Temptation: Reckless Desires (Blue Moon Saloon Book 2) (16 page)

“Hello?” Janna called.

“We’re out front,” Jess called.

Janna dragged him past the enticing scent of the muffins to the airy front room of the café, where everyone was gathered. Jess brushed the crumbs off Simon’s face, looking ridiculously happy. Tina Hawthorne was there, too, with her mate, Rick Rivera, the wolf shifter who owned the property adjoining Twin Moon Ranch.

“Ready to start work soon?” Rick asked as Cole shook his hand. Rick, his new boss, because Cole had scored the perfect job at Seymour Ranch. “We’re desperate for help with those new bulls we got in.”

Cole grinned. He’d been by Seymour Ranch to teach Rick’s ranch hands how to handle the new stock and had immediately been offered a job. The new cattle could turn great profits as organic beef, but they’d been causing the ranch hands hell ever since they’d arrived.

“Can’t wait,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.

It was true. He couldn’t wait to start. His month of settling into his new skin was almost up, and it was time to earn an honest wage again. He’d been helping Rosalind transition to a new stable hand. Two, in fact — a very capable, very eager brother-sister team who hailed from a wolf pack up in Colorado. Not that Rosalind knew about the wolf part.

The only aspect of the new setup he didn’t like would be the hours of separation from Janna, but they’d get through that, too.

“Okay, everybody. Here we go,” Jessica cleared her throat and handed him a champagne flute. “To the Quarter Moon Café.”

Everyone raised their glasses and watched Jessica’s eyes shine at the idea of a dream come true. It was exactly the same way Janna’s eyes shone at him — and probably the way his eyes glowed right back at his mate.

“To the Quarter Moon Café,” everyone echoed with a hearty cheer.

“To a great manager.” Tina nodded to Jess.

“To lots more muffins,” Simon added.

“To more working hours,” Janna chimed in, wearing a wry smile. Other than worrying about Victor Whyte, the rogue leader who’d slipped away, the only thing the Blue Moon clan had to fret about was finding enough help to run both the saloon and the café.

Tina pinched her lips together. “I found someone to help here all next week. After that… Well, I’m working on it.”

Rick pulled Tina into his side, and Cole was tempted to do the same with Janna. He let his eyes drift across the cheery faces. Everyone working together, pulling together, helping each other along. The way it should be.

A figure walked by the front doors then pulled up short, and he smiled. Getting people to try out the new café wouldn’t be hard, not with Jessica’s cooking and Janna’s knack for pulling customers in.

He looked more closely and realized the woman outside wasn’t looking at the colorful tables and chairs he’d helped paint. She wasn’t studying the menu Jessica had posted in the window, either. She seemed lost and weary. Except for the swell of an unmissable baby bump, the woman was thin. Too thin. She stood in the bright sunlight, teetered on her feet, and—

Whoa! Cole ran to the sidewalk just in time to get an arm around her before she crashed to the ground.

“Whoa there. You all right?”

She sure didn’t look all right, so he steered her into the café despite her mumbled protests.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Jessica cooed, guiding the stranger in.

Janna and Tina dashed in to help, too, and as they took over, he caught a glimpse of wicked burn scars running down the woman’s arm.

“Rick, get her a cushion.”

“Get her a glass of water, too,” Jess said, kneeling by the woman.

“I’m fine,” the woman insisted, but her voice was weak and uncertain. “Just need a minute…”

She needed about six weeks, Cole figured, until that baby was ready to take on the world. The woman was gaunt, but her belly was stretched with what had to be seven or eight months of baby. For a moment, he panicked, thinking she might be in early labor.

The woman puffed once or twice and sat straighter. “I’m fine,” she repeated, a little more insistently.

The curtain of her hair fell back, and Soren froze in front of her, holding a glass in midair.

“Soren!” Janna chided.

“Soren?” the newcomer whispered.

“Sarah,” he whispered, barely above the sound of his breath.

For a moment, everyone stood still. Time stood still, and Cole’s mind whirled. Janna had explained about Soren being in love with a human from back home in Montana. A girl named Sarah who’d died in a fire…

One look at the way Soren and the woman stared at each other told him this was that Sarah. So she hadn’t died in that fire. She was alive. Alive and expecting a baby…

His mind spun through the math. According to Janna, the fire happened seven months ago and Soren had been away a few months before that. Which meant that baby had to have been conceived sometime after Soren left.

Oh, shit.

The woman’s hand dropped to her rounded belly, and when Soren’s eyes followed, the glass slipped out of his hand and shattered on the floor.

The woman’s eyes remained dry, but her expression wept with something like,
Let me explain.

Before the splinters came to rest on the new linoleum floor, Soren wheeled and strode out of the room. Not a word. Not a backward glance. Not a sign of emotion. But the air around him wavered with sorrow and doubt.

“Soren!” Janna called sharply, but the bear shifter was gone.

Cole’s eyes met Janna’s and he gulped. They’d found their happiness — but Soren… God, how would he ever find his?

###

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Temptation!
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Temptation
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Bear shifter Soren Voss lives and breathes for the new clan he leads. It’s all he has left after the rogue ambush that murdered the woman he loved — the woman he swears he’ll always love, even if it’s only in his dreams. But the day this alpha’s dream comes true is also the start of a nightmare, because his destined mate may no longer be his and his alone. Is it fate’s way of torturing him or his last chance at redemption?

Sarah Boone narrowly escaped the inferno that claimed her family and her home. For months, she’s been on the run with a secret that has become impossible to hide. But the clock is ticking, and she needs a place to settle down soon. She never expected to find the love of her life running a funky little place called the Blue Moon Saloon. He’s darker and more dangerous than ever, but somehow more vulnerable, too. Does she have it in her to be the woman her world-weary warrior needs most of all?

Click
here
for a sneak peek or order your copy of
Redemption
today!

“Man, where are those two?” Soren looked around. “Everyone’s ready but them.”

Jessica stopped unwrapping the foil at the neck of the champagne bottle to chuckle. “I can guess where Janna and Cole are — in bed, snoozing or shagging.”

Soren sighed. It was to be expected of freshly mated shifters in his growing little clan. But really, could those two not drag themselves out of bed by eleven?

“I’ll get them,” he sighed. He headed out the back door of the café, into the door of the neighboring saloon he ran with his brother, up the creaky stairs, and down the hallway until he came to the happy couple’s door and knocked.

“Janna! Cole!”

The giggle that had been drifting through the door broke off abruptly. Yep, those two were busy, all right.

Mates,
his inner bear whispered sadly.

He let a few seconds tick by, swallowed away the lump in his throat, and knocked again.

“Janna!” he called, and even his inner bear winced a little at the way it came out. He hadn’t meant to bark quite so sharply, though it sure did come out that way.

Happy,
his bear reminded him.
Be happy for them.

He was happy for them. Truly. It was just hard to forget that he’d once dreamed of mornings like that. Joyous mornings, waking up beside his own mate. Carefree mornings, watching her smile in her sleep. Sensual mornings, when an innocent touch or a quick kiss could so easily turn into more.

When he closed his eyes, he could still see her. Sarah, his destined mate. His dreams had been full of her last night, even more than usual. He could still see the beautiful visions of Sarah tossing her hair over her shoulder and telling him about her day. Of her turning to look at him with those incredible emerald eyes.

What are you looking at?
she’d tease him.

You,
he’d say.
You.

His perfect, destined mate. He could still see the sun shine off her fiery red hair, still smell her huckleberry scent. Sometimes, it seemed so fresh and near, he could swear she was still alive. He’d woken that morning believing she might be walking down the street outside. She’d seemed so painfully real, so torturously close.

He curled his fingers, then flexed then, then curled them again. A little ritual that kept the pain and anger at bay as well as keeping his bear claws safely tucked inside. Later on, he’d head to the woods and scrape those three-inch claws down the trunks of a few trees. He’d let his bear cry and roar everything he couldn’t let out as a man. He’d rip at one tree after another until he was worn and bleeding and ready to pretend he was okay with the cards fate had dealt him for yet another day.

He cleared his throat and called out again. “Come on! Jess needs everyone downstairs, now.”

It was an important day for Jessica: pre-opening day in her new business, the café right next to the saloon. In fact, it was an important day for each and every one of them — the handful of wolf and bear shifters who’d banded together here in this high-altitude Arizona town. They were growing as a business and as a clan. Looking to the future. As alpha, it was his job to lead and coordinate it all.

Look to the future,
his bear mumbled unenthusiastically.
Not to the past.

Which would be easy to do if his mate were alive. If he hadn’t been away the night of the rogue attack that she’d fallen victim to along with so many others who’d been burned alive.

“Get moving, already,” he said as much to himself as to the happy couple behind the door.

He lumbered down the stairs and back into the café, where he snagged his second coffee of the day and thought of his grandfather, the legendary alpha, who had lived decades after his mate died. Decades that might have been his best as an alpha, because he lived entirely for the clan.

Soren snorted. Technically, that ought to mean he was all set to become the best fucking alpha of all time, because he’d lost his mate so young. He wasn’t even forty, damn it. Not even close. He hadn’t even had a chance to fully bond with the love of his love through a mating bite before she died. Hadn’t even had the chance to reveal to her who he truly was — or what he was. A bear shifter. A pretty damn ferocious one who would fight to the death for her, if only he had been given the chance.

He cursed fate for the thousandth time in the past year and shuffled slowly to join the shifters gathered in the front room to toast the opening of the café.

“They coming?” his brother — the only other bear shifter in their unusual little bear/wolf clan — asked.

He nodded and looked around. The other three present were all wolf shifters, two from neighboring Twin Moon Ranch and the other, his brother’s mate, Jessica. The woman of the hour.

He took a deep breath and did as a good alpha should: locked away his own regrets and focused on the good of his clan.

“Okay, everybody. Here we go,” Jessica said once Janna and Cole finally turned up. “To the Quarter Moon Café.”

“To the Quarter Moon Café,” everyone echoed with a hearty cheer.

“To a great manager,” Tina raised her glass in Jessica’s direction.

Soren raised his glass higher. Jess deserved it, after all the work she’d put in for both the saloon and now, the café.

“To lots more muffins,” his brother added.

“To more working hours,” Janna chimed in, wearing a wry smile.

Soren nodded to himself. That was the next problem he had to solve: finding more staff to run the saloon and the café. While their customers were mostly humans, it was safer to keep an all-shifter staff. Otherwise, it would be too easy for their shapeshifting abilities to come to light. That was the only thing shifters truly feared: exposure. Even though most shifters were peaceful, law-abiding types, there was no telling what kind of witch hunt humans would go on if they discovered there were shifters living among them.