Page 7 of Barron

When she pulled her balaclava off her head, her dark red hair flew all over the place in the slight breeze coming from the gully that the people were in. He stared at her face. She knew what he could see. Dark freckles that bloomed when she was out of doors for more than a few minutes, as well as her clear blue eyes. They were as crystal clear blue as the sky was when the sun shined over it, as she’d been told by Chief Roanhorse, her adopted father.

He stood up when she did, as she turned away, thinking that she’d had enough of him for one day, he asked her if she’d come and meet his family. Have dinner with them. Then he smiled.

“I’d very much like it if you were to tell them what you told me about your tribe and my grandparents. They would enjoy that as much as I have. Please.” She looked at the way that her home was. It wasn’t anything more than a hole in the mountain while she was out. Tomorrow, she would return to the tribes that she lived with. Finally, Willow told him that she’d be honored so long as she was able to leave when she needed to. She and the Cherokee were very close. “That’ll be great. All right. Thank you.”

As they started down the mountain again, she asked if they needed any honey. She’d been out checking on her trees and had gotten more than she could handle. Handing him one of the gallons of the pure gold stuff, she took the other. Her tribe had more than they could use right now, too.

~*~

Barron was beyond happy. He almost didn’t want to shift to talk to her because he didn’t want to be disappointed when he was naked again. But not only was he fully clothed lying beside her, but he also had on a winter coat and heavy boots. He nearly did a dance. He’d been so happy.

He supposed that he should have told her what she was to him. However, he was a little nervous. First of all, she had a blade on her hip that was as large as his head. There were other weapons around her, too, that he knew that she could use on him at a moment’s notice. But as they walked toward his home, Mark’s home, all he could think about was that he’d found his mate, and she was nothing like the other woman. Glancing at her, he realized that he knew absolutely nothing about her. He asked her what her name was.

“Willow. I don’t remember my last name. I didn’t even remember my first name, but my biological father called me Willow all the time. When we arrived here on a family vacation, it was…complicated. My father had joined a cult. One that he had us following all across the United States when my family and I were little. I was seven at the time.” He asked her if she would wait and tell his family her story. “Do you really think that they’ll care? I mean, I don’t anymore. I got free of them, and that’s a good thing.”

“I’m sure that they’ll be happy to hear the story about how you’d come to be living with a tribe. I’m assuming by the way you talk that they abandoned you. We have that happen a bit more than I’m comfortable with by living here. At one time, I was a park ranger, along with the rest of my family.” She said she knew a great deal about his family. “I would imagine that you did if you knew about my grandparents. I have to tell you something before we go in and meet my family. You know that there are six of us, correct?”

“Yes. The oldest is the bear king. What else?” He in stops and starts told her about Caitlynn. Also, that she would more than likely be making trouble for him and his family. And now her. “Why me? I’ve—” She cocked her head at him. “You’re saying that you’re my mate, aren’t you?”

“I belong to you, yes. You’re my true mate.” She continued walking, and he didn’t say much but stayed at pace with her. “Are you upset?”

“No. Flabbergasted but no, not upset. I believe in the fates and their way of working things out as much as you do. But I am still a little scared, too.” She stopped, and he did, too. Turning to look at him, she studied his face like she was looking for flaws. “I can take care of myself. I’m a warrior as much as the men in my tribe. I have been adopted by the chief when he found me injured and dying one day. I think that I’d been in the forest for about a week by then. After nursing me back to health, he claimed me as his child.”

“I’m sure that there is a reason that you’re telling me this, but I can’t think of a reason why it should matter. I’m not being a dick here, but I don’t know the ways of the Indians that live here in the mountains. I know there are several tribes, but nothing more than that.” She nodded, then continued to walk at a pace that had him lengthening his stride to keep up with her. “Are you upset about this?”

“No. Why would I be?” He said that he didn’t know, but she did seem to be. “I’m speaking to my father. He would like to meet you. He’s going to be at your brother’s home before we will be. I don’t know what he’s going to ask of you. Tradition is huge with him. You will need to show that you can provide for me. Not just in monetary ways but just to keep me safe. Why? I have no idea. I’ve been taking care of myself for decades. But it’s his tradition and he’ll expect something from you to claim your life to mine.” She looked at him. “Showing him your bear will be enough. But you’ll be bigger, stronger, too, if we were to claim one another. Would you do that? Before we meet him?”

“Anything. You tell me what you need for me to do to claim you.” Her face heated up, and he laughed. “We have to have sex? I’m more than willing to make love to you whenever you say that word.”

“Just a kiss will do for now.” He pulled her to his body and let her decide how close she wanted to be to him. As he lowered his mouth to hers, she let out a soft breath, just enough for him to taste her. Claiming her mouth, it was so much more than he could ever have hoped for and then some. Barron had a mate, and he couldn’t have been more in love with her than he’d been in love with anyone else.

Chapter 4

Caitlynn tossed the book she’d been reading across the room. It was drivel, and she wasn’t any closer to figuring out why she wasn’t his mate than she’d been before. In her lifetime, she’d been several fiancées to her fiancés, and not once had any one of them meant a thing to do with her loving them until the next big prize came alone. She wanted to be his mate in the worst sort of way. He was handsome, friendly, and, most importantly, he was rich. It hadn’t taken her as long as she thought it should have to figure that part out as it did to read one of the several hundred books that were out there on shifters. It seemed to her that she should have been setting her sights on shifter men rather than plain old men. Shifters seemed to know how to collect money and to keep it, just for little old her. She laughed as she thought of how sincere Barron was—his name even sounded rich when he’d had to break it off with her.

The books would go from saying that there wasn’t any such thing as shifters to having about every other man or woman being one. They were just that good at keeping their shape-shifting a secret. Christ, the only real information that she could find was by reading those ridiculous smut books. Even those only talked about sex and how wonderful it was when they came together. She also found out, through reading up on getting with child by one was that ovulation wasn’t two weeks like Barron had told her but only a few hours once a month. That pissed her off more than anything.

Her phone was ringing, and she decided to ignore it for now. The business was doing well, even without the expansion she was hoping to get, so she had very little to do with it. In fact, as bored as she was with the company, she’d gone ahead and did what she should have done years ago. Putting it on the market to get rid of it was the best decision she’d ever made. There were other fish to fry, as her father used to say.

He’d nearly bankrupted them when he’d been in charge. Dad had wanted to branch out, of course, but he wanted to take on more smaller companies, up-and-coming ones that he thought would be a good investment to their company. After he told her this, she decided that he was much too easy with the company and declared him incompetent to run the place. A few weeks later, she won the case through the board of directors, and he died of a massive heart attack. Then, her mother, who was about as useless as any woman could be, joined him in death by taking her own life. Good riddance to the both of them, she had thought then and now.

Her secretary knocked once and said that there were several messages for her from the service. Asking her if anything was important enough that she had to stop what she was doing, she told her that it wasn’t her job to judge on that sort of thing people wanted her for. Handing her the missed call papers, she left the room without another word. Caitlynn wanted to fire her, but she did a good job in keeping her abreast of things and didn’t want to have to hire someone else this late in the game. She started sorting through the messages.

Two were from her banker, telling her that they had a buyer for the business, and that made her smile. The next three were from her butler telling her that there were several messages from someone wanting to put an offer on the business. He then asked if they’d all be out of a job.

“You might well be if you ask shit like that.” After calling her banker to find out what sort of offers they were getting, he, of course, started telling her that since he’d left the second message, his phone hadn’t stopped ringing.

“I wish you would have told me that I was going to be getting calls like this, Ms. Royce. I would have had the phone calls transferred to your system instead of taking up my time answering questions that I know nothing about.” She asked him what the offers were. “All of them are less than what you’re asking with the exception of one. What do you know of someone known as David Gibb? He’s willing to pay the full asking price if he could have the buildings as well as keep all the employees that are there now. He also wants to close within the next three weeks.”

“Did he say what the rush was?” He told her when she asked. “So he doesn’t want me fucking with the employees before he takes over. Not very trusting of him if you ask me.”

“That isn’t the wording that he used, no, but I guess it boils down to that. What do you want me to tell him? He’s been calling here for the last few hours on the dot to see if you’re willing to meet him to get the paperwork signed over to him as soon as the day’s end.” She looked at her calendar and then called in her secretary to see when her next free time was. After being told that she had nothing on her calendar for the next three days, she told her banker that. “Today, then?”

“Why not? I don’t want this drawn out any longer than he does. I want money not some excuse for him telling me that he doesn’t have the money right now. It’s pay up, or I move on to the next person.” He reminded her that there wasn’t a next person who was willing to pay what she wanted. “I know that, dumbass. I want you to tell him that I have several offers on the table. I want him to squirm a little.”

He said he’d call her back and decided to look up this David Gibb person. All she could find out about him was that his wife of thirty-one years had died recently and that he’d been staying with friends. It never mentioned who his friends were, but she had noticed that his house, like a lot of houses on the market in DC, was somewhat of a mansion with an indoor swimming pool and bar all in one. She thought that it must be some house if he was asking eleven million for the place. There were no records that she could look up on him or his wife. The friends part didn’t bother her. She wouldn’t have mentioned it either if she’d been hiding out from someone. The press. Glancing through the phone messages that she’d gotten, three of them were from newspapers around the state wanting to talk to her. Whatever. She didn’t have anything to say to them that she’d not already said when she put the business on the market. Cailynn had decided too to get rid of the house that she’d been living in since she was a child. It was time to start fresh, she thought. And to do that, she needed to get Barron off his ass and ask her to marry him. She wanted to live in the style that he could give to her. She didn’t want to work at all for the rest of her life. The buzz of the phone startled her, and she was told by whatever her secretary’s name was that it was her banker.

“He said that he could meet you at this bank in twenty minutes. Also, he is bringing his attorney with him.” She asked him if she should bring one with her. “How well do you know that law pertaining to selling a company?”

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