"My mother called and said she wasn't looking well," he said, picking his words carefully but Rose heard the anxiety in his voice. It read loud and clear like he was next to her with his puppy dog eyes.
Rose wasn't nearly so concerned with propriety. "Your mother was being polite, bless her. Clara is not well, at all. She needs you. She needs you to come home."
"If she needed me, she'd call," Cade pointed out. "And she hasn't."
"You keep in touch, don't you?"
"By email and if she answers, it's just a line or two."
"Then you know she's too proud to ask for help and she's too damn stubborn, as well. She wouldn't ask for help if she was treading water in a well."
"That's Clara," he agreed.
"Well, I'm asking you. She needs someone to love her, Cade. She needs you. I need you to come home for her."
There was a long pause, then, "She already rejected me. And not just once, Rose. Time and time again. She doesn't want me." The pain echoed through his voice and filled her ear.
Rose tutted. "That was then, and this is now. And since I'm in a straight talking mood today, I'm going to tell you that she always wanted you and why she didn't accept fate, I just don't know. I could see it in the way she used to look at you. She truly struggled."
"She didn't want me. She only wanted my brother."
"They had a strong bond, I'll admit that."
"Strong enough to exclude me." Cade sighed. "She told me to go and I left. Getting rejected again isn't going to work for me. I don't want to put myself through that again."
"Good," said Rose. "Because this time it's not going to happen. She needs you. I'm sure of that. She needs to be loved and cherished and for someone to show her there is hope and a future for her. Now are you going to swallow your pride, let me put myself in your eternal debt and come home, or what?"
There was a long moment of silence, then, "She’s really in a bad way?"
Rose exhaled and closed her eyes. Clara was going to be so cross, probably because every word was true. "Yes," she said, at last. "Yes, she is and I can't watch her pine away anymore. It's time to come home and take your place at her side. She's too damn young to be a widow and you love her."
"She won't have me."
"I've never said this to a wolf because it goes against our ways, but you should have damn well marked her as your mate years ago, never mind what she thought about it, and we wouldn't be having this discussion now."
"I would never do that!"
"I know. You're too decent. Now, man up and come home. Clara needs you, more than she needs any of us."
"Let me think about it."
"Don't take too long," said Rose and hung up. For a moment, she just stared at the phone then, carefully, she replaced it in the charger and turned, jumping when she saw her husband lounging against the door jamb.
"What have you done?" he asked slowly.
Rose straightened her back and pushed back her shoulders. She wondered how much her husband heard. "Exactly what needed to be done," she said.
"Clara is going to be angry."
Rose stared back at her husband defiantly, her expression softening as she realized he wasn’t disagreeing with her. "It's about time she got angry at someone. If making her angry at me helps her move on, so be it." She just hoped Cade still found his long-held love for Clara somewhere in him; even more so, she fervently hoped that love could sustain him until her stubborn, defiant, sad daughter accepted him into her heart the way she should have done years ago.
Chapter Two
Several hundred miles away from the town he still called home, Cade looked at the phone in his hand and sighed. For two years he'd longed for a phone call like this, one that told him to come home to Clara, but he'd never envisaged it would be from her mother.
Instead, in his daydreams, it had always been Clara on the other end of the line, her voice filling his ear as she told him what a huge mistake she'd made in rejecting him that final time and how she couldn't live without him any longer, how she needed him, how she always had. Instead, for two solid years he'd not only grieved for his brother—his pack mate, his best friend—but also for the woman they both loved.
After Colton's wake, leaving town—or running away as his mind frequently reminded him—seemed the only option. He couldn't bear sticking around any longer. He was a man, as well as a wolf, and he could only take so much rejection. It had been easier to bear when Colton was here, assuring him that Clara would come around, but without support he couldn't take the hurt anymore. Back then he had hoped that putting several hundred miles between them would have helped the mating bond dissipate, but that was just naive. Though his career had been on the up since he pushed himself at it and he'd made a good life here, that didn't stop him hoping Clara would change her mind. It was destiny after all and everyone knew destiny shouldn’t be messed with.
"That sounded serious," said his roommate Luke, who had discreetly slipped out of the room once the conversation turned serious and now returned with two open beers. He passed one to Cade and dropped onto the couch beside him. “What gives?”
"That was Rose, from my home town," said Cade after he took a long, soothing swallow.
"Everything okay with the family?"
Cade nodded. "Yeah, they're all fine. Rose wants me to come home."
"I get the feeling I'm missing something. Who's Rose?"
"I don't even know where to begin."
"The beginning will do just fine."
"I'm not sure where the beginning is." Cade raised the beer to his lips again, swallowed, then pressed the cold bottle to his forehead to ease the sudden ache that sprang up. "Rose is Clara's mom. I've mentioned her before." Not too often though. It hurt enough to have Clara in his head, invading his dreams, it didn’t do to talk about her non-stop.
Luke frowned, clearly trying to place the name. "Clara is, was, your brother's wife?"
Cade nodded. Rubbing his jaw, he said, "Rose says she isn't doing well. She needs help."
"So... you go help?" Luke put his socked feet on top of the coffee table and stretched. It didn’t surprise Cade that Luke had found the exact spot where the sun streamed through their living room windows, bathing him in warmth. Typical tiger.
"It's not as easy as that." Cade huffed.
"How come? You don't get on with Clara?"
Cade smiled sadly. "No. Yes. Ah, shit, it's complicated."
"This is where I'm missing something, right? Hold up. Is she the girl you talked about? The one from back home?"
Cade took a deep breath. He'd tried to avoid talking about Clara, even though Luke had been his best friend since he moved to town, but occasionally her name came up. Mostly it was just too painful. He'd wanted to get away from the constant angst not take it with him. They'd talked about everything else, but not this, not indepth. And now he really needed someone to talk to, someone who understood their world. "Clara wasn't just destined to be Colton's mate. She's mine too."
Luke whistled, a long, piercing sound, and arched his eyebrows. "For real? What happened? You didn't want her, or something?"
"No, I wanted her." Cade wondered briefly if the longing came through in his voice. "Even after Colton and she exchanged the mating mark, it was still there, that strong urge to mate with her, to make her mine."
Luke clearly struggled to make sense of it. "And Colton wasn't keen?"
"None of us thought we'd end up having a multiple mating, though it's not exactly uncommon where we're from," Cade explained. Their lycan community was used to having multiple pairings what with few full lycan females between them and the mating bond often coming into play with more than one male. Cade didn't need to explain it to Luke. As a shapeshifter too, though of a different species, Luke understood that and they'd discussed it a few times already, especially as Luke’s breed, a rare one, often sought out mates of another breed. "Colton was okay with it. He said he could learn to share and that he was just glad it was with me, his brother,
and not some random dude. If it was what Clara wanted, he would be fine, but Clara wanted the human thing. The one man, one woman pairing."
"That must've hurt."
Cade rested his head against the back of the couch. "Like you wouldn't believe."
"Didn't she care how cruel she was?" Luke growled his indignation even as he slumped under the sun.
True mating bonds were rare and special. Someone had to have a damn good reason to avoid or reject a pairing. Even worse, a rejected male had little chance of finding another female with whom to share a true bond. Clara's rejection hadn't just driven him away from their community, it had denied him the chance to love, to have a family of his own. Even so, Cade couldn't bring himself to blame her, even though that little bubbling ball of anger still simmered below the surface.
"She was just young and idealistic," he said. "And damn stubborn. She truly believed Colton was enough. I guess he was for her," he conceded. “My brother was a really great guy. You would have liked him a lot.”
"But she still rejected you even though she knew you two were destined to mate?"
"Even though," echoed Cade, trying not to wince at the ‘r’ word. "There were a few times she was tempted, I could tell. She even kissed me once. You know what her mom said to me on the phone just now? She said I should’ve bitten her when I had the chance."
"Maybe you should," said Luke.
"Maybe I should," agreed Cade. "Except I wasn't enough of a bastard to force my mating mark on her and beg forgiveness with her in my arms later. Anyway, like I said, Rose wants me to come home. She says Clara needs me."
"Clara say that?"
"Not so far as I know."
"You think she'll be happy to see you?"
"I think she'll slam the door in my face."
Luke chuckled. "I'm fairly certain I've never seen that happen before."
"Can't say I'm eager for it to happen again."
They fell silent, contemplating that. Cade wasn't what anyone would call a womanizer but he was good looking, tall and athletic, possessing a rugged look that had women tripping over themselves to sample his goods. Sometimes he indulged, but rarely for more than one night, preferring to thoroughly love them for an evening, and politely leave them before they got clingy. Or woke. He never got the feeling there was a future with one of his conquests. Luke, on the other hand, had no problem chasing skirts even if he hadn’t brought anyone home for a good long while.
"I bet you a hundred bucks you go home and she mates with you."
"Seriously? You want to put a bet on it where you're guaranteed to lose?"
"Fine. Two hundred bucks says she mates with you."
"I am not betting on Clara!"
"Afraid you'll lose?" Luke jibed.
"More afraid she'll kick me in the balls for suggesting it again and that'll be the end of my sex life."
They both took a sip and crossed their legs.
"What are you going to do?" asked Luke after a long silence and another round of beers.
"I'm going to do the right thing," Cade decided, taking a long look around the apartment they shared. With the open plan room featuring black leather sofas, a glass coffee table and a kitchen that was a blank palate of granite and walnut, it screamed bachelor pad, yet it had none of the warmth he craved. Most of all, it didn't have Clara. "I'm going to go home."
"And the bet?"
"Two hundred says she doesn't mate with me. And I'm only taking the bet because one, I'm giving you a chance to win back what you lost at poker last week and two, I'll be glad to lose."
"Very generous. I'll grab a bag."
"What for?"
"I want to see your face either way. And if you win, I'll get to see your balls take a beating too."
"You still pissed about poker?"
"Not at all," lied Luke smoothly. "I'm just coming along for the ride. I finished my contract. I have a month free and I feel like a change of scenery. The girl situation might be good amusement too."
"Callous, man. She lost my brother."
Luke winced under Cade's glare. "Sorry, dude. My insensitive side promises to stay at home."
Cade reached for the phone, tapped in the number. "Rose," he said, when he heard Rose's voice on the line. "I'm leaving in the morning. I'll be with you in a few hours. I'm bringing a friend. No, we don't need anywhere to stay but I appreciate the offer. I seem to recall my brother offered an open invitation to stay with them and I intend to take him up on that. Clara can’t argue." He paused, listening, then grinned. "Yes, Rose, I'll bring ice."
***
Despite repeated attempts at conversation during the long drive, Luke finally admitted Cade wasn't in much of a chatty mood. Watching his friend of several years clutch the steering wheel, his jaw set in a 'don't mess with me' line, Luke couldn't help wonder just how bad this Clara had messed his friend up. And that made him pissed.
Not that he liked to think on it but he'd had the occasional brush off from a human female in his time which rarely hurt but usually astounded him, given that shapeshifting females practically drooled when he showed his face, never mind his animal side. However he'd never been fortunate enough to meet his mate and had never really contemplated what would happen if when, and that was a big if, he met her it wasn't exactly an auspicious meeting. Only Cade had met the mate destiny chose for him and she'd rejected him, a cruelty Luke couldn't imagine. Not that he’d thought on it much, but he assumed the fated mate meeting was like a thump to the heart, a meeting of minds, flowers and candy, all wrapped into one.
The more he thought about it, the angrier it made him. Who was this stubborn female to refuse the mating destiny sent her way? It wasn't like every shifter was lucky enough to ever meet his mate. Not that he'd been looking, but if he had he'd have accepted fate. He was sure of that. Pretty much.
So why couldn't this woman?
It wasn't like Cade was a stranger to her, or, not that he really thought about dudes at all, but his best friend wasn't exactly butt-ugly. Given the pleased noises that came from his bedroom from time to time, he wasn't exactly lacking in the bedroom department either. He wondered if the human ideal of two partners only was just a ruse; maybe she thought Cade wasn’t good enough.
Luke snuck a sideways glance at Cade again, then had to brace himself against the door as Cade wrenched the wheel and they turned onto a rough road. "Easy there, buddy."
"Sorry," Cade muttered, his gruff voice not quite hiding the emotion. Luke could tell how wound up he was. What had started out as a buddy road trip had descended into a tight jaw, an expression that could wilt flowers, and white knuckles gripping the wheel. Cade was nervous. Possibly the first time Luke had ever seen him so.
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
Cade took his eyes off the road for a moment to glance at his friend. "That's the third time you asked that. And yes, I wouldn't come if I didn't want to."
"You don't look happy about it."
"Hate to admit it, but I'm anxious. The last time we saw each other wasn't exactly pleasant."
Luke had the full story after a couple more beers the previous evening. "Your brother's funeral?"
"His wake."
Luke shook his head. Young deaths in the shifter community, much like the lycans, were rare and they often had a hard time adjusting to sudden and tragic loss. It was hardly surprising, now he thought about it, that the she-wolf had been angry. Even so, it didn't take away from the fact that she'd already rejected the man fated to be her mate. He didn't comprehend it. Couldn't comprehend it.
But it would do Cade no good if they rolled up on her doorstep like two angry men with chips on their shoulders.
"Maybe we should have called ahead," Luke suggested.
"Her mom didn't think it would be a good idea."
"Why? Did Rose think she'd do a runner?"
A smile crept onto Cade's face. "Probably. Clara is the most stubborn woman I've ever met. Thinks she's invincible. When her and Colton took o
n the farm, I thought it was a lot to handle but now she's doing the whole lot by herself. She's not the type to ask for help or even take it. When she finds out her family interfered..."
"I get the picture." Luke was also starting to build up a strange mental picture of her. Was she some kind of straw chewin', dungaree wearing woman who swung lump hammers all day long? He was pretty certain Cade liked them petite and feminine through and through. "Actually, I don't. You got a photo?"
Luke's forehead furrowed in thought. "Maybe in my wallet but it's in the back. You'll meet her soon anyway. That's the turning for the farm ahead."
"Just how pissed is she likely to be?"
"Well, she slapped me at the wake but she's not the violent type. And it was her husband's funeral so that I don't even need to forgive her for, especially seeing as I might have overstepped the mark."
"You think?"
Cade cut a glance at him and raised his eyebrows. "Okay. I completely overstepped the mark. I don't know what I was thinking telling her that she would never have to be alone, that she would always have me, whenever she was ready. She probably thought I was trying to replace Colton or get in her pants the same night or something.” He shook his head at the memory, at his pathetic attempt to make her feel less heartbroken. “I just didn't want her to be alone. I think she's going to be angry and upset and I just hope she stays calm long enough for me to talk to her."
"You want me to talk to her first?"
"While I hide in the truck? No thanks, man."
"I'll be right behind you." Luke glanced down, remembered his balls. They didn't deserve to get in the middle of this. "About two feet behind you," he added.
Cade laughed and made the turn, the farmhouse appearing at the end of the gravel driveway. It could use a few extra sacks but it looked neatly raked. "Who knows? Maybe she'll be pleased to have company?"
It didn't escape Luke that Cade gulped, the worried look reappearing on his face. Well, here goes nothing, he thought. And I finally get some answers about the woman who broke Cade's heart.
Second Chance Mates Page 2
