Chapter Seventeen
Blake
Blake waved at Krista to get her attention. Talking to her mother had clearly stressed her out because the look on her face was stony and her eyes were brimming with hurt.
“Yes?” she bit the word out when he reached her. It was okay. Her mother had just told Krista she ‘forgave’ her for things not working out with the man who’d tried to force himself on her own daughter. His mate had the right to be a little surly.
“Stef’s pulling the team together. I need the directions to the winter cabin,” he said, glancing around. Nobody was standing close enough to overhear, although they were the object of a lot of curious stares.
She rattled them off in a monotone and then turned to go.
He grabbed her by the arm. “Wait! I have something I wanted to tell you.” He quickly repeated the directions to Stef, who would now be heading up to the winter cabin with a couple of dozen shifters as back-up.
Then he turned his full attention to Krista.
“Your mother is a liar,” he blurted out. She just looked at him in mild puzzlement. Great. He was doing it again, the thing where he had something really important to say so his brain froze, and his tongue spit out sentences full of stupid.
“What I mean is… I know that you’re still a little iffy on this fated mate thing, and I want you to believe it. Because I believe it now, from the top of my head to the bottom of my paw-pads. You were questioning the whole concept of fated mates because of your mother and because your dad ran out on you. But she’s a liar. First, she said your dad was her fated mate, and then she said it was that pig who I would like to bring back to life so I could kill him again. I don’t think your mother ever had a fated mate. So your dad running out on you—that doesn’t mean that fated mates aren’t real. Because he never was that. Fated.”
He looked at her pleadingly. “Just stop me any time, will you? You know how I get.”
“Do I?” She arched an eyebrow. Her face was a strange, expressionless blank. “What do I really know?”
What had just happened? Maybe he’d overstepped his bounds in saying what he really thought of Maybelline.
“If it upsets you to hear your mother called a liar, I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “No, that does not upset me, anymore than hearing that poison ivy leaves a rash or bee stings hurt. It’s an unpleasant fact of life, but why get upset about facts?”
What the hell was going on here? He could sense a coldness flowing from her, and whereas before she was wide open to him in a way that he’d never felt before, now, somehow, she was closed and hard. And it hurt.
“I need to talk to Hattie for a minute. Alone.” She hurried away from him, leaving him standing there, baffled. He went over to the drink table and grabbed a beer, downing it in three mighty gulps. He tossed it aside and grabbed another one, drinking more slowly.
People were staring at him. That creep Bo Durian, for one. And the bears. Their eyes slid back and forth between him and Krista, and he didn’t like it one bit.
After a couple of minutes, he made his way back to Krista, who was standing with Hattie, Pearl, Marigold, and Ethel, who seemed to have forgotten their fight and were now all gabbing like best friends.
Krista flashed him a huge bright smile.
“Blake. Do you love me?”
“Of course,” he blurted out the words before he even had time to think. And he didn’t need to think. She was his mate. He loved her, even though they’d just met. That didn’t matter. Fate was fate. They had their entire lives to get to know each other.
“Well, if you really love me, you’ll entertain Hattie and the girls here until I get back from the restroom. Might be a while. All of my make-up’s melted off my face and I have to put it back on again.”
“Ok.” He knew enough about women to understand that he had said or done something to piss her off, and this was his punishment. He flashed her a dazzling smile, and she returned a smile that was more plastic than a Hollywood starlet’s tits and hurried off.
Hattie and all the women pounced on him, peppering him with questions. Who were his people? Where had he grown up? Where would he and Krista live? When would they start having cubs or kits? Were they expecting any yet? What exactly did he do for a living again?
Hattie was drinking cup after cup of… something and getting drunker and drunker.
He just nodded and wished that Krista would come back. He felt as if she were getting farther and farther away from him. As if she wasn’t even here any more, as if she was miles away. But he kept smiling and nodding and saying “Uh-uh” to the increasingly inebriated Hattie, who had taken over the whole conversation.
“An’ another thing,” she was saying. “Wolf whistles. S’not right, hooting and whistling and looking at young ladies’ bottoms. Not when you’re committed to my great-great…” she squinted in thought “great-gran’-neesh. She’s a very shpecial person.”
Blake wondered how long the bruise would last as she poked him again. “It’s not a wolf thing,” he insisted tiredly. “I think it’s construction workers, actually. And even if it was, I have no interest in other ladies’… bottoms. Only Krista’s.”
“A-ha!” Hattie exclaimed triumphantly. “I knew it! You’re only in it for her bottom!”
