by Leela Ash
Therese had insisted on getting her into therapy and then, at last, she had dredged up the courage and left Jason. The trip to Africa, a year after Therese found out, had culminated in meeting Derek.
She loved him; she felt safe with him. But a part of her was scared for herself and Tom. What if Derek hurt her or Tom?
As soon as the thought came, she threw it aside. Derek would never hurt her or her child. He loved her and he loved Tom. She knew beyond any shadow of doubt that he loved her.
Tom was waiting close to the car park, bouncing on his heels, his lunch box and school bag clutched in one hand, while he waved, with excitement, at her with the other.
The moment she pulled to a stop, he ran to her and clambered into the truck.
“How was school, champ?” Kelly asked, ruffling his tawny mane of hair.
“Fine, Mommy. I drew you a picture. Wanna see?”
Kelly smiled at his excitement as he pulled out a child’s drawing. She frowned at the three stick figures. Ever since Jason had threatened to take Tom far far away from her if she divorced him, the little boy had stopped including Jason in any drawings he made at school.
She flicked a curious glance at her son as she negotiated the bend, “What’s the drawing about?”
“Family. Me, you and Derek,” he chanted.
Kelly stole a look at him. “I didn’t know you and Derek were tight.”
“He buys me ice cream and sweets and he gives me rides on his shoulders.”
Tom made it sound as important as reasons for voting Derek to some damned legislative seat.
She rolled her eyes, “Sure, Tiger. Ever heard of bribery?”
“That would be you giving me an ice cream to finish my veggies,” Tom supplied without pretense. “Derek doesn’t do that. He gives me ice cream just because.”
Kelly shook her head with a sigh as she turned her attention to the long stretch of empty road ahead of them.
Well, she knew one thing, at least, Tom loved Derek to bits.
A dark sedan overtook them on the road and took the bend so fast it was almost going on two wheels. Kelly didn’t think anything of it until she rounded the bend herself and found the dark sedan parked across the road. Marjorie was standing beside it, dressed all in black, her hands folded across her middle.
“Today only wanted this,” Kelly hissed. She leaned her head out the window on her side and yelled, “Hey, Marjorie. You think you could maybe move your car a little to let us through?”
The other woman remained silent, chewing on a bit of bubblegum. She blew a bubble, until it almost covered her face.
“Are you high?” Kelly demanded.
The sun was sweltering, and she needed to get Tom home soon and call Derek. As though on cue, her phone rang, and Caller ID showed Derek’s name.
With a glad cry, she picked it up and held it to her ears, her gaze on the other woman still planted in the middle of the road.
“Hey, handsome. Are you still mad at me?”
“I could never be mad at you, Kelly. I love you. I know you need some time and space.”
“Well, that too. And I need your girlfriend to get out of my way,” she declared.
There was a bewildered silence and then, “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Marjorie is parked right in the middle of the express, blocking me off and —”
“Get out of the car! Nice and slow!” a guttural voice ordered from Tom’s side of the car.
Kelly’s head swung and her eyes widened in alarm as she saw a tall man wearing a cowboy hat pushed low on his forehead pointing a gun straight at Tom’s head.
“Kelly? What’s going on?” Derek barked in her ear.
“Get out of the fucking car or I start shooting!” another man yelled, materializing at her side of the truck.
Kelly let the phone slide to the floor of the car and raised both hands high in the air, her body trembling.
She reached for her son, but the other man had already wrenched open Tom’s side of the truck and jerked the screaming boy out.
As Kelly climbed out, she caught the satisfied grin on Marjorie’s face, and she glared at the other woman. “What did I ever do to you? Leave my son out of it, you troll!”
“One wrong word out of you and you can kiss your son goodbye,” Marjorie declared, walking up to where the other man was already taping Kelly’s hands behind her back.
Kelly looked at the other woman. “You don’t have to be so hateful, you know?”
Marjorie’s lips pulled back over her teeth in an angry growl and she lifted her hand and slapped Kelly across the face so hard she almost passed out.
“Put a sock in it! I’m not interested.”
The men covered her mouth and Tom’s, blindfolded them, and bundled them into the back seat of the sedan.
They drove for what seemed like hours before the sedan came to a stop, and all the while, Kelly’s heart pounded so loud inside her that she almost couldn’t hear the words their captors kept murmuring to each other.
She was with Tom, for God’s sake. What if they hurt him? She knew Marjorie wasn’t some jealous ex. She wanted to hurt Derek in return for her brother’s death. It was obvious she planned to use Kelly to do that.
Kelly raised tear-brightened eyes to the other woman as soon as the blindfold and mouth gag was removed.
“Please let my son go. You can do whatever you want to me, but let Tom go.”
The two men with Marjorie shared a glance, then they threw back their heads and howled with laughter. They were in a cave, she noted so their laughter sort of bounced off the walls.
Kelly turned to Marjorie, “Spare my child. He’s an innocent little boy.”
Marjorie turned to the man nearest her, “Kill the boy first.”
Kelly screamed, “No!”
As the man raised his hand, the loud report of a pistol rang inside the cave and he folded into a heap on the floor. The second man went down as well in a hail of bullets and Kelly turned, shocked, toward the entrance to see who had saved her.
Her heart sank to the very toes of her shoes. It was Jason!
20.
“Jason!” she gasped.
He shot her a look of pure revulsion before turning to Marjorie, his gun still pointed at her. “How was my plan?”
To Kelly’s shock, Marjorie grinned at him and began to laugh. She catapulted across the space separating them and clung to him.
Kelly blinked. Was she seeing things?
“You’re a smart boy,” Marjorie laughed, rubbing her nose against his.
They knew each other?
As though he’d read her mind, Jason looked over Marjorie’s shoulder at Kelly, his familiar eyes blazing with even more familiar contempt.
“Hello, my sweet. We meet again,” Jason crooned.
He disentangled himself from Marjorie and walked toward her.
Kelly stared at him, then her gaze bounced to Tom. Her son was still gagged. He was sitting very still and wide-eyed as though he wanted to vanish into the walls of the cave. He, without doubt, thought that if he stayed still enough, his father wouldn’t notice him.
Her angry gaze cut to Jason, “You bastard! What is the meaning of this? Let my son go.”
“Oh, I have no intention of hurting the little brat. I came back to pay you back for divorcing me and taking me to the cleaners.”
Kelly stared. All she had filed for was monthly income for maintenance. He had gotten to keep his home and assets.
“I did no such thing!”
“I have an ax to grind, Kelly. And guess what I found when I got here? My private investigator was scared off by your boyfriend and I had to pick up the slack. And then, I discovered I wasn’t the only one watching you. In less than a month, you had an enemy in Marjorie. Ain’t that amazing? How can one person be so unlikable?”
Kelly flushed. “I am not unlikable! She hates me because I’m friends with Derek.”
“No, I loathe Derek. You’re just collateral d
amage,” Marjorie corrected.
“I’ll take Tom with me today, Kelly. Whatever happens to you is up to Marjorie.”
Kelly screamed, “No. Don’t take my son away from me. Please don’t. He’s all I’ve got. Please leave him alone.”
Jason laughed so loud that the sound reverberated all over the entire cave.
Tears trickled down Kelly’s cheeks as Jason turned to Tom and her son began to cry anew.
She couldn’t die like this. She still had a lot to do for Tom. And Derek; she had never even told him how much she loved him.
Jason grabbed Tom by his collar and lifted him by his shirtfront until his feet dangled above the ground.
He gave Tom a light shake, “Stop crying!”
Tom was crying louder now, despite the mouth gag.
Jason shoved him to the floor in disgust. Tom’s head hit a small stone and he was knocked out. Kelly screamed, her anguish raw with the agony only a mother can feel for her child.
She saw Jason bend to check his pulse. “Stop bawling, you wuss. He’s alive. Marjorie? What do you want to do with her?”
“Slap her to death, like Derek did Jeremy,” Marjorie declared. “But I’ll settle for getting my satisfaction at the end of this trusty little pistol,” she announced.
Out of nowhere, howling sounds filled the cave, and to her shock, two wolves bounded into the cave.
Marjorie and Jason shrieked, and both ran to the far end of the cave, scrambling to race right out through its solid wall.
Kelly recognized the silver wolf at once. It bounded over to her and licked her cheeks and she sobbed with relief. The other wolf, she suspected, had to be Luke.
Marjorie and Jason were as white as parchment as they stared in horror at the silver wolf and the midnight-black wolf with piercing golden eyes.
“You dirty dog, stay away from me. I know it’s you, Derek,” Marjorie shouted in a quavering voice.
In the blink of an eye, both wolves turned into human beings.
“I’m glad I need no introduction,” Derek mocked, his tone chilling. “Luke? Deal with them.”
He turned and scooped Kelly into his arms. He kissed her in hunger and then untied her hands. She flung her arms around his neck, sobbing into his chest.
“How did you find us?” she sobbed.
“One whiff of your scent in Africa and I was hooked, Kelly. I can find you anywhere in the world from miles away with your scent,” he laughed into her hair.
Then the words she had been afraid she would never get to say tumbled from her lips, “I love you, Derek. I love you.”
Something flared in his eyes, then warmed, and he smiled at her as he kissed her again; slower, this time. Then he leaned back and looked into her eyes as he whispered back, “I love you.”
Carrying her with ease, he walked over to where Tom was still knocked out and lifted the boy into his arms too. Kelly turned to where Luke was speaking in low tones to Jason and Marjorie and they were nodding as though hypnotized.
Unhurried, they turned and walked out of the cave without another word or glance at her.
She looked at Luke. His eyes were twinkling with wicked humor.
“You compelled them?” Derek asked in a whisper.
Luke nodded as he made to take Tom from Derek’s arms. Kelly slid down Derek’s hard length until she was standing on her feet, still leaning against Derek.
“Father?” Tom’s voice quavered.
“Oh baby, you’re awake,” Kelly cried, raising one hand to touch his cheek.
Tom shied away from Luke’s outstretched arms and wound his little hands tight around Derek’s neck.
Derek laughed and kissed the top of his head, flushing with pleasure.
“My boy is awake.”
“I love you, Father,” Tom whispered. In the cave, the sound was so loud.
“What did you say to those two?”
“I compelled them to forget everything in Weirna and all they saw tonight. They’re heading to Alaska to get married and stay married forever.”
“Alaska? Why?” Kelly asked.
“Your ex needs to freeze his balls off for a change and Marjorie needs a place to cool off from decades of hatred,” Luke said.
As they walked toward their parked car, Derek slowed, letting Luke go ahead with Tom. “So, will you spend the rest of your life with me and let me be Tom’s father for real?”
“Yes,” Kelly said without hesitation.
He looked at her, and she saw a sheen of tears in his eyes that surprised her. “You will?”
“Yes,” she repeated.
As he hugged her, she reflected that the world couldn’t be a happier place than it was right now. She would be Derek’s wife and she would be happy forever.
She smiled up at him, “I feel so happy, right now, Derek. Like nothing can ruin my joy.”
“Nothing will. Not while I’m alive.”
“Hey, lovebirds, I hate to be the one to break your embrace, but we do need to find Nabradia and stop the bitch before she finds her Tiara and makes us all her slaves. That would ruin your joy, I’m thinking,” Luke called.
“Idiot,” Derek grumbled with humor.
Kelly laughed as she turned and led the way to the car and their bright new life together forever.
The End
Claimed by the Bear
Damaged Pack Shifters 2
Leela Ash & Pamela Avery
Copyright ©2019 by Leela Ash and Pamela Avery. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
1.
“What idiot left their car with its engine running smack-dab in the middle of fifty-eighth?” Jeanine Lourdes demanded in a loud carrying voice, looking around for her culprit. She was so mad and it wasn’t even noon yet! With her luck, she would be here until noon thanks to this crap-yard metal-heap masquerading as a sports car!
Things just seemed to be going from bad to worse all morning, she mused, as she waited with thin patience for the driver of the car to show up.
First her mother had gotten some hare-brained notion that Jeanine was unhappy without a man in her life; so mother dearest had decided to try her hand at matchmaking. Everyone within a five-mile radius knew that Dolly Lourdes was an adorable klutz and clumsy at everything she did. So it wasn’t really much of a surprise that her matchmaking efforts had been little short of an ongoing series of entertaining catastrophes. They had left half the town gaping and the rest gossiping for all they were worth; yet Dolly had remained cheerful and undaunted!
Thanks to her determined matchmaking efforts, the past three weeks had presented one disaster after another designed to wear Jeanine’s already-thin patience a little thinner. Then just when she’d thought it couldn’t be any worse than it already was, the crowning touch had happened this morning when one of the ‘blind dates’ her mother set her up with had come crawling back before the sun had even broken across the sky. And he hadn’t been alone! He had been frog-marched all the way to her front door by his mountain of a wife with a heaving bosom and a loud mouth, bent on seeing whom her husband’s “latest plaything” was.
They had cut such an unusual picture: the scruffy, meek man with his proverbial tail hanging between his legs and the mountain of a woman who looked like she’d already eaten five of him for breakfast that morning. Jeanine had taken one look at them and had to bite back an inappropriate bark of laughter.
Jeanine hadn’t been laughing few minutes later though, after whatsherface screeched loudly enough to wake up the entire neighborhood and brought more than one over-helpful neighbor by to intervene. It had taken some coaxing to assure the woman that Jeanine wasn’t her husband’s “plaything” or his “anything else” for that matter.
By the time she’d managed to escape the sorry couple and anxious ne
ighbors, she was already late to work— for the third time in a single week. Then she had made a brief detour to grab a much-needed cup of Starbucks only for some idiot driver to park his car and hem her in. And now she was so late she felt like beating her head against the sidewalk. At least then she would have a concussion, she thought with dark humor, and then maybe she could get out of yet another ear-bending lecture from her obnoxious boss on the merits of being a “fastidious old soul like me Momma.”
“Who’s the moron owner of this sports car?” she barked again, raising her voice a few decibels. A few heads snapped her way as her voice carried.
“That would be me,” a husky voice said with quiet authority from behind her.
Jeanine spun around ready to flay the driver alive with her tongue when she saw it was him! Every word she had been about to say dried up on her tongue in an instant as she fought to inhale suddenly scarce oxygen.
Beaufort Kent was the very bane of her existence and yet for some strange reason every time he showed up, like clockwork, she got short of breath. Perhaps he sucked all the oxygen in a room up? Yes, that must be it, he was just perverse enough to do that.
Nice try, you’re standing in the great big outdoors, her subconscious snickered.
Beaufort was a magnificent male specimen if she did say so herself, but all that handsomeness had gone straight to his head and made him an insufferable jerk. Everyone else called him Bo, but somehow, she had gotten stuck on the more formal Beaufort maybe because their first meeting had been anything but informal.
He was dressed as usual in stone-wash jeans and a chambray shirt but this particular jean was so tight it emphasized the thick, intriguing outline of his manhood. The shirt clung to huge broad shoulders and a firm masculine chest. His black hair was in artless disarray around his head, their color emphasizing the blackness of his eyes. He was tall, at six-two, with an air of authority and arrogance stamped into every chiseled feature.
Warm humor lurked in the darkened depths of his eyes as he met her gaze and she felt a trickle of something that felt alarmingly like desire in the pits of her stomach.
