by Leela Ash
Jeanine wrenched her gaze away from his, transferring her attention with a careful frown on her face to the little sports car, “That yours?”
He threw the car a casual glance, “It’s my housekeeper’s.”
“Is she learning to drive in between pressing your shirts?” she spat dripping sarcasm. Then before he could think of a suitable comeback, she added, “Where the hell did she go?”
“She’s home with Joshua. I’m driving it,” he offered. His tone was mild, only the small vein ticking in his jaw gave any indication that he was getting pissed off.
“Then you’re responsible. Listen I’m late and you’re blocking me in, so do you mind?” she demanded nodding towards the car.
He followed her gaze and stared at the car as though he was only just noticing it for the first time. “I’ll move the car, just as soon as you say please.”
Jeanine gritted her teeth. Something about Bo always rubbed her up the wrong way and vice versa. He was the Town Stud if the stories were to be believed, or at least he was the stud in the fevered imaginations of many ladies — married and single alike. In truth, he was always careful to avoid women like the plague; he was the sort of tall, dark, handsome loner writers loved to rave about. He was also the sort of dictatorial, arrogant, infuriating, and insufferable creature that made her want to tear out her hair.
She had run into him a handful of times and none of them had been pleasant. Why, the very first day she moved to the town, his charming personality had welcomed her to the Angle with a row, of all things, right in the middle of Mainstreet. She had executed what she’d thought was a fancy maneuver to keep from running over a little duck and he had almost rear-ended her. He had been livid, cold and so arrogant she’d expected every word out of his mouth to take shape wearing its very own supercilious expression, like the one stamped onto his face!
He had told her in no uncertain terms that she shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel of a car for the safety of the entire populace and he had made such noise about it that a deputy who had wandered by had actually demanded to see her license and registration!
She had never been so humiliated or mortified in her entire life and she had never forgiven him either.
Two weeks ago during the town hall meeting, she had watched with open glee as a group of five-year old pranksters had gotten hold of his car keys and thrown them down a hole so tiny his ham-sized fist would never be able to get to them. He hadn’t noticed what the kids had done until just about everyone else had left. She hadn’t been certain how he had known exactly where the keys were either since he had patted down his entire body in near panic, taken one long look at her face, and turned directly around to zero in on the tiny hole in the corner. He had discovered soon enough that his hands could not fit in and he had enlisted her help in getting his keys. She had made him beg prettily before she’d deigned to dip her smaller hand into the hole and rescue his keys, she recalled smiling with victory at the memory. He had begged too; it had been either that or walk home, and now she was almost certain this “please” was about that incident — his own way of getting her back.
“You’re pathetic!” she announced now with frigid displeasure. “You’re in the wrong! You’re the one blocking me in. Why do I have to say please?”
He shrugged, “You were in the wrong too when you let those little rascals steal my car keys and did nothing about it,” he said confirming her suspicion that this was about that incident; the petty soul! “Yet you made me beg,” he continued. “Be thankful I’m not making you beg; I’m just asking you to be a polite human being!”
Jeanine gasped, feeling the insult all the way to her Southern soul. “I’ll thank you to know that my mother raised me right! I am a polite person.”
He flicked her a disparaging glance that swept her entire length from the top of her auburn curls to the tips of her Indian shoes. “Your poor mother did the best she could,” he allowed, leaving her to draw the obvious inference. “Now say please,” he ordered.
This was getting ridiculous! She was running very late and this idiot wanted to stand on a street corner and argue about her upbringing. She was so mad she could feel the angry color suffusing her face.
True, her patients were all animals which meant they wouldn’t be clock-watching and angry about being kept waiting but their owners sure would mind if their vet turned up late because she’d had a run-in with Jabba the Hunt at a coffee shop!
With cold deliberation, she turned her back on him and raised one hand in the classic signal for a cab. One slid to a smart halt right in front of her and she opened the back door with a flourish. She was really enjoying the surprise that made Bo’s jaw drop. “I don’t have time for more of your nonsense today Beaufort. Stay parked behind me all day since you have nothing better to do with your time!”
His incredulous glare was the last expression she caught before she convulsed with laughter in the plush backseat of the cab as it sped off.
2.
Jeanine had never been one for clock-watching but all day her eyes had been trained on the timepiece in her office waiting for closing time with ill-concealed impatience. As soon as it was five o’clock, she grabbed her bag and headed for the door.
She was curious to see if Bo had picked up his car or left it there. He was just obstinate and hot-headed enough to leave his car parked right in that spot blocking her in, just to prove a point, she thought stifling a shout of laughter as her cab wended its way down the street.
When the cab pulled up in front of Starbucks, her grin vanished. Two towing vans were just pulling out: one had her car attached and another was pulling Bo’s car.
Her eyes rounded in surprise. The dratted man actually had the unmitigated gall to leave his car parked behind hers all day. Seriously?
With a furious sputter she leaped from the cab and ran towards the driver of the van hauling away her car, “Hey, that’s my ride.”
“Not anymore. It’s being towed,” the man grunted, chewing on a piece of tobacco in his mouth with gusto.
“But—”
“Listen ma’am it’s out of my hands. You know where to pick it up,” he added before he punched it.
Jeanine picked her jaw off the floor and stalked towards the waiting cab. “Follow that van,” she snapped as she got in.
Beaufort Kent was the most horrid human being she had ever encountered, she decided, and she had encountered more than a few.
As soon as the towing van pulled into the impound lot, she leaped out of the cab, threw a few bills into her cab driver’s outstretched hand and stalked into the office.
A small woman with eyes so round they could have easily belonged to a child looked up from her cup of ginger tea, “May I help you?”
“My car was towed from Starbucks’ lot. I would like to clear it.”
“Please wait a few minutes ma’am. Mr. Mathews will be right with you,” the woman told her, motioning to the row of visitors’ seats on the other side of the wall.
“You’re a real piece of work you know?” a warm masculine voice, tinged with laughter, breathed close to her ear as she turned to head towards the chairs.
Of course he was here! Her day was going very badly thanks to him and now he thought he could just walk up to her and make everything hunky-dory again?
“You’re one to talk. The only reason we’re in here is because you were so stubborn,” she ground out through clenched teeth.
“I’m not the one who couldn’t be bothered to say please,” he tossed back. “Grandma Lourdes would be rolling in her grave if she could see you now,” he said, making an audible tsk.
Without stopping to think, she jerked around and slammed her elbow straight into his midriff. However, instead of him doubling over in pain, she was the one in white-hot pain. It felt like she had dislocated her elbow.
She gawped at him while he stared down at her with an odd, grave expression.
“Have you got bricks in there?” she demanded staring at hi
s mid-section as she rubbed her sore elbow.
“I work out,” he growled. “I can’t believe you got violent over this.”
Jeanine rolled her eyes. Now he was making her sound like a female thug. “I didn’t get violent, I just hit you a little.”
“Same difference.”
“No, it’s not. It was a tiny jab from my puny elbow and you’re a huge mountain of a man. We both know that poke didn’t even make a dent but I almost broke my elbow. So what are you moaning about?”
He planted both hands onto his hips and balanced onto the balls of his feet, “So would it be okay if a guy hit you and his defense was that he was too small-sized to do much damage?”
Now he put it that way, it did sound terrible, she conceded to herself, as she swallowed a horrified laugh.
“You find it amusing?” he growled, nostrils flaring. Something indefinable passed in his eyes and Jeanine frowned.
His eyes were narrowed, his jaw tight, and his fists clenched. For the first time, she realized he was angrier than she’d thought.
“Jeez, forgive me for wounding your tender sensibilities,” she tossed out, the words caustic.
His eyes chilled and then without another word, he turned his back on her.
Before she could say anything else, Jared Mathews strode out to meet them, exhibiting such bonhomie he might as well have worked in a coffee shop. Jared handled their paperwork as fast as he could, chattering away the entire time, and Jeanine tried not to frown too much as she parted with her fine. With every passing second, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had deeply insulted Bo. He stood beside her silent as a tomb.
In a matter of minutes, they were done. Bo was already in his car before she could clear the doorway. She ran up to the side of his car to apologize but he didn’t even throw a single glance her way. He drove off spewing gravel as he left and leaving a small cloud of dust to settle on her outraged face.
He was impossible, she thought with a click of her tongue.
“I heard you got into a fight again, Jeanine,” her mother said with weary resignation the moment she crossed the threshold.
Jeanine sighed as she flung her bag onto the nearest cushion. The local grapevine needed to get something better to do with their time. She had gotten into a tiny difference of opinions while defending her mother and her upbringing early this morning. Yet it had been reported as though she had been in a screaming match over nothing.
“Well, I hope at least whoever they were, bothered to tell you it wasn’t my fault,” she grated, a little defensive.
“It never is,” Dolly pointed out. “You seem to pick fights all the time with the boys. How do you expect any of them to want to settle down with you? It’s alright to be feisty and argumentative, but at the end of a long day at work everyone just wants some peace and quiet, not feisty arguments.”
“Follow your own advice, mum,” Jeanine snapped, stung to the quick. “I could do with some of that peace and quiet right now!”
In the silence that followed, Jeanine felt her mum’s rebuke loud and clear, as though Dolly had spoken aloud, but her mom’s gaze remained fixed on whatever new thing she was knitting.
Then just when Jeanine thought the moment had passed, Dolly rose to her feet and announced in a hurt voice, “All I’m saying is picking fights with all the young men in town isn’t exactly going to help you settle down and get me grandbabies, Jean. I know exactly why you’re doing it too. We both know. But as long as you continue to hold onto the past, you’ll repeat that mistake you’re so afraid of making, again and again.”
Jeanine sighed and shut her eyes signaling the end of the discussion. Thankfully, her mother took the hint this time and left her alone without another word.
She dragged herself into the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge. As she popped the can, she carried it to her lips musing over the day’s events. What was it about Beaufort that drove her up the wall? He seemed to get mad whenever he saw her too. His black eyes always blazed with dislike whenever he saw her, but in that moment after she had hit him and made light of it, he had looked at her as though she were beneath contempt.
Unable to bear the train of thought, she tossed the half-finished can of beer into the trash and bounded upstairs to her room.
Sleep was a long time coming because her traitorous mind kept haunting her with images of a tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed man who thought she was too violent by half.
She shivered as she recalled a look she had seen in his eyes in that split second before they became shuttered and distant. He had seemed as though he weren’t entirely human, he had seemed almost… animal.
3.
Bo drove as though the hounds of hell were after him. How could Jeanine have been so cavalier? True, it hadn’t hurt him one jot when she slammed that tiny excuse for an elbow into his ribs but he had seen firsthand what such careless behavior could do and it rubbed him the wrong way. One careless jab from his elbow and he could put her or any other human in a coma or worse. Joseph had died because of just such behavior and Bo had spent his entire adulthood learning to control his impulses and fight his own strength, especially when he was with humans because they were a damned fragile lot! And if he could be so courteous and careful not to hit them, by Jove, he expected the same courtesy!
Bo was one of five shifter friends who called themselves the Damaged Pack but despite their tough-sounding name, they had been grilled to walk on eggshells around humans by their beloved mentor, Joshua. The old man would put humans in a show glass just to preserve them from harm if he could, he was so fascinated by them. Ever since they were kids, Joshua had insisted that they had to treat humans with respect and care. You would think they were fine porcelain, the way he went on.
Bo snarled now as he thought about how the Angle was crawling with those pesky humans. These days, it seemed everywhere he looked, he saw them.
It didn’t help that Derek had gone and fallen in love and gotten himself wrapped around Kelly’s little finger, and she was human! Derek was one of the Damaged Pack — their leader in fact— and Bo respected him a lot. He had grown fond of Kelly too but sometimes he wished the annoying termagant were a shifter like the rest of them.
Well, Kelly did have that Pristinely Ungifted thing going for her so he guessed that was alright. It was actually pretty cool that magic couldn’t hurt her, not even magic from the queen of the Salem witches, Nabradia herself. It gave them one less thing to worry about, because while Nabradia couldn’t put a hex on any of the Pack because of the Salem-Weirna covenant, she wasn’t above trying to harm the human in their midst. But since Kelly was immune, that took care of that concern.
And Kelly had helped heal Joshua too, he recalled now letting his grin break across his face. Heck, whom was he kidding? He liked Kelly a lot even though he would die before he would admit it out loud. Everyone else already fussed over the minx. He had to play bad cop and stay stern for the sake of balance.
Her son, Tom, was another kettle of fish. He kept getting into trouble because he wanted to see everything and everyone, all at once. He poked his nose where it didn’t belong all the time and the other day, he had almost caught Luke shifting into a wolf.
Bo had raised holy hell that day but all he had gotten for his efforts was an admonishment to shush from his soon-to-be sister-in-law and then she had bribed him into silence with a can of Coke and his favorite cookies. After that, she had frog-marched Tom up to his room for the night.
Bo shook his head now. Kelly had blossomed in less than one month of living with Derek, and so had Tom. It was easy to see they had both been starved of love by her ex, and now that Derek was supplying all that love, they were lapping it all up and thriving. Her aquamarine eyes were no longer sad. She laughed more, talked more and she teased every one of them as though they were her brothers. They enjoyed teasing her too, but she made certain to give as good as she got. The little minx was mischievous alright, and he wondered how he’d never noticed it from
the onset.
Sometimes though, Bo was fairly certain, that for all her love for Derek, Kelly was still hiding something. He couldn’t be sure, because her immunity meant he couldn’t read her mind. It was one reason he hadn’t really trusted her when he first met her.
But truth be told, Derek couldn’t have chosen a better mate for himself; and it didn’t matter one jot that Kelly was human and not a shifter, he thought.
That line of thinking made him shift with discomfort as a familiar pair of blue eyes drifted into his mind’s eye.
Jeanine Lourdes was a mass of contradictions. She had baby blue eyes, auburn ringlets that curled just above her neck and lent her an air of childish innocence. She had a long beak nose that stopped her from being quite pretty and a wide mobile mouth that made him want to kiss it just to shut her up. She was a very handsome, rather than ‘pretty’, woman and she moved through life with all the subtlety of a ten-ton truck. He still remembered his first encounter with her after she came into town. She’d driven like a veritable maniac down Mainstreet and expected him to applaud when she revealed that she had almost killed herself and him to save a duck!
The nerve of her!
He slammed the brakes hard in front of the only home he had known for years. The last thing he wanted to do was think about Jeanine Lourdes. She was an irritating, opinionated woman and if he never saw her again it would be way too soon!
He slammed the door behind him as he entered the house and would have slammed his way to his room as well, if Joshua’s voice hadn’t stopped him midstride.
“Bo? Is that you son? Come here for a minute.”
Bo heaved a silent sigh as he changed direction and headed instead towards the living room. The room was chockfull, with Drake and Luke playing card games beside the fire and Derek and Jack looking at some map in a corner of the room.
Joshua was planted in his favorite chair, but he wasn’t by himself, he was surrounded by Kelly and two old shifter friends of his; Miles Hadley and Roland Bryan. Joshua also had Tom, Kelly’s little boy, perched on his knee.
