“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” she whispered as she came to stand in front of a cream-colored singlewide with a beige porch and green shutters around the single window behind the rocking chair.
The house numbers were dilapidated and lopsided, barely hanging on by their nails, but easily readable.
Her eyes prickled with tears of disbelief.
1010.
Just like the trailer that had been passed around Damon’s Mountains when she was a kid. The magic one that gave sanctuary to so many.
Who were these people?
As if conjured by her thoughts, one of the Crew appeared out of the woods like a ghost. Like a loud, cussing, red-faced, furious, tall-as-an-oak, hot-as-hellfire ghost. He was all chiseled jawline dusted with the perfect amount of dirty blond whiskers, a straight nose that flared slightly with what was probably rage, and an intensity in his pretty bi-colored gold and green eyes. She was pretty sure her mouth plopped open and her ovaries went off like roman candles.
And then that sexy man yanked off a yellow hard hat to expose sandy brown hair cut short. That hat got tossed into the weeds, and in his other glove-cladded hand, he carried a humongous red log-splitting blade like the damn thing weighed nothing. His jaw was clenched, which made it looked as sharp as a runway model’s, and he was wearing an open blue flannel shirt over a thin white hotboy tank top. His jeans were covered in dirt and oil spots and had rips at the knees, and his work boots had seen some serious trauma. His bright eyes were focused solely on 1010, and when he snarled up his lip, he looked more beast than human. Now that was a man. They didn’t make them like him in the city.
“Hey, asshole!” the man roared at 1010. “You’re fired!”
And then the blazing-eyed shifter threw the gigantic blade into the side of the trailer like he was throwing shotput.
The resulting damage to 1010 ripped right out of her any charitable thought she’d had about the man. She hated him before the blade even made contact with the thin siding of the trailer. Remi jumped out of the way as the deafening crash sounded, but the fury over what the man had just done to the trailer…THE trailer…pounded through her veins. Pain sizzled through every cell in her body in an instant, and she gritted her teeth as her grizzly shredded its way out of her.
She hit the ground on all fours and was off like lightning to teach that idiot a painful lesson on taking care of important possessions. And 1010 was hella important.
Someone was yelling from the hole in the side of the trailer, distracting the villain, and just as she drew up to him, murder in her heart, the angry man turned.
She saw his lips form the words, whuuut theee fuuuuuck? and then she was on him.
She just wanted to kill him a little. Just a little death to avenge 1010. Nothing major.
But the man spun out of the way and Changed in a moment. An enormous lion, nearly the size of her bear, came out of him ready to fight, and they locked onto each other with zero hesitation. A brawler. Good. She would’ve felt bad killing a pussy cat. But a big old dominant lion? Now, that would be way more fun to bleed.
She could hear the yelling from the trailer getting closer, and just as she clamped her teeth on the lion’s shoulder, there was a sharp sting on her backside. And another and another. Her rage turned infinite as she released the predator and spun on the new threat.
Some idiot with a paintball gun was shooting her from the hole in the wall of 1010! He gave a warrior cry and did that double-tap move on the trigger and just peppered her with paint and pain.
Well now she was going to have to kill everything! The lion swatted her back legs so hard she fell to her butt and took one ill-aimed pink pellet of paint right in the bear-tit, and now everyone was going to die. Except when she spun to end that stupid lion’s life, another equally massive, black-maned lion was brawling with him. She roared because this was her kill and the other lion was ruining everything. But they didn’t listen. Then the paintball sniper was laughing like a lunatic and shooting at his own Crew, pink paint splattering against their tawny fur, and this entire Crew was a friggin’ disaster. They were fighting each other! No one was even paying attention to her anymore—the big pissed-off grizzly bear.
The black-maned lion swatted the other back a few feet and Changed into a very tall, very muscular, very naked, very tattooed, very scarred-up giant of a man with bright gold eyes and a black mohawk. “Change back!” he yelled, veins popping in his neck.
The first lion roared, but it turned into a man’s yell as his body broke back into the sandy-haired man. Beside her, the other idiot tripped and fell out of the hole in the trailer. When his paintball gun went off, he shot Mohawk in the left ass cheek. He clenched hard and turned a terrifying glare onto the clutz lying on his belly in the weeds, his bare feet propped up on the trailer.
“Whoops,” the Village Idiot muttered. “Accident.”
Remi Changed back, but no one even glanced over at her.
“Seriously?” the sandy-haired man asked Mohawk, standing to his full height. His shoulder was badly clawed, but she couldn’t remember if she’d done that or if it was from the lion fight. Red was streaming down his arm. “A grizzly shifter attacks me, and your response is to fight me, too? Some Alpha you are.” His words were low and simmered with hot rage. He stood there, staring down his own Alpha, his fists clenched at the sides of his powerful thighs.
Big dick. Remi swallowed hard and blinked but it wasn’t a mirage. That man was hung like a damn mammoth. Look away. Look anywhere but at his dick. Don’t get caught. Look at Mohawk.
She ripped her attention away from the sandy-haired man’s nethers just in time to see the Alpha shrugged up one shoulder like he didn’t give a rip about the call-out. He bent at the waist and picked up a piece of tattered jeans. “That was my favorite pair.” His attention arched to her. “Why are you here?”
“My name is—”
“I know who you are. Why are you here?” he repeated.
“I invited her,” the sniper muttered from where he was still lying in the grass in his blue plaid boxer shorts, fiddling with his paintball gun.
“What?” the two brawler lions demanded in unison.
“I put out an ad for someone to cook us food because I’m tired of eating chili dogs for every meal, and I thought it would be more fun to have someone else here than hang around with you two dipshits all day. We’re supposed to give her a trailer and pay her thirty thousand a year, too. So, you know, get your checkbook out, Alpha.” The way he said the last word was like a cuss word.
All three of these men hated each other.
Seriously…what had Juno and Dad gotten her into?
“I think I should leave,” she gritted out, good and pissed they’d wasted her time and money in travel expenses. “Y’all are a disaster.”
The sandy-haired man’s gaze landed on her at last, and something changed in his face and demeanor. His eyes were still too bright, but the rigid lines of his face softened for just a moment before he put on a mask of aloofness. “Who are you?” he asked, lifting his chin slightly.
“I’m out of here.” She turned and, bare-ass naked, limped past her shredded clothes back toward the trail that would lead her out of there. A little piece of her was irritated these boys were getting a good look at her pink painted ass, but more than anything, she was just disappointed. Not just in the loss of this opportunity, but the destruction of 1010, the horrible timing in having to see that happen, this mess of a Crew, this not being her escape after all. She was disappointed in everyone and everything, her life in general, all of it. This was the last blow she wanted to deal with. It was all too much, too overwhelming. A mountain had rested on her shoulders to begin with and this added rock was one rock too heavy.
The back of her leg hurt so bad, she almost couldn’t put weight on it. Stupid lion had got one good slap on her, claws extended. She hoped that injury on his shoulder was her doing.
“Don’t leave!” the paintballer yelled. “That was the most fun I’ve had in weeks! You totally kicked Kamp’s ass!”
She rolled her eyes and stepped around a neon green lawn chair someone had left toppled in the yard. Nah, on second thought? She turned and punted it. In her fury, she’d used her bad leg and it hurt like a mother-lover. The chair broke into splinters against a tree, and that, at least, was four percent satisfying.