The Alpha's Mate (11 page)

“So tell me, Miss Elizabeth Reynolds, what
brings a city girl like you to a place like Rabbit Creek?”

“Is it so obvious I’m a city girl?” she
asked, laughing lightly and lowering her lashes. This was flirting.
She was actually flirting. Thank you Cassandra Fontaine!

Charles leaned in and breathed deeply through
his nose. “Mmmm, it is. Country girls don’t smell this good.”

She was searching her mind for some witty
reply when he raised his eyes to hers. Her brain froze in its
search for words and all she came up with were two.
Kiss me
.
She hoped she hadn’t said it out loud.

His tongue touched her lips and pulled back.
She wasn’t sure if she should follow it or stay where she was.
Cassandra had deserted her. As if sensing her hesitancy, Charles
leaned in again, this time catching the corner of her mouth with
his kiss. The kisses continued lightly against her cheek, her
temple, the corner of her eye.

When his mouth returned to her lips, she was
ready for him. Tilting her head to meet him, he kissed her, mouth
slightly open but probing no further. This time when his mouth left
hers, she followed, but he had other plans. He moved to her neck,
to the sensitive spot below her ear and with tiny nips and nibbles,
worked his way down to her exposed shoulder. Her body burned hotter
with each new touch.

Her breath left her on a sigh. When his lips
traveled further downward to the swell of her breast, she drew
breath sharply and smiled dreamily. Charles was every bit as good
at this as Marshall. Marshall!

What the hell was the matter with her? She
didn’t even know this man. She hadn’t had more than twenty minute’s
conversation with him. She didn’t know his likes, dislikes. They
hadn’t had a meal together. Hell, she hadn’t even finished her
glass of iced tea before her body wanted to drag him off to the
nearest bedroom. Still breathing hard, she pushed away from
him.

“Stop, stop.” She crossed her hands at the
base of her throat and took two steps back. “This isn’t right,” she
said, “This isn’t me.”

Rather than looking shocked or chagrinned,
Charles looked pleased. “Oh, it’s you all right, heeding Mother
Nature’s call. Doing what you were meant to do.” He reached for
her. “Just go with it, love, and see where I can take you.”

“No,” she said shaking her head. She took
another step back toward the end of the porch at the corner of the
house. Her body, seemingly with a mind of its own, wanted to throw
itself into his arms to pick up right where it’d left off. She
pressed her knees together and bit the inside of her cheek. “I’m
sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. I’m normally not this
way. I don’t even know you well enough to kiss you, never mind…”
She flapped her hands helplessly.

Charles laughed. “Your body knows me. All the
rest will come in time. No one has a claim on you, do they?” He
sounded reasonable, sincere.

She couldn’t tell him about Marshall.
Besides, Marshall wasn’t a possibility and certainly didn’t have a
claim.

“No, there isn’t anyone else. Still…” She
could feel her resolve beginning to weaken. Why shouldn’t she play
a little fast and loose? There was nothing wrong with being a
healthy woman with healthy appetites. This was a new place, a new
life, a new her.

“I knew it.”

Charles grinned roguishly and it should have
been charming, but something about that grin made her
uncomfortable. It was as if he’d won a bet and she was the purse.
It suddenly felt as if he were playing a game to which she didn’t
know the rules. It was that more than anything that gave her the
strength to stand straight and face him.

“Please,” she said quietly, “I need you to
leave.”

He frowned and took a step forward. She was
beginning to feel trapped, enclosed by the house and rail with
Charles blocking her only exit.

“I apologize again if I appeared to offer
more than I’m willing to give.” She didn’t want to anger him or
hurt his masculine pride. “It’s not that I don’t find you
attractive. It’s just too fast, too soon and that wouldn’t be good
for either one of us.”

Charles nodded and took a step back. The
charming smile was back in place. “You’re right, of course, but I
want you to know I’ll be back. I have a feeling, Elizabeth
Reynolds; you’re the key to my dreams.”

Elizabeth sat heavily in the rocker and
watched him disappear into the trees at the side of the house where
Max claimed there was only a steep and impassable ravine.

Chapter 11

Elizabeth spent the afternoon or evening as
it was called here in the mountains, ruminating. All right, moping,
but the smaller word made it seem like a larger fault. She tried to
write, but Cassandra’s character had fallen flat and Morton was
nowhere to be found which is exactly where she was with Marshall
and Charles. Nowhere. Shouldn’t there be a plot in there
somewhere?

One woman. Two men. The very sight of them
sent her body singing and zinging and had her nether regions doing
tiny pirouettes that made her squirm with anticipation. One, an
upright local sheriff, well respected and loved by his community.
The other, a mysterious stranger with a mysterious past. Both were
handsome, but she’d met handsome men before and they never made her
breasts feel like a pair of twelve year old girls at a boy band
concert.

These feelings coursing around inside her
made her ashamed and excited at the same time. Ashamed because at
thirty two, she apparently didn’t have enough self-control to tame
her body’s sexual urges and excited because, tamed or not, she
finally had some.

But no matter how hard she reasoned or
analyzed, she couldn’t fathom why. The water up here was good, but
not
that
good. The mountain air was certainly invigorating,
but if its fresh air were the cause, Rabbit Creek would be the
vacation capital of the world. Now that wolves and snakes were
things of the past, she was sleeping better at night than she had
in years. But if a good night’s sleep caused this kind of reaction,
mattress companies would have it plastered all over television and
billboards across the country. She probably would have read the
study on it.

No, none of those things made sense. Like
Sherlock Holmes in
The Blanched Soldier
, she had eliminated
all that was impossible and was left with only the improbable
truth. And bless his analytical heart, Sigmund Freud would most
likely agree. It was her mother’s fault.

Mother was the perfect hostess, the perfect
small town socialite, the perfect wife. She wanted the same life
for her only child. So, from the time Elizabeth was old enough to
toddle, she was raised to meet her mother’s social expectations.
Unfortunately, Elizabeth wasn’t very good at it.

Dancing lessons were a disaster; piano and
voice painful to the ear. Neatly braided hair came home from school
in lopsided pigtails and while Elizabeth made it through ice
skating lessons relatively unscathed, she spoiled the season by
breaking her arm trying to climb the stacks at the library to reach
a book on the top shelf.

Elizabeth tried; how she tried. She observed
those around her like an anthropologist observing the culture of a
previously undiscovered tribe. No matter how much she read and
studied and analyzed, she simply couldn’t understand the
intricacies of her mother’s social status. Over time, she learned
to live her life by a series of lists thoughtfully provided by her
mother. These lists worked so well, or so she thought, that she
started making her own.

So it went, until six months ago when, after
another socially acceptable affair ended badly, Elizabeth realized
that her unhappiness had nothing to do with the loss of a man and
everything to do with the loss of herself.

She wasn’t her mother, could never be her
mother, and she was so very, very tired of pretending she
could.

She made her plans and started searching for
a place to live where her mother wouldn’t follow. Eugene Begley
visited the library to use the computers as his laptop had
unexpectedly died. One conversation led to another and here she was
in the Appalachian back of beyond. Writing a novel was just her
socially acceptable excuse for running away from home and she
wasn’t sorry for it.

She’d done more living and made more friends
in a single week in these mountains than she’d done in thirty-two
years in Ohio. These people didn’t care where she bought her
clothes or what hair salon she went to or what restaurant was in or
out on this week’s list of Places To Be Seen. Today was the first
time in a week she’d thought about wearing makeup. Her mother would
pretend she wasn’t at home rather than answer the door without her
‘face’ on. For the people of Rabbit Creek the face she was born
with was good enough. They didn’t expect her to be anything but
what she was.

And therein lay the problem. After thirty-two
years of being what someone else wanted her to be, she wasn’t sure
who or what she was. But she was learning. She was a woman who
could kill mice, use a shotgun, and run into a burning barn. She
was a woman who could get the screaming hots for two very good
looking men. Those feelings were part of her, too. Maybe it was as
simple as that. She’d finally had the courage to escape from her
mother’s world of lists and rules and all the feelings she’d
suppressed were bubbling to the surface.

She wasn’t frigid. Her old life was. Still,
she was no teenager suddenly released from all restrictions and
unaware of the consequences. She was a mature woman who needed to
use her head.

“This is my life,” she said as she rose from
her rocker, “And I’m going to go where it leads me.”

“It’s about time,” she answered and laughed
aloud.
* * *

Elizabeth wasn’t getting much writing done,
but she was certainly making a dent in the box of unread books
she’d brought with her. She used to hide them under her bed, but
she wasn’t going to feel guilty any more for her taste in books and
she wondered if she could build herself a bookshelf to sit next to
her bed.

When GW replaced a few boards on the porches,
he’d left some sizable pieces of scrap beside the back porch. There
was a hammer and nails in a kitchen drawer and even a handsaw
hanging on the back porch wall. How hard could it be? It was
already after nine and full dark, but she thought there would be
enough light from the kitchen windows for her to bring the wood
inside.

She’d no sooner opened the back door than
something thudded against the wall beside her head. She yelped,
pulled back into the kitchen and slammed the door. She ducked to
the floor and sat huddled in the corner between wall and door,
frightened and unsure what to do. When, after a few minutes,
nothing else happened, she slowly raised up enough to peek out the
door’s window. She couldn’t hear or see anything.

Cautiously opening the door, she saw the
clump of mud and gravel someone had thrown at her house. Why? She
peered out into the yard, squinting to see what she could in the
faint light thrown from the door.

There was a mass of black in the lighter
patch of gravel that was used for parking. At first she thought it
was a garbage bag and that she’d interrupted some local pranksters
up to some mischief. Then the bag moved and she realized with
growing horror that it wasn’t a bag at all, but a human being.

“Oh no, please, no,” she cried as she ran to
the struggling form.

It was Max and the only thing recognizable
about her was her strawberry blonde hair though even that was
matted with blood and filth. The battered woman had already risen
to her hands and knees.

“Stay there, Max. You shouldn’t move. Let me
get a blanket.”

“House. Lock the doors.” Max retched and
heaved something black and ugly onto the gravel. She moaned and her
elbows started to collapse beneath her.

Elizabeth helped her friend to her feet and,
bearing as much of her weight as she could, lead her to the house.
The four steps to the porch seemed impossible to climb. Max
screamed when Elizabeth tried to grip her around the middle to
hoist her up. Her ribs were broken.

Once in the kitchen, Max leaned against the
counter, gripping the edge with white knuckled fingers while
Elizabeth closed and locked the door. When she would have helped
her friend to the bedroom, Max waved her off. The young woman was
panting, her breaths shallow because of the pain.

“Gonna hurl,” she whispered and tried to turn
toward the sink. Elizabeth had just enough time to help her into
position before Max vomited again. The vomit wasn’t black, but
bloody.

After settling Max into a chair, Elizabeth
began to wash away the blood and dirt from her face and hands.
Max’s eyes were already beginning to blacken and her lips and nose
were swollen into a grotesque mask. Silently, Elizabeth washed.
Over and over she rinsed the dish towel free of grime, but there
was always more.

Once face and arms were cleaned, she
carefully unbuttoned the torn cotton blouse and gasped. The girl’s
body had been pummeled. As she tossed the garment onto the floor,
she saw the distinctive imprint of a man’s boot.

“Who did this to you?” she asked.
And how
much more have they done?
She couldn’t keep the anger from her
voice. What kind of monster did this to a woman?

“I don’t know.” Max started to weep.

Fearing shock, Max’s stony, staring silence
had frightened Elizabeth, but these soft whimpering tears broke her
heart.

“Shh, shh, it’s going to be all right. You’re
safe now. I’m here.” She reached into the drawer behind her and
pulled out her only kitchen knife. She laid it on the table within
easy reach. “And I swear I’ll kill the fucking bastards if they
come back.”