WereCat Fever (5 page)

“I was sick for three months—totally out of it. I didn’t know those rogues stayed behind or anything about what happened to her father.”

“You would have if you hadn’t been so stubborn. You should have checked on her before.”

“I did check. There was never any evidence she’d been infected. She never showed any signs of changing until recently. Why do you think it took so long?”

“I don’t know. On average, male shifters go through the change later than females. But even some genetic shifters never change. In your case, the Were virus triggered your change. I still don’t know why Lacey didn’t show signs of the virus until recently. Maybe her metabolism is slow or she was on medication or something.”

“It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t interfere. She accomplished so much on her own. Finished college, got her degree. She has her career and the ranch. Hell, she could’ve had a normal life if it weren’t for me.”

“Well, that option’s off the table. When are you going to go down there and man up? Sorry…just an expression.”

“Hunter, you’re not funny.”

“Really? You’re probably right.”

“I’m trying to decide how to tell a woman her life is about to change forever. That almost everything the movies show about the paranormal world is true. How the hell is she going to react?”

“I don’t know, but you’ve had plenty of time to contemplate that over the last few years. It’s not like you haven’t been thinking about finding a way to convince her that this would be a good choice if she has to accept it. Don’t forget, if the rogues sniff her out, she could be in real danger. So make up your mind. I’m getting hungry, and we don’t know how much time she has left.”

“I know. That’s why we’re here.” Bryan took his leather hat off and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not leaving her side, whether she knows I’m here or not.”

This weekend couldn’t come and go quickly enough for Lacey’s satisfaction—Sunday was the fifth anniversary of the day Bryan disappeared, the week before her father’s body was discovered. The sheriff claimed he’d been killed by some wild animal, but none of the evidence pointed to any local species.

With a finger touch, Lacey clicked on her laptop to check the responses to the invitations for this coming weekend’s events. The reminder date on the computer calendar may as well have been a big blinking neon sign blasting the approaching event.

Thomas talked her into joining the town council to get out and mingle. How she ended up assisting Donna, the chairman in charge, was still a mystery. She let out a hiss. Keiran and Donna always sided with Thomas when it came to what they believed was her well-being. If she ever found out who’d nominated her for the committee, she promised she’d wring one of her friends’ necks. Thomas swore it wasn’t him, but she believed he was the most likely culprit. When he insisted she delegated authority better than anyone, Lacey started thinking she’d been railroaded.

Stinker. Lacey smiled. He never envisioned finding out how good she was. Lacey ran him ragged with assignments for the jubilee and she tapped her finger on her desk thinking up more ways to get even with him.

He could meet with the local junior women’s league tomorrow night. Half the women were single and hot for his scrumptious body and the other half were matchmakers, certain a man his age should be thinking about marriage. That would be pure torture since Thomas preferred variety, kinky sex, and ménages.

Her email inbox flashed, practically screaming at her. Ugh, more responses to sort through. Why did everyone wait until the last minute?

Rummaging through a few papers on top of her desk, she remembered the invitation list was inside the drawer. Right on top, with all the check marks, the list indicated who was coming and who was not. Her email notice pinged and she glanced back at the screen to see who else was responding.

One name jumped out of the rest. One name in the inbox had her insides quivering at the gall. The shock, after so long, sent her bolting forward in the chair. As a result, she knocked the glass vase off the desk. She cursed several very obscene epithets. Then suddenly the air seemed too thick to breathe, and her pulse pounded in her ears.

He’s alive. I knew it!

For all she’d known, Bryan could have been killed along with her father. There’d been blood, but no body—no other evidence. Even so, there’d been another reason she’d known he was still alive. Even though his absence had left a hole inside her, the unusual connection they shared never changed. The bond still held her to him. If he’d been dead, she would have known it. Then at least she could’ve mourned him instead of cursing him.

A mixture of relief and regret settled over her when she couldn’t stop the memories of their last days together. Everything came flooding back—the emotions with the memories. The memories included the weekend he’d come home sick to see the doc shortly before graduation. After a few days, his symptoms passed and his old libido returned with a vengeance, proving he was well enough to go back to school.

“I’ll be back, soon,” he’d said the next morning before he left and kissed the tears off her cheeks. “You’ll be too busy with your finals to miss me.” He’d chucked her under the chin and left.

College, a couple of weeks, and then he’ll graduate. Don’t cry. It’ll only be a little while before he’s back for good…

But that never happened.

This email was the first evidence he was alive. The first she’d heard from him since he’d waved good-bye to her as he drove out of town. They never found his car or him, and as far as she knew no one had heard from him again. Until now.

With a quick tap of the key, the header appeared. She stared and wondered…so many things. Her eyes flickered over the screen.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Old friend

Really? Old friend.

Hi Lacey, hope you haven’t forgotten me. We used to date some.

Date? Ouch.

Which part stung most? Date some was what he called their relationship, and love of her life was the way she remembered him. More like “soul mate” than old friend.

Those curses she cried out in the nights after he disappeared seemed so much more appropriate now, knowing he chose his path. Damn him for breaking her heart. Damn him twice for returning. And damn him three times for being able to do it again.

The coffee cup from this morning sat innocently on her desk, awaiting her wrath. She let it fly, a substitute for the man she wanted to squash, the man she’d mistakenly believed in, the man who may have been involved with her father’s death. The cup hit the library wall while she repeated those old curses and then some.

He’d stood her up after graduation, never showed up, never called, never wrote. Not only had he broken her heart, but the sheriff, his family, and the town went into an uproar looking for him.

What was he thinking to show up after all this time? All hell was going to break loose. For a moment she hoped he’d let someone other than her know he was returning. His father and the sheriff were going to crucify him—not to mention what she was going to do to him when she came face to face with the coward.

After five years was he suddenly thinking, “Oh, hey, wonder how that little Lacey is doing?” The email was supposed to be…what? A warning? “Get ready baby, I’m back?”

Yeah, like she’d been sitting around for five long years waiting for him to grace her with his presence.

Okay, so what if she had no life. He didn’t have to know that.

Well, he had another thing coming.

Maybe he’ll break some law so the sheriff will lock him up before I run into him.

Everything churning through her mind turned into a collage of memories dredging up emotions she didn’t want to experience. She remembered the football games and secret dates, picnics and moonlight. The kisses were so wonderful, she wondered if anything surpassed the way he made her feel when he touched her.

Lacey let her face fall into her hands. His disappearance had set off a chain of events she didn’t want to relive. She lifted her head and stared at Bryan’s message then shut her eyes. The words imprinted against her eyelids, and the shock was still too fresh in her mind. Just thinking about them brought the bitter pain back with the details.

Old man Cauldwell tried blaming her when Bryan, his oldest son, didn’t return home from college. Tory, Bryan’s half brother, the little son of a bitch, accused her of chasing him to ground until he couldn’t stand the thought of returning. When she’d been too wounded emotionally to deal with them, her father stood up to the Cauldwells and took the heat for her. In the end, she believed her weakness cost her father his job and his life.

The sheriff claimed it was a wild animal attack, but Lacey believed otherwise. Bryan’s father, the wealthiest rancher in the state, fired her dad the day before they found his body. To this day, Lacey was sure the Cauldwells were involved. If not Bryan, then his father had a part in her father’s death or the cover-up. All the money in the world couldn’t persuade her otherwise.

There was nothing she could have done back then. Knowing the older man’s volatile relationship with Bryan made her suspect he had something to do with his own son’s disappearance.

All those questions changed with this one email.

Date some
?

Hardly. His father never let his son date his foreman’s daughter. Fucking? Oh yeah! Fucking her was a different matter totally. That he might have accepted if he knew about it. Probably even would have preferred it. To that elitist S-O-B, she was okay to do in the dark or in the hills, but not good enough to bring out in public. He didn’t want any negative attention brought to the family or his country club set.

It took years before she came to the realization that she and Bryan spent time together at school and sneaked off when they could. She believed those passionate I-love-you’s he declared in moments of heated embraces because her own desperation wanted to. Now she recognized them for what they were to Bryan—a way to get in her pants. Over the last few years she’d grown to believe he wasn’t any different from his father.

She looked out the window to the hills, the ones where she and Bryan went, where he’d lied to her, fucked her, and forgotten her.

Her eyes blurred, but she blinked away the self-pity.

There’d been nothing more in the email, nothing that mattered, anyway. Blah, blah, blah. No explanation. No apology. Merely statements that broached more questions.

Don’t believe for a minute that leaving wasn’t as painful for me…

She closed her eyes and swore she could hear his deep, rich voice murmuring the words in her head the way he once had.

More lies. And why now?

Even the prospect that he remembered her fondly made her wonder if he thought about her when he crawled under the sheets stark naked, the way he always slept. If he ran his hands down his tight abs, lowered them to his groin, and thought of her. Had he thought of her when he buried himself inside all those other women these last few years? Had he ever dreamed of her the way she had about him every night since the day they’d met?

Nothing hinted at an answer to the one burning question she would never ask.
How could you have loved me and done this to me?

The only explanation she could come up with was that he’d lied, then and now. The knot in her throat threatened to choke her, making it hard to swallow. Her skin tingled, her eyes burned, and she glanced back at the computer, aching for more, for something she couldn’t quite grasp.

The truth.

What happened to keep him away? And what happened to her father? If he didn’t have the answers, she was sure he knew where to find them.

Blinking through the watery haze, she pressed
delete
, and closed her laptop. She needed to get out of the house before she did something irreparable…like cry. Because if she started, she wouldn’t stop.

What she needed was something other than this heartache slicing through her breast. She needed fresh air. Open skies. The range. The hills.

And another emotion…
Anger.
That was an emotion that might settle her.

She dredged it up from repressed memories, savoring it, adding it to this most recent insult. When she recalled the pain, the red-hot anger was impossible to get past. Perhaps it would be enough to block her fear—fear that he’d find a way to get to her.

Anger always controlled the pain, but she’d need more to fight her feelings for Bryan.

Fortunately, she knew just where to find more of that anger. In their cave. If Bryan was coming to the diamond jubilee celebration, it would be the perfect opportunity for her to find retribution for her heartbreak, even if she never found it for her father’s death. Lacey wanted a shot at bringing her old friend to his knees and gutting him the way his leaving had emotionally emptied her.

First, she’d find out what happened to her dad and make him confess to his father that she’d had nothing to do with his disappearance. Then she expected a massive apology.

If she managed to convey anything else, she’d make it clear she was over him. Because more than anything, she wanted to free herself of this caring, even if the thought of being without him was unbearable. A hot, shooting pain pierced her gut at the thought of the possibility. Honestly, her need was less about being free of him—it was more about wanting to be free of the inexplicable hold he had over her. She wanted that tie broken—wanted control over her emotions back. She had to break the emotional ties she felt to him. And he could never find out how often she thought about him, how much she wanted him.