The Alpha's Daughter (12 page)

She didn't have to ask him to take her to the
outhouse. The door opened and there he was holding the flashlight
in his hand.

"You ready?" he asked.

Jazz nodded. There were so many things she
wanted to say, wanted to ask, and yet she couldn't find the
words.

He waited patiently for her and once back in
the house, said only, "I have work to do. Don't wait up."

Which, of course, is exactly what she did.
She waited. Try as she would, sleep didn't come, not even after he
came to bed and laid himself along the edge as he had the nights
before. It wasn't until he rolled behind her and placed his hand on
her hip, that she felt almost comfortable enough for sleep.

This time, however, instead of slipping from
beneath the possessive hand, she snuggled back into him to mingle
her warmth with his. His big paw slid over her hip to plant firmly
across her belly. His heavy sigh of relaxation made her smile. Jazz
was content.

In the morning, she drowsily stayed where she
was instead of slipping out to make the coffee. She liked his
warmth at her back, the press of his early morning erection up
against her ass, his hand still splayed across her belly. It felt
good. It felt right.

So it was double shock when she felt him wake
and hiss a curse of disgust as he rolled away.

The day that began bad, got worse.

The grizzly really was a
bear that morning and it was Jazz's personal opinion that his
grouchy attitude had a lot to do with his staying up until all
hours hiding in his office which she figured was his way of
avoiding the bedtime situation.

Add to that his unhappy
reaction to finding himself curled snuggly around his houseguest
and it made for one unhappy camper. Jazz didn't feel much better.
After all, it was her campsite the grumpy grizzly had invaded. His
rejection of the tasty treat she offered hurt.

He drank his coffee and ate his breakfast
between a series of grunts and grumbles in answer to her comments
or questions about what she was supposed to do at the clinic.

"Look," he said, "It's simple. Say hello and
ask their name. Find the file. A red block in the corner means they
can't pay, a yellow block means maybe they can pay and a green
block…"

"Means they can pay. I get it. What I don't
get is that you believe them when they say they can't pay. What
about insurance?"

He'd looked at her like she had two heads.
"Nobody has insurance. If they had insurance, they wouldn't be
coming to me."

"The wolvers would," she said reasonably.

"And they're the least likely to have
insurance."

"If you say so." She
shrugged. That didn't necessarily mean they couldn't
pay.

"I say so. And whatever you do, don't
swear."

"Who me?" she asked in pretended indignation.
"Never."

He only looked at her and frowned and his
mood hadn't changed by the time they were on their way in his
rattletrap truck.

"Aren't you ever going to smile?" she asked,
frowning herself.

"What's to smile about? I've got three kids
down with croup and it's probably going to spread. Bobby McIntire
has hip dysplasia and something tells me his son probably has it,
too, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I'd have more
luck and better facilities in treating a damn German shepherd.
Little Marcie Croft needs to have her tonsils out and I'll end up
doing the operation on a kitchen table like it was 1912.

"My roof leaks, my porch is rotting and if
somebody gives me one more fucking pig I'm going to have to move
into the sty and let them have the house."

"You'd never notice the difference," she
muttered. Big or small, it would still be a pig sty if someone
wasn't there to look after him.

"What?"

"I said, have you talked to the Alpha?" she
yelled over the clanking of the rattletrap truck. The timing was
still off. She could hear it and it was driving her crazy.

"About what? You think he doesn't know his
people are poor as church mice? He does the best he can with what
he's got. He scrapes the money together to pay the land taxes and
that's all he can do. They've lived hand to mouth for hundreds of
years. They're not about to change."

"What about the young? Don't they want to
live in the twenty-first century?" She was having a hard time
adjusting to a world without TV, computers, and only spotty cell
phone reception. She couldn't understand how this pack got along
without them.

"Some of them do and the Alpha releases them.
A few come back. Most find other packs to take them in."

They pulled up in front of the same stores
she'd parked in front of that first night, but Doc didn't cut the
engine. He turned in his seat to look at Jazz.

"I told you before, but you don't get it.
This pack is dying. Literally. It isn't only the young moving away.
There are fewer and fewer conceptions each year and for every two
pregnancies, only one results in a live birth. The pack's strength
is gone."

He looked beaten, defeated, and Jazz wanted
to lay her hand on his arm and offer him comfort, but an old man
was knocking on the truck window asking them what was taking so
long.

*****

This job was boring. Jazz sat at the battered
metal office desk which served as a barrier between the waiting
room and the examining room door. She served as the guard dog,
which she was sure Griz thought was her only qualification for the
job. If she didn't stop them, patients knocked on the examining
room door to see if he was available. What did they think? He was
hiding in there?

There were a few patients
standing on the sidewalk when they arrived and since then it had
been a revolving door of patient out and patient in with never more
than three or four patients in the room awaiting their turn. The
only thing she changed was the billing system.

"How much money you got?" she'd ask once the
pleasantries were over.

If they said under ten, she gave them a pass.
Under twenty she charged two dollars. Under thirty, five and so on.
Her father had taught her that you don't get something for nothing
in this life and you don't give something for nothing either. If
you did, people would think it was worth nothing and they'd be
right.

If someone complained,
Jazz had a whole spiel ready about how Doc had expenses, too, and
if they wanted this clinic to stay in business, they would have to
help out. She never got to use her spiel because no one complained.
The second drawer down on her desk became her cash box. At these
rates, nobody was going to get wealthy, but she might collect
enough to finish the repairs on his porch.

The bell over the door rang and Jazz looked
up from her magazine to give the incoming patient a friendly smile
and assess their ability to pay. The smile left her face when she
recognized one of the men as Cho, her attacker from the bar and
probable thief of her motorcycle.

Remembering Doc's warning that this was
strictly neutral territory, she plastered a smile, false and
unfriendly, onto her face and asked, "How may I help you
gentlemen?"

Her answer was a sneer.
"Well, if it isn't the bitch from the bar." Cho looked over his
shoulder at his companion. "Don't bother making a move on her. She
swings the other way."

"Not until I met you," Jazz muttered under
her breath, but Miss McGruder, a very pregnant human woman, must
have heard it because she made an odd sound like a stifled snicker
and held the magazine she was reading higher up to cover her
face.

"Come on, Cho, knock it off," the companion
advised, "You need to get fixed and I need to get to work."

"You don't need that fuckin' job anyway. I
make more in a week than you make in a month," Cho bragged. "We
could use that truck of yours for more than haulin' lame ass
tourists out of ditches."

And Jazz figured she knew
what that was. It was part of her father's business, too, and the
smell of it, burned or unburned, was as familiar to her as baby
powder to a new mother. Wolvers metabolized the stuff quickly, but
that didn't mean they couldn't get high or trade it for more potent
stuff. Her father was careful about how much he allowed in his
pack, though not for himself or his seconds, and he had no problem
with moving it from the growers in Northern California to buyers
elsewhere. Her father would never tolerate a member of his pack
talking about it so publicly.

By the look on the
sidekick's face, they'd had this conversation before. Younger than
Cho by several years, the guy wore the same clothing as Cho; jeans,
white tee shirt, black leather jacket with zippered pockets and
unbuckled straps at the wrists, and heavy boots, but unlike Cho,
who wore his like a second skin, this guy wore his like a uniform
that didn't quite fit.

"What are you looking at," Cho snapped at the
older couple who were trying very hard not to look at anything.

The older man, a wolver who'd introduced
himself and his wife when there was no one to overhear, placed his
arm protectively around his wife's shoulders while she looked down
at her fidgeting hands in her lap.

"Ah, forget it. Let's get this shit over
with." Cho swaggered to the desk. "Tell the Doc I need to see
him."

"Why?" Jazz asked with no pretense of
pleasantry.

"None of your business,
bitch." Cho's face became a scarlet mask.

For a moment Jazz wondered
if everything she'd been told was a lie and wolvers really could
contract a Sexually Transmitted Disease. The thought of this
asshole suffering an STD pleased her. Her bubble of pleasure broke
when his buddy spoke.

"Oh, for God's sake, show her the hand and
get it over with. It's been that way for three days and you have to
get it fixed." He grabbed Cho's right hand and shoved it front of
Jazz. "He got in a bar fight the other night and jammed up his
fingers."

"What did you do?" Jazz
asked brightly, her bubble back in place, "Shake hands with a
girl?"

His injury was the result of their meeting at
the bar.

Cho shook the other guy off and awkwardly
reached for his wallet which was chained to his right side. He
flipped it open displaying a wad of cash, fished out a twenty and
tossed it to his friend.

"Go next door and get me something to eat.
I'll only be a minute."

The friend rolled his eyes, but took the
money and looked around the room. "Can I get you guys anything?" he
asked politely.

Jazz almost asked for a muzzle and a leash,
but remembered her role as receptionist and shook her head.
"Thanks, I'm fine."

The waiting patients didn't look up. The
young man shrugged and left. As the door shut behind him, Cho
turned back to Jazz and slammed his good hand down on the desk.

"You tell that fucking doctor that I need to
see him now."

"I'm sorry, sir, but Doctor's with a patient
and these nice people were here before you. I have some papers here
for you to fill out, although if it's too difficult, you can wait
until your friend comes back. Oh, and let's see, two jammed up
fingers at a buck seventy-five. That's three hundred and fifty
dollars. Please."

Cho leaned over the desk. "I ain't paying you
jack shit, bitch. This is a free clinic."

"Rules have changed."

"Fuck you."

"Only in your dreams."
Jazz stood and leaned into him until they were almost nose to nose.
"Do you really want to get into this again?" she whispered, "With
your bad hand and no buddies to back you up?" She stared at him
until he blinked and only then did she sit back down. She watched
with satisfaction as he backed up and took a seat.

"Oh, and the price just went up. Two bills,
each. That's four hundred. Payment is due before services are
rendered."

He started to speak, but
she held up her finger to cut him off. "Or you can go to the
nearest hospital where it'll cost you a helluva lot more and your
friend will be late for work."

He curled his lip, but opened the wallet and
removed several bills. He held them out and Jazz was tempted to
make him bring them to her, but she'd won the battle and that was
enough. She rounded the desk and reached for the money and he
tossed it on the floor. She bit her tongue and bent to pick up the
four, hundred dollar bills.

The pregnant woman's gasp of fright warned
her. Jazz glanced up, saw Cho's left hand move and brought up her
right, still clutching the bills, to block it. Hundred dollar bills
wrapped around his wrist, she turned, stepping into him instead of
away and her right arm snaked beneath his left and pulled downward.
With one hand at his wrist and the other at his upper arm and his
free hand all but useless, she had enough leverage to drive the
knife wielding hand down into his thigh. He released the knife
before it got there and the blackened blade slid along his leg to
clatter to the floor.

Cho was now curled over her bent back, his
attention on the knife's near miss. She dragged her right hand
along his leather clad arm until it connected with her left and
bent forward a few inches more. Cho, already off balance, slid
further up along her back. It was simply a matter of pulling with
her hands and pushing upward with her legs to send him sailing over
her.

He landed with a bone rattling crash on the
desk top. The appointment book skid onto the chair which crashed
against the door followed by the desk that hit the wall and chair
back with a double thud. The coffee cup and contents went the way
of the pens and magazine, off the end of the desk and onto the
floor.