The only sound was the click of the coffee machine and the sizzling food.
“You need me, Sal,” she repeated.
“I’ll pay you minimum and you can keep your tips,” he said without looking up from the eggs and burgers charring alongside each other on the grill.
Danika hesitated for only a second. “I’ll take eleven bucks an hour. Cash. Mondays off, and I’ll split the tips with you,” she said cheerfully.
“Wednesday’s off,” he snapped back.
“Mondays!”
“Fine.”
“Deal!” She’d said it before she knew what was happening. Just like that... she had a job. It seemed impossible, but it was real.
She’d been trapped in Gideon’s house for so long, unable to do anything for herself—but she was free now, and free women did whatever the fuck they wanted with their time, and their money.
She grinned happily, slapped her hand on the order bell, ignored her new boss’ glare of annoyance, and floated through the rest of her shift on a cloud of accomplishment that nothing could drag down.
She really was getting the hang of this independence thing.
Finally.
Chapter 4 - Bracken
“When do you want me to call her? And is this really a motel card? Alpine Motel? Brax... what the hell happened last night?”
Cassie’s tone was incredulous and Bracken couldn’t decide if she was more surprised that he’d spoken to a woman, or that she’d given him her number, or that the number was for a room in a motel beside the highway.
“Don’t call me that,” he said absently.
“You didn’t answer my question, Bossman,” Cassie sang.
He sighed heavily. “If we have a cancellation, you call her,” Bracken snapped half-heartedly. “Just like any other client.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cassie salute him mockingly.
“Whatever you say, but I think it’s shady as fuck!”
Bracken bent his head over his table and ignored her. He’d finished Danika’s drawing on the same night he’d met her, but Cassie didn’t need to know that.
Yeah, sure, the motel card looked shady, but he hadn’t gotten any kind of weird vibes off of Danika. He was usually pretty good at that, and his bear could smell trouble from a mile away. She was trouble, there was no doubt in his mind about that, but it was a different kind—and his bear didn’t seem to mind that at all. But that wasn’t even his biggest problem with the whole thing.
He’d never met a mate who had left after being marked. Sure, he’d heard about it happening, but he’d never met anyone who had done it.
Mates were supposed to love unconditionally, that bond was supposed to be unbreakable... Even after death.
It was something that every shifter understood from a very young age. Every one of them, no matter who they were in this life, had a mate. The Great Goddess had made sure of it. Somewhere in the world, there was a perfect match for him. For all of them. It wasn’t something he’d spent a lot of time thinking about. He’d been busy keeping himself distracted with work, busy making a name for himself and getting his feet under him.
He didn’t have time to mope around because he hadn’t found his mate yet. It would happen when it happened. Or... maybe not at all.
“Paging Bracken Quinn! Helloooo? Are you in there?”
Bracken looked up as Cassie slapped her hand on the counter to get his attention.
“What?”
“You had a cancellation, that Motel chick is coming in this morning.”
Bracken nodded and he looked back down at the chest piece he was sketching out.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” Cassie yelled.
“Like what?” he replied calmly.
“Like, ‘oh, shit, or ‘that’s cool.’ Anything? Something? I don’t know. Why are you being so weird?”
Bracken looked at her strangely. “Weird? I’m pretty sure I’m not the one acting weird.”
“So. Is she like you?”
He crossed his arms over her chest. “Like me?”
“You know. Is she like you? Or is she something else?”
Bracken shook his head. “No, she’s more like you.”
Cassie wrinkled her nose. “Boring.” She shrugged. “Whatever, she’ll be here in an hour. You’d better get your shit together.”
“Yeah, boring,” he muttered. He might have only talked to her for a few minutes, but Bracken didn’t think there was anything boring about Danika Jackson.
“What?” Cassie shouted over the music.
“I said go get me a coffee,” he shouted back.
“Fine, but you’re buying me one too,” she said as she grabbed for the box of petty cash he kept in the front desk.
Bracken allowed himself to chuckle. Cassie definitely ran him ragged, but she did her job, and she did it well. Plus, he was pretty sure that the shop would just burst into flames if she ever left.
“D’you want anything else from Sal’s?” Cassie called out from the doorway. Cassie knew damn well that he could hear everything she said even over the music, but he was pretty sure that she liked shouting anyway.
“He hates that nickname,” Bracken warned her.
“I know he does, but I can’t seem to call him anything else,” she laughed. “So— Nothing else? Have you eaten yet?”
He hadn’t, but he wasn’t hungry. He shook his head firmly.
“Nope. Just coffee.”
“Whatever, I’m getting you a sandwich,” she said as she disappeared through the door. The bell jangled sharply and the door slammed shut. He shook his head but smiled just a little. Cassie was a pain in the ass, but she did take care of him.
An hour. She was coming in an hour.
Why was he nervous?
“Get your shit together, Quinn,” he scolded himself. He pulled out the stencil and laid it on his station. The drawing he’d made was pinned to the corkboard next to him. He narrowed his eyes and looked at it critically.
It was mostly black and gray with some subtle hints of color touching the petals of the flower and the spreading leaves. Wolfsbane was a surprisingly delicate plant, but the tattoo felt strong and purposeful...
He hoped that she would feel that way with it on her skin, too.
Bracken looked up at the clock for what must have been the tenth time that morning.
“I told her to be here fifteen minutes early,” Cassie said in a bored tone.
He looked around in surprise. “What?”
“You might want to chill out a bit, Boss. I can hear your gears grinding away over there. She wasn’t that pretty was she?”
“Very funny,” he growled half-heartedly.
“Well, question answered,” Cassie laughed. “You’re terrible with women,” she continued without looking up from her magazine. “Do you need me to talk to her first and explain that you’re really just faking the whole ‘grumpy old bear’ act?”
“The what? I’m not—”
“Y’know, since we’re talking about pretty women you’ll never have a chance with, there’s a new girl at Sal’s. She totally looks like your type.”
“My type?” Bracken hadn’t been prepared for this kind of attack so early in the morning and he blinked at Cassie’s bent head incredulously.
“Oh yeah, totally out of your league, unavailable, and lugging around a buttload of baggage? She doesn’t look local. Might be a transplant from one of the cruise ships. You know.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he sighed.
Cassie shoved the magazine away, leaned on her elbows and opened her mouth to reply, but the shop door opened and she sat up straight with a strange smile on her face.
“Mountain Outfitters is down the street, honey,” she said with a familiar hint of sarcasm in her voice. Bracken groaned inwardly as he recognized Danika’s chaotic tumble of dark hair.
He clapped his hands sharply and almost jumped forward to rescue her from Cassie’s inco
ming personality dump.
“Sal let you have the day off?” Cassie asked brightly.
“Yeah, it took some convincing, but he eventually saw things my way,” Danika replied with a smile.
Cassie turned to Bracken with a giant grin on her face. “I told you Sal had a new girl,” she said before reaching under the desk to get the new client form for her to fill out.
“We’ll just need some particulars here,” she said as she handed Danika the clipboard and a ridiculously pink pen with a puff of marabou feathers glued to the top. Danika looked at the pen strangely and then shrugged. “It’s so no one steals it,” Cassie explained. “You should see the big rough guys using it... it’s hilarious.”
Bracken rubbed a hand over his face and grinned sheepishly at Danika as she sat down to fill out the form. It was a simple waiver—allergies, address, phone number... normal stuff. But she seemed to hesitate over a lot of it.
“Do I have to fill out everything?” she asked.
“Are you paying cash?” Cassie replied quickly.
“Yeah.”
“Then you just fill out whatever the hell you want, kitten.”
Bracken chuckled as he went back into the shop to wash his hands and get set up.
AND ALSO TO DISTRACT himself because he’d realized that he was staring at her while she filled out the form.
“Go on back,” he heard Cassie say brightly. He pulled on a pair of gloves as Danika walked over to his chair.
“Hey,” she said softly.
“Hey.”
She looked over his shoulder as she started peeling off layers of warm clothing. “That looks amazing,” she said. “Thanks for not making it... wolfy.”
“I mean, it was tempting to put a moon in there somewhere, but I didn’t think you’d appreciate that.” He was trying to make a joke, but from the look on her face he’d failed. He cleared his throat. “Once you're ready, we can get the placement right and I can fill in the background with some extra shading and leaves... unless there’s something else you’d like me to add in freehand?”
She looked thoughtful for a moment and then smiled, but her eyes were sad. “A broken chain is pretty cliche, isn’t it?”
“Maybe a little...” He thought for a moment. “When’s your birthday?”
“What? October. Why?”
He nodded. “What if I added some opals? They’re your birthstone, right?”
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “Yeah, that would be nice.”
“They’d add some color, too. Subtle, but still delicate to match the flower.”
She smiled again, but this time it was genuine. “I’d like that. Let’s do it.”
“Great.”
She peeled off another layer of sweaters and dropped them on the chair next to Bracken’s station and stood in her sports bra and leggings, shivering.
“Do you need a blanket?” he asked. “I have a lot of clients who bring blankets with them for their sessions.”
Danika nodded. “That would be amazing.”
“Cassie! Blanket patrol!” he called out.
“On it!”
Danika raised an eyebrow as Cassie jumped up from her desk and ran past them. “We keep a few in the back, just in case,” he explained.
“Sure.”
Bracken swallowed the nervousness that had risen up as she stood in front of him and he focused on the task at hand. Business first. Nervous later. His bear paced in his mind and he tried to ignore it. He could smell the wolf on her. It was faint, but it was still there.
“Allright, let’s get this placement worked out,” he said cheerfully.
Danika turned toward the full length mirror obediently and directed him to where she wanted the stencil placed.
He watched the smile on her face as he wet the stencil and pulled it away so she could see where it would lay, and how it would move when she moved and stretched.
“Good?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she replied firmly as Cassie handed her a fluffy blanket to drape over her legs. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter 5 - Danika
Bracken had told her that the ribs were a tender spot to tattoo, but Danika hadn’t really been prepared for the sharp sting of pain as the needle touched her flesh. She did her best to stay still, and reminded herself that with every stroke of the machine, she was leaving her old life behind. Covering her mate mark was symbolic, and she was surprised that the bear handling the tattoo machine hadn’t hesitated more. Maybe he could still smell how faint Gideon’s scent was, though she could feel his hold on her fading with every passing hour.
If she could feel it, any other shifter would be able to sense it, too.
Despite the pain, or maybe because of it, Danika focused on how Bracken’s gloved hands felt on her skin. His touch was precise and clinical, businesslike, but he was also gentle, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that the pressure and weight of his hands felt somehow... familiar.
It wasn’t until he was finished and she was standing up, bandaged and vibrating slightly with adrenaline, that she tried to make sense of it. Maybe she was just hard up and needed a little distraction. Everything that happened with Gideon had left her bitter and angry—she needed a rebound. But another shifter? That was out of the question. She knew from experience that shifter’s weren’t so good at the whole ‘no strings attached’ thing.
“Cash is okay, right?” she asked hastily as she dug into her pockets.
“Yeah, fine with me.” Bracken looked up at the clock and frowned slightly. “That was four hours, so—”
“Here,” Danika said. She shoved some hundred dollar bills into his hand. She hadn’t bothered to count them and hoped she hadn’t overpaid, but she didn’t really care. It felt good to spend Gideon’s money on something that was just for her.
Besides, she was working now. She’d make it back in no time.
“Whoa, that’s way—”
“It’s perfect,” Cassie interrupted cheerfully. She snatched the money out of Bracken’s hand and marched back to the front desk.
Danika raised an eyebrow. “Does she always do that?”
“More times than I’ve bothered to count,” he said with a shrug. “But seriously, that’s way too much.”
“Don’t even say that,” she said. “I’m paying for your art, and your time, and you’ve done me a bigger favor than you know.”
He frowned slightly, but the expression passed quickly and she wondered what he was thinking. She extended her hand toward him. “Thanks, I mean it,” she said.
Bracken looked down at her hand and then wrapped his fingers around it. The fresh tattoo on her side burned with a comforting warmth, but it was nothing compared to the heat of his palm as it touched hers.
She barely held back a gasp as she felt a shock rocket up her arm and sear straight into her heart. Her eyes leapt to Bracken’s and then she pulled her hand away and shook it.
“Sorry, no one warned me that Alaska was full of static electricity,” she laughed. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have worn so much wool.”
Bracken smiled awkwardly and rubbed his palm on his hip. She must have zapped him good.
“Sorry,” she apologized again. “I’ll get out of your hair. Sal will be wondering where I am. I said I’d be back for the dinner rush.”
“You know he hates that nickname, right?” Cassie said with a wicked smile as she walked past the counter.
“Yeah, I figured,” Danika replied. “But I like it. I can’t call him Salvatore every time I need a sandwich, can I?”
Cassie laughed and flipped a page in her magazine. “Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue the same way,” she said.
“Besides, he doesn’t even look like a Salvatore. He looks like a Sal. He acts like a Sal. He’ll just have to get used to it, right Brax?”
There was a growling reply from the back of the shop and Cassie laughed again and winked at Danika. “Come back and see us in two weeks, and check the website if you forget all the s
tuff he just rattled off at you. Everyone always forgets, even the veterans.”
Danika nodded and glanced back to where Bracken was busily, and noisily, breaking down his station.
“Don’t you have any other artists?” she asked.
Cassie shrugged. “Sometimes. But Bracken owns the building, so it’s not like we need to pay rent or anything. Guest artists come and go, but he’s not really worried about filling chairs. We have space for a few more, but it’s not a priority. Besides, things are a little... slow up here.”
“Right,” she said softly. “Thanks again.”
“Anytime, Kitten. I’ll see ya around. Bracken likes Sal’s coffee.”
Danika took a deep breath to brace herself, pulled the door open, and stepped out into the street. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be cold, but her body hadn’t gotten the memo. She could also see her breath in the air, which was enough for her to know that she was not ready to let go of her layers just yet. She was a warm blooded creature, and it was definitely going to take her some time to acclimatize.
Danika shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and grimaced at the size of the billfold in her left pocket. She needed to pick up some more shifts, fast.
Her ribs burned and ached, but it was the good kind of ache, one that made her feel strong. She turned in the direction of The Golden Horn. Sal had grumbled about her taking the morning off, but maybe the big ox would be less grubly after she covered the dinner rush that was about to flood into the diner.
Two weeks passed, and after several visits to the Animal Instinct website’s FAQ page to make sure she wasn’t completely fucking up her sefish investment into her personal healing process, Danika decided that she was proud of herself. She’d sat through the pain, and come out stronger, and more secure in herself.
When she pulled on her shirt in the morning, she wasn’t reminded of anything except the feeling of Bracken’s gloved hands on her skin. But that part was confusing, and she wasn’t sure what to do with it.
Bound to Change: A Limited Edition Spring Shifter Romance Collection Page 54
