Broken Lynx (Green Valley Shifters Book 5) Read online

  Fire flowed through him, head to toe, blooming from his mouth where he hungrily feasted on Jamie’s eager lips. The coats really were too much then, and he struggled to keep himself from simply ripping them off, fumbling with the zipper at Jamie’s throat with one hand.

  “Excuse me?!”

  He and Jamie froze, mouths and arms tangled, and after a moment, backed apart and faced the source of the interruption.

  “Abby,” Devon growled. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

  Her voice was disgusted and defensive, a tone that Devon was getting more and more familiar with as she got older. “It was an early out, end of the quarter or something.”

  “This…is Jamie,” he introduced awkwardly. “Jamie, this is my sister, Abby.”

  6

  Abby looked very twelve, Jamie thought. Not quite ‘young woman,’ but definitely not ‘little kid’ anymore. She had a round, suspicious face with the same golden-green eyes that Devon had, and she was tall and lanky, with knobby elbows sticking out from her t-shirt. She had Devon’s golden-brown mop of hair and his cultivated frown. Jamie would have picked her out as Devon’s sister from a lineup in a red-hot minute.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Abby,” Jamie said as casually as she could around her burning lips.

  Abby mumbled something that had the cadence of a polite reply. “I’ll be in my room,” she added, sounding sulky, and then she was dashing out of the room, leaving an awkward tableau behind.

  Jamie shoved her hands into her pockets. “I...should go,” she said reluctantly. Their obvious plans had very definitely been shelved.

  Poor Devon looked like he was being given a terrible choice. He raked a hand through his hair, face like a thunderstorm. “I warned you, my life is complicated. What if we have dinner? Tomorrow?”

  “At Gran’s?” Jamie suggested, half-dreading the audience.

  Devon shook his head, obviously considering the same. “How about here? I can cook.”

  “He can’t cook!” Abby’s voice came from the obviously very poorly sound-proofed bedroom in the back.

  “Then you can cook!” Devon retorted over his shoulder.

  “Fine!”

  Jamie smothered her laughter. “Um, that would be great.”

  Devon walked her out onto the porch. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I should have known. I would have…”

  Jamie stopped his apology by dragging him down for a swift kiss, wishing with her whole body that the day had gone differently. She could see the desperation in his eyes, and feel a reflection of the same yearning she felt. He was so damn cute and earnest and she was more smitten with him than anyone she’d ever met in her life.

  She thought that she’d had some epic crushes in her life, but they all paled to the way she felt faced with this man.

  “Later,” she promised, walking backwards down the stairs.

  Hopefully not much later.

  “Wait!” Devon called, and Jamie was alarmed by the way her heart leapt in her chest. This was ridiculous and utterly unlike her.

  He ducked back into the house and emerged a moment later, before Jamie could decide whether or not to follow him. “Your phone,” he explained, taking all the steps at once with no trouble to hold it gingerly out to her. “I had it in my coat pocket the whole time. I replaced the battery, and it works fine now. I...charged it for you.”

  Jamie took it, thinking that it wasn’t the only thing he had charged. “Thanks,” she said as casually as she could manage.

  “I probably should have opened with that,” Devon said, looking reluctant to leave her and go back into the house.

  “Instead of ‘My life is complicated?’” The phone felt warm in her hands and she was thinking too hard about how his hands must be much more nimble than their size implied to fix such a small item. “How much do I owe you?”

  Devon blushed. “Nothing.”

  “You really are terrible at invoicing, aren’t you,” Jamie teased him.

  Devon’s slow, sheepish smile was like a crack through to sunlight. “What if you get coffee at Shaun’s next time we go?”

  “I shall also ply you with sweet pastries,” Jamie promised, and she realized that she was smiling foolishly back at him. She didn’t know how to make her face stop being stupid. “Anyway, I gotta go.”

  “Yeah.”

  They stood there another beat. Jamie finally said, “Bye,” and turned on her heel to go.

  She spent the entire block listening for his voice to call her back again, but he didn’t.

  The walk back to the fire station was lonely and cold compared to the walk to Tawny’s house with Devon close beside her. Jamie pulled the collar of her coat up and jammed her hat down as far over her ears as it would go.

  She wasn’t sure if she was glad or sorry to find that the station wasn’t empty.

  Turner was sitting at the little table by the coffee maker, staring into his soul at the bottom of an empty cup. He looked up in surprise, clearly not expecting her.

  “Want something in that?” Jamie asked, stomping her boots off at the mat.

  “Too late for coffee,” Turner said mournfully.

  “What’s it going to do, keep you up all night?” Jamie scoffed. “It’s like three in the afternoon.”

  “Some day, you’ll be old and young people will mock you,” Turner told her sourly.

  Jamie poured herself a cup of coffee; she could sleep through just about anything and her tolerance for caffeine was quite high at any hour.

  “How was your date?” Turner asked.

  “You’re not my dad.”

  Jamie meant it flippantly, but it hung in the air between them with unexpected tension. She swallowed, not sure how to take it back. Turner didn’t seem hurt, but there was a shuttered look over his face, one that always made Jamie realize what a jerk she could be without trying.

  She did what she always did in these cases: she ran.

  “I’m going to the grocery store for chips. Are we stocked on coffee?”

  It was as close to a peace offering as he’d get, and Turner knew it.

  “We’re good,” Turner said.

  But Jamie had to wonder, as she turned and left.

  7

  “So, you’re really into this girl,” Abby guessed.

  It didn’t take any particular genius to come to that conclusion.

  Devon was buttoning and unbuttoning the top button on his shirt, trying to balance between looking not-too-formal and not-too-casual. Maybe a collared shirt was too much altogether. It was the third shirt he’d tried on.

  “At least this way, if dinner is a disaster, you can blame it on me,” Abby pointed out.

  “I wouldn’t blame you.” Devon stopped playing with the buttons and turned to face Abby with a scowl. “I would never blame you.”

  “Just saying you could,” Abby said. “Unbuttoned is better.”

  Devon glared at his reflection and unbuttoned it.

  “Very smooth, now all you need is some gold chains and some more chest hair…”

  “Shouldn’t you be burning something?” Devon asked in exasperation.

  “It’s in the oven. Salad is made and it only takes a few minutes to steam asparagus.”

  “Thanks for doing this,” Devon said seriously.

  “No prob,” Abby said. They smiled fondly at each other for a moment, then she looked completely embarrassed and vanished back to the kitchen.

  Just as Devon thought that he could not possibly get more nervous, the doorbell rang. He still hadn’t decided what to do with his buttons, but it was too late now.

  Abby got to the door first, by virtue of both being closer and pelting to beat him there.

  “Hi,” Abby said, and Devon was frozen speechless behind his sister.

  He’d been sure that he had imagined how beautiful and perfect Jamie was. Surely it had been a false memory, exaggerated by his underlying feelings for her and his lynx’s obsession.

  Instead, she was e
ven more gorgeous, with her freckled, tanned skin and her upturned nose. Her lips were redder than he remembered, and when she licked them, Devon had to fight down an urge to growl possessively.

  “Hey,” Jamie said casually, and when Abby stood aside, she swept into the room like she owned it.

  “I’m making chicken,” Abby said. “Like my brother.”

  It took Devon a moment to get the joke, but Jamie looked at him and laughed, and if he’d thought she was beautiful a moment ago, it was nothing compared to her face crinkled in joyous mirth.

  “Smells great,” Jamie said sincerely. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Can I take your coat?” Devon finally remembered to ask.

  Jamie wriggled out of her blue and orange jacket, stuffing her hat and her mittens into a sleeve. “Thanks,” she said, almost shyly.

  Devon took it, stared at it for a few moments, then realized that he should hang it up. He hadn’t planned on that, and all of the hangers in the closet were being used and the whole thing was stuffed tight. He managed to double up one of Abby’s jackets with a raincoat and squeezed Jamie’s coat into the space.

  So smooth, he told himself sarcastically. All I need is gold chains and more chest hair.

  While he was struggling with the contents of the closet, Abby more gracefully showed Jamie to the dining room.

  “It looks a lot different than when Tawny lived here,” she observed. “I’m used to seeing a piano over there.”

  “Do you play?” Devon blurted.

  “Nope,” Jamie said, shaking her head. “I took about a month of lessons before my mom realized it was just throwing money away.”

  The timer in the kitchen went off and Abby disappeared.

  “This is nice,” Jamie said neutrally, sitting in the chair that Devon indicated for her. “Festive.”

  He had agonized over adding candles when he set the table, finally decided that they were appropriate for a romantic dinner, but not a dinner chaperoned by his twelve-year-old sister. Instead, he’d found a Halloween centerpiece with a black wreath sporting sparkly bats.

  “Well, it’s not that far past Halloween,” Devon said. He realized he was scowling in embarrassment and forced himself to smile.

  “It looks great,” Jamie said kindly.

  “Do you need any help, Abby?” Devon called. Please? he didn’t add.

  “I’ve got it!” Abby sang back, more annoying than ever.

  “She seems like a great kid,” Jamie said, fiddling with her spoon.

  “She’s great,” Devon echoed.

  “I really am,” Abby said, appearing with a platter of roasted chicken and potatoes.

  She put them down on the hot pads waiting on the table and slipped into her chair. “Dig in!”

  Dinner went much better than Devon had any right to expect. Abby kept her snarky observations to a minimum, and Jamie complimented her food sincerely. “When I was twelve, I was barely capable of making a box of mac and cheese,” she confessed.

  “Devon is an awful cook,” Abby said loftily. “I learned to cook a few years ago out of self-defense.”

  “I’m not that bad,” Devon protested. “Everything I served you was perfectly edible.”

  “Edible in the won’t actually kill you meaning,” Abby scoffed. “Not in the starving isn’t worse than this way.”

  Jamie laughed. “After a summer of MREs and camp rations, I bet I’d have eaten it,” she said.

  That led to Abby asking about firefighting, and Alaska. Jamie told colorful stories, stopping some of them halfway through as she realized that the end wasn’t appropriate. Devon caught himself staring at her repeatedly, watching her lips as she spoke, or licked food from her fork, and several times he dragged his gaze back to find Abby watching him suspiciously.

  He focused on his food, and on not saying anything too stupid.

  “I didn’t make dessert,” Abby apologized as they scraped their plates bare. “We have some cookies, I think.”

  Devon collected the plates and brought back a package of chocolate chip cookies to split.

  “I should have picked up something from Shaun’s,” he said regretfully.

  “This is just fine,” Jamie assured him, and she smiled up at him like the sun.

  If it hadn’t been for Abby’s presence, he would have tried kissing her again on the spot.

  “Can I help with dishes?” Jamie asked, after she had crunched through a few of the commercial disks.

  “I can…” Abby started.

  “Cooks don’t clean,” Devon said firmly.

  Abby looked pleased and Devon wondered if she’d neatly manipulated him again. He gathered up a few of the glasses and Jamie followed him into the kitchen with a pile of plates.

  “I have homework to do!” Abby called after them. “In my room! With my music on! For a long time!”

  “It’s Friday night,” Devon pointed out suspiciously, pausing in the door while Jamie went to fill the sink with soapy water.

  “In which case, no one needs to go to bed early, and if you were to...I don’t know...walk her home, no one would care when you came back,” Abby said, her eyes huge and innocent.

  “Abby,” Devon groaned.

  Abby gave him a pair of cheerful thumbs ups and disappeared into her room.

  Devon turned back to find Jamie hastily looking back to the sink.

  “I warned you,” he told her. “My life is complicated.”

  “You’re a good brother,” Jamie said warmly.

  A brother was not at all what Devon wanted to be at that moment, and he went to get the dish towel from the refrigerator door and start drying.

  8

  Jamie hadn’t been sure what to expect from a dinner with Devon and his kid sister in Tawny’s old house, but the whole thing went much more smoothly than she feared. Abby was sharp as a tack and had no illusions about the fact that she was camping in on what would otherwise have been a date.

  Jamie had caught her appraising look several times, and found herself hoping that she’d made a favorable impression.

  It was the first time she’d ever worried about what a twelve-year-old thought of her...or at least the first time since she was twelve.

  When Abby vanished back to her room, a tense silence remained.

  Jamie and Devon spoke inanely about the dishes to fill it, and about Tawny’s house and how the kitchen had been different.

  “They replaced the fridge. We had the option between paying more and getting a dishwasher, or accepting it the way it was,” Devon said apologetically. “We were on a budget.”

  “The fire station barely has a kitchen sink,” Jamie said, washing the last plate. “Having a dish rack is an unspeakable luxury. To say nothing of a full sized fridge. Is there anything else?”

  “That’s all the dishes,” Devon said. He was looking all shy and geeky again, and if Jamie didn’t already know how paper-thin the walls in this house were, she would have kissed him right then. Maybe he’d lift her up on the counter and… She let the stopper out and watched the water swirl down.

  “I...I could walk you home,” Devon offered softly.

  “Yeah,” Jamie said, and he literally threw his dish towel over the remaining dishes in the drainer.

  “I’ll get your coat.”

  He struggled with the tiny closet and emerged with her coat and his own. They both put them on in silence and Devon called, “We’re going!”

  “Don’t hurry back!” Abby shouted back.

  The evening outside was dark and bitterly cold, and Jamie zipped her coat up further and pulled her hood up over her hat.

  Devon didn’t seem bothered by the cold wind at all, but he didn’t object in the slightest when she took his gloved hand and pressed up against him.

  They walked close together, finding a synchronized step after only a few tries.

  “That probably wasn’t much of a dinner date,” he said regretfully. “She’s getting old enough that I could leave her alone long eno
ugh that we could grab a meal somewhere fancy in Madison or in Hamilton. She’d never forgive me if I tried to get her a sitter at this age, but she’s...pretty responsible.”

  “It was a great dinner.”

  “I told you, my life is complicated.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  When they got to the fire station, Jamie drew him to a stop outside the door. “Devon,” she said seriously. “I’m not sure what you’re expecting…”

  “I want...I…” He swallowed.

  “I’m planning to go back to Alaska in the summer,” Jamie said flatly. “I don’t want to lead you on, or make you promises I don’t intend to keep. You’ve got a sister and a house you just bought. I don’t know how all those things go together long term.”

  “I don’t either,” Devon said intensely. “But I know that if I don’t try to make something work, I will never forgive myself. I’ve never met anyone like you, and I know there’s something here. Something real. Something...amazing.”

  Jamie stared at him. In any other guy in the world, she would have guessed that he was making wild statements to get her to invite him up.

  “If you don’t want to…” Devon said with effort. He was still holding her gloved hand in his and she could feel him flexing it, like he was making himself not clutch at her.

  “I’m...willing to see where this goes,” Jamie said slowly. “Take it slow, see what happens.”

  “Can I kiss you?” He asked it desperately, like he was afraid of her answer.

  Jamie answered by stepping closer and lifting her face to his.

  She had forgotten how delicious his kiss was. No, she hadn’t forgotten, the pale memory just didn’t compare to the actual touch of his mouth.

  He kissed her deeply, pulling her close up against him, and Jamie felt her resolve slip. No one had ever set her on fire like this with a kiss. No one had ever kissed her like this, like he was losing himself in her. It was as if all the shyness and geekiness was burning away, leaving raw need and passion in its place. He was growling against her lips, kissing and biting and dragging his teeth along her jaw as he held her closer and kissed harder.