Grayslake: Lion to Get Her (Alpha Lion Shifter Romance) (Kindle Worlds Novella) (The Jamesburg Shifters Book 8) (12 page)

“About,” old Samuel said. “And I’m sorry for what I done. I really am. If you asked me this morning what I’d do today, I’da never said nothin’ to do with attempted murder.”

Rip hardly heard him though. He was a million miles away, lost in the sea of his thoughts. That sea, though, had a name. “Laney,” he whispered, loudly enough for Sam to hear. “I’ve got to find her. I’ve got to have her. The longer I’m away, the more it hurts. But what I don’t get is that I hardly know her. I’ve fallen for this girl and I feel like a goddamn idiot.”

“Some things need to go slow,” the old man said slowly, “and some go quicker. I’d known my mate eighteen years by the time we did the deed,” he said with a grin. “Ayup. But for all but the last three days of that period, she hated me too bad to even give me a cup of coffee.”

“What changed?”

“For me? Nothin’. I always knew. For her? No tellin’. I think I just finally wore her down.”

Rip couldn’t hide his brief smile. “You know what’s funny? I think this might be the exact same story. Just a lot quicker. At least, that’s how it looks right now. I chase, she runs. I try to make a grand gesture and,” Rip paused for a moment. “I’ve got a damn good idea,” he said. “If I do the same thing again, you promise you won’t shoot me? Another press conference, I mean. And I promise I’m taking things slowly. This one’s different.”

“You gonna be a big ol’ sap, ain’t ya?” Samuel asked. His puckered smile formed an upside down rainbow under his drooping nose.

“I think I just might,” Rip said. “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Naw,” the old man said. “That was when you let her get away the first time.”

––––––––

S
he had nowhere to go, and no clue where to look. Laney spent the rest of that afternoon worried, fretting, and generally making a mess of her own mental state. Elaine tried to talk to her and even Gilligan tried to cheer her up, but it was no good.

The press gaggle broke up slowly over the afternoon, and when they were all finally gone, it seemed like the entire day had been a surreal nightmare. At least, that’s how it felt to Laney. Everything that happened just sort of vanished. There was no trace of the ill-fated press conference.

She sat with her head in her hands, staring out the front window and wondering how the hell she’d find Rip again. Or, for that matter,
if
she would. She figured that she’d hear from him, but no luck there. And then, when she lost hope in that ever happening, she started thinking maybe she should go looking for him.

Elaine talked her out of that one the first time. And she’d been right, too—how the hell was Laney going to find him? If the cops with their cars and motorcycles and chopper didn’t manage, how was she going to manage?

Still, she could hardly help herself. Worrying was a fairly common state of being for Laney Langston, but this was on a whole new level. Her stomach kept clenching. Her pulse kept racing, and every time the radio issued a news report, she was absolutely certain she’d hear about Rip going down in a gunfight, or at the least, getting hauled into the station and being held without bail.

“You need to get drunk and go to sleep,” Elaine said. “Come on, we’re going to your house, and we’re breaking into the wine stash.”

Laney looked up and realized the entire library had emptied out, and the majority of the lights had been switched off. She stood, and popped her back. “I need to find him,” she said, but followed Elaine out the front door

The ride was quick and quiet. Neither of them had much to say, and the only thing on Laney’s mind was finding the lion. Somehow, she was going to find him, but she hadn’t the first damned clue
how
.

Elaine sighed heavily and broke the silence after the two of them plodded up Laney’s gravel driveway and inside her house. “We’ve been over this. He’s hiding somewhere, for some reason keeping that crazy old bastard safe and if he wanted to be found, he probably would have called you already or something.”

Laney shook her head, refusing to believe that was the case. “I can’t think that way,” she said. “I just can’t. I can’t believe he’s just gone. Not after the stuff he told me.”

Elaine slid an arm around her friend’s neck. “Babe, I never said he took off for good. That was your invention. What I’m saying is that knowing his type, the rogueish, heroic, Han Solo kind, he thinks he’s keeping you safe by keeping his distance.”

“He did say something about not letting me make this mistake,” Laney said softly. “But fuck that. I don’t let anyone tell me what to do.”

Cocking an eyebrow in a triangle that almost touched her hairline, Elaine shrugged. “God knows that’s the truth.”

“So I guess I’m gonna do this thing,” Laney said. “I’m gonna go and find him and I’m gonna make this shit right. I have no idea how, but I’m gonna do it because if I don’t I’ll go crazy.”

For a long moment, Laney was quiet. She watched Elaine’s face for a few seconds. When her friend just stared at her glass of wine, Laney frowned. “Are you listening, Wendy?”

“Yeah,” Elaine said. “I’m listening. I’m just trying to figure out what you’re talking about and why you haven’t already left. Because, let me tell you, that guy is hard up for you. Like real hard up. And he’s got some passion in his loins, and you better jump on it before he cools off.”

Laney stood up, stretched her back with a couple of pops and then sat back down. “I can’t decide what I should do,” she said. “Should I really just go get him?” A couple seconds later, she frowned again. “Wendy? Come on, the label isn’t that interesting. It’s a picture of a kangaroo and a flip-flop with
pinot noir
written over top of it. Why won’t you respond to me?”

“Because I’m terrified,” Elaine said. “I’m trying to give you advice, but I’m scared that anything I say is going to be stupid, and that you’re going to follow it.”

The two of them stared at each other. “Really?” Elaine finally asked. “Why do you think that’s gonna happen?”

Elaine shrugged. “Because I can’t imagine any way it wouldn’t. Everything is just playing out the way it’s supposed to play out and here I am, waiting to see you finally get what you need. What you
should
have.”

“Oh come on,” Laney said. “I don’t deserve anything past anyone else. I have a good life. I just,” she paused for a second. “Oh my god, I’m almost sure that if I don’t get this guy I’m going to explode.”

Elaine blew up laughing. If there were any explosions about to happen, then the volcano was just waiting to pop. She stood up and patted Laney on the shoulder and shook her head. She stared into her friend’s eyes. A moment later, she hugged her once and then did it again after a few seconds of pause.

“It doesn’t matter,” Elaine said. “It really doesn’t. Nothing you can do is going to screw this up, and no bad advice I give you is gonna ruin it. But look, there’s... oh shit.”

She reached for the wine bottle, and nudged it. It made a little ringing sound as it almost flopped over on the table, but Laney caught it before anything spilled. Good thing, too, because the bottle almost managed to tip over and dump a significant amount of tasty, tasty pinot on her very ugly doily. “Do you think I’m crazy?” she tipped the bottle and took a little nip. “Be honest.”

“You’ve asked me that more than once in the past few days,” Elaine said.

“Maybe I’m feeling it. Or maybe I’m looking to you for validation that I’m not actually insane. Or maybe I’m thinking I
am
and—”

Elaine cut her off. “You’re starting to like it? There’s a certain comfort you can only get when you realize you’re not in control of your own brain. Like when figure out that hormones are raging, and you’re just a puppet in the claws of that raging, interdimensional demon known as estrogen. Lions
do
have estrogen, right? I mean you’ve definitely got yourself a cycle there, so—”

Laney let out a huge “ha!” that surprised Elaine enough for the ferret to slosh a little vino onto her shirt. She just shrugged and sucked at it for a second. “No reason to let this stuff go to waste.”

For a moment, the two sat in silence. Laney considered her next move, and realized she hadn’t any plan at all. Elaine considered getting the bottle again, because honestly it didn’t seem like Laney was interested. As she reached for it, her pointy elbow jabbed the power button on the television remote resting next to the bottle.

“Oops,” she said as she poured. “Well, whatever. May as well see if anythi—”

When Elaine’s mouth fell fully open, and she stopped talking entirely, Elaine, who had been fooling with her phone, knew something was wrong. She looked at her friend first, and when she verified that Elaine had not, in fact, died from a sudden aneurysm, Laney turned her head slowly to the television.

“What the hell?” she asked.

On the screen, the front of the library, shrouded in the darkness of ten o’clock on an early spring night, was framed in light. The press corps from before were reassembled. And although there seemed to be quite a few less of them, the feeling of busy noise and confused tension was complete. “This can’t possibly be what I think it is, right?”

“You were hoping to see him again,” Elaine managed to say through her gaping lips. “Looks like he had the same feeling. Either that, or he’s crazy enough to want to get shot at again. Somehow I doubt that one, though.”

Laney’s hands were shaking, though she hadn’t noticed it yet. She was breathing heavily, in through her mouth, out through her nose, and her heart had started racing to keep pace with the rest of her. “I have to get down there,” she said flatly. “I have to see him and for some reason, I think this is my last chance for... for whatever it is I’m doing.”

She was up on her feet and almost to the door by the time Elaine noticed that her friend wasn’t sitting down anymore. Something about that ferret ability to pay rapt attention to something, but only one thing at a time, was on full display. By the time Elaine herself clambered up out of the La-Z-Boy, and began to chase her friend, the door closed and Laney was patting down the driveway.

“Wait!” Elaine called out as she swung the door open, and jumped backward slightly to dodge it instead of just getting banged in the forehead. “Laney! We just got here!” she pled, knowing full well it wasn’t going to do a damn bit of good.

The haunted-looking lioness froze with her hands on the steering wheel of her reasonable, late-model silver Civic. She squinted at her house and then waved her friend toward the car before mouthing at her to hurry. Elaine got the message, and scurried over to the Civic as fast as her little legs would go. She huffed as she sat, at once relieved that something was going to finally happen, and terrified that it wouldn’t be what her friend wanted.

“What if this doesn’t work out?” Laney asked, chewing on her bottom lip in a mixture of frustration, anticipation, and utter confusion. “I’m not exactly the chance-taking type you know. I mean, what if I get out there, and it’s just some political rally and I’m totally out of place and—”

“That is exactly why you have to do this,” Elaine said. She grabbed Laney’s shoulder and squeezed tightly. “I know you’re scared and I’m gonna be real honest here, I am too, but probably not for the same reason you are.”

About halfway down the roughly graveled street leading from her house to the main thoroughfare, Laney remembered to turn on the headlights. They were for everyone else to see her coming, of course, lion eyes hardly need dim little car lamps to see where they’re going. She was still chewing her lip, though she’d gotten a lot more serious about it in the intervening seconds. “What if it’s all bullshit?” she asked. “What if everything I’m paranoid about
really is
true?”

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you,” Elaine said with a giggle.

“Nirvana lyrics aside, what if I’m making a huge mistake?”

Elaine squeezed Laney’s shoulder harder—hard enough to hurt a little. “Stop the car,” she said. “I want to look you in the face when I say what I’ve gotta say and I’m gonna be real honest with you, the way you’re taking these turns makes me just about want to hurl. I’d rather not hurl on you right before we go to see this guy who I’m pretty sure is making his
second
grand romantic gesture of the day.”

“Hunh?” Laney grunted. “Did you just say ‘hurl’?” She pulled the car to the shoulder, which really meant that she just pulled off the paved part of the road. Redby Township was nothing if not thrifty about infrastructure spending. Reid Bennet didn’t like roads. Then again, Reid Bennet didn’t like much of anything. It’s all relative. Then again, there was a tremendous amount of tax money spent on the local elderly shifter support network. After all, it doesn’t matter how old a bear, a tiger, or a lion is, they still need a hell of a lot of meat.

It’s all relative.

“Okay,” Elaine said with a sigh. She did it again to steady herself. “Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen, and neither do you. Neither does anyone except, I’m guessing, Prince Charming of the Grand Gesture. But I’m willing to bet that maybe he isn’t exactly sure either.”

“What do you mean? Who the hell puts on a press conference, gets shot, runs away to keep the guy who shot him safe, and then has a
second
press conference at quarter past ten on the same day?”

“Good point,” Elaine said. “Although here’s a counter argument:
no one does that
. No one. Not even the most power hungry, the greediest, the most... I’m out of adjectives, but not even they would do that kind of thing. That’s what makes me think that this guy’s got a hell of a plan, and if he’s doing it in front of the library, that tells me one damn thing.”

“That he’s doing it to get my attention,” Laney said. She felt her heart flutter, and not in the unpleasant, slightly nauseating way it did when she used an elliptical for too long without water. “The crazy thing is that even knowing that, I still feel kinda queasy.”

Elaine threw her head back, scratched behind her ear with a couple of quick flicks of her fingertip. Then, when the itch was satisfied, she laughed loud and hard. “Oh honey,” she said as the laughter subsided and she started to catch her breath, “that queasy thing you’re feeling? It’s kinda good, right? Kinda... tingly?”