Mount Roxby Box Set

by Aimie Jennison

  Her question causes my mind to run around in circles. Do I tell her the truth? No, I can’t tell her the truth, not without coming across as a fucking creeper hitting on her when she’s just been dumped. The truth is out of the question, but that doesn’t help me work out what to actually tell her. I lift my head and look at the tree line opposite us hoping for some inspiration.

  It’s so peaceful here. How have I never noticed that before?

  Making my mind up on what to say, I plaster on my most flirtatious smile, before opening my mouth, “You know me, Rubes, I don’t know how to interact with a chick without flirting. I didn’t want Paddy challenging me for it. I thought you’d miss him if I killed him.” I throw her a wink and get a thump in the arm for my trouble.

  “You’re terrible, Eddie,” she says, seemingly taking me at my word. The glint in her eye is telling me she’s not entirely convinced, but her anger has dissipated so I’ll take that as a win.

  She leans her head against my shoulder and stares at the tree line I’d just been looking at. “I’ve missed you and your cheeky ways.”

  She’ll never have a chance to miss my cheeky ways again because I’m not going anywhere. The last few weeks have been hell for me, and I can’t do that again.

  Seventeen

  UNEXPECTED HEART TO HEART

  RUBY

  After Eddie let me cry on his shoulder for most of the day, he walked me back to Theo’s. I had no idea there were tracks through the bush from their place to Theo’s.

  Although after he had explained about the many tracks leading from Theo’s place to almost everywhere in town for the pack to use in emergencies, it made complete sense. I spent the rest of the day in bed; crying and wondering where I’d gone wrong in reading Paddy and his feelings, while dozing on and off.

  I wake up to a dark room, reaching out I feel about on the bedside table blindly until I grip my phone, lifting it up glimpsing at the time. One in the morning, and I’m wide awake. Brilliant.

  Knowing I won’t fall straight back to sleep, I decide to go downstairs and make myself a chamomile tea. Walking through the house in the dark, I try to do everything as quietly as possible. Living in a house full of people is bad enough when three of those people are weres it’s even worse. I hear footsteps padding on the carpet of the hall and curse myself for not just staying in bed. I’m really not in the mood for company right now. I don’t even know if anyone but Eddie knows about what happened between me and Paddy.

  I turn to see Selena enter the kitchen, giving me a small smile. “I’m sorry if I woke you up, I was trying to be quiet,” I apologise, as I pour the boiled water over the tea bag in my cup.

  “You didn’t wake me up, this little mister likes to keep me awake, it’s become our nightly ritual,” she says, patting her swollen stomach lovingly as she shuffles towards the cupboard and pulls down a cup.

  “Do you want chamomile?” I ask holding up a tea bag.

  She nods. “Please.”

  I pour her tea and remove the tea bag from my cup, throwing the used tea bag in the rubbish bin under the counter, before giving the one in Selena’s cup the same treatment. We silently walk over to the L-shaped sofa’s and take a seat beside each other, both shuffling about to find comfortable positions. I sit back in the corner with my feet folded under me as Selena sits at the end turning herself slightly to face me while propping her feet on the coffee table.

  “We’ve determined the cause of my lack of sleep. What’s keeping you up?” she asks, as she takes a sip from the cup she’s nursing between her hands.

  “It’s a long story.” I brush her off, not knowing where to start or whether I even want to go into it. Especially with Selena, she doesn’t even know about the wolves, so how would I start talking about mates and such things.

  “Neither of us have anything better to do. I’m more than happy to listen, it’ll make a nice change to the lonely nights I normally have,” she offers.

  Seeing the genuine look on her face I make a decision, I hope, I won’t regret later.

  “I broke up with my boyfriend this morning. Right after we slept together for the first time.” Even I cringe at the bitterness in my voice.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Ruby. Any breakup is hard, but it’s even harder after a night of loving.”

  I glance at her sharply. How does she know it was lovingly?

  As if reading my mind, she answers the question that must be plastered on my face. “I’ve seen you and Paddy together over the last few weeks. I saw the way he looks at you. There’s no way he wouldn’t show you that love the first time you slept together.”

  “Yeah, well, he said he was waiting for his...” I manage to stop myself saying, true mate. “Waiting for the one,” I correct myself.

  “Finding the one is overrated. I learnt that the hard way. I had a good thing with Theo, it wasn’t perfect, there were a lot of secrets between us, there still are, but you can live with secrets if they don’t hurt you. I went and ruined all that finding my one. When he realised what we had, he couldn’t destroy his brother’s life, even though he knew we were meant to be.”

  Is she talking about Cain? She cheated on Theo with our brother Cain; who left straight after it happened. No one knows where he is, Theo has a number to contact him but I don’t know if he’ll ever use it. If what she’s saying is true, and Cain left so he wouldn’t destroy Theo’s life; he was too late, sleeping with his wife already achieved that.

  “Enough about me,” she says, with a shake of her head. “What are you going to do to get him back?”

  “That didn’t work well for you,” I say, before really thinking about my words. She takes in a sharp breath as though my words wounded her somehow. “I’m sorry, you didn’t deserve that.”

  “No, you’re right. It didn’t matter how much love Theo and I had for each other, it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t get him to forgive me. I came back with the one thing he always wanted from me, hoping it would be sufficient for his forgiveness but I was too late, he’d met his true love.” The sadness in her eyes gives me a whole new respect for her.

  How can she live under the same roof as her ex-husband and his fiancée?

  “How do you do it? How do you live with them?”

  Taking a moment to have a sip from her cup, no doubt giving herself time to think of how to answer such a loaded question, she slowly looks across at me ensuring eye contact while she answers. It’s almost like she’s laying herself out there for me to see everything she feels. “I’m not going to lie and say it doesn’t hurt. But in saying that, anyone can see they’re meant to be, that’s why I gave him the divorce without a fight. I couldn’t stand in the way of love like that. And if I’m being honest, my heart belongs to someone else. It always has.” She reaches up and absently wipes a tear from her cheek. “We’ve ended up on me again.” she laughs quietly.

  “With Paddy’s connection to Theo, he’ll be around a lot. Can you handle that?” The way she said the word connection made me watch her with suspicion. She has never been told about the wolves, she always believed anyone he had over was a work colleague or friend. That every full moon when Theo was away for the night and sometimes the following day, he was on a business trip. We’ve always joked that she must be so dumb to fall for something like that, but looking at her now I’m starting to wonder if she’s smarter than we’ve given her credit for. “He works at the gym doesn’t he? Theo always treated his employees like family.” With those words, I realise my mind is playing tricks on me. I was giving her way too much credit.

  “I thought I heard voices,” Mum says from behind us startling us both, so much so I slosh my now lukewarm tea all down my front.

  “Shit!” I curse.

  “Was it hot?” she asks, as she runs into the kitchen and grabs a tea-towel.

  “No, it’s fine, just wet. We didn’t mean to wake anyone,” I reassure her, as I dab at the wet patch with the tea-towel she hands over.

  “The chamomile see
ms to have put the little mister to sleep, so I’m going to try and get a couple of hours sleep,” Selena says, as she gets up with a groan. “This chair is too soft, if I get any bigger I’ll never get up. Night ladies.”

  Mum takes the seat Selena left and reaching out she gives my hand a squeeze before dropping it again. “I’m sorry to hear about Paddy.”

  “How long were you listening?” I ask, shocked at the thought of her listening in to our conversation. I had thought the others in the house might overhear the conversation with their were-animal hearing, but I’d never considered my mum listening in.

  “I’m sorry. I heard talking and when I came down you were both saying personal things and it didn’t seem right to interrupt. It sounded like Selena needed to get some things off her chest as much as you did.”

  “What do you want, Mum?” I demand. Knowing there has to be a reason she’s sitting here now, she could have just gone to back to bed and I’d be non-the-wiser about her eavesdropping.

  “My therapist insists I be honest. Especially with you, since it’s you I’ve harmed the most. I put you in so much danger over the years bringing home all those strangers. I don’t blame you for hating me.”

  “The strangers that snuck into my room after you’d passed out. Those same strangers that I had to fight off night after night.” I angrily wipe away the tear that runs down my cheek. “The one that caught me when I was weak with a fever, the one who stole away my virginity. Yeah, Mum, that’s right, he stole the one thing I was meant to save for the one I love.”

  The tears are now streaming down my face, I don’t bother trying to wipe at them. “Not that it really matters anymore, because the guy I loved enough to share myself with just dumped me after I had sex with him, so if I’d saved it for him it would’ve been wasted anyway.” I stop talking to quickly catch my breath. “Who knows maybe you did me a favour after all.”

  She pulls me into her arms and I go, too broken to put up a fight.

  The tears eventually ease and I pull away to sit back, only to realise I wasn’t the only one crying all that time. “It looks like we both let out enough tears to fill a bathtub,” I say with a sad smile.

  “I know you had to guard your words with Selena. I just want you to know you have someone to talk to, who isn’t going to instantly be on his side because they share the werewolf gene. I’m human just like you, and I understand them and the issues they can bring to a relationship.”

  “Thanks, Mum. I don’t even know what to say about it anymore. I know I’m not his true mate, so I have to respect his decision. It just stings. Mainly because we spoke about it. He had said he didn’t care about waiting for his true mate. Some wolves wait all their lives for their true mate and never find them. We held off being intimate for that reason. He wanted to make sure he was committed to me. Then we go there and he changes his mind.” I feel like I’m talking myself in circles. My mind is running ninety miles an hour.

  “I think it’s for the best. There’s nothing worse than him finding his true mate after he’s mated with you. That’s what happened between your father and me.”

  Stunned at her admission, I can’t help but jump in. “I thought he was all for the pack?”

  “Of all the werewolves you know, tell me, would any of them leave their mate in one town bringing up his kids, while he lived in another town surrounded by his pack. Remember, he was an alpha too. Would Theo do that?”

  Thinking about what she was saying for a minute, I realise I’ve never really considered how he lived that far away from his mate. Of all the mated couples I know, not one of them would live like that. “He had his true mate with him in the pack,” I say, stating the obvious.

  Mum nods with a sad smile. “Her name was Margaret.”

  “You knew about her? True mates are notorious for killing the other mate, how did you survive?” The questions fall out of my mouth one after another.

  “I only had Theodore when she arrived on the scene. She wasn’t willing to bring him up as her own and your father wouldn’t let her kill him. She couldn’t hold a child to term so after a number of miscarriages he came back to me for more children. I don’t know how he talked her into that, but somehow he did. I’m just grateful it didn’t come down to a death match because I would’ve had no chance.”

  Seeing the light coming in through the windows, I realise it must be getting close to everyone’s alarms going off. “I guess we should both try and squeeze in an hour’s worth of sleep or we won’t be up to much company today.”

  Mum glances down at her watch before slowly standing alongside me. “It’s good that it’s coming close to the end of spring and the sun is coming up earlier than normal. We might get a couple of hours sleep before we have to be up.”

  Before heading up the stairs, I give her a quick hug. “Thanks for the chat,” I whisper in her ear. She squeezes me back tightly, before heading off to the front of the house where she’s sleeping in one of the bedrooms, neighbouring both Selena and Jared.

  Eighteen

  SHOPPING MAKES HUNGRY MEN

  RUBY

  “Who’s babysitting today, boys?” I enquire, walking into the lounge. After my heart to heart with my mum and Selena yesterday, I feel much better. I can’t help noticing that Paddy is missing. Does that mean he’s miserable? It may make me a bitch, but I hope he’s hurting, even if it’s just a little.

  Ed shuffles over giving me room to sit next to him. “That all depends on what you have planned. I’m not doing a spa day ever again. I still have that stinky shit causing my nose problems,” he says, referring to our previous spa visit.

  I open my mouth before my brain kicks in. “But I bet the ladies like the smooth chest.”

  The stunned look on his face makes me realise what I’ve just said. I slip my hand up to cover my mouth too late.

  The guys burst into laughter. “You…had a wax?” Jared asks, between his laughter.

  “For fuck’s sake, Ruby, that was supposed to be between us,” Ed complains. He looks around at the boys; Jared, Wes, and Matthew. “They made me do it. They wouldn’t let me stand guard if not. I took one for the team.” They are all too busy laughing to even listen to his reasoning. Poor Eddie.

  “You want to think yourselves lucky it wasn’t you. I know each and every one of you would’ve done the same if you were in his shoes,” Bel says, effectively silencing the guys as she enters the room. “You’re all off the hook because we’re dress shopping today. I’ve been told I can’t get married in jeans and a T-shirt,” she adds, with a roll of her eyes.

  The guys all get up whooping at the thought of a free day. “Let’s go shoot some pool,” Matthew suggests. With nods of agreement, they all start to leave.

  “Jared, can I have a quick word?” Bel asks.

  I catch her eye and nod toward the other room, offering to leave them to have a private conversation, or as private a conversation one can get in a house full of werewolves. “Stay where you are, Rubes, it’s nothing private.”

  Jared turns in the doorway and glances at the chair he’d just occupied. “Should I be sitting for this?” he asks sounding nervous. “You’re going to tell me to go home, aren’t you? My dad calls every day telling me the same thing, so don’t waste your breath.” I’ve never heard him sound so defeated. What the hell is going on with him?

  Bel pulls him into a hug. “I don’t want you to go. If I were selfish, I would demand you never leave. But I can’t do that, the pride will need you one day but today isn’t it.”

  “Really?” he asks leaning back to look her in the eyes, no doubt seeking the truth. Whatever he sees must be enough because with a short, sharp nod he releases her and steps back. “So, what did you want to talk to me about?”

  “I don’t know how to ask,” Bel admits, as she fiddles with a strand of cotton hanging from the hem of her T-shirt.

  “Just spit it out,” he says playfully, as he reaches forward to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “Sorry, old h
abits,” he apologises, realising what he’s done.

  “Be my man of honour,” she blurts out.

  He takes a step back, surprise written all over his face. “What?”

  Bel turns away and paces across the room, before turning back to face Jared. “If you were a girl, you’d be my maid of honour. So be my man of honour, please?” she begs.

  “Okay,” he replies with a nod, before Bel throws herself at him.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m not wearing a dress,” he scoffs, grinning at me over her shoulder. “I draw the line at that.

  * * *

  We spend all day traipsing around the bridal shops of Sydney. Rosabel has tried so many dresses on that I’ve lost count, and here we are back in the first shop we started in.

  I never want to get married!

  “Baby Bel, I love you. But I swear, if I have to go to one more shop I won’t be held accountable for my actions,” Jared complains once again. He said the same thing three shops ago.

  Bel is standing in the middle of the room on the platform as she looks at herself in the mirrors wearing the beautiful lace covered dress. “This is the one.”

  Jared walks around her giving her a thorough once over. “You look stunning, Bel. Theo isn’t going to know what hit him,” he says, his voice full of pride.

  I glance at Misty, who like me, has tears brimming in her eyes. I can only manage a nod in agreement. I don’t think I can get any words out through the lump in my throat.

  Misty and I chose dresses at this shop the first time around. They are a lovely purple colour with a sweetheart cut. So, thankfully, we don’t have any more to worry about since the shopkeeper has the payment and fitting details.

  Leaving Bel to undress, we head to the main sales room. “Who’s opening the bar tonight, Misty?” I question, glancing the time on the clock. There’s no chance we’ll make it back in time.