Broken Lynx (Green Valley Shifters Book 5) Read online

  “When’s your next day off?” Jamie asked patiently.

  It took Devon a ridiculously long time to remember. “Tomorrow. I don’t work tomorrow.” He should be doing more of the heavy lifting here, he thought in despair, but he was still vacillating between certainty that his existence had no meaning without this woman and conviction that he’d never deserve or win her. She didn’t want a place in what passed for his life.

  His mouth hadn’t caught up with his doubts. “Do you want to get coffee tomorrow morning at the bakery? About ten?”

  “There you go,” Jamie encouraged him with laughter in her eyes. “Ten o’clock tomorrow at the bakery sounds great. I’ll see you then. Aren’t you freezing?”

  He should be, Devon thought, shrugging. But he was flushed with heat, filled with excitement and dread. Was this what falling in love was like? A confused, aching, terrible feeling of anticipation and hope and despair? He wanted to kiss her, and warn her away, and fall at her feet and pledge himself to her.

  He couldn’t do any of that, so he just gruffly said, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and fell back in through the door of Gran’s Grits as she strode away.

  Old George was picking up the apron that Devon had shed; he’d managed to rip off one of the ties when he pulled it off.

  True to character, Old George didn’t say anything, but he did give Devon a long, inscrutable look.

  Devon wasn’t sure how he got through the rest of his shift, or how he got home; he just wandered through his day, his lynx purring in his head, his body a tangle of anticipation. He found himself standing in front of the sink staring out the kitchen window. He hadn’t even bothered taking his coat off, and he had no idea how long he’d been there.

  “I hate this town!” Abby stormed in, slamming the front door behind her and bringing Devon back into awareness at last.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked in dread.

  “I hate this school. I hate everyone here!”

  To Devon’s horror, she looked tearful, and he desperately offered, “Do you want a snack?”

  It was exactly the wrong thing to say.

  “I’m not five anymore!”

  Her backpack went flying, further than she clearly expected it to, and it smashed into the bookshelf. The books were too tightly packed to move, but a vase on the top shelf toppled and fell. It was, fortunately, both empty and metal, so it only bounced off the floor and rolled away, unharmed.

  Abby burst into tears and fled for her room.

  Devon helplessly collected the vase and her backpack, staring at her closed door. His chest ached for her. He’d hoped it would be easier in Green Valley, that she’d have more chances to make friends than in a big faceless school in the city.

  His lynx had always wanted space to run, which was why he’d picked this town, after careful research, already certain that Abby was going to be a shifter, too, in a few years. He hoped, from the cryptic exotic animal sightings in the area, that there would be other shifters, though he had yet to find any confirmation. He had suspicions about Turner, given his size and strength, and he was pretty sure that Gran was her own elderly cat, but he hadn’t figured out how to broach the subject without making himself look crazy if he was wrong.

  It suddenly struck him that Jamie might be a shifter, too and he had a rush of hope. Had she recognized him as her mate? He’d never had much luck with girls—understanding them, attracting them, or talking to them. But she’d seemed...interested. Interested enough to put up with his desperate fumbling at trying to ask her out. Maybe she had an animal inside her, urging her on like he did.

  He shook his head. He shouldn’t be thinking about Jamie right now. He had to be there for Abby.

  Had he failed his sister, with this move? Sometimes he felt like he’d done nothing but fail Abby, over and over. He’d been hopelessly unprepared to suddenly be an acting single dad, and all the webpages in the world couldn’t advise him on how to help a five-year-old handle overwhelming grief, when all he really wanted to do was lie down with her and cry himself.

  They had muddled through with counselors and therapists, fought with each other, and spent long nights talking as frankly as they could. They had clashed over rules and bonded over movies and video games, argued about clothing, agreed wholeheartedly about food. He was always completely transparent about money and feelings and reasons, and Abby was more honest with him that he suspected most kids were with big brothers.

  At the end of the day, they were a team.

  And they never, ever went to bed angry.

  Devon hung her overloaded backpack by the door and went back to the kitchen.

  A few minutes later, he knocked on Abby’s door.

  “What?” she called defensively from inside, her voice muffled by the door and her distress.

  “I know you aren’t five anymore.”

  He knew that entirely too well. Five-year-old Abby could be distracted with candy and tickled. Twelve-year-old Abby was suddenly talking about her weight, and didn’t want to be touched.

  She was quiet, so Devon stumbled on. “But we have Pop-Tarts, and I already toasted one for you and they aren’t as good when they’re cold.”

  The door cracked open. “They taste like ass and cardboard when they’re cold.”

  Devon dropped the hot Pop-Tart into her extended hand and she juggled it and took a cautious bite. “You aren’t supposed to say ass,” he reminded her.

  “You’re—”

  “—not your dad,” Devon finished for her. “But I’m your big brother and it’ll make me look really bad if you’re swearing like a soldier at school when I go in for conferences.” He folded a Pop-Tart of his own into his mouth, wincing at the hot filling. “And I still gotta sign all your permission slips and crap.”

  Abby giggled. “You’re not supposed to say crap,” she retorted.

  “You’re not my mom,” Devon mocked her.

  Abby smiled around the last bite of her Pop-Tart. “Sorry,” she said, not specifying what she was sorry for.

  “It’s okay,” Devon said. He hung out at the door, not sure if he was going to get a hug and not wanting to ask for one, but he wasn’t surprised when she shrugged and said, “I’ve got homework.”

  “Let me know if you need help,” Devon offered.

  “It’s history,” Abby scoffed.

  “Nevermind,” Devon chuckled. “I’m putting a pizza in the oven. Hawaiian or pepperoni?”

  “Who lives in a pineapple, under the sea…”

  “Hawaiian it is.”

  But he frowned as he went out to the kitchen. Where might Jamie fit in their team? Should he tell Abby about her? How did he explain her?

  All he could see were roadblocks and confusion. He didn’t want to fail his sister. He didn’t want to fail his mate.

  4

  Jamie didn’t want to admit how nervous she was, sitting alone at the table in the bakery waiting for Devon.

  She didn’t get nervous. She was a creature of impulse and action, a doer. She took risks, lived on adrenaline.

  This was just a coffee date, she reminded herself, blowing on her hot latte. It wasn’t like she was moving to Alaska, or accepting a marriage proposal.

  She was good at handling people. She didn’t care what they thought. She was tough and independent.

  So why was her heart pounding in her throat?

  She knew when he came in, before she even saw him, somehow, and when she did see him, she was struck all over again how handsome he was, how gracefully he moved, how deliberate every gesture was.

  He looked around and found her at once, and Jamie remembered to raise her hand in greeting. He didn’t pause to order his own coffee, only covered the distance between them with a few long strides and dropped into the chair opposite from her.

  “My life is really complicated,” he blurted, as if he’d been practicing what to say all night. “I’m sorry for that, and I don’t want to pretend that I’m normal or like I can date like normal peopl
e, but I really like you and I’d like to make something work but I really have no idea how to do that.”

  “We could start with coffee,” Jamie suggested gently, pretending like she wasn’t feeling butterflies in her chest cavity. She ought to be terrified; this was way too intense for her tastes, far too fast. And she didn’t like complicated things.

  “Turner told me you’re taking care of your sister,” Jamie said, when he returned with a steaming cup of black coffee.

  “Yeah,” Devon said solemnly. “Our folks died when she was five. I was seventeen, just a couple of months from eighteen, and they let me have guardianship.”

  “How old is she now?”

  “Twelve.”

  Jamie did the math in her head. He’d be twenty-four, just like she was. But instead of being able to hare off in any direction she felt like she had at seventeen, he’d been raising a kid.

  “Twelve is a hard age,” she said, speaking from her own experience.

  “Yeah, especially…” Devon trailed off. “Yeah,” he ended lamely.

  Jamie felt a jolt of sympathy for him, essentially suddenly a single dad before he even got to be a kid himself.

  Sympathy turned to admiration when he looked up and said firmly, “I won’t say it hasn’t been hard, but it’s been worth it. She’s a great kid.” Unexpectedly, a smile quirked at the corners of his mouth. “You’d probably like her,” he said. “She’s got a habit of pulling pranks.”

  Jamie groaned. “Oh, lord, who’s been telling you stories?”

  “Andrea says you broke her record for suspensions in one year,” Devon said.

  Jamie realized that if he was devastating when he was being serious, or covering his embarrassment with scowls and glares, Devon with mischief dancing in his face could utterly undo her.

  “It’s Green Valley,” she protested. “I was only suspended three times and people would make you think I was a hardened war criminal. God, I hate this town. I could not escape it fast enough, and I cannot wait to leave again.”

  That seemed to draw Devon up, and there was an awkward moment of silence. He couldn’t be that serious already, could he? It confused Jamie that even the idea of it didn’t send her running for the door.

  “Were you born here?” Devon asked shyly.

  “No. My mom moved here when I was about two,” Jamie said, shrugging. “But I grew up here, spent every humid summer and crappy winter in this town.”

  “Are your folks still here?”

  “My mom’s dead,” Jamie said briefly. “Dad...is long gone.”

  Devon made a noise of sympathy and Jamie was tempted for a moment to tell him more. Then he gave her a look so warm and understanding that she felt like her feet had been swept out from underneath her. “It’s hard,” he said simply.

  Jamie hid her confusion by sipping her coffee.

  “So, what’s Alaska like?” Devon asked.

  “Big,” Jamie said seriously. “It’s this great, huge, beautiful land with strange, loud, interesting people.”

  “I thought that was Texas,” Devon observed.

  “Bigger,” Jamie said. “Arguably stranger. Far less peopled.”

  “What made you go?” Devon’s gold-green eyes were full of what might-have-been.

  “I hate Green Valley with a fiery passion?” Jamie scoffed. “And Alaska was really far away.”

  Devon chuckled, suspecting a joke.

  Jamie went on, “I wanted to see more of the world than just Green Valley, and it seemed like Alaska was full of opportunity. They were looking for effers—emergency fire fighters—and it sounded…fun.”

  “Was it dangerous?”

  “Less dangerous and more monotonous, honestly,” Jamie said. “I mean, there are some days when you really hope the wind doesn’t suddenly change directions, and you are reminded that nature is big and strong and uncaring. But there are also whole weeks that are just an awful lot of brushing and clearing and hard physical drudgery for really long days.” She’d made enough during the summer that she didn’t need to worry about working through the winter if she didn’t want to.

  “Will you…do it again?”

  “Next summer, sure. It’s a good gig. Hard on the body, though. It’s not a settle-down career.” Her instincts gave a shriek of warning. She wasn’t ready to talk settle-down with this captivating man. She might actually want to do it.

  “Speaking of, what gym do you go to?” she asked too quickly. “I’ve been meaning to get back into some kind of workout habit before I lose all my muscle tone.”

  Devon scowled and gazed into his long-empty coffee cup. “I don’t really…ah...work out.”

  “Well, you don’t get that kind of physique slinging plates of biscuits at Gran’s,” Jamie said, hoping she was hitting the right tone of tease and flattery. “What do you do, aside from waitressing?”

  “I work at Dean’s hardware shop on weekends,” Devon said, looking like he wasn’t at all sure about Jamie’s tease-flatter ratio. Dean not only owned the local hardware shop, he was also the local volunteer firefighter that Jamie had come in to replace at Turner’s request for the winter. Jamie wasn’t sure yet how she felt about his new girlfriend, Shelley. She was pretty city for Green Valley.

  But then, so was Devon.

  “And I have a freelance business doing web programming on the side.”

  “Oh, an entrepreneur,” Jamie said with admiration. “What’s it called?”

  Devon frowned. Jamie was beginning to realize he did that when he was feeling especially shy about something. “Broken Lynx,” he said gruffly. “Lynx, like the cat. It’s…kind of an inside joke, because I...fix broken links. It’s stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid,” Jamie said, and she wanted to pound who or whatever had made him feel insecure about something he obviously had invested a lot of himself into. “Web programmers can make really decent money.”

  Devon winced. “I’m better at the programming than at the making money,” he confessed.

  “No shame in that, either,” Jamie said fiercely. “Let me guess, you hate the invoicing part, and never feel comfortable charging what you’re worth.”

  “Am I that obvious?” Devon asked.

  Jamie opened her mouth, then closed it. She didn’t think it would be, to just anyone. But there was something about Devon that telegraphed deeper than just his facial expressions and his body language…like she was actually feeling what he did.

  That was absurd, of course.

  But she couldn’t shake the sensation that this was more than just coffee and attraction.

  Or the unsettled feeling in her stomach that it caused.

  5

  The more they talked, the more Devon knew that his lynx was right. It wasn’t just that Jamie was beautiful and he was in a dry spell of dating that he barely let himself acknowledge.

  She was everything he’d ever imagined in one incredibly sexy package. She was clever, confident, sweet, and imaginative. Knowing about Abby hadn’t frightened her off—he wasn’t sure if anything could scare this fiery, bold beauty.

  She is our mate, his lynx purred. Claim her.

  He gazed at her hands, strong around her long-empty coffee cup.

  Was she a shifter?

  “I hear you bought Tawny’s old house.”

  He was frowning again, Devon realized. He ought to be smiling, encouraging her, doing his part of this strange courtship dance. So far, he’d managed to insult her instead of flatter her, and point out every one of his own inadequacies. “Yes,” he said briefly. “It’s small, but close to the school and my jobs.”

  “I used to bike that neighborhood all the time,” Jamie said, gazing out the window in that direction. “You should show me what’s changed.”

  “We didn’t change much,” Devon said, not recognizing at first that he was scowling again. “The house was in good shape and there were just a few things that the inspector caught...oh.” She had given him an excuse to invite her to his house and was watchi
ng him now with one eyebrow raised, her blue eyes dancing.

  He swallowed. “Would you like to come see it? Compare it to what you remember?”

  “There you go,” she said with a sly grin as she stood.

  Devon pushed back his chair so hard that it scraped on the floor and several other customers turned toward the noise. He scrambled to his feet and snatched his coat off the back of his chair. “I’ll show you where it is. I mean, you already know.”

  To his delight and discomfort, Jamie put her coat on, pulled her hat over her head, and then came and threaded her arm into his. “You can show me anyway.”

  Devon spent the walk the few blocks to his new house—which would always be Tawny’s old house in the eyes of the locals—in a dizzy blur of anticipation and despair. He was going to ruin this. He was going to make a fool of himself. It was a minor miracle he hadn’t already. It was hard to think with her walking so close beside him, occasionally brushing a hip against his, her arm linked with his. He wished they weren’t wearing winter coats; it felt like too much between them.

  They didn’t talk much, just inane observations about the weather (cold), the town (small), and the buildings (old).

  Then, they were finally at the gate to the house and Devon was standing aside to let her go first.

  “Sorry, I haven’t shoveled yet,” Devon said. There were a few inches of slushy snow accumulated on the walkway up to the covered porch. It would probably melt off in a day or two.

  “Doesn’t bother me,” Jamie said.

  Devon shut the gate and his breath was fast and didn’t put enough oxygen in his lungs. Did his hands shake in anticipation as he unlocked the door, just a little?

  “All we really had done was some roof work, but the decor is probably—” Devon started.

  Then Jamie was up on her tiptoes, wrapping her arms up around his neck, and he was kicking the door shut hard behind them as he bent down to kiss her.