“It’s fine. Hopefully I won’t break the chair.”
She let out a little husky laugh as she pulled out one of chairs and sat down. And God help him, the sound went straight to his cock. He quickly sat to keep her from noticing his body’s reaction.
“So.” She focused her intense gaze on him, the humor—and even the touch of arousal he had sensed—evident just seconds before were replaced with concern. “I know this is just a preliminary meeting to see if you think I can help Dex, but I hope you’ll give me the chance to work with him.”
“Why?” It was a given she would be the one—and not just as Dex’s therapist after the high praise she had received—but he didn’t need to make it too easy. Plus he was interested in what she had to say.
She riffled through the pages in one of the folders she’d laid on the desk and pulled out a drawing. It was obviously one of Dex’s. “Let’s talk about this one.” She slid the page over to him. The drawing captured his home at La Pradera, but it was depicted standing in a storm with the leaves of the large palm trees flanking the entrance billowing and rain falling to the ground.
“Dex is a gifted child.” Rafe couldn’t help but take pride at the admiration in her voice. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if his talent grew to be something quite spectacular when he’s an adult.”
“I agree.”
Dex’s abilities were astounding. But not surprising. Before bonding with Javier, Dex’s mother had had quite a career in Atlanta as an in-demand artist, with a panther featured heavily in much of her work. As a Destined Mate, it was how she’d manifested The Calling to the shifter she was meant for.
And if Rafe wasn’t mistaken, artistic talent wasn’t the only legacy Catherine Navarro had passed down to her only child. Dex was most certainly also a Destined Mate. He traced over the dark contours of the drawing again, searching for…
He found the gray wolf in part of the cloud formation behind the house.
Dex was too young to understand the significance of why he felt compelled to add the wolf into almost all of his drawings in one form or another. The young boy probably just thought the wolf was part of his dreams. But as a Destined Mate, he would be unable to help but call to the shifter in his waking life in this manner.
“I’ve actually never come across a child of his age with this degree of talent,” Aubrey continued, pulling Rafe’s attention to her tight features and scrunched brow.
“I sense you have a but in there somewhere.”
Her face relaxed. “Not a but, just more of a pause.” She touched the edge of the drawing and drew it back toward her across the table. Then she brushed her fingers over Dex’s depiction of his home. “It’s what he’s expressing in his artwork. What he’s saying.” She glanced up at him with a sad smile. “And I’m guessing more than he says to anyone face to face.”
He nodded at her insight as she continued. “I’m confident I would know your house if I ever saw it. Just from this drawing.”
She would be seeing it soon if he had his way about it.
“But if you look closely, the house isn’t standing against the storm. See…” She pointed to several points where the house seemed to be listing along with the wind. “And here…” He peered closer and blocked out his need to breathe all of her in. This was about Dex and not his own needs. So he focused on where her fingers touched over pieces of dark gray roofing taken up in the wind. “This tells me one of two things.” She met his gaze and held it. “He doesn’t feel safe in the home due to something going on within its walls.”
Destined Mate or not, he bristled. “I can assure you Dex is loved and cared for.” He had no intention of letting her believe anything other than that.
“I’m not accusing,” she said, her tone mild but firm. “Just observing. But the other is, he has a sense of unease from external forces that he worries will collapse the house.” She frowned. “And this fear and unease is being expressed in the only way he knows how. In his art.”
Rafe nodded and absorbed what she was saying.
“I don’t know all the details of his parents’ deaths,” she continued, “but I remember the story when it was reported on the news.”
Of course there had been no way to keep it off the news. A prominent artist and her attorney husband had been found murdered on their isolated estate, with their only child discovered in the home with his dead parents. It was big news. But a spin had been put on it, to make it out as a robbery gone wrong. Luckily for them, Alliance contacts within the state police had made sure the officers in charge of the scene and investigation were shifters or humans involved in their world. When it came to unexplained deaths and incidents involving shifters, these resources had come in handy.
“So, Dex was there?”
“He was.”
She breathed in deeply, her expression somber. “And he witnessed what happened to his parents?”
That was the question Rafe hadn’t been able to bring himself to ask his nephew. “We don’t know.” But Rafe wanted desperately to find out. “He hasn’t spoken of it to me or anyone else—not even when I found him hiding in the closet under some clothes.” Again, the memory of the agony in those interminable minutes of searching washed over him.
“Have you spoken with a child psychologist or therapist before now?”
“We have but with no progress.” Dex had seen a shifter therapist specializing in children for over six months, but Dex had refused to talk about anything. “When Mrs. Ervin suggested art therapy, it seemed like a last hope, but I’m willing to try anything at this point.”
She nodded again. “I have to tell you, from Mrs. Ervin’s report, Dex doesn’t fit all the norms when it comes to children experiencing trauma—at least here in the school setting.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s doesn’t display aggression to other children. He doesn’t seem to lack focus when it comes to his classwork. According to Mrs. Ervin, all in all he’s remained a good student.”
“He’s the same at home.” He snarled. “Well-behaved and no trouble at all.”
Her brows drew down as she tilted her head in question. “You sound like that aggravates you.”
“It shouldn’t, but it does.” Rafe leaned over the table. His fists clenched between them on the wooden surface as he looked deeply into her sympathetic gaze. “He keeps it all inside—except when he’s having a nightmare or when he talks to one of our horses at the stables. And there’s nothing I can do to make it better.”
She reached out a hand and covered one of his. Her touch was gentle, and he took in a sharp breath at what she probably only saw as an expression of comfort. But as a human, she had no idea how his shifter mind worked, or that his panther and alpha form saw the simple gesture as his mate accepting them.
He pulled his hand away to keep from doing something he would regret—like claiming her right then and there. She frowned and slowly pulled her hand back, with what he thought was a look of hurt filling her gaze.
“Well,” she said, all prim and business-like as she sat up straight in the tiny chair. “With school letting out the middle of next week, I’d love to start working with him. That is if you think I’d be a good fit for him.”
“Where do you typically hold your sessions?” She didn’t have an office after all.
A fleeting look of unease crossed her face that she quickly masked—but not quickly enough for him not to notice. “At the moment I would need to meet at your home.”
He let that strange look pass as warmth spread through his chest at the idea of having Aubrey under his roof.
“Excellent. I’ll see you on Wednesday afternoon. Say two o’clock?”
Her eyes widened. “Uh. Okay. But don’t you want to see my references first,” she said, pulling a folder stuffed with papers from one of the stacks she had laid out.
“No.” He let his hungry gaze roam over her smooth but confused features. “I have everything I need to know.”
Rafe s
at in his home office and stared at his computer screen without really seeing anything on the display. It had been the same the past three days. He supposed meeting one’s Destined Mate had a tendency to do that to a person because nothing had kept him from going back to the thirty minutes he’d spent with the woman he wanted for his own—the one meant only for him.
Javier had told him it would happen to him one day—had told him how it would feel—but he hadn’t taken much stock in it. Finding a mate hadn’t held much interest for him, much less a destined one. Now, after meeting Aubrey, he was thankful he had never been tempted to mate with any of the human or shifter women he’d had relationships with over the years. If he had, he wouldn’t have felt The Calling from her, which had to have been those unexpected sensations he had experienced when she’d probably entered the school. And her dreams of him would have forever been lost.
His heart stuttered. She would have been nothing to him Friday—nothing but a random person who might be able to help his nephew.
He turned his leather chair toward the window behind him and looked out over the pool. He now understood Javier’s driving need for Catherine once he’d found her, even though at the time Rafe had laughed his ass off at his brother’s determined pursuit of a human woman who would have to Awaken to her destiny.
He smiled at the memory of his brother’s grousing each time she’d turned him down. Their road to each other had taken almost a year before her Awakening, but in that time, a deep and abiding love had grown between them as he’d worn her down with his charm and good humor.
“The journey to my mate was worth everything,” Javier had told Rafe after his brother’s bonding ceremony to Catherine. He’d hugged his mate close on one side as he’d slapped Rafe on the back with his free hand and laughed. “And one day, you’ll remember I said this when you’re standing next to your mate.”
He’d found his mate. But waiting for her a whole year? He frowned. He might end up having to rethink that whole "patience is a virtue" thing.
“Uncle Rafe.”
Rafe’s surprised glance flew up to his open office door at Dex’s cautious voice coming from the front of the house. “Yes,” he called getting up from his desk. It had to be something for Dex to actually initiate a conversation.
“There’s a bear in the driveway.”
He rushed to his office door and then down the hallway as his claws and fangs dropped. He hadn’t been notified of an official challenge, but that didn’t mean some wannabe wouldn’t try to take him on.
“Dex,” he growled at the wide-eyed little boy as he rounded the corner leading to the front door. “Get back.”
Rafe grabbed the door handle about the same time a loud sneeze sounded from his front porch, and he paused—his partial shift receding as he scented the air.
Horses. Bear. Sneezing.
Max.
He pulled opened the door to find the Beta Prime of the Southeast standing on his porch and blowing his nose, while letting out several colorful curses under his breath.
“How is it you’re allergic to horses?” Rafe asked with a laugh as he opened the door wider to Max as the bear shifter glared at him while still wiping his nose.
“Bears have…ah…ah…ah…ah-shit!” That was an interesting sneeze. “A keen sense of smell. God,” Max said as he snarled up his nose. “Just let me inside before my head explodes.” He sniffled as he brushed over his clothes. “And I’ve got damned horse hair on me everywhere.”
“You walked from your car—there,” Rafe said, glancing past the giant of a man and pointing to the black SUV not ten feet from the bottom of the steps. “To my porch—here.” He pointed to Max’s booted feet. “And I don’t see a horse anywhere near you. So how can you have horse hair on you everywhere?”
“It’s in the air, man,” he said, sneezing again with another expletive Rafe hoped Dex didn’t hear—which he probably had—before he blew his nose with a loud honk.
A quiet giggle sounded behind him. Rafe nearly broke his neck snapping his head over his shoulder to find Dex peeking around the corner of the living room archway with a smile on his lips—one he quickly lost as his gaze rose to Rafe’s before he scurried away.
“Get your ass in here, you giant snot factory,” Rafe said, grabbing Max by his shirt with both hands and hauling him through the door.
“Are we fighting?” Max said with his brows raised as he stared down at Rafe and his hands knotted in his shirt.
“No,” Rafe said with a laugh and then let him go. “But if you were a woman, I’d kiss you full on the lips right now. Hell, I might just do it anyhow.”
Max took a step back and looked Rafe up and down. “Well, while you’re an attractive guy and all, I don’t see that happening. Ever.” He took a big whiff in Rafe’s direction. “Besides, you smell like a horse.”
“It’s a horse ranch.”
“My point exactly.” He sneezed again, letting out several more curses under his breath as he wiped his nose. “Sending me to a horse ranch,” Max grumbled as he walked past Rafe and further into the house while brushing at his clothes. “Law has a sick and twisted sense of humor. Ha!” he said, picking at something on his sleeve. He turned to Rafe with an accusing glare while holding out his pinched fingers. “Horse hair.”
“If you say so,” Rafe said, although he didn’t see anything. But the big bear had made Dex laugh—even though it had been a small one—so he’d indulge him. And small or not, it had been the first thing resembling a laugh he’d heard from his nephew since before his parents’ death. “I thought you’d flown back to Huntsville with Law.”
The bear’s demeanor changed immediately, his expression hardening. “I’ve been attempting to trace Llewellyn and his family’s movements. And I have to tell you, it’s been damned frustrating.”
“Go on in and have a seat,” Rafe said as he motioned for Max to precede him into his living room. “So you’ve been in Tampa this whole time?”
“I have,” Max said. Rafe frowned when the bear took his favorite recliner before he sat on the couch opposite him.
“And I’m just finding out about this now?” Rafe had only been Regent for a little over a week, but wasn’t this something he should have known about?
Max shrugged. “Law wanted to give you time to heal after the challenge—maybe let the whole mantle of responsibility thing settle on you before the real work begins.”
“Law filled me in on some of it, and I’ve been in contact with a man who’s part owner of the club Llewellyn frequented.”
“Yeah. That Covenant place.” Max huffed. “I couldn’t get past the guard shack.” Of course he hadn’t. They didn’t let just anyone in. “And I thought I saw what looked like several armed guards patrolling. Seriously, who has that kind of security for a club?”
He doesn’t know. This should be good.
“It’s exclusive,” Rafe said with a slight grin and what he hoped was a bored expression. “And their members like their privacy.” The bear was in for such a surprise. “Anyhow, Ian Sawyer and I go way back. He’s handling some personal business right now but said he’d call me next week with a time to stop by.”
“So, he’s okay with us questioning some of his staff?”
“Within reason,” Rafe said as Max nodded. “Now, tell me. Why didn’t you just stay at the ranch while you’ve been here?”
Max stared hard at him, but the effect was ruined as his nose twitched. “You…ah…d…ah…” His body jerked as another sneeze shook him before he sniffled and shot a watery death glare at Rafe. “Does that answer your question?”
2
Aubrey Simmons brought her old, red Chevy S-10 to a stop in front of the sprawling ranch house and then squeezed the cracked steering wheel tightly as she peered out the windshield. Rafe Navarro’s home was a lot bigger than she had envisioned—even with Dex’s detailed drawings as a reference. She turned off the ignition and let Reba have the time she needed to do that sputtering thing she always did w
hile her wondering gaze traced over the light and dark gray lines of the exterior.
“Now this is a house,” she whispered over the last rickety gasp from the old girl. She then grabbed her canvas art supply bag from the passenger seat and stepped out onto the paved circular driveway.
“Wow,” she breathed out as she slammed the truck door shut. She squinted at the front of the house and shaded her eyes against the sun setting behind it before taking in the surrounding buildings and horse pastures beyond. It was amazing how meticulously Dex had captured even the smallest details of La Pradera. Everything—each place her gaze landed—was familiar to her from the artwork she’d inexplicably been drawn to and poured over again and again.
If she had to admit it, she’d spent more time on them than had absolutely been necessary to do her job, which probably explained why her dreams had picked up on her slight obsession with the place the past few nights. Her heart beat a little harder at the realization of how after years of dreaming of her panther and the man he became, the pieces of Dex’s pictures had brought the setting into focus—from the tall grass she spied beyond the two-story, five-door barn and three corrals, to the white fencing that went on and on in every direction, and the large shade trees in the distance draped with gray moss. And then, of course, the stream she knew instinctively ran through those same trees. All of it filled in what had been missing.
She flushed with heat that had nothing to do with how long she had stood in the late afternoon sun and everything to do with what she and her dream lover had done on the banks of that stream the previous night.
“No sense revisiting that at the moment,” she murmured as she gripped the handles of her bag tightly and made her way across the bricked walkway leading to the house. Her skin prickled with awareness when her foot touched the first step leading up to the porch, and she paused as an almost eerie sense of homecoming filled her. She had no idea where the feeling had come from, but she quickly dismissed it as wishful thinking.
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