“You do realize she’s off to the coffee shop to tell the entire town that there’s a new hunter in town?” Angie asked wearily.
Daniel shrugged, a fluid ripple of broad muscular shoulders. Angie’s mouth dried. It wasn’t fair. How could he still have this effect on her? After all these years? After all that had passed between them?
“What the heck are you doing here?” he demanded. He cast his blue eyes around in a disparaging circle. His handsome features were stiff with anger.
The century building was in good repair. The store recently renovated. It was organized, clean, bright and inviting. Racks of hand-painted greeting cards provided a splash of color by the front door. The shelves of canvases, paints, solvents, and other raw materials of the artists’ trades were less flashy but neatly arranged. Fairchild’s Art Supply didn’t deserve Daniel’s scorn.
“I’m the new manager.” She ignored his real question. How dare you put me to the trouble of looking for you, wife?
His blue eyes narrowed. His chest swelled. Despite his elegant facade, and high naval rank, deep down he was a throwback to one of his berserker Viking ancestors. “My wife doesn’t need to work in some backwater store.”
Angie rolled her eyes. Typical alpha male. Daniel Lindorm was as rich as any other dragon from his clan. These days the House of Lindorm might choose to call their stash the Lindorm Fund, but that was just a pretty euphemism for a dragon hoard that would choke a brontosaurus.
Daniel didn’t sit around on his tight dragon ass clipping coupons. No, like most of his kin, he was a military officer. A flottiljamiralin or rear admiral in the Swedish Royal Navy and a member of their Special Forces. But his wife was above getting her hands dirty. She could sit on a cushion and twiddle her thumbs as a symbol of Daniel’s importance. The hell she could.
“My cousin owns this store. She’s just had a baby, and I’m helping out.” Why the heck was she answering her pushy husband’s implicit question? Old habits certainly died hard. “What are you doing in Mystic Bay? Shouldn’t you be saving the free world?” The sarcasm slipped out.
He grew taller and broader before her eyes. “I came for you,” he said simply. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
She shrugged. “I’m surprised you noticed I’d left.”
That made him even angrier. The glory of the afternoon sun backlit his huge frame and gave his perfect blond hair a halo. He was magnificent. Just like the young dragon who had stolen her heart all those years ago. Toughen up, Angie. Thirty-three years is enough neglect.
“Oh, I noticed,” he growled. His hands reached out and plucked her from behind the shelter of the broad counter. She flew through the air and landed safely against his heaving chest. His mouth descended.
He was furious. She could taste his fury. But his mouth was gentle. Seducing. How could he do this to her? Her anger melted at the touch of his tongue against hers. The taste of her man. Her arms wound around his neck. She returned his kiss. Only a throat being cleared behind her brought her back to her senses.
She shoved at Daniel’s rock-hard chest. He set her down, bracing her until she was balanced on her strappy sandals. She was sure he had felt the change in her body as she slid down his torso. In slow motion, he turned his head to glare at the intruder. His face turned crimson. His eyes flashed his get-the-hell-out-of-my-sight-sailor command.
A slight man in a khaki uniform gazed back blandly from watery blue eyes. “Everything okay, Angie?”
Angie sighed. “Just peachy, Walter. This is my husband, Admiral Daniel Lindorm. Daniel, this is the sheriff of Mystic Bay, Walter Babcock.”
Walter was a rabbit shifter, a trembler like Celeste. But unlike Celeste he returned Daniel’s hard stare with one of his own. He held out a hand and the two men shook. Testosterone hung in the air like smog.
Daniel let go of Walter’s tiny hand. Wally squared his narrow shoulders and adjusted the gadgets hanging from his belt. He had been a good deputy, and he was a good sheriff, preferring to patrol his town on foot rather than stay in his air-conditioned office.
“You scared the bejesus out of Ms. Greene just now, Admiral,” Walter said sternly. “I just want to remind you that there’s no hunting on West Haven. The entire island – not just the town – is a sanctuary. Understood?”
Daniel’s big square jaw bulged. “I’ll remember, Sheriff,” he said stiffly. “Scaring the gazelle was unintentional.”
“Excellent.” Unexpectedly, Wally chuckled. “The town council is certainly going to be glad you showed up, Admiral. Now they won’t have to decide if they have to throw a fairy off the island.” He nodded and went out, still chuckling.
“What is this place?” Daniel asked. “First a gazelle shifter and now a rabbit? What the heck is going on? Is there some sort of convention?”
“Like Wally said, the island of West Haven is a sanctuary,” Angie explained. “A sanctuary for sensitives. It was settled by fairies and most of the permanent residents are sensitives. After a while you get used to being openly paranormal, because around here the paranormal is normal.”
“And yet they want to throw you off the island?” Daniel’s deep voice dropped an octave and became even quieter. A sure sign of mounting anger. When he used that voice it was time to take cover. “You’re coming back to Sweden with me, but...” What he meant was, no one throws my wife off of any island.
“The Mystic Bay Town Council controls this island, Daniel. But I’m a relative and guest of the mayor Robin Fairchild. Even if I’m a dragoness-made, they probably won’t throw me off for being a hunter.”
“Let me see if have this right, shifters are okay, except for dragons?” He barely suppressed his growl.
Angie shrugged. “Predatory shifters do live on West Haven, but none sit on the council, and people seem a bit nervous about them. Robin tried to explain it to me, but I fell asleep in the middle.”
She waved a hand. “It can’t be anything too serious. My cousin Moira who owns this store is a fairy who married a dragon. They just had a little girl.”
She had distracted Daniel. “A dragonette?” Surprise and hope filled his voice.
“Yes. First one born to a Drake on this side of the Atlantic. I don’t know what Lexi did, but the curse has been lifted.*”
“Maybe we’ll have one too. In Stockholm,” he added firmly.
“I left you for a reason, Daniel,” Angie retreated behind the counter again. “I got tired of being alone and lonely.”
“I don’t pick my assignments,” he said through his teeth. His lovely straight white teeth. Why did he have to be so mouth-wateringly handsome?
It was true Daniel didn’t pick his assignments. But he picked to serve in Special Forces. And he picked to do the bidding of the head of the House of Lindorm. When Lord Lindorm snapped his fingers, his grandson Admiral Daniel Lindorm only asked how high he should jump. And Thorvald Lindorm frequently snapped his fingers.
“I’ve been gone a full six weeks,” she pointed out. If she had been important to him, it wouldn’t have taken her husband this long to show up.
*Dragon’s Christmas Captive
CHAPTER TWO
Daniel~
She was just trying to get him going. Angie had been able to wind him around her little finger since the day he had been introduced to her. And wind him up in nothing flat. That hadn't changed.
She was still the most beautiful dragoness in the world, still his fated mate. His pregnant fated mate. After three decades, he had assumed they were not to be blessed with firelings. But here she was sweetly rounding with his baby.
“I knew where you were,” he said indignantly. His nephews had located her within days. “I knew you were safe. At least I thought you were. I didn’t know you had decided to spend your days on your feet, carrying heavy things around.”
“I’m fine.”
“Pregnant women should take it easy,” he said. He hesitated. “You’re not as young as you used to be.”
Angie’s green
eyes narrowed. “Fairies are immortal. Remember? My mother was older than I am when she had me.” She patted her stomach, a tender gesture. He relaxed infinitesimally.
“May I?” He longed to touch his infant. To hold his wife and child.
She stepped backward and pressed against the counter.
“I’d never hurt you,” he ground out.
“You already have. Admit it, if you hadn’t found out I was pregnant, you’d still be scouring the seafloor looking for Russians.”
“Someone has to.” The cold war might be over. But the Russians were still engaging in espionage. “And I didn’t know you were pregnant until I walked in here.”
“I’m not showing.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. His tiny wife had retained her fairy powers even after her transformation into a dragoness. Part of her talent was dressing herself. Today’s pink and white dress floated around her in delicate translucent layers that alternately concealed and revealed her luscious curves.
She didn’t look pregnant. Just sexy as all get out. But she smelled pregnant. A delicious extra top note had been added to the fragrance that had driven him wild since he was a young man.
“How could you take my son and run away?” He felt the heat in his face. He hadn’t meant to blurt out that question. Blurt out his hurt. But the pain of her abandonment was intensified by the knowledge that she had stolen his child. Their child. Their long-hoped-for child.
“What makes you think my baby is yours?” she threw at him.
When he became aware of smoke trickling from his human nostrils, he saw her through a red haze. He clamped iron control on his emotions and his talent. She wasn’t cowering as a dragoness who had declared her infidelity should do. No, his stubborn, reckless little mate was enjoying yanking his chain. Her green eyes were sparkling and her plump cheeks had flushed a pretty pink.
“It’s mine. There’s a lot you’re capable of, my darling. Adultery isn’t on the list.”
She pouted. No other word for it. Those red lips he had just been kissing were pursed in disappointment because he hadn’t lost his temper. He folded his arms across his chest. Dared her to lie. “It’s mine.”
Available Aug 3, 2018
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CHERISHED BY THE COUGAR
A SHIFTERS IN LOVE
FUN & FLIRTY ROMANCE
MYSTIC BAY SERIES BOOK 2
by
Isadora Montrose
Available on Amazon. Read it next!
When rumor names him as Jimmy’s father, cougar shifter Ryan Rutherford is compelled by the head of his clan to marry BBW witch Claudia Peterson.
Former Marine Ryan shows up on luscious Claudia’s doorstep to inform her that they’re married. The attraction between them is instant, but sorceress Claudia suspects it’s only a spell. Alpha Male Ryan worries that his curvy wife gave her heart to Jimmy’s father.
Enjoy another sexy romp as these two wary souls discover their bond is soul deep and a match made in West Haven is indeed a match made in Heaven.
Keep reading for the first 2 chapters.
CHAPTER ONE
Portland, mid-October
Ryan
“Would you mind repeating that, sir?” Ryan Rutherford barely restrained himself from bellowing at Cougar One.
“I said you are married,” Charles Rutherford reiterated dryly. “I know that it comes as a shock, but I have evidence.” He handed Ryan an envelope. “Please make a note of your witnesses, and the officiant.”
Ryan goggled. The wedding had been performed by Robin Fairchild, the fairy who owned and ran the Tidewater Inn. The fairy who was mayor of Mystic Bay. The witnesses were his own grandparents, Charles and Leona Rutherford. Even with cobra venom frothing in his blood, Ryan didn’t think he would have forgotten getting married. Or that Cougar One would have taken part in a secret wedding.
Sheer pride made him match Cougar One’s dignified calm. After all his grandfather was eighty-eight. If Grandfather could deal with this forgery without hysterics or a heart attack, so could Ryan.
“Do I know the bride?” he enquired politely.
“You must remember the Petersons?” Charles continued in that same dry, almost amused tone.
The Petersons were all witches and warlocks. “Dr. Peterson has a clinic on the island.”
For over a century, to the Rutherford Clan ‘the island’ had meant West Haven, Oregon, one of the dozens of tiny islands in the San Juans. They had summered at Cat’s Head Cove in their island compound since Cuthbert Rutherford had bought the land.
“Correct. Virginia is a physician and Tom runs a whale watching business out of the harbor. They have three daughters. They are all sorcerers. Claudia is the youngest.”
Ryan searched his memory. “A cute, little round kid with blonde hair? About so high?” He held his hand just below his heart.
Charles smiled. “All the Peterson women run to curves. But Claudia is a grown woman. Probably blonde.” He shrugged. “These days, who can tell? Your own grandmother has gone quite auburn with age.”
“Grandmother always looks fabulous.” Why was Charles shilly-shallying around? “Is there some reason that Robin Fairchild, who has always seemed like a perfectly reasonable fairy, and a pillar of the community, has faked a marriage between me and Claudia?”
“I’ll cut a long story short. Claudia has a three-year-old son. Jimmy carries the Rutherford Y chromosome. For certain that boy is one of us. On the strength of that, the Mystic Bay Town Council is about to vote away our title to Cat’s Head, unless one of us marries Claudia and provides Jimmy with a shifter father. They are apparently afraid of hybrid vigor.”
What the hell? “Hybrid vigor?” Ryan narrowed his eyes. “Which is code for what exactly, sir?”
“Don’t you remember your West Haven history? How Cuthbert Rutherford came to acquire our land on West Haven?”
“Didn’t great-great-I-forget-just-how-many-greats-grandpapa help to clean out a nest of rogue shifters and save the island of West Haven for peace, justice and sensitives?” Ryan asked lightly.
Charles didn’t smile. “He did. Only the Haverstocks, while rogues, weren’t precisely shifters.” Grandfather placed both palms on his desk and leaned forward. “They were grizzly-fairies. Haverstock was a grizzly bear shape shifter who shacked up with a fairy. He and Olivia Fairchild whelped an entire brood of psychopathic killers.” Cougar One paused.
Ryan nodded his understanding.
“They terrorized the islanders for two decades before Cuthbert stepped in with his hand-picked vigilantes,” Charles continued. “Haverstock and his whelps had wiped out every non-sensitive on the island and were working their way through the sensitives when old Cuthbert showed up with his posse of cats, wolves, dragons and bears.”
“And was rewarded with land on West Haven as far as possible from town.” Ryan finished the familiar tale. Cat’s Head was a bulge on the coast of West Haven. One hundred acres of forest and cliffs. Cougar paradise.
“Rewarded?” murmured Charles. “Not exactly. Cuthbert paid cash on the barrelhead for our land. Which we only hold at the sufferance of the town council.”
“Right,” Ryan said grimly. “May I sit down, sir?”
“Of course.”
He lowered himself clumsily into one of Charles’ two visitors’ chairs. “Okay. The town council doesn’t like shifter-fairy hybrids. Except that we know Quinn Drake, who was still a dragon shifter last time I checked, just married a Fairchild.*”
“Indeed. I think the marriage went through without protest, because the council assumed that the match would be barren. They assumed a fairy in her sixties was no virgin.” Everyone knew dragons could only have offspring with virgin mates who could be transformed into dragonesses.
Ryan smirked. “Moira was pregnant on their wedding day.”
Charles snorted genteelly. “The council isn’t forbidding a match between you and Claudia. They are insisting on one. They want the boy u
nder the control of our clan.”
“Why? If he’s a psychopath, what the heck could we do about him? Besides, it’s a stretch to assume that any match between shifters and sorcerers will automatically produce psychopaths,” Ryan pointed out. “Like there’s some sort of curse on interbreeding.”
“Not shifters, son, hunters.”
On West Haven, calling a cougar a hunter was supposed to be some sort of insult. As if. “And marriage will take away the threat that the kid will become a psychopath?” Ryan asked.
“They probably assume we’ll execute the boy if he turns out evil,” Charles said bluntly. “It’s nonsense genetics, of course, but I am not going to risk this coming to a vote. Not with so much at stake. It’s not just Cat’s Head either. Adam and Paige just bought the old lighthouse.”
Ryan knew an order when he heard one. Grandfather was head of the Rutherford clan and had to be obeyed. “Yes, sir.” Married! To a fricking stranger. Father to the love child of one of his own cousins. There was a recipe for a happy marriage. Not.
But Grandfather was still speaking. He tapped the marriage certificate that Ryan had thrown onto the desk. “Robin and Deputy Mayor Gordon Sullivan are also working to prevent Claudia and her son from being thrown off the island.”
Poor kids. “Isn’t banishment a little harsh?” He supposed it was less harsh than killing the boy. But still. Fear made good people do bad things.
Charles nodded. “Yup. But frightened people do stupid things. You know that.”
“Yes, sir. But why me? It’s not like I even know Claudia. I’m not sure I’ve even spoken to her since I was a kid.”
Cougar One raised perfect gray eyebrows over amber eyes that were still bright and fierce. “You’re a bachelor, Ryan. Last one in your cohort. Besides, the islanders already think you’re the father.” Grandfather paused. “Or they say they do.”
Ryan went cold. Which made a pleasant change from the fire in his veins. “I hope I don’t have to assure you that I’m emphatically not, sir?”
Beloved by the Bear: A Shifters in Love Fun & Flirty Romance (Mystic Bay Book 3) Page 18
