Chasing Cristabel (Ashland Pride Six) (2 page)

“Lily and I have known each other for a long
time. I would agree with you on the meatloaf for sure.”

After explaining her credentials to the
pediatrician, he said, “I’d love to have you come in for an
interview. Would tomorrow morning work, say ten?”

“That’s perfect. Thank you so much. I’ll see
you tomorrow.”

Smiling as the call ended, Cris pulled out of
the parking lot and turned up the radio, thrilled to be starting
things off right in Ashland. If all went well at the job interview,
she’d be able to find a place of her own. Intrigued by Ashland and
by Lily’s claim of hot men, she let her thoughts drift as she
drove, wondering if she might find her truemate along the way.

Were-lions, by and large, didn’t believe in
truemates. They were more practical when it came to mating. While
many did mate for love, there was still a surprising number of
lions who agreed to arranged marriages, allowing their hajes or
families to choose their future mates. Cris had perhaps read too
many romance novels as a teenager, or hung around werewolves too
much in college, and that was why she
did
believe in
truemates. She earnestly believed that there really was one male
who was perfect for her out there somewhere; she just hadn’t met
him yet. And if she entered into an arranged mating, then she would
be giving up on finding the guy who was right for her. She wasn’t
ready to admit defeat yet.

Cris pulled into the parking lot of Cherie’s
Diner a little after one p.m. Her body ached from the long drive,
and she was glad to get out of the car and stretch her legs. When
she opened the diner’s front door, the scents of hundreds of meals
filled her nose. As a shifter, she had heightened senses and
sometimes was overwhelmed in places like this, where grease hung in
the air.

Cris pulled off her gloves and stocking cap
and scanned the nearly empty diner, finding Lily standing in front
of a corner booth. Lily glanced up, waved at Cris, and excused
herself from the table.

After one of Lily’s big tackle-hugs, she
said, “Come over and meet some of my best customers.”

Lily brought Cris over to a table of three –
two men and a woman. Cris scented discreetly and found the female
was a wolf and the males were mountain lions. She’d never met a
mountain lion before. “Guys, this is my bestie, Cristabel Hardison.
She just moved to Ashland.”

They all shook her hand. “Where are you
from?” Scarlett the she-wolf asked.

“Kentucky, the Lake Lemanar area. Until
recently, though, I was living near Indianapolis.”

“She lived with my brother, Lance,” Lily
said.

Scarlett said, “I didn’t know you have a
brother.”

“He hasn’t lived in Ashland since he went off
to college. He’s a finance guy, and his firm that is based in
Cranston merged with another, so he has to move to a different
location. But anyway, my bestie is going to work for the new
were-clinic here in town.”

Cris elbowed Lily. “I haven’t even been
interviewed yet. You’re going to jinx me.”

Lily chuckled. “Scarlett, Grandma says she
has a special dessert for you to take home along with your regular
extra French toast and bacon, so don’t let me forget. I’ll be back
with your food in a few minutes.”

“It was nice to meet you,” Cris said and
followed Lily into the kitchen.

Lily handed Cris a key and said, “Do you need
directions?”

“No, I’ve already got the address in my
GPS.”

“Did you call the clinic?”

“I did. I talked to Dr. Radcliff, the
pediatrician who is opening the clinic, and I’m meeting with him at
ten tomorrow morning. I need to drop my suit off at a dry cleaner
so I look presentable.”

“There’s a cleaner in town, and they have
one-hour service, too.” Lily pulled out her order pad and quickly
drew a map, tearing off the sheet and giving it to Cris. “I’ll be
home after class around eight.”

“I know you’re not leaving without giving me
a hug, young lady,” Cherie, the diner’s owner and namesake, said as
she walked out of the tiny office at the rear of the kitchen.

“Of course not,” Cris said.

Cherie enveloped her in a hug that made tears
sting her eyes. Cherie was one of the kindest, sweetest women Cris
had ever known, and being around her always reminded her of her own
mother and how she didn’t feel comfortable going home because of
her father’s insistence she mate as soon as possible with a pride
male.

“Oh, don’t cry, honey,” Cherie said, stroking
her hair. “You’ll find what you’re looking for.”

“How do you know I’m looking for something?”
Cris asked with a chuckle. She was surprised by the sudden rush of
emotion.

“Intuition,” Cherie said. She lifted a
plastic bag from a counter and handed it to Cris. “Here’s dinner
and dessert. I expect you to come visit again soon.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Cris kissed Cherie on the cheek and thanked
her for the meal, and then she walked out with Lily. “Have fun at
class,” Cris said.

“We’re making pie crust tonight, so be
prepared to eat nothing but pie for the next week.”

“I think I can manage,” Cris said, laughing.
She loved pie, especially pecan.

On the way to Lily’s apartment, Cris stopped
at the one-hour cleaner and dropped off the navy blue suit she’d
purchased for job interviews, along with a white blouse to wear
under it. Normally, she didn’t like to dress so conservatively,
preferring bright colors and fun, casual clothes, but she wanted to
put her best foot forward when meeting Dr. Radcliff.

Once she had dropped her suitcases in the
spare bedroom of Lily’s apartment, she opened the bag that Cherie
had packed and lifted out two plastic boxes. One contained a thick
wedge of meatloaf along with an enormous pile of mashed potatoes
slathered with gravy. The second box contained a large slice of
pecan pie. The sweet buttery scent made Cris want to skip dinner
and go right to dessert.

By the time Lily came home from class, Cris
had eaten, retrieved her things from the cleaners, and unpacked.
Lily plopped onto the couch next to Cris with a loud sigh,
depositing a large cardboard box on her lap. Cris opened it and
found a variety of desserts made with pie crust – everything from
mini tarts to pies.

“Have a good class?” Cris asked as she
drooled over the delicacies.

“Yep. My hands hurt from the rolling pin,
though,” she said as she stretched and cracked her knuckles. “Are
you ready for your interview?”

Cris set the box on the coffee table and went
into the kitchen, returning with two forks. Lily took one as Cris
sat down, and the two dug into a raspberry tart. The pastry was
buttery and flaky, and the raspberry filling was just the right
balance of tart and sweet.

“I think so. I have my resume printed out,
and I did some research on Dr. Radcliff. He’s been a
were-pediatrician for twenty years, but this is his first private
practice. He used to work for a were-hospital.”

“I think he’s rogue,” Lily said. “He’s
married to a human, and from the town grapevine, his pack was
strictly wolf-only so he left.”

“That happens,” Cris said.

“Would your dad let you stay in the pride if
you married a human?”

“Hell no. I’d like to believe that if I ever
find my truemate, he will be accepting of him, but I don’t think
that will happen. He has his own ideas about what my future should
be, and they clash with my independent streak.”

“Did you call your mom?”

“Yes, when I was unpacking. She wished me
luck tomorrow.”

“And asked you to come home again?” Lily
asked knowingly.

“Of course,” Cris said with a sigh. “I swear
that those times when I do go home, that I feel like my dad is
making mating plans for me across the dinner table.”

“He’s never liked that you went to
college.”

She shook her head. “No. He hasn’t approved
of much since I graduated from high school.”

“I wish your dad was more supportive.”

“Me too. I love him, despite his antiquated
ideas of how my future should go, but it’s hard to be around him,
and my mom, when I know that they don’t agree with the choices I
make. Unfortunately, disappointing them makes me feel crappy, even
though I don’t want to go back home.”

“It’s hard to disappoint people we love. But
I’m never disappointed in you, and I’m so glad you’re here.”

After they finished the tart, Cris helped
Lily put away the desserts and then said good night as she headed
into the small bedroom. After a long day, she was relieved when her
head hit the pillow. She was looking forward to the morning, to see
what her future held. It would be nice to get the job so she could
focus on finding a place to live and explore Ashland. Maybe she’d
run into some of the gorgeous men that Lily promised lived in town,
and maybe…just maybe, one of them would be her truemate.

Chapter 2

Chase Hall pulled the rack of clean glasses
from the dishwasher at Kickers, the local country bar, where he
worked as a bartender. He carried them from the kitchen into the
bar area. It was early Wednesday evening, and the nearly dead bar
meant he had time to get the side work done before the rush later
on. His two cousins also worked at the bar. Dylan was the kitchen
manager, filling orders from the small, all-appetizer menu, and
Hunter had a dual role of assistant manager and bouncer. They’d
never all worked at the same place before, but it was nice to know
that he could back up his cousins if something went wrong, and they
would be there for him, too. Not that anything too exciting ever
happened at Kickers, outside of the usual Friday and Saturday night
drunks and occasional bar fights.

They’d been in Ashland for a little over a
year and lived with their mountain lion pride at a boarding house
in town. The pride was made up of adult and young mountain lions.
Several of the mountain lions had found mates, and what surprised
Chase was that many of them shared a mate between them. He and his
cousins had never really thought about sharing a mate, but after
living in Ashland and seeing the mate-sharing, they had come to the
conclusion that it was possible the three cousins would, too. The
idea had intrigued him, but he knew that for the moment, they were
simply talking in abstract. Until they met the right female –
human, shifter, or other supernatural creature – they wouldn’t know
if they were meant to share her.

Mountain lions were unique in the were-world
because the females of their kind were only interested in mating to
continue the species and not in the least bit interested in being
in a committed relationship or starting a family. It had been
revealed through a clan of black panthers, who now shared Ashland
with the mountain lions, that the goddess who created them had
actually cursed the female mountain lions eons ago. The females
were forced to use venom in their claws to slowly change the young
females from loving to callous.

The female mountain lions were long gone now.
They had settled in Canada and could stay the hell up there as far
as Chase was concerned. Turning his attention back to the limes he
was slicing, he looked up at Dylan, who was younger than him by a
year, as he came through the double doors of the kitchen and leaned
against the bar. Chase, Dylan, and Hunter were the only sons of
three brothers who still lived in King. They shared the same dark
brown hair, but that was where their similarities ended. However,
they’d grown up in the same house, and as far as Chase was
concerned, Dylan and Hunter were his brothers.

“I’m tired as hell,” Dylan said, sighing as
he leaned on one elbow and rested his cheek against his palm. His
jade-green eyes drifted shut as he yawned.

“Well, you shouldn’t have stayed up helping
Ray and Wes paint their bedroom.”

“I like to help,” Dylan said, stifling
another yawn.

Ray and Wes had mated with a woman named
Scarlett, and she was four months pregnant. Scarlett was the
daughter of an alpha wolf and a supernaturally gifted woman known
as a Breeding Queen. Scarlett was basically genetically inclined to
have a lot of babies, and Ray and Wes were looking forward to their
first child with her.

Hunter stalked over from where he had been
standing near the front door. “You can’t bitch about being tired if
you volunteered to help instead of going to bed.”

“Don’t gang up on me,” Dylan protested,
ducking the lazy swipe that Hunter aimed at the back of his
head.

“The last time you didn’t get enough sleep,
you burned three batches of hot wings because you were too out of
it,” Chase reminded him.

“Oh, fine.” Dylan put his hands up in mock
surrender. “I’ll be extra vigilant with the wings tonight.”

Chase shook his head at them. Hunter was the
oldest at twenty-seven and built like a tank. Like all mountain
lion males, he was in reality very kind and generous, but he looked
like he could punch a hole through a brick wall. He also happened
to have dimples when he smiled, but it was a death sentence to call
him
dimples
. Which Chase and Dylan both took great delight
in teasing him with. But only from a safe distance.

Chase was twenty-five. He hadn’t planned to
become a bartender when he was filling out aptitude tests in high
school, but it worked for him. He liked talking to people, and it
was kind of fun to have the human females flirt with him, even
though nothing serious had ever come from it. He’d been on a few
dates since they’d been in Ashland. One of the dates had been with
a human woman named Jenny, who was a few years younger than him and
had hit on him while he served her a drink. He’d asked her out and
she’d agreed. It had only taken an hour into the date for him to
realize that she hadn’t really been interested in him as a person;
she was interested in the fact he was a shifter. Now he made a
point to not go out with women he met in the bar.