Brilliant Heart (Dark Wing Series Book 2) Page 7

  “Please, Doc, let’s get you some food.”

  “Okay.” When did she become so agreeable? She needed to write this down.

  10

  Go

  Tad knew she wanted to both stay and go. The same emotions echoed in his eyes. He tried to cover his internal conflict with a sideways smirk. The one that got him out of trouble with lesser women. He may not have been the alpha of the pack, but he had alpha tendencies, and wearing his insecurity wasn’t something he planned on doing.

  Somewhere in the back of his head, a voice, his suppressed wolf, nagged to stop being an ass and let her notice the real Tad. That voice may have been accompanied by a low growl and the word mate. He squashed the voice down and leaned closer into her. He hovered so that he almost touched her. Let her make her choice.

  She leaned into him just enough that his lips contacted her ear. Her breath hitched. He wrapped his hand around her waist, the contact with her making him instantly hard. Tad nibbled at her ear before kissing down her neck. She moaned. He wanted to devour her over and over. But it would never work. A woman like her would want commitment more than sex. Love, commitment he couldn’t do.

  “Wait.” She pushed off of him, her body rigid. “I can’t do that . . . this. Whatever this is.”

  Tad took a step back, his hands up. “I’m sorry. I had no intention of pushing you. Let’s go to dinner.”

  “I . . .” Elizabeth stammered

  “In a public place. You choose. We need to talk and not here. There’re fewer distractions.” Duncan said something to the night nurse. Tad’s focus waned.

  “I . . .” She stopped.

  He saw her thinking again, her brain working faster than her mouth. He waited.

  “The officers’ dining room. It’s quieter.”

  “Lead the way.” He held out his hand. Why? He wasn’t sure. He had never had the urge to hold a woman’s hand before. Maybe if they were walking down a busy road, crossing a street, sure. But not walking down a hall in a ship. And they were in her office.

  It surprised him even more that she took it, her hand fitting in his. Not too small and not too big. Her hand was the golden bar of hands. Had he lost his mind? He had to remind himself that he didn’t want a mate. Never had. That he would have to let her down easy. He didn’t do love, wasn’t capable, as several women had told him as they’d thrown objects at his head. A basketball—Kaylee from the cheer squad in high school. A book—Stacy in undergrad. And his personal favorite, Brook—a full pot of cold pasta with marinara sauce. Cold because he was two hours late. Granted, there’d been an emergency at work, but she didn’t care. After Brook, he began his policy of . . . of women too young and not interesting enough to keep around.

  He could let Elizabeth down easy. Is that what he was doing? If he was letting her down, why had he rubbed her feet for twenty minutes? Twenty minutes of his wolf panting inside him. With a chant of mate, mate. Why had he sent healing to her feet? If he was walking away from her, he needed to start now. She was not part of his too-young-and-not-interesting policy. Passion for her patients radiated from her. The way she’d eased the expectant parents. Her compassion for her students.

  His wolf growled at him. If he stepped back, he understood it. But damn, he didn’t need to let his irrational thoughts run haywire. He had work to do, but the doctor fit every box he wanted, if he wanted, which he didn’t, he told himself again. Her hand in his sent shocks to his groin.

  He glanced at her; lust and confusion stormed in her eyes and a lot of overthinking, no doubt mirrored in his own eyes. The same conflict filled her up, but without the practiced veneer. No, she shielded herself with her patients, but in her expressions with him she hid little. He had listened to her treat her patients tonight. Her passion for her work shined. So different from the few girls he had dated in New York, when he was in school. They held their polish like a shield. Why had he spent any time with them? He only played at understanding them. They wanted his body, definitely. His money, most certainly. To control him, possibly? What did he want of them?

  Things were different now. His wolf pushed at him. Mate, mate, mate. Not that he wanted them to love him. Love—where had that word come from? He had no concept of it.

  The doctor pushed open the door to her office. Nurse Smithfield smiled at her. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I’ll be back later.”

  “Tomorrow. You’re not on call tonight. If anything big happens, I’ll have Katie call you.”

  “Okay, are you sure she can handle it?”

  “Katie’s been on board for a month now—she’s got this. Plus, the match fighters will be out of here soon.” Anna turned to Tad. “Your cousin’s out soon too. He’s got a bunch of things to sign and he can go.” She waved a stack of papers in her hand.

  “You want to talk to your cousin before we go?” Elizabeth looked up at him.

  “No,” he said with a little too much enthusiasm.

  “Well, okay.” She led him through the empty waiting room and down a short hallway away from the stairs that he and Aurora came down earlier. She scanned them through a door. He expected the hallway to crowd in and get smaller. Everything he read about cruise ships was that the crew areas were extra small. But the hallway didn’t get smaller. The floor was no longer marble, but vinyl tile in a purple and black pattern. The lights were industrial instead of baroque. He waited for his normal claustrophobia to set in. When it didn’t, he shrugged it off.

  They walked by doors at regular intervals, each with labels you would see in an office building—Human Resources, Receiving—and some you wouldn’t—Costume and Violet. Coming from that room, a woman screamed. He stopped. He looked at Elizabeth and pointed to the door. “Should we help?”

  “Oh, I didn’t hear it until you pointed it out. Guess I’m used to it. No. That’s Violet’s office.”

  The screeching increased. “Shouldn’t we see if she’s okay?”

  “She’s okay.” Elizabeth started walking again.

  “She doesn’t sound okay.”

  “Trust me. It’s normal. Quiet, even.” Elizabeth looked at the door.

  “You’re sure?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “Yup. It’s been going on for months.”

  “Okay.” He moved slowly from the door. The screeching changed pitch.

  The doors continued at greater intervals towards the end of the corridor. A label proclaimed it to be the officers’ mess. She held the door open for him. He motioned for her to enter, but she didn’t budge, so he reluctantly went in.

  Brass globe fixtures hung over brown laminate tables. The smell of food teased his stomach. Elizabeth made her way through the tables, rotating around one and sitting in what was definitely her spot. One large porthole shone, the moonlight bouncing on the waves. It was cheery while still being utilitarian.

  He smelled food, but there were no menus, no waiters, and only one man in the room’s corner who nodded to Elizabeth but kept his focus on the book and plate in front of him. Elizabeth motioned to the seat next to her. She took off her white coat, draping it across the back of her chair. Her arms were bare in a short-sleeve scrub shirt. She pulled out her phone and sat down.

  “Here’s the menu for the day. What would you like?” She showed him the phone.

  He sat next to her and had to scoot his chair closer to read the menu. The phone was clear from where he sat, but years of dating human women trained him to act more like them. His shoulder bumped hers and, instead of pulling it back towards himself, he kept the contact. She shook a little. She put the phone on the table, but she didn’t move away either. They read the menu silently.

  “The mauhi mauhi is amazing.” She glanced up at him and her heat hit him before she pivoted back. She squirmed, severing their contact. “Do you want beef? I don’t eat red meat often, but I’m sure it’s tasty. Did you already eat?” She was rambling. She pushed her shoulders back and clenched her jaw.

  He leaned in, their arms firmly
touching now.

  “I’ll eat. I’m a fan of second dinners—my mother calls me a hobbit—and I didn’t eat much at dinner service.” He watched as she tapped her order into the ship app. She picked several appetizers, a sandwich, and fish for dinner.

  “It’s not all for me—I always bring something back for Anna. She yells at me to leave work, but she works twice as hard as I do.”

  “Not possible.”

  Elizabeth jerked at him. “You know nothing about me, Mr. Larsen.”

  “It’s Tad. And I spent a little time with my bonehead cousin and Aurora before hanging out grading papers.” He looked at his Omega wristwatch. “It’s almost 1:00 a.m. . . . and you don’t seem to be acting like it’s odd to be up this late. Doc, I’m a shifter and even I’m a little tired.”

  “I don’t mean to keep you up. You’re the one who suggested that we talk. Do you want anything to eat? It’s a simple question, Tad.”

  Hearing her say his name as a curse made him cringe. He expected her to push away from the table and storm out—that’s what most of the women he had dated in the city would do. But she didn’t move. Rather, she challenged him face on.

  “Here, pick what you would like.” She pushed her phone towards him with a straight arm. She didn't look at him, rather at something over the top of his head.

  Tad quickly scanned through the menu, choosing a steak medium rare and a large kale salad. He held out her phone in front of her in his open hand, and she scooped it up, making contact. Sparks flew over his skin.

  Elizabeth finished sending the order off and then sat back in her chair, her shoulders slumped and her eyes avoiding his. “So, you want to talk, let's talk. We've got a few minutes before our food gets here. It’ll come fast.”

  He wasn't sure what had changed her attitude. One minute she was warm and receptive and the next all business. But then he was doing the same thing to her.

  “Let's start over. This thing seems to be as hard on you as it is on me,” he said.

  “Thing?”

  He blinked. She had to understand. “Yes, mates. I believe we’re mates.” Stones gathered in his throat.

  “Mates,” she repeated, nodding, still not looking at him directly.

  “After my late twenties, I believed I would never find my mate. Seemed that ship had sailed—pun intended. You study shifters—have you been looking for your fated mate?”

  Elizabeth groaned. “A mate wasn't why I started researching shifters. I'm not a groupie that hangs around shifters for some pheromonal high.”

  “Pheromonal high?”

  “Yes, my mentor’s research was on the evidence that shifters give off a certain pheromone that even attracts humans to them. Some say that there are more shifters in Hollywood and in politics. In a popularity contest, it seems shifters win all the time. I mean, look at you: you're tall, muscular, and good-looking.” As she listed the things, her face got pinker and pinker.

  “Did you study with him for a long time?”

  “As long as I could. She was brilliant. She died while I was doing my residency. I would have worked for her lab, but with her gone, the study was closed down.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. It’s hard to lose a mentor.”

  “Thank you.” Her hazel eyes met his. In this dim light, they were greener.

  “Let’s circle back to the you think I'm good-looking comment.”

  "I'm not answering that. You have eyes. You know you're good-looking.” Elizabeth squirmed in her seat.

  “So . . . you think shifters have an unfair advantage in the universe and I’m handsome?”

  “You’re impossible. I’ve already answered the second question, and for the first, I wouldn't say the universe. But I would say the modern world.” Pink flushed her cheeks, and that little color aroused him more.

  “Ah, semantics—I’ve been accused of that before.” He tapped his lips, staring at hers. She had the sexiest lips he’d ever seen. Like plump pillows.

  “I have too.”

  Her red lips pursed on the words, and he tore his eyes away. He was staring. The app on her phone now had large red numbers counting down from fifteen. While the timer might have been for their food, it reminded him of a debate timer.

  “You like it here? On the ship?”

  “I do. While it’s a perfect place for research, with my current topic I wonder if I might not make more of a difference if I found a position on land.”

  “Your topic?”

  “Oh, right. I talk about it so much that I’ve been trying to train myself to talk about it less. To avoid the broken record syndrome.”

  He waited.

  “My topic. Right. I'm currently researching the longevity of shifters who have lost their mate before their time.”

  “That’s not a myth? My dad died twenty-eight years ago and my mom’s alive and as meddlesome as ever.” He didn’t mention that his parents weren’t fated. The concept of fated mates dying seemed like legend to him and he didn’t mind throwing a crooked bone at it.

  “It’s not at all a myth. You must know someone whose parents died one after the other.”

  “Granted, I haven’t done the science, but isn’t it a Baader-Meinhof phenomena: you don’t notice how many jeeps are on the road until you own one?”

  She didn’t roll her eyes. Her expression let him know that he needed to not talk down to her again. “I’m aware of the probability statistics and they don’t apply here. This is fact, straight-out numbers. If your fated mate dies, you are ten percent more likely to die in each successive year.”

  “You're sure those numbers are correct?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, and the cause?”

  “At first I had no idea. But I'm finding there is a tie between fated mates on the cellular level. It’s the same thing that seems to let fated mates heal each other, even if the other mate was born human. I don't believe in magic, Tad.”

  “And that's one thing we agree on.”

  “Magic is just science that we don't understand yet.”

  “Exactly.”

  She turned away from him in contemplation. “My research is everything to me; science is everything to me. I'm good at it, and that is where I’ve caught myself into a problem. Being pulled away from my research. I have to solve this. For Dr. Garb, my mentor. She died after her mate was killed in an accident. A slow death that none of her many colleagues could halt. I can’t stop my research.”

  “Someone doesn't want you to continue your research?”

  “Not that he doesn't want me to continue, he just wants me to do something else first. I can’t be pulled away from it. Not by anything or anyone.”

  Noted. He didn’t blink.

  “And my research of longevity of shifters is going to save hundreds of thousands of lives. What he wants me to do is only going to help three or four shifters a year. Mostly it will help his sister. And I don’t have much of a choice, seeing that he’s my boss.” She tugged on the locket around her neck.

  “The dragon?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you don't want to abandon your own research. I get it.”

  “Thousands of shifters and their widowed mates could die by the time I find a cure for him.”

  The door to the hallway swung open, and a waitress with a loaded tray approached them. She served them. “Guess I brought too many boxes. Would you like me to box anything up now? I thought you would be taking more back to the infirmary.” She glanced at Tad.

  “No, that's okay, Colette. I can do it. Thanks for bringing these to us this late.”

  “Late, Dr. Cottage? This is an hour earlier than yesterday. Have a great night.” Colette exited the room, holding her tray to the side.

  “Have you explained to him how your research is important?”

  “At substantial length, but to no avail. Dragons aren’t great at bending their opinions, and Captain Matthias is in that category.”

  “Perhaps you're better off doing you
r research on land, as you said earlier.”

  She made a face like a wounded toddler, but immediately regained her composure.

  “But that's not what you want.”

  “I love this ship, the crew. I love seeing patients. I can do everything from here. I have a large community of shifters who are willing to work with me for my research. I have to make him see it my way . . . But you might be right.”

  She dug into her dinner. He wasn’t hungry, which was a strange concept for him. They ate in silence for a while. He could see her thinking again. She was definitely enjoying her veggie burger. Sauce dripped down her chin. He fought the urge to wipe it off with his finger.

  “You got something right here.” He pointed to his own chin with his index finger. She took her napkin and wiped the wrong side.

  “Don’t mind me. I haven’t eaten today.”

  “Never done that. I didn't think it was possible.” He pointed to the other side of her face where the spot lay and she wiped it.

  “It happens a lot. I get involved in what I'm doing. Usually I go to bed wondering where the day has gone.”

  “That sounds amazing. You must like what you do.”

  “I do.”

  He replaced his dinner plate with the chocolate cake he ordered. The one that the doc had been eyeing since they started to eat. She was too thin—how in the world do you forget to eat? And not like one of the stick women he dated. All they did was talk about food. No, he believed her when she said she just forgot. He took a bite of his cake and enjoyed watching her follow the fork to his mouth. It hit his tongue and the flavors exploded. And the scent coming off of his mate was almost as intoxicating as the cake.

  11

  Frosting

  He shared his dessert with her. She was savoring it. She didn’t order dessert with dinner, and she didn’t share food. Sharing food wasn’t romantic; it was unhygienic. But here she was sharing a frosted chocolate cake that melted in her mouth and fork dueling for the tasty gooeyness. And her absent-minded fast today didn’t help. With all of their focus on the sugary goodness, conversation slowed. He left the last few bites for her. Full, she put her fork down.