An Alpha's Thunder (Water Bear Shifters 3) (3 page)

“Now you’re talking,” Ben said. “Let’s go chill out for a bit. I could use a breather after all the storms and rescues we’ve had.”

Lance sighed inwardly, but agreed to go grab a drink with the guys. He was feeling moody, and part of him wanted to just stay home and continue his search for any kind of contact information for Caroline. But he told himself to stop being ridiculous. He had already searched high and low for a phone number, and had come up short. Another few hours of searching were unlikely to reveal anything new. Besides, it was looking like he was leaving San Diego, anyway. No sense in continuing to chase a farfetched chance at a romance when he might be moving away soon.

His bear growled within him, disagreeing strongly with his determination to forget about Caroline. Lance pushed down the beast’s insistent rumbling and grabbed his keys and wallet.

“First round’s on me,” he said, heading for the front door. No matter how much his bear tried to steer him back to Caroline, he would focus on his crew tonight. Their safety and well-being was much more important than some silly crush.

Even if that silly crush was on the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.

“Here’s your mail,” Samantha said, tossing a pile of white envelopes onto the kitchen counter. “I’m going to Jake’s for the weekend, so I won’t see you until Monday night. Have a good weekend.”

“Thanks, you too,” Caroline answered, giving Samantha a small wave. Inwardly, she was doing a happy dance. She loved it when she had the apartment to herself for the weekend. And after the stress of the last week, she could use some solitude.

Her publicist told her that the calls had been nonstop about Lance, the man who had shown up at the art show looking like the identical twin of the man in her paintings. Her publicist begged her to make some sort of public statement, but Caroline refused. She didn’t see the need for it. She had already told everyone the truth—that the man in her paintings was a figment of her imagination. She had no further comment to make beyond that. No matter what she said, she knew everyone was going to draw their own conclusions about how she knew Lance.

Caroline had Googled Lance several times over the course of the week. He hadn’t given her his last name, but the snoopy reporters who were always calling had found it for her. Caroline had no idea how they’d found out so much information about him, and she didn’t want to know. Their ability to find out details about anyone and everyone creeped her out.

A Google search of Lance Bowman didn’t turn up a whole lot of exciting information. He worked for the Coast Guard, which only added to the suspicious appearance of the situation. Caroline had to admit that it sounded pretty shady to tell people that you had accidentally painted a carbon copy of a Coast Guard rescue crew member in a painting of a Coast Guard rescue crew. The only other information about Lance was a public record of a condo purchase he had made a few years ago. Other than that, he seemed to be something of a mystery. Caroline didn’t find any Facebook or other social media accounts for him, and she couldn’t for the life of her find anything that would lead her to who his family might be.

Caroline sighed and rubbed her forehead with her palm. She was acting like some sort of high schooler who wanted to stalk her crush on the internet or something. Why did she really care who Lance Bowman was? Yes, he looked exactly like her dream man. And yes, she had accidentally painted him into her latest art exhibit. But other than that, they had no connection. She didn’t know who he was, and she had no reason to believe that he was a man worth pursuing.

Well, okay, that last part wasn’t entirely true. She was pretty fascinated by the fact that he worked as a flight technician on a Coast Guard rescue crew. He probably knew the ocean storms even better than she did. She doubted that he loved them more than her, but he surely understood their power in a way that she never would. And they both made their living based on the sea—him by rescuing people from its grasp, and her by introducing people to its raw beauty in her paintings.

Caroline laughed out loud. What was she doing, sitting here trying to convince herself that a total stranger might be worth pursuing. She would likely never meet him again. In fact, it was probably better that she never met him again. These nosy news reporters would jump on any chance to claim that they had broken a story about how Caroline had a secret lover whom she’d used in her paintings. Caroline shook her head in a mixture of amusement and annoyance as she went to her counter to open her mail. She loved painting, and she was thankful for the success she’d had as an artist. She wasn’t going to deny that being a starving artist wasn’t as sexy as it was made out to be. She very much preferred being an artist who could afford to buy food and pay the light bill. But the constant attention that came along with even a low level of fame had grown wearisome to Caroline. Sometimes she dreamed of packing up her few belongings and just disappearing to start over somewhere far away. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d attempted that. Sometimes a fresh start was just what you needed.

Caroline let out an exasperated breath and started flipping through her mail. She wasn’t sure that she was ready to leave the ocean here in San Diego just yet. She knew the beaches here so well. They had become a sort of friend to her, especially the one closest to her house. She knew every nook and cranny of that beach, even with her eyes closed.

The mail, as usual, was an assortment of bills and credit card offers. Caroline was about to toss it aside onto the counter again when she flipped to the last envelope and paused with interest. It was a plain white envelope the size of a greeting card. An old name and address of hers was written neatly in blue ink, but there was no return address. A yellow forwarding label from the postal service contained her new address, which was how the letter had made it here. Caroline raised her eyes in surprise. The original address the sender had used was so old that any forwarding order would have long expired. There must have been some odd glitch at the post office that caused the letter to get forwarded anyway. Caroline frowned and flipped the envelope over, but there was nothing written on the other side, either. The postmark was from just over a week ago, in San Diego. It looked like a personal letter of some sort, which made Caroline wary. She guarded her personal information religiously, and would not be pleased if her home address somehow leaked out. Hopefully, since the letter had originally been sent to an old address, her current address was still private.

She tore open the envelope to find a simple card with an elegant, colorful paisley design on the front. Furrowing her brow, she opened it to find the entire inside filled with neatly written script in the same handwriting that had been used on the envelope. Her eyes quickly scanned down to find the signature, and her heart skipped a beat when she saw the name “Lance Bowman” signed in perfect cursive at the end of the note. All of a sudden, she forgot the long list of reasons she had come up with for why she would never be interested in Lance. How had he found this address? She’d had quite a few people stalking her over the years, but they had only been able to find the phone number for her publicist. They had never managed to get her address, and had been forced to settle for showing up at all of her art exhibits to try to convince her to date them. But in the span of a week, Lance had found an old address and sent her a card. She should feel creeped out and scared, but instead she felt flattered and impressed. Who was this guy, exactly? Caroline’s hands shook slightly with excitement as she read what Lance had written to her.

Dear Caroline, Forgive me for sending you this letter unsolicited. I tried to call you, but your publicist is quite the stubborn watchdog.

Caroline laughed. Her publicist was worth her weight in gold. Caroline never had to worry about taking phone calls she didn’t want to take.

I searched high and low for another phone number or your address,
the letter continued.
You’re not an easy woman to find. I finally found this address buried deep within a public record from almost a decade ago. I have no idea whether it’s even correct, but it’s my last hope of contacting you before your next art show, which might be months away. I had to try. I know this might sound crazy to you, but I feel like destiny is trying to bring us together. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you painted a man who looks just like me, or that I ended up at the show when I’m not even that interested in art. (Sorry, it’s true. I’m not much of an art buff. Although I did like your work). I apologize for running off so quickly after the show. I was shocked and confused, and, in all honesty, I was overwhelmed by how suddenly I felt strongly attracted to you. You’re beautiful, and you possess a certain peaceful, happy quality that few people do. I can’t stop thinking about you. I’ve tried, believe me. I told myself it was ridiculous to think so much about a woman who doesn’t even know me. But then I realized that you do know me. You painted me, after all. Even if unintentional, that must be the hands of destiny at work, don’t you think? Please, give me a chance to get to know you better. I think there could be something special between us. I’m running out of room on this card, so I’ll stop rambling now. But I hope I’ll be hearing from you soon.

The card ended with Lance’s signature and his phone number and email address scrawled beneath it in tiny, neat type. Caroline reread the card two times, then set it down and stared out the kitchen window. The day was sunny and hot, and an orange tree took up most of the view from where Caroline stood. Its branches bobbed slightly in the breeze, the bright orange spheres of fruit shimmering in the sunshine.

She felt her heart pounding in her chest. She looked around nervously, as though someone might be watching and know that she was flustered by the letter she had just received. She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to call Lance and tell him that of course she would love to get to know him better. She wanted a chance to explain in no uncertain terms that she had definitely not been modeling her painting after him. She wanted a chance to see if the butterflies she had felt when she saw him at the art exhibition would still be there if she saw him again under less stimulating circumstances.

But Caroline knew that life didn’t always give you what you wanted. So she slowly folded the card shut and placed it back into the envelope. Before she could change her mind, she walked over to the corner of the living room where a small computer desk stood. Beneath the desk was a shredder, and Caroline placed the card in the shredder. She bit her lip to hold back the frustrated emotions coursing through her as she watched the beautiful card disappear into the hungry, noisy mouth of the shredder.

She knew better than to think that she had a chance to have a real relationship with Lance. The minute anyone saw them together, rumors would be flying about how she was dating the “model” she had used for her Coast Guard paintings. Caroline had quickly learned from observing other artists around her that the only thing worse than having everyone up in your business was having everyone up in your business when you were dating. Everyone loved a good love story, and the local newspapers would start hounding you, trying to get pictures or a quote that they could turn into an “exclusive” story about your relationship to sell more papers. This constant scrutiny would place great strain on the relationship, until it started to fall apart. And the only thing people loved more than a love story was a love story gone bad. Caroline didn’t want to be in the spotlight for anything, especially not her love life.

She was perfectly happy in her reclusive little world. Sure, it got lonely at times. But loneliness was better than having your personal life splashed across the pages of the newspaper. Caroline had decided long ago that she would only date someone she was sure things were going to work out with, and that she would take extraordinary steps to keep the relationship secret for as long as possible. She had no guarantee that things would work out with Lance. She didn’t really know anything about him, other than what he looked like. And she definitely wouldn’t be able to keep a relationship with him a secret.

Caroline stared at the top of the shredder, where Lance’s card had been only moments before. She wiped her hands off on her pants determinedly and turned on her heel. If he really thought that they were destined to be together, then let destiny figure out a way to bring them together. Caroline wasn’t going to go messing with the perfect solitude she’d worked so hard to achieve.

“You’re a disgrace,” Caroline’s mother yelled at her, getting so close to Caroline’s face that little splatters of her mother’s saliva landed on her skin. “What makes you think you’re so special, that you get to throw away the years and years of premium education your father and I have paid for? Art is not something highly educated people do. It’s not what we raised you to do. Pick a university, and a real major, and get yourself a real career.”

“Art is a real career,” Caroline said, crossing her arms. “And it’s the career I’ve chosen.”

Caroline’s mother turned beet red with rage. “Get out. I don’t want to see your face again until you’ve come to your senses and chosen a respectable career path. And don’t expect any more financial support from me. I will not be the financier of these pipe dreams. You’re a disgrace.”

A loud clap of thunder sounded, and Caroline woke with a start, beads of sweat forming on her face and neck. She sat up slowly in the darkness of her room, breathing rapidly and telling herself to calm down. It was only a dream. A nightmare, really, but there was no need to get technical.

Caroline rubbed her face, shaking off the fogginess of sleep as her eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light in her room. It had been a decade since she’d seen her mother, and yet the angry way her mother had kicked her out of the house still came back to haunt her dreams now and then. In the beginning, right after Caroline left home, she had dreamed about her mother almost every night. Caroline had spent her childhood working hard and doing her best to make her parents proud. She had studied hard in school, and graduated valedictorian of her class at the expensive, private school her parents had sent her to. She had used her spare time to volunteer for multiple nonprofit organizations, and she had coordinated multiple food and clothing drives for homeless and poor people in her hometown. Caroline had been a model citizen. On paper, she was perfect. She had been accepted to every university she applied to, including the big names like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. Caroline’s family had come from old money, and they were very proper and traditional. Caroline had been raised to follow all of the social graces expected of the upper class, and she never failed to make her parents look good.

She was the perfect child, until she wasn’t.

Caroline’s rapid fall from grace had been triggered by one thing: an innocent love of painting. Caroline had been enrolled in painting classes from the time she was old enough to hold a paintbrush. Her parents hadn’t thought much of it—the classes were just one more thing in a long list of activities that they thought a well-off young woman should be proficient in. Sandwiched between ballet and violin lessons, the painting classes amounted to one more box to check on Caroline’s well-rounded education.

But Caroline had fallen in love with painting. As she got older, and school became more demanding, ballet, violin, and sports had become less important. But Caroline had never given up on her painting lessons. By the time she graduated high school, she felt that she had real talent, and she wanted to take a chance on being an artist. She didn’t think it was necessary to go to college to do what she wanted to do, but she offered to major in art just to at least get a degree and satisfy her parents. But this had not been enough for them. The tension in the house had grown, until Caroline’s mother had called her a disgrace and kicked her out the day after her high school graduation.

At first, Caroline had thought her mother was bluffing. Surely, after a few weeks, her mother would come around. Her parents loved her, after all. She was an only child and had been their life for the last eighteen years. But, as the weeks and then months wore on, Caroline realized that her mother had been serious. Any attempt to contact her parents was met with silence. So, Caroline decided to launch off on her own. She moved to San Diego, rented the tiniest apartment she could find, and began painting like crazy. The early years had been very hard. She often ate nothing but ramen noodles for weeks on end. But, eventually her hard work had paid off. She began to get noticed, and, soon, she was selling paintings faster than she could make them.

Her obsession with storms had begun the night she left her parents’ home. As she had left, confused and heartbroken, a huge storm had broken out. The thunder had been louder than she had ever heard it before. Some might have taken the storm as a sign of turmoil, but for Caroline it had been comforting. She had felt as though the universe was somehow telling her not to worry. That despite the chaos of the personal storm she was going through at that moment, nature and the cosmos were bigger than anything she might be dealing with. Nature always recovered after a storm, and so would she.

Anyone who knew Caroline at that time would have laughed at the idea that she had taken a thunderstorm to have such significant spiritual meaning. She had always laughed off the idea of deeper meanings. But that night had changed her. She suddenly believed in something beyond herself, and every time she heard thunder she was reminded that she was not alone.

Caroline was startled back to the present as another clap of thunder echoed through her room. She suddenly realized that she was missing the storm, and she jumped out of bed. She threw a rain jacket on over her cotton pajama shirt, and didn’t even bother changing out her pajama pants. She slipped on some flip-flops, then grabbed her keys and ran to her car. This storm was huge, and Caroline’s eyes shone with excitement. It had been a long time since they’d had one this big. She could hardly wait to see what patterns the waves would be making.

* * *

A few miles away, Lance was listening to the same loud claps of thunder. He had been tossing and turning in his bed for several hours, trying unsuccessfully to stop the loop of worries running through his mind about Caroline, Alaska, and the future of bear shifters in general.

Lance lay on his back and closed his eyes as the storm intensified, enjoying the angry, insistent sound of the thunderclaps. Thunder had a special place in his heart. His father had told him often when he was a little cub that he was like a little thunderclap, always making a stir right in the middle of a stormy situation. Sometimes his father had said this with pride, and sometimes with exasperation. Lance had often been picked up from school by his father after being involved in a skirmish of some sort. Lance would tell his father his side of the story, and sometimes his father would agree that Lance had been in the right. Other times, he would tell Lance that he would have been better off handling the conflict in a way that didn’t involve raised fists.

“Always remember, my little thunderclap, just because you have great power, doesn’t mean you should jump to use it. Your real strength comes from knowing when to hold back and when to push forward.”

As a boy, Lance hadn’t understood what his father meant by that. But as he grew, he began to understand better. By the time he took over as the clan’s alpha, Lance had gained a reputation as someone who led fairly, but wasn’t afraid to use force when necessary.

Lance smiled sadly as he remembered sitting beside his father’s deathbed to say goodbye. His father had reached over to squeeze his hand before closing his eyes for the last time.

“Go get ‘em, thunderclap. I love you, and I’m so proud of you.”

His father’s last words had been etched into his heart, giving him strength to go on even when the unimaginable had happened and Lance had last his whole clan. He knew his father would have told him that even if he didn’t have a clan, he was still an alpha. The world still needed his leadership and spirit; it would just be in a different way than he might have originally thought.

Lance sighed and sat up in his bed. He felt like he had made a difference in the world through his work on the Coast Guard rescue crew, but he still felt restless. Like something was missing. And he knew what that restlessness was. His bear wanted a mate, and cubs to whom he could pass on the alpha gene and legacy. But Lance had no idea how he was supposed to find a lifemate when he lived such a solitary life. He was always busy with work, and he was afraid to get too close to anyone for fear that his inner bear would be revealed and he would be persecuted for being a shapeshifter. Trying to get close to someone just didn’t seem worth the risk.

Which was why sending that card to Caroline had been such a monumental step for him. He had put his heart out there, asking her for a chance. It had been a long time since he had done that, and, now, he was beginning to think that he shouldn’t have bothered. It had been over a week since he sent the letter to Caroline. The address had been in San Diego, so the letter should have only taken a day to arrive. Either he’d had the wrong address, and she would never see it, or she had chosen to ignore him. That was that. Either way, he had hit a dead end in his efforts to find Caroline.

Maybe it was for the better. The transfer request paperwork had been submitted for the panda shifters to make the move to Kodiak, Alaska. Ace’s contact in the upper ranks of the Coast Guard wouldn’t make any definite promises, but he said he was fairly sure he could pull some strings and make sure that Ace’s crew was awarded the transfer. Certainly, this was an awful time to start a new relationship.

But despite the awful timing, and the fact that Caroline had given no indication that she was interested in Lance, he couldn’t get her off his mind. What’s worse, his bear was constantly pining for her, making him moody and restless. Lance should have been enjoying his night off from work, relaxing and catching up on sleep. Instead, he was tossing and turning and counting down the hours until morning arrived.

A flash of lightning illuminated Lance’s bedroom, followed moments later by another loud clap of thunder. Lance sighed, and decided to get out of bed. He was tired of sitting here and moping. He would go for a run and enjoy the fury of the storm. He loved these out-of-control storms, and he hardly ever had the chance to leisurely enjoy them. Usually, he was taking them in from the open door of a helicopter as his crew attempted to save people stranded out at sea.

Lance laced up his running shoes and headed out the door. He didn’t bother to take his car. He wanted to run on the beach, but it was only two miles to the beach. He would run that distance, then run on the beach until he was tired enough to turn around. The wind blew fiercely as Lance made his way through several residential streets, heading for the ocean. He did his best to run in a straight line, but the strong gales made it difficult. Within a minute of leaving his condo, the rain had drenched Lance from head to toe. His t-shirt and gym shorts clung to his body, and his tennis shoes squished with each pounding step.

Lance didn’t mind. The restless rain soothed his soul. It gave him comfort to know that something besides his own heart was chaotic and out of control. When he got to the wet, sandy beach, he bent down to take off his shoes and socks. They were only getting in the way, and sand was going to make trying to run in them even worse. Newly barefoot, Lance continued his run, sprinting parallel to the frenzied ocean. Waves rose and fell violently, illuminated every few minutes by bright streaks of lightning. Thunderclaps continued to echo across the water, and Lance couldn’t help but smile every time he heard them.

The storm had caused the June temperatures to drop, and Lance had goose bumps on his arm. He didn’t notice the cold, though. He was too busy watching the whitecaps rising and falling next to him, and listening to the whistling wind and booming thunder. Lance breathed in deeply, letting the damp, salty air fill his lungs. If the crew did move to Alaska, Lance was going to miss this place. He knew he would find new outdoor spots to love around Kodiak, but these San Diego beaches would always have a special place in his heart.

Another flash of lightning lit up the scenery in front of Lance, and he did a double take. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like there was a person several hundred yards ahead of him on the beach, standing about knee deep in the churning ocean.

“What the heck?” Lance huffed out, speeding up his pace and straining to see through the darkness. He couldn’t see that far ahead without the help of the lightning, though. He silently willed the sky to light itself up again, but it felt like an eternity passed before it did. By that time, Lance had gotten close enough to the figure to see that it definitely wasn’t a figment of his imagination. There was indeed a person standing in the water, and that person appeared to be a woman. He had seen her hair whipping wildly in the wind as the lightning reflected off of it.

Why in the world was she out here in this storm, standing in the ocean? She must be high or drunk, which meant she was likely to slip and drown in the ocean. Lance’s protective instincts suddenly went into high alert, and he sprinted the last short distance to where the woman stood.

“Ma’am!” he yelled out. “Ma’am! Are you all right?”

The woman spun around, her eyes wide, and that’s when Lance’s heart froze in his chest.

It was Caroline.

She didn’t appear to be drunk or high, although her face did darken a bit with anger when she saw Lance.

“Lance? What are you doing here?” she yelled out, her voice barely audible over the roaring of the wind and waves.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he yelled back, wading out into the water next to her. “Why are you standing in the ocean in the middle of a storm? This is incredibly dangerous. One strong gust of wind could stir up a wave that knocks you over and drags you out to sea.”