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“Yes.” Leaving Boone sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, Wes followed Grayson toward the boardroom.
CHAPTER 4
Eleanor stared blankly at her phone screen. She’d been scrolling through Facebook for the last five minutes while she waited for Wes to finish work for the day, but she couldn’t remember anything she’d just looked at.
Hell, she could barely remember her day. It had passed by in a haze of disbelief and numbness and a curious lack of grief. Her father was dead. Shouldn’t she be feeling something? As selfish as this sounded, her tears this morning had been more for herself, for the weird and immediate feeling of terror at being utterly alone in this world. No parents, no siblings, no aunts or uncles or cousins. No… friends.
She swallowed hard. She’d gone her entire life yearning for that connection that most people felt with another person – whether it was a lover or a partner or a friend – and she’d never found it. It was her fault. She talked too much. She was too blunt. Too weird. Too… Eleanor.
She’d tried over and over to change herself, but it proved impossible. She was only twenty-seven, but her hope that she would eventually find her person – the one who loved her for who she was even with all her faults and flaws, grew dimmer with each passing year.
She leaned her head against the headrest and closed her eyes. Immediately, she was back in Wes’s embrace, his hands stroking her back, his low voice calling her butterfly, and his scent washing over her. Wes’s smell was as comforting as freshly baked cookies.
A strained giggle escaped her mouth. What would Wes say if she told him that he smelled like cookies to her? He’d probably look at her like she was insane.
He doesn’t smell like cookies to you, idiot. He gives you the same happy feeling as cookies.
She lifted her arm to her nose and took a long sniff. Did she smell like Wes to other shifters now? Daisy said Cooper rubbed his face against her to mark her. Wes had kissed the top of her head… was that almost like marking?
The idea of being marked by Wes was also comforting. Not that she was terrified of shifters like Daisy was, but she wouldn’t mind if other shifters knew she belonged to Wes.
Uh, Eleanor? He made it clear that he just wanted to be friends this morning.
Right. Friends only. She didn’t belong to Wes Masters, and she never would.
That thought filled her with more grief than the news of her father’s death, and just what the fuck did that say about her?
She jerked in surprise when the car door behind her opened, and a blond man wearing a long dark coat and aviator shades sat behind her. He slammed the door shut, and Eleanor stared at him in the rear-view mirror. “Are you drunk? I’m not a cab, buddy. Get out.”
She froze, her heart first stopping and then kickstarting back into life like an overtaxed engine when the man pressed a gun to the back of her head. “Give me what your father sent you.”
“What?” Eleanor said. The gun barrel dug into her skull, and a soft whimper escaped her throat.
“Give it to me, you stupid bitch,” he said.
“My father is dead,” Eleanor said.
“I know. But I also know he sent you a package. I want it.”
“Why? It doesn’t belong to you. He sent it to me, not you.”
His upper lip curled, and he smacked her upside the head with his free hand. “What the fuck? Just tell me what you did with the fucking package. It’s not in your house.”
“How do you know that?” she said.
“How the fuck do you think? A woman living alone should get better fucking locks on her doors. Is it still in the car? I couldn’t tell last night if you brought it inside,” he said.
“Have you been watching me?” she asked.
He cuffed her across the head again. “Just give me the package, for Christ’s sake.”
“Then what?” she said.
“Then I’ll leave you alone,” the man said.
She couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirrored sunglasses, but she knew he was lying. The minute she handed over the box from her father, this man would put a bullet between her eyes. Of course, if she didn’t hand it over, he really would kill her.
“It’s in the trunk,” she said. “You can take it. I won’t say anything.”
