by Selena Scott
It was the most logical way of getting what she wanted. And what she wanted was to protect these humans at all costs. She turned and looked back at Jean Luc’s house. Where she knew they all were.
Probably talking and laughing with one another. And she was out here, on the outside, as usual. She knew she was the outlier. The odd man out. It had never bothered her before.
And she hated that it bothered her now.
***
“Sit down!” Caroline urged everyone, a huge smile on her face. “Thea and I made dinner.”
The group sat down then, a bit more eager for the food now that they knew that Caroline had had help. It wasn’t that she was a bad cook. It was that she was a very unusual cook. Thea, however, stuck to the basics and did them well. There was baked mac and cheese, a gorgeous salad and pan of roasted vegetables, and some grilled chicken.
They sat in the dining room, which was strange for Jean Luc, considering he and Hugo and Claude used to sit around the kitchen counter to eat. He could count the number of times he’d sat at this dining room table on one hand. It didn’t bother him to do so now, it was just a bit strange.
“Okay,” Caroline said, a little sparkle in her eye. “This is family dinner. We’re having it tonight, obviously. But we’re also going to have it every night. All of us eating together, okay?” She looked around at all of them, her happiness so palpable it was almost fierce. “And two people who aren’t me and Thea are going to clean up.”
The group turned to the food.
“And!” Caroline held up a finger and the group pulled their hands back from the silverware and looked back at her. “We’re all going to do something together after dinner. A movie or a board game or something.” She looked around at the bemused faces of her friends. “We’ll start easy with a movie tonight.”
“You’re seeming awfully…” Jack searched for the right word, “…gung ho this evening, Caroline. Any particular reason?”
“Yes!” she nodded that head of tumbling chestnut hair and treated all of them to a particularly sparkling smile. Tre choked on the beer he’d just been attempting to swallow and coughed it out. For the most part, he was used to that sparkle of hers, but tonight it was particularly potent. “I realized something today.”
“What’s that?” Thea asked her, serving salad onto her plate and then Jack’s and then, just because, onto Martine’s plate as well. Martine looked up at her in surprise.
“I realized that I am definitely, absolutely, supposed to be here.”
They all looked at her for a minute, lots of eyebrows raised.
“I thought we already went through that, Caroline, darlin’,” Jack said softly. Caroline had stolen her copy of the map from her husband’s family. She’d broken down and revealed their impending divorce as if it were a betrayal to the group as a whole. She’d felt that it meant that she wasn’t supposed to be here at all. That she was endangering the group by having deprived Peter of the right to be there.
They’d all reassured her that they wouldn’t have preferred Peter. That the map had a way of choosing the right person. That it was destiny for her to be there.
Apparently, she hadn’t been completely convinced if she was bouncing off her chair to tell them the reason she’d finally accepted it.
She waved her hand at Jack. “Well, yes, we went through it, but I still felt left out. Like the one who didn’t quite belong, until today.” Caroline didn’t notice Martine’s green-eyed stare on the side of her face.
“What happened today?” Celia asked, scooping a large forkful of mac and cheese into her mouth. She was painfully aware of Jean Luc across the table, but was trying to pretend that she was not. Not at all. Not in the least. She flirted with and laughed with and jumped into the arms of gorgeous, famous men all the time. No big deal. She definitely had not been replaying the whole experience on repeat in her head all day. She definitely was not blushing right now, just thinking about it again. No way. It was hot in here, was all. That was why she was blushing. Not because of Jean Luc’s humongous, muscly presence across the table.
“I realized something,” Caroline said. “Remembered something important.” She leaned across the table and laid a friendly hand over Jean Luc’s. Tre and Celia’s eyes both zoomed in on it like circling hawks in the sky. “Your uncle, his name was Claude, right?”
Jean Luc nodded, looking like he might know what was coming.
“Did he sometimes go by Crazy Claude?”
Jean Luc couldn’t help but laugh. “That he did.”
“I knew it!” Caroline crowed, delight lighting up her features. “I didn’t make the connection before. I didn’t realize that his last name was LaTour. I just thought that was what he called his business, because it was French for ‘tour’ or something.”
“I’m sorry,” Thea said, frowning. “What the hell is going on?”
Jean Luc, smiling abashedly, scraped a hand over his face. “LaTour’s Tours with Crazy Claude. Come see the Everglades the French way.”
Thea stared at him. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “What the hell is going on?”
Jean Luc rose from the table, shaking his head. He returned a minute later with a dusty photo album that he opened up to a certain page and held open for the group to see. “There’s Uncle Claude. He’d guiding a tour on his airboat.”
“Is he wearing a striped shirt and a red scarf? And a beret?” Celia could barely believe her eyes.
“Oh yeah,” Caroline said. “He did tours of the Everglades but totally played up the whole French stereotype thing. He wore a fake mustache and hammed up the accent. It was hysterical. I have no idea why it worked, but it just kind of…”
“Did,” Jean Luc finished. “He had so much charisma. And he knew he needed an edge over all the other schmucks with airboats around here. He needed something in particular to draw the tourists. So he played up the French thing, even though he was French Canadian. And people liked it. It made the tours more fun. Totally random. But totally fun.” He turned to Caroline. “I take it you partook in one of these tours?”
She nodded, a huge grin on her face. “About six years ago. I came down here with Peter, but he was busy in Miami. I drove through Homestead, looking for a tour. But I’d done a few before and I wanted something different. Somebody told me about your uncle and I was all in. It was the best tour I’ve ever done. Informative and thrilling and hilarious. It was just me and him and another couple. Afterwards, I stuck around for a bit and just talked to him.” Her eyes went a little distant, a little faraway. “He told me that it sounded like I married the wrong guy. He had two sons who would be much better for me. I assume he was talking about you and your brother. He tried to give me your numbers.”
Jean Luc groaned into his hand, a healthy blush working its way up his cheeks. “Jesus, I’m so sorry, Caroline. That was so rude of him.”
“No!” she shook her head. “I thought it was funny at the time. And turns out, he was right. I did marry the wrong guy.” She sighed and pushed food around on her plate. “I’m just so thrilled that I have a connection to this place, the way Tre and Celia had a connection to Northern Michigan, you know? It means that I’m a part of it. Of all of this. I’m so relieved! I hated being the odd man out.”
Martine eyed her for a long time. “You were never the odd man out.”
“Sure felt like it,” Caroline said, a little laugh on her voice. “Isn’t it crazy what we can convince ourselves of?”
The rest of the dinner passed in friendly conversation, just the way that Caroline had hoped it would. Afterward, when Celia was clearing dishes, she paused over the photo album, her eyes zooming in hard on one particular feature.
“Oh my God,” she muttered under her breath, her eyes widening in delight.
“Don’t say a word,” Jean Luc growled, leaning over her back to see which picture she was looking at, though he was pretty sure he already knew.
Celia tried very hard not to go still when she felt the hea
t of him at her back. He was just so big, she could feel him everywhere. She cleared her throat. “Tell me this preteen in a beret is you. Just tell me that and make my dreams come true.”
He chuckled. “I plead the fifth.”
“Oh my God. You weren’t lying! You were a dork!” It utterly delighted her to no end to know that the athletic hottie behind her had at one point suffered from dorkdom as much as she had. Because this kid in this picture was not cool. He was big and awkward and there were almost no hints that he was going to grow up to be athletic and handsome. None. She looked at the picture closer. “Dang, you were all ears.”
“Alright, alright,” he grumbled, flipping the photo album closed. “I’m still all ears, for the record.”
She turned and forced herself not to step back. They were almost as close as they’d been that afternoon on the screened-in porch, leaning on one another and laughing. She peered up at him and squinted at his face. She saw, with a little jolt, that he did, in fact, have a lot of ear to work with. “Wow. You’re right. How come I never noticed that before?”
“The beard helps even me out a little,” he said, looking down at her, a blush rising lightly on his cheeks.
She nodded and stepped around him with the plates toward the kitchen. The beard was definitely not the reason she hadn’t noticed his big ears. She loaded the dishes in the dishwasher and then made sure that she and Martine were definitely alone in the kitchen.
“Do you think Jean Luc is handsome?” Celia whispered to Martine.
Martine looked up and narrowed her eyes, like she was trying to figure out why she was being asked this question. She shrugged. “I think I’ve made my stance on his attractiveness clear in the past.”
“No,” Celia shook her head, still whispering and blushing to beat the band. “I don’t mean attractive. Anyone with a body like that qualifies as attractive. I mean handsome.”
Martine dumped food into a Tupperware and gave it considerable thought. “I guess not. He’s a little plain. Except for those eyes of his. Which are special.”
“Right.” Her suspicions were confirmed. She leaned back for a second and pulled her phone out of her pocket. In a matter of seconds she was looking at an endless string of Google images of him. Pictures of him all geared up, black, sweaty stripes under his eyes, his arm cocked back for a perfect throw. There were pictures of him in a suit and tie during a press conference. Pictures of him surrounded by screaming, smiling kids, posing for a picture with a football star. In each one of those pictures, Celia’s stomach swooped hard and low, like a seagull skimming an inch above the waves. But as she studied them, she could see now that his ears poked out just a little far. His features were definitely, just a little, plain. Huh.
She took another second and Googled a picture of Chris Evans. Then of Matt Bomer. Yeah. Yup. Handsome. Classically so. But they didn’t swoop her belly. Huh.
“Movie time!” Caroline called into the kitchen. Celia looked from her cloud of thought to see that the kitchen had been set back to rights. The food put away.
“Oh. Crap. I’m sorry for not helping more, Martine.”
“No, no,” Martine waved her hand with a little smile on her face. “I can tell you had something else on your mind. Seemed important.”
Celia was the last to join the group in the TV room. It was really the most conventional room in the whole house. It was painted a regular old blue and had a large sectional couch and a couple armchairs all pointing toward a gigantic flatscreen. Jack and Thea were curled up together in one of the armchairs, Tre had claimed the other. Martine and Caroline were on the long end of the sectional and Jean Luc was half-sprawled across the short end. The lights were out and the movie was already flickering to a start.
Jean Luc caught her eye as she walked in and he straightened up a little, making room for her on the short end of the sectional. Alright. Apparently she was sitting there, between the arm of the couch and Jean Luc.
She sat down and turned toward the TV, trying not to freeze up when her knee knocked against his.
“Anybody want blankets?” Jean Luc asked, standing up and moving over toward a chest in the corner. He passed them out to everybody and came back to sit next to Celia, who’d declined a blanket. This time, when he sat down, he was close enough that when their knees knocked, they stayed touching. Just a single point of zinging contact. Celia could have sworn her knee was fifteen degrees hotter than the rest of her body.
The movie played and she faced the screen, the images zipping past her eye, but she couldn’t have said what the story was about. She took long deep breaths, but even that wasn’t enough to keep her leg from trembling, a little tapping up and down that completely destroyed the nonchalant air she was trying so oxymoronically hard to cultivate. So, she shifted. Away from him. And so did he, immediately. Celia cursed herself for destroying the spell. She didn’t settle. Instead, she drew her legs up onto the couch, leaned against the arm, and sprawled out a little, taking up far less space than he had when he’d sprawled. Seemingly casually, she slid sideways and pressed her toes to his knee.
He hissed and she turned to him, whipping her toes away.
“No,” he murmured in a whisper that only she could hear. “It’s okay. You’re just cold is all.” He lifted his leg a few inches and jerked his head back his way. Was he inviting her back in? Slowly, her eyes on his, she extended her legs again and pressed her toes into the little cavern of space he was creating under his knee. He let the weight of his leg back down and her chilly toes were fully cocooned in the warm cave of his leg and the couch cushions.
She couldn't help but shiver, just a little, as she settled back down onto the couch. The rest of the movie was a blur.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning, the men had shifter practice with Martine while the three women did some shopping and errands that needed to be done.
“Fine,” Thea had said to Jack, one finger in his chest. “But don’t think just because you’re spending the day being all macho and bear shifter-ish that this means you don’t have to make dinner. The girls did all the kitchen crap last night. Boys’ turn.”
The three bear shifters had raised their hands in surrender.
Now they were out in the field next to Jean Luc’s house, shielded from the road by a copse of trees, sweating their balls off. This bear shifter thing was a hell of a lot of work. And none of them were very good at it.
It was hour three and Martine was still attempting to teach them how to shift on command. “The thing is, you three are all so connected that I’m sure if one of you can figure out how to do it, the others will be able to get it.”
“I just don’t understand what we’re trying to do here,” Jack said calmly, swiping at sweat that was threatening to get in his eyes. “You’re saying that we need to clear our minds, but also concentrate, to relax, but to also be ready. To try and trigger it, but also to just let it come. It’s all a little counter-intuitive.”
“I know,” Martine said, frustrated with herself. “I wish I could explain it better. It’s just that I never had to learn how to do it. I was born knowing how. Shifting into my hawk form is as simple as…” She trailed off, looking at their defeated expressions. She realized, a little belatedly, that this wasn’t the time to be talking about how easy this all was for her. “Never mind. What do you say to a break? Lunch and a swim, maybe? We can pick it up again in the afternoon.”
The three men agreed, all of them exhausted and frustrated and even more exhausted and frustrated because they were tuned in to one another’s feelings as well.
Jean Luc couldn’t help but feel a little bit of relief that the bear shifter lesson had been so physically and emotionally demanding because he hadn’t had any time to think about Celia. Who had been on his mind a lot over the last few days. Something had changed with her, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. She’d opened up a little, shown him some of the sweetness she’d been showing everyone else this whole time.
And she’d made him laugh. Really hard. He hadn’t laughed that hard since Hugo. He liked her. Wanted to be around her a little more. Jack and Tre were his friends, sure, but it was almost more like a forced brotherhood. They hadn’t gravitated toward one another because they had sensed they’d be compatible. No. They’d been forced together via circumstance. That wasn’t to say that Jean Luc didn’t like the other two. He really liked them, and was glad to see that the three of them were becoming friends. But becoming friends with Celia was a whole other piece of pie. He was becoming friends with her for no reason other than that they liked each other. And that felt good. Really good. He’d been lonely for so long that he hadn’t even realized it after a while. It was just his everyday existence. Making friends with Celia was gratifying. It felt like stretching a muscle that hadn’t been stretched in a really long time.
Also, it didn’t exactly hurt that she was cute. And interesting. Tattoos and piercings and crazy hair weren’t exactly his thing—he generally preferred women who looked a lot more like Caroline. Classic-looking and put together. Manicure and pastels. Celia wasn’t anything like that at all. Which was why Jean Luc wasn’t worried about messing up the group dynamic by getting a crush on her. She was cute and attractive, but just a friend. Even if it had made his heart race to have her cold little toes snuggled up under his leg. That didn’t mean anything.
They made their way back to the house and saw that the van was back in the driveway. The girls were home from town and had hopefully picked up everything they were going to need for the next few days. None of them liked being separated.
“Swim?” Tre asked Jean Luc and Jack. The three of them had sweated through their T-shirts.
“As long as there’s beer,” Jack said, groaning as he cracked his neck from one side to the other.
“You’re speaking my language, old man,” Tre said, a cocky grin on his face as he threw an arm around Jack’s shoulder. The two of them scuffled a bit as they entered the house through the side door and made straight for the kitchen. Tre grabbed a beer apiece for him and Jack and tossed Jean Luc a bottle of water. They knew he didn’t drink.
