“What? That’s not possible. Right?” But she already knew the answer. It freaking stared back at her in full and very vivid color. Sabine turned around for another look in the mirror. He stepped up behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders with a pleading look in his eyes. She hated that look. Hated it yet couldn’t bring herself to calm the nerves in her gut long enough to ease the guilt she knew ate at his insides. “Why do you keep calling me that, Rone? Angel?” Her gaze floated over to his in the reflection of the mirror. “I’m no one’s angel. No one’s beautiful anything. I’m just another girl, normal as they come.”
“There’s nothing normal about someone as special as you and if you don’t believe that then you’re not looking close enough.”
She turned and he leaned in, resting his hands on the counter, which pinned her in place. “And you are an angel. The kindest soul I’ve ever met.”
“I’m jaded, cynical and if my supervisor is to be believed I like to play God.”
He pulled back. “What the hell does that mean? Play God?”
“You want to know why I’m outta here tomorrow?” She pushed at his chest and he let her pass. Maybe if he knew the truth about her then he wouldn’t want her so much. He would erase the bond, imprint… whatever and she could be done with it. Done with him. So much for a quick holiday hook-up. Her heart fell a little bit at the thought of never seeing him again. What the hell was wrong with her?
She walked the perimeter of the room, turning every single light on and then made her way through the rest of the apartment. Anything to shed the romantic vibe that wanted to cling to the place.
But the more lights she flipped, the more he killed.
“Will you stop already?”
“They hurt the eyes. Tell me what you meant.” From across the room she felt his heated stare.
She flushed with anger and balled her fists by her sides. Her heart constricted and she looked at anything in the room besides the man she spoke to. “I killed someone on the job two days before I came here. Not directly but I failed her and the children that depended on her. I know how that sounds, but that’s only the first half of the story. I went digging for information and discovered she was in recovery and trying to pull her life together for her kids. She had almost two years clean.” Her heart hurt. “Then she relapsed.”
Sabine held her breath, waiting, watching as silence filled the small apartment. With the drapes closed everything seemed smaller, the walls closer, the space constricting. Dots floated in front of her face and the tiny kitchenette twirled in slow circles.
“Whoa, Angel.” Warm and inviting arms wrapped around her and for the briefest of moments the world seemed right. “Breathe…you’re having another panic attack.”
Then reality bitch-slapped her.
“No kidding.” Blackness swallowed everything and she let her guard down long enough to bury her nose in his neck for one lungful more of his scent. She could afford that. Hopefully. When she landed in Houston in ten hours she’d forget all about Rone Wylde and the penetrating way his eyes held her captive and the pine scent she wanted to rub all over herself until she could smell nothing else. Damn man.
She pushed him away slowly and fought to find a new rhythm to her breathing.
“They said it was a good call on my part and that I couldn’t do anything to save the mother.” She pressed a palm to her forehead and closed her eyes. “I fought, administered the right counter medicines to block the heroin overdose but nothing worked.” She crashed and the sound of her heart monitor flatlining still rings in my ears.”
Rone stroked her cheek. “What did your supervisor say?”
“She’d like nothing else than to see me fail, but in this case she told me I made the right call and she supported it when I went in front of the board.”
“It seems to me you have your answer right there.”
“Don’t you see, Rone?” Her voice broke and sounded ragged to her own ears. She hated weakness. She slammed her hand down on the counter but the sting of pain did nothing for the frustration and hurt that burrowed deep in her heart.
“No,” he whispered softly. “You’ll need to spell it out for me, Sabine. Because the only thing I see is you killing yourself emotionally over something that was entirely out of your hands. You didn’t shoot that woman up, make her use drugs or tell her the drug should mean more to her than her kids.”
“I quit,” she stated flatly. “Four years, so many odd jobs I’ve lost count, and there’s Cherry too. She’s done so much for me and I walked away because I hesitated. What happens when I’m in the operating room and stall? Oh my God. It scares me. All I could think about was my own stupid screwed up mom and it cost three kids their mother.” Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “Some Christmas miracle I performed. I’ve been stumbling through the last year and a half of med school and rotations if I were to be honest. As soon as it became something more than books I couldn’t hack it. Only I didn’t have the balls to let my sister down.”
Propped up on the kitchen counter beside her, Rone considered. “So what now, Sabine? Run and hope your problems don’t trail after you?”
She whirled around, fury burning like a hot poker in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t know, Rone. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know I can’t be here to figure it out. I thought I could come, spend time with my sister and find some answers, and now I only have more questions.”
Her heart ached. “I know what you are thinking. I see it in your eyes and how you keep eyeing that door. There’s no reason you can’t be a part of that family, Sabine.” Rone unhooked his ankles and crossed the room to here where she stood by the couch.
“Cherry will worry about me when she needs to focus on the babies.” She plucked up the few items she had strewn across the apartment and pulled on the sweater Rone tossed over the back of a chair and a pair of gloves from the counter. She swiped her guidebook too and passed Rone who stood there, arms crossed and putting a lot of energy into the broody gaze he should own copyright to.
“Now, I’m outta here.”
“Sabine wait.”
“No, Adam said he had one last run tonight to pick something up from Fairbanks. I’m leaving.”
“You asked why no one has been behind the bar with me for the past four years. The answer is my mate, the one I thought would be with me until the day I died, left me. She tore out of here because she thought shifters were disgusting after she saw me shift for the first time. People leave, people hurt you, but you’ve shown me only you have the power to say when enough is enough and retake control over your life. I thought I could fight fate and decide on my own. That I knew what was best for me. Sometimes, most of the time, that’s true. But this is different. Everett experienced it with Pepper, and we thought he would be the only one in the family.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and rubbed at his eyes with a long drawn-out sigh. “Back then with the woman I thought would be my mate for life, it didn't feel like this. I didn't feel like this.”
“Like what, Rone?”
“Like my life would end without you in it.”
Her mouth went slack. The sex was good. No, mind-blowing fantastic, but a forever?
She paused by the bedroom door and turned to meet his gaze over her shoulder. “I think you need to go, Rone.”
The soft click of the front door resounded in her head and the final wall around her heart crumbled as the tears silently slipped from her eyes. “Christmas can go to hell.” The fact she never wanted to feel again solidified like a shield around her heart.
Fact: Love sucked and love at first sight was bullshit.
CHAPTER EIGHT
He’d fucked up. Big time.
Rone paused outside Sabine’s door. The urge to break the fucking wood into splinters and demand she listen to reason blinded him. But it would only make her close in on herself more.
There was a better way. When he would interrogate suspects, the easiest way to find
a chink in their armor was through family and loved ones. Low yellow light drowned the small hallway separating their doors and beyond the window at the end of the hall, night had long since fallen. He flicked his door open, grabbed a shirt. His brothers would be home and so would the one person that would know how to crack through the unbreakable wall Sabine had formed around her heart. And her damn ears.
On his way out, he grabbed one of the many baskets the baker left on the counter in Big Paws, briefly checking the name on the handle. During the holiday the less fortunate people in Claw Ridge always received a basket of goodies from the Wylde family. A token of gratitude and friendship his sister started way before he took over her bakery and one he would see carried on long after he passed it on to his kids. If he ever got that far. With how things were going in the mating arena kids were a long way off.
Today the basket would serve as a bribe for Intel.
Ten minutes later he shoved his truck into park and bounded up the back steps of his brother’s temporary rental while they rebuilt the original Wylde home out on the property that hugged the ice bear’s property. He understood why they were eager to return to such a remote area but he liked the easier convenience of living closer to town.
He knocked a couple of times and smiled when Cherry flashed him a smile as she opened the door. “Wait.” She held a hand up. “Does that have ‘the pie’ in it?”
He chuckled lightly and kicked off the snow from his boots as he stepped inside. “Yes. Ma’am. Would I come over here and risk my right nut by not having your favorite pie?”
“The guys are going to be mad. I just sent them to the grocery store for ice cream.” Cherry leaned in and he gave her a quick peck on the cheek, passing her the large basket of goodies from his bakery. “Sounds like a perfect combination if you ask me. And I don’t think those two could ever get mad at you. Even if they had to go to the North Pole for the ice cream.”
Cherry’s smiled widened. “True. Come in.” She waved him in and he dusted the snow from his shoulders.
Warmth surrounded him as he walked through the door, greeted by the smell of something simmering on the stove. “Smells good.” He inhaled long and hard. Good food always calmed a shifter’s nerves but his stomach clenched with an uneasy queasiness.
“It’s really coming down out there. It must be something pretty big that brings you here. What’s up? Something happened between you and my sister?”
“Always perceptive, aren’t you?”
“I call it mommy genes. It’s like little Spidey senses that go off with anything that concerns Sabine.” Cherry busied herself in the kitchen putting all the little pies from the basket out on a platter. “Grab a bowl and help yourself. There’s cornbread in the oven and apple cider or a beer if you prefer.”
“Thank you.” Growing up in a town the size of Claw Ridge where everyone really did know everyone, going back decades and long before he and his brothers were born, he knew refusing a plate when offered was a sign of disrespect. He served himself a ladle full of beef stew and thanked Cherry for the bread she placed on the counter for him as he pulled up a stool.
The modern apartment looked much like his over the bar and bakery with the exception of a larger kitchen. Something Cherry had insisted on after the ice bears burned down the old Wylde home on the backlands near the lake.
He took a bite of the stew but the usual pleasure of Cherry’s cooking didn’t settle on the tongue as easy as it normally did. “It’s delicious. Thank you.”
“Liar.” She tossed at him with a kind smile. “I know when a man fakes and that frown on your face says a thousand words without even trying. Now tell me, why you are really here.”
“First, you doing okay? The babies?”
“Yep, Lorne and Kohl nearly had a heart attack when I showed them the ultrasound of two little heads and two set of legs and arms.”
“Do you know if they are boys or girls?”
“No. Little critters wouldn’t show us this time around and Lorne said he’d rather be surprised anyway so you know. Everett, on the other hand, is having a hissy fit drawing up the plans.”
“Serves him right.” Rone chuckled.
“Can I ask you something?”
Cherry reached out and patted his hand. “Rone, what’s on your mind? You look like a bear with a thorn in his paw.”
Adequate but it was more through his chest at the moment. “It’s Sabine. What the hell happened in your childhood that has her so damn hell bent on shoving everything good that happens to her to the side?”
A sadness slipped over Cherry’s face, and he cursed under his breath for even bringing the subject up. “Look. Maybe I should just ask Sabine. Make her tell me.”
“Good luck with that. You think I’m stubborn. That girl suffers from many things including stubbornness.”
Rone finished his plate and pushed it to the side as Cherry settled a cup of coffee in front of him and grabbed one for herself.
“There’s something you need to know about Sabine and me. We didn’t grow up in a family like you did. Where mom and dad were there for us when he fell flat on our faces or when we scored good grades. No one to cheer us on and support us. We had four walls most of our lives and at least one good meal a day. But that was the silver lining.”
“Son of a bitch.” Rone fisted his hand and bit back the stronger string of curses he wanted to let loose. “How much fucking worse did it get?” He really didn’t want to hear this. If anyone had hurt her he’d hunt them down and make them fear the simple act of drawing breath.
“What really killed my little sister inside were when people, moms and dads, walked into the orphanage with the nuns and looked at all of all the kids playing or studying or whatever we were doing at the time. They were not supposed to let us know they were looking to see which of us would fit into their lives the best, but this was a small place and the nuns didn’t really follow all the rules. I can’t tell you how many people would pass over us like puppies in a pound or worse, trash.” Cherry paused and he could see the past weight on her as she fiddled with the new wedding band around her ring finger. “The nuns loved us in their own way, and Sabine and I even managed to get adopted by a family in Sweet Briar.” She looked up and offered a small smile. “Even then magick had its designs on us, I guess.”
“Before you and your sister came to Claw Ridge I never thought much of fate really. Now it’s grabbed me by the balls and well, here I am. So what happened with the family in Sweet Briar?” The more he heard about their time the more he might be able to decipher if they had any connection with his world and uncover how the hell he’d imprinted on a human.
“The wife dabbled in witchcraft but she was human. Sweet lady, but when her husband fell ill and lost this job and they couldn’t care for us anymore, back we went. It really hurt Sabine, too. She took a real liking to the lady. A year later I turned eighteen and took my sister out but not before all the rejection messed with her head.”
“There was more than one family I take it.”
She nodded but didn’t give him any more. He thought he was a clam. “She said something about your mom. What happened to your parents?”
He watched her for the slightest clue to the answers he needed, but she gave none away as she contemplated her thoughts before answering. “She should be the one to tell you all this, not me. We share the past, but I don’t know. It seems like it all should come from her.”
“I imprinted on her tonight.” He didn’t mean to blurt it out but it tumbled over the tip of his tongue and dropped like an atomic bomb in the middle of his lap.
Cherry gasped and cupped both of her hands of her mouth. “You what? How?”
His hand went to the back of his neck as a wave of heat consumed the entire circumference of his neck. He stretched at the neck of his shirt but it didn’t help. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. Do you know who your parents were? Did they have any magick in them?”
“Not that I know of. D
ad was a workaholic and left to work here of all places. Not Claw Ridge, but Alaska back when they installed the pipeline. Mom couldn’t take caring for two kids on her own when he left and her recreational fling with narcotics became a lifelong passion until she took one pill too many. I found her one morning dead and Dad might as well be dead.”
“Some people do not deserve to have kids.”
Perched on the end of her stool, Cherry looked at her plump belly, and the sudden urge to see Sabine with his child sucker-punched him in the gut and nearly blew him off his own stool.
“There’s something you need to understand about Sabine, Rone. She’s fiercely independent and fears looking weak or in need. It took me months just to get her here and only the news of the babies got her moving.” She clasped his hands between hers. “I know she’s moving on from her classes, but I’m not all that sure if that’s what is bothering her. But she won’t talk to me. I think she believes her problems would be a burden to me. I’m worried. She’s keeping something pent up inside and I think you might be the only one to help her. Honestly, I’m afraid she’s going to pull away. I can sense it.”
“You would be right.” But that was all he would say on the matter. Like Cherry said, it was Sabine’s news to share, not his.
A cold blast of air filled rushed through the open door as Lorne and Kohl pushed it open with their feet, their arms laden with a variety of ice creams and toppings in several different bags. Lorne kicked off the snow as Kohl rushed in behind him. The cold didn’t really bother them but they were more worried about their woman getting cold with the door wide open, as he would be for Sabine. “We didn’t know what you wanted so we got everything.”
“More like we didn’t want to mistake what the next craving would be so we got everything and then some,” Kohl corrected Lorne.
Snowbound With Her Christmas Bear: Wylde Den #4 (Alaskan Den Men Book 16) Page 13
