CHAPTER FOUR
“What do you mean you don’t have any potato chips?” Grace yelled. She planted her hands on her hips and stared him down, as though he was selfishly hiding away the tasty treats, and needed a little encouragement to share the goods. It definitely wasn’t one of her finer moments.
“I’m sorry, but as I’ve tried to explain repeatedly, I’m on the Paleo diet, and I only eat natural foods that my hunter-gatherer ancestors would have had access to.”
“I think I hate you. Seriously, if all you wanted to do was punish me you should have let the tigers finish me off.”
“This isn’t punishment! Do you have any idea how expensive organic eggs are? I’m telling you, this is high quality stuff. How about I make you an omelet? We can call it dunch and I’ll throw in a side of grilled sweet potatoes if you want.”
Grace ignored him for a couple more minutes as she continued to pore through the boring contents of his large walk-in pantry. What the hell was coconut flour? And why on earth did he have so many glass canisters of nuts and dried fruit? Worst of all, she hadn’t found alcohol of any kind.
She no longer felt as though she’d waltzed into heaven, because any man who had ten pounds of carrots in his fridge was obviously up to the Devil’s work. Eventually she grunted “Fine,” and sat down on a stool at the island to watch Henry work.
She’d never had a handsome man cook for her, or any man for that matter. They’d all expected her to wait on them hand and foot, yet none of them were willing to lift so much as a finger for her welfare. She’d certainly never had a Betty Crocker style mother figure around to teach her how to cook. Basically, the only appliance she knew how to operate with any degree of confidence was the microwave.
Thanks to her job as a waitress she was also pretty proficient at filling empty ketchup bottles and she knew how to set up the coffee machine. Tallying up a growing list of her deficiencies was leaving her with a hollow feeling, which royally sucked. Instead of feeling bad about herself she decided to have fun with it.
“Not to brag, but I happen to be a microwave expert if you need a hand with that,” she said. Maybe she should have offered to help chop or something, but unlike her he actually appeared to know his way around a kitchen. All of this sitting still was making her bored, and when she was bored she got fidgety, and when she got fidgety the urge to use was stronger than ever.
“You put eggs in the microwave?” A horrified look crossed his face.
“Yeah, so what?” she said defensively.
“I don’t have a microwave. The radiation destroys all the nutrients in the food. I just use a pan,” he said grabbing a couple of wicked looking cast iron skillets from a lower cabinet. He chopped a bunch of weird looking green stuff that he claimed were herbs. Being as the only spices she’d ever seen came dried in plastic jars, she couldn’t help but wonder if he was pulling her leg.
He drizzled grapeseed oil, something she had never even heard of, into the skillet and after it was warm he added some diced sweet potatoes, peppers, and onions as well as some more herbs. He cranked some fresh pepper and salt on top, and then once the potatoes were well under way he returned to the glass bowl on the counter and vigorously whisked the egg mixture.
He was fascinating to watch cook. He almost danced as he teased the omelet from side to side and rolled it up to perfection. He slid the omelet onto a big white plate when he finished cooking it and she was so hungry that she rushed it and burned the roof of her mouth. The next time she was smarter and blew on it first. Huh. It was actually good.
“I’ve had worse,” she mumbled as she continued to scarf down every last bite. She struggled not to moan rapturously when she took the first bite of sweet potatoes. Why was it so much tastier than a bag of chips?
It made Henry’s bear happy to get to feed his mate, so happy that the beast actually nodded off for a bit and stopped barking at him to do a better job of wooing the woman. He kept up an endless stream of chatter, but he’d learned from their time in the car together and he made sure not to ask her a bunch of nosy questions that would get her hackles up again.
There was no more “if” about it. He’d found the one. He’d never thought it could happen so quickly, but in the span of a few hours he’d gone from being a happy productive bachelor to a lovesick pup who felt as though he’d found the half of himself he’d never even known was missing.
Henry was unsure of what to do next. She had to be tired, what with the way she was slumping forward over her seat onto the counter, but he was afraid that if he mentioned going to bed she’d take it the wrong way and get all snarly again. He’d always been a confident person, but then the stakes to win over a woman had never been this high before.
His bear thought he should stop being such a pussy and just tell her that he wanted her to have his bear cubs and endless amounts of practice sex. He growled at his bear to shut up, because it was terrible pick-up lines like that that would destine him to a cold and lonely future. Everyone knew that fated mates only came along once in a lifetime, and lots of bears weren’t even lucky enough to find it once.
Grace wasn’t a shifter, so he couldn’t rely on her animal instincts to tell her that he was the only man for her. She could probably go on to find happiness with any number of others. But that wasn’t the case for him. If he screwed this up he was destined to be miserable and alone until he croaked.
His “chipper” thoughts started to rile up his inner bear, and the last thing he needed was another voice in his head, so he struggled to calm his racing thoughts so that the animal would lose interest and go back to sleep. One thing was certain, he had to play it cool. The woman had been through a lot, and she had to catch her bearings before he proclaimed his undying love and devotion.
If he jumped the gun and revealed how he wanted to spend the rest of their lives together right after having just met her she’d laugh in his face, or run. Which sucked, because he was dying to explain to her that shifters mated for life, as in no take-backs period, and that she was his mate!
***
Henry had cleaned up the kitchen while Grace finished her meal. They managed to get through the awkwardness of retiring to separate bedrooms after all. Neither of them bothered mentioning the fact that it was day outside, because after missing out on a full night of sleep they were both in need of a lengthy nap.
Grace had initiated things by saying, “I’m tired.” While that certainly wasn’t an untrue statement, she didn’t know if she would be able to actually go to sleep. At the very least she needed a moment alone with her thoughts. Her mind was racing from everything that she had witnessed over the past week, especially the last day. The fact that she was attracted to said stranger just made everything more confusing.
Was this some kind of post-traumatic stress side-effect? She had come dangerously close to dying. Was her attraction some sort of misplaced gratitude for his having rescued her? Maybe it was just hormones making her want him, he certainly was one gorgeous man. There was nothing quite like a near death experience when it came to shaking up one’s life paradigm.
What’s his deal? Grace mused silently. Henry didn’t seem to have any ulterior motives and she wasn’t sure how to deal with that. Could it be that he was actually genuinely concerned for her welfare? Or was he just obsessed with keeping the shifters’ secret safe? Fortunately he had put on clothes the moment they entered his house, so that was at least helping her to stop gawking like a teenager. It had been much easier to focus when she wasn’t fighting to resist the urge to sneak a peek to see if his junk was as generously sized as the rest of his body.
She was ashamed to admit that a big part of her wanted to see him without pants again to solve the mystery once and for all. What the hell was wrong with her? She had never been boy crazy, and there were so many other thoughts that should be filling her brain, like what was going to happen next? Like freaking escape plans!
Was he planning to keep her here forever? Call it oppositional defiance or whatever other label you wanted to tack on it, but she simply wasn’t down with being told what to do—ever. Sure, so far he seemed trustworthy enough, but in her experience people always let you down . . . eventually. No matter how nice he was to her and how many meals he prepared for her, someday he would show his true colors. Wouldn’t he?
As part of her pre-sleep ritual, Grace counted her pills. She’d hidden them under the hollowed out bottom of the lamp on the bedside table because she hadn’t been able to force herself to put back on her dirty bra, and his loaner sweats didn’t have pockets.
She was still trying to figure out how she was going to get her next fix if her meager supply ran out. As she sorted through the pills, she was annoyed to discover that she didn’t recognize the neon green pill that constituted the lion’s share of the bag. It had been too dark to make out much of anything beyond the Ecstasy when she’d first fumbled through the bag, and she hated how few pills there were left. Without knowing what the green pill was she had no way of knowing how she would respond to it.
She was going to have to learn to ration her supply, go longer between fixes. As she lay there struggling to fall asleep without the help of a sedative or a downer, she wondered if she should do more than just rough it for one night. What if she just cut out the drugs entirely? Maybe she should treat this whole situation as a golden opportunity. Could it be she was getting the fresh start she’d always wanted? What if instead of treating her stay as a much needed vacation, she turned it into a little self-guided rehabilitation instead?
Did she have it in her to stop the pills entirely? It was a question without a ready answer. As for now, she felt like crap, and it was going to take a lot more than a few hours of sleep for her to recover from the trauma of the past week. She sprawled on her back in bed for what seemed like forever, looking for patterns in the popcorn ceiling, and eventually she fell into a restless sleep.
***
Henry had no trouble at all falling asleep. Initially his bear had been less than pleased and had grumbled and groused about being forced to cross the lonely hallway to an empty room. He didn’t understand why Henry was taking them to the master bedroom when their mate was all alone in the guest bedroom without them. Truth be told Henry hadn’t liked leaving her alone either. He’d heard from other shifters that it happened fast when a bear chose his mate, but hearing about something and experiencing it were completely different animals!
He was woken up by the sound of screaming originating from the other room.
“Intruder!” his bear roared in his ear.
He flung aside the bed sheet and lurched out of bed. As he ran for the door his mind filtered through possible scenarios. Had the tigers tracked them down? He swore that if they had come to hurt Grace, it would be the last thing they ever did.