SwitchBack: A Paranormal Werewolf Romance (Knightsbridge Canyon Series Book 1) (7 page)

“Hey! I like your bag,” a voice called out behind me.

“Why don’t you hand it over,” another voice beside me said.

“If you do, maybe we’ll let you walk away and keep that pretty face of yours.”

My heart skipped a beat and I looked up and around, realizing that in my self-righteous anger, I’d walked right into a herd of biker chicks or something. At least, they had a lot of leather and piercings and ink.

“You know, my twin sister’s a lesbian,” I said, trying to distract them as I slid away from the phalanx they were creating around me.

“Hey, Arnott. I think she just called you a lesbian,” one of the hard-faced girls spoke up.

“No, she didn’t. She said your sister is a lesbian,” said another.

“I already know that. Although what that has to do with giving me her bag, I got no clue,” the more well-spoken leader said. “So, why don’t you just hand me that purse and we can all go on our merry way?” The circle began to close.

Oh no, this was not going to happen. I looked at the sky and thought about trying to shift. If the moon was up at all I might be able to induce the change, though most times I no more wanted it than the average girl craved a visit from Aunt Rosie Flow.

“And why don’t you take your big old ass…” I began, but didn’t get any further, as suddenly the sound of a Chevy V-8 roared up behind me and Will threw open the door, scattering the crowd.

“Get in, Ash,” Will yelled and he grabbed for me as I leaped into the truck.

“Ow. Ow. Ow.” I yelped as my butt slid across the seat and I could feel skin and stitches tear. “Get me to a hospital.” 

“I’ll do better than that.” He said something vulgar. “I’m taking you to my sister.” His hands gripped the wheel and he put the pedal to the metal.

Will’s big sister Samantha “Sam” Stenfield was a nurse practitioner at Knightsbridge Hospital and worked the swing shift. Used to work graveyard, but when she got the chance she changed to evenings. Too many crazies on nights, she’d said. About ten years older than Will and I, but she looked at least a decade beyond that. I guess that’s what the ER will do to you, but she had a good bedside manner and didn’t even blink when Will rushed me over.

“Oh, hi, Ashlee. Nice to see you again,” she said matter-of-factly. “Strip and let’s see what we’ve got.”

“Get him out of here first,” I told her.

“Will.” She gave him that older-sister-to-younger-brother look and he retreated behind the curtain she’d pulled in front of his face.

I dropped trou and laid face down on the examination bed. I was so humiliated.

“So, you want to tell me what happened?”

“Not really,” I said. “Oh, you mean with my bullet wound. I mean, it was a staph infection. Hunting. A ricochet. The bullet wound got infected,” I amended.

She scowled. “Doctors these days. Better safe than sorry, they say. So let’s just get a surgeon in for a consult, they say. And surgeons love to cut stuff anyway. When you got a hammer, everything looks like a goddamn nail.”

I winced and then bit my lip as Will’s sister went on her rant. I was so not going to complain. It was my fault anyway I was in this predicament, I figured. I may be from here, but it wasn’t my Knightsbridge anymore.

“Well, you may have set yourself back a few days, but I’ve cleaned the wound and used a little skin seal instead of stitches. What do they got you doin’ for wound care?”

“Oh, you know. Bleach baths and fresh dressing.”

“Well. Keep it up. Looks like you’ve got a week or so to go, then you’re out of the woods, but I’d continue the bleach baths until the wound is totally closed. Make sure that all the bacteria stays dead.”

“Can I come in now?” Will asked.

“No,” I warned him.

“Hey Will. Give me your sweatshirt,” Sam called, and he handed it to her through the gap. She turned it inside out as it still had a few grass stains.

“Here. Step into this and wrap it around your waist. I’ll put your sweat pants in a bag. There’s bloodstains on them,” she said. “And Will, you take her straight home, you hear? Are you good on pain medication?”

I nodded. “I’m good.”

“Cool.” She let me get quasi-presentable before she pulled the curtain open and let in her brother.

“Good seeing you again, Ash. Take care of yourself,” she said, as if I came in every Friday. Hadn’t seen me in years.

Nurses. Can’t faze ’em.

I let Will bundle me off to the truck and back to Amber’s doorstep. “I’ll call you tomorrow. See how you’re doing,” he promised. Then he drove away.

I kind of hoped he would and I kind of hoped he wouldn’t. I sighed as I let myself in the door and slipped upstairs while the rest of the house slept. I was not going to tell this to my sister. No way, no how, I thought as I brushed my teeth and went straight to bed.

“Ashlee. Why haven’t you called Will back?”

“I dunno,” I mumbled. I so did not want to get into this with my sister.

“You know, you can’t run away from all of your problems,” she said. “Whatever it is, you’re going to have to face it sooner or later. Preferably sooner, ’cause I’m getting sick of making excuses for you.”

“I never asked you to make excuses for me.” I rounded on her. “So, why don’t you mind your own damn business?” Okay, I must be going crazy, because you do not take that tone with Amber.

“As long as you’re under my roof, it IS my damn business,” she said. “You know, sometimes you are so ungrateful.” She was right, but I was mad, and when I had my mad on, my stupid mouth got the best of me.

“Fine. I’m an ungrateful bitch. You hate me. This town hates me and now, probably Will hates me too!” I wailed and I broke down and began to cry.

My sister stared at me like I’d grown another head. I never cried. I was the tomboy. I was the scrapper. I was…I was, I was a big ol’ mess.

My sister sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at me with concern. J.R. and Elle both poked their heads into the room and she waved them away.

“So…do you want to talk about it?”

“Do I look like I want to talk about it?” I sobbed.

Amber patted my foot through the down comforter. She was not making this easy on me.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I promised. “Right now, I’d just like to sleep a little.”

Amber looked at me with kindness and brushed my hair from off my face. Then, she kissed my forehead like Mom used to do and I about lost it. That is, until she said, “Tomorrow, we’ll go get mani-pedis. Just the two of us.”

As if that would make it all better. I laughed between sobs as she shut the door.

I was such a schizoid.

“Ashlee Marie Scott!” Mom’s voice came out of the woodwork and her disembodied head floated into the room.

Oh, dear mother of God
,
I thought. Now I’d done it. It wasn’t enough to be humiliated and have a nervous breakdown in front of my identical twin, but now Mother had to get involved and I knew that she wasn’t going to be put off so easily.

“Stop that sniveling at once,” my dead mother said as she halfway materialized into the room.

I say halfway, because the lower half of her body seemed to be having trouble catching up to the rest and was banging its shins against the door. She whistled and her stocking feet finally found their home. “There. That’s better. Now what’s this all about, young lady?” she intoned and sat down into the bed.

I would have said “on the bed” but it seemed like holding a visual pattern of molecules against the solidity of the real world was a process she hadn’t fully mastered.

I opened my mouth, but before I spoke, she plucked the thought from my mind.

“So, Will’s in love with you.”

I growled, “I really hate it when you do that.”

Mom ignored my outburst. “So, why does that bother you?” she asked.

I knew she was referring to Will, but I deliberately called up a brick wall in my head and said, “Because my thoughts should be my own and I’d like to think that there’s such a thing as respecting my privacy.” If I wouldn’t let her read my diary when she was alive, I was sure as hell not going to give her the opportunity to read my mind after she was dead.

“Talk to me, Ashlee,” she said. “You know I’m not very good at this.”

“Yeah, well that makes two of us.”

“So, why does Will loving you bother you so?” she badgered me.

I sighed and threw the covers over my head. “Because I don’t even know how I feel! How can he say he still loves me after how many years has it been now?”

“I don’t know how to answer that, Ash. Time doesn’t work the same for me as it does for you.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, suddenly curious. I was always trying to trick Mother into telling me what’s on the other side, but she usually saw through my subterfuges.

“Hmm. How can I say it?” Her eyes closed and her head got denser, and the rest of her tea-length gown went diaphanous as if all her energy was centered in her noggin as she thought long and hard about what she could or would say.

“I know.” She opened her eyes and the color washed out of her cranium and she got all ghostly again. “See. Time is a continuum, a mental construct created for physical bodies. As I no longer have the same type of physical body that you do and am not bound by time, I see you as a complete entity. You are all ages at once to me. Maybe Will sees you the same way. You’re still the girl he fell in love with in high school, and even more so now.”

“But people change,” I told her.

“Not as much as you would think.”

“I’m not sure if that makes me feel bad or good.”

“Then don’t let it make you feel either,” she said. “Feel what
you
decide to feel. Will loves the Ashlee Scott you were and there’s something in him, that metaphysical something that is timeless, which loves the Ashlee that you are today.”

“But I’m a werewolf, Mother,” I let out in exasperation.

“Only temporarily, dear.”

“You mean there’s a cure?” I said, sitting up so quickly I got a little dizzy from the meds.

“No, I mean, temporarily the rest of your life.”

“Oh.” What a letdown.

I heard a scratching at the door. Mom turned to look. “That would be Spanky,” I said.

“I know that.” Mother waved her hand and the door cracked open to let him in. The dog sat at the foot of the bed, looked up at her, and cocked his head.

“He can see you, can’t he?” I said, amazed. Even Amber couldn’t see our mother.

Mom looked at me before I could get my mental shield up, and we both said what I was thinking. “Must be a dog thing.” We laughed as Spanky pawed at the bed. I lifted him up and he curled into my arms and suddenly I got really, really tired.

“Can we talk later?” I asked, and Mother nodded. Spanky and I drifted off to sleep as she floated slowly away.

“Hey! Hey! HEY! HEY!” My sister called from the living room as I swore at my outdated computer with the sticking H key. “I hope that’s your own laptop you’re abusing and not mine this time!”

“Yes, it’s mine. And my scumbag of an editor has reassigned my upcoming trip to Cancun. He’s giving it to one of his golfing buddies who’s been twisting his arm to do the western Caribbean. Listen to this. ‘Considering your current physical challenges, we’re concerned about your ability to fulfill your obligations at this time.’ That shithead word pimp.”

“Ashlee. Language,” my sister complained as she passed my doorway putting fresh linens into the guest bathroom.

“Is J.R. home?”

“It doesn’t matter if J.R.’s home or not. We don’t talk that way in this house,” she said, obviously forgetting the F-bombs she had dropped the other night in between cosmos with Sheri and Renee. My sister has an inflated sense of propriety until she’s had a few and then she can swear like a sailor.

“Sorry. But, if it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t even have that assignment. I brought that contact with me and now he’s going to try to pull it right out from under my bullet-ridden ass! I don’t think so!” I shot off an email to my contact in Cancun. “Let’s see him try to fu-, I mean, screw with me,” I snarled.

“You’re such a lady, Ash,” my sister remarked. “And could you please remember to rinse and wipe the tub after you bathe. We have hard water here and it’s not easy to get the stains out once they’ve set in.”

“I thought I did,” I said, looking up at my perky-nosed sis from where I lay.

She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me.

 “Obviously not well enough,” I said as she went back down the hall and into her bedroom. “You know, the way you run this house, I’m surprised you don’t ask for military corners on all the beds,” I muttered.

“I heard that!” Her voice floated back toward me.

“Bite me.”

“I heard that, too!”

“Love you.”

This time, nothing. Yeah, sure. See? Selective hearing.

I got up and ran myself a bleach bath, then peeled out of my clothes and stared at myself in the mirror. Like my sister I bordered on petite, but I was much more athletic and she hung somewhere around model thin. I’d gotten soft not being able to work out and I was determined that within the next week, I was going to actively pursue some kind of toning regimen.

I turned around and tore off the bandage, wincing as the tape peeled another layer of skin. The wound, which started larger than an everlasting gobstopper, had finally shrunk to the size of a quarter and filled in quite nicely. There was still discoloration and would probably be a slight scar, but surprisingly, it wouldn’t be unsightly. Not that anyone that mattered had seen my ass lately.

Which made me think about Will.

I stepped into the bath and settled in, taking the latest Nora Roberts with me. I loved to read in the tub and since baths instead of showers were now a regular part of my routine, it gave me time to catch up.