Shifters of Grrr 1 (11 page)

It was Mr. M! He had shown up out of nowhere, and he looked furious. He advanced a step on the nearest insurance scam-man, who stood his ground at first.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. Stop accusing her of fraud, which, by the way, is ridiculous, and get the hell out. I don't want to see either of your faces around here again."

He took another step, his knuckles cracking as he made a fist.

"It's okay, they're just doing their jobs," she tried to say, but he ignored her.

"You don't have to act like a complete ass, like these two are, just to do their jobs. Now, why aren't you leaving?" he questioned, taking one more step until he was almost face to face with the other men.

After several tense moments, the two of them backed off, not willing to risk a confrontation over nothing. They exchanged glances with each other, then moved away, heading back to their vehicle. Jake turned to watch them go, his bulging arms crossed over his chest.
 

Once they were gone, she faced him, unsure of what to say. Her mouth was suddenly dry as their eyes met. The connection was electric, her body responding to him immediately. Her nipples hardened underneath her blouse, the nubs surely poking through to the point he could see them. As if that wasn't enough, warm, moist honey flooded her canal, preparing herself for him.

Harper could barely understand what was going on, but she knew that if this man wanted to take her, all he had to do was say so, and she was his. Whatever he wanted, she would do for him without question. It was scary the way he seemed to control her with his eyes.

Yet below all that, she sensed something else. Something beyond the sheer urge to let him fuck her brains out. Underneath that, disguised by the strength of it, was desire. Desire to love her, to protect her and give her the world as best he could. The sheer strength of that reached out and picked her up, engulfing her within its existence.

The entire moment was almost too beautiful to share. If she reached out, she felt as if she could practically see images of them together, like a slideshow of their life. Never again would she want for a companion, someone who could understand her, support her and push her to be the best she could. In this man, she would have it all, and more. All she had to do was reach out and take it. Reach out to this man whose name she didn't even know.

Just like that, the connection snapped, leaving them alone. The world seemed to grow around her, reassuming its large and scary proportions. The trees loomed tall, impressing on her that she was just a little cog in the wheel, a mote of nothingness compared to the size of the universe as a whole.

"What the fuck was that?" she exclaimed, stepping back from him in alarm. She was breathing heavy, trying to keep herself calm, even though every instinct told her to run.

"That," he gasped, also out of breath, his perfectly sculpted chest rising and falling rapidly, "was us connecting for real."

She looked at him blankly.

"Don't tell me you didn't feel anything the other night at the bar."
 

She wanted to deny it, but the truth was there for him to see in her eyes. He could see right through her if she tried to lie, so instead she said nothing. She studiously avoided making eye contact with him again, looking past him, or at the ground. Harper was scared at how easily he had broken past her walls with that first glance, and she was determined not to let it happen again.

"If you don't acknowledge the connection, it will drive you crazy Harper." He sounded so calm, so reasoned as he stood there, looking straight at her.
 

"I don't even know your name."

"My name is Jake Jefferies, I'm thirty-four, and I want to help you."

"I don't need any help!"

"Then you don't mind telling me why you were acting like a zombie the other night?"

He waited, but she didn't say anything, not trusting her voice. How did he know so much about her? It was as if he could read her like a book, even if he didn't know what the words on the page meant. Had it really been that obvious that something had happened?

She turned and began to walk along the path. If he truly wanted to talk to her, he would catch up. Harper Muller was not about to swoon over a man she didn't even know! Barely a half-dozen steps into her walk and he was there, walking next to her. To her irritation, her hand kept wanting to reach out and grab his.

The pressure of it was getting to be ridiculous as they walked. Every fiber of her being called out to him, begging for his comfort and touch. She wasn't sure how much longer she could ignore the call either.

"So, what did happen?" he asked softly as they came upon another section of former campsites that were now nothing but burnt ash and crumbling trees.

"This happened."

"What do you mean?" He looked around, confused for a moment. Then it dawned on him what she had been doing there, with the other men, and why she had looked so distraught the other day.

"This is yours. You own it," he said breathlessly, looking at the destruction around them with a completely different understanding.

"Was."

"Pardon?"

"It was mine. But now those scumbags of insurance providers are practically refusing any sort of payout, at least in the amounts that would be necessary to rebuild."
 

Now, finally, the tears did fall. Sobs wracked her body, taking full control to the point that she didn't even react when he put his arms around her. Resting her head against his firm chest, she cried for an unknown amount of time. Jake stood there the entire time, unmoving, simply holding her tight, as an indication that there were still some things worth living for.

She snorted in amusement at that. It would be just like whoever controlled fate to send someone like this along to her just as she was facing the worst crisis of her life. Now not only did she have to deal with putting her work life back on track, but she had to deal with a man who seemed absolutely perfect for her, even though she didn't know a damn thing about him!

Feeling somewhat relieved now that she had washed some of the stress away, she stood up straight.

"I'm sorry about your shirt," she mumbled, embarrassed at the amount of wetness her tears had soaked into it.

"It's just a shirt, it'll be okay."
 

He still held her hand, providing a sense of comfort and strength that she so desperately needed to lean upon now. They started to walk again. This time she did hold his hand, even leaning her head against his shoulder from time to time as well.
 

"So Jake, I don't recognize you, which means you're new to Moonshine. What brings you here?"

"Well, I was actually just passing through. I'm on a, uh, road trip, of sorts, with my brothers. It's a cross-country type of thing."
 

He sounded embarrassed as he clumsily avoided telling her the whole truth. She assumed it had something to do with women or some such, and let it pass. Men had the strangest rites of passage she thought, rolling her eyes internally, but Harper was willing to accept that answer for the time being.

"Oh, okay, sure thing. I completely understand." She arched a sarcastic eyebrow at him, letting him know that she wasn't completely fooled by the answer and that he would owe her the full truth at some point.

A grin split his face as he looked down at her. She practically melted in response, her knees going weak as he gave a genuine belly laugh. It was good to see him so happy she realized.
 

God, what the hell kind of connection IS this?

Harper was nervous about the way each other's emotions seemed to be more easily readable than with her normal friends. In fact, she also seemed to be affected by them. She felt his happiness as much as she saw it in his face. Like before, the wonder of it scared her. It would be all too easy to just fall into him and surrender control. She smiled though, unable to deny the contagiousness of his mood.

As they paused in their walk, she looked around. They were now where the Fire Marshall had told her it all started. Campsite Fourteen, or what was left of it, was laid out in front of her. She sighed, looking over the destruction again, wondering just how in the hell she was going to come up with the money this time.

She wanted to tell him, to show him how all of this, had been started right here. How some absolute moron had ruined everything, and that the only good that had come of it seemed to be him.

But Jake shattered the illusion before she could.

"Well, will you look at that!" He exclaimed excitedly, stepping forward to grab something from the ashes.
 

"Look at what? All I see is ash."

"This was a Christmas decoration one of my, ah, brothers, hung up as a joke at our campsite." He held up a melted blue-colored ornament. "How it survived the fire I'll never know."

Harper was quiet for a moment, trying to process this new information.

"You. You were staying here?" She said dangerously. Jake picked up on her mood but obviously didn't understand why she was so suddenly pissed. He looked at her cautiously before responding.

"Yes, we came in the day of the fire. Barely had a chance to set things up and get the bonfire going before we needed food. Then when we came back, it was burning. Why are you looking at me like that Harper?"

A million different responses ran through her brain in the fraction of a second after his words registered. Instead, she remained paralyzed as anger warred with reason. The entire reason for this fire was standing right in front of her. The buffoon had burnt her entire life to the ground because he needed
food?!
 

She wanted to scream at him, berate him for what he had done to her. That because of his carelessness, she was out of not just a job, but a passion, something she had built from the ground up. Because of him, twelve people had been taken to the hospital with serious smoke inhalation. His inability to follow the rules had nearly seen a firefighter killed when a tree collapsed on him while he fought the fire. Only the fact it was charred and full of ash had prevented any injury as it fell apart over him.
 

She wanted to tell him all of this, to scream it at him and vent her anger at the situation. Despite all of her wants and needs, however, reason prevailed through, telling her it was pointless, that he was just another idiot male who wouldn't understand. It seemed impossible to believe that they might have shared a bond, for how could someone who cared about her, do something like this?
 

"I don't have words right now. But, thank you for all your fucking help," she said sarcastically before storming off towards her car.
 

Thankfully, he didn't follow her. She could sense his shock and surprise for some time though, until she rounded a bend and he faded from sight. That, she told herself, would be the last time she saw him, or thought of him.

That evening, when his phantom touch tried to reach out to her in the shower, she angrily slapped it away. As she tossed and turned, not getting any sleep, she cursed his name again and again.

***

Jake

"Thank you for all your fucking help."

Jake stood there, rooted to the spot as his mate stormed away. His senses were assaulted by the rage pouring off of her. It washed over him in a wave, the strength of it pounding him near senseless. It was so strong his leg weakened and he almost dropped to one knee.
 

He had never before known such anger and emotion from another person. Shifters had a faint connection to their parents, but it was so mild as to be nearly nonexistent. As Jake was finding out, that was far from the truth with a mate. Even after she disappeared from sight, he was bombarded by her ire.

What the hell did I do?

It had something to do with him, or the campsite, or perhaps Christmas. What any of those had done to make her suddenly hate him was beyond him. It just didn't make any sense. He had felt her starting to come around, to accept that something was going on between them.
 

She still didn't know him, nor he her, but that didn't matter if both of them accepted what was happening. They would have spent the next weeks and months learning everything there was as they prepared to live a life together. Now she had done her best to cut herself off from him.

There hadn't been words associated with it, but he'd felt it when she decided she never wanted to see him again. It had hurt.
 

Now, alone, his own anger flowed.

"What the hell!" he shouted into the emptiness, trying to understand. It seemed that despite the shifter connection they shared, this woman was still as confusing to him as one must be to a regular human. He kicked a burnt out tree in his rage, the husk of it shattering as it crumbled to the ground under his blow.
 

"Is there a problem here, son?"
 

He jumped at the sound. It took a lot for someone to sneak up on a shifter, and yet this man was leaning out the window of his truck, which he had managed to drive up the road without Jake noticing. That just went to show how confused and angry he was at the situation, that he was becoming unaware of his surroundings.