Stalking the Pharmacist (14 page)

“Laura.”

She took out her phone and
dialed
her cousin’s cell, tapping her fingers with
agitation on the dashboard and praying to whatever
being
watched over her in this life.

Please
let her answer!

“Ash!
How are you, honey?” Laura’s upbeat voice
was the best sound she’d ever heard, and a small sob escaped Ash’s throat.

“Laura. Are you home yet?”

There was silence for a moment, and Ash
realized her panic may not be as deeply buried as she’d thought.

“Ah, yeah, we just got in, honey. What’s
wrong?”

“Can I
come
stay
with you tonight? I don’t want to crash the honeymoon or anything, just
…
please…”

Oh shit, she was being so selfish! Her
cousin had just got married, for goodness
’
sake! Hot, salty tears began leaking down her face, and a large lump rose in
her throat like a tidal wave. What was the other alternative?
The airport?
Leave Scott and Jack, and never look back?

She bit down on her lip and held her
breath, yet some of it escaped and she began to really cry.

“Oh honey, sweetie. What’s happened?”

Ash fumbled around for the tissue box and
took some deep breaths and focused on speaking.

“I’m
…
going to
…
drive over. Okay?”

“Of course, Ash.
Please be careful. We’re not going
anywhere. You take as long as you need.”

Ash made a humming noise in her throat and
hung up before she embarrassed herself even more.

She put the phone down and let her head
fall back against the headrest. Her chest hurt, her eyes were stinging, and she
couldn’t get enough air in her lungs.

She let go of her control and let the
angry, hurt, confused tears come. So much had happened in such a short amount
of time, and those animals… She shuddered in remembrance.

Eventually, the retching sobs slowed down
and she regained a small amount of control over her mind and body.

Ash blew out a long breath and pushed her
hair out of her eyes.
Time to see how much damage she’d done.
She looked in the mirror and grimaced at her reflection. She was bright red,
everywhere, from the tip of her nose to her once-white eyeballs.

“Oh fuck!”

She looked as bad as she felt! She was
exhausted, her entire body aching from both the crying and now adrenaline
crash.

She huffed out some air and sat up straight
in her seat, grabbing her dark glasses and covering her bloodshot eyes.

“Okay, Laura’s house.”

She pressed some buttons on her cell phone,
got the location of Laura’s new home into the navigator, and slid the car’s
stick into drive. It was time to find out exactly what she was dealing with.

Chapter Ten

Scott raced back into Jack’s house, his
muscles trembling with the amount of adrenaline pumping through him. He should
never have tried to talk to Meaghan about Ashleigh. Fucking teenagers! All
rampant hormones and no bloody sense! Couldn’t control
themselves
if their lives depended on it. Her lion had come out due to her anger and
stress. She was still quite young as far as shifters went, since they only
began changing once they hit puberty.

Yeah,
well what was your excuse?

Scott grimaced. He and Jack hadn’t been much
better than his teenage daughter, and he knew that was not only wrong but set a
bad example. When Meaghan had shifted, their need to protect their mate had
overruled all common sense and the next thing he’d known, all three of them had
been in lion form.

And if he was honest, some pure frustration
and anger had probably been a driving force too.

“Ashleigh? You here, honey?”

He walked through Jack’s house, checking
each of the living areas, bedrooms, and even the bathroom.
Nothing.

“Hey, Scott.
Is she here?” Jack’s voice bellowed
through the walls from the kitchen as he arrived, and the hairs on Scott’s body
prickled up, a fine shiver coursing over his whole body.

“No, she’s gone.”

He walked back into the kitchen and faced
his brother, who was panting from the run and covered in sweat.

“She’ll be back at the hotel, then. Let’s
go.”

Jack turned to leave and Scott leaned back
against the kitchen bench, his knees weakening at the idea of never seeing
Ashleigh again.

“What if she’s not, Jack? What if she took
off some place?”

Jack shrugged as though he was indifferent,
but the set of his jaw belied his determination. “Then we’ll find her, even if
we have to drive to Toronto and drag her back here.”

His knees were seriously not going to hold
his weight any longer. Scott lunged for a kitchen chair and grabbed the back of
it. He swung it around and planted his ass on the hard plastic seat before his
legs gave out.

“Ah…” He grabbed at his thighs, massaging
the muscles as his mind whirled with the implications of her disappearing.

He couldn’t believe his brother was being
so naïve. How was that possible after the life they’d lived? They could
probably track Ash down, since they knew where she worked and lived, but what
would they do with her then?

“And if she doesn’t want us anymore? If
she’s too freaked out by the fact that we shift into fucking animals! What
then?”

Jack growled at him, his eyes flashing gold
as his lion rose to the surface. Then he began to pace, his heavy body causing
the floor beneath his feet to creak with strain.

“She has to, she’s ours!”

Scott let his head drop into his hands,
fear filling him up like an infection, spreading through his body and
overcoming all the good that Ashleigh had lay there.

He’d known something like this would
happen. The promise of paradise he’d seen in her eyes and felt in her touches
last night had been too good to be true.

He let the cold pain consume him and he
clenched his teeth until he heard a crack. He sat up straighter in his chair
and clung to the promise of oblivion that was on its way. He knew this feeling
only too well. What an idiot to believe he belonged in an oasis.

It was the desert for him, where he’d once
more be lonely and miserable.

****

Ashleigh pulled up outside a beautiful
house with a winding path, which sat in the most magnificent position beneath
the mountains.

The front door was carved and looked like
it held a Rocky Mountain lion.

Holy
hell!

She began to hyperventilate, pain
constricting her throat and lungs. She’d seen the same door at Laura’s wedding.
Brandon and Tyler’s parents had a similar entrance to their grand home.

Her breath wheezed in and out between her
lips and she gripped the steering wheel hard. Her head began to feel light,
black spots spinning around in her line of sight.

They were all lions. They were all animals.
Oh my God…

“What the hell!
Ash?”

Her car door opened and she inhaled again,
her ribs aching with dull pain. The air was cold as it entered the car, making
her teeth chatter.

She exhaled and her breath shuddered. She
needed air so badly, and a part of her brain told her that she was
overreacting, yet she couldn’t stop it. Her vision was spotted and her stomach
clenched with a wave of nausea.

“Sweetheart, stop panicking, breathe
slowly.” Laura knelt down and pressed her hands into Ash’s thighs. The pressure
was something to cling to, and Ash focused on her cousin’s green eyes staring
up at her.

“It’s okay, I’m here. Breathe.”

Ash let her eyes close, feeling two tears
slip down her cheeks and ignoring them as she focused on breathing.

In,
oh that hurts. Out, that’s a bit better.

She repeated those words over and over,
listening to Laura’s soothing voice until she could breathe almost normally.
She finally opened her eyes and let her hands slip from the steering wheel and
into her lap, her shoulders sagging in pain and exhaustion.

“Come inside.”

A sob escaped her and she wiped at her eyes
with her palms. Everything hurt so much.

Laura all but dragged her from the car, and
Ash moved in a daze toward the house. There were no more words spoken. She was
led through the house and into a bedroom. Her body moved in strange motions,
but eventually she lay on a soft bed and heard distant male voices. Ash didn’t
want to see them. No men, no strangers, no
shifters
.

A gentle hand touched her forehead and she
curled up onto her side, sighing as a warm cotton blanket was pulled up over
her, creating a cocoon of heat.

“Sleep, sweetheart.”

She nodded and let the blackness consume
her.

****

Ash opened her eyes and stretched out her
aching legs, feeling a welcome relief as the muscles lengthened and popped.

She blinked several times and rolled onto
her back, stretching again. She sat up slowly and looked around for the first
time. Her head throbbed from all the crying and her eyes felt like they’d been
rubbed raw with sandpaper.

She was in a bedroom of some sort. It was
free of photos and personal trinkets, yet was comfortable and friendly. There
was even an
en
suite bathroom.

She groaned as she turned and swung her
legs off the bed. The world wasn’t quite steady yet. She stood up and waited a
moment while her head spun and her stomach tightened, in need of nourishment.

“I…feel…like crap.”

It was the understatement of the century,
but it made her feel better to say something out loud, and she didn’t have the
words to express exactly how bad she felt. Ash pushed herself to walk to the
bathroom and splash some cold water on her sore eyes. She turned the faucet,
gathered the liquid, and threw it in the direction of her face. The icy water
made her gasp as it touched her skin and she let it slide over her lips and
into her mouth, swallowing some of the clear, clean water.

Her belly gurgled and she stood up, staring
into the mirror.

Wow,
I look like shit.

Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were red
and bulging, and her hair was just about sticking up on end.

She splashed more water on her face and
patted down her skin, running her hands through her hair and straightening it
out as much as possible.

Ash couldn’t work out why her tummy was
jumpy and nervous. It was only Laura out there in the house. Maybe her husbands
too, but Ash didn’t want to think about another pair of men. She needed to
relax. She’d come here for help, and she was sure she’d find it here.

She checked her reflection once more before
she moved through the bedroom, opened the door, and crept along the hallway
toward the sound of voices.

She was almost at the end of the corridor
when she heard a rather sexy male voice say, “Are you going to get her up soon,
Laura?”

Ash halted and listened. They were talking
about her.

“Maybe.
It’s getting dark and she might be
hungry.”

As though on cue Ash’s tummy gurgled again,
so she gathered her courage and stepped into the modern, brightly lit kitchen.

“Yeah, I
kinda
am.”

Her heart thumped against her ribs as the
three people in the kitchen turned to look at her. The men jumped up and Ash
stepped back, the testosterone and energy in the room moving the same way it
had with Jack and Scott.

“No! Don’t do it! Please.”

Laura jumped up from the kitchen stool
where she was perched and put both her hands out. “
It’s
okay, it’s okay. Tyler and Brandon won’t hurt you, honey. They’re just big. Sit
down, boys. Please.”

There was a moment of silence in which all
the air from Ash’s lungs left her and a squeezing sensation wrapped around her
ribcage. She didn’t want to see those lions again. She really didn’t!

Brandon and Tyler both sat back down and
Ash sucked in some much needed air, her mouth burning with the force, as the
atmosphere in the room calmed.

Laura moved forward and gestured to the
stool on her side of the island bench. “Sit down here, sweetie. I’ll make you
something to eat. Do you want a sandwich, or there’s leftover chicken
stir-fry.”

Ash’s stomach growled and she giggled
nervously. “I’d love some stir-fry, Laura. Thanks.”

She needed something to drink too.

Tyler, the dark-haired husband, quietly
walked over to a fridge and took out a few bottles. Without speaking he placed
them on the table in front of her and took out a couple of glasses from the cupboard.
He lifted his gaze to her once again as he backed away and sat back in his
chair.