“Hmm…” Michelle tilted her head, appearing to think it over. “That is interesting.”
“Hell yeah, it’s interesting,” James said, feeling especially smug. “She left him once! A long ass time ago.”
“Old flame…” Michelle pursed her lips. “He could be really hung up on her. Which means if she breaks his heart again, he’ll be especially weak. That’s good.”
“It’s great!” James insisted. “You should go to his suite tonight and seduce the hell out of him! Sounded like he was going to talk to her again. You gotta snap him up before he gets away!”
“No, no, no.” She squinted and stared out the window at the snowy peaks beyond. He could practically hear the click of the wheels turning in her head. She was scheming. It was the only time she wasn’t volatile. “No, he’s not broken down yet. I have to wait until they talk and see if he collapses. Things aren’t going well but they’re not dead yet. Gotta let it die. Or kill it. I’ll definitely kill it myself, if I have to.”
“Are you sure-”
Michelle gave no warning before her hands were around his throat. Her strength was a little unnatural, she was using magic to enhance. This occurred to James dimly and then he couldn’t think of anything at all because he couldn’t breathe. She was grimacing at him, her eyes wide with delight as she choked him, pulling him over the side of the tub so that he half fell into the bath with her.
“I’m...s-sorry....” James croaked, his eyes bulging out.
He’d fucked up somehow. She was finally going to kill him. His heart pounded with fear and the edges of his vision began to grow black. Michelle grinned in that crazy way of hers and her grip tightened, her fingernails breaking the skin.
“Don’t contradict me,” Michelle whispered in his ear.
Just as James was sure his life was about to be snuffed out like an old candle, Michelle let go and he fell back into the tub with a splash. She kicked him and he wheezed, coughing as he climbed out of the water and caught his breath, his throat throbbing.
“Sorry,” he rasped. “Okay, you’re right.”
He sat on the edge of the tub and felt both petrified and also very fortunate not to be dead as he composed himself.
“Um...anyway,” James said. “Uh, yeah. K-kill it.”
“Kill it,” Michelle said, nodding. She looked completely calm again. That was as unsettling as anything else.
“Or kill her, I guess,” James said, cringing and wondering if that was contrary enough for her to nearly kill him again. But she only sat back in the tub instead.
“If I have to,” Michelle said, taking another sip of wine. “Or, even if I don’t.”
12
Lydia
It was just sex; it was just sex; I need to get out of here. I need to shift and run...
Lydia sighed heavily and sank further into the bubbly hot water of the jacuzzi tub.
It was difficult not to feel a little pathetic. She’d come all the way down to Black Bear Lake just for Eric, who was seemingly perfectly fine. He wasn’t in any danger, that was for sure. After hearing about what his brother had been through finding his mate and fighting off some notorious gangster shifter from Utah, she was starting to think it was only that situation which she’d dreamed about. It was likely that the danger had already come and passed.
That meant she really had no further reason to hang around Black Bear Lake, except that Eric was letting her and it was difficult to resist.
There was also the unavoidable fact that if Eric came to her door again, she would let him into her bed. Even if it was just sex.
Besides all that, what did she have to go back to? She had left her awful sleuth a long, long time ago. She had no real ties in Washington and she’d brought everything important with her. The thought of being lonely in Washington was a lot more dismal than the thought of being lonely, even with Eric just across the lodge from her.
Lydia climbed out of the bath and dressed in the yoga pants and sweater she’d bought with one of Eric’s gift cards. She was considering ordering food when the knock came at the door and she tensed, expecting Eric. Except, it didn’t smell like him.
When she opened the door to Cody Strauss, she sighed in relief. “Hey, Cody.” She grinned genuinely. She had not had a chance to catch up with all the Strauss brothers, though she had only ever been dimly aware of them as Eric’s intimidating older brothers when she was younger. But Cody laughed and gave her a big hug, clapping her on the back. He was holding a covered platter and he held it carefully aside as he hugged her. “How are you?”
“Me?” Cody raised an eyebrow. “I’m just fine. I’m more interested in how you are. Judging by the pouty expression on my brother’s face, I’m guessing not great.”
“Really?” Lydia shut the door behind Cody and padded over to the mini-bar. If they were going to be talking about Eric, she at least wanted to be buzzed. “He seemed pretty happy with himself the last time I saw him. I’ll get you a drink.”
He’d looked perfectly happy to her mind, tossing their time together off as hot sex and nothing more. It hadn’t been only that to her. Not when they’d seemed to connect on every level.
“He wasn’t,” Cody said firmly. She tossed him a mini bottle of Grey Goose and he caught it neatly, throwing it back all in one swallow. “But we Strauss brothers aren’t always great at talking about our…” Cody sighed dramatically and waved a hand around as if batting away insects, “feelings.”
“Wow.” Lydia couldn’t help but laugh. “You really aren’t.”
“My feelings are usually that I’m kinda pissed and everything else is a dull roar,” Cody cracked.
Lydia cackled at that and she sat down at the dining table. Cody set that mysterious platter of his on the table. “I brought you dinner, by the way. Shrimp scampi, creamed spinach, potatoes au gratin, tiramisu for dessert…”
“Oooh.” Lydia’s mouth watered. She was more in the mood to go on a hunt and get her paws dirty, but she was hardly about to turn down shrimp. “That looks delicious. Thank you! I must have been a fool to fall for the concierge and not the chef.”
“Fall for?” Cody’s eyebrows shot up.
Shit.
“I’m just… I don’t mean…”
“I won’t say anything.” Cody shook his head and Lydia blushed, digging into her shrimp scampi. On second thought, it was much better than a hunt would be. Though she still wanted to go on a run in the snowy woods to stretch her legs. “It’s your business. But I think it’s stupid.”
“I left and he never got over it,” she said quietly. “I was doing it for his own good.”
“You might have given him the choice, you know.”
“I was young. Didn’t always think things through.”
“Right.” Cody shrugged. “Well, I hope it works out. If it makes any difference, my brothers and I have been trying to knock some sense into him.”
“If he’s sensible, he’ll tell me to go,” Lydia said. It sounded morose, she supposed. And pitiful.
“Hey, now.” He squeezed her shoulder. “I never got to know you too well, but I always liked you a lot better than any other girl Eric ever knew. Not that there was anything wrong with them. You just always felt like one of us.”
Lydia smiled sadly, poking at her shrimp. “I was never one of you though. That was the problem.”
“Well, if I had to guess, I’d say Eric’s madly in love you,” Cody said. “So that shouldn’t matter. You belong because you love each other. If you can work it out.”
“Maybe.” She only felt marginally better. But there had been too many years of being alone to let Lydia feel optimistic or believe that love conquers all. “We’ll see.”
The next day, Lydia was just picking up her phone to call Eric when his text came through. She liked to think that was part of their occasional telepathic connection, and even if it was probably a coincidence, it still made her smile.
Can we talk?
Lydia had to laugh. At this
point it seemed as if they were repeating a pattern of promising to talk then resolutely not talking. It was a dangerous business. If things started up between them again, she couldn’t promise herself she had the will power to turn down Eric Strauss.
But she only texted back: Sure. Your suite?
Eric texted back a thumbs up. She answered that she’d be there in fifteen minutes as she finished up the meal Cody had cooked for her before sorting through the things she’d bought on the shopping promenade. Even if it was just a conversation, she wanted to show up in something better than yoga pants.
“I’m gonna miss this fancy stuff,” she muttered, sighing.
There was a big, dark void waiting for her. She should have been used to it, she supposed. But even this state of uncertainty with Eric sometimes made her think things could be better. Yet that wasn’t reality. The best thing she could hope for was that they resolved their old messy issues and parted as friends.
Lydia settled on jeggings and a tunic sweater in an icy blue that was soft and snug around her curves. She brushed her hair out and put on some lip gloss before heading across the lodge to Eric’s residence, taking her time to memorize everything about the place. She thought it must be strange to live in a resort that other people could only visit for short periods. But it looked like a lot of fun to her. She wondered what it would be like to raise children in such a place.
“Hey.” Eric smiled sheepishly.
He looked casual for once. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and there was some beard bristle dusting his chin. He looked more like his younger self. His hair didn’t even have product on it and it looked like it would be soft and silky between Lydia’s fingers.
“Hi.” Things felt excruciatingly awkward immediately and Lydia’s heart pounded in her chest as Eric shut the door behind her. “Do you actually want to talk or-”
“I actually want to talk,” Eric said quickly. “If that’s okay.”
“Yeah.” They should have properly talked days ago. They’d ‘talked’ for hours about this and that, but had carefully skirted the giant elephant in the room that had been standing there between them for so long. “So go ahead.” She crossed her arms and nodded at him. “Talk then.”
“It was not just sex,” Eric said quickly. His eyes were blazing as he looked at Lydia who already felt a little heated under that intense gaze. “I’m sorry I made that crack that made it sound like that’s all it was. It was bullshit. Of course, it wasn’t just hot sex, although, holy shit, was that some hot sex-”
“The sex was amazing,” Lydia said wryly. “That’s not in dispute.”
“Definitely not.” Eric sighed, never looking away. “But it wasn’t just about that. There was...I felt… I mean didn’t you?”
“It got telepathetic,” Lydia said quietly.
“Exactly.” He grinned, throwing up his hands. “I can’t pretend it didn’t mean anything when we obviously formed that connection. It was… I’ve never felt that before.”
There had been a few times when they were kids when they could read each other’s minds. But that total merging of two souls...that was new.
Lydia had heard of mates who could read minds. It was rare, but it did happen. As kids, they’d tossed it off as some magic fluke. But she’d read some lore. Mates who could read minds could do other things like transfer strength to each other in times of crisis or enhance magic ability - though Lydia had never learned to use magic. It made her feel special that they had that potential with each other.
“Me either!” Lydia said. She was starting to get her hopes up. And that was dangerous. “You think that happens for me everyday?”
“I’m glad, if it doesn’t.”
“Of course, it doesn’t!”
The quick back and forth made them both laugh and Lydia felt a little more relaxed.
Eric hovered near the door and then said, “I’m going to make some coffee. Okay?”
“Oh, I didn’t find any coffee in my-”
“Of course, there’s coffee,” Eric said with a snort. “I gave you the deluxe fridge. There’s packets of gourmet stuff in there behind the booze.”
Eric strode with purpose over to the mini fridge and knelt, rooting around.
“Aha!” Eric shook a bag of fancy looking coffee grounds. He whistled as he filled the coffee maker carafe with water.
“Maybe this is the danger.” Lydia smiled softly, getting settled on the couch and turning around to face him, leaning on its back. It was one of those moments that made her feel young again. She remembered sitting on the kitchen counter in the Strauss’s fancy kitchen watching Eric cook for her. It was usually something he’d learned from Cody, who had always been a natural in the kitchen. “Maybe you’re gonna burn yourself on scalding hot coffee. That’s it, that’s all my nightmare was about.”
Eric chuckled at that. He watched what he was doing as he carefully scooped grounds into the filter. Lydia watched his every move, happy to let her gaze rove over him as he worked. He had fine lines around his eyes now. He was still young, but she had spotted just a couple. She liked them. They pointed to a lot of laughter and smiles.
“That would be nice,” he murmured, flipping on the machine. He spun around and leaned against the small counter. “Would it have been worth the trip then?”
“Of course.” Her gaze dropped to the floor. It was hard to look right at him when things got more serious. It was frightening. “It would always be worth the trip to see you.”
“Then why didn’t you come before?” His voice broke. He sounded truly hurt.
Lydia breathed in and the silence of the moment was deafening as she tried to think of what to say. The coffeemaker gurgled.
“I didn’t think you wanted to see me,” she said it so quietly she wasn’t sure he heard her or that she wanted even him to. “The last time I came… It didn’t feel right-”
“You left out of nowhere-”
“Eric-”
“No,” he said fiercely. “We’re talking about this.”
He clamped his mouth shut and the juxtaposition would have been funny, if anything could have been funny at that moment. The silence stretched on until the coffee was done and she heard Eric sigh and turn around to put together two cups for them and bring them over.
Lydia turned around and sat properly on the couch before taking a long sip of coffee.
Eric sat across from her in a small easy chair that made him seem somehow larger.
She was halfway through her coffee, trying to get up her nerve, before she finally said, “I thought I was helping you. When I left.”
His eyes flashed and she saw the way his jaw clenched subtly, the little tremble of his cheek. “You broke me,” he said. “You broke me. I never… I pretended you didn’t. I didn’t want to admit it. I never got over you even a little bit.”
“You’ve forgotten what it was like,” Lydia said. She already had tears brimming and she blinked, wishing them away, but one stubborn drop slid down her cheek. “You were still at home with your family and your parents… You wanted to pretend it wasn’t a problem because it wasn’t a problem for you but your parents hated me-”
“They hated your sleuth.” He rubbed his eyes and she gaped at him.
“You know that’s the same thing, Eric.” She shook her head, annoyed. “It’s not like I loved where I came from. My childhood was miserable. You know that. If they’d cared they could have helped me, but they didn’t want to help me. They wanted me to just go away. Leave their perfect son alone to marry some perfect rich girl-”
“I would have left it all for you,” he said fiercely. “You know I would have. You didn’t give me the chance-”
“I didn’t want you to leave your family for me!” Lydia cried. “I would have felt worse!”
“But you ended up leaving your sleuth anyway,” Eric said. “You could have-”
“They would never have accepted me-”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Eric said. He grabbed her
hand, gazing into her eyes. “They’re far away and I’m not eighteen years-old anymore.”
Lydia burst out laughing, snatching her hand from his. “Oh, like that’s it?” She threw up her hands. “It’s all fine now? You’ve been angry at me all this time but it’s all wiped away because-”
“It doesn’t matter,” he insisted. “If we were together, I won’t… That’s the past.”
Lydia got to her feet. It was tempting. She couldn’t deny it. But none of it felt right. You couldn’t just dismiss history. She knew too much about life now to think that would ever work.
“So you’re not still angry?” She paced in a circle. Her blood felt like it was humming. Eric didn’t answer. That was answer enough. “Exactly.”
“You should have given me a chance,” he said, rising from the couch. “You should have given us a chance to fight for what we had.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing!”
When she looked at him, she only saw anger and that was too much.
“I have to get out of here,” she whispered.
“Lydia, no!”
“I have to…”
“Don’t run away again!”
“I just have to…” Hot tears came one after the other. “Just get out of here for a bit. I can’t take that look from you, Eric. Not from you.”
“All you do is leave,” he hissed. There was a ferocity in his voice that made it feel like her heart was shattering in her chest.
She wiped her eyes and nodded. “At least you’re not surprised.”
She shut the door behind her when she fled the suite. She didn’t stop running until she was outside the lodge, heading up into the woods beyond the slopes, shifted and free and far from Eric Strauss’s angry eyes.
13
Eric
Not again.
Eric had a much different feeling this time watching the love of his life run out the door. He’d screwed up. This time, that much was clear. For the first time, he truly realized how much he’d screwed up the first time around. He had always wanted to blame Lydia for breaking his heart. But the two of them had been young and stupid. It was obvious now. Lydia had been just as heartbroken as him.
Eric (Strauss Bear Shifter Brothers 0f Colorado Book 2) Page 7
