Shapeshifter Romance: Duty of a Lion (Paranormal Army Hero Navy Seal Shifter Protector Alpha Lion Romance) (Fantasy Military Action Adventure Urban Wolf Romance Short Stories) (23 page)

He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I have something to show you.”

“Okay, but do you think we can work this out?”

“Let me show you what I have to show you, then we’ll talk.”

He led her outside. He sat her down on the porch step.

“Go ahead,” she said, not sure she was ready, but if she was able to accept it, she could be with Tim.

“I have a secret. That’s not what holds me back from being in the corporate world. I can’t be around people unless I am with my mate.”

“Your mate?”

Sounded like animals, not humans.

“Just wait.”

He stood there in the clearing. Then she noticed his eyes changed. Then his hair grew. All over.  A few minutes later, a full grown male bear stood in front of her. He went down on all fours, but didn’t approach her.

If she hadn’t seen it herself, she never would have believed it. She didn’t feel any fear. Just curiosity. So she approached him. He put down his head. She scratched behind his ears and he let out a low rumble. The same sound he made when she kissed him.

Holy shit. She was in love with a bear. She lifted his head so he was looking at her. “Change back.”

Then before her eyes, he did change back. There Tim was standing in front of her. The look in his eyes was fear. He was probably afraid that she was going to reject him.

Instead, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. He growled then took her into his arms. He broke the kiss then buried his face into her neck.

“You don’t have to memorize my scent. I’m coming back,” she said.

*****

She was coming back? Had Tim heard Simone properly?

He let go a little to look at her. “You’re coming back?”

“If you can’t come to my world I’ll come back to yours.”

“I choose not to be in your world. Not without you.”

“We could run the company together.”

The idea took away his breath. He could run the company with Simone by his side. Did he want to give up his paradise?

“The commute might be tough, but we could use the corporate helicopter.”

“You have one?” he said.

“Yes, Tim. We have one. There’s an airport not that far away. Even if we didn’t come home here every night, we could come here on weekends.”

He blinked. She was making plans? “But Simone, your life is there. You must have friends and go to the theatre and all of those city things.”

She shrugged. “None of those things seem important right now.”

“I can’t ask you to give up your life.”

“You aren’t. I’m offering.”

He stepped away from her. One of them had to be rational. “No. I won’t let you.”

She stepped closer to him, poking his chest. “You aren’t letting me do anything. I’m choosing to. Just because you are a bear doesn’t mean that you rule me.”

He laughed. He doubted that he’d ever rule her. “I love you Simone. I have from the moment I met you.”

She smiled. “I love you, too Tim, but we have to go save a company.”

“You don’t mind that I’m a bear?”

“No, silly. Just don’t shed in the house.”

He laughed. He threw back his head then laughed very loudly. Some birds flew away.

“Why is that funny?” she said.

“Because I figured that you would never stay here and be my mate.”

“I’m not staying. We’re staying. We’re going to be together. Isn’t that what you need?”

“Yes, I do, Simone.”

He stepped closer, the beast in his eyes. “Do we have time?”

“For another?” She frowned. “No, we need to get there today so you can claim the company.”

“Do I have time to shave?”

She put a hand on his face. “Don’t. I like you all furry.”

He laughed then growled before kissing her. When he’d stepped out of the woods yesterday he’d had no idea that he was going to find his future.

They showered, then he’d dressed in a suit that he never thought he’d wear again. He’d have to give notice at the ranger station, but this house was his so he didn’t have to move. Simone was waiting for him by the front door. She was once again dressed in business attire.

“I’ll have to stop at my apartment to change.”

“Whatever you need.” He took her hand, brought it to his mouth then kissed it. “You’re mine Simone and I’m not letting go.”

She smiled up at him, her eyes sparkling. “Good, because you’re mine Tim.”

THE END

Bonus Story 5 of 10

Here’s what you most need to know most about Alexandria Bill: She hated New York City.

While most people were trying to get into New York, she was trying to get out. She’d grown up there, in the borough of Brooklyn, and had come to resent the concrete jungle, the towering peaks of buildings along the horizon, the rats that came out at night and scurried along the garbage bags stacked up on the curb.  She’d been trapped in a maze of sidewalks her whole life, but what she really yearned for were trees. Trees and grass and little creeks that made their way through meandering woods.

Ever since she was a young girl, she’d been collecting pictures of this other world she coveted. Her favorite section of the New York Times was the Sunday travel section and she’d cut out her favorite pictures of green paradises from all over Europe and the United States.  By the time she was ten, she’d selected Bavaria in Germany and Yellowstone National Park as the two top spots on her wish list.

To her father, there was no other place beyond New York.  He came from a long line of people who had spent their whole lives there, who had worked and breathed and lived and died in New York and it was unimaginable to them that anyone would want to live anywhere else.  To the Bill family, the city was the epicenter of the Universe and they knew its history and its neighborhoods and its nooks and crannies like the rest of the New Yorkers who believed the city belonged to them.

She had lived her whole life at 17 Quackenbush Avenue in Brooklyn, three doors down from her grandparents and two streets west of her cousins.  Her mother had left when Alex was two and her father had raised her alone.  His parents had bought them the house on Quackenbush and they’d become a tight family, sharing Sunday dinners, existing between the family homes spread out in the old Brooklyn neighborhood.  Her grandparents regarded raising a family as a communal process, something that was the responsibility of everyone that shared their DNA.

The only person who knew her secret dreams was her grandfather.  He’d taken her upstate twice when she was growing up----once to a state park that had a giant waterfall accessed by a long, winding trail and another time they’d stayed overnight in the hills of the Catskill Mountains. She’d looked at the ancient woods as a city all in itself, with its own towering structures and its own sounds, but it was a place of peace. She hadn’t missed the noise of the never-ending traffic and the bustle of people moving when she was in the woods, but had instead reveled in the solitude of the place. The silence seemed to be a sound all in itself.

Her father had been a doorman for most of his adult life.  The posh West Side apartment where he worked was a little world unto itself and he knew everything about the people who lived there.  He knew their names, their pet’s names and their children’s names. He knew who was divorcing whom, who was having an affair, and where they worked and what they were having for dinner. 

He’d never dreamed of doing anything else.  He felt like he was plugged into the heart of the city working there, as if he were connected to its soul with an electric cord.

Alex wanted nothing to do with it.

She thought the real movers and shakers in New York were the ones who made it sparkle.  Everyone else merely existed to keep those people happy, and her father was one of those people.  She thought he was lost in his own little dream, believing he was part of something bigger and greater than what it actually was. 

She had no intention of servicing other people for the rest of her life.  She wanted to move out west, live in a pretty little town somewhere and understand what it meant to be free in an expanse of endless open land.  The Big Apple was for big dreamers and her dreams were simple.

She had graduated Magna Cum Laude from City College two years before and was almost finished with her master’s degree in teaching.  As soon as her last grade was posted, she planned to apply for teaching positions in high schools throughout America’s west.  She had bid her time, had slowly and meticulously planned the rest of her life, often in secret.

The only thing that gave her pause about this plan was her father.  He loved her more than the Upper West Side apartment where he worked, which was saying a lot.   She was proof of something to him---proof that he was a capable man who could raise a daughter single handedly and raise her well.  The fact that she even existed made him proud and he fawned over her the same way he fawned over the people he served in the apartments.

“Alex!” he had said through the years when she’d described her vagabond dreams to him. “There are trees in Central Park.  There are trees and squirrels and rocks and ponds.  Why would you need to go anywhere else?”

Her dreams were an aberration to him, something he couldn’t even begin to understand and he wondered what wayward gene had been bestowed upon his daughter that caused her to dream of fleeing New York.

“My God Alex!” he’d say.  “Everything everyone could possibly want exists right here in your own backyard!  What else is there?”

His daughter was book smart, but her brain had somehow talked her into ignoring the fact that she was beautiful.  She was nearly six-feet tall, with blonde, flowing hair that reached her shoulders in gentle curls.  She had wide green eyes and a sculptured, classic face and even with her glasses on, she was every bit as beautiful as the models who lived in the infamous apartment building where he worked every day.

The irony was that she didn’t know it.

She glided down the streets of New York like a wandering cloud, as if she wasn’t sure where she was going, always oblivious to the glances of men and the envious stares of women.  Her clothes were plain and her eyes were always cast downward, but still her beauty shone through the cloud that seemed to follow her.

He didn’t think she’d ever leave him.  He didn’t think she had the strength to go off on her own.

*****

When the fall had come and gone and Alex still hadn’t heard from any of the schools she’d applied to, she decided she would have to come up with Plan B.

Alex wasn’t used to having a Plan B.  Her plan A’s had always come to fruition.  She never found it difficult to set a goal and forge her way there---sometimes rather effortlessly.

She still kept in touch with her mother although she didn’t visit as regularly as she once did. She lived in San Francisco, having headed west she’d met another man and moved west.  The details of the story remained frozen in time at the behest of her father, but she knew her mother had fallen in love with someone else who turned out to be a very wealthy man.

Her parents had married when they were young and “before we knew who we really were,” her mother had told her.  She had wanted Alex to join her in California once she got settled with her new husband but her father would not hear of it.  As the years went on, Alex was glad that she’d stayed in New York.  Her mother was now mothering a stepchild part time and it was confusing for her to see her mother nurturing another child when she’d missed out on so much of it.

They lived a different life than Alex and her father did.  They were part of the cocktail set and they owned a boat and a private company plane and there was a private school for their son Thomas.  Alex wasn’t comfortable there, and as time went on, she spent less and less time with her mother in the summers.  She explained to her that she had friends and activities now that kept her in New York and although her mother seemed sad about the circumstances, she eventually relented and let her have her way.

The phone rang one day while she was scouring the Internet for teaching positions and she was happy to hear her mother on the other end of the phone.  They talked for a while about what Alex was doing and how she hadn’t had much luck finding a job.

“Well, that’s why I’m calling,” she said, her New York accent still evident in her voice.

Her husband Tom was grooming his son Tom Jr. to take over his wine distribution business. He’d been working for his father for two years now and his assistant had just quit to get married.

“You are perfect for this job, Alex,” she said.  “You are certainly bright enough and you have a lovely presence.”

“But I’m a teacher,” Alex said.  “My experience is with children in the classroom.”

“You may only want to do this for a year,” her mother said. “But it involves travel.  You’d get to see the world, sweetheart.  That’s something you want to do when you’re young. You can teach until you’re old and grey.”

Her mother explained the role Alex would be taking.  Assistants, she said, did a lot of the travel planning, event and meeting planning—and some grunt work, like getting coffee and bringing in meals.

“And it pays $80,000 to start,” she said.  “Plus bonuses.”

Alex stammered for a minute.  $80,000 a year, she thought? And travel! It all sounded too good to be true, but she’d never been fond of her stepbrother. There was, of course, a lot of jealousy between them and Alex had always thought of him as a spoiled brat.

“It’s an exciting job,” her mother said.

Alex knew her mother was offering this to her to help her broaden her horizons.  She’d always wanted more for Alex than Alex had wanted for herself.

“I’m just worried about Thomas,” Alex said. “It’s not like we’ve ever been the best of friends.”

“Thomas has changed,” her mother said. “He’s an adult now.  He’s not going to give you any trouble.  I think given the chance, the two of you will get along very well.”

It was one of those synchronistic events that never happened to Alexander Bill.  There was no question in Alex’s mind that she’d be accepting the job.  This was her chance to leave New York for a while, to explore the world beyond Brooklyn.  She was having dinner with her father and her grandparents’ house that night and she’d broach it with them then.  She knew it would be a battle, but she was determined.

“Thomas Cooke?” her grandfather said.  “That’s your mother’s husband’s business!”  Why aren’t they looking for a candidate with a business degree? You’re a teacher!”

“They’re looking for someone intelligent,” Alex said, blushing a bit. “They need an assistant.  A lot of the work is mundane.  How smart do you have to be to get someone coffee?”

“Then it’s beneath you,” her father said, with an indignant tone in his voice.

“Now just a minute,” her grandmother said, putting her fork down on her plate with a loud thud. “This sounds like an incredible opportunity and we all need to stop yakking and listen to Alex.  What young girl doesn’t want to see the world?”

“Yeah, and it pays more than $80,000 a year to start,” Alex told them, somewhat hesitantly.

The room became silent.  That’s more than anyone in the room had made as a yearly salary their entire lives.

“Oh, lord,” her grandfather said.  “How can our Alex say no? This sounds like it could be something good.”

Alex’s father looked lost.  He stared down at his plate with a look of sadness on his face.

“You always knew this coming,” her grandmother told him. “You can’t keep Alex in a cage. She needs to go and find out who she is.”

*****

Two weeks later, Alex was on her way to a private airport on Long Island to catch a private plane to France.  She’d be meeting Thomas Jr. in Paris.

Her father had hired his own private car to take her to the airport, and they’d all crawled in---her grandparents and her father and one younger cousin, too, who didn’t want to miss the chance to see inside his first private jet.

Her father held her hand all the way there.  He was miserable to think she was finally leaving the nest, but he was proud of his little girl.  He’d even started bragging about her over at the apartment building.

When they arrived, her grandfather took her aside. 

“We love you,” he said. “If you need us, you know where we live.  You can come home.  And don’t ever compromise who you are,” he said. “Stay true to yourself.”

The airport manager showed her to her plane and her father asked if they could get on board and say goodbye to her there.

Alex was a bit embarrassed when they all got on the jet, inspecting every inch, completely in awe.  Most of her relatives had never left the United States, not to mention being escorted onto a private jet to France.

“Break a leg, kid,” her father said when he left, looking a little teary.  He hugged her for a minute too long when he said goodbye.

They stood and waved from the parking lot as the plane took off to head northeast into the clouds to France. Alex could see the towering skyline of New York in the distance and she was surprised to find she, too, was a little teary.  She had waited her whole life to leave and now that the time had come, she realized she was saying goodbye to the first chapter of her life. 

It is one thing to want to grow up and another thing entirely to do it.

She’d studied Thomas Cooke’s company like an encyclopedia in the weeks before she left and had begun to form a better idea of who he was and what he did. Besides the wine distribution business, they were importers of goods from dozens of countries overseas.  They had subsidiaries around the world and Alex took out her notes to study them again.  She wanted to present herself as ready to work from the moment she got there.

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean she was served lunch, and after that she slept.  She was awoken just before the plane was due to make a landing in Paris.