by E A Price
“It’s about your wife,” said his grandmother.
Harold immediately growled. “What about her?”
In the back of his mind, he worried it was about Christine – worried his father, who currently wouldn’t meet his gaze, had not let the matter drop.
His mother patted his hand. “We’re not sure it’s working out with her, darling.”
Harold stared at his mother until she became uncomfortable and had to look away.
“What makes you say that?” he asked carefully.
He was aware of his inner wolf stirring, getting angry and he wanted to remain calm. But, his family was trying to take Christine away from him – and that would not be tolerated.
“We brought her here to give you a mate and a child.”
“We’ve barely been mated more than a month – do you really expect her to have given me a son in that time?”
“Don’t be facetious,” snapped his grandmother.
“We believe she’s a bad influence,” huffed his father.
Harold thought of his sweet Christine – he couldn’t imagine her influencing anyone to do anything bad. Well, except making out in the back of a movie theatre.
“Your work is suffering because of her - because you’re leaving early to spend your time with her.”
No, it just meant that his father had to do more than he usually did – which was very little.
“I hardly think it is suffering,” Harold hissed.
No, he made damn sure the work got done. He just delegated it to people who were more than qualified to do it. Work that usually would belong to the actual alpha and beta.
“We thought she would be such a submissive little thing,” complained his mother. “But she just refuses to try and fit in. I keep asking her to come to the club and play tennis, and I keep trying to take her out shopping, but she just snubs me.”
“Never mind that,” snapped his grandmother. “She refuses to have a pup – her one purpose in the pack!”
“She is not refusing,” said Harold with his last reserve of patience. “She merely wants to wait – as do I. You are speaking about her as if she is nothing more than an object. Christine is a person. She is my… my wife – she deserves respect.”
“Then there’s her father…”
Harold stiffened. Had the male complained about what happened in Texas?
“What about him?”
His father huffed. “He’s been difficult about the agreement – I sent one of the legal team down there – Sabrina…”
Harold thought his life had been a little quieter the last couple of weeks.
“He won’t give her access to any of the company records. He’s trying to shut us out.”
“He can’t, not if he wants to keep the money.”
But maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he wanted to back out of the agreement entirely - to give back the money and get his daughter back. It was too late – he couldn’t!
“Yes, Sabrina pointed that out, and he started making a few concessions. It appears the money still has some hold over him, but I’m beginning to wonder if it wasn’t all just a big mistake.”
“Alphas are rarely easy to get along with,” said Harold pointedly.
“It was supposed to be an easy acquisition that would pay out in years to come, but if the alpha is going to battle us at every turn, I wonder if we shouldn’t just dissolve the agreement and the marriage.”
Harold frowned. He knew his father had been annoyed by Christine, but whatever she said clearly pissed him off so much that he was willing to forget the whole deal. His father could be arrogant at times… okay, all the time, but usually he valued money more than this.
“I hardly think there’s call for that…”
“It’s in the agreement that you have pups,” reminded his grandmother.
“Within five years,” he snarled. “Is your real only criticism that I have to spend time with her and that she refuses to go shopping?! How she chooses to spend her time is up to her.”
“As long as she isn’t with another male.”
“She isn’t.”
Any fears he had over her ex, Roark were ebbing. The silent phone calls to the house had stopped, and even if she had seen him again in Texas, she didn’t spend any time with him – Harold was with her nearly every moment.
“As for how I spend my time, she’s my wife – I must speak to her on a regular basis. Do you want me to see her less? And how can you expect me to produce pups if I can never see my wife? How can I impregnate her if I do not sleep with her? How strong do you think my sperm is?”
“Harold!” exclaimed his mother. “Don’t be disgusting young man!”
“You're ridiculous! Christine and I have only just begun to get to know one another.”
“You are quite right, Harold,” said his grandmother.
That stunned everyone into silence. His grandmother rarely agreed someone else was right. She was firmly stubborn to the point of ridiculousness. She had once got into an argument over who starred in the movie, Some Like it Hot. To that day, she still maintained that Marliyn Monroe was not in it – in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, she was too pig-headed to be budged on the matter.
“It is still early days. We shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Christine.”
His father huffed.
“I’m sure we are being too hasty,” she continued. “I’m sure that Harold can prove that he is devoted to his position as alpha.”
“Future position,” muttered his father.
Prove himself? Hadn’t he done that over and over?
“After all, isn’t your pack the most important thing to you?”
“Of course,” he said, even as doubt crept in.
“Well then, we have nothing to worry about. Right?” She gave him a significant look.
A few beats passed before he finally murmured, “No.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Three weeks later
Christine was shopping for tiles for their bathroom. It needed redecorating, but her heart really was not in it.
Harold had been so distant in the past few weeks. She had thought they were getting closer. She had started to care for him, so the fact that he had all but turned his thermostat down to Mr. Freeze’s summer wardrobe hurt her no end. No, that wasn’t fair. He hadn’t been rude or mean in any way. It was just that the warmth that had been growing seemed to be extinguished, and he was back to the polite but distant man she first met.
Truthfully, she’d barely seen him over the last few weeks. She desperately wanted to spend more time with him, but when she did, she kind of wished he wasn’t there at all. Being with her distant husband was lonelier than not being with him at all.
She wondered if it was something she had done – something her parents had done. She tried to ask Harold if anything was the matter, but if it were, he wouldn’t confide in her.
She tried to timidly broach the subject with her dad – whether he had said or done anything to push the two of them apart. But any attempts to bring that subject up just ended with a rant about the evils of her new pack and husband.
“Would you like any help, Mrs. Buchanan?” offered a sales clerk
“No, thank you,” she murmured.
Christine had bought quite a lot of decorating supplies from that store over the past few weeks – they knew her on sight. She picked up two green tiles and considered the different shades.
Harold would probably say they were the same. She wished he was helping her with this. Course, he would be no help – he’d tell her to get what she wanted and not have any opinion at all, but it would still be nice to hear it.
They had seen so little of one another that she hadn’t brought up the house makeover at all. He probably hadn’t even noticed the progress she was making.
A giggle roused her from her reverie as she spied a young woman, about her age, shopping for tiles too. The difference being that the other woman’s husband was with h
er, he was kissing her, cuddling her and they both looked incredibly happy.
The two of them made it look so easy. She doubted the female lay awake at night fretting over whether her husband even liked her.
Christine tried not to watch them as they flirted and kissed, but she couldn’t help herself. It was like looking at a travel magazine – seeing all the wonderful places she could dream about but never visit.
The couple was virtually making out. She and Harold hadn’t been together physically for almost a week. Her former efforts to change her schedule so that they could find the time to be together were kaput thanks to his erratic schedule. He didn’t seem overly concerned by the fact that they were barely having sex, but she was starting to get frustrated.
“Remembering the good times, hobbit?”
Christine yelped and dropped the two tiles. They smashed, making the canoodling couple jump. She spun to find a slightly disheveled Roark grinning at her.
“Roark!”
The sales clerk rushed over to pick up the fragments of tiles.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Christine bending to help. “I’ll pay for the damage of course.”
“That’s quite all right, Mrs. Buchanan,” she rushed to reassure her.
Christine smiled weakly until the sales clerk left.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“Mrs. Buchanan,” he sneered.
“Well, that is my name now,” she said defensively. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Roark…”
“Christy, I love you.”
“Roark, don’t…”
He grasped her hand, growling as he felt the ring. “You should be mine, are you honestly telling me you don’t love me?”
Christine bit her lip. Truthfully, she hadn’t thought of him at all in the last few weeks – too preoccupied with her husband. But then slowly, all her thoughts of him had been replaced by Harold. She really didn’t love Roark anymore.
“Stop this,” she hissed, but he only got louder. People were starting to stare.
His face turned thunderous. “No, Christy, you should be with me. Not that asshole you married!”
She tried to pull her hand away from his. “Let go of me!”
“Is everything okay, Mrs. Buchanan?” asked the nervous sales clerk.
“We were just leaving,” growled Roark, trying to drag her to the exit.
Christine dug in her heels. “No, you were, I’m staying here.”
“Christy!”
“Let go of me!” she yelled.
Roark roared and raised his fist. She thought for a moment he was going to hit her, as did the young sales clerk who screamed for security and started throwing tile samples at Roark.
He snarled at the girl, but on seeing two burly bear shifter security guards heading his way, he dropped Christine’s hand and bolted for the exit.
The sales clerk rushed to prop her up as Christine turned to jelly. Perhaps she was being soppy, but she wished Harold was with her.
*
Harold stormed into the office. “Christine!”
“Harold?”
Christine frowned and rose to her feet shakily. In two steps he wrapped his wife in his arms. His heart thudded in his chest. Vaguely he heard a cough, and he discerned the store manager carefully leaving to give them some privacy.
The manager, Sylvia was an old friend of his mother’s - well, his mother had virtually kept the department store in business for two decades by dint of her spending habits. Sylvia called him to say his wife had been involved in an altercation and was still a little shaky. Harold got there as fast as he could. It was a miracle no cop pulled him over. But the moment he heard his wife was in trouble, he had to be with her.
He hadn’t been treating her very well in the last few weeks. He knew it, and yet he did it anyway. His father heaped as much work on him as possible, and all he wanted to do was be with Christine. When he was with her, he tried to be as distant as possible – to make it easier to be apart. But pushing her away hurt her – he could see it on her face. She didn’t understand what he was doing, and it hurt her.
“Wha ya doon har?”
The muffled voice came from his chest, and he realized he was holding Christine maybe a shade too tightly.
He loosened his grip, and she repeated herself, “What are you doing here?”
“Sylvia called me,” he told her briskly.
“I told her I was fine,” she grumbled. “I just needed a moment to compose myself.”
“What happened?” he demanded.
Haltingly, she told him.
Harold watched her carefully. “Did you know he was in town?”
Did she invite him? Did she want him there? Did she still love him? He knew of her attachment to the male before their marriage, but he was not aware of anything since then. He had thought Roark was out of her life completely.
“Not until he decided to jump out at me in the tile section.”
“What did he want?”
“He said he wanted me.”
Harold stared at her, and she struggled out of his arms.
“I know, ridiculous right?” she murmured, her cheeks blazing red. “I’m going home.”
Did he find it incredible that a man would travel across the country to claim Christine? No, not at all. He would. He’d travel to the moon to claim Christine. But he doubted this unworthy male came all this way for her – he wanted something else.
“You’re still upset.”
Christine pursed her lips unhappily. “I’ll be fine.”
“I will drive you, and I will have a pack mate collect your car,” he told her in a tone that wasn’t open to argument.
“Fine,” she sighed.
Harold wanted to be the kind of person who could say something reassuring, but still caught between fear of something happening to Christine and anger at Roark – he was useless.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“I want you to find Roark,” snapped Harold to the pack security officer, Dale. He flung his briefcase and coat on his desk and started prowling the room, looking for something to claw.
The burly wolf growled at him. “He’s in an office down the hall.”
Harold glared at him, and the other male shrugged.
“He came by looking for you twenty minutes ago. He was making a fuss downstairs, so I had him brought up. Figured you’d want to talk to him.”
“I do. Bring him in.”
Harold glared at the disheveled male as Dale roughly manhandled him. Dale may have been a shade too rough, but Harold wasn’t complaining. Dale had a soft spot for Christine – she gave the security team homemade cookies and brownies whenever she could, and often brought hot cocoa to those on night duty. Harold melted a little for his adorable little mate, before remembering that the asshole in front of him had tried to hurt her.
He didn’t waste any time. “What do you want here?”
Roark gave him a supercilious grin. “Christy – she’s my fiancée. We’re getting married.”
Dale snorted in the background.
“Christine is already my wife,” Harold said, his words dripping with icicles.
Roark jutted his chin defiantly. “She loves me.”
Harold didn’t move an inch of a muscle. Wouldn’t react to that. He didn’t believe it was still true, though there was a possibility it might be. But she was his wife. Mine.
“We’d be married now if it wasn’t for you,” he taunted.
At that, Harold really did sneer. “Indeed? I was under the impression there was no proposal.”
Roark leaned back in his seat and balanced a foot on Harold’s antique desk. As if Harold didn’t already hate him.
“You know, I’d be a little nicer, or when I leave town, I might just have to take your little lady with me. Unless you can persuade me not to.”
Harold smiled humorlessly. Ah yes, it was all about money. This male wanted
a bribe.
“You understand Christine has no money – her father can no longer sell the pack business. Currently, Christine has money from my pack and an open line of credit, but that’s it, and the moment she leaves me, that’s gone. Even if you did manage to persuade her to go with you, you wouldn’t get anything from her.”
The other male snorted. “We’re in love.”
“As you were with Melinda?”
Roark froze, and Harold knew he had hit a nerve. His investigator hadn’t been a hundred percent certain about this, but Harold now had it confirmed.
“Of course that was back when you were called James Wilson.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” lied Roark.
Harold shrugged. “Perhaps, my investigator was wrong. Perhaps that wasn’t you who married an alpha’s daughter and then inherited a huge amount of money when she mysteriously died a few months later. Of course, no murder was proved, but her father did not see it quite that way. Perhaps you didn’t change your name to avoid being mauled by Melinda’s father who understandably wants vengeance.”
Roark gave him an uneasy glare.
“I think you thought Christine would get a lot of money from her father, but he was broke, and your plans to try and persuade him to sell his business fell through. So, you thought you’d come here, get my attention and blackmail me into paying you to leave Christine alone.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Though, Roark was looking a little green.
“Ah, good, because you won’t get any money from me. Christine is already mine; I have no reason to pay you to leave her alone. And as for this James Wilson person – since you are not him, then it’s no matter to you that I gave your name and location to Melinda’s father. I’m sure he’ll take one look at you and know he’s come to see the wrong guy.”
“You fucker!” howled Roark.
He tried to lunge at Harold, but Dale already had him by the scruff and was dragging him away before he managed to get anywhere near him.
Harold leaned back in his chair, clenching and unclenching his fists. Nobody was going to take Christine away from him – nobody.
*
Christine stirred, she felt hot and almost suffocated. She realized it was because Harold was all but lying on top of her. His breathing was deep and even, and unlike her, he seemed to be managing a restful sleep. Her own sleep had had filled with dreams of Roark trying to abduct her, trying to drag her away against her will. In some of them, Harold was there, merely watching her struggle while she called for help.
