“Let’s see what Kenneth comes up with first. Let me make you dinner,” he said.
“So we’re eating beer and coffee? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just saying, you don’t have the most well stocked refrigerator. Actually I think I finished off your coffee this morning.”
“Okay, okay, so I’m going to pick up some Italian from the restaurant around the corner. Feel free to stock up the refrigerator with anything that you want. You could even try to teach me how to cook.”
“A skill I’m sadly lacking. I can defrost like a champ, though.”
After a hearty meal of fettucine alfredo, the two of them relaxed on Jax’s couch, digesting.
Maybe, Jax thought, maybe if I open up to her, she’ll feel comfortable enough to open up to me. This was partly his fault, he thought; he’d given her plenty of reasons not to trust him.
“My father’s probably dying of emphysema,” Jax said. “And I won’t be going to his funeral.”
“Oh?” Bobbi looked shocked. “A werewolf with emphysema?”
“My father went into an incredibly destructive downward spiral after my mother died. She died when I was eight, giving birth to my younger brother. He’s the one that I want to earn all this money for; he’s in medical school.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“It’s a bloody miracle that he turned out to be such a good kid. My father blamed him for her death and was absolutely brutal to him, until I turned 18, moved out, and took him with me. Nobody in my pack raised a paw to help us; we left the pack and moved north to a new town. And frankly, because of my bad temper, I blew it with the new pack I joined, and lost my job, which is why I’ve chosen to work freelance and be on my own. I never thought I could open up to another person.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing his hand, but she didn’t say anything else.
“You should meet my brother someday.”
“He sounds wonderful.”
“And your brothers?” he pushed on. “Are they going to run me through the wringer when I meet them?”
She went tense. He felt it. She was still sitting next to him, but she’d suddenly pulled away from him. It was like they were standing on different sides of the Grand Canyon.
After a long, long pause, she said “I don’t know. I’m still not at the point where I can talk about my family.” Her voice had grown distant, her expression far away. She was looking at the wall, but seeing something else.
“Okay. I get it.” But he didn’t.
Anger and grief suddenly filled him, and a raging frustration that he couldn’t express. He wanted to be with her. Wanted her to truly be part of him…but she was pushing him away. Building up a big, hard wall between them, and he had no idea how to break it down.
Suddenly he felt like he couldn’t breathe, and he knew that if he didn’t get out of the apartment he’d explode.
“I need to go for a run,” he said abruptly, leaping to his feet.
“Now?” she asked, startled. It was eleven o’clock at night.
Without answering, he turned and rushed from the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter Sixteen
“There’s no nice way to say this, but you look like crap,” Pixie observed. “I’d drink like ten more cups of coffee if I were you.” They were at a coffee shop in the lobby of Bobbi’s hotel, which she still hadn’t officially checked out of.
Bobbi grimaced, rubbing at her face, downed the rest of her coffee in one gulp, and poured herself another. Her unbrushed hair was a rat’s nest. Her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep.
Jax had been out until 4 a.m. She’d fallen asleep curled up on the couch, waiting for him. When she came in, he’d been a mess. Leaves in his hair, swollen lip, black eye. He’d gone for a run in the woods, and gotten in a fight, it was clear.
After he came in the house, he’d ripped off his clothes by the door, shifted into wolf form, and stalked into his bedroom without a word. She imagined he’d lie there for the night in wolf form, and be mostly healed by morning. Shifters healed much faster in their animal form.
It was all because she’d blurted out that she had five older brothers the very first time she’d met him – and it made no sense that she’d slipped up like that. She’d never, ever talked about her brothers to anyone. There was something about Jax, though, that had immediately disconcerted her. She spoke without thinking when she was around him.
And more than that, she realized, she instinctively wanted to share with him, wanted to open up to him. It was an instinct that she was fighting with every last bit of her strength, but the instinct was so strong that it burst through when she least expected it.
And now for some reason he was honing in on her brothers…why? Was it possible that he’d found out the truth? She didn’t think so – she prayed he hadn’t.
She had to fulfill her mission, her promise to herself. Her obligation to Marcus.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said to Pixie.
“What happened with Jax?” Pixie asked when they were outside the lobby.
“We’re fighting,” she admitted. “It’s…kind of my fault. He wants me to talk about my past, and I can’t. He started telling me about his past, I refused to answer anything about mine…”
“Oh, screw that,” Pixie snorted. “None of his damn beeswax. Dump him and move on to the next one. Oh, I forgot to tell you, I’m doing it with a shifter!” she added. “A jackal. Oh my God. Huge where it counts. And hot! Let me tell you-“
“Don’t!” Bobbie pleaded. “I’m sleep and sex deprived. Too much. Just be careful, Pixie, jackals are among the least trustworthy of shifters.”
Pixie flashed an evil grin. “I don’t need him to be trustworthy. I just need him to service me.”
“Watch your back, though.”
“Always.” Pixie glanced in the mirrored reflection of a store window.
“Speaking of watching your back…” Pixie said.
“Jeez. I smell lion shifter and yes, that is Dominick lurking behind us. Come on, this should be fun.”
She and Pixie casually strolled around the corner, and then made a series of quick dashes and dodges until they had doubled back and came up on the same block as Dominick.
“Hey! Leo the Lion! You’re busted!” Pixie yelled.
Dominick swung to face them, his face angry.
Pixie and Bobbi trotted up to him.
“Seriously? Jax told you to follow me?” Bobbi demanded indignantly.
“No, he did not. When he finds out, he’s going to kill me.” Dominick looked very unhappy.
“So this is Kenneth’s idea?”
“No. He’ll fire me.”
“What is that annoying beeping noise?”
“My ankle bracelet. I just stepped out of my confinement zone and violated my probation.”
Dominick’s cell phone started vibrating in his pocket. Wincing, he pulled it out.
Before he could stop her, Bobbi snatched the phone. “Hello, this is Enforcer Roberta Jo Simpson, license number EN7234. Dominick is accompanying me on an investigation of high importance. We were pursuing a suspect, so we were forced to leave his area, but he will be returning immediately. You can call headquarters to verify.”
She rattled off the number to her contact at the Enforcer headquarters, listened to the probation officer on the other end, and handed Dominick’s phone back.
He spoke to his officer and then hung up.
“Why did you do that?” he asked her, surprised.
“You may not have noticed, but the human world isn’t always that kind to shifters.” She glanced at Pixie. “Or drifters. We’re better off when we stick together.”
“Why are you following us?” Pixie demanded. “Are you following her, or me?”
Dominick was sullenly silent.
“You knew where to find me. I used my debit card to buy breakfast for Pixie and myself. So Tyler must have tracked me here with his computer hacking ninj
a skills. Why are you two checking up on me?” Bobbi folded her arms and glowered at him.
“We’re just concerned about Jax. He’s a good guy. I’ve never seen him like this about a woman before,” Dominick said reluctantly.
Bobbi sighed.
How could this end well? It couldn’t.
“I am not cheating on him.I can’t discuss anything further than that. And you’d better get back to your zone.”
She and Pixie walked off.
“I’m going down to the police station to see if they got anything useful from Athena. Remember what I said. Do not investigate anything else on this case. We talked about you looking for a waitressing job, right?” Bobbi shot Pixie a severe look.
Pixie gave her a mock salute and sauntered off, no doubt to track down her new jackal shifter boyfriend.
* * *
At police headquarters, Captain Thorne met up with Bobbi in the conference room.
“You look like hell,” he observed as she sat down at the table across from him.
“Why does everyone feel so comfortable telling me that this morning?”
“Because you have that air about you that makes people feel at ease with expressing their innermost thoughts?”
Bobbi shook her head. “Nope. That can’t be it.”
Captain Thorne had poured himself a mug of coffee when she came in the room. He pushed it towards her across the table. “Here. Looks like you need it,” he said.
“I’ve already had four cups,” Bobbi said.
“Have a fifth. Trust me.”
She grabbed creamers and sugars from a small dish, and began stirring it up. As she quickly down the cup, Thorne briefed her on the results of the interview with Aurora.
“She started dating Tony a couple of months ago. She knew he was a drug dealer. He used her for her connections to wealthy clientele at the club, had her pushing this drug he calls Pure Pleasure, and everything went really well at first. They were making a fortune. She started going to private parties, selling them there, working as an escort and selling dozens of the pills to her clients. Then suddenly, over the past few weeks, these rabies-like events started happening. Because of the cover-ups, it took a little while for Aurora and Tony to figure out that she was the common connection, but when it happened Tony panicked. He told Aurora he must have cooked up a bad batch.”
“Does she have any idea where he might be?”
“Unfortunately, no. He took off and left her holding the bag. Over the past few days, she suddenly started seeing people following her, and she got spooked. When the people broke into her apartment, she grabbed her room-mate’s purse and climbed out a window.”
“She knew she was leaving her room-mate behind to die? Did she even call the police?”
“Nope. She was holed up in that hotel room with a hundred thousand dollars cash that she’d made from selling those drugs, trying to figure out her next move.”
“Wow. What an ice hearted bitch.”
“True dat. She’s facing multiple murder charges now because of the clients who died, but she’ll probably never be held accountable for her room-mate’s death.” Isaac sighed heavily, then spoke to her, his voice low even though they were alone in the room. “The people who started following Aurora…that started as soon as the police learned about her possible involvement in this case.”
Vaughn. Vaughn had caused this, Bobbi was sure of it. Bobbi yearned to tell Captain Thorne, but couldn’t. Isaac seemed like a human who genuinely cared about shifters, who could see that they were as human as he was, and it was incredibly frustrating to watch him fumble in the dark when she could give him all the answers that she needed.
Unless he was on Vaughn’s payroll, and was gauging her for a reaction…but she didn’t think so. She was a good read of people, and she felt that he was genuinely angry and frustrated by what had happened.
“Watch your back,” was all she said.
He stared at her, as if wanting to ask more. She looked away.
“Have you found out anything more on your end?” he asked.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
“Unfortunately, no. Tony’s going to be a lot harder to find than Aurora. He’s a seasoned criminal, an ex- felon, a drug dealer who likely has connections all over the country, maybe the world.” She stood up, her conscience jabbing at her angrily with little pitchforks.
“I’ll keep you posted,” she said. He nodded, watching her thoughtfully.
I hate this, she thought, as she walked out. Lying to good people, covering up for the scum of the earth…it felt as if it would never end. As she left the station, her phone buzzed with a text message from Jax. “Sorry about last night. I’m out right now, be home afternoon or early evening,” the message said.
With nothing else to do, she headed back to her hotel room and napped for a few hours. Then she woke up, took a shower, and took a call from Heath.
“I’m fine,” He reassured her, but he sounded tired. Prison was getting to him. Her stomach squeezed tight the way it always did when she talked to him these days.
“I’m making progress for our mutual friend. Everyone still treating you okay?”
“Like a king. Better than I deserve. Thanks for the book, by the way.”
“I’ll go mail you another one right now.”
“You’re the best. I’m sorry I screwed up so badly. I’m sorry this is all on you.”
“I screwed up plenty in my time, I just was lucky enough never to get caught. And if our positions were reversed, you’d do the same for me.” She paused, then blurted out “Heath, have you met your fated mate yet?”
There was an astonished moment of silence.
“You mean here? In prison? Ahhh…Bobbi, you know me well enough to know that I don’t swing that way. And prisons are still unisex, much to my sorrow.”
“Never mind.” She was mortified. What had she been thinking?
“Why do you ask?”
“Oh, just curious. About fated mates. You know, since I missed out on growing up in a pack and really never learned a lot of basic shifter knowledge that would have been passed down…nothing. Never mind.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s the problem with modern society. A lot of shifters drift away from their packs and prides, miss out on the old lore. From what I remember my parents telling me, the experience is different for different shifters, but basically, from the moment you meet your fated mate, you feel an instant attraction like nothing you’ve felt before, and you never want to be with anybody else. Even if you try to fight it at first, it grows on you, to the point where it’s painful until you finally give in and accept it.” He paused. “Hey, wait a minute. Did you meet your fated mate? Is that why you’re asking?”
“Me? Don’t be silly. I’m going to go mail you the book right now. Stay safe.”
She hung up quickly before he could ask any more questions. For the first time ever, she was glad he was in prison – because he couldn’t call her back and harangue her for answers that she didn’t have.
After she’d bought and mailed him the book, she was struck by an idea. There wasn’t anything else she could do to investigate the case at the moment; they were all stuck in wait-and-see mode…but she had an idea of how to pass the time, and maybe distract Jax from questioning her about her past.
She headed over to Liquid.
After browsing through the racks, she settled on a minidress that unzipped in about 20 different places, and a g-string that untied on the sides. She’d bought her trench coat with her; she changed into her new outfit in the dressing room, put her trench coat on, and sent Jax a text. “Meet me at your place. Now.”
He didn’t reply, so she headed over to his apartment.
Maybe she could take his mind off the whole issue with her brothers. She’d sure as hell give it the old college try, anyway.
When she got to his apartment she climbed his stairs quickly, hurried down the hallway – and froze on the spot.
The door to his apartment
was unlocked. She pushed it, and it swung open.
The smell rolled towards her as she stood there in the doorway, assaulting her nostrils.
It was the scent of cinnamon, mingled with skank. Caress.
Was Jax in there now? She was in human form, so her senses, while better than human, couldn’t quite discern whether she was smelling him because he lived there and his scent permeated the apartment, or because he was in there with Caress.
Either way it didn’t matter. He’d let Caress come over, and she could smell Caress’s arousal reeking through the air, taunting her. Caress and her mate. Her fated mate.
She was so angry that for a minute she literally couldn’t see. Her vision swam red and she thought she’d choke. Her bones rippled and her face lengthened, and a snarl rolled up from her chest and her clenched fists became paws.
There was only one thing that she could do. Run. Otherwise she’d tear into the apartment and kill them both, she knew it.
Jax had told her that when he was boiling over with rage and frustration, he’d head to the warehouse district and hurl himself into a fight with whatever lowlife was stupid enough to challenge him.
Sounded good to her.
She threw herself into the car and jammed her foot on the accelerator, heading downtown in a scream of tires and a cloud of smoke.
* * *
“Where the hell is she going?” Jax asked Dominick, astonished.
“I don’t know, but she’s sure in a hurry.”
They’d pulled up in front of Jax’s apartment building in Jax’s car, only to watch Bobbi take off as if all the hounds of hell were chasing her.
Quickly, Jax and Dominick jumped back in Dominick’s car and raced downtown.
They barely managed to stay on her tail, and lost her once she got to the warehouse district. Jax pulled over, climbed out of his car, and listened.
He could hear howls and snarls a couple of blocks ahead and to the left.
Without a word, he and Dominick shifted so fast they didn’t even take the time to shed their clothes, and raced around the corner to see Bobbi, dressed as if she were about to head straight for Caged Heat in a tight little black dress and heels, surrounded by a dozen jackals to the left, and a dozen hyenas to the right.
The Alpha Meets His Match Page 17
