Daddy Shifter's Fake Fiance (Stonybrooke Shifters)
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Table of Contents
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Highlander Time Travel Romance
Vampire Romance
Billionaire Romance
MC Romance
The Runes of Argyll Trilogy
Bear Shifter Romance
Wolf Shifter Romance
Daddy Shifter’s Fake Fiance
Leela Ash
Copyright ©2017 by Leela Ash. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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STONYBROOKE SHIFTERS SERIES
DADDY SHIFTER’S VIRGIN
A SECRET BABY FOR THE SHIFTER
THE SHIFTER’S MAIL ORDER VIRGIN
Table of Contents
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
BONUS BOOKS
Alien Romance
Time Travel Romance
Dragon Shifter Romance
Dystopian Romance
Love and Survival in the Time After
Highlander Time Travel Romance
Vampire Romance
Billionaire Romance
MC Romance
The Runes of Argyll Trilogy
Bear Shifter Romance
Wolf Shifter Romance
1.
“Professor Desmond?”
There was silence; only the scribbling of the pen as the professor continued grading papers in his office, pointedly tuning out the distraction buzzing around the door of his office.
“Kane!”
“What do you want, Max? I’m busy!” Kane exclaimed, his voice a low growl. If he was going to get home in time to make dinner for his daughter, who would be home soon after her last math course of the day, he would have to finish soon. Time was of the essence.
“Took you long enough to acknowledge me!”
It took all Kane had to keep his wolf at bay as Max stepped into his office. He had never liked the man. Max was the kind of guy who reeked of corruption and greed, and had the face of a man who had no regard for anyone but himself.
“Tell me what you need and leave,” Kane said darkly. “I’ve got plans tonight and I need to get this done.”
“Sounds like you’re pressed for time,” Max said with a smug grin on his face. “You know, I’m teaching a seminar on time management. It’s geared toward the first-year students but you should really attend. It’s quite insightful.”
Kane’s hackles rose. What kind of an egotistical jerk was he?
“Get to the point, Max,” Kane growled.
“I just came to inform you that there’s an emergency board meeting being called tomorrow at 5 pm sharp. Be there, you won’t want to miss it.”
Something about the look in Max’s eye sent a chill down Kane’s spine. He was up to something. That much was certain. And he had come to all but gloat about it.
“All right, Max. Thanks for the update,” Kane said with a heavy sigh. He would have to attend now, and see what this was all about. But right now, he had other matters to attend to. Matters like dinner.
“Of course,” Max said. “My goal is to keep others informed. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be a professor, now, would I?”
Kane glowered down at the papers he was grading on his desk. If Max actually wanted to be a good professor, maybe he should spend more time on teaching his students instead of trying to brag and put down other people.
“Well, thanks for dropping by,” Kane said, looking meaningfully at his door. Finally, Max seemed to get the message. That or he had just been waiting for Kane to find a reason to thank him, because a shit-eating grin spread across his face.
“Just doing my duty for the council,” Max said, his eyes glittering with malice. Kane watched Max leave, suddenly suspicious. Something was going on, and it wasn’t going to be good.
***
“About time, dad!” Courtney exclaimed, bounding to the doorway and flashing a bright smile up at Kane. “Where have you been?”
Kane smiled sheepishly and pulled the pizza box from behind his back. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“All right!” Courtney cried, grabbing the pizza and running into the kitchen. “Oh, by the way, Lia’s here today. We have to study tonight for the math lab.”
Kane tensed up. Lia was Courtney’s best friend. They had met in his class on shifter history and hit it off immediately. That would have been great, except for two things. First, Lia was a human, and it was often difficult for humans and shifters to maintain amicable relationships, friendship or otherwise.
The other problem was that Kane had already had Lia in a previous class the year before, and had noticed how much she stood out from the rest of the humans who had attended university in Stonybrooke. She was bright, intelligent, and, most of all, absolutely stunning. But she didn’t seem to realize it at all, and he had found himself looking forward to reading her papers and seeing her walk into class…to the point where he found it somewhat unnerving. She was just a kid, but his attraction to her was anything but childish.
Still, he had managed to call the wolf off and instead, act as a responsible adult and mentor. But the more Courtney brought her around, the guiltier he felt about his brief struggle with resisting his attraction to Lia. The girl was his daughter’s age, for fuck’s sake. He couldn’t just act like that wasn’t creepy of him. Besides that, he knew that if his wife Ava were still alive, she would be sorely hurt by his interest in the girl. And so he had shoved those feelings deep into a box and locked them away, burying the key.
“Mr. Desmond, hi!”
Lia’s gentle voice brought a pang to his heart. He hadn’t wanted to let himself feel anything for anyone since Ava had died in the shifter wars, but especially not for some little girl in one of his classes. She saw him as a teacher, as an authority. It wasn’t right.
“Good evening, Lia,” Kane said as genially as he could muster, which wasn’t very. It was strange seeing students outside of class in general, let alone in his home. But Lia’s face had been popping up more and more, challenging him to face his own demons right in her presence. It was unnerving, he had to admit, and he’d just as soon stay at the school as opposed to coming home to a surprise like thi
s.
It was especially difficult because, at the university, he had to keep an air of professionalism at all times. It wasn’t proper for him to let his personality slip too much. Sure, all of his students knew he was the kind of guy who didn’t let any shit fly past him. He was no-nonsense, a strict grader, and an all-around hard ass, but it wasn’t like at home where he could just tear off his button-up shirt and lounge around in jeans for the rest of the night, swearing whenever he felt like it and taking calls from the many women around town who were hopelessly in love with him.
He had been hounded by their advances for ages now, ever since the year after he’d lost his wife and the town seemed to all come to the conclusion that it was time for Kane to move on. It was a conclusion he hadn’t been included in, but the women came looking for him anyway, leaving him feeling both bombarded and flattered.
“Dad, I know you just got off work, but do you think that, after dinner, you could help us study for this thing? Lia is really struggling.”
“Is that right?” Kane asked, turning a sharp eye onto Lia. She looked down at the counter without meeting his eyes, a deep blush creeping across her soft, porcelain cheeks.
“I have a hard time with numbers,” she admitted quietly, studying the paper in front of her.
Did he intimidate her or something?
“All right,” he said begrudgingly. “We’ll go over it once I’ve had a chance to unwind a bit. Sound good?”
“Thanks dad,” Courtney said cheerfully, grabbing a slice of pizza and sitting down at the kitchen island beside Lia. “We appreciate it.”
Kane said nothing, taking a slice himself and grabbing a beer from the fridge. He would help them, sure, but for now, he would like to just sit in peace in his living room for a few moments. He was late to catch the news, thanks to Max and his wait on the pizza, but it would give him some space to collect himself before facing his daughter and her beautiful friend.
2.
“Dude, why do you clam up so much around my dad?” Courtney asked, poking Lia accusingly with the eraser of her pencil.
Lia looked into her best friend’s eyes as she considered the question. They were deep grey, and serious, much like her father’s, but Courtney had a much lighter complexion, and sandy hair that fell straight over her shoulders. Kane, on the other hand, had much wilder salt and pepper hair, and a strong, defined jaw that left him looking dark and mysterious.
“I guess I have a weird thing with authority,” Lia admitted, laughing and shaking her head. “It’s really nothing. I had him last year as a teacher so it’s hard to see him as like a….”
“Person?” Courtney offered with a sly smile.
“A dad,” Lia corrected.
The truth was that Kane had given her extremely complicated feelings right from the start. He was a no-nonsense kind of a guy, who seemed like he didn’t have a soft bone in his body. But, for some reason, that made her want to find something in him, anything, really, to prove her assessment wrong.
“Well, a dad is all he’s ever been to me,” Courtney said, taking another bite of pizza before scribbling something on her notes.
“I know,” Lia said. “He’s just so serious and strange. Difficult to get to know, I would say. Not that I would try…”
“Ah. That aloof thing he does,” Courtney said with a nod as she continued to write distractedly. “He’s been like that since my mom died. It’s like a part of him went with her.”
“Do you remember your mom?” Lia asked softly. It was a subject they rarely broached, but Lia could tell it was a significant source of grief for Courtney. It seemed a little bit inappropriate to try talking to her about it at school, but here in her home it seemed a little bit easier.
“A little bit. I was about three when the war got really bad and she was needed as a healer. I remember crying so hard when she left, and how when she reassured me that everything was going to be all right, I didn’t believe her,” Courtney said, her voice suddenly far away. “The only thing that made me feel better about her going to tend to the wounded was my dad. He took care of me. Held me whenever I was acting out, instead of punishing me, he cooked and cleaned and rocked me to sleep every night. Without him, I probably would have chased her down myself.”
“I never would have guessed,” Lia said softly, her heart melting at the idea of Kane having such a secret loving side. Of course, Courtney was his child and it probably never went any further than that, but still…
“Yeah, he’s a good dad,” Courtney said. “I’ve never wanted for anything. Except my mother…”
“So why didn’t your dad go to war with her?” Lia asked. They had been learning a little bit about the war in Professor Desmond’s class together, and from what she’d learned, it was odd for an able-bodied shifter male to be at home with a child and his wife sent to assist the wounded.
“Oh, he did. He fought for the first three years of my life, actually. He only got to come back every six months, until he got wounded. Then my mother nursed him back to health. That’s when they realized she would be helpful toward the war effort…”
Courtney trailed off. It was clear that the subject was becoming too painful for her.
“I’m sorry,” Lia said, putting her hand on Courtney’s arm. Courtney smiled weakly at her.
“There’s nothing any of us can do about it now,” Courtney said, clearing her throat and looking back down at her textbook. “We just have to live the best we can so that the sacrifices of those who died to bring us here weren’t in vain.”
“Amen to that,” Lia said with a small smile.
Courtney looked at her curiously and Lia smiled to herself. The shifters had a completely different belief system than the one she had been raised in. Their spiritual world was full of mystery and secrets, and frankly, fascinating. Magic ruled the shifters’ world, and their society, while Lia had been raised with only one possibility in her mind. It was comforting in times of need, though she had a feeling there was more to the world than what she had been taught to believe. The shifters were proof of that. Perhaps they had come from another planet, or another dimension, where the rules she had grown to understand didn’t apply. But that was a question for another time.
“All right, let’s get this shit over with so I can get to bed.”
Kane’s deep voice filled the room and Lia’s heart panged in her chest.
“Hey, are you all right?”
The edge in Kane’s voice was immediately gone when he rushed to his daughter’s side.
“I’m fine, dad, don’t worry about it,” Courtney said, brushing his hands away from her face. “We were just talking about mom.”
“Oh,” Kane said, his face darkening.
He sat down heavily at one of the stools across from the two girls at the island in his kitchen.
“Give me that book.”
They spent the next few hours reviewing the math, and Lia was surprised by just how comfortable Kane was with all subject matter. He was a history teacher first and foremost, but the skill with which he handled numbers was incredible. By the time they were finished, Lia felt like she had a new grasp on math that she had never had before.
“Thanks, Mr. Desmond,” she said, closing her book at the end of the session. “Professor Fredrickson doesn’t ever go over things in that much detail.”
Kane’s face darkened. “Max is an idiot. He chose math, of all things, because it’s the easiest to make people feel inferior at. That’s how he gets his sense of self-worth. Don’t let it get to you too much.”
Courtney snorted as Lia gaped at Kane in surprise. Clearly, there was some animosity there.
“I take it you and Professor Fredrickson don’t get along very well?” she asked.
“I can’t stand the prick, actually,” Kane said. “And it’s no secret either, so don’t feel like you’re getting away with something by blabbing it all over the school, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Lia was taken aback. “I would n
ever!”
A quick emotion flashed in Kane’s eyes – regret maybe? – as he glanced away from her and continued speaking. “Max is a pain in my ass, actually. He’s leader of a group of teachers at the school who are hoping to turn the tides of the educational system here.”
“What do you mean?” Lia asked, frowning.
She knew shifter customs were different, but she honestly had little clue how the board worked at the school. Lia had gone there as an exciting opportunity to become part of the delegation between shifters and humans to make the world a more inclusive place for shifters and a safer place for humans. She had witnessed injustice toward the shifters and the messy, violent situations that it could lead to far too often in her life to just stand by and allow it to happen. It was time for things to change.
“The council is in charge of most of what happens at the school,” Kane mumbled. “It is governed by ancient law, but some laws are given more importance over others, and there is a group of renegades who are trying to change the way the youth are being raised. They want to abolish some old laws that are truly important, and draw importance to some old laws that are truly dated, replacing it all with a regime of their own construct and an agenda that, frankly, makes me question their loyalty to the wolf shifters.”
“Why would they want to do that?” Courtney asked, frowning. Clearly, it was the first she was hearing of this as well.
“I can only speculate,” Kane said, “But I’m wondering if they are hoping to rise to power and make way for the bear shifters to interfere with Stonybrooke. They’re probably after the true source of power – the Serah Stone.”
“What is the Serah Stone?” Lia asked. But now, both Courtney and Kane were glaring at her. She had asked too many questions.
“Actually, that is a sacred subject that we’re not supposed to speak about. Especially in the presence of humans. No offense.”
Courtney said this to Lia unapologetically, and Lia knew when to back off.