Chapter Eight

Joselyn leaned over the marketing plan she had spread out on the kitchen table, tapping her lips with a pen. Her brain was mush from too many numbers—market shares, focus groups, demographics. The lists were endless, but she wanted to be sure she wasn’t overlooking anything that might thwart her brewery’s launch. She had been working for two hours on a Sunday afternoon to keep her mind off the abrupt end to her phone call with Alton.

She spoke to him most days. They rarely went more than two days without finding the time, but she didn’t have the liberty to call him back when she knew he was at his parents. Occasionally they had to end a call quickly when someone approached. It happened. It hurt.

When the back door opened, a whoosh of cold air filled the room. Her parents had been up in the mountains for an hour roaming around in their bear form. They did that most Sundays. Their cheeks were red from the short walk in human form from the tree line to the house. Her mother was laughing at something her father had said as they entered.

When Rosanne spotted Joselyn at the table, her smile fell. “You’re working?”

Her father, Bernard Arthur, leaned over the copy on the table and peered at it. “That’s amazing, honey. You do such good work. Thank God we have you. No one else in the family has an eye for this stuff.”

Joselyn’s gut clenched. She hated feeling indispensable. Especially under the circumstances. There was every chance in the world that she and Alton would have to leave town after they outed themselves. Then her father would have to find a new marketing director. “Don’t be so dramatic, Dad. I have a marketing degree. Anyone can get one.”

He smiled as he righted himself, taking her chin in his hand. “You have talent, my sweet, humble daughter. No degree can make someone talented. It comes from the heart.”

She swallowed. She did have talent and an eye for marketing, but she hoped like hell someone else in the family had gotten the gene too because she was at the breaking point. “Thanks, Dad.”

He dropped her chin and faced the papers again while her mother bustled around in the kitchen putting a kettle on to boil water. It was her daily routine. Afternoon tea. Allister spoke again. “You think we’re ready to launch?”

“I believe so.” She bit her lip hard. She did that a lot lately. The stinging pain took away some of the guilt.

“Good. Because it’s next Monday, hon. Eight days. All this last minute tweaking is unnecessary. You’ve nailed it.”

She nodded. If he only knew where her nerves were coming from. They had nothing to do with the launch.

As if her father read her mind—and if she didn’t pay attention to blocking better, he probably could—his next words made her jump. “The Tarbens are going to piss themselves when they find out about this.”

She nodded again, unable to utter a word. That was her primary concern. The most important person in her life was one of those Tarbens, and she had no idea how he was going to react when he found out she’d been secretly involved in this scheme to get ahead of the game and bolster her family’s sales, leaving the Tarben brewery number two in the area.

It scared the daylight out of her. It kept her up at night. It even got in the way of her phone calls with Alton. Damn family secrets. For years she’d hoped their families would reconcile eventually and she could be with Alton in peace. But she hadn’t counted on something like this. The entire Arthur pack was banking on making a lot of money off this new campaign at the expense of the Tarben pack.

Joselyn was stuck in the middle. She hated herself for her role. She hated herself even more for not mentioning it to her mate. But how could she? This was a family business. It wouldn’t be fair to her extended pack if she leaked confidential information to the competitor that could ruin their marketing plans.

Besides, they didn’t have a single clue she was sleeping with the enemy.

When Joselyn was at work, which was nearly all the time she was awake, she threw herself into the task and gave it her all. She forced her mind to ignore the niggling feeling she was about to destroy the tentative hold she had on her personal relationship and did the job she was assigned to.

It sucked. It made her sick most days. But she did it.

It wasn’t as though she had knowledge of some giant merger that was going to eat Alton’s family business and spit them out. It was simply a new product, one that had been carefully guarded from the Tarben pack to get an edge in the industry.

Even though there was renewed communication between the two sets of parents and a set of their sons, it wasn’t as if they played bridge together on Friday nights and sang Kumbaya around a campfire.

They’d bonded twice, once over Heather and then again over Nuria. Joselyn wasn’t convinced the relationship was strong enough to survive an actual binding between the two families yet. And that didn’t even take into consideration what her extended family would say. She shuddered.

“You okay, honey?” her mother asked, handing her a cup of tea. “You look tired. You work too hard. There are bags under your eyes.”

Joselyn rolled those eyes. “Mom, stop worrying about me. I’m a grown woman.” She blew on the tea and took her first tentative sip.

Rosanne leaned over the ad lying on the table and ran her fingers over the bubbles erupting from the top of the two-dimensional bottle. “Every time I see this, I get chills. It looks so real I have to touch it to prove it’s not.”

Joselyn smiled. “That’s the idea. Glad it’s working for you. I love what the graphic artist came up with. Now, let’s hope everyone else in Silvertip, Alberta, and North America agrees and rushes to the store to wipe the shelves clean of Glacial Citrus.”

Personally, Joselyn thought the lemon- and orange-flavored malt beverages were going to be a huge hit, and not just among the target audience of women, but even with men. There were dozens of microbreweries in the area, but none of them were producing a product geared toward women.

Only the big breweries usually took on such a risky venture. But this had been in the works secretly with Glacial Brewing Company even before Joselyn returned from U of C and took over the marketing department.

When she’d first arrived back in town two years ago, young and naïve and silently freaking out over the total separation from Alton, she’d worried the older members of her family who all worked in the brewery would resent her expertise or the position the board had given her.

The reality was no one else in the family was qualified for the job. That was the reason she went to U of C to get her marketing degree in the first place—to fill a need in the family business.

The first months back in Silvertip had been challenging. She found it difficult to sleep at night. Work was stressful. She doubted her decision to return to Silvertip every day.

Although she had kept Alton at arm’s length the entire time they’d been at U of C, she considered him a friend. And she missed him.

Every time he tried to discuss the possibility of there being more to their relationship than mere friendship, she shut him down. She’d been too young to handle the idea. Scared. So many concerns riddled her, it was difficult to acknowledge which one was the most gut-wrenching.

Fear of being banished from her pack, her immediate family, and her hometown was top on the list of anxieties. The truth was they both came from a long line of deeply loyal packs who worked together and played together. Grizzly packs were tight. Severing from one was not easy. She’d heard stories of other shifters leaving their packs only to spend their lives feeling incredible desolation. Suicide wasn’t uncommon for a banished pack member. The solitude could be astronomical. Would it lessen if the reason for leaving the pack was to bind to a member of another pack?

Besides her concerns regarding banishment, she had other apprehensions. Her parents had paid a lot of money for her to get her university degree. She felt awful enough that she’d lied to them for all these years by omission. Heck, she’d lied to herself too. It would have killed her to turn her back on her family so abruptly and hurt everyone who loved her. After two years, she didn’t want to let them down by separating from the pack to enjoy the fruits of her education somewhere else.

Alton had the same problems. At least they had that in common. It wasn’t difficult to understand how the other felt about the subject. Family loyalty. A sense of debt from the bills of their education. And a huge fear of the unknown if they simply took off and didn’t glance back.

At first, they had no contact with each other, and then he’d called. Denying the pull toward him was difficult.

Now what would happen? Just when they were about to snap and go insane with the need to be together, this explosion of a secret could forge a divide between them that would be insurmountable.

Joselyn honestly had no idea how Alton would react. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as she expected. Maybe it would be worse. In the two years since they’d returned and taken positions in their respective family breweries, they had intentionally agreed never to discuss business.

The plan had served them well. But this was different. This wasn’t about spreadsheets, the ups and downs of beer sales, bottom line sales, or even differing tastes. This launch could be damaging to Alton’s family.

Where did that leave Alton and Joselyn?

She shuddered, reminding herself that her fleeting conversation with him earlier had been cut far too short. She missed him so terribly. Making it worse was this secrecy. He was her life mate, the man she should have bound herself to long ago. She wanted to share everything with him. Everything. Her thoughts and dreams and even her rotten day at the office.

Instead, she found herself knee-deep in what could very well be the biggest mistake of her life.

When Joselyn’s dad popped the lid off a beer behind her, the sound jolted her back to the present. “I don’t know what you’re so worried about, honey. No one else is concerned. Your work is amazing. Everyone agrees. Even my father would have been proud, and that’s saying something.” He tipped his head back and took a long swig.

Joselyn smiled. “Grandpa Arthur did have good taste.” He had died five years ago, but she remembered him as a surly old man who was the primary antagonist in maintaining a century-old feud with the Tarben pack. Nevertheless, he had an eye for art.

The house phone rang on the kitchen counter while Joselyn continued to stare at the colorful depictions of orange and yellow malt beverages spread over the table. She paid no attention to her mother taking the call until she stepped up to Joselyn’s side and held the phone out. “It’s Nuria Orson,” she mouthed while shrugging and lifting her eyebrows.

Joselyn took the phone from her mother and wandered toward the living room area to plop down on the couch. “Hello?”

“Hey, Joselyn. It’s Nuria Orson. Not sure if you remember me, but I just moved back to Silvertip a few weeks ago.”

“Yes. Of course.” Joselyn leaned back, wondering what Nuria might want to speak to her about.

Nuria giggled. “I’m sure the entire town knows who I am. If they didn’t remember my family fleeing in the middle of the night fifteen years ago, they were reminded in a big way when I returned.”

“Yes. I’m so sorry for all you’ve been through. I’ve heard.”

Nuria was six years older than Joselyn. Joselyn didn’t specifically remember her from childhood, but she’d seen her a few weeks ago at the Tarben home after she’d been abducted and rescued. Joselyn hadn’t spoken directly to Nuria that day, but she’d at least had her memory jogged when she saw her big green eyes and gorgeous dark curls.

The visit to the Tarben home had been the first and only time Joselyn had ever been in Alton’s family home. It had also been strained and stressful. Besides finding herself swept into Alton’s world with dozens of other people that day, it was also the first and only time she and Alton had been in the same space while surrounded by everyone they loved.

And they’d done so without acknowledging they knew each other.

Joselyn closed her eyes, remembering the day well. It was etched in her mind. She’d gone there with her parents to show support for the Tarbens as they dealt with a local kidnapper. In spite of their long-standing family feud, the two packs had at least bonded—if only temporarily—over a mutual need to ensure the entire community’s safety.

Joselyn had spent the whole time worrying that her relationship with Alton would be found out. If so many people from both families hadn’t been in the house with far more pressing matters to concern themselves with, things would have gone differently. There was no reason someone shouldn’t have noticed the connection between Alton and Joselyn.

Grizzly shifters didn’t put off a distinct scent indicating they were bound to another bear until after they completed the binding. However, often their immediate families could sense a connection, especially their parents.

“Thanks,” Nuria responded, dragging Joselyn back to the present. “The reason I’m calling is because I heard you got your marketing degree from the University of Calgary, and I was wondering if you might not mind speaking to me about it. I’m going to enroll in classes soon.”

“Sure. Anytime.” Joselyn was a little shocked by the request. After all, she didn’t know Nuria at all. But maybe she had an interest in marketing.

“Are you free tonight? I mean, I don’t want to bother you if you’re busy or anything, but I thought since it’s a Sunday, maybe you had some time? Perhaps you could come to the house?”

Wow. That was even more shocking. Joselyn worried her lip. She had no reason to turn Nuria down. In fact, it might be helpful to her sanity if she got out of the house for a while to take her mind off the upcoming launch and her stress over what it would do to her relationship. “Sure. I could do that. What time?”

“How about eight? I’m at the Tarbens this afternoon, but we’ll be home by then.”

Joselyn took a deep breath. Lucky Nuria. She was able to reconnect with her childhood sweetheart, Alton’s brother, and now she was all nestled into the Tarben family fold—welcomed with open arms—while Joselyn remained the permanently hidden, secret girlfriend of the younger brother.

She’d give anything to be at that damn family dinner with her mate. That’s how it should be. Instead, the only thing she’d gotten from Alton so far that day was a quick call that ended too soon.

Would it be weird to spend time at Austin’s home while knowing she belonged to his younger brother in her soul? Probably, but on the other hand, maybe it was a step in the right direction. A connection with Alton’s brother couldn’t be a bad thing.

She decided to accept the weird invitation. “Sounds good. I’ll be there.”

“I guess you know where we live.”

Joselyn smiled. Silvertip wasn’t that big. She knew where nearly everyone lived, friend or not. “I do.”

“Okay, perfect. See you then.” The call ended before Joselyn could respond. She found herself staring down at the phone in her hand wondering what sort of bizarre relationship she might forge with Nuria Orson.