Crush This!

by Tasha Black

  The officers followed Harkness in.

  Jeremy’s grandfather glowered at him from across the porch, but didn’t speak.

  At last they all filed out again.

  There had been no gasps or screams - no commotion at all. They didn’t have any animals with them, either.

  “Where is it?”

  Mona ignored Jeremy’s demand.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Harkness,” she said.

  “My pleasure,” Adrian replied.

  “No,” Jeremy said. No, that couldn’t be right.

  He pushed past them, entering the room on his own, ignoring the calls from Mona and his grandfather telling him to stop.

  The room was tiny. He threw open the closet doors, nothing. He checked the bathroom, nothing. The shower stall was empty though it smelled of Harkenss’s insufferable aftershave.

  There was nothing under the bed or behind the curtains.

  When he finally gave up and came out to the porch again, he was good and mad.

  But nowhere near as mad as his grandfather was.

  “I told you to apologize,” the old man scolded. “And I told you to leave it alone. But you couldn’t listen. You couldn’t keep your fool mouth shut for one day.”

  “It’s fine, Mr. Hall,” Lucy interjected.

  Jeremy hated her for trying to protect him. He was a man - he could stand up for himself.

  “You’ll be lucky if they don’t press charges,” Giles went on.

  He had Jeremy by the sleeve, but he had pinched a good chunk of skin along with it. The old guy still had a firm grip, and it was already sore as hell.

  “Thank you again, Lucy, Adrian,” Giles called warmly as he dragged Jeremy bodily off the front porch to his car. “I’ll be looking forward to seeing the commercial when it’s finished.”

  26

  Adrian

  THREE MONTHS LATER…

  * * *

  Adrian parked in the gravel drive of Harkness Farms.

  He cut the engine, then reached over to squeeze Lucy’s knee.

  She smiled up at him and he resisted, barely, the urge to kiss her.

  Kissing always seemed to lead to more, even the most innocent sort of kissing. And there was no way he was going to make love to her in a car in the parking lot at the farm.

  She giggled and he realized belatedly that she had heard part of his thought.

  “Are you saying I’m wrong?” He winked at her.

  She shook her head and her cheeks turned pink.

  God, how he loved her.

  They got out of the car and walked hand-in-hand under the sycamores to the old stucco farmhouse.

  Something about walking under the tunnel of branches always made him feel like a kid again. There was a magic to this place that had nothing to do with the three hundred moons spell or the shifters, and everything to do with love and peace and homecoming.

  But he was still nervous.

  Lucy knew him as cool Adrian Harkness, the boss, an expert, a bit of a hipster, a sexy older guy with a leather jacket and a nice watch, and a gang of celebrity buddies.

  But here at the farm, he’d be as likely to get teased for his neatly trimmed beard as not. There was a lot of love here but not a lot of “cool” - the place ran less like Entourage and more like The Muppet Show.

  “Ready?” he asked when they reached the door.

  She smiled and nodded.

  Before he could knock, the door burst open.

  “You’re Uncle Adrian,” a dark-haired boy exclaimed.

  Adrian laughed. “Are you Darcy’s boy?”

  The boy’s face spread into a joyful smile.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m Luke.”

  Adrian was glad to see that his foster sister Darcy’s soon-to-be adopted son was fitting in nicely. He’d heard that when she’d first rescued him from a bad situation, Luke had been too frightened to speak. It looked like the farm life agreed with the kid. Boy after his own heart.

  “Well, you know who I am,” Adrian said. “This is Lucy.”

  “Hi, Luke,” Lucy said warmly.

  “Whoa,” Luke said. “You’re pretty.”

  Lucy laughed. “I’ll bet I’m not as pretty as your mom though.”

  “Come on, you can meet her and decide for yourself,” Luke said, opening the door for them. “Mom!” He disappeared down the hall, presumably to find his mother.

  But the next person to greet them was the mom of Adrian’s heart.

  “Son,” Kate said, her blue eyes as twinkly as ever in spite of the streaks of gray in her blond curls.

  “Hi, Mom.” Adrian wrapped her in his arms and wondered at how the largeness of her personality could possibly be contained in her small body.

  “And you must be Lucy,” Kate said softly.

  “It’s very nice to meet you,” Lucy replied, her voice shy.

  “Very nice indeed,” Kate replied, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “Come on, I’ll fix you some tea. And then I want to see what you’ve been working on.”

  Lucy smiled, wrapped her arm around his mom, and headed for the kitchen like she’d lived at the farm all her life. When they reached their destination, she perched on a stool and looked up at Adrian as though he were lagging behind.

  “I heard this commercial of yours is very popular,” Kate commented as she started the teakettle.

  “It went viral, Grandma,” Luke said, reappearing in the doorway. “Mom’s finding the WiFi password so we can watch it,” he told Adrian.

  “The script was top-notch,” Lucy said. “And the actors are incredible. We were lucky to get to be even a small part of it.”

  “Well we can’t wait to see it,” Kate said.

  Lucy smiled happily and moments later the boiling water hit the mugs.

  “Got it,” a woman’s voice called from the other room.

  Luke dashed off and Lucy followed him, laughing.

  Adrian started after her, but Kate took him by the arm. “You’re not letting her go, are you?”

  She meant the relationship, not the job. But he wasn’t letting her go in any sense, no matter what sacrifices he had to make. Kate didn’t need to worry.

  “No way,” he smiled down at the woman who had taught him what selfless love was all about.

  “I know you want to get back to Glacier City to take advantage of what this has done for your careers,” she said. “But I hope you’ll stay here a few days at least, take a break, get to know each other outside of work.”

  “That sounds nice, Mom,” he said.

  “But?”

  “But I need to go back, and talk to Mr. Howard,” he said. “We need to leave in the morning.”

  William Howard had been abroad when the commercial broke. He didn’t know yet about Adrian’s relationship with Lucy, and Adrian didn’t relish telling his own mentor that he had flouted the company’s fraternization policy.

  “Oh,” Kate said. “Well, it’s good that you’re staying for dinner with the family tonight.”

  “Will there be room for us at Christmas?” He knew the family was getting bigger by the minute with all his siblings finding mates.

  “There’s always room - anytime,” she said. “You know that.”

  He wrapped an arm around her.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go watch your virus.”

  He didn’t have the heart to correct her.

  Darcy and Lucy had Lucy’s laptop set up on the dining room table. The five of them gathered around.

  Lucy leaned in, pulled up the video and hit play.

  A commercial for potato chips came up.

  “Oh, my,” Kate said, sounding confused.

  “This isn’t it, Mom,” Adrian told her.

  “They have commercials before commercials now?”

  “Welcome to the internet.”

  “We can skip it now,” Lucy said, leaning forward to click out of the pre-roll ad and get to theirs.

  Adelaide’s face filled the scr
een.

  “I’m worried about Dad,” she said simply, but in a way that made your heart stutter.

  “I’m worried about you,” Rod Bilworth replied, his tone just grating enough to make him seem human.

  The camera panned out to show Adelaide wearing fatigues and sitting in a wheelchair.

  “Oh,” Kate breathed.

  Bilworth rolled her past a flower garden and up to the front door of a modest but well-kept brick home.

  The door opened and the camera cut to a middle-aged man looking down at Adelaide in shock.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Dad,” Adelaide said, her voice thick with barely restrained emotion. “I’m gonna be okay.”

  “You’re gonna be better than okay, baby,” the dad said. “You’re my hero.”

  A tear slipped down Adelaide’s cheek and then the dad was hugging her as the brother in the background put a hand over his mouth as if containing his own emotion.

  The scene cut to a picture of a greeting card with a soldier on it. A voiceover came on.

  “This Veteran’s Day, Horizon wants to thank all our heroes. All proceeds from this year’s Hero card collection will go to the National Veterans Fund.

  Adrian put an arm around Lucy.

  No matter how many times he saw this thing it never failed to move him. And it wasn’t about the color-blind casting the media raved about or the fact that Horizon was going to be donating enough to change the lives of thousands of vets.

  He knew Lucy hadn’t cast Adelaide to win points with the Screen Actors’ Guild’s Diversity Board. And she credited Horizon fully for their generosity, taking no credit for her ownership of the project.

  No, what moved Adrian was the way it moved her. The way this mate of his wore her heart on her sleeve, stretched out her own empathy to envelop everyone around her - that was what had him on his knees.

  Even if he hadn’t been on his knees quite yet, at least not in the way he so desperately wanted to.

  Adrian slipped a hand in his pocket to worry the little box that was there. He’d been doing it all day, comforting himself that it was there even as he fretted that Lucy might not feel ready to accept what was in it.

  He’d needed her to meet his mom before he could do what was coming next. Now that it was done, he felt free to bind himself to her officially, though they had already been bound in his heart since the day they’d met.

  He only hoped Lucy felt the way he did.

  27

  Lucy

  Lucy was wearing one of Kate’s thick handmade woolen sweaters over her t-shirt. It was a mild November for Pennsylvania, but she still shivered when the wind blew through the drafty farmhouse windows just right.

  She was helping Darcy and Kate make a big pot of stew for dinner. They all laughed and carried on as they attempted to tell her a little something about each member of the family. Ethan and Evangeline and the baby were coming for supper, Finn would be home soon, and Will and Tess were on their way and Jack was coming too, if he could finish his carpentry job in time. With Adrian and Lucy there, and the kids living in the house with Kate, there would be too many to eat at the big dining room table. They planned to bring dinner out to the octagonal barn and eat at the big tables in the pie kitchen. The whole idea felt like a party, though there was no special occasion except the happiness of a family gathering together for a simple meal.

  Suddenly, Adrian burst into the room, a determined look on his face. “Lucy, can I talk to you?”

  “Um, sure,” she said, worried that he was angry. She reached out a hand to touch him and read his mood, but he was already holding the back door open for her.

  “Bring her back in time for dinner,” Kate yelled after them.

  “Another one bites the dust.” Darcy laughed inexplicably.

  “Darcy,” Kate admonished.

  But Adrian was already halfway to the orchard, so Lucy dashed after him, missing the rest of the conversation that was happening in the kitchen.

  He stopped when they reached the middle of a row of trees.

  The apple orchard was hauntingly beautiful, the bare branches of the trees twisting and reaching for the pale gray sky as if they were alive.

  “I always loved it out here,” he said, smiling down at her. “Even in winter.”

  Lucy wanted to reach for his hand, but he was just out of arm’s reach.

  Then it hit her. He didn’t want to touch her, because there was something he didn’t want her to know.

  Though he was smiling kindly at her, she felt herself nearly swoon with fear.

  It was one thing to fall in love at work and another to bring someone home. What if he felt she didn’t measure up against the backdrop of his warm family and his valiant mother?

  Her fears must have shown on her face.

  “Lucy,” Adrian breathed. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded. She was a big girl - she could take it. But there would never be another man for her.

  “The time I’ve spent with you has been the happiest of my life,” she said simply.

  “Hey, that’s my line,” he laughed.

  And then he was down on one knee, holding something out to her.

  “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Lucy Wren,” he said.

  Her heart soared and she wanted to memorize the moment, his handsome face, the simple grays and browns of the landscape, but it was all a blur from the tears in her eyes.

  “Will you marry me?” His words brought her back from the daze of joyful emotion.

  “Yes, Adrian,” she said. “Yes, of course.”

  Then he was up, swinging her into his arms and carrying her back to the house.

  She didn’t know what the future would bring, but one thing was certain.

  They would spend it together.

  * * *

  ***

  Thanks for reading Bear This!

  Keep reading for a sample of Crave This!: A 300 Moons Book.

  * * *

  Or grab your next book right now:

  http://www.tashablack.com/300-moons.html

  1

  Crave This! (SAMPLE)

  Sarah paced the floor of her office.

  The carpet was lush beneath her feet, and out the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, the skyscrapers of Glacier City sparkled in the late morning sun.

  Baby Orson snuggled himself against her chest, a lock of her hair curled in his chubby fist. He loved being carried in his sling.

  Sarah loved it too. She made it a point never put him down for an instant on the evenings, weekends, and work-from-home Wednesdays they spent together.

  And she had the best nanny in Glacier City for the other four weekdays.

  At least she used to have the best nanny…

  Orson had his first episode a week ago in the middle of the night. He’d been suffering with his first real cold and Sarah had barely slept in days.

  He cried in the night for about the hundredth time.

  Sarah smashed her shin on the dresser while launching herself out of bed to go to him and yelped in pain and surprise.

  Orson’s scream turned into a growl.

  Half-blind with sleep, she’d hurried to his crib and lifted him out, held him close.

  Orson snuffled loudly and made a strange, piteous sound.

  When she looked down she swore she saw a fur-covered thing in her arms instead of her baby.

  “Orson?” she whispered.

  Before her blinking eyes, he transformed back into her boy. The fur disappeared, the snout melted back into a button nose, all in an instant.

  Shaken, she carried him over to the window, into the moonlight so she could see him better.

  But he was her baby, nothing different than usual, no fur, no strange sounds.

  He sniffled again and whimpered a little.

  She chalked it up to the dim lighting and lack of sleep.

  She curled up in the rocker and snuggled him back to sleep.

  She called out of work the
next day and the nanny came to be with Orson for a few hours while Sarah slept. She pledged to take better care of herself from then on. After all, she had Orson to think of.

  She had never really thought of herself as a single mother in the classic sense. Sarah had enough money to ensure that taking care of Orson was not a hardship. Between herself and the world’s best nanny, Orson had never wanted for a moment’s attention.

  Until today.

  She could still hear Linda’s screech over the phone.

  “You have to come home now,” Linda had yelled, her usually warm, motherly voice gone cold and frightened.

  Sarah had run the four city blocks, too scared to wait for a car, cursing the elevator for taking too long to get up to the modified loft she and Orson called home.

  Linda was shaking outside the door to Orson’s nursery.

  “I didn’t leave,” she said. “I stayed until you got here.”

  “What happened?” Sarah asked, her hand already turning the handle of the door.

  Linda just shook her head, eyes wide with terror, and ran out the door of the loft.

  “Orson?” Sarah whispered, entering the darkened room.

  He had pulled himself up to standing in his crib. So he wasn’t hurt.

  But something in her head told her that wasn’t right. Pulling to standing was a milestone for much older babies, wasn’t it? Orson wasn’t quite four months old.

  But she could see him there, the small glow from underneath the light-blocking curtain on the window behind him threw his tiny form into silhouette.

  Orson cried out hoarsely.

  He must have been so frightened if Linda had run away from him. His nanny was like a second mother to him.

  “It’s okay, my love,” Sarah crooned. “Mama’s here.”

  Some part of her must have known before she wrapped her hands around him and lifted him out, because when she felt the glossy fur under her fingertips she didn’t even hesitate, just brought him close, snuggled him in.

  He made a contented sound and she felt that little snout rooting at her silk blouse.