“Tonight, I do.” He grabbed me by the arm and marched me to his bike. I knew this dance. I let him hustle me onto the motorcycle and drive me home.
This time, instead of just helping me off the bike and then leaving, Gabe parked his Harley by the curb and turned off the motor. He herded me inside, guided me to my bed, and pulled the covers up over me. “Sleep, Chloe. In the morning, we need to talk.”
Chapter Ten
I woke up the next morning, my head pounding from the mother of all hang overs. I got up and stumbled into the shower. After a week of drinking heavily every night, I felt like I’d been run over by a Mack truck. The warm spray of the water felt good, and I stayed underneath it until it began to run cold. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a tank and shuffled to the kitchen for a soda. No coffee for me. I got my caffeine from the carbonated heaven of a Pepsi.
“Mother of god, why don’t you warn a girl?” I shrieked when I rounded the corner in to the kitchen only to find Gabe sitting at my table.
“I told you last night that we needed to talk this morning.” Upon seeing the puzzled look on my face, he continued, “and you were so drunk you don’t remember.”
“Not a thing. I don’t even remember you bringing me home.” I grabbed a Pepsi out of the fridge and joined him at the table. “You did bring me home, didn’t you?”
“Haven’t I every night?” He got up and rummaged through the fridge. “Lord knows you need someone to keep an eye on you.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m fixing breakfast for you.”
I expected my stomach to revolt at the mere mention of food, but instead, it growled loudly. I wasn’t sure what the deal was, but I’d been hungry a lot lately. “You cook?” I laced my voice with as much disbelief as I could manage.
“I make a mean omelette, which is a good thing considering you don’t have much else in here to eat. Where are your pans?”
I pointed to the cabinet beside the stove and cringed at the noise of banging pots and pans as he searched for a skillet. “Don’t you have a job to get to, or other cases you need to investigate?” Having a guy in my house when I woke up was bad enough, but he was fixing me breakfast. This was unchartered territory that I frankly didn’t want to get anywhere near.
“They can manage without me for a while.” Gabe moved about my small kitchen whisking eggs and chopping up the ingredients for the omelettes.
“Is being a PI your only job?”
“No. I’m actually a specialized PI. I only work on cases when the need arises. Most of the time, I’m a mechanic.”
“Well, that fits.”
He turned away from the counter and fixed me with a hard stare. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Well, I just meant that it suits you.” As usual, my sarcastic nature had gotten me into trouble. Just because he rode a Harley and I’d never seen him in anything but tight jeans and t-shirts didn’t mean he had to be a mechanic.
He grabbed the mixing bowl and dumped the contents into the sizzling skillet on the stove. “Just how does it suit me?”
I huffed and shook my head. I really needed an edit button between my brain and my mouth. “Can we just forget I said that?”
Once again, he turned and glared at me, and I thought for sure he was going to insist I answer him. Instead, he sighed and returned to cooking. “You get a free pass. Once. And only because you’ve had a rough couple of weeks.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled. While he flipped the first omelette, I got up and went to the cabinet to dig up some pain reliever. I poured three into the palm of my hand and grabbed my Pepsi from the table.
“That isn’t going to help,” Gabe said before I could pop the pills into my mouth.
“Well I know they won’t get rid of the headache entirely, but it should at least mute it to a dull ache.”
“I mean…never mind.”
I made a face at his back and took the medicine, washing it down with my drink. I sat back down and watched him cook. Only a dead person wouldn’t notice how his jeans accentuated the nice curves of his ass and the way his muscles flexed as he labored over the stove…and even though I was hung over, I was very much alive. I stood by the assessment I had made when I first laid eyes on him. He oozed sex from every pore.
“Plates?” I pointed at the cabinet by the sink. “So what’s the deal with you and Detective Andrews?” he asked as he slid a steaming omelette onto a plate and placed it in front of me.
“There is no deal.”
“Really? Cause you two looked kind of chummy, and I saw how he looked at you at the restaurant that night.” His voice had gone all low and growly like Max had no right to do such a thing.
“In case you didn’t notice, he completely ignored me the night…” my throat suddenly closed up, and I felt the tears build up in my eyes. I bit my lip, determined to keep them from falling. “You know which night I’m talking about.”
“Yes, I did notice that, and I found it very odd that he didn’t even question you. He should have asked you about her movements that night. Instead, he acted like he had forgotten you even existed.”
“And that’s exactly how I like it. No strings. No mess. No fuss.” Take a note of that, big guy. Relationships aren’t my thing.
“Uh-huh.” Gabe cocked an eyebrow and threw me a speculative look. “It’s still weird if you ask me.”
“Well no one asked you!” Okay, so I was getting testy, but what business was it of his anyway?
He sat down across from me with his plate, and we ate in silence. After we finished, I cleared off the table, and stacked the dishes in the sink to give myself something to do.
“Didn’t you say you had something to talk to me about?” Truth be told, I wasn’t used to being around men and actually having a real conversation. Again, unchartered territory I wanted no part of. He looked way too comfortable at my table, so I needed to move things along.
“I need to know who you talked to last night.”
I crossed my arms and glared at him. “What business is it of yours?”
Gabe slammed his hands down on the table, and I jumped in shock as his unexpected response. “Damnit, Chloe, stop being so argumentative! Everything is a struggle with you!”
“Well, sorry, I didn’t realize you had appointed yourself as my babysitter! I don’t need one, thank you very much!”
Gabe stared at me, his ice blue eyes blazing. He opened his mouth, then closed it and took a deep breath. He ran his fingers through his thick, ebony waves. “It’s related to your attack and Susie’s death.”
I opened my mouth to ask how an animal attacking me could possibly have any relation whatsoever to who I talked to at the bar, but I thought better of it. Gabe looked a little scary when he got irritated. Okay, make that a lot scary. I pulled my chair back out from the table and slid into it. “I didn’t talk to anyone.”
“Come on, Chloe, think. You talked to someone.”
“How do you know that?”
“I…just do.”
I scowled at him and cast my mind back to the night before. The memories were fuzzy and out of focus, which wasn’t surprising considering how much beer I’d had to drink. A memory tugged at the edge of my thoughts though, if I could just figure out what my brain was trying to tell me. Something did happen at the bar. What was it? I closed my eyes and thought about the Royal Lush, about the noises and the smells, about what I saw. I remembered sitting there hunched over my beer and feeling annoyed. The nerve of… “Mitch!”
Gabe leaned forward, his eyes, laser sharp and focused right on me. I squirmed in my seat beneath that gaze. I couldn’t help it. “Who’s Mitch?”
“He’s just some guy. I think I slept with him one time.”
“You think?”
The look on his face made me squirm even more. For some reason, I suddenly didn’t want Gabe to know just how many guys I’d forgotten about. “Well, he wasn’t very memorable,” I squeaked.
A sudden flare o
f desire sparked in his eyes. “I can promise you would not forget sleeping with me,” he growled.
I felt a throb between my legs in response. His voice held the promise of every wicked thing I could think of and then some. Warning bells blared in my head. I had a feeling Gabe wasn’t a one night stand kind of guy. Besides, didn’t he have a girlfriend? “Well, we aren’t talking about you.”
“You’re right, we aren’t…at least not yet.”
I gulped and tried to look away from the gaze he pinned me with. There was so much heat in the way he looked at me, I was surprised my clothes hadn’t melted off. It was the kind of look that said ‘you’re mine for the taking, you just don’t know it yet.’ I had a sudden urge to crawl across the table and climb into his lap. I grasped the edge of the table and shook my head to clear it. Those kinds of thoughts led to dangerous actions. Gabe was dangerous. I really needed to stay away from him. The problem was, deep down inside, I knew I really didn’t want to. I was in big trouble.
“What can you tell me about this Mitch?”
I brought my attention back to the conversation we were having before he’d run it off the rails with his loaded declaration. “Not much. Like I said, not very memorable. He has short, straight brown hair. His face is kind of plain with no mustache or beard. He’s thin but not in a skinny kind of way if you know what I mean.”
He shook his head. “Clear it up for me.”
I paused to think. “You know…not skin and bones. Skinny but you could tell he had muscles, just not the bulging kind.” I eyed Gabe’s arms. Now those were the bulging kind. I wiggled in my seat. Whoa, girl. Stop thinking like that!
“Does he have any scars?”
“Not that I noticed. He’s about three inches taller than me, so he would be just shy of six feet tall. And he smells like peppermint.” Where did that come from?
“Yeah, I know what he smells like.”
“What? How could you possibly know that? How did I even know that?”
Gabe frowned and then looked at me. I didn’t like that look. It was the confusing look that had a mixture of sadness, sympathy, and excitement all rolled into one. “Have you noticed anything different about yourself since the attack? Anything out of the ordinary?”
My immediate instinct was to say no, but I knew that wouldn’t have been the truth. “I’ve been hungry a lot more often than usual. I mean a ravenous kind of hungry.”
Gabe nodded like he knew. “What about your injuries from the attack? You returned to work awfully fast after it happened.”
“Well…” Did I really want to tell him this? I didn’t even tell Susie.
He must have sensed my reluctance because he reached across the table and covered my hand with his own. I felt a little spark, like static electricity, on contact with his skin, and I realized it wasn’t the first time I’d felt that little jolt. It had happened for the first time the night Susie died, and I’d felt it every time we had skin to skin contact since then. It was like we recognized each other. Whoa! Where did that thought come from? Part of me wanted to jerk my hand away from him, but the other part wanted the contact…even needed it. That part won, and my hand stayed underneath his.
“When I went to the doctor a couple of days after I got of the hospital to have the wounds cleaned and bandages changed, they were completely healed. The doctor couldn’t explain it. He said he’d never seen anything like it in all of his years of practice.”
Gabe squeezed my hand. “Chloe, I have something to tell you. It’s won’t be easy to hear, and it’s going to sound crazy, but I promise you, it’s the truth. I’ve waited as long as I dared to be sure before I told you, but we are getting close to running out of time, and I can’t wait any longer.”
I couldn’t imagine what he was going to say, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect what came out of his mouth.
“The creature that attacked you was a wolf, but it wasn’t just a normal oversized wolf.” He paused a moment and took a deep breath. “This never gets any easier,” he mumbled. “Chloe, it was a werewolf.”
I sat there with my mouth hanging open and stared at him. I’m sure I looked at him like he’d just suddenly sprouted two heads. “What the hell are you talking about? There’s no such thing as werewolves!”
“Yes, there is. I’m one, and now, so are you.”
I jumped out of my chair so fast, it fell over and clattered to the floor. I pointed my finger at the door. “Get out! You’re looney toons! Get out of my house!”
Gabe stood up, the look on his face saying he’d heard all of that before…and worse. “Okay, Chloe, but the full moon is coming soon. You won’t be able to fight the change. New cubs just can’t will it to happen or not happen. As we get closer to time, you’ll start feeling it more. The powers and changes that come with it come online slowly. In fact, most cubs don’t notice much difference until just before the full moon, and even then, it’s just a restlessness. Usually, they don’t feel or see much alternation in their normal life, except maybe experiencing more hunger, until after the first change. It’s interesting that you starting showing signs weeks ahead of time.”
I rolled my eyes and stomped over to the door and flung it open. “Get. Out. And take your crazy ideas with you.”
Gabe walked out the door but turned and made a parting shot. “The change is coming, Chloe, and you can’t stop it.”
I slammed the door. Just great. I’d finally met a guy who seemed to actually have a possibility of not being a monster, and it turned out he actually thought he was one!
Chapter Eleven
After a couple of days of moping around the house, I decided it was time to go back to work. One week of drowning my sorrows was enough. As much as it hurt, I had to keep going. No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn't just curl up and die. Susie wouldn't have wanted that. It just would have pissed her off.
I called in and talked to my boss, Mrs. Potts, and she told me to come in for my normal shift. As usual, someone had called in, and she was short a waitress. The restaurant just couldn't seem to find good help.
I'd been there for about an hour when my stomach growled loudly. I walked back toward the kitchen, and my mouth watered from all of the delicious aromas. How was it that I never noticed just how good this place smelled?
"Chloe, I just seated a couple in 2B," Becky, the hostess for the night, told me.
I looked over to see the couple and stopped short. It was Gabe and the leggy blonde. No way was I going to wait on that kook. Glancing around, I spotted Harmony approaching a couple of old ladies who were regulars and had just been seated in her section. I walked fast and caught up with her just before she got to the table. "Harmony, can you please do me a big favor?"
"What do ya need girl?" She flipped her brown curls and tapped her foot. Harmony never sat still. She always seemed to be moving in some way or another.
"Let me take this table and you take mine that just got seated. Please? You know Mrs. Owens and Mrs. Paul never tip worth a crap since they are on a limited income, so you won't be losing anything."
"Which table?"
"2B."
She glanced over and her face lit up. "Sure, I will take your table."
I knew Harmony was a sucker for a good looking guy. I wasn't about to burst her bubble and tell her this particular one was a freak who thought he sprouted an extra set of legs, fur, and fangs once every month on the full moon.
"Thanks." I couldn't figure out why he was here anyway, unless he was keeping tabs on me or something...like stalking me. I was pretty sure I had never seen Gabe here before the night he came shortly after my attack. He wasn't someone you'd likely forget.
My stomach grumbled again. It seemed like every time I turned around I was hungry. It didn't matter if I had only eaten an hour or two before. Honestly, I didn't see how my clothes weren't tight. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand and went to wait on the old ladies.
"Hello ladies, it's great to see you agai
n! Do you want your usual drinks tonight?"
Both of the ladies nodded. As I turned to walk away, Mrs. Owens spoke. "Dearie, can you ask the manager to turn the thermostat up? It's a bit chilly in here."
Chilly? I felt like I was roasting. It must have just been because they were elderly. I'd heard they had a harder time staying warm thanks to thinning blood or something.
I started over toward the drink station and overheard Harmony speaking to our boss. "I've had a few customers complaining of being cold."
"I'm actually a little cool myself," said Becky as she walked by to grab a stack of menus.
Where they serious? It was most definitely not cold in the restaurant.
Harmony came up beside me. "Are you okay, Chloe? You look a little flushed."
"I'm fine, thanks." I had to wonder if I was though. I felt like I hadn't eaten in a week, and sweat had stuck my uniform shirt to my back. Maybe I was coming down with something. I hadn't been real nice to my body over the past week or so.
I served the two ladies their drinks, and when I moved over into my section I saw Harmony at Gabe's table. I could have sworn they were staring at me. Which made no sense. Harmony was a flirt, but she never shared information about fellow employees to customers. I must be losing my mind.
I managed to make it through the night thanks to a large meal and a milkshake during my break. The food quieted my stomach, and I actually felt a little cooler after drinking the milkshake. I got a few stares from fellow employees though. They were used to seeing me eat maybe a cheeseburger on my break, not an entire entrée and an appetizer.
After Gabe and the blonde left, I felt a stab of relief. I honestly half expected to see Gabe's Harley waiting on me outside, but he wasn't there. I didn't need a ride anyway, not that I would have taken one with him. Susie's parents had given me her car. They didn't need it and said they'd feel much better if they knew I wasn't walking around town in the dark after what happened. I guess they wanted to ignore the fact that it hadn't kept Susie safe. Maybe that's why they wanted to get rid of it. A pain stabbed my heart every time I looked at it, but I had driven it tonight anyway. I didn't really want to be walking in the dark either.
Fated Mates: The Alpha Shifter Boxed Set (12 Book Bundle) (Insatiable Reads) Page 116
