Stalking the Pharmacist (2 page)

He was instantly converted to women with
fuller figures. Such incredible breasts and lush hips should be admired, not
exercised into nonexistence.

He’d never look at a woman’s body the same
way again.

The woman Laura had called Ash, sighed.
“Thanks, sweetie, I know.
Whereas you look bloody fantastic.”

Laura did a twirl and stuck her hip out at
an angle.
Cheeky woman.

“Why thank you, darling.
The
love of a good man…and all that.”

Ash quirked an eyebrow at
Laura.
“Or men,
perhaps?”

Laura blushed and stared at her cousin, her
mouth tugging down. “Yeah…well…”

Ash, who Jack was dying to touch, smiled at
Laura with genuine warmth and love. “As long as you’re happy, honey.” Next to
him, Scott shifted from foot to foot, just as impatient as Jack
himself
. Laura whirled around, seemingly just remembering
that they were standing there waiting.

“Oh,
Ash,
let me
introduce you to Brandon and Tyler’s cousins. It’s common in their family for
men to be born into
nonidentical
twin sets. This is
Scott and Jack. Guys, this is my cousin Ashleigh.”

Jack jumped and stepped forward with his
brother, their backs ramrod straight as they stared at the woman in front of
them.

Ashleigh’s face turned cold, her mouth
pulling down on both sides.

“Nice to meet you
gentlemen.”

Her tone was like ice, yet Jack wasn’t
deterred. Whatever her baggage, they could cope. God knew they had enough of
their own.

He stuck out his hand at the same time as
Scott. He would have laughed if the moment hadn’t been so serious. This was it.
With this first touch they would know if Ashleigh was the woman they’d waited
twenty-five years for.

She looked at their hands as though they
were the lowest form of life, but neither of them dropped their arms away.

No
fucking way, beautiful. Pick one. Touch us.

Finally, Ashleigh sighed and reached up to
shake Scott’s hand.

Watching it happen rather than being the
first one to experience it hit Jack in the gut with disappointment, but he
didn’t even blink, in case he missed something.

As her hand connected with Scott’s,
Ashleigh gasped and her face reddened. Her knees obviously weakened as she
began to crumple and sink closer to the ground.

Jack jumped forward to catch her and
electricity shot straight through his arms and into his core, making his body
want to meet the dirt himself. He groaned in time with Ashleigh, and she dropped
Scott’s hand to cling to him.

Jack forced all of his strength into his
legs and locked his knees while pure pleasure replaced the electrical pain.
Like a cleansing white light, it slid through his chest and down his arms and
legs.

She’s
ours.

Ash stared up at him, blue eyes wide,
looking shocked and vulnerable. Her lips parted as she took a breath, and Jack
fought off the need to kiss her. His heart was thumping in his chest, and his
cock stirred in his suit pants.

Ashleigh began to struggle in his arms, her
eyebrows lowering as her mouth took on an angry tilt. Jack reluctantly let go
of her solid warmth as soon as he was sure she could stand, and she staggered
toward Laura. His arms were still tingling like he’d lifted weights for too
long, yet he yearned to have her back and pressed against him.

“What the fuck was that?” Ash spat at them.

Jack bristled and lifted his hand in a sign
that everything was okay when he heard several male cousins around them growl
in warning.

Jack shared a look with his brother,
then
stared back at Ashleigh. What was the next step now?

“Ash, how long
are
you here for?” Laura asked, forcing Ash to stop staring at them like they’d
committed some sort of crime.

“A week or so.
I took some leave.”

Hell
yes!
They had time to convince
her that she had to stay.

“Brilliant. We’re going away for the
weekend, but have honeymoon plans for the summer. Will you stay with us next
week when we come home again?”

Ash glanced at Scott and Jack for a moment,
her brilliant blue eyes troubled. She looked back at Laura, nodding slowly.

“Yeah, sure.
I’d love to catch up properly with you.”

Jack cleared his throat and held out his
hand to Ash once again. He may as well start the ball rolling. They had the
weekend to woo her, and he didn’t want to waste a single moment.

“Would you like a tour of the property?”

Ash glared at him with impressive strength.
If she’d been a mountain lion, her fur coat would have been bristling and
standing on end.

“No bloody way, and keep your hands to
yourself.”

Ash turned tail in a flurry of silver silk
and beautiful brown hair. Her back was straight as she stomped her way up the
steps and into the house.

She’s
got spunk.
He had to
admit, he was already proud to call her theirs.

Laura giggled, drawing their attention.

“You two are going to have your hands full
with Ash if she’s yours.”

“She’s ours,” they said in unison. Jack’s
voice sounded deep and gravelly to his own ears, yet his twin’s tone was more
of a pained groan.

Brandon and Tyler walked up then and
wrapped their hands around their new bride.

“Hey, Scott, Jack.” Brandon’s deep voice
pushed into Jack’s head and he forced his gaze away from the house and back to
their hosts. Jack nodded mechanically but couldn’t stop his attention from
straying to the house again. Beside him, Scott did the same.

“Congratulations to you all. Ah…we…” Scott
rambled as they began to edge away. Jack couldn’t speak for Scott, but he was
pretty sure his twin didn’t want their long-awaited mate getting too far away
either.

“Go, go. You have the weekend with her,
then
I’ll have her from Monday.”

Jack gave Laura a grateful smile and took
off toward the house.

“I can’t believe she’s really…” Scott’s
voice drifted off and Jack nodded once, looking at his brother and grinning as
they mounted the steps. Pausing on the beautiful back patio, they looked inside
the house to see Ashleigh standing with their aunt Rosalie.

“She really is, Scott. Can you believe it?
I mean, fucking twenty-five years and we…” He trailed off, a lump rising in his
throat when he said the words he never thought he’d utter.

“We finally found her.”

Scott and he had decided when they were
young that the prophecy that had been told to them was bullshit, and they’d
both gone out of their way to do what they wanted instead. So they’d followed
their gonads and married women who didn’t suit them.

Worse than that, they’d bred with bitches
who’d
tormented them for twenty years.

Two divorces and five children between
them, and Jack had been certain the future that awaited them would be no
better.

“I…I didn’t think she was real.”

Jack nodded and couldn’t help the smile
that spread across his face. His heart was pumping, his hands were shaking, and
a thin film of sweat now covered his brow.

“I feel alive, Scott. For the first time in
…
forever.”

Scott nodded and wiped his own brow with a
handkerchief. Jack laughed, something inside his chest opening up like a bird
spreading its wings.

He jerked his head toward the kitchen.
“Let’s go.”

“Wait!”

Scott grabbed his arm with
a steel
like grip, stopping him from moving toward their
woman.

Jack ripped his arm from his twin’s grip
and glared at him. What the hell was up with him?

“Do you think, ah, we should talk to her
one at a time? You know…since she’s not a shifter and won’t understand about
perfect pairs.”

Jack frowned and looked through the glass
patio door at their aunt, who was still engrossed in conversation with
Ashleigh.

“That’s probably a good idea,” he said,
turning back to Scott.

They stared at each other, Jack clenching
his teeth and putting some heat into the glare. He was the oldest and Scott got
to touch her first.

“I’ll go in, and we can tag team if need
be.”

Scott’s jaw pulled tight and he huffed
through his nostrils, but after a moment he nodded.

“Okay, but get your ass out of there as
soon as possible!”

Jack chuckled and turned around, squaring
his shoulders as he stared at their woman.

Let the chase begin.

Chapter Two

Ashleigh was struggling,
really
struggling. She was focusing so
hard on the animated woman in front of her, yet all she could think about were
the men standing outside watching her. She was
trying,
God knew she was trying, to forget their presence. But if her eyes had been
capable of dividing, one would be staring straight at those men and probably
giving them the meanest look she had. Why were they so interested in her? They
were gorgeous, older yes, but sexy as hell.

“It must have been hard taking time away
from your business like that. Or do you have someone you trust to run it?”

Ash forced her brain back to the
conversation she was having with her
cousin
Laura’s
new mother-in-law Rosalie and turned her back on the men.

“A week isn’t too bad, but yes, any longer
and it gets stressful. I have some fantastic pharmacists working for me,
though, and I trust them not to burn the place down while I’m gone.”

“That sounds interesting. Who’s burning
what down?”

Ash jumped to the side when she heard an
incredibly deep voice. Her heart thumped in her chest and heat spread up her
cheeks when she realized it belonged to Jack, the bigger, blonder twin.

“Hey, Aunt Rosalie.
Congratulations on finally marrying those
two off.”

Jack kissed the woman, and Ash gulped air
into her lungs. What on earth had happened outside when Jack and his twin,
Scott, had touched her? It had been like they’d reached inside her and attached
electrodes to her soul, shooting pleasure into her belly and destroying her
ability to hold her own body weight. If Jack hadn’t stepped forward when he
had, she would have ended up on the ground, a pulsing mess of sensations.

“Yeah, well they had to wait for the right
woman to come along, didn’t they, Jack?”

Something almost stern in Rosalie’s tone
snapped Ash’s attention back to their conversation and she watched a slash of
red
color
Jack’s handsome face.

“Yes, they were much smarter than I.”

Oh, so he was married? He wasn’t wearing a
ring, although that wasn’t a given for all men. Divorced, then? Or had he let
someone go?

Rosalie turned back to her, blue eyes
glowing with warmth.

“Jack, have you met Laura’s cousin Ash?
She’s a pharmacist from Toronto.”

Ash’s belly tightened as Jack’s sparkling
ocean-blue eyes met hers, a smile tilting up his full lips.

“I did, outside for a moment, though I
didn’t realize she was a pharmacist.”

Ash swallowed the lump that had risen in
her throat and straightened her shoulders. She could do this. Conduct a
conversation with a man she couldn’t keep her eyes off.

“What do you do, Jack?”

He grinned at her, that smile lighting its
way down into the pit of her belly, pulling on an area between her thighs that
Ash had believed had died a long time ago. After her ex-husband had done such a
good job of destroying her self-esteem, she hadn’t thought a man would ever
truly appeal to her again.

She squeezed her thighs together and almost
gasped at the jolt of longing that just being so close to this man brought her.
She’d never believed in lust at first sight, but this had to be it!

“I’m a football coach for the local high
school. I played pro ball for a few years after college.”

Ash’s blood cooled like the heat had never
been. He said that with such arrogance, as though it was actually impressive!
She frowned and looked away. What was the easiest way of escaping? Maybe say
she needed to go to the toilet?

“Oh, that’s nice. Would you excuse me? Rosalie,
could you tell me where the bathroom is, please?”

Jack’s eyes went wide and his mouth fell
open slightly.

Yeah,
I’m not impressed by the fact that you can kick a bloody ball around, buddy.

She smiled at Rosalie and tried to ignore
the odd pain in her gut. Why would she want to stay and talk to a footballer,
for God’s sake? Thick as a brick and more focused on his body than anything of
importance.