Beast Denied (4 page)

It seemed to work for them, but it wasn’t something Naomi ever intended having for herself. At least
that
was a choice. One of her own making. So many other choices had been ripped from her. But she’d dealt with them, had forged a worthwhile life for herself.

“All done.” Smiling, Naomi snapped off the gloves. “I’ll leave you to get dressed. Take a seat when you’re ready.”

Naomi dropped the gloves in the bin, washed her hands and went outside. She walked to the reception desk, where one of the practice nurses was peering at the computer screen with a puzzled look on her face.

“Something wrong?”

The nurse glanced up. “System’s on a go-slow. I keep getting this fuzzy screen and then all the data flashes. It’s all out of sequence. Think I’ll close it down and try again.”

“Good idea. Did the vaccine come in for the winter flu jabs?”

“Yes. I’ve stored it away. Oh, and Mr. Lox just canceled. Said his leg is much better and he wouldn’t need the appointment after all.”

“Okay. I’ll pop by tomorrow morning anyway, just to check on him. I’m going to finish up here and then take off for the evening. Don’t hesitate—”

“To call if we need you.”

Naomi gave a wry smile. “The curse of being predictable.”

Back in her surgery, Naomi found Talia checking her phone. “What are we like? Two bloody workaholics.”

Talia shook her head. “No rest, and all that. Missing tourist.” Her job as reporter on the local newspaper kept her busy, especially this time of year when darkness fell fast over the moor, often taking the intrepid winter campers by surprise.

“Do you have to go in?” Naomi asked. “I was hoping we could grab a drink. My last appointment just canceled.”

“That’d be good. They’re only keeping me up to speed. Debbie’s handling the preliminaries.”

“I’ll finish up here. Mind waiting?”

“Fine by me. I’ll just sit here and watch you work.”

Naomi picked up her prescription pad. “I’ll give you an ongoing prescription until your next checkup’s due. If you notice anything unusual…spotting, discharge…that kind of thing, come back in and I’ll check you over.”

“Great. Thanks.” Talia folded the prescription and popped it into her bag. “Do you know, you’re the only one who doesn’t keep asking me when Caleb and I are planning to start our family. And you’re my doctor.”

“That’s your business. Although, pack members can be forgiven for asking, seeing as you’re our leader’s wife. People think producing heirs is your primary function now. Well, that, and keeping a smile on the face of our leader.”

Talia’s smile was sly and not a little smug. “One out of two achieved, then.”

A sudden pang of deep regret that she would never find herself in Talia’s shoes hit Naomi full center. It happened like that sometimes. She’d learned to navigate the pain by focusing on what she had. Which was so much. Her grandfather, her friends, her career. The freedom, finally, to make her own choices, her own decisions. It should be enough for any woman. She’d make sure it was enough for her.

She plastered on a smile. “If you’re going to brag all evening, I’m going to retract my drink invite.”

Part of her wanted to do that anyway. Despite her mental pep talk, the mention of producing heirs had suddenly dampened Naomi’s mood to socialize.

Not that Talia seemed to notice. “Why don’t we discuss your love life for a change?”

Naomi kept the smile in place. “That’ll take all of two minutes. Actually, even that’s stretching it a bit. How long does it take to say,
zilch
,
nada
,
nothing doing
?”

“Maybe you should think about rectifying that. Do you still have that thing going with Nathan?”

Naomi slipped her work coat off the hook, unable to regret confiding in her friend, but wondering if maybe it would have been best keeping it to herself. “We scratch each other’s itch from time to time.”

“You don’t feel anything for him?”

Naomi pursed her lips as if thinking it through. The expectation on Talia’s face called for at least the pretense of consideration. “He’s a friend,” she said, deciding the truth was always best. “He’s also extremely good in bed. Two pretty good reasons to have sex with the man.”

She thought back to the previous evening and her lucky escape from the clutches of those two Neanderthals.

“You don’t want anything else?”

“No.” Because Talia’s reporter instincts were sharper than any other human she’d known, heightened even further after mating with a shifter, Naomi quickly glossed over her sharp response. “Shifter males like to push their weight around too much. While Nathan is no exception, he doesn’t want or expect anything but casual sex. Suits me, and him, just fine.”

“But you must want to settle down sometime. Build a home with someone. Start a family.”

She tempered her response this time, taking steady breaths to relax her squeezing heart. “Not in the cards for me. It’s not what I want.” It was not what any of the males around here would want either. Not if they knew the truth about her. None of them would come within spitting distance. Especially not Tynan. “All I want is to be a good doctor. My career’s important to me.”

“My career’s important to me too. Caleb eventually came to understand that.”

“Only because you can twist him around your little finger.”

“That’s a work in progress. He’s still the most arrogant, overbearing and…” she gave a long heartfelt sigh, “…incredibly sexy man I’ve ever known.”

Naomi smiled, thinking how pertinent that description was when applied to Tynan. Because the whole conversation was making her feel wretched and despondent, she shrugged into her coat, reminding herself that at some stage she’d need to get her best coat back from the hotel.

“Come on,” she said, hooking her arm through Talia’s. “That drink is calling my name.”

Chapter Three

“Two goons were sniffing around Naomi last night.”

While Tynan waited for his leader to digest the information, he hoped his own anger would abate and allow him to start thinking straight again. He and Nathan had initially agreed to avoid telling Caleb about their concerns, deciding to wait until they had more concrete information. But that was before they had spoken with the desk clerk at Seth’s hotel.

Now, standing with Nathan in Caleb’s office while they apprised their leader of the situation, Tynan knew they’d made the right decision.

“What do you mean?” Caleb asked stiffly, his large frame looming over his desk. “Sniffing around her?”

Naomi wouldn’t appreciate having her business discussed and dissected, but there was really no choice. And what they discussed would go no further than this room. Trust didn’t come stronger than the kind shared by the three of them.

“She hooked up with them last night,” Tynan explained, sinking down into a chair when fresh fear for what might have happened to her rushed through him again. “Humans. Ran into her hurrying out of Seth’s place like the devil was on her tail.”

“What happened?”

“Hard to say. She’s as tight-lipped as hell. Kept insisting she could handle herself.”

Thinking back to his conversation with Naomi, Tynan couldn’t stop the way his heart thumped. He’d bet she wouldn’t have given the same response had it been Nathan or Caleb there last night instead of him, and he tried to tamp down the irrational fear that it was because she viewed him as less than a man because of his accident. That was his shit to deal with.

While he was a first born, a member of the Council of Principals, he was no longer a warrior. He wasn’t included when and if the first-born sons were called away to defend and protect other shifters, other packs. Damn it, he hadn’t been there when Caleb had led the warriors to defend a pack in South America overrun by radicals. He hadn’t been there to help when Caleb had been taken prisoner and held for almost a year and nobody knew if he was dead or alive.

Okay, his technical skills had helped Caleb find his way back, and he’d been instrumental in helping Caleb discover that his half brother, Joshua, had been behind his kidnapping, but that didn’t alleviate the longing that crawled in his gut, the desperation that clenched at his chest, to serve his pack in the way that was his birthright.

The knowledge lay in his stomach like a heavy stone, a constant companion that refused to budge.

“You find out who they are?”

“Checking it out,” Nathan replied while Tynan battled with his maudlin thoughts. “Businessmen, according to the clerk that checked them in.”

Right then, Tynan didn’t give a flying fuck what they did for a living. All that concerned him was the other information the clerk had offered. “Bastards questioned the clerk when they checked out this morning. Tried to find out who Naomi was.”

Caleb’s head snapped up. “We need to find out what the hell went on in that room. You need to speak to Naomi. And don’t take any fucking shit for an answer.”

Since Caleb looked straight at him, Tynan shifted in his chair. He feared he’d get a better response from the wallpaper he currently stared at than he would from questioning Naomi again. She’d been taciturn last night when he’d made casual inquiries, so why the hell would she loosen her tongue now if he went in all guns blazing, demanding to know the facts?

“There’s something else.” Tynan hadn’t even wanted to consider the possibility, but it was too coincidental to be random. “Clerk said one of them was sporting a gash from his eye to his cheekbone. When he asked if he was all right, the guy said he wasn’t, but he soon planned to be.”

“Shit.” Caleb rubbed a hand across his jaw, then looked at Tynan. “Naomi?”

“Said she shoved him across the room.”

Tynan knew what was going through his leader’s mind right then. Beneath the concern for Naomi, the granddaughter of one of their elders, rode a grave concern for the pack and its security. The last thing they needed was a couple of humans sniffing around and questioning a local woman’s unusual strength. Rumors of large cats roaming the moor raised enough curiosity from the public as it was.

The pack integrated with the human community, just as they had for hundreds of years. It was what kept them safe from detection. Caleb was a strong proponent of integration, although until Talia came along and cut him off at the knees, he wasn’t a believer in humans infiltrating the pack itself. Things had changed since then, but the pack still kept their contacts circumspect. Most members had regular jobs among the human contingency and blended in well.

“Shit,” Caleb said again and sank into his chair. “Like I said, Ty. Get her to tell you what the hell happened. We need to know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

Nathan cleared his throat. “Maybe I’d have a better chance of getting the intel. We’ve…hooked up a few times.”

The stone in Tynan’s gut sank lower, helped on its journey by a savage resentment.

Caleb shot him a look before moving his dark gaze across to meet Nathan’s. “So I heard. But since Tynan was with her last night, maybe she’ll open up more to him.”

In a fucking pig’s ear
, Tynan wanted to say, but he nodded.

“Can’t think why there should be any link between Seth’s security concerns and what happened to Naomi,” Caleb mused, “but it won’t hurt to play it safe. Find out what you can about these two guys. Put a fucking tracker on them if you need to.”

Which basically confirmed what Tynan was already planning, which included putting a tracker on Naomi too.

“Maybe we need to make the Council aware of this.”

Tynan scowled over at Nathan. No way did he want Naomi’s sex life discussed among the Council of Principals, one of whom included her own grandfather. “Right now we need to protect Naomi, and that means keeping her private life private.”

“Protecting Naomi is what I have in mind, friend.” Nathan returned Tynan’s glare. “So get that stick out of your ass.”

“We’ll keep the Council out of it for now,” Caleb said. “But if we need to act on this further, I’ll have to call a meeting of the Principals. Just make sure you talk to Naomi tonight. And don’t take no for an answer.”

* * * * *

While lasagna heated in the microwave, Naomi tossed a green salad. Hanging out with Talia invariably left her feeling relaxed. In the relatively short time they’d known each other, they had become close. Naomi had provided a sounding board for Talia when she was going through the mill with Caleb, and someday soon Naomi knew she’d need to spill about her own past. Talia had once noticed the tension between her and Tynan, and fastened on to the fact there was history between them.

In true friend fashion, Talia hadn’t pushed, but Naomi had come close to telling her friend about her past. It might be good to have someone to talk to. The only people who knew about it were now dead: her parents and her aunt.

For the most part, she could put it all away and focus on her work. But there were times, unexpected and unguarded, when the reality of her loss hit her with full and devastating force. Lately, those times had been increasing.

Before she could slide into memories, the doorbell sounded. She hurried over to the intercom, a tad annoyed at the intrusion. Already in her T-shirt and sweats, she’d been intent on spending the remainder of the evening in front of the television.

“Hi. Got a minute?”

Tynan. What the hell was he doing here? About to tell him to get lost, Naomi hesitated. There was something in his tone. “Come on up.”

Her place was on the second floor of the small apartment block, which meant she didn’t have time to change or fancy herself up. She spent what little time she had plumping cushions and tidying magazines and papers.

He must have taken those stairs in record speed, because she jolted at the sharp tap on the door. Why in hell was her stomach jumping around like a box of frogs? And what the heck was wrong with her pulse?

With a steadying breath, she opened the door. He stood there, all big and masculine, looking tantalizingly good in a black corduroy jacket over a dark gray polo shirt, unbuttoned, and tailored jeans that fit snugly around his hips.

Her mouth watered with something other than the promise of lasagna cooking. Which made her an idiot.

“Come in.”

He smiled and walked past her, glancing around her living room. Since he’d never been here before, Naomi let him survey her place. It wasn’t as swanky as the large house he’d inherited from his parents on the outskirts of town, but she loved it.

The microwave pinged, and he glanced over to her small breakfast nook. “You’re about to have dinner?”

Naomi shrugged, then folded her arms across her chest. “It needs to cool a little. What did you want?”

He hesitated, screwing up his mouth in that way he had when faced with a dilemma. Strange that she should remember that about him. She also remembered that while he was powerfully built, deliciously fierce, he had a big gooey center that could bring her to her knees at the oddest of times. She remembered other things too. Which was why she intended to keep him so far beyond arm’s length, she would barely be able to see him. Then he couldn’t affect her. Then he would never need to know.

He glanced toward the nook again. “Why don’t you dish up? We can talk while you eat.”

“Considering the look on your face, and the way you’re acting, I get the feeling you might be about to ruin my appetite. Spit it out, Tynan.”

“It’s about those guys you were with last night.”

Guys?
He knows?

With her arms still crossed, she cocked her hip. There was no way in hell she was going to be forced into defending herself or her choices. “I told you. That was none of your business.”

“I’m making it my business.”

“Oh really? And why is that exactly?”

“I checked out those guys. Nathan and I—”

“Nathan? The two of you have been discussing my personal life?”

“Hard not to when you run out of a hotel room in the early hours half-naked.”

It was easier to simply ignore the realization that he had a point. “And why are you checking them out?” She huffed and threw her arms into the air. “You just can’t help yourself, can you? Interfering in people’s business. All that covert government agency shit has turned you into some ball-breaker who thinks he can stick his nose exactly where he sees fit.”

“Why don’t you sit the fuck down and listen.”

His sharp tone had her staring at him. Tynan rarely raised his voice. He didn’t need to. He commanded authority and respect simply because of the man he was. Nevertheless, she’d be damned if she was taking his bullshit.

“You don’t get to come into my home and talk to me that way.”

Tynan shook his head, then took matters into his own hands. He grabbed her arm and marched her over to the nearest of her two sofas, where he all but shoved her down. He knocked the wind out of her. That was the only reason she stayed put. At least that was what she told herself. She didn’t want to consider that there was a reason to be worried about the purpose of his visit.

While a chill rippled down her arms, she watched Tynan pacing back and forth in front of her. With his hands tucked in the back pockets of his jeans, shoulders hunched and chin down to his chest, she imagined him in full panther form. That first time—the only time—she’d seen him in his elemental state, he’d been magnificent. Back then he had just gone through his transition, yet he’d been a prime specimen among the young males.

Remembering, something sweet and incredibly painful trembled through her. Back then she’d thought—hoped—that they might have a future together. Which just went to prove how naïve she’d been. Believing in fairy tales and happy-ever-afters, she hadn’t yet had the chance to experience life at its cruelest.

Tynan came to a halt and towered over her. “Seth had a feeling something was off and asked me to check out his security. Seemed someone tried to breach his computer system. Not that they got anywhere.”

She just bet they didn’t, because Tynan had set up the system in the first place. He’d done the same for most large organizations in the area, having a reputation as the best. She wasn’t exactly sure what made him the best, but since he’d worked for the government—still did, if the rumors were to be believed—she would never be surprised if he employed less than legitimate means to keep everyone safe. She would also bet that if he hadn’t been the one responsible for Seth’s security, the hotel would be looking at a major breach right now.

“What has this got to do with the men I met last night? Do you think they had something to do with it?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“They said they were here on business.” She racked her brains, trying to remember the conversation she’d shared with them in the bar. “Merchandising, I think. Shops. That doesn’t sound like it would affect Seth in any way.”

“I’m just checking out all angles. Seth’s gut feelings are usually spot-on.”

A shifter’s surreal instincts were what helped keep the packs safe from discovery, and there’d been many a crisis averted due to that particular gift.

Tynan tapped the toe of his boot against the leg of the small coffee table. “I have to ask you this because I need to know, not to stick my nose in where it isn’t wanted, and not to make you feel uncomfortable.”

Despite his words, discomfort sat in her stomach. “Ask me what?”

He brought his gaze to hers. “Those men. How did you meet them? Did they pick you up, or…”

The implication was apparent in his eyes, shining dark and foreboding. “Or did I throw myself at them?”

Tynan’s lack of response made her blood heat. Why was it that her one time of being even remotely reckless had blown up and smacked her full in the face? This
feeling
of Seth’s couldn’t have come at a less opportune time. Now she had been pushed into the limelight, front and center of pack investigations regarding security issues.

She leaned forward, clasping her hands together. “I can’t see how what happened to me last night has anything to do with Seth’s security issues.”