“But I—”
“End of discussion.” Liam was already heading to the door of the restaurant, the only one on pack territory.
Chase snarled loudly, sliding the brochure closer to him.
“And Chase,” Liam said, hand on the door. “No fucking her until I have my information.”
Great, Chase thought. Can this assignment get any worse?
* * * *
“Hello. Thanks for calling White Oak Run.”
Avery Montgomery’s voice came through low and sultry, surprising him. Chase hadn’t expected her to answer the phone. According to Liam, she had some guy handle the rentals, but he recognized her voice from the author interviews he’d been forced to watch.
“Hello.” Chase still couldn’t believe Liam was making him do this. “I need to make a reservation.” Need, not want.
“Okay, hold on just a sec.”
His keen ears picked up the sound of rustling papers and then maybe the opening of a laptop. Yeah, that was it. She was typing something.
“Okay, Mr….”
“Randall. Chase Randall.”
“Mr. Randall.” More typing. Slow typing. Was she a hunt-and-pecker? “Okay, Mr. Randall. Tent site or cabin, and when are you looking for?”
“A cabin.” He was an outdoorsy kind of guy, except when it came to sleeping on the ground. He’d pass on that. Hard pass. “And as soon as possible.” As in today, in the next hour or so. The sooner he could get started on his annoying mission, the sooner he could get back to his life.
“Alrighty, and for how long?”
Chase bit back a sigh. “Two weeks.” Though Liam thought it might take a while to get the information they needed, Chase had no intention of playing stalker for that long. He’d get what Liam needed and be back in Deep Valley territory in half that, even if it killed him.
“All right, so I have a couple of vacancies right now. One is right on the lake. The other one is deeper in the woods but closer to our parking area and our tent sites. Both have modern plumbing, electricity, cook stove and a fridge, so you can enjoy the outdoors and the basic luxuries.”
“I’ll take the one on the lake.” He liked being near water, so that was a no-brainer.
“Would you like to hear our rental prices or the number of bedrooms first?”
Not really, but okay. He should probably play along. “Sure. Give ‘em to me.”
“The lake cabin is more in-demand, so that goes for five hundred dollars a week during peak season, which is right now. That one has two bedrooms and a loft that can be used as an additional bedroom. The other vacancy has one bedroom and rents for two hundred dollars a week. Both have a single bathroom. Neither has a bath, but the shower gets plenty hot.”
“Sounds great. The lake cabin it is.” He rolled his eyes, listening to her rattle off a ton of rental policies as well as amenities in the area, which didn’t sound like a whole heck of a lot. Why did humans insist on making everything more complicated than it had to be? “Yeah, yeah. All that sounds fine.”
She paused in her long-winded speech. “Are you in a hurry, Mr. Randall?”
Oh, so she’d picked up on that. “It’s Chase, and I am sort of in a hurry. I have a meeting in ten minutes.” Hopefully, he could get this over with faster if she thought he had little time to waste.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t usually handle the reservations, so I don’t want to overlook anything. I’ll try to hurry it along. Normally, you could come to the office or mail in your reservation request, but since you want this ASAP, I’ll need to take all of your information now as well as a card for payment in full. There’s a one-hundred-dollar cleaning deposit that you get back after checkout as long as you leave the place the way you found it. That work for you?”
“It works.”
“Then all I need is your contact information, including your billing address, and the full names of the other adult guests. For kids, I just need first names and ages.”
“It’s just me,” he said before rattling off his home address. Silence. He looked at the phone. Had it disconnected? No, he could hear her soft breathing. “Hey, did I lose you?”
“Nope. Still here. Forgive me for asking, Chase, but are you sure you want such a large cabin if you’re coming out here alone?”
Really? Just give me the damned reservation already. “I want to be near the lake. The size of the cabin doesn’t matter so much to me. Unless you have some other cabin by the lake, I don’t really have the choice of a smaller one.” He hoped he was keeping his annoyance at her nosiness out of his tone.
“We don’t often get men out here by themselves. Families, fishing groups, couples, yes. Single men, no. You might prefer River’s Run. It’s about forty-five miles north of us and closer to the city as well as, you know, restaurants, bars, and such.”
He could practically hear her shrugging him off. “So you don’t want to rent to me because I’m a man? Isn’t that discrimination?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
But he could hear it in her voice. That was exactly what she meant.
She sighed into the phone. “But why pick a family type of place just for you? We don’t have much in the way of entertainment out here.”
“Come on.” He had better things to do with his time. Damn Liam. “Do you always give your guests the ‘twenty questions’ routine?
“Now you’ve made me curious.”
“How so?”
“By making a fuss about me asking a simple question and offering a friendly recommendation.”
She didn’t sound so friendly anymore. Chase casted about for a plausible excuse, which he shouldn’t need, for why he wanted to rent one of her stupid cabins.
“I’m burnt out at work, and I have some vacation time. I want a place where I can enjoy a little peace and quiet, do a little fishing and hiking, and recharge my batteries. I’m not interested in being near the city. In fact, I need to get away from all that. I’m quiet, housebroken, and not interested in causing any trouble. If you like, I can provide references or get my mommy to tell you I’m a good boy.”
Her silence told him she was thinking of taking him up on that. Shit.
“No.” She sighed. “That won’t be necessary. What I do need is your driver’s license number and a major credit card.”
He gave both over, the whole time thinking she was going to suddenly decide they had no vacancies. When she finally gave him the address to the office to pick up the keys and rental agreement, he breathed a sigh of relief. He had zero interest in sleeping out in the woods simply because she didn’t want to rent to an unaccompanied man.
“Gus Thompson will show you to your cabin after he makes a copy of your driver’s license, so please be sure to bring it. Enjoy your stay at White Oak Run, Mr. Randall.”
* * * *
“Kinda blew that, Roscoe.” Avery gave her three-year-old German Shepherd a few quick pats when he came over to nose at her arm. Then she got up to grab a jolt of caffeine from the fridge. It was swill, really, in the form of high-caffeine, high-sugar soda, but she typically guzzled a bottle to get going in the mornings. It was her substitute for coffee, which she couldn’t stomach.
Taking her soda, she plopped down on the old couch they kept in the office, hoping Gus wouldn’t be too long at the dentist. Lila was out with some sort of stomach bug, and Gus was getting a cavity filled, leaving her to deal with phone calls and guests, something she tried hard to avoid. In fact, she’d hired the two of them so she would never have to, but “never” wasn’t reality sometimes.
Avery had first visited White Oak Run Campground at twenty-four years old and pounded out her second bestseller during her stay. The campground only had a total of seven cabins, which were so spread-out you could go for days without seeing another guest if you wanted to. Its general store had been on the honor system. You wanted a candy bar, you put your money in a jar and walked off with it.
The lake, the trails, the sound of the cricke
ts at night and the chirp of the birds in the morning were unfettered by things like car horns and frustrated people. She’d fallen in love with its beauty and the peace it gave her. So when she’d learned the owners were selling, right after her third novel hit bestseller status, she’d gone ahead and bought it. She’d added the tent sites later.
One of her friends had tried to talk her out of buying the site, but she’d already made up her mind at that point. Far from wealthy, Avery did have to take out a mortgage, but with the income from her books and the insurance money from her parents, she was comfortable enough to swing it. Then she’d really given her friends something to talk about when she gave up her apartment to live at White Oak Run for all but the winter months. During the winter, she headed to a short-term rental in the city.
For the most part, her friends thought the move was crazy. Why give up the accessibility and excitement of the city to live three hours away in the woods? But it suited her, and she was used to people thinking she was crazy, anyway. After her parents died, she couldn’t stop telling everyone about the werewolves she’d lived with. And much to her aunt and uncle’s dismay, she told everyone who would listen that a werewolf had killed her parents. Of course no one believed her. They even denied that she’d ever had a little brother.
Her aunt took her to a psychiatrist who decided she was making up stories to deal with the pain of her loss, living in a fantasy because reality was too depressing. They’d tried therapy, and eventually, medication. Nothing worked, so the people around her adjusted. The neighborhood kids stopped playing with her, and her teachers learned not to call on her too often. She learned, too. She learned how to keep her mouth shut about it, especially when her uncle threatened to send her away to get what he called real help if she didn’t quit making up stories.
So she’d stopped, ignoring her memories, trying to forget the dreams until after college when she decided to use her warped brain for something good and wrote her first paranormal romance. She’d lucked out and gotten it published, and the next thing she knew she was a bestseller and getting all kinds of attention because of it. Her publisher had pushed for book two and then book three. That’s when it happened. Someone from her past spread the word that author Avery Montgomery really believed her own stories.
Avery managed to play that off, and most people seemed to think it had all been a publicity stunt her publisher had dreamed up. A few thought she really was a nutcase, but there were those who wrote to her that they believed as she did, that they’d seem similar things. Some even claimed to be vampires or asked for help hooking up with a hot alpha.
It was those messages, often mad ravings, that actually made her question her own sanity. Then there were the persistent types who tracked her down to question her about her paranormal knowledge. It didn’t happen too often, but when she’d heard the man’s last name and then he’d claimed to want that large cabin just for himself, she’d wondered. Chase Randall. Randall was a common enough last name, but it meant shield wolf. Naturally, she’d wondered if he was yanking her chain. Or a crazy. Maybe even both. She’d meant what she said. They didn’t get a whole lot of lone men at White Oak Run. Still, she shouldn’t have questioned a potential guest like that.
* * * *
Chase packed light as his way of influencing the future. If he didn’t take too much with him, he wouldn’t end up staying that long, right? That’s what he hoped, anyway.
He slung an overstuffed backpack and a beat-up leather suitcase in his pickup and hit the road. From start to finish, including one stop to gas up and another because he was hungry and had to grab a burger, he made it to White Oak Run in just under five hours. The highway exit led to a little town that looked like the epitome of Nowheresville, which didn’t surprise him, since he and Liam had researched the area online.
In fact, all it did was reinforce his conviction that this woman, this nosy Avery Montgomery, couldn’t know anything about anything. If she knew something, she wouldn’t live in a place so remote. She’d want to be right in the thick of things, where she could share her insights with humans in a position to do something about them. Scientists, cops, and government officials who could team up and attempt—and yes, he did mean attempt—to take a shifter pack down and experiment on them or use them as weapons, or something. Chase wasn’t the paranoid type, so he wasn’t real worried, but he guessed Liam was right. They couldn’t be too careful.
It had happened from time to time. A wolf revealed himself to a human, and that human told others that wolf shifters really did exist. Usually, that sort of sharing ended badly for the big mouth human. The other humans lacked imagination and turned on the whistle blower, calling him or her crazy. Unfortunately, though, there had been the times when the human government had listened and gotten involved. It hadn’t involved Chase’s pack, but each of those events left even the unscathed packs nervous.
The last incident had turned into a blood bath, with humans in the know killed and evidence destroyed, but Liam believed it was only a matter of time before it was the wolves suffering the losses. Chase didn’t disagree that humans were best left in the dark, but the idea that an author of paranormal smut could bring the Midnight Pack down was nothing short of laughable to him.
The little town of Emory had come and gone before he really even got a glimpse of it, and still he drove on, the road becoming narrower and rockier by the minute. There were woods and untamed fields as far as the eye could see on either side of the road, with the occasional farm house here and there. As far as other vehicles were concerned, he didn’t see many, and the lack of typical annoyances like stop signs and traffic lights pleased him.
When his GPS finally perked up again, he glanced at her. She had a sweet, come-hither voice, and he’d named her Debbie. Debbie announced that he was less than a mile from his destination, so he pushed the gas a little harder. The sooner he got there, the sooner he could leave.
Debbie had been pretty reliable up until that point. She usually was, but when he turned onto an even narrower road, this one dirt and gravel, he had to wonder if she was leading him astray. Somehow, it just didn’t seem the type of road to send paying guests down. It was a bumpy trip, for one thing, and he thought it would be hell to travel in bad weather.
Eventually, Chase saw signs. Signs that said Private Entrance. Signs that said No Guest Parking ahead. He pulled his pickup to a halt. It would take some serious work to turn around, and he’d bet the road he was on led to Avery Montgomery’s place, which meant Debbie might actually be on to something. He could go find the office and take care of his paperwork as expected, or he could drive right up, knock on her door and introduce himself. Decision made, Chase stepped on the gas. If he had to stalk her every move, he might as well get cozy from the get-go.
It only took a few minutes to make it down the road to a curved driveway. The log cabin ahead was dwarfed by trees in every direction, except the one he’d come from. He pulled up next to a not-so-new Jeep, red with a dream catcher hanging from the window, cut the engine, and looked around. It reminded him a lot of where he’d grown up, wild, untamed and untouched. She hadn’t decided to chop down trees to build her dream home or put in a pool. Chase approved. While he didn’t have anything against developing the land, he much preferred when it was allowed to thrive.
Stepping out onto the gravel driveway, he shut his door and walked around the side of the cabin to find her front door. He’d knock, she’d answer, and he’d make up what to say as he went along. Chase was confident it would all go fine. He’d be his usual smooth self and the words would just come. He wasn’t worried at all until she opened her front door and changed everything in all of a split second.
Chase never got the chance to knock and turn on the charm. He never got to guide the conversation in the right direction to minimize the time he had to spend there. Avery Montgomery didn’t just change the plan. She changed his whole life.
He’d seen her before. He’d seen the woman who stepped outs
ide in photographs, on the inside of a book jacket, and even on a recorded television interview. She was every bit as attractive as he’d expected, with long, dark hair that flowed past her shoulders, warm brown eyes, and a mouth made for kissing. She was curvy and shorter than he’d thought she’d be, and she wore a not-so-friendly look. None of that surprised him, nor did the dog that barked and yipped in circles around him, sniffing him as if a long-lost friend had come to play. What surprised him was something he hadn’t envisioned and couldn’t quite grasp at first.
It was her scent, a smell so heady it blocked everything else out. All sights and sounds faded into the background. It was a scent so personal, so compelling that his wolf threatened to break free right there in front of her, before he’d ever spoken a word. He couldn’t ignore it, and he didn’t want to try. This author, this woman Liam wanted him to spy on, was his mate.
* * * *
Avery didn’t get many visitors to her cabin. When friends came by, they called first. No one wanted to risk trekking all the way out to her place only to discover that she wasn’t even home. Gus or Lila came by from time to time, but when she looked outside, she didn’t recognize the dark-blue pickup parked next to her Jeep. Probably someone lost, she thought, heading out to meet him. Of course, Roscoe rushed out, too, and then took to barking and sniffing the man, tail wagging furiously in excitement.
Closing the door behind her, Avery looked up into the sun. Okay, not really, but the trespasser was so handsome she forgot to breathe. Her belly flip-flopped as she looked him over. Well over six feet tall, he had dark, penetrating eyes that didn’t just stare her down. They devoured her. Usually, Avery preferred a clean shave, but on him that would have been all wrong. His five o’clock shadow worked perfectly with his darkly sexy vibe. It was just the right amount of facial hair to tickle when he buried his face in her breasts. Shit. Where had that come from?
“Can…Can…” Her voice cracked when she tried to speak, mostly because she was having trouble looking him in the eye again. She’d gotten stuck on staring at his biceps and pecs. The black T-shirt he wore did nothing to hide the body he must have worked out every day since birth to build.
Avery and Her Wolf [Shifters Revealed 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 2
