Five
Luke
Even though it was my day off, my mind was stuck at the office.
Well, not at the office exactly, but on one of my patients. One in particular. The last one I saw last night. Claire.
Meeting Claire put to rest all of my ideas of going out to a bar, finding a random woman to lose myself in, and ignoring the curse for another night. Meeting Claire practically flipped my life upside down in the space of a few minutes. My bear wouldn’t stop roaring about her, my dick twitched at the mere thought of her, and I was constantly looking at my phone, hoping she’d call.
Okay, so that part wasn’t exactly true. I wanted Claire to call me, but at this point, if she was calling me that would mean Ella’s condition got worse and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But I still wanted to hear from her. I still hoped she’d reach out. That maybe she felt the weird connection too and wanted to explore it a little further outside the confines of my office.
But my phone never rang.
I was dying to know more about her, who she was, how I’d somehow missed ever seeing her in all my time on this mountain. She’d said that she lived here her whole life, so it wasn’t that she was new in town.
I knew someone that was sure to have an answer for me, so I picked up the phone that had been taunting me all day by staying silent, and dialed Zion’s number.
“Hey stranger!” Zion answered, his voice welcoming and warm as always. That was new since he’d met his mate, but I liked his new demeanor.
“Hey Zion, how’s it goin’?”
“It’s goin’, it’s goin’. What about you? Haven’t heard from you much since you opened that fancy practice of yours.”
I rolled my eyes. There was nothing fancy about my practice, but leave it to my brother to give me hell for it anyway.
“Everything’s fine,” I said, pausing for a moment. When Zion didn’t immediately offer a follow-up question, I cut to the chase.
“Look, I had a patient come in yesterday and I’ve never seen her before, but I was wondering if you guys knew anything about her?”
“Oh?” Zion asked, his voice going up. I could just imagine his eyebrows raising with it, that knowing smirk stretching his face. I growled under my breath. I should have known better than to ask this guy for help with anything. He was never going to let me hear the end of it. But I didn’t exactly have any other sources to turn to, so it was what it was.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Her, eh?”
“Yep,” I answered, not giving him an inch.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Are you going to tell me why you’re so interested in finding out more about her?”
“It’s not any of your damn business, Zi.”
He chuckled, clucking his tongue. “You’re not wrong, but you did call me asking for my help, so I think that affords me a little bit of leeway here.”
I sighed. He had a point. And if I knew my brother at all, I knew he was just as stubborn and ridiculous as I was about these things. He’d never drop it until I gave him something.
“Fine,” I grumbled. “My bear… reacted to her,” I said, trying to sound as removed and clinical as I could, but Zion wasn’t buying it. He hooted loudly and then tumbled into laughter.
“Well damn, I thought the curse was gonna get you before you got around to finding your mate.”
I rolled my eyes even harder. “No one said anything about mates, Zion. I just want to know more about her.”
He laughed again and he was lucky that this was a phone conversation, not an in-person conversation, because the way my fists were balling at my sides, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to resist punching him.
“Sure, sure. I’d probably be wondering who the hell you were if you weren’t in denial. So, who is she?”
Before I could answer, I heard Aiden and his wife talking on the other end of the call, and then I heard Zion filling them both in on the conversation. I groaned, dropping my head to my hands. At this rate, I should have just gone for a visit if everyone in the damn family was going to be roped in.
Molly, Aiden’s wife, squealed and clapped her hands, and I could hear her getting close to Zion. “Ask him who it is, ask him!”
“I already did,” Zion grumbled. “So, Luke, who’s the lucky lady?”
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose to ward of the sudden headache behind my eyes. “Her name’s Claire… Andrews,” I finished.
“Claire Andrews?” Zion said, sounding confused, but Molly gasped and then I could hear them fighting over the phone.
“Hey Luke,” Molly said, having won possession of Zion’s phone apparently.
“Hi Molly,” I sighed.
She giggled. “So, Claire, huh? She’s super cute.” I didn’t really need her to tell me what I already knew. I needed new information.
“Uh-huh. So do you know anything about her?”
“Just that she runs the antique shop in town and she has the cutest little girl. I swear, every time I see her I get baby fever all over again.”
“Hmm,” I said, but that was useful information. I thought I remembered seeing that antique shop before, not that I’d ever had any cause to actually stop in. I guess that’s how I missed her all this time. I made a mental note to stop in and visit her sometime soon, already concocting a story about why I’d be there.
But who was I kidding? Sometime was probably going to be today. Now that I knew where she was, my bear was roaring at me to head down the mountain and find her again. I didn’t even want to argue with the bastard. I wanted to see her again too.
“I’ll ask around for more info,” Molly said brightly, and the air caught in my lungs.
“No, no. Don’t worry about it. That’s more than enough.” The last thing I needed was for Claire to hear I was trying to find out more about her like some crazy stalker. This had to seem natural, serendipitous. Otherwise I’d just scare her away.
“I’ll let you know what I find out,” she said, completely ignoring me.
“No, Molly, I mean it, don’t—”
“Hey bro, I’m happy for you man!” Aiden said into the phone.
“Why the hell do I call you people?” I groused, the headache behind my eyes throbbing now.
“Cause we’re family and you love us? Hey, we’re having a little get-together next weekend. Feel free to bring a guest if you’ve got one,” he said, and I could just imagine his eyebrows waggling suggestively.
I groaned. “Goodbye, Aiden.”
He was chuckling as I hung up the phone.
Brothers. Who needed them?
I hopped in the shower for a quick rinse and shave and then toweled off, getting dressed in record time before I headed out to the truck. Was I crazy for wanting to go into town to see her right now? Probably. Did that stop me? Not even a little.
I kept second-guessing myself the whole way down the bumpy mountain road from my cabin to the tiny mountain town of Crystal Falls.
But it was about two miles outside of town when the temperature gauge on my dash started creeping toward the red, and by the time I was crossing the town line, there was smoke coming from the hood.
I cursed, slamming my hand on the steering wheel. At least I was in town, where I could get the stuff I needed for repairs. That was something, but it meant that I’d be working on my truck all afternoon instead of visiting Claire.
Smoke rose in thick plumes by the time I pulled into the lot at Buster’s Auto Supply and Repair. I lifted the hood, coughing and waving the smoke away as one of the workers came outside, an arrogant lean to his stroll. I didn’t know the guy’s name, but I’d seen him around enough times and interacted with him enough to know that I didn’t like him. But I liked Buster and he’d been good to my family, so I still gave him my business — not that there was anywhere else to go really.
“Shouldn’t drive it when it’s that hot,” the guy said casually, hands in his pockets.
“Yeah, no shit,” I grumbled.
“Want us to take a look at it?”
I shook my head. “Just here for parts.” I learned a long time ago not to trust mechanics. Even if they didn’t lie about all the things wrong with your vehicle, they charged a higher hourly rate than I did, so I learned to do most things myself.
“Suit yourself,” he said shrugging, walking back into the open garage where another one of the workers was doing an oil change.
I headed into the shop, but through the open door, I could still hear the conversation in the garage.
“So then she acts like she’s doing me some kind of favor for letting me see my kid. Like the judge didn’t order that shit. We both know it’s not out of the goodness of her heart or nothin’. And she wants to give me shit for how I handle the kid during my time. Like I don’t need to work, too. I gotta pay child support and shit, don’t I? She acts like she’s the only one that ever goes to work. It’s bullshit.”
“Can I help you?” The teenager behind the counter finally appeared from the narrow aisles of shelves to greet me.
“Uh, yeah, I need some parts for that truck out there,” I said, hooking a thumb over my shoulder.
“—my kid too. She doesn’t get to be a fuckin’ dictator of parenting—”
I tried to tune the guy in the garage out, but it was hard with his loud mouth and abrasive way of talking. I didn’t even know who the woman he was complaining about was, but I was pretty sure I was on her side of this issue. He seemed like a piece of shit. He was always rude, arrogant, and self-absorbed. It was actually kind of surprising he had a kid at all — or cared about it — but I guessed a good personality wasn’t a prerequisite for reproducing. As unfortunate as that fact was.
“Okay, we should have that in stock,” the kid at the counter said after I rattled off the list of parts I’d need to fix the truck.
If I trusted those guys in the garage even a little, I could just let them do the work and then walk over to the antique shop to see Claire. But I didn’t trust them as far as I could throw them. They’d come back to me with a list of needed repairs as long as my arm and a bill big enough to make my head spin. People in these parts still had the idea that doctors made a lot of money. No one seemed to consider the ongoing costs of operating a small clinic like mine, insuring it, and maintaining the building. Not to mention my penchant for taking alternative forms of payment to help people out. Most people on this mountain probably thought I was one of the richest guys out here, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I did all right for myself, yeah. I was getting by and the clinic wasn’t really in any danger of shutting down, but I still needed to scrimp where I could, and auto repairs was one of those areas. So unfortunately, visiting Claire would just have to wait until another day. And hopefully, Molly could manage to keep the gossip train in the station until then.