Geek Chic (8 page)

Before their mother wasted away and died in front of her.

Before she had to grow up fast, quit college, and become not only a parent, but the family’s main source of income.

Now, she’d settle for getting to the point where she could relax and think about retiring in a few years from driving a bus, while she was still young enough to enjoy life. At least she had seniority and didn’t have to work a darn split shift anymore. She’d hated those. But if she retired, then she could go to work full time for Lara at the dress shop.

That was her true love. She enjoyed seeing the smiles on the girls’ faces when the twirled in front of the mirror and saw themselves as princesses. Didn’t matter if they were fifteen or fifty, the smile always lit up places deep inside Nami’s soul, places that normally felt sad and lonely.

What she did made people feel happy. Maybe it wasn’t running a soup kitchen or helping out in a hospice house, but it made people smile.

Yet, even all those thoughts today couldn’t erase the growing unease welling inside her.

She pulled into her usual parking spot on the outskirts of the lot where other drivers and store employees parked. After going to use the bathroom inside the store one last time, she walked over to stand and wait for her bus to arrive, which should be any minute.

Now if she could just get her mind back to normal—back to something
resembling
normal—and forget about the handsome stranger, life would be good.

* * * *

Alone, Beck sat at the Marion Transit Center downtown and waited, scanning every bus that arrived. So far nothing, but this was only his second day scoping out this location.

Day five of his hunt.

He’d hunt as long as it took to find her.

Dewi and Badger had gone off to handle some pack business today, taking Martin with them for introductions and backup. Ken had needed to stay behind at the house to take a conference call with Peyton and Trent about the network systems.

That meant he’d be lone-wolfing it today.

Not that he minded. Despite the deep ache in his soul, he was slowly starting to come to peace with the process of waiting. It hadn’t quite settled in yet that he might not find her. He didn’t want to go there.

Yet.

Not that he wanted to go there at all in his mind, but he’d be a pie-in-the-sky dumbass not to at least consider the possibility, no matter how much Ken swore upon the law of averages that the odds were in their favor.

It was a little after six in the morning, and despite the sun not being up yet, muggy heat already swirled off the bay and through the streets of downtown Tampa. Traffic hadn’t reached rush-hour levels yet, but it was just a matter of time. The air coated his skin, the exhaust from cars, the smells of the homeless stirring and moving before Tampa PD rousted them from their nightly perches…

But no N. Drexler. No light, delicate jasmine, like an olfactory spotlight in the darkness to his lupine nose.

No
mate
.

He took periodic walks throughout the center, making sure he checked every bus that arrived.

Nothing.

If Dewi hadn’t been with him when everything had occurred, he would have tried to talk himself into believing it hadn’t happened, that he’d been mistaken, that it’d been wishful thinking and an overactive imagination on his part.

But he couldn’t.

The mystery woman had become embedded under his skin.

In his soul.

In the old days, wolves frequently caught and marked their mates without a care as to what the mates thought about it at the time. In today’s age, that was called rape, and frowned upon even by the least civilized of wolf shifters. Beck had wanted to chastise Dewi for how she’d marked Ken, but when he saw how devoted Ken was to her, he didn’t have the heart to scold her.

Not that it would have done any good.

He knew the other risk lay not in N. Drexler being taken, but not wanting to be taken by
him
. He could not and would not in good conscious mark an unwilling mate, even knowing that by marking them, they’d come to want him, too.

He might be an Alpha wolf, but he was also a modern man. He wanted a mate who’d willingly submit to him. He was no asshole. He didn’t want someone he had to force into it.

Just like he’d known from their first night together that he and Dewi weren’t meant to be mates. Hell, from forever he’d known that.

But he’d hoped that, just maybe, she’d felt that way about him. He would have willingly let her mark him, become her mate.

How did he know he could eventually survive wishful thinking? Because for years he’d already lived it, knowing it was only a matter of time before Dewi found her true mate.

Knowing he likely would never find his true mate until after Dewi had, and he could finally cut the emotional cord for good.

And the Goddess had proven that, what, not even two months after Dewi found Ken. How many years, how many people had he come into contact with in his forty-nine years, and never, not
once
, had he scented a mate for himself?

Because he’d never looked, never wanted to know.

I blocked myself to the Universe with my damned wishful thinking.

He’d purchased himself an unlimited bus pass just in case he needed it. As he sat there he played with it, walking it through his fingers, not wanting to take out his phone and get caught up in his e-mail, to get distracted from his mission.

Why can’t anything ever be easy?

* * * *

Why can’t anything ever be easy?

Nami sat in traffic and drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. It was a little after seven, and rush hour traffic was in its full-blown misery. She was now running three minutes behind her normal schedule due to several accidents along her route.

Yet, even that logical cause didn’t settle her mind about her growing unease.

She knew from her years behind the wheel that she couldn’t do a dang thing about the traffic or the weather, two variables she’d long ago learned to keep her cool over.

Still, her nerves felt stretched, jangled.

On edge.

By the time she made it to the Marion Transit Center downtown for the first time, she felt like she’d had a bucket of caffeine dumped on top of really bad PMS and mixed with a sugar high. Like she could set fire to someone’s brain just by glaring at them long and hard enough. Normally she wouldn’t take a potty break that soon into her shift, but she knew if she didn’t she’d be in misery well before time for her to make her next one. So she pulled into the transit center and shifted into park, set the brake, switched her route sign to say Citrus Park, ripped off her seat belt, grabbed her purse, and beat the passengers off the bus as she raced into the building to the drivers’ lounge.

* * * *

Beck had worked his way down to the far northern end of the center and turned to make his way back south again. As he neared the southern end of the plaza he stopped, nose up and senses twitching.

Jasmine.

Ignoring the people grumbling at him for blocking their way, he stood there motionless, nostrils flaring as he sniffed, resisting the nearly overwhelming urge to shift so he could use his superior wolf sniffer.

That, however, would be a very
baaaad
idea for a whole library full of reasons.

Not the least being Dewi would kick his ass for it.

Feet moving again and nose in the air, he followed the scent as it grew stronger, until he reached a bus bearing an LED sign declaring it was the Citrus Park route.

It sat idling without a driver, but the scent of jasmine nearly overwhelmed him.

It was
her
.

His cock went hard, straining, his soul yearning to let out a howl of satisfaction that he’d finally,
finally
found her!

Well, her scent.

It took everything in his power not to shove his way through the short queue of passengers making their way onto the driverless bus. He got in line, happy to see that while the seat behind the driver wasn’t vacant, the one right next to the front door on the passenger side was. He’d be able to stare at her, watch her, never take his eyes off her again.

Okay, yeah, that sounded a lot creepier in my head than I’d meant it. I’ll make sure to
not
say that out loud.

He scanned his pass, took his seat, and closed his eyes as he deeply inhaled.

Mate.

His soul danced, gleeful. Even if a different driver returned to the bus, at least Beck knew he’d found proof of
her
, something that had been lacking for too damn long.

I owe Ken an apology for all the bad things I thought about him and this plan but didn’t say because I was afraid of Dewi kicking my ass.

* * * *

It was probably the fastest bathroom trip in the history of any driver, but Nami raced back to her bus, her mind on the time and well aware that if she didn’t pull that bus from the curb within the next ninety seconds, she’d start out the second leg of her daily shift running late again. The built-in time padding at each end of the route allowed the drivers an opportunity to hit the bathroom and to help make up for running late, but she didn’t want to push it.

She was glad to see there wasn’t anyone queued to get on the bus when she trotted herself up the stairs at a dead run, plopped into her seat, and fastened her seat belt. She let off the parking brake and shifted the bus into drive to pull out into traffic, glancing over her left shoulder as she cut the wheel hard to pull around the bus parked in front of her.

She eased out southbound onto Morgan Street to begin the return leg of her journey to Citrus Park. She hoped the rest of her day settled down and she could finally get back into her groove. Her nerves felt even more raw and shredded than they had before she’d taken her potty break.

When she pulled up to the light at Tyler to make the right-hand turn, it was only then that the passenger in the front seat behind the door caught her eye, shocking her so much her foot almost slipped off the brake pedal.

Mystery Hunk.

He flashed her a wide, toothy, wolfish smile that both terrified her and sent fluttering, frantic jolts of need and desire straight to her clit.

“Helloooo, N. Drexler,” he said. “You have
no
idea how happy I am to finally see you again.”

Chapter Eight

Beck was content to do nothing but sit there and stare at her while she drove. Her scent filled his nostrils, the jasmine, the faint hint of coffee.

She was
there
.
Right
there. He could reach out and
touch
her if he wanted to.

Well, except he was genuinely worried that she might accidentally wreck the bus and injure or kill people if he tried to reach out and touch her right now.

He turned sideways in his seat, with his back to the window and leg propped up along the bench seat, discouraging anyone from wanting to sit next to him. He wanted an unimpeded view of her.

No rings on her fingers. That wasn’t a sure sign, but it was a good start.

She glanced his way at every stop, every time she had to brake for a red light or intersection.

No screaming, no ordering him off her bus.

No calling the cops.

No radioing for help.

More positive signs.

When she pulled the bus into the parking lot at the Walmart in Citrus Park, she switched her sign and then tightly gripped the steering wheel after shifting into park and applying the parking brake.

She refused to look his way.

He edged over, to the end of the seat. “What does the N stand for?”

“Sir, if you are going to remain on the bus, you must pay another fare.” Her voice sounded shaky, terrified.

And tinged with more than a hint of need.

He pulled his pass out of his shirt pocket and leaned forward, scanning it, before sitting back in his seat with a smile. “I bought an unlimited ride card.”

“Oh.”

More people boarded the bus. He knew they only had a couple of minutes before she pulled out again, and he didn’t dare leave the bus for fear of her taking off without him, schedule or not.