Hard As Steele (A BBW Paranormal Romance) (Timber Valley Pack) (7 page)

He was every bit as handsome as she remembered him. He was so big he almost filled the doorway, blocking out the sun behind him.

He was wearing a sheriff’s uniform. Had he told her
that he worked for the sheriff’s department? She couldn’t remember.

With resentment, she noticed several of the female patrons checking him out.
Back off, bitches
, she thought to her.  Then she shook herself. Who was she to be jealous? He’d made his feelings for her quite clear – by vanishing.

Steele scanned the room for her and walked up to the bar quickly.

“Roxanne!” His tone was astonished.  She couldn’t tell if he was happy or angry or what he was feeling, but she knew what she was feeling. All the hurt and humiliation she’d been feeling swelled up inside her and overflowed, and before she could stop herself, she reached up and slapped his face so hard her hand stung.

Steele took a step back,
rubbing his cheek.

“You son of a bitch!” Tears filled her eyes.

“What was that for?” His tone was bewildered.

“For leaving me by my car in a snowstorm! And for
leading me on and lying to me!”

Everyone in the place was staring at them, riveted.   H
e glanced around the bar. “Can we please discuss this outside?”

“Sure. Why not?” she said bitterly.
He probably didn’t want anyone to know that he’d spent the night with her.

She reached for her purse, but Steele stopped her. “Put it on my tab,” he called out to the bartender, who nodded.

She followed him outside.

“I don’t remember you telling me that you work for the sheriff’s department,” she said, as they stepped out into the cool fall air.
  She followed him out into the parking lot.

“
I am the sheriff.  What, exactly do you remember?” he asked her.

Interesting choice of words, given that her memory was full of blank spots.
  After the car accident, she’d had tests at the local hospital, and there was no sign of brain injury.  There was no logical explanation for her missing memory. The doctor had described it as partial retrograde amnesia, but he also said that her head injury hadn’t been bad enough to account for it.

“I remember you telling me that you would love me forever. Did you get a good laugh out of telling me that?” To her utter mortification, her eyes flooded with tears.  When he’d said it to her, she’d wanted it to be true so badly.  Her memory of her weekend with him was patchy, but she did remember him saying that. Also, all the hot sex.

He winced, as if her words hurt him. “No, I did not. And I wasn’t lying to you.”

“Really?
” she choked on a bitter laugh. “You’ve got a funny way of showing it. The next thing I remember was standing next to the side of the road in the snow, and you getting in your truck and driving off.  Then the police showed up. Good thing, or I would have frozen to death out there.”

“They showed up because I called them.”

“You called them?  They said that it was an anonymous call.” She blinked, hard. “You’re in law enforcement. Why wouldn’t you have left your name? Why did you drop me off by the side of the road and leave?”

They were walking towards a patrol car.

“It’s complicated.” He grimaced. “I know that sounds like a weak excuse. Get in, will you?”

Stubbornly, she stood there.
“Yes, it does sound like a weak excuse. Are you married? Do you have a girlfriend?”

He looked horrified. “Good God, no! Neither one of those. If I did, I would never have…”

“Had sex with me for a weekend and then left me by the side of the road with a head injury, in the snow?” she snapped.

Pain flickered across his face.
“Please. Get in.” He held the passenger door open.

She glowered at him, and stalked off. She looked around for her car, but couldn’t see it.
Steele caught up to her.

“What is it?” he asked her.

“My car is gone,” she said, bewildered. 

A man
who had just come out of the bar pointed at a black Suburu that she didn’t recognize. “That’s your car,” he said.

She shook her head. “That’s not my car,” she said. “I have a Ford.”

“That’s the car I saw you drive up in and get out of,” the man said.

I am completely losing my mind,
she thought
. I’ve never seen that car before.

“Oh, right,” she said, stomach clenching in panic.  “Uh, yes. I borrowed it from my friend. I forgot.”

“Roxanne, come back to my place with me and let’s talk,” Steele said, and she followed him back to his patrol car.

Something in the park
caught her attention. It was something in the corner of her eye. She turned to look. 

“Roxanne!” Steele said urgently.
  It seemed like he was trying to distract her.

She could see a blur of motion, two children playing, one of them chasing the other…wait, what was happening? It looked as if one of them had just melted into something else in one smooth flowing motion.
Then the other one followed suit.

Now
it looked as if they were two bobcats, chasing each other straight up a tree.

“
Roxanne
!” Steele’s voice bellowed in her ear.

She swung to face him, and a wave of dizziness rolled over her. She clutched at the car.

An impossible image flashed through her mind, like a memory.  It was an image of Steele, standing outside in the snow, stark naked, turning from man to wolf.

She’d remembered that before, hadn’t she?

Another image swam into her head. It was an older man with gray hair, looking into her eyes, urgently. “Run,” he was telling her. “Get help. Bring them here.”

Where was “here”, and why did she need to get help? Who was that man?
She needed to get help for him, he’d done something for her, he’d rescued her somehow…she had no idea where he was, or if he was even real.

Panic clutched at her throat, and she fell to her knees. Steele grab
bed at her and helped her into the car. He buckled the seat belt around her.

She heard him climb in, and they started driving.

“I can’t have seen what I just saw,” she moaned.

“What do you think that you saw?”

“Two children turning into animals.” She turned and directed an accusing look at him. “I swear to God that I remember you turning into an animal. You were a giant wolf. A beautiful gray and white wolf, running through the snow.”

She leaned back in the car seat. “Ever since that car accident, I’ve been having hallucinations
and blank spots in my memory. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I literally don’t know what’s real and what’s not any more. I can’t even be completely sure that I’m really here. It feels real, though.”

“Well,” Steele said as he drove.
“A head injury can have lasting effects.”

“I’ve been to doctors,” she said. “My friend
Katherine took me after I got back from the funeral, because I kept having these weird flashbacks.  I had an MRI, I had a CAT scan. Nothing abnormal showed up, but it keeps happening.”

“How did you end up coming to Timber Valley?” Steele asked. They were driving down a rural road, hemmed in by towering pine trees on either side.

“Where are we going?” She was trying to get her bearings.  Timber Valley…when the name had first started popping into her head, she did internet searches for it, looked on maps…it didn’t seem to exist.

“We’re going to my house. How did you find us here?”

That was an odd question, Roxanne thought, with a ripple of unease. The town didn’t exist on a map, and the sheriff of the town sounded concerned that she’d been able to find the town at all. Then there was the weird way that everyone had looked at her when she’d walked in to that bar – as if they’d literally never seen a stranger in their town.

All right, she told herself. Let’s assume that I’m not crazy, dreaming or hallucinating.  Let’s look at all the facts objectively.

“How did you find us here?” Steele repeated urgently.

She shot him an angry look. “Tell you what. I’ll tell you, as soon as you give me a satisfactory, honest explanation for why you would tell me that you loved me and then leave me by the side of the road, drive away, and never contact me again.”

“All right. I will. I just need a little time to gather my thoughts.”

“You’d only say that if you needed t
ime to come up with a good lie,” she snapped.

He
didn’t try to argue with her.

She folded her arms and shut her eyes. Think, Roxanne, think, she told herself.

First of all, she was a twenty four year old woman who’d never had a history of mental illness, and nobody in her family had a history of mental illness. So the odds of her suddenly being crazy were pretty slim.

Secondly, this all felt way too real for her to be dreaming or hallucinating. She could feel physical sensation. She could smell things, like th
e scent of Steele’s cologne and the new car smell of the patrol car.

Sixteen months ago, s
he’d gotten in a car accident and had been rescued by Steele, who seemed to have superhuman strength.  Then she’d seen him turn into a wolf.  She’d seen that. She was sure of it now.

Now she was in a town that apparently was on no map anywhere, a town that never got visitors, and she’d seen two children turn into animals and then turn human again. She was sure of that too.
  There was only one logical explanation for all of this.

Suddenly, it all came back to her. She gasped and clutched at her seat.

“I remember,” she choked out, as they glided down a long driveway towards a gray clapboard house.

“What do you remember?” Steele demanded.

She turned to glare at him accusingly. “I remember everything.”

Steele felt cold fear wash through him, a sensation that he’d never felt before. If Roxanne remembered everything, she was in danger.

She was staring at him, wide eyed. “Did you bring me here to kill me?” she demanded.

“No! Of course not! Why would you think that?”

She walked towards the house, not looking at him. “Because you’re a werewolf, and you live in a town full of werewolves and werecats, and you are trying to keep it a secret.”

“I would die before I let you come to any harm,” he said fervently, and he meant it to the core of his soul.

             
“But I’m right, aren’t I? I remember everything now, including the fact that you brought in some man to erase my memory. It obviously didn’t work right.  And I think it messed up my head somehow; it’s been causing weird bouts of amnesia and hallucinations.”

             
She was standing on his front porch. He opened the door; they didn’t bother with locks in Timber Valley.

             
She followed him in to the living room and they sat on his brown leather couch.  Being so close to her but not being able to touch her made him ache with need.  He wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her, to feel her softness against him and hear her moans of pleasure, but he wouldn’t make that mistake again. He had no right.

             
“What kind of hallucinations are you experiencing?” he asked her.

             
“I keep feeling like I was in some kind of…place.” Her expression turned anxious. She clenched her hands and shifted in her seat. “I can’t leave. I want to leave, but I can’t. There’s an older man, and he wants me to go find help. And…” she frowned, as if concentrating.  “That’s it. I don’t know where he is, and I can’t picture the place that well.  I don’t think it was even real.”

             
“After the police picked you up, you made it safely back to your home town. I know that much; I checked up on you,” Steele said. “When would you have been imprisoned?”

             
“I don’t know. I really think that part is a hallucination.”

             
“Is it possible that you’re remembering being in a hospital after your accident?”

             
“No, I don’t think so. I didn’t stay overnight in the hospital at all.  I went there for tests, but that only took a few hours each.”

             
She looked up at him. “Let’s get back to the original issue here, Steele. You’re a werewolf.”

             
Steele took a deep breath. There was no point in lying; she’d seen too much.

             
“I’m a shifter,” he said.  “Our survival depends on keeping our existence secret from humans.  If we were discovered, humans would panic. We’d probably be forced onto reservations and subject to being tested like lab rats. Our kind would fight back, and as a result, a lot of humans would die too. It would be a worldwide disaster.”