SHAPESHIFTER ROMANCE: Protection of the Wolf (Paranormal Shifter Army Navy Seal Protector Alpha Wolf Romance) (Fantasy Military Action Adventure Urban Werewolf Romance Short Stories) (4 page)

Kurt had not called the cops, or NCIS. His buddy who had warned him had. When his friend, whose name was Jack Low, found out exactly how much trouble Kurt was in he figured to let the people who look after SEALs handle it. He had not been positive the cops would be able to.

Apparently, according to the agents who had responded, the only reason the rocket launcher had not destroyed the cabin was that Kurt had shot the only guy who knew how to use it. When NCIS pulled up the Big Guy was trying to fire it, but he didn’t know exactly how and was trying to figure it out.

An ambulance EMT had bandaged her, but she had refused to go to the hospital. She knew as night approached, it would be Kurt’s last night of the month that he would change. She wanted to be there for him. She was not sure she was in love with him but she did know that some of the love songs she had heard all of her life were beginning to make sense. She thought that was a good sign. They watched the bad guys being driven away by the last of the NCIS agents, and they both sighed in relief.

“Do you think they will get a prosecution?” Kurt asked as he escorted her inside. The pain medicine she had been given was working well so her shoulder barely throbbed. He was treating her like she was fragile and needed help every step. She did not need help, but had to admit privately that she enjoyed the attention.

“Oh I think they will. I gave them my file from work when you were being interviewed. I made the suggestion they look in a couple of specific companies to prove what I was saying. In a few days they should have all they need to prosecute. I however will be out of a job. My boss was making a lot of money off of the mob. That won’t fly, no matter what he might say,” she told him honestly.

“Sorry about that. Considering the people he was doing business with I suppose it was inevitable things went south on him. Now you just sit here, I am making dinner. I need to work off some adrenaline anyway,” he chided her. He then went to the kitchen and she got to watch a man make her dinner. It was a first for her and she thought she could get to like it. If this was a real date with him, she could do more of them, without the shooting she reminded herself. She turned her phone’s music on and they sipped beer and he cooked.

The dinner was a chicken and rice dish with Indian flavors that smelled heavenly while cooking. He moved around the kitchen completely at ease with it and she decide she liked watching him cook. Or do anything really, she told herself with a slight smile. Despite everything that had happened she still found him incredibly attractive. Now that she knew him better she thought they might have a good shot at it.

“I hope you don’t mind me having to check out again tonight. You could have gone home and slept in your own bed,” he said. It sounded like he was feeling guilty.

“You fought heroically to save my life. The least I can do is be here for you. Besides, I hate hospitals and I would have been lonely.” As she said the last, she was surprised with herself. Elizabeth had not meant to say it, it had just came out. His eyes softened. Elizabeth continued. “I don’t know why. Just after everything, I still haven’t absorbed it. Even if you are a wolf and locked up, I will not feel alone. I hope you don’t mind, Kurt. I know I have probably been a pain in the ass this whole weekend,” she admitted to him.

Kurt shook his head while bringing the dinner to the table. He served her.

“Truthfully, as shocked as I was by your initial visit I was glad to see someone I know. It can get pretty lonely up here too,” he admitted to her.

They ate in silence and the food was excellent. She was feeling tired and knew she would not last long after he changed. They finished in a calm silence. As if nothing needed to be said right then. It was nice for Elizabeth and she enjoyed being comfortable with someone.

Later when she had stroked Kurt’s paw until he went to sleep she fell asleep in the hall, and dreamed. In the dream she and Kurt were at a stream, having a picnic lunch and laughing. It was a peaceful rest they both had that night.

Tomorrow was going to be a good day.

THE END

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Can’t Go Back

-Chapter 1-

Here’s what you most need to know most about Alexandria Bill: She hated New York City.

While most people were trying to get into New York, she was trying to get out. She’d grown up there, in the borough of Brooklyn, and had come to resent the concrete jungle, the towering peaks of buildings along the horizon, the rats that came out at night and scurried along the garbage bags stacked up on the curb.  She’d been trapped in a maze of sidewalks her whole life, but what she really yearned for were trees. Trees and grass and little creeks that made their way through meandering woods.

Ever since she was a young girl, she’d been collecting pictures of this other world she coveted. Her favorite section of the New York Times was the Sunday travel section and she’d cut out her favorite pictures of green paradises from all over Europe and the United States.  By the time she was ten, she’d selected Bavaria in Germany and Yellowstone National Park as the two top spots on her wish list.

To her father, there was no other place beyond New York.  He came from a long line of people who had spent their whole lives there, who had worked and breathed and lived and died in New York and it was unimaginable to them that anyone would want to live anywhere else.  To the Bill family, the city was the epicenter of the Universe and they knew its history and its neighborhoods and its nooks and crannies like the rest of the New Yorkers who believed the city belonged to them.

She had lived her whole life at 17 Quackenbush Avenue in Brooklyn, three doors down from her grandparents and two streets west of her cousins.  Her mother had left when Alex was two and her father had raised her alone.  His parents had bought them the house on Quackenbush and they’d become a tight family, sharing Sunday dinners, existing between the family homes spread out in the old Brooklyn neighborhood.  Her grandparents regarded raising a family as a communal process, something that was the responsibility of everyone that shared their DNA.

The only person who knew her secret dreams was her grandfather.  He’d taken her upstate twice when she was growing up----once to a state park that had a giant waterfall accessed by a long, winding trail and another time they’d stayed overnight in the hills of the Catskill Mountains. She’d looked at the ancient woods as a city all in itself, with its own towering structures and its own sounds, but it was a place of peace. She hadn’t missed the noise of the never-ending traffic and the bustle of people moving when she was in the woods, but had instead reveled in the solitude of the place. The silence seemed to be a sound all in itself.

Her father had been a doorman for most of his adult life.  The posh West Side apartment where he worked was a little world unto itself and he knew everything about the people who lived there.  He knew their names, their pet’s names and their children’s names. He knew who was divorcing whom, who was having an affair, and where they worked and what they were having for dinner. 

He’d never dreamed of doing anything else.  He felt like he was plugged into the heart of the city working there, as if he were connected to its soul with an electric cord.

Alex wanted nothing to do with it.

She thought the real movers and shakers in New York were the ones who made it sparkle.  Everyone else merely existed to keep those people happy, and her father was one of those people.  She thought he was lost in his own little dream, believing he was part of something bigger and greater than what it actually was. 

She had no intention of servicing other people for the rest of her life.  She wanted to move out west, live in a pretty little town somewhere and understand what it meant to be free in an expanse of endless open land.  The Big Apple was for big dreamers and her dreams were simple.

She had graduated Magna Cum Laude from City College two years before and was almost finished with her master’s degree in teaching.  As soon as her last grade was posted, she planned to apply for teaching positions in high schools throughout America’s west.  She had bid her time, had slowly and meticulously planned the rest of her life, often in secret.

The only thing that gave her pause about this plan was her father.  He loved her more than the Upper West Side apartment where he worked, which was saying a lot.   She was proof of something to him---proof that he was a capable man who could raise a daughter single handedly and raise her well.  The fact that she even existed made him proud and he fawned over her the same way he fawned over the people he served in the apartments.

“Alex!” he had said through the years when she’d described her vagabond dreams to him. “There are trees in Central Park.  There are trees and squirrels and rocks and ponds.  Why would you need to go anywhere else?”

Her dreams were an aberration to him, something he couldn’t even begin to understand and he wondered what wayward gene had been bestowed upon his daughter that caused her to dream of fleeing New York.

“My God Alex!” he’d say.  “Everything everyone could possibly want exists right here in your own backyard!  What else is there?”

His daughter was book smart, but her brain had somehow talked her into ignoring the fact that she was beautiful.  She was nearly six-feet tall, with blonde, flowing hair that reached her shoulders in gentle curls.  She had wide green eyes and a sculptured, classic face and even with her glasses on, she was every bit as beautiful as the models who lived in the infamous apartment building where he worked every day.

The irony was that she didn’t know it.

She glided down the streets of New York like a wandering cloud, as if she wasn’t sure where she was going, always oblivious to the glances of men and the envious stares of women.  Her clothes were plain and her eyes were always cast downward, but still her beauty shone through the cloud that seemed to follow her.

He didn’t think she’d ever leave him.  He didn’t think she had the strength to go off on her own.

-Chapter 2-

When the fall had come and gone and Alex still hadn’t heard from any of the schools she’d applied to, she decided she would have to come up with Plan B.

Alex wasn’t used to having a Plan B.  Her plan A’s had always come to fruition.  She never found it difficult to set a goal and forge her way there---sometimes rather effortlessly.

She still kept in touch with her mother although she didn’t visit as regularly as she once did. She lived in San Francisco, having headed west she’d met another man and moved west.  The details of the story remained frozen in time at the behest of her father, but she knew her mother had fallen in love with someone else who turned out to be a very wealthy man.

Her parents had married when they were young and “before we knew who we really were,” her mother had told her.  She had wanted Alex to join her in California once she got settled with her new husband but her father would not hear of it.  As the years went on, Alex was glad that she’d stayed in New York.  Her mother was now mothering a stepchild part time and it was confusing for her to see her mother nurturing another child when she’d missed out on so much of it.

They lived a different life than Alex and her father did.  They were part of the cocktail set and they owned a boat and a private company plane and there was a private school for their son Thomas.  Alex wasn’t comfortable there, and as time went on, she spent less and less time with her mother in the summers.  She explained to her that she had friends and activities now that kept her in New York and although her mother seemed sad about the circumstances, she eventually relented and let her have her way.

The phone rang one day while she was scouring the Internet for teaching positions and she was happy to hear her mother on the other end of the phone.  They talked for a while about what Alex was doing and how she hadn’t had much luck finding a job.

“Well, that’s why I’m calling,” she said, her New York accent still evident in her voice.

Her husband Tom was grooming his son Tom Jr. to take over his wine distribution business. He’d been working for his father for two years now and his assistant had just quit to get married.

“You are perfect for this job, Alex,” she said.  “You are certainly bright enough and you have a lovely presence.”

“But I’m a teacher,” Alex said.  “My experience is with children in the classroom.”

“You may only want to do this for a year,” her mother said. “But it involves travel.  You’d get to see the world, sweetheart.  That’s something you want to do when you’re young. You can teach until you’re old and grey.”

Her mother explained the role Alex would be taking.  Assistants, she said, did a lot of the travel planning, event and meeting planning—and some grunt work, like getting coffee and bringing in meals.

“And it pays $80,000 to start,” she said.  “Plus bonuses.”

Alex stammered for a minute.  $80,000 a year, she thought? And travel! It all sounded too good to be true, but she’d never been fond of her stepbrother. There was, of course, a lot of jealousy between them and Alex had always thought of him as a spoiled brat.

“It’s an exciting job,” her mother said.

Alex knew her mother was offering this to her to help her broaden her horizons.  She’d always wanted more for Alex than Alex had wanted for herself.

“I’m just worried about Thomas,” Alex said. “It’s not like we’ve ever been the best of friends.”

“Thomas has changed,” her mother said. “He’s an adult now.  He’s not going to give you any trouble.  I think given the chance, the two of you will get along very well.”

It was one of those synchronistic events that never happened to Alexander Bill.  There was no question in Alex’s mind that she’d be accepting the job.  This was her chance to leave New York for a while, to explore the world beyond Brooklyn.  She was having dinner with her father and her grandparents’ house that night and she’d broach it with them then.  She knew it would be a battle, but she was determined.

“Thomas Cooke?” her grandfather said.  “That’s your mother’s husband’s business!”  Why aren’t they looking for a candidate with a business degree? You’re a teacher!”

“They’re looking for someone intelligent,” Alex said, blushing a bit. “They need an assistant.  A lot of the work is mundane.  How smart do you have to be to get someone coffee?”

“Then it’s beneath you,” her father said, with an indignant tone in his voice.

“Now just a minute,” her grandmother said, putting her fork down on her plate with a loud thud. “This sounds like an incredible opportunity and we all need to stop yakking and listen to Alex.  What young girl doesn’t want to see the world?”

“Yeah, and it pays more than $80,000 a year to start,” Alex told them, somewhat hesitantly.

The room became silent.  That’s more than anyone in the room had made as a yearly salary their entire lives.

“Oh, lord,” her grandfather said.  “How can our Alex say no? This sounds like it could be something good.”

Alex’s father looked lost.  He stared down at his plate with a look of sadness on his face.

“You always knew this coming,” her grandmother told him. “You can’t keep Alex in a cage. She needs to go and find out who she is.”