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“It’s a local IPA.”
“Gotcha,” said the waitress, hurrying to take their order back to the kitchen.
“I ordered tots for you and rings for me so you could try both. We can share or if you like one and not the other, you can have whichever you like.”
She smiled. She had a glorious smile. He was fairly sure it could rival the aurora borealis in both beauty and magic.
“And they say chivalry is dead,” she teased.
“Not in Mystic River, Alaska, it isn’t. It’s a strange little town.”
“How so?”
“In most places where you have single and mated guys, the mated guys are happy, but kind of look at the single guys with a little longing. Here in Mystic River, the single guys look at the men with mates covetously—not of that woman, per se, just wishing they had found their own.”
“And what about those who have?”
“They regard us with a look of pity and say ‘chump.’”
Nora brought her hand up to cover her laugh. “That’s terrible.”
“Terrible but true. We have all these predatory alpha males walking around, and the lot of them are bossed around by their beautiful, curvy mates, although said mates work really hard to keep the men from knowing.”
The waitress set their food down and Nora filched an onion ring, biting into it with a kind of childish glee at having gotten away with something. His mate was an enigma. She had an old soul; he could feel it. Yet, at times, there seemed to be a childish side that longed to run free.
“How’d you end up in Mystic River?” she asked.
“I was a soldier and deployed to the Middle East. My last op was all fucked up, and I saw my unit torn apart by a pack of hyena-shifters. Then someone tried to kill me. I’d had enough. Seen way too much. When I landed in Ottawa, Colby Reynolds was there. I’m not sure how or how much he knew about what happened, but he offered me a soft place to land, and I just stayed.”
“How does a warrior go from that to baker?”
“He sees too much and has fought for a cause he no longer believes in. Coupled with that, I used to plan my leave time in cities where there was some kind of baking school and found that I liked it. There is a comfort in knowing that if you add the same ingredients, in a precise way, you’ll get the same result every time. The guy who started the bakery had left town, so Colby arranged for me to buy it.”
“Could you ever see yourself leaving?”
Hutch thought about it. “Maybe someday, but for now I need to stay. What about you? Could you ever see yourself leaving New Hampshire?”
“Vermont,” she corrected. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’d like to run away and hide in the wilderness. Other times, I feel trapped in a life I chose a long time ago.”
“Funny you should say hiding in the wilderness. That was my plan when I got to Ottawa. I planned to get to the Canadian Rockies, shift, and disappear into the wild forever.” He reached across the table to take her hand. “Instead, I listened to Colby, came here, bought a bakery, and found a home.”
Recognition dawned in her eyes. “You’re a cloudie, aren’t you? We’re such loners in our shifted forms. I think, sometimes, it makes us long for friends, companions, a family, and home. Even more so than other species.”
He nodded. “I think you could be right. I take it, then, that you too are a cloudie.” She nodded. “Look, I know we haven’t known each other very long, and finding another cloudie is difficult, but I’m about 99.9 percent sure you are my fated mate.”
She looked up at him, tears forming in her eyes. “I know,” she whispered.
He was taken aback, not only by her confession, but by the sadness in her tone.
“Why does that make you sad? Is there another who seeks to claim you? I’ll challenge him for that right.”
She laughed quietly. “Typical male. It must be some other man, and you’ll just fight him for me. Hot news flash, I’m the one who decides where and with whom I want to be, but no, there is no one else.”
“Then why were there tears in your eyes?”
“It is not as simple as you believe it to be. My life is… complicated… for lack of a better word. I don’t even know what I want or feel. My plan was so simple—come to Alaska and do a little research, make notes for my book, and then go home and write it. But then you came along,” she said, turning her palm up so she could hold his hand. “I wasn’t expecting you. It is rare for me to be surprised by anything. And yet, here you are. Giving in to this feeling has ramifications you can’t possibly imagine.”
“Then explain them to me. We can work it out. I know we can.”
