Haley had been living with Wilder and Adrienne a few days when she heard the staff discussing her and that she would be leaving to go to school soon and there would be one less person to cook and clean for.
Asking Adrienne whether it was true, Adrienne replied, “I know nothing about that.” Her voice honest, her tone comforting. However, she appeared upset hearing this for the first time.
“Wilder would have said something to me. Everyone is welcome here especially girls. There is too much testosterone for my liking,” Adrienne had said to Haley with a sincere smile. She held her close, and Haley believed her because Adrienne gave Haley the truth as she knew it.
Leaving for horseback riding, Haley ran into Lycell pitching hay in the stables. “I hear you’re going to school in a few months,” he said wiping his brow of sweat. He would know. She turned and sprinted back into the house and ran directly into Wilder.
“Are you sending me away?” Her voice showed desperation. He glanced at her. She looked into his eyes and he knew he couldn’t lie to her.
“Yes,” he said with no excuses.
“Hunter wouldn’t want me to go. You know I’m supposed to marry him when I old enough,” Haley said wide eyed with the look of a child in a fantasy world. Wilder raised an eyebrow but never commented. He took her remark as childish banter.
“It was Hunter who made the arrangement for the school.”
“I don’t need to go to school. I’ll just run away,” she said as tears welled in her eyes. Wilder didn’t know what to do. He never liked to see females cry. He touched her shoulders.
“The school is in Switzerland. We can visit you and you can visit us on holidays.” His voice is warm, not his usual cold standoffish demeanor.
“It will not be a good idea to run away. We’ll find you and just send you back.” Wilder wasn’t the most tactful person and he wasn’t used to dealing with teenage girls especially humans. Adrienne was all he could handle, and Haley was a handful, and now he knew why Hunter was sending her away.
After Adrienne and Wilder left for town and after Haley hung up the phone with Hunter, she found Adrienne’s keys to her jeep. She didn’t stop to get money for gas or for food. She didn’t take time to bring a change of clothes.
Haley checked her purse on her drive to San Francisco, and discovered she had about ten dollars. She would drive as far as she could and get out of the area before anyone discovered her missing, and then she would call Hunter, but she left her smartphone on the bedside table in her rush to leave before Wilder and Adrienne returned.
On Interstate eighty she was headed west before she looked at the gas gauge. She had to make different plans because she didn’t prepare for her trip. She thought she could make it to Berkley and then call Hunter. Or ask someone to use their phone.
Haley thought how wonderful it would be to live with Hunter. He knew how she felt about him, and in time if she stayed around him long enough, he would learn to love her.
Her ideas were the thoughts of a young girl who needed love and the protection of a father, and she had none of that anymore. The only person she knew who could give her what she needed was Hunter, and that’s why she set off in a hurry without any preparation or thought of what disaster could lie ahead.
Haley had been driving about an hour and watching the gas gauge which was dipping low. A quarter of a tank. Haley didn’t know how much the tank would hold and she decided to use half the money to put gas in the car and the rest to buy something to eat.
Stopping at a station, she parked the jeep and jumped outside and ran for the restroom. She was hungry and lonely. She paid five dollars for gas, bought a cinnamon bun, and walked outside with it in her mouth. When she reached the pump, she saw a limo parked next to her.
A man in a black suit and white shirt was pumping gas, and as she raised the handle to place the nozzle in the gas tank, she glanced over to see a handsome man in a dark blue suit with amber eyes and a small beard. His window was lowered and he was talking on the phone.
It took her a minute of pumping gas before the pump shut off. She looked and a saw barely a gallon of gas. Now was the time to ask the man to use his phone. He had a mysterious look on his face and he smiled at Haley. She thought he was nice. He had beautiful brown eyes and a handsome face. He was maybe twenty five or thirty. Not a father figure and he wasn’t threatening, so she walked behind and around the pump, and stood in front of his window smiling.
“Hi,” she said in a childlike voice. Her voice sound that way when she was nervous. “My name is Haley. I left my phone at my home, and I need to call my brother and tell him when I will be arriving in San Francisco.”
“Sure,” he said not hesitating. Haley put Hunter’s number into the phone she memorized when she spoke to him. The phone rang and rang. And no answer. She tried texting and waited a few minutes as the man watched at her.
She caught him staring at her, so she handed him the phone. She thanked him and he said, “No problem. Any time.” He smiled. She lingered looking around, and then slogged to the jeep, climbed in, and drove off.
Her heart was in her mouth the whole time she was driving because she didn’t know when the car would run out of gas. She didn’t want it to be in a deserted area.
It wasn’t at night that the car stopped and refused to go any farther. But it was in a deserted area of Interstate eighty. Reluctantly she opened the door and stood outside after putting on her flashers.
Haley waited and waited for a car or truck to pass. It felt like an hour before a black car pulled up behind her. It was the car at the gas station. The sun was getting low in the sky. She saw a burst of yellow and orange as the sun was approaching twilight.
The back door opened and the tall man with the amber eyes and dark brown hair stepped out. A handsome man in his own right dressed in an expensive blue suit with a tie and cufflinks. He looked very professional and rich. He looked very inviting with his wide smile. He looked harmless but he was anything but harmless.
“Well this is my lucky day. My name is Brian Anderson,” he said giving Haley his patent sincere smile.
“My name. Oh I said it before. I’m Haley Redmond.”
“What is the problem?” His voice calm his gaze covered Haley from head to toe.
“I have no gas. And I have no money. Could I use your phone again?”
“I tell you what. How about if I take you into San Francisco and call the wrecker to get you some gas and drive it to my estate. There you can call your brother and if you want you can eat and sleep and have your brother pick you up in the morning.”
The invitation sound too good to be true and as it goes, it probably was too good to be true, Haley thought, but what choice did she have? She had to trust someone. Even if she waited for the next person she wasn’t sure whether they could be trustworthy.
“Maybe. But I would like to call him as soon as I get in San Francisco if that’s okay?” He gave her a closed small smile and Haley locked the car and climbed into his limo.
“Oh, do I have to leave the key?” she asked getting ready to get out again.
“No.” He placed his hand over hers. His hand was hot, but it may have been her. “The wrecker can take the car without the keys.” She watched at him as he called to have Adrienne’s car picked up.
“Would you like something to drink? If you’re hungry I can stop and get you something. I know how you teenagers like hamburgers.”
“I’m nineteen not technically a teenager.”
“Really? You look so young.”
“Hunter...”
“Your brother?”
“Well, he tells me that I look fifteen.”
“He’s right. I wouldn’t have thought you were nineteen.” Brian smiled to himself. He wanted Haley. He wanted her to sire his cubs. She’s young and beautiful. Her hips are wide and he imagined her mating with him. But first he had to get permission from the female shifters in his pack. They had sired only females, he needed male cubs to run his businesses.
He liked that she was human. Maybe the females in his den wouldn’t want her? He questioned, but then he was king, and since when do they have any say in the matter.
He would introduce Haley to his females and declare his intentions to mate with her. But first he would mate with the older shifters one after the other, and they would have no choice but to bond together and take care of his half human lion cub once Haley gave birth.
Haley would be his first human. In the city, and being a prominent businessman, Brian couldn’t take the chance of reveling himself as a shifter. He didn’t know how his human partners would accept him. He had worked too long and hard trying to fit in. He couldn’t risk it now, but now he wanted to risk it all to sleep with the human.
After Haley drank a lemon Sprite, she fell sleepy. She didn’t want to fall asleep in a strange man’s car but she did. Her eyes were heavy and the three hour drive and barely little to nothing to eat had made her drowsy.
When she woke, she was being cradled in Brian’s arms as he carried her to his mansion.
Looking up in his face, “What are you doing?”
“You were asleep and I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Put me down. I can walk,” she said as he placed her on the stone walkway leading to his front door. The driver a large broad-shouldered man stood to the side and opened the door. Haley reluctantly walked in the large home. Not seeing anyone in the house, Haley panic.
“Can I use the phone to call my brother? He must be worried about me.” Then from the right of the foyer a beautiful dark haired woman walked out with a long black robe on. She was a natural beauty with long black hair and olive skin.
She walked up to Brian and kissed him. “Are you staying the night? Or are you just visiting us and going back to your suite in San Francisco?”
“I’ll stay. Tell the others we have a guest. Open up the room in the right wing. The one near my bedroom.” The dark haired woman shot him a willful glance.