Cowboy Daddy

by Hannah McBride

  “Just stay,” he mumbled into her hair—honey-colored and spilling across the pillow beside him—as he flung his other arm around her, pulling her to fuse with him once again. Afternoon had danced across the electric blue horizon of the sea, painting the skies a different shade of orange with each passing hour. Aaron and Vanessa lay there, limbs tangled together and breaths synchronized below the lapping blades of the ceiling fan, the waves whispering below the deck. Flip-flops clacked against the floorboards outside of the room as hotel guests scuttled out to the impossible blue of the sea. Sleep fell over them, their bodies clean and hollowed out by orgasm, their minds alight with the essence of one another as the orange faded to fuchsia and bathed the sea below in glimmering serenity.

  Chapter 20

  “I have a secret for you, too,” Aaron whispered as the sun rose across the sea. It illuminated behind Vanessa’s head like a halo as she lay there on the opposite side of the bed, fresh-faced and recharged.

  He woke up an hour before she did, pulsating with nerves. Should he tell her? Should he wait? What if she found out? What if he couldn’t control himself? What if he transformed in front of her? Or worse yet, what if he confessed to her what he really was, only for Vanessa to cower away in fear and disgust?

  This kind of dilemma was no stranger to the tightly guarded borders of every new relationship, but it felt different in Aaron’s case. He wasn’t confessing to alcoholism or a gambling addiction, or any other recognized personal flaw. It wasn’t even a vice, it was a vandalism of sorts. Someone had systematically eroded him to this periodic monster, this werebear. What if Vanessa couldn’t take it? What if she ran away screaming, out of his life forever?

  And yet, she told him what had been done to her. She gushed everything over sun-splashed days pounding along the water: her parents’ car accident, their lack of life insurance, the bills piling up, the epilepsy diagnosis. Then, of course, the day-to-day hardship of being a single parent to a six-year-old, especially at the age of twenty-one. She entrusted Aaron with all of this, setting the stage for a beautiful exchange of information, a dance with shared secrets.

  Vanessa nuzzled her face into his chest. Aaron sighed and pulled away, looking her in the eyes.

  “Someone… poisoned me,” he began, and her face contorted into a look of pure concern. “Someone poisoned my father and me, both, to infiltrate our company.”

  “What?” Vanessa demanded, sitting up. “Are you okay? When was this? Who poisoned you?” Her mouth was spouting questions, unspooling like a roll of thread dropped on the ground.

  “Everything’s all right,” Aaron said, calmly. Vanessa lay back down next to him, pulling the covers up over her breasts. “I don’t know for sure who it was,” he continued, “but I think I know who. I’ve placed Mr. Lee in charge of my father’s care while we’re here. He should improve. As for me… though…” Aaron sighed.

  What made the situation so much worse was that it was utterly nonsensical. Aaron had become a walking parody, a mythical being that he thought only existed in fairy tales. How could he tell Vanessa such an absurdity? It sounded asinine even when he thought it. How could he convince her that it was real?

  “I was given a rare, military-grade serum,” Aaron belted out. “This serum causes me to… transform…”

  “Into what?” Vanessa cut him off, intrigued.

  “The military doctor called it a… werebear,” Aaron said, gulping. “As in, a werewolf bear.”

  Silence fell across the room, and only the lapping of the waves could be heard outside as the landscape of the Maldives revved up for another day, totally unaware of the confession made within these walls. Aaron let his head fall into his hands, hopeless, wondering how to salvage the morning. He’d ruined the conversation, unleashing this venom of a secret to someone who—rightfully so—couldn’t take it all in.

  Something stirred inside Vanessa; curling up around her soul. Her mind sizzled with a mix of fear and confusion bubbling up together in tandem with one another. What is a werebear? Her mind spiraled with the question, over and over again, until it no longer sounded ridiculous in her train of thought. It was intriguing somehow; overpowering in its allure. The notion of being craved by this beast of a man with rippling muscles and overflowing appeal. His confession felt more and more normal with each wave of realization across her mind; so much so that Vanessa didn’t even feel the need to sour the moment with her own commentary.

  “Aaron,” Vanessa broke the stillness. “What do you want out of life?”

  Shock drizzled through him. “What?” he asked, lifting his head to face her.

  “What do you want out of life?” she asked again. “Have you already achieved your dreams? Are you still searching for something?”

  He let his eyes wander outside to the cyan sea, and the way the sunlight glimmered across the surface of the waves. All he wanted was normalcy, to be average, to not be considered such a commodity.

  “I want… to be a regular guy,” he confessed. “I want a house, I want a wife, I want to barbecue in the backyard and drink beer with my friends. I want to talk about sports, not stocks. I want to fix things in the garage. I want to read all the newspaper sections, not just the finance and business parts. I want… to be average,” Aaron said, looking into her eyes.

  “Have you ever told anyone before?” she questioned, curiously.

  “No one’s ever asked me,” he replied.

  Chapter 21

  In the months following his trip to the Maldives, Aaron was informed that his assumption about his former secretary’s involvement in the case was false. His father was still deteriorating, even after a quick jump in his health. In what felt like a move of ultimate betrayal, Mr. Lee was taken into federal custody on two charges of attempted murder, having stolen the serum from an unknown merchant on the black market.

  “Why did you do it?” Aaron said into the phone as he stared into Mr. Lee’s eyes, sunken and gray, across the plexiglass barrier. “Why would you do this to us?”

  “You never respected me,” Mr. Lee hissed. “I had worked for your father since before you were born. I should have owned the company by now. I should be in charge. I was loyal for decades, but Charlie never cared about me. I was stuck, unable to move up, wasting my time. I wanted him gone. I wanted you gone. I wanted to win.”

  “How did you inject the poison into me? How did you make me into such a monster?” Aaron was desperate for answers; his brain seemed to turn itself inside-out in longing to understand how all this happened.

  “I spiked your coffee,” snarled Mr. Lee, his eyes somersaulting in their turpitude. “The morning of the meeting with the investors. I placed a tasteless sedative in a single serving of decaf coffee and poured it into a mug as soon as I saw Desiree coming. Once you were knocked out, I injected you with the serum...the same serum I plunged into your father’s bloodstream in sustained, nearly-lethal doses. I kept him alive just long enough to name me as his successor. And yet...he never did...” Mr. Lee’s wicked confession trailed off, leaving Aaron with the constricting depravity of his words.

  “My father could read people,” Aaron said slowly, measuredly. “He could have sensed this behavior in you, Mr. Lee. That’s probably the reason that you never moved up in the company, not me.”

  Hatred emanated from Mr. Lee’s pores as he spit at Aaron’s face across the windowpane. The two guards supervising the visit immediately snapped to action, dragging Mr. Lee back into the dingy recesses of the federal prison where he was held, awaiting the death sentence. Sighing, Aaron held his thumbs tightly within his fingers for a few seconds before getting up to leave. This was his coping mechanism, this helped him calm down. Over time, Aaron learned the value in stress-management strategies, always testing and trying new ways to prevent a transformation. In times of intense anxiety, Aaron could squeeze his thumbs at the pressure points to release dopamine through his body to create waves of contentment.

  Behind the wheel of the Tesla he’d traded f
or his old bachelor’s Porsche, Aaron took in the fields of unending green across the rural California landscape. Mountains sketched themselves out across the brilliant blue of the southwestern sky and birds flitted through the wind gusts, chirping and singing a soundtrack of inextinguishable joy. He sold Kümertech to a rival company, which absorbed his albatross with open arms. Now, Aaron did what he wanted, when he wanted, and didn’t have to keep up the masquerade of detached indifference.

  Aaron pulled into the driveway of a house he’d bought shortly after his return from the Maldives. Emma ran out to greet him as he closed the car door, bounding across the yard only to be swooped up in his arms and spun around until they both fell in their dizziness on the landing pad of the grass. Vanessa watched from the window, spinning in her own form of dizzy joy at the sight of the two of them together, giving each other companionship they’d never had before.

  For Emma, Aaron was a big brother and a father figure rolled into one. For Aaron, Emma was a window into a life of joy, of compassion, of innocence, of hope. For Vanessa, they were bridges to a family she didn’t think she deserved, the new and improved version of the family that was ripped away from her. She was nearing her twenty-third birthday, and her life had painted itself in ways that she lacked the artistic ability to imagine. Watching Aaron gaze up at clouds with Emma in the grass, pointing out cloud formations and giggling at the possibilities, Vanessa’s heart was bursting. This was her life now.

  Unwrapped by Him

  By: Natasha Spencer

  Unwrapped by Him

  © December 2017 – All rights reserved

  By Natasha Spencer,

  Published by Passionate Publishing Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. All names and characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  This book is for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Warning

  This book is intended for adult readers, 18+ years old. Please close this e-book if you are not comfortable reading adult content.

  Chapter One

  “And one…two…three…and hold!”

  The music pumped out loudly as the room of mostly women, and a handful of men, held their stretches, bent over, bottoms up in the air. They were all at various stages of development and abilities, but Ashleigh was proud of every one of them.

  “And release…nice and slow…and stand…”

  She ran her fingers through her short –and now pretty wet– black hair and grinned at the room, bouncing up and down on her toes and shaking out her limbs.

  Everyone copied her, their red hot, sweaty faces looking relieved to bring the session to a close.

  “You’ve done great, guys!” She laughed buoyantly and ran over to switch off the music, still full of energy despite the intense one-hour work out. Most of the others in the room were all puffed out and ready to drop, but not Ashleigh.

  “I’ll see you all next week!” she called out as her clients began to disperse, a general hum of chit-chat filling the air as they talked about the session, or their plans for the weekend. Her Friday evening sessions were always her favorite. Everyone was in such a good mood and pumped to have a couple of days off work. It was different for Ashleigh though. Being a personal trainer, she often found herself working weekends too, but she didn’t mind. She enjoyed what she did, and operating on a self-employed basis allowed her flexible hours.

  Draping a towel around her neck and taking a swig from her water, Ashleigh headed out the room after the last of her clients, wandering down the corridors of the gym where she worked towards the front desk in the reception area. She needed to clock out and let them know the session was over, and also check when she was next booked in. Tuesday was her next regular session, but she was pretty sure she had a private one booked before that.

  “Hey, Trina,” she smiled at the girl on reception as she arrived.

  Katrina, or Trina, as everyone called her, had quickly become one of Ashleigh’s closest friends since she’d started working at the gym a year and a half ago.

  “Hey, Ash,” Trina grinned back, looking relieved to get a bit of a break from the monotony. Working the reception desk was a pretty boring job, all in all. “How’d it go today?”

  “Yeah, great.”

  “You look a little sweaty.”

  Ashleigh laughed and wiped her forehead with the towel. “Yeah, I’m in severe need of a shower, but just wanted to check about next week.”

  “Uh yeah… one sec…”

  Trina tapped on the keyboard and pulled up Ashleigh’s schedule, while Ash glanced around the reception area and looked up at the TV, catching a glimpse of the latest news headlines. Nothing good, as per usual.

  “Tuesday, you’re in for your spin class…”

  Ashleigh nodded, as Trina continued.

  “Oh wait, and it says here you’ve got a one-to-one with Bryony on Monday morning at 10. That sound right?”

  “Yeah, that was it. Honestly, I couldn’t remember, my mind’s like a sieve these days.”

  “Yeah? Good job I’m here then,” Trina smiled and clicked off the screen. “You got a lot on your mind?”

  “Kinda,” Ashleigh shrugged and took a swig from her water. “I’ll fill you in after my shower; I feel skanky.” In truth, she probably could have told her what was up right then and there, but she had just lost her nerve – again.

  Trina laughed and reluctantly turned her eyes back to her work, not suspecting a thing. “Alright, see you in a bit then.”

  Ashleigh strode off back down the corridor and took a left, disappearing into the changing rooms. She opened up her locker, took out her bag, and found herself a spare shower, letting the hot water wash away all the hard work and any nagging thoughts she had regarding the conversation she was about to have with Trina. She knew her friend wouldn’t take too well to her news, but she hoped she’d be supportive nonetheless.

  She didn’t bother drying off her hair, just patting it with a towel then slicking it back. Having short hair was a real bonus – it dried off so quickly on its own. Next, she got changed into some fresh clothes and stuffed the old sweaty ones in her bag, swinging it over her shoulder. She checked her appearance once in the mirror. She still looked hot, but at least she was hot and clean now, rather than hot and sweaty. Her cheeks were all rosy and fresh; healthy. She grinned at herself, flashing a set of sparkling white teeth, then left the changing rooms and strolled through to the reception at a more leisurely pace, feeling chilled and relaxed after her shower, and in a better frame of mind to be able to talk to Trina.

  “Hey.” She leaned her elbows up on the desk and Trina immediately swung her chair around to face her, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “So…what have you got to tell me? Have you got a boyfriend or something?” She gave a little squeal of anticipated delight. She was always asking Ash whether she’d managed to land herself a boyfriend yet, and the answer was always the same. A resounding no. And she wasn’t interested in that type of thing. Not at the moment. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself. She certainly didn’t want to rush into a relationship after the last handful of disasters. She’d been hurt in the past, and she wasn’t about to walk down that road again anytime soon.

  “Noooo, it’s nothing like that,” she laughed and rolled her eyes in response. “It’s not even…a definite thing yet but…I’ve been thinking about it a lot, which explains why my head’s a bit all over the place right now.”

  “Come on then, spit it out, what is it?”

  “Well, uh… I’ve applied to be a runner on a movie.”

  Trina’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Oh, no way!”

  “Yeah, I just like… I saw this advert, and I just thought, why not? I’ve always wanted to work in the movies and most people start off being runners so…it’s kinda the bottom rung
on the ladder type of thing,” she shrugged, trying to play it down. “You basically drive people around, go and get coffee and sandwiches, post mail, print off scripts, odd jobs, you know?”

  “Okay, but like, does that mean you’re gonna be quitting here permanently? How long’s this job last and where’s it filming?”

  Ashleigh bit her lip. She knew that question was bound to come, and it was the reason she’d been nervous sharing her news initially. “Well, it’d be out in LA and–”

  “Whaaaaat? You’re ditching us for Hollywood?” Trina laughed.

  Ash chuckled and shook her head. “Look, I probably won’t even get the job, it’s such a long shot. Imagine how many other people apply for this kind of thing, and I’m just…some personal trainer. There’ll be people much more qualified than me.”

  Trina frowned and pulled a face. “Psssh, don’t think like that. You’re awesome. Why wouldn’t they want you?”

  Ashleigh smiled and bit her bottom lip softly. “Thanks. And…well, I guess I would be leaving here but…not permanently. The shoot would only be a few months and then I’d be back.”

  “Nah, then you’d be snapped up by Hollywood and enlisted in some other movie, then another, then another. I mean, that’s the whole idea, right? You’re doing this because you want to break into the film industry? Not just do one movie then return home to your ordinary job with us boring lot.” Trina grinned, her voice full of humor, and obviously not mad about this at all.

  “You think I should go for it?”

  “Of course you should, babe. I mean, yeah, I’ll be sad to see you go but…this is your dream! I remember you gushing about wanting to be in movies when we first met. You gotta follow your dreams, Ash. Come here.” And at that, she stood up and opened up her arms to give Ashleigh a hug over the desk.