By the timePaloma walked out of the small general store attached to The Shack, tote bags full to bursting, the weather had taken a turn. She gave the sky a withering look. The snow was no longer falling in gentle flurries, but had turned into a worryingly dense wall of white. Adjusting her bags over her shoulders, she sighed and fished her phone out of her pocket with the tips of her fingers.
The weather wasn’t supposed to change so fast. Her reports showed that the snowstorm was several hours away. But when she checked the updated data on her phone, Paloma could only let out another long sigh. Even with her advanced technology, predicting the weather was like trying to guess where a handful of jacks would fall. One slight change in air pressure or sudden temperature shift from a breeze off of the ocean a hundred miles away and all her carefully examined data went out the window.
“You stopping at the library, Polly?” The familiar voice made her spine lock.
Shoving her phone into one of her bags, Paloma eyed Jack Jr. with barely disguised distaste. Her one-time high school boyfriend turned thorn in her side, Jack Jr. thought he was something special because he’d made it to the Shifter Games in his junior year of college. It didn’t matter that he’d gotten his ass handed to him in the ring by a bear from Toronto. He still thought he was the big, bad alpha of Pineridge. She would have avoided him on an average day, but after his disgustingly vocal support for “putting down” her dragon, Paloma could barely look at him without wanting to swing one of her totes at his head.
Sucking in a bracing lungful of icy air, she cast her ex a dismissive look. “No. I planned to, but the storm moved in faster than I thought. I have to head back up the mountain before the road gets too icy for my tires.” At a certain point, even m-enhanced autogrip tires wouldn’t keep her safely on the narrow road.
Jack Jr. stepped out of the doorway of his father’s store to lean against one of the awning’s old wooden pillars. Generations of staples from thousands of fliers for fundraisers and babysitting services and town notices littered the pillars — layers and layers of rusted metal flakes that winked in the snowy afternoon.
Her unwanted companion shoved his hands in the back pockets of his fitted jeans and squinted at the sky. A mountain lion shifter, Jack Jr. was built lean but strong. For many years of her life, she sighed over his sandy blond hair, pretty hazel eyes, and the easy way he carried himself. Paloma had even burned with envy as she watched him go through girl after girl in their small school, waiting for her chance to show him she was the one he really wanted — only to have that chance come her senior year of high school and turn out monumentally disappointing.
Too bad Jack Jr. never quite got the message. He’d never shaken the fact that she broke up with him after a paltry two months of dating, and he’d made it her problem ever since.
“You sure you should drive in this?” He cast her a look she knew well. “My place is closer. You could stay the night and wait out the storm.”
Ugh. Paloma shifted her weight and pretended to adjust the tote bags over her shoulders to hide her grimace. “Thanks for the offer, but I should be okay.” She made to step out from under the awning, but Jack Jr.'s hand on her elbow held her back.
“Look, Polly, I know you’re still mad about the vote last week, but you don’t need to take it out on me.” His voice dropped into the distinctive shifter purr so many people found irresistible. “I’m just trying to make sure you’re safe. You know that it bothers me thinking about you all alone up there on your property. You’d be better off down here, with a pack looking out for you.”
Paloma rolled her eyes. “You know I can’t do my job from down here, JJ.”
She felt his hand ghost up the back of her arm through the layers of her flannel shirt and heavy jacket. There was no response to his blatant overture, no familiar tickle or surge of butterflies. All she felt was familiar exasperation.
“The Weather Service can put someone else up there,” he insisted, hazel eyes flickering to the gold of his lion as his irritation grew. “You shouldn’t be alone, Polly. And you shouldn’t have to work. A good mate would take care of that sort of thing for you.”
And there it was, the reason she’d so quickly fallen out of her infatuation with him: Jack Jr. didn’t want a mate who was equal. He wanted someone who would worship his every move, give him all the little cubs he asked for, and be happy to give up her own life to do both.
Paloma was not that kind of woman and never had been. Too bad her resistance only made Jack Jr. that much more determined to have her.
Damn single-minded shifters. It was like the longer she remained single, the more convinced he became that she was holding out on him as some sort of test.
Jack Jr. wasn’t malicious. He was bullheaded and full of himself, but not a monster. They’d known one another since they were babies. If push came to shove, she knew she could trust him with her life. She just didn’t always like him. Especially when he refused to actually listen to her.
And she certainly had no plans to let him sink his teeth into her.
Using the need to shift her heavy bags as an excuse to step out of his hold, Paloma tartly replied, “I like my job, JJ. You know that.”
“How do you know you wouldn’t like being my mate more?”
“Because I have a—” She caught herself at the last second. Blanching, she realized that she’d been about to say she already had a mate. The memory of Artem’s easy smile flashing in the cocoon-like darkness of his wing rushed to the forefront of her mind.
Good grief, woman. You need to get a grip.
Paloma cleared her throat. “Because I have a brain, JJ, and I don’t need you to tell me what it's good for.”
Jack Jr. scowled. “Damn it, Polly, I know you’ve been struggling since Emile died. It bothers the fuck out of me that you won’t just ask me for help. If you’d stop being so proud and just let me take care of you—” His eyes dropped to the bags slung over her shoulders. Brow furrowing, he asked, “Why do you have so much food? Are you planning on barricading yourself up there or something?”
Paloma felt her cheeks heat with equal parts outrage and humiliation. It was a low blow to bring up her father’s death. It was worse knowing that he was right. If Artem’s stay in her home showed her anything, it was that she was struggling. She had no idea just how lonely she was, nor just how tired of the emptiness in her life she was, until he showed up with his sunshine and smiles and reverent kisses.
The truth was that she had been more or less willfully ignoring it. Now that thin protection was stripped away. As soon as Artem left, she would be worse off than before his arrival.
That didn’t mean she would ever, ever take Jack Jr. up on his offer, though.
She didn’t mind that he was an alpha to his bones — the need to protect and lead built into his damn DNA — but she would never be the woman he wanted. Striving to be that woman would only break her into something smaller, more fragile than she already was.
If she could be with someone, it would be a person who wanted to see her flourish, not wither in his shadow.