Three Shifters for Sarah (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (6 page)

“TJ has left.” Lance handed Ryan a beer from his refrigerator. Ryan popped the tab on it and figured he could use a few swallows.

Securing the towel around his waist, Ryan stepped out onto the front porch of his house. The song of the crickets was haphazard and crazy out in the prairie weeds. Up in the foothills the sad call of a wolf echoed across the plain. It was one of Ryan’s pack out for a nightly run.

Ryan took a pull from the beer Lance had given him and thought for a while. “TJ’s gone to New York to find Sarah.”

“He has disobeyed you.” Lance wasn’t angry at his young half-brother, but seemed depressed. “When he gets back we’ll think of a suitable punishment for him.”

“Forget it,” Ryan ordered. “I’ve made so many mistakes lately I can’t count them all. Maybe precluding the two of you from chasing Sarah was just another one.”

“No. You were right,” Lance assured him. “We never belonged with that girl. No matter how much we wanted to fuck her, the fact remained that she isn’t one of us. We’re shape-shifters with a pack to run and don’t need to entangle ourselves with a human female.”

Ryan leaned against a pillar of his front porch, his muscles flexing as they took his weight. “I won’t do anything to stop TJ or punish him when he returns.”

“Perhaps you’re being too lenient on my little brother.”

“I don’t think so.” Ryan turned to Lance. “And, Lance, the same goes for you. You’re also free to pursue Sarah if that’s what you’d like to do.”

“You really have had a change of heart.”

“Well I’ve been thinking a lot about it. I’m no good for her. I handled things wrong. I should have forced all of us to be honest with her when we first met her and not hide what we were from her. It would have been difficult, and she still might have ended up leaving, but it would have felt right.”

Lance laughed, which was most unusual for the morose Beta. “I’ve never liked humans,” he admitted. “I can truthfully say Sarah Winter is the first human I’ve ever wanted to be with, and I guess maybe I could have loved her if I’d given it a chance.”

Ryan sighed. “Look, Lance, TJ is like a big kid. He’s got the best heart of any man I’ve ever known, but he’s never been out of Montana in his life. Since he’s become a man he’s spent his life working this ranch and looking after the members of our pack. Hell, he works harder than any three of us put together. But I’m worried about him out there by himself in that city.”

“Do you want me to go after him?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“What about you?”

Ryan just shook his head. “I had my chance with her, and I blew it. I’ll live with that. Maybe I won’t be happy, but I’ll still live.”

Lance nodded that he understood.

“But I was thinking that maybe Sarah isn’t happy either. It’s possible that TJ and you could still offer her something. You’re good men, and she’s your mate. If she’ll have you, you’ll be the luckiest men alive.”

Lance flipped his Stetson back on his head and gazed up at the stars. New York City was out there somewhere under those same stars. So was TJ and so was Sarah.

* * * *

New York City, Friday on a summer morning proved to be warm and overcast with the pungent odor of car exhaust mixed with a hint of air pollution. The Big Apple came alive early as the first rays of the sun made the clouds shine yellow above the skyscrapers, but it never really slept.

Sarah was hustling to work where she was employed as an accounting assistant level three for a large brokerage firm just off Wall Street. Outside the giant glass-and-steel building she earned a living in, an Occupy Wall Street protest was on going. Vigil holders carried signs and angry looks in their eyes.

Each morning Sarah had to walk past their numbers, and it gave her the creeps. Hell, what did these people want? She was living pay check to pay check just the same as they were, but sometimes a particularly bitter protester would yell catcalls her way. All she could do was hasten past them and hope no one tried to throw anything at her.

The pleasant ding of the elevator told her she had arrived on the twenty-second floor. Clearing her throat to let the people in front of her know she wanted off, Sarah was able to scoot past them and out onto her floor.

“You’re five minutes late.” Ruth already had her cup of coffee and the morning newspaper and was trailing Sarah to her cubicle.

“Is that all?” Sarah took it in her stride as she hung her shoulder bag up inside her cubicle wall. “There were three muggings and a cardiac arrest on the subway this morning. All things considered I think I made pretty good time.”

“Don’t forget our weekly team meetings at nine.”

“I’ll be there.” Sarah sat down at her desk, turned on her flat-screen monitor and typed in her password to open the PC desktop. Her head was buzzing. Last night she had not slept well, in fact she had barely slept at all. The mark on her shoulder still had not healed, and it looked more like a tattoo of a star than a hickey. Now as she pulled up her email there were three balance sheets to be collated before noon, and she still hadn’t gotten any coffee yet. Thank God it was Friday and tomorrow morning she could sleep in.

The team meeting was suitably boring and resulted in little except that two of the team members got into it over the final numbers on a spreadsheet they were working on. Sarah thought they would come to blows. The good news was that she got her coffee and was able to sip it and pretend to listen as the meeting grinded along. Today was one of those days she just couldn’t concentrate. Her mind kept drifting back out west and had done so all week, more proof that her vacation still haunted her.

After the meeting adjourned, and with her balance sheets all neatly balanced and sent on their way, Sarah got a few minutes of downtime. The odious prospect of paying her monthly bills and balancing her own checkbook was next on her daily list of things to do. When she got through with that she thought she had it all worked out. If she just didn’t eat for the next month, she would be able to pay all her bills. That vacation she took evidently had been a killer in more ways than one. It certainly hadn’t done her bank account any good, and a week later her heart was still numb from all the emotion she had felt with the men.

In the privacy of her cube she pushed down the shoulder of her blouse and rubbed. The damn thing was still sore. It hadn’t gotten any better and neither had her heartbreak.

A few minutes before noon Sarah went to the kitchen and fished in the refrigerator among all the other brown paper bags until she finally clasped the one with her name penciled on the outside. She forked over a dollar fifty to the vending machine for a diet soda and cursed silently when it failed to give her back proper change.

“Let’s take it outside.” Ruth came up behind her. It was her lunch hour, too. Problem was half of New York City had their lunch hour now and it would be a madhouse out there.

“Did the sun finally come out?” Sarah asked her.

“Finally came out and it’s a reasonably nice day, only a tad on the hot side.”

“I guess maybe the fresh air will do me good.”

Carrying their lunches, they started for the elevator. “Big plans this weekend?” Ruth always allowed herself to be nosey.

“My big plans are to sleep all weekend and try to finally recover from the postvacation blues.”

Just down the street from their building there was a scattering of benches and a few trees providing only minimal shade. Sarah and Ruth had eaten many a lunch here and back in the winter Sarah had even planned her vacation to Montana while seated on one of these benches. It was a spot to relax and people watch and forget about the rush of the day for an hour.

“Well would you look at that!” Ruth exclaimed and almost dropped her lunch-meat sandwich into Sarah’s lap.

Sarah had her nose in a magazine and was holding her untouched soda a few inches from her lips. Ruth’s call roused her from her lethargy, and she looked up. Immediately her eyes went in the direction of Ruth’s stare and she saw what Ruth saw.

A tall young cowboy was walking between the crowds of lower Manhattan. He was the cutest thing Sarah had ever seen in her life.

On closer inspection Sarah’s heart went into her mouth, and she almost passed out. It was TJ Hawkin, the young stud from Montana, and now here he was in New York. Somehow one of her cowboys had found her.

The first two thousand miles had been easy. Now the last several feet were the hardest he had walked in his life. During one of their lazy conversations on a picnic in a meadow of wildflowers, Sarah had filled him in on her job in New York and mentioned the name of the brokerage house she worked for. That had been the only clue TJ had to go on, that and his sixth sense as a shape-shifter to be able to find his mate, and it had led him here to lower Manhattan.

He spotted Sarah first, but within a moment her eyes had darted up and met his across the sea of people. Fortunately TJ was a head taller than most of them and didn’t have any trouble making his way over to the bench Sarah ate her lunch on.

She was standing up, and her mouth was hanging open as if his presence had just rendered her dumb and mute. For his part TJ’s heart was racing with adrenaline, and he had to admit a little bit of trepidation. This was the big moment, not only of his trip to New York, but of his whole life.

“What are you doing here?” she challenged him.

TJ reached up and pulled off his Stetson and held it limply at his side as he regarded her. “You left without saying good-bye.”

“Everything all right, Sarah?” the other woman Sarah had been having lunch with inquired.

Sarah seemed like she wanted to say something else but changed her mind at the last minute. “Yeah, we’re good.”

“I think I should get back upstairs.” The other woman was giving TJ the once-over, and TJ gave her a polite nod. “Unless of course you need me to stay?”

“No thanks, Ruth. I’ll see you back up there in a few.”

With another mystified look in his direction, the other woman took up her brown paper bag, threw her soda can in the trash, and left Sarah alone with TJ. They were in lower Manhattan, so there were thousands of people walking around them, and they weren’t really alone, but they were as alone as they were going to get for the moment.

“Why did you leave us like that, Sarah?” TJ asked the question that had been tormenting him for a week.

Sarah shook her head in what amounted to disbelief and briefly hid her face in her hands. “What are you, TJ?”

TJ gave a smile, a relieved grin brightening his features. “Is that what this is all about?”

“I saw you and Ryan and Lance turn into…” Sarah couldn’t even speak the words. She broke off and put her palm to her forehead as if she felt sick.

“You saw us turn into wolves?”

“Yes.”

“We’re shape-shifters, Sarah.”

Sarah shook her head and was still frowning and clearly confused. “What is that? I don’t know what that is.”

“We’re kind of an open secret in some parts out west.” TJ cast a glance around him at the roiling mass of people surging by on the street. Over on the next block a construction crew had started a jackhammer, and it was loud. TJ had to raise his voice over the din. “I’m thinking this isn’t the best place to have this conversation.”

“Look, TJ, I have to get back to work.”

“What time do you get off?”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll be waiting for you right here when you do.”

“That’s not a good idea, TJ.” Sarah also had to raise her voice as the jackhammer sounds from the next street now coalesced with traffic roaring past a few feet away from them.

“I’m not leaving New York City until you talk with me.”

Sarah had the cutest scowl on her face as her anger mixed with indecision, and she tapped her foot on the sidewalk and gave thought to his proposition. Feeling brave, TJ took another step closer to her. She smelled so damn good, fresh soap, lavender shampoo, perhaps just a hint of some alluring perfume, and that special Sarah Winter scent that was uniquely her own. TJ wanted to wrap his arms around her and kiss her right there in front of all of New York. Only with effort did he restrain himself.

“It’s Friday night.” TJ leaned in close. He could almost taste her breath. It was sweet and intoxicating just like her well-shaped body beneath her pantsuit. “We’re in the biggest city in the world. It’s summer, and it’s warm. Hell, we’ve even got a full moon tonight. You’ve got to say yes to me.” He capped off his proposal with a smile that he hoped she would not be able to say no to.

“I get off at five.” She sighed as a couple walls of her resistance went crumbling down, and he could see the wheels of her mind working fast and struggling for direction. “But I was five minutes late today so I won’t be off until five after. Also that’ll be rush hour so give me ten minutes to get down here.”

“Five fifteen then?”

“Yeah, five fifteen.”

Sarah gave him the faintest trace of a smile, and TJ knew his trip to New York had been worth every minute of the two long plane rides it took to get here.

Damn if he didn’t want to pluck her up off the sidewalk and hug her against his body as he kissed his way down her neck. This woman got his heart to pounding like no other. Once again it was by the slimmest of margins that he contained himself and let her walk away from him and back to the steel monster of a building she worked in.