Jason watched her walk out of the room. He wanted to go after her, but she was in no mood to listen to him. What could he say? He’d had no idea she or her wolf was strong enough to stand up to Toni without fear. The strength of your wolf was determined by how strong a person you were.
There was no way for him to explain this to her without sounding insulting. If she had truly been the woman he’d been e-mailing, he would have been able to read her strength through the e-mails. Through her responses to his commands, he would have known her wolf would have been Alpha mate material.
He slowly wheeled over to the door and listened. He heard the soft whimpering and knew she was crying. Those tears were his fault. Each and every one. How was he supposed to make this up to her? Sorry just wasn’t going to cover it. He had no clue what would.
Instead he wheeled to the kitchen and finished preparing lunch. He fixed her a plate and wheeled it to the room. “I’ve got some food. I’m going to leave it here.”
“I’m not hungry!” she yelled.
“You need to eat. I’m going to leave it here. You don’t need to talk to me or eat with me. Just—”
“Fine.”
He was surprised when she stepped out, grabbed the plate, and walked over to the bar in his kitchen. He was not expecting that.
“Feeling better?”
“No. I’m not feeling better. I haven’t let anyone make me feel ashamed of who I was since high school. But I trusted you and… Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I was stupid. I won’t be again.”
She didn’t say she was stupid for trusting him. She didn’t have to. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. What could he say?
Trust me now. I won’t let you down again
. He closed his mouth and just wheeled away from her.
“Don’t starve your wolf to punish me. She’ll get stronger and pop out on you at the wrong time.” The second the words left his lips, he knew it was the absolute wrong thing to say.
“Don’t worry. I think we’ll be just fine. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll be sleeping in the guest room tonight.” She picked up a forkful of the salad and pushed it into her mouth. She chewed, but she didn’t look like she was enjoying it.
“So you’re not going to talk to me anymore?” The time left until the solstice was going to drag on forever if all they did was ignore each other.
“If by
talk
you mean sleeping together, then no. We won’t be doing that. But talking? It doesn’t make sense to walk around each other and not talk.”
The fact that she wasn’t arguing with him anymore and didn’t sound remotely concerned worried him. Maybe they just needed to change the subject completely. It wasn’t like they didn’t have things to discuss.
“We need to get out of this house. Maybe we can do a little damage control.” He watched her as he said the words. Her body stiffened at the mention of going outside. “We can go into town and meet some of the pack before Toni has time to do much damage. But…”
“But what?” she asked, putting her fork down.
“But you’re going to have to pretend you actually like me. If you’re standoffish at all, they’ll know something is wrong, and Toni can be really convincing. She had me fooled for over a year.” He knew he shouldn’t have added the last part. Mentioning his ex was not going to help Gio forgive him.
“See, I don’t understand that. From the second she opened her mouth, I had her pegged as a power-hungry conniver. How could you not see it?”
“I’ve asked myself that question a lot in the last three years.” He shrugged. There was no good explanation for his lack of common sense here. He knew it. And he also knew that if he got Gio out of this house, he might be taking a step in the right direction—if not in her case, then definitely in her wolf’s.
“And it’s not that I don’t like you. More like I don’t trust you.” She finished her food. “Thanks for cooking. And if it will earn me an afternoon out of here, then yeah, I can play the adoring girlfriend.”
“We can go shopping too. Get you some clothes.” He waited. A few hours ago she might have jumped in with a smart-assed comment or a joke. But instead she got up and rinsed off her plate. Their easy camaraderie was gone. He hoped that if he proved he trusted her and wanted to be seen with her, she would also believe he was only trying to protect her.
He waited until she was done to show her out to the garage and to his modified truck. It had cost him a small fortune, but he could drive using hand pedals. After they were both in the truck, he pulled out.
“You left your chair?”
“I only use the manual chair in the house. For trips out, I have a mechanical one in the back.” He nodded toward the back of the truck. He’d also modified it so he could crawl through the back to get to the wheelchair.
“There’s a women’s-wear shop on Main Street. We can stop in there to see what they have. Sarah Jane and her sister, Ambriel, own the shop, but Ambriel basically runs it for the day-to-day stuff,” he told her as they pulled into a parking spot near a storefront sporting mannequins in swimsuits. He shook his head. Ambriel never paid attention to the seasons. Gio got out the passenger-side door, and he pulled his way into the backseat, then pushed a small button and lowered two small sections so he could reach the chair. He pushed several buttons to fire that puppy up. It hadn’t been used in a while. A long while. He pressed another few buttons on his key fob, and the truck’s cab lowered and a ramp extended down. He wheeled over to Gio’s side and took her hand.
He watched her muscle tighten in her arm as if she might yank her hand away—or something worse. He wasn’t going to give her that chance.
“If you pull away, people will see.” It was an excuse. A poor one, but he was grasping at straws. He needed to make sure things got back to normal before the solstice. After it her heat would be gone, and she wouldn’t need him anymore. It was plain and simple that they didn’t have enough time. He needed, no wanted more.
As they slipped inside, an intense floral scent hit him square in the nose like a heavyweight prizefighter. He coughed twice before his body adjusted to the aroma. He didn’t remember it being so strong before. Gio cleared her throat. Her ears had gotten more sensitive, but her nose wasn’t there yet. Either that or she liked the smell.
“Jason? I swear my eyes are playing tricks on me.” A small petite pixie of a woman came from behind the counter with a burst of speed and headed straight for him.
Gio held her breath. She wasn’t a jealous woman, or at least she’d never been before. She pulled in a breath and told herself that not all women wanted Jason. And even if they did, she couldn’t take them all down. She exhaled slowly. No way did she want him to think for a second that anything he did affected her. He wasn’t hers. She had to remember that. Even when everything in her told her he was.
“I heard someone busted Toni up. About damn time. I would have done it myself if it wasn’t for the business.”
The woman pulled her down into a hug. Gio didn’t know what to do. Her wolf didn’t want the hug. She wanted to tear the woman’s arms off and beat her with them for wrapping them around her. When she looked over at Jason, he was smiling. She pushed the woman away as politely as possible, then extended a hand. “My name is Giovanni, but everyone calls me Gio.”
The woman shook her hand and sniffed her. Actually put the hand up to her nose and sniffed. “My name’s Ambriel. My husband, Nickolas, works at the fire department. Maybe you can stay for dinner tonight.”
“Sorry, Am, we’re only here to do a little shopping.” He maneuvered a joystick, and his chair vibrated to life, and within seconds, he was by her side, stroking his thumb against her palm.
“Oh, I remember what it used to be like. That mating heat lasts until about the first child comes.” A smug smile lit up her face. “Then the kids come, and it gets worse, because you have to get adventurous. Sex in the laundry room, in the car, in the garage—and that’s just at home. Eventually you get desperate enough to do things outside, where strangers may see you.”
Gio couldn’t help but take a step back at the word
kids
. Her throat closed at the thought that she was never going to have kids. Her entire life gone in a flash, to be replaced by this joke where the one person who’d come to mean something to her was ashamed of her.
“I don’t—”
“We aren’t planning on having kids right away. We want a couple of years to ourselves,” Jason said, raising Gio’s hand to his lips.
The contact was both calming and inflaming. She’d been fine at lunch. On the drive down, she thought she’d been okay, that the need for him could be controlled.
Ambriel waved her finger at Jason. “Did he tell you that after seeing my brood, he bet my husband that he would have more? He’s planning on having his own baseball team.”
Gio swallowed hard. “No, he didn’t tell me that.”
Jason dropped her hand and looked away, then cleared his throat. “That was before the accident.”
Gio rolled her eyes. “You know you are the most self-pitying son of a bitch I have ever met. You’re in a wheelchair. Get over it. Lots of men in wheelchairs are great dads. I’m sure a few of them even have nine or ten kids. The only difference between them and you is they know that their lives weren’t over when they lost the use of their legs.” Gio walked toward one of the racks of jeans. She was sick and tired of hearing how his life had changed and the shit he couldn’t do. Hell, the only thing he couldn’t do was stand.
Ambriel walked over and stood next to her. “You know, when they told me you broke one of Toni’s arms, I knew I was going to like you. But after that, I think I might be a little in love with you.”
Confused, Gio turned toward her. She wasn’t angry? Gio was expecting to get ripped into shreds verbally for talking to Jason like that.
“Now if you had smacked some sense into him, I might have had to sign up as your love slave.” There were tears in Ambriel’s eyes. Not the type of tears that spilled down your face with a good cry. These tears made the woman’s honey brown eyes extra bright.
Gio wasn’t trying to impress anyone, and truthfully, after she’d heard his words, she’d forgotten the other woman was there. “Thanks.” She couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Pick an outfit out. It’ll be on me,” Ambriel said, smiling.
“No. I couldn’t.” Gio didn’t have any money, and she really didn’t want Jason buying her anything, but she didn’t want to take anyone’s charity either.
“I can pay for an outfit,” Jason said as he wheeled up behind them.
“I didn’t ask you,” Ambriel said, dismissing him without a glance. “Why don’t you go over to the couch and wait?”
Gio decided right then to take the woman up on her offer, for no other reason than to spite Jason. He’d hurt her, and he thought buying her an outfit was going to fix something?
Hell no.
“Okay. One outfit. Jeans, shirt, and some underwear,” she told Ambriel.
“No underwear,” Jason growled.
Was he serious? She’d told him that ship had sailed. No way was she going to willingly give herself to someone who made her feel so second-class.
“Don’t worry; I’ll take care of you. Why don’t I just get a dressing room ready?” Ambriel moved through a doorway quickly—too quickly.
“If you get some underwear, I’m going to rip them to shreds.” He was whispering, but she heard every word clearly.
“And I thought I told you I was not going to have sex with someone who was ashamed of me.” She kept her back to him and her voice low.
“I told you I was not ashamed of you. I was only trying to protect you—”
“Keep believing that. But I protected myself. I didn’t see you running in trying to save me. And it turns out your ex was the one who needed protecting. I could have hurt her worse.” Anger was working through her body, making her hot. She needed to calm down before her wolf came out.
“If you had tried to hurt her while she was down, she would have changed on you, and her wolf would have torn you to shreds,” he whispered, his anger running down her spine like a mild caress. Her wolf purred beneath her skin.
“You don’t know that. I—”
Ambriel poked her head through the door. “Come on back. I picked out some of our new arrivals for you to look at too.”