by E A Price
His face took on a wistful look as he thought of his little mate, and Jake resisted the urge to chuckle at the burly wolf shifter.
Adam, the pack Alpha grunted impatiently. “We know, when you joined the pack, you weren’t keen to be a cop again, but I’m glad you are, and I hope that…”
“I’ll do it,” Jake interrupted curtly.
Adam stared at him. “Really?”
“Yep.”
Adam slapped him on the back, and Jake resisted the urge to wince. The Alpha sure packed a punch.
The Beta grinned at him. “Jeez, fuck, I mean that’s great. I just expected you to put up more of a fight; I had a whole speech prepared about how you’d make a better sheriff than me, you know?”
Jake’s lips twitched as he forced himself not to laugh at the almost hurt tone of the beefy male in front of him. “Do you want to go through it anyway?”
“Kind of, I spent hours rehearsing it to Liv last night. She does a great impression of you, by the way.”
Jake raised an eyebrow but wisely made no comment. He had learned to keep his mouth shut where his Beta and his mate, Liv were concerned. A misconstrued outburst had led to his Beta’s hands wrapped around his throat the first time he met Liv. Well, they had just mated for the first time, and Alec thought that Jake was trying to threaten her. It was water under the bridge; shifters were prone to outbursts of that nature, and they were quickly forgiven. But Jake had certainly learned his lesson. The Beta was not a wolf to be trifled with where his mate was concerned.
Alec shook his head. “Really, I’m thrilled at your decision.”
Jake raised both eyebrows at Adam who returned his surprised look. Anyone would think Jake had just told the Beta he’d won the lotto.
It was just relief as far as Alec was concerned. As much as he liked his other deputies, he didn’t think any of them were ready to be sheriff. Although, given time, he saw potential in his bobcat deputy, Deanna, but that would be reliant on her not being led astray by her somewhat wild mate, Casey.
Jake let out a breath. “I want to hire some new deputies, one to replace me and maybe two or three more. I want to spread the duties around and have more than one person on night shift. I think it would be helpful to have a human deputy, as well.”
He paused at the twin looks of surprise on Alec and Adam’s faces; he inclined his neck in submission slightly. He didn’t want to offend his Beta, but Jake had considered how he would improve things over the last few years. He had a natural urge to want to take charge.
Alec chuckled. “Hey, you’re the sheriff you can do what you like, you realize you could have had the job when it first came up, right? I only took the job because you wouldn’t; you’re a hell of a lot more experienced than me.”
Jake shrugged. “It wasn’t right for me at the time.”
Adam grunted. “We get it.”
They didn’t really get it, but Jake didn’t want to start an argument over it. Since joining Adam’s pack in Rose three years ago, Jake hadn’t wanted anything to do with his old life; he’d left his job as an agent for the Supernatural Enforcers Agency, and he hadn’t turned back.
He’d been with the SEA for over eight years, but after a case went south, he’d needed to get away. He’d joined Adam’s pack at the urging of his aunt who had married into the pack. With his law enforcement experience, Adam had wanted Jake to take over as sheriff, but he wasn’t ready for that kind of responsibility. However, he’d had a lot of time to think things through over the last few years, and he was eager to get his paws on the department and make a few changes. Yep, he’d had a bump in the road, and lost his zeal for a while, but now he was raring to go. Truthfully, he was a control freak at heart.
Jake gave them both a shrewd look. “Does the Mayor know about this?”
Alec winced, and Adam growled.
Since their current Alpha, Adam took charge of the pack, relations between the humans had greatly improved to the point where people of all species came to Adam for help. The Mayor had been all for it at first, but his camaraderie with the wolves had dimmed somewhat. Probably because people preferred Adam to him.
The Mayor had been making noises that the pack was trying to take over the town completely. It hadn’t helped that the pack now owned most of the businesses in town. But the Mayor had been making some questionable decisions of late. Such as giving permits out to his friends for building extensions and allowing food trucks to park outside the pack owned pizzeria. Okay, maybe they sounded like small things, but they amounted to a lot of discontent from anyone who had their own permit rejected and also the managers of the pizzeria.
“Adam told him,” grunted Alec.
Jake raised his eyebrows. “And he was okay with that?”
Adam sneered. “Not at first, but he was soon persuaded.”
Jake wasn’t going to touch that comment.
“Just forget the Mayor, he agreed to have a pack member in the role of sheriff and that’s what he’s got. Now, about these new deputies you want to hire…”
Jake gave the Alpha and Beta a small smile. Three years ago he had lost his enthusiasm, but that had changed. Being a small town deputy, and now sheriff, wasn’t the same as being in the SEA. Alright, it could be a little boring now and again, but it was steady and easy.
As for his new deputies, he had some ideas, although he didn’t imagine that either the Alpha or the Beta would be thrilled…
*
“Where have you been?” demanded the irate coyote shifter.
“I had a meeting that ran late,” Jake told her coolly as he slipped into the other side of the booth at O’Neill’s bar in Darlington.
Honey prickled at his tone and huffed and puffed. “You could have called me.”
Jake shrugged. “I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
Her jewelry jangled as she threw up her hands in annoyance. “You just expected me to sit here waiting for you?”
“I guess.”
The two of them had a casual relationship. In fact, calling it a relationship was exaggerating. They had a thing. Every so often, Honey called him, cooing and simpering, they met, they had sex and then they went their separate ways. He never called her.
She slept with other men – numerous other men – but it didn’t bother him. She was a horny young coyote shifter, no worse than any of his young pack mates, and he had no claim on her. Nor did he wish to make any claim. The agreement suited him most of the time. Sitting opposite her scowling face, this wasn’t one of those times.
“You guess?!” she spat through gritted teeth, waving her hands about.
His wolf snorted at her attitude and vaguely he was aware that he hated women who wore clunky jewelry. Hey, he hadn’t said a word when she asked to meet him a couple of weeks ago and then ditched him in favor of an old boyfriend. He wasn’t going to cry over that!
“Do I mean so little to you?” she snapped.
He shrugged as his wolf huffed at her hypocritical attitude. Honestly, he hadn’t thought about it. He figured that if she got bored waiting, she’d find some other guy to take her home. He wasn’t heartless, but he wasn’t about to pretend their relationship was anything other than it was.
“Ugh, you are such a repressed asshole!”
He found whatever flare of arousal he’d felt coming into the bar quickly evaporate to be replaced by irritation. His wolf snapped his jaws. He really didn’t need to put up with this.
Swiftly, he stood, ignoring the furious gape on her face. “I think I better go. Do me a favor, lose my number.”
“Of all the…”
He drowned out the rest of her sentence and ignored the ‘I told you so’ vibes emanating from his beast. Yeah, yeah, he knew hooking up with her was a bad idea, but she had taken care of a need and hadn’t been interested in either his feelings or talking about his past. In fact, she hadn’t been interested in talking at all.
He stepped out the bar and enjoyed the crisp, cool air. Dimly, he was aware of
a small feeling of disappointment that he didn’t have anyone to celebrate the fact that he’d just received a promotion. Sure, he could have gone to the pack-owned bar back in Rose, Bar Luna, and he was sure he could have found a few pack mates who would have raised a beer to him, but it wasn’t quite the same.
Over the past few months, a number of his friends had found their mates and settled down, and he couldn’t deny the fact that it had made his wolf a little uneasy. Jake wasn’t unhappy about living alone, it suited him, but his wolf was becoming increasingly aware of something being missing. It was natural for wolf shifters to want to find a mate and have pups.
He just wasn’t good with women. He wasn’t good with relationships. His marriage had fallen apart for a reason. The words ‘closed off,’ ‘repressed’ and ‘stick up your butt’ had been liberally thrown around when he and his wife had made a last-ditch attempt at saving their marriage with couple’s counseling. He shuddered at the memory of that. Well, having them hitting each other with foam bats was never going to save anything!
When he was younger, he’d been a shy, gangly teen with a stutter, who was shunned for being the only wolf shifter in his school. That was fine with him. It was easier to deal with his wolf as an outcast. Having to control himself around friends might have been tricky. His wolf wasn’t overly aggressive, but he was strident and domineering. Vapid teenagers weren’t exactly the best company for him. Jake got used to being quiet, and not interacting. Something that dogged him to this day.
Obviously, he’d grown a lot since then, physically anyway. By the time he’d reached college, he’d sprouted to six-foot-four and had put on one hundred pounds of muscle. He made the jocks who had tormented him in high school look puny. Not that he cared; he certainly wasn’t the type to dole out retribution. But, at college, his newfound status as an MHOC (major hottie on campus) soon found him garnering attention from numerous women. About a quarter of the co-eds and half the faculty.
It soon became apparent that he wasn’t exactly dateable material, though. Dates were fraught with awkward silences only cut by Jake blurting something inappropriate. By inappropriate, that meant true, but things that other men would have been wise enough not to say. Like when his first girlfriend lamented the fact that she’d put on six pounds over Christmas, and he corrected her that it was actually eight. The relationship withered after numerous incidents like that.
Yep, Jake soon realized that his mouth had no filter. Due to his loner childhood and shy nature, and his disdainful wolf, he wasn’t good at small talk or flirting, and couldn’t bring himself to tell white lies. If a woman asked him if her bottom looked big in something, he felt compelled to tell her the truth. So, instead of trying to keep a relationship going, he contented himself to casual flings, and there were any number of willing women happy enough to take him to bed.
Jake was happy not to have a cloying female begging for his attention, and the female population was happy not to have to endure the agony of sitting through a date with him. It was almost the perfect arrangement.
After college, he joined the Alexandria police department. Not long after, he was headhunted to join the Supernatural Enforcers Agency and it was there that he met his wife.
His marriage had been unexpected but… functional. Robyn had been a fellow agent at the SEA, and career driven to the extreme. Jake had risen to be a team leader in the Alexandria Division of the SEA fast, and soon caught her attention. She openly pursued him and, flattered and surprised, had allowed himself to be wooed by her. She was a blasé cougar shifter, and never took the time to care what he said to her.
Their marriage broke apart after he quit the Agency. Robyn couldn’t get on board with his sudden aversion to working for the SEA, and without it, they had nothing in common. They’d worked long, hard hours for the two years of their marriage, with schedules that rarely overlapped, and to suddenly find themselves together, it became apparent they weren’t compatible and that Jake wasn’t exactly emotionally available.
So, they went their separate ways. Robyn was promoted to a different branch of the SEA. Jake’s aunt – and the only family member he knew on his mother’s side – suggested he petition the Alpha to join the pack in Rose. Uncertain what else to do, he did, they accepted him and now, three years later, he was a valued member. Having never lived in a pack before, it was a steep learning curve and at times as frustrating as trying to navigate high school, but it was worth it, and he was happy. But he could be happier…
His wolf wagged his tail and panted like a dog. Jake shook his head and sent out a message of sorry to him - mating really wasn’t on the agenda. He figured if he were ever lucky enough to meet his true mate then, yeah, he’d settle down, but he wasn’t going to date in the hopes of finding just anyone. He could be alone – hell, he’d been practicing it for years and had it down to an art form - and a little loneliness wasn’t going to suddenly make him run out and bond himself to just any woman.
His beast whined and clawed the ground in annoyance. Jake ignored him and got in his truck to drive home. The animal would get over the idea of being alone; god knows Jake had. It wasn’t really that bad…
Chapter Three
27th February
Val stirred her martini. She hated martinis and only ordered one to make herself seem sophisticated. Big mistake. The ass sitting in front of her was hardly worth the bad taste in her mouth.
His profile really didn’t do him justice. Nope, his profile made him look like a really desirable package, and in real life he was anything but.
Yeah, he’d neglected to mention his three ex-wives, six kids and the fact that he was currently between jobs. He didn’t want a girlfriend; he wanted a sucker to mooch off. Okay, esthetically, he was pretty darn tasty – which went part way to explaining why so many women were willing to stand up and say ‘I do’ with him. Heck, if her ears weren’t working then she would be in big trouble from that boyish grin and that taut body but… her ears were working, and all she could focus on were the insipid comments falling out of his mouth. No, she didn’t care how good he was at Call of Duty! It had been downhill ever since he'd casually mentioned that he’d left his wallet at home and that she was going to have to pay for dinner…
Since posting her profile on Intimate Connections, she had been on five dates. She was thrilled at the attention her profile garnered, but five dates in she was feeling a little jaded. And damnit, that ache in her stomach was only getting worse.
Date number one had been okay until his wife turned up and threw her martini all over her. Apparently he was using the dating site to cheat on his wife. Asshole.
Date number two was really bitter having just been divorced by his wife, and kept spouting misogynistic garbage. Pig.
Date number three was cute, but it was painfully obvious that he wasn’t yet 25 as he claimed. In fact, Val suspected that he was still shy of his 18th. Apparently, he just had a big thing for older women. She stopped that date quickly – there was no way in hell that she wanted to get arrested. Jailbait.
Date number four was just plain creepy. He wanted to know all about her, and not in a getting-to-know-you kind of way. His questions were just too inquisitive, and he seemed a little too interested in her and her parentage. What was he expecting her to say about her parents? He was asking her all kinds of questions about her mom and her dad, and about their lives. It was weird; she soon nipped that in the bud and excused herself from that date. After that, he rang her a few times as well, asking to see her again and each time he was more insistent than the last. She stopped answering her phone and finally the calls stopped too. Creep.
Which led to date number five, who shall only be referred to as Sir Butthole. Shit, he was looking at her expectantly.
“Ummm yes?”
Sir Butthole slammed his hand down on the table making her jump. “Hell, yeah!” he cried happily.
Dang, what had she just agreed to?
“We are going to kick Los Lobos’ butts on S
aturday!”
She groaned inwardly, and a part of her wanted to laugh. He was talking about football. Well, at least it was better than listening to him complaining about his ex-wives.
He launched into an offensive about how much Los Lobos’ football team sucked, only pausing to wink at the waitress as she delivered their entrées. The young woman blushed and giggled. Oh, brother.
Val knocked back her martini and hastily ordered a bottle of the cheapest white wine on the menu. It was going to be a long night.
*
Val let herself into her apartment and kicked off her shoes.
“Hello Tumbles, did you miss me?”
The indifferent cat raised his head to look at her, found nothing of interest and began licking his privates.
“I guess not. You’ll be completely unsurprised to learn that my date did not go well.”
Tumbles completely ignored her – he was far too engrossed in his task. Yeah, she used to date someone who had the same fixation.
She trailed a path through her small home discarding clothing and jewelry before stepping into the shower. She turned the water up as hot as she dared and sighed as it cascaded over her aching muscles. Lord, she really shouldn’t be in this much pain – it wasn’t normal. Any day now, she would have to give in and see a doctor… if only she weren't so terrified of them. A condition she completely blamed her grandmother for. She’d heard far too many horror stories growing up to ever willingly want to walk into a hospital.
She waited until the water started to cool and, reluctantly, she got out the shower. She wrapped herself in a fluffy bathrobe and twisted a towel around her hair. She grabbed a couple of painkillers and a bottle of orange juice before settling in front of the TV to catch up on her missed shows. Honestly, her date was hardly worth missing The Real Housewives of Playa Lunar for. She swore she only watched for the beautiful houses and locations, and she could quit anytime she wanted.
Val eyed her laptop. She should take her profile down and cancel her subscription to Intimate Connections. She was wasting her time; she didn’t know exactly what the man of her dreams would be like, but it was becoming clear that he wouldn’t be found on the dating site.
