capable of taking care of herself.”
He smiled and squirmed at the same time. “My intentions, huh?”
She sipped her coffee, but didn’t say more. Intentions? Sometimes this whole town seemed like it was stuck back in another century. Sure, he had intentions, but he didn’t feel like nailing them to the door or anything. He figured whatever intentions he had were best shared with Jena, not the entire community.
“I’m only going to warn you. Springs people? Shifters? We’re damn territorial. You can call it animal instinct if you want, but once we latch on to someone, we have a hard time letting go. The upside to that is we’re loyal. Just keep it in mind.”
“That’s my warning, huh?”
“That’s your warning, shifter.”
For some reason, Ted calling him “shifter” warmed him. It was as if he’d passed a test of some kind. Had been accepted into the club. Maybe he wasn’t exactly like them; maybe this weird collision of myth, blood, and taboo had caused some internal shift like the original families who had taken the spring water. He didn’t know how it worked and he was starting not to care. For the first time in his life, Caleb felt like he was exactly where he needed to be. He felt like he belonged.
“Consider me warned,” he said with a smile. “Speaking of Matt and Missy, have you had a chance to ask about Matt’s alibi?”
She sipped her coffee before she spoke. “I asked my mom, who asked around. She says that since Missy couldn’t shift—she was still pregnant—she can’t be certain, but that her sisters verified that Matt was with them.”
“Would they lie?”
“Possibly. The cats, you’re going to realize, are clannish. They keep to themselves, for the most part.”
“You’re a lion, right?”
She nodded. “We don’t play well with others, so we keep to our own family groups. There are two main cat families. Matt is from one family, Missy, the other. But cat women tend to rule the roost. So Matt is in his wife’s clan now. Would his sisters-in-law lie to protect him? Yes. He’s their sister’s mate. The father of her kids. They could be telling the truth, but we might never know.”