The Alpha's Daughter (34 page)

Griz looked up at that. "Why were you going
through boxes?"

"Because I waved my hand
and nothing happened," she told him. Her sarcasm was wasted. "Those
bedrooms didn't magically clear themselves out, you know," she
huffed. "You dumped all those boxes on top of old man Hurley's
stuff."

"Edgar, his name was Edgar Hurley," Griz told
her. "His father and grandfather were barbers like him. This was
his shop."

"That would explain the
barber pole and chair upstairs in the corner," she said, laughing.
"Were they dentists, too? That long ago, most barbers were and I
found a leather case upstairs with suspicious looking tools. I told
you that first night I thought this place looked like the home of a
mass murderer. He could have used those tools to torture his
victims." She shrugged and laughed again, trying to change his
mood. "But old fashioned dentistry is probably a better
fit."

Griz gave her an odd look.
"What do you know about old fashioned dentistry?"

"I'm not limited to cars
and motorcycles. I made it through tenth grade. I can read," she
said defensively. "Anyway, I like historical stuff like that." Most
of her knowledge came from reading historical romances, but she saw
no reason to mention that. "I'm not stupid."

Griz shook his head and
sighed. "I'm sorry. You're anything but stupid and I didn't mean it
to sound that way. You're right. Edgar's predecessors were barbers
who did a little doctoring and tooth pulling on the side. His
father built this house. Edgar kept the barbershop going until his
hands shook too badly to hold the scissors. That was before my
time." He looked around the room that held no sign of what it once
was.

"I used to come up here
for a couple of days every month to treat patients and do a little
research. I used to see patients in the Alpha's parlor. Since he
was no longer using it, Edgar let me turn the shop into my office.
That's how we ended up with electricity out here, but not in
there." He pointed to the door leading to the house. "Edgar
wouldn't have it." He shrugged. "I started spending the night here
instead of the hotel down in town. When he died, he left me the
house."

"And you moved here permanently," Jazz
concluded.

"No. That was later."
Griz's tone changed.

"Why? What brought you here?" she asked
brightly, hoping to keep the conversation going.

Griz talked about his parents and brothers
and the little Appalachian town he grew up in, but he never talked
about his adult past. She'd asked herself the question before. Why
would someone with his education and abilities choose to live in
Gilead?

Any pack would welcome a wolver doctor and
the larger packs would pay well for his services. Those boxes of
clothing told her that someone once had.

"Life brought me here," he said and then
shook his shoulders as if shaking off an unwanted thought. "What
did you want? I have work to do."

The sharing session was obviously over, but
Jazz wasn't giving up on her reason for being here. "You certainly
do and the sooner you get it done, the sooner I'll be out of your
hair."

He shook his head as if she'd lost her mind.
"We are not having sex in this office."

"Why not?" Jazz folded her arms under her
breasts. "Give me one good reason."

His eyes slid from her face to the plump
pillows of flesh she offered.

"Put your foot down and unfold your arms," he
grumbled. "You're distracting."

Jazz knew she'd won. She unfolded her arms
and started unbuttoning her shirt. "It's only distracting when you
won't let yourself enjoy it."

"Stop it. Someone might come in." He glanced
at the door.

"Who? Everyone's been here
already." She grinned mischievously. "You can always lock the
doors." She unsnapped the belt at her waist and let the shirt slide
down her arms to trail behind her as she circled the examining
table. With the nails of her free hand, she tapped the white paper
covering. It crackled under her touch. "Oh Griz," she said with a
suggestive groan, "We could make this table go snap, crackle,
pop."

"Jasmine, we will not do
this here," he said sternly and growled when she ignored him and
hopped onto the table. "We have a bed."

"Oh, oh. Next you'll be
telling me we're restricted to missionary." Jazz laid back, arms
stretched over her head, legs dangling from the end. "Have you ever
noticed how these tables are just the right height?"

"Jasmine."

The breath he huffed out held more than
exasperation and the bulge in his pants confirmed that belief.

Keeping her voice low and sultry, she said,
"Come on, Griz, haven't you ever played doctor?"

"I am a doctor," he growled.

"Then you should be good at it," she
laughed.

And he was good, very
good, but it was only sex. The usual connection she felt between
them was missing. She wanted to blame it on exhaustion. Both of
them needed sleep, but she knew that wasn't the reason. While her
grizzly's body had been fully engaged, his mind was someplace else
and Jazz felt its absence. She was also pretty sure she knew where
that someplace else was.

That wooden chest was a
Pandora's Box of Griz's memories, one of which she was trying hard
to erase. The photo he didn't want her to see was of the rival she
couldn't fight. It was the mysterious Angelica. Jazz was sure of
it.

Other nights when Griz
shook his head and said, "Ah, Hellcat, what am I going to do with
you?" it sounded like playful frustration and she had grown to love
those words. Tonight, the words had an ominous ring to them that
worried her.

Tonight, they had embraced
in the most intimate way of both human and beast, but they had not
touched at all.

"We need to talk."

In every book, in every movie, in every damn
TV show, those words were part two of a three step sequence and
were always harbingers of not-so-good things to come.

Sometime in the next ten pages, the next ten
minutes or after the next commercial interruption, in part three,
one of these sentences would follow the words, "We need to
talk."

"This isn't working."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"I'm leaving you."

"I'm not in love with you anymore."

"I'm in love with someone else."

Part one occurred before the dreadful words
were spoken. The character uttering them would a) pace the floors
to find their courage, b) stare off into the distance seeking their
words from some cosmic source, or c) look at themselves in the
mirror to face the reality of what they must do.

Griz needed both a) and b) in preparation to
say those words. Jazz knew this because she'd heard him pacing the
floors in the night and when she snuck downstairs to see what the
problem was, he was staring off into the distance from the front
porch. She'd foolishly crept back up the stairs to leave him to his
thoughts. He probably would have used c) as well, but the only
mirror in the house was in their bedroom and he hadn't stepped foot
in there all night.

After the office sex, he'd escorted her to
the outhouse and then left her to climb the stairs alone saying he
had some work to finish and would be right up. Liar!

Not that she'd realized it at the time. At
the time, she only knew that something was preying on his mind and
so, when he said the words first thing that morning and right
before he took off for business unknown - Coward! - Jazz stood
there foolishly with her mouth puckered and ready for a kiss.

"We need to talk," he said. "I'll see you
this afternoon." He gave her a nod and walked away. Bastard!

Of course, once she put together parts one
and two, she was prepared for the coming of part three.

Like hell she was.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to punch
something. She wanted to kick the ever-lovin shit out of the first
person who walked by. It was a testament to her self-control that
it wasn't poor Brad who sat up unaided for the first time and asked
politely for something to eat.

He gave her a little wave of his hand when he
saw the look on her face. "No biggie. I can wait for Livvy. If
that's okay, I mean," he said nervously.

He must have been envisioning what she'd done
to his brother. Jazz didn't even feel bad about it.

Eat? She tried. In spite of her sour look,
she scrambled up a dozen eggs to share with Brad who was to have
soft foods only according to Griz. No! According to Doc. He was
Doc. Doc, the bastard. Doc, the dumb fuck who… who… who said,

"We have to talk."

She delivered Brad's eggs, waited until she
was sure he could handle a fork and disappeared back to the kitchen
to eat the rest of the eggs in the pan. The first forkful stayed in
her mouth and wouldn't go down. It rolled around her tongue and
over her teeth until she gagged and spit it out in the sink.

Jazz slammed her fist down on the counter,
making the dishes rattle in the cupboards above. She was not going
to do this. She was not going to stay here playing the role of the
little woman waiting for her man to come home and tell her…
what?

"We have to talk."

The walls were closing in on her, caging her,
confining her, and she began to pace. Through the dining room, past
the mismatched chairs that somehow seemed to fit, around the cozy
arrangement in front of the fire and into the room that couldn't
decide what it wanted to be. The new bookshelves looked perfect
climbing three quarters of the way up the side walls and to either
side of the window. The most recent batch of books was waiting in
the boxes to be added to the shelves.

No one would write this place up for a
magazine, but she had turned the pigsty into something good. It was
a place where you could put your feet up and not worry about the
furniture. It was a place where friends could gather around the
table and hold each other's hands or laugh and tell embarrassing
stories.

The kitchen was still horrible. The wooden
counter was scarred with a hundred years of use. The enamel sink
was chipped. She had to pump water! There wasn't room to swing a
cat and yet she'd bumped hips and knocked elbows with neighbors in
that kitchen and no one seemed to mind. This might be his house,
but she'd made it a home.

Her wolf snarled.

"Okay, damnit! I built a den. I built a den
for my pack and my cubs and yes, damnit, my mate. Happy now?"

Her wolf relaxed, battle won.

"Stupid wolf! The battle's not won. Didn't
you hear him?"

"We have to talk."

She could hear Opal overhead, getting the
cubs ready for the day. Getting them ready in what? That poor woman
came here the same way she did, with nothing but the clothes on her
back. Jazz was ashamed she hadn't thought of it before. She should
make a few stops, knock on a few doors and see what she could find
for Opal and her brood.

Keep busy. Don't think.

Livvy and her father arrived and before she
could abandon her post Jazz had to promise to fetch Ellie or Donna
back to the house to keep watch with young Livvy. Tom wasn't about
to leave his daughter with a woman he didn't know and young man he
didn't trust.

Jazz chose the older sister. Donna could
handle two randy teens, particularly if one was laid up and weak.
She'd keep Opal busy and in spite of her harshness, pups seemed to
like her. She would also defend them if the need arose, though no
one seemed to think this likely.

She was on her way in five minutes with a
very short list of mothers with small cubs. Her wolf was whining
louder with each step Jazz took away from the house and finally
began to growl.

"We need to talk," Jazz muttered, looking
like a crazy woman as she trudged angrily up the road. "You don't
know what that means, do you wolf? No, of course you don't. All you
see is a mighty wolf who would father great pups. All you want is
that damn grizzly bear to run with and play with and eat and sleep
with."

She could feel the damn bitch wagging her
tail.

Jazz stopped in the middle of the road and
looked up at the sky. "That's all I want, too!" she shouted to the
heavens. "Is that too much to ask?"

She wasn't asking for money or power. She
didn't need palaces or fast cars. She wasn't even looking for
gorgeously handsome. Hell, the man was too damn big to squeeze onto
the cover of GQ and no one would ever call him good looking.

No one but her. Like Donna seeing that
raggedy boy across the room, Jazz saw what other's didn't.

His eyes were beautiful. She liked how they
twinkled when he teased her, how they smoldered with passion when
he held her in his arms. They softened and turned misty when he
held a pup or an old person's hand and they'd blazed with righteous
fire when he stood against her father. You could feel the power
rolling off him in waves. Even her father shrank before his
wrath.

Yet no one in Gilead was afraid of him. They
trusted those massive hands to do no harm. They trusted his power
would be used in a glowing ball of healing magic. Those hands made
them feel safe. Those hands were beautiful, too.

The face that no one would call handsome was
solid and true like the rest of him, carved from one of the great
oaks that surrounded Gilead and browned by weather and sun. Clean
cut and honest, it was easy to see it was a face without guile or
pretense and that was beautiful, too. He would look you in the eye.
He would say what he meant.

"We need to talk."

Jazz's shoulders slumped. Maybe a wolver like
him was too much for her to ask. She'd seen the clothes in those
boxes. Men who wore clothes like that weren't looking for biker
chicks with foul mouths. They weren't looking for a woman who could
fix their truck. They needed a woman who could plan a dinner party.
They weren't looking for a girl with a tenth grade education and no
talents outside the bedroom. They'd want a girl with a name like
Angelica, not Jazz. He would someday want to go back to that life.
Who wouldn't?"