by Sennah Tate
By the time the party was cleaned up and the last bits of food were disposed of or scarfed down, Hailey was ready to collapse. She headed inside, nearly forgetting that Brock was there until she heard the metallic clang of tools clattering to the floor.
She poked her head around the corner, “How’s it going in here?”
The sight of Brock with sweat glistening on his brow and grease-stained hands took her breath away for a moment as he peered up from his work to look at her.
“Great, should have it up and running in a little bit.” He immediately went back to work and Hailey watched his fingers move expertly over the bolts, nuts and tubes of the freezer’s guts. She thought of him touching her now, leaving grease marks on her pale skin…
What the hell was wrong with her?
“Okay, well… I’m going to look for a manual or something to help you out,” she said quickly, looking for any excuse to get away.
“That’s not nece—”
Hailey didn’t hear the end of his sentence. She sprinted to her grandfather’s office, closing the door behind her, trying to ignore the deafening thump of her heartbeat. She couldn’t be so close to him. Not with these traitorous feelings that made her imagine him naked. His hot mouth on her flesh.
Hailey couldn’t be near him when he radiated heat that made her mind mush and her tongue lead. She couldn’t look at him. He’d fix the freezer and be out of her hair. Just like she wanted.
Why did that sound so disappointing?
Chapter Six
Brock
The repair wasn’t one of the easier ones he’d had, but Brock was determined and determination went a lot further than most folks knew. After he’d cleaned up and washed the grime and grease from his hands, he went in search for Hailey.
He found the office door and brought up a knuckle to rap against it, but thought better of it. The door opened on surprisingly quiet hinges and he found himself looking at the back of her. Seated on the floor in front of a file cabinet, a mane of fiery curls cascading over her shoulders down her back. The flare of her hips and the smooth patch of skin exposed just above the waistband of her jeans drew him closer.
She didn’t notice his entrance and he felt like a voyeur for not announcing his presence. Seeing her like this, completely engrossed with whatever she held in her lap, was like spotting a rare beast in its natural habitat — awesome and reverent.
His eyes settled on the dusty book in her hands and the drawing it contained along with a warning in bold handwriting: BEASTS IN SWAMP. His blood heated and he itched to get his hands on that book to see what else it said. What else she might know.
At that moment, his shadow fell over her and she turned with wide eyes, scrabbling to close the book and stuff it back into the file cabinet.
He pretended not to notice.
“Give her a couple hours and it’ll be cold enough for penguins again,” he said, drawing attention away from his suspicious behavior. “Anything else I can do for you?”
Hailey shook her head, standing and brushing herself off, “You’ve done more than enough already, Brock. Thank you.”
His panther purred at the sound of his name coming from those luscious lips. Then he noticed something else: a yawn. Dark purple circles under her eyes. A slight wobble as she stood in place.
“You look tired.”
She laughed.
“That’s an understatement,” she said with another yawn.
“Let me guess, you fed everyone in town today and never ate anything?”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. He was already pushing her out of the office, one hand on the small of her back, steering her towards a booth.
“Sit.”
She looked like she would protest but Brock held up a finger and pointed her to the booth.
“Sit,” he commanded. For the first time in what seemed like forever, someone listened to him. She slid onto the cracked pleather seat and when he left she already had her cheek resting in her palm, her eyes sliding downward.
When he returned with food, her eyes were completely closed and her breathing was soft and steady.
“Hailey,” he whispered, setting the tray on the table. She started awake.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” she said, the imprint of her hand on her face revealing her lie.
He grinned.
“I hope you like french toast. I’m no chef, but I make a pretty good breakfast.”
She breathed in deeply through her nose and sighed. He heard her stomach rumble and her eyes widened with surprised, wondering if he’d heard it too.
His smirk was enough to tell her that he had and her cheeks colored; Brock laughed. Hailey laughed too. He liked her laugh.
“I smells wonderful,” she finally said. She reached for the mug and inspected the contents, “Hot chocolate?”
He nodded and she spotted something else bobbing in the drink.
“Is that ice cream in it?”
Brock shrugged, wondering if he’d made a mistake.
“It’s how I’ve always made it.”
She raised a brow at him, setting the mug back down, “Me too. I’ve never met anyone else that did it. It’s just weird, is all.” After a long pause and an extended look at the food before her, she turned her gaze back to him, “Thanks.”
“My pleasure,” he answered, sliding into the booth opposite her. She seemed surprised that he joined her, but Brock was contending with a surprise of his own.
The sudden and intense affection he felt for this woman. It blindsided him. She was his mate. He’d been drawn to her from the very beginning, but this was bigger. More.
He’d sought out his mate for renewed strength. He wanted to become more powerful, but Hailey made him feel weak and vulnerable instead.
And he couldn’t get enough of her.
Chapter Seven
Hailey
Hailey didn’t know if it was the comforting drink, the overload of carbs or the sexy man across from her, but she knew she felt all warm and tingly inside. Somehow he’d lulled her into a sense of security and she found herself opening up to him.
“I really didn’t expect today to turn out so well. We might have even come out ahead, thanks to your generous services,” she said, tilting her mug to him.
“You clearly know how to throw a party.”
She snorted, hot chocolate burning her sinuses from the abrupt fit of laughter.
“No. I really don’t. Today was my first party. Ever.”
He didn’t say anything but his raised brow told her he was skeptical.
She somehow found a hidden well of energy that propelled her forward.
“No, really! I was homeschooled; I didn’t get prom or anything.”
Though her tone was irreverent, his face fell.
“Why?”
Hailey faltered, nibbling on her bottom lip, wishing she hadn’t said anything at all.
“When I was little… something bad happened,” she answered. “My parents got really over-protective.”
It wasn’t a complete lie. They’d wanted to protect themselves from the stigma of having a cuckoo daughter. Once the rumors started to fly around Sunset Glade, they’d whisked her off, far away where no one even knew they had a daughter.
Brock nodded, but Hailey sensed that she’d ruined the mood and blamed herself for messing up the moment. If it could even be called a moment. He’d seemed genuinely interested in her past, but Hailey didn’t trust his angle still.
“Well, now that you’ve eaten, you have to get some sleep,” he said, taking her dirty dishes away with a sweep of his large hands.
Part of her wanted to argue for the sake of being contrary. The other part was way too tired to make an argument.
After what seemed like a handful of seconds, he returned, having washed the dishes.
“What are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you to sleep?”
Her mouth fell open and she felt his hand spanning the space between her shoulder
blades as he pushed her toward the door.
“I need to…” His hand was so warm against her back. A gentle current traveled from his fingers splayed over her spine straight down to her core. “Lock up,” she murmured, her hand on the door.
Brock flipped the light switch and ushered her out. She locked the door and he saw her safely around the block to her front door before they parted.
Under other circumstances, she may have expected him to kiss her. Brock didn’t seem to be wooing her though. He’d made her a meal and sent her to bed. He was nurturing. It was a welcome change in her life. She crawled into bed and snuggled up with a pillow, imagining his earthy scent and strong arms encircling her waist.
The moment her eyes closed, she fell asleep.
In her dreams, Hailey held her grandfather’s journal again. The bold letters jumped out at her and the rough drawing of a wild-looking creature morphed and rippled. The sketchy lines became shaggy fur. A towering creature covered in thick matted hair. It stood on two large feet and its human eyes spoke of murder. She screamed.
Then everything sped up. A large cat pounced out of the trees and bared its teeth at the creature. Hailey tried to scramble away, her hands and heels sliding in the mud. The cat swiped a paw as big as her head at the monster and she heard the answering howl of pain as claws dug into flesh.
The monster left, but only after it mauled the cat, nearly blinding him and tearing off his ear in one fell swoop. Hailey wanted to help him. She tried to reach out to him. But she was so far. He looked back at her. Cat-like pupils shifting, changing. The blood covering his wounds obscured his changing skeleton, but as the cat ran into the woods, Hailey swore he became a boy.
With a gasp she woke. The sheets were damp with her sweat and Hailey’s heart raced. The memory had been clearer this time than ever before. She’d almost seen the whole thing play out rather than the usual bursts of images. What did it mean?
Her therapist’s voice rang clear in her mind.
It was a traumatic experience. Your adolescent mind created these things to cope with what you couldn’t understand, she thought in Dr. Allory’s nasally voice.
She counted her breaths — a technique she’d learned as a child to help her calm down after nightmares.
Ten in… ten out, she thought, slowing her heart rate as her breathing calmed.
Being back here was just bringing up old wounds. One day she’d finally be over the thought of sasquatches and magic boys. She hoped.
Despite her — unconvincing — attempt to soothe her worries, the first chance Hailey got, she found herself rifling through the old file cabinet for the journal. With their now limited stock, the diner wasn’t seeing many customers and Hailey was able to sit in a back booth, distracting herself with her grandfather’s journal.
She read through countless pages, but there was nothing more about the mysterious ‘beasts’ that were mentioned on that one page.
“Anything interesting?” Brock’s familiar voice slid over her like satin.
“I came to check on the repair. Looks like it’s holding up alright.”
She nodded, closing the book, “No complaints here.”
He didn’t get the hint that she wanted to be left alone, instead choosing to slide into the seat across from her.
“So, what’s that?” he asked, pointing at the journal.
What was his fascination with it?
She shrugged. “My grandpa’s journal. Mostly really boring stuff about this place. He apparently had a hunting cabin in the swamp, though. I wonder if it’s still there…”
She didn’t say it out loud, but she wondered if there were any more clues to what her grandfather knew in his forgotten hunting cabin.
“I know the Glades backwards and forwards around here. If you need a guide I could take you.”
Again she found herself surprised by his generosity and eagerness to help.
“You’d do that?”
He shrugged a shoulder and grinned, “Why not? It could be fun.”
Hailey wasn’t so sure about that. She was even less sure about venturing into the heart of the Everglades with Brock Silvanus. Though the niggling memory of the attack that changed her life, coupled with the persistent heat that accompanied Brock whenever he was near ensured that she couldn’t say no.
Chapter Eight
Brock
She didn’t say much as he led her through the swamp. Brock took care to point out interesting sights or plants to be wary of. Yet through it all, Hailey stayed mum.
Disturbingly, Brock found himself wondering what she was thinking. What was troubling her. What he could do to help.
Help?
That’s all he’d been doing for her lately and it was unexplainable even to him. He could come up with a hundred excuses: he wanted to keep her away from panthers, he wanted to know what the ‘beasts’ her grandfather knew about were, he was curious about the old man’s hunting cabin, and on and on. Sure, he could come up with plausible excuses until he was blue in the face, but none of them rang true.
He glanced over his shoulder, watching her gingerly pick her way around a thicket of saw-blade palmettos.
“Doing alright back there?” he called.
The drone of insects thick in the air like fog made it hard to hear her reply. They were close to the water’s edge now.
“Just a little further on foot, now,” he assured her.
“Really? I thought it would be a lot fur—”
Her voice stalled and died as her eyes fell on the airboat hitched to a rickety post in the mud.
“What’s that?” she asked, her voice reaching a high note he’d never heard her make before.
“This?” he jabbed a thumb in the direction of his trusty transport, “This is Stella. She’ll take us the rest of the way.”
He didn’t note it out loud, but Brock saw her heels dig further in the mud. Her shoulders were tense and his panther could hear her heart racing.
“Perfectly safe,” he assured her, tossing a life vest her way. A lot of people got freaked out by airboats if they’d never been in one. They were loud, fast and difficult to control if you didn’t know what you were doing.
Luckily, Brock knew exactly what he was doing and he’d rebuilt the whole damn thing himself, bolt by bolt. He wouldn’t let Hailey onboard if he wasn’t one-hundred percent sure she’d be safe.
She took the neon orange garment from him with trembling fingers, clearly not calmed by his confidence.
His gut twisted into knots. What the hell was he thinking? She didn’t belong out here anymore than she belonged with him.
Mate, the panther urged.
Mate or no mater, Hailey didn’t belong in this life.
He helped her climb in, holding her clammy hand as she swung one leg into the boat then another. She was so pale. She looked like she’d faint. Or throw up — maybe both.
As terrified as she looked, Hailey steeled herself at the bow, holding onto the edge of the craft with bright white knuckles.
He started off slowly, but soon increased speed, enjoying the way her halo of fiery curls whipped in the wind. She was too paralyzed to do anything about it, but he was glad for it — he loved her hair, the unruliness of it so at odds with how cautious and timid she seemed.
It had been a few hours since they began their trek and the cloudless sky overhead had developed a healthy cluster of puffy cumulus clouds. The air was a damp blanket draped over them, thick and heavy.
Checking his bearings, Brock altered his course a little and soon, the water became more shallow. He ran Stella aground and turned off the deafening fan before explaining his actions to a bewildered Hailey.
“Water’s always changing paths out here. We’re going to have to continue on foot from here,” he was surprised to hear the apology in his voice. Brock Silvanus apologized to no one.
The moment her foot made contact with dry land, Hailey visibly relaxed.
“Hey,” he said with a joking tone, “
I told you she was safe, did I not?”
She gave him a weak smile and nodded, “Yeah. I just…”
He grinned, “It’s okay. Airboating isn’t for everyone.”
She nodded again.
“How much further, do you think?”
Brock looked again at the bearing’s he’d given himself, “Probably another mile or two. Just stay close, okay?”
That went without saying; her chest was nearly pressed into his back. He felt her shallow breaths against the back of his neck, sending hot need coursing through his veins.
“Scared?” he asked, turning to face her.
She shook her head, eyes wide. “N-no. Why would I be?”
He could kiss her right then. So close. So vulnerable and open.
Because you think there are monsters out here — and you’re right.
He shrugged, “The swamp can be spooky if you’re not accustomed to it.”
After twenty more minutes trekking through the thick brush the sound of slow moving water reached their ears once more.
They came to a stop at the edge of a shallow barely-moving creek. The Glades were full of these little tributaries. They winked in and out of existence at different times of the day. By mid-afternoon, the Sun could completely obliterate a river that had been there in the morning. Similarly, a quick douse of rain could create new waterways on a whim.
He noticed her freeze again. Maybe it wasn’t Stella that had made her nervous.
“Looks like we should be able to wade through it,” he said, trying to gauge her reaction.
Hailey shook her head, “Isn’t there another way?”
Brock frowned.
“Sure, let’s see…”
After a few minutes of scouting, he’d found a fallen log that seemed sturdy enough and the right length to cross the stream. He made a makeshift bridge for them and crossed to the other side without getting so much as a drop of water on him.
“Your turn,” he said, calling Hailey over.
“I meant a way that didn’t involve crossing this river of death…” she muttered. If it weren’t for his panther’s super sensitive hearing he may not have heard her at all.
