3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Raif
R aif is in the middle of talking to John about a new hitch for his truck when the door to the hardware store slams open.
Raif’s in the back, but he’s close enough that he can see the woman.
Dark hair, tall, muscular, lean arms and shoulders.
The kind of woman who’s strong. She’s beautiful, he knows that right off the bat.
Her hair curls around her neck in loose waves, her tan golden skin, and worn jeans that hug her curves in all the right places.
The scowl on her face doesn’t detract from her beauty at all. He thinks she’s gorgeous even with it.
“Whose truck is that?” she yells, eyes flitting around the store.
Raif watches her in fascination. He’s never seen a woman so commanding and bold.
“Whose is it, huh?”
Raif looks around at the other customers. Everyone is staring at the woman, and it doesn’t really register what she’s saying until John speaks up and asks her what truck she’s referring to.
“Old blue shit-bucket. Big scratch down the side.”
It occurs to him, maybe thirty seconds later, that it might be his truck.
John has moved from behind the counter and is talking to the woman, asking her to show him what truck, and leading her outside.
John’s not one to placate a woman. His wife is one of the strongest women Raif knows, and John has always let her be herself, even when it gets her into trouble.
The other customers move to the window to see what’s going on, but Raif hasn’t moved. He’s still awestruck by the woman and remembers once again she may very well be angry about his truck.
Moving outside, he sees her and John standing a little ways down in front of a beat-up sedan and his truck. The woman is moving her arms all around and is clearly angry. John is nodding along and shooting glances down the sidewalk towards Raif.
Finally, Raif catches on. He parked too close.
He walks down the sidewalk, moving closer. “Ma’am.”
“Don’t ma’am me. This your truck?”
He nods and steps to where she and John are standing.
He’s immediately hit with the scent of citrus and cloves.
Like fall, it swirls up his nose, and he takes a big breath in.
It’s the best thing he’s ever smelled in his life, and it’s coming from her.
Mate. He steps back with the shock of it.
He never imagined. Never thought for once in his life that he would find his mate.
Thirty-three years of being single, alone.
Now here he is standing with his mate in front of him.
The one person who can complete him, make him whole. He smiles.
“Are you laughing at me?” she sneers. Her eyes are wild with rage, rage directed at him.
Immediately, the smile drops.
“No ma’am. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”
“Didn’t mean what? To park so fucking close I can’t get in my vehicle? To laugh at me?”
“I wasn’t laughing.”
She throws her hands up in the air and storms over to the passenger side. Flinging open the door and crawling through to the driver’s side.
“Your jars, ma’am?” This time it’s John who speaks, gesturing to the canning jars on her hood.
Raif can hear her swear in her car, and his cock starts to thicken a little.
She crawls back over and climbs out. Grabbing the jars off the hood while scowling at Raif the whole time.
He tries to keep a smile off his face, but he is so in awe of the powerful woman.
She shoves the canning jars in the backseat and climbs in through the passenger door again. As she reverses, she throws Raif the finger, and he stands and watches her go. John claps him on the shoulder and turns to go back into the store.
“Wait.” Raif doesn’t know who he’s asking, John or the woman, his mate , who just left. He has no idea who she is, how to get in touch with her, or even her name.
“Son?”
“Who is that? Do you know her name?”
John looks at him with a sad frown. Like he knew before, Raif did that Raif was interested.
“You'd best leave her alone. She didn’t seem too keen on you.” John has already started walking back when Raif stops him with a hand on his arm.
“Please?”
“I don’t know, son, never seen her before.
” John looks apologetic, and Raif lets him leave, looking wistfully down the road where his mate had driven away.
He goes back to the store, picks out a new truck hitch, and drives back to the lodge.
He has to forget about her. She’s gone. He’ll never see her again, and even if he did, he blew any chances he’d have had with her anyway by parking his truck too close.
Raif is hauling away some dead trees by hand when Jack, his younger chef brother, ambles towards him with a plate in his hand.
“Thought you’d be hungry,” Jack waggles the plate at Raif as he makes his way through the undergrowth.
Raif grunts and sits down on a log, Jack coming to sit next to him and handing Raif the plate.
“What’s got you back to caveman sounds as opposed to words?” Jack’s sarcasm has always bugged Raif. Jack’s too happy, too outgoing, too fucking friendly. It annoys Raif.
Raif sits in silence for a few moments. Chewing on his sandwich and looking out at the forest. Jack doesn’t say anything, just waits in silence for Raif to speak.
“I fucked up.”
Jack waits a moment before asking what happened.
“I met my mate.”
Jack's intake of breath has Raif squirming on the log. He can sense Jack’s excitement already and knows he’ll have to explain what happened, then Jack won’t be so excited.
“I...she...I had gone to John’s to get a new hitch for the truck.
I guess I wasn’t paying much attention, but I parked too close to another car.
While I was in the store, this woman came in and started yelling.
I go outside, and she’s upset about my park job.
I stood there like a fucking idiot, didn’t say anything, and she drove away. I could scent her, citrus and cloves.”
“Like Mom used to put on the stove in the fall.”
Raif nods his head in agreement. The scent of mate will mean something to the person.
This woman smells like citrus and cloves, which reminds Raif of good times in their family home.
When his mom would put a pot on the stovetop with lemons, oranges, and cloves.
She’d let it simmer, filling the house with a delicious smell that always comforted Raif. Now it’s the scent of his mate.
“I fucked up. She was angry and left, I didn’t...I didn’t even get her name.”
Jack clasps Raif’s shoulder and squeezes.
“It will be okay,” when Raif snorts, Jack continues. “It will, seriously. We are meant to find our mates and be with them forever. You’ll find her again, I know it.”
Raif can’t compete with Jack’s enthusiasm for life. He nods, dropping his head and taking another bite of his sandwich.
“Oh, and by the way. Axel says to tell you the shitter in three is clogged again, and he needs you in there soon to fix it.”
Raif huffs out a breath in frustration as Jack chuckles and stands. Jack always was a cocky SOB. And Raif hates those fucking toilets and how the guests always manage to clog them.
It’s later, when Raif has unclogged the toilet and cleaned up, that he heads to Axel’s office.
He is under no illusion that Jack hasn’t told Axel and Gunner what happened.
Jack always was a busybody. When he knocks and steps into the office, he’s surprised to find Chloe sitting behind the desk and not Axel.
She perks up immediately upon seeing Raif. Chloe is a doll, and Raif loves her. She’s perfect for Axel. Soft and sweet, complementing his gruff exterior. If people think Axel is stoney, then they must think Raif is a brick fucking wall with how much he dislikes people.
“Raif, my favorite brother-in-law. How are you?” Chloe slides up from the desk and comes around the side to hug Raif, and he bends down so she can kiss his cheek sweetly.
She mothers him and his brothers, and he eats it up.
Chloe had come into their lives at their lowest. On the brink of losing the lodge due to Maury, the accountant embezzling millions from right under Axel’s nose.
When Chloe, who was vacationing at the lodge, uncovered not only Maury’s stealing but the Harvey Development Group’s involvement, the brothers were devastated.
Axel, in particular, was embarrassed. Thinking he made a bad mate and had failed at ever getting Chloe’s affection.
But she was right there standing with them.
Axel and Chloe fell in love easily, and Chloe chose to stay in Montana.
Giving up her fast-paced life in New York City for the small town of Silver Lake, Montana.
She brought with her a friend, Danielle, who took it upon herself to invest in the lodge and Chloe’s new accounting firm in town.
With Danielle’s investment and strategic advertising, the lodge is doing great.
Raif has no doubt his strong-willed mate will be loved by his brothers as much as Chloe is, if only he knew her name.
“I’m good, Chloe, how about you?”
“Oh, Raif,” she moves herself back behind the desk, flipping her red hair over her shoulder. “I heard what happened.”
Raif huffs and drops himself in the chair across from hers. Nothing is ever kept private between him and his brothers.
Chloe looks at him appraisingly across the desk. He knows she’s thinking, always thinking before she speaks.
“I don’t think you really did anything wrong.”
Raif barks out a harsh laugh.
“Seriously. So you parked too close? Lots of people do that. Doesn’t mean it’s okay for her to have flipped out the way she did. Seems like maybe there was more going on there than a truck parked too close to hers.”
Raif nods. It makes sense. Most people, especially in such a small town, would just have found the truck owner and asked them to move. Not come in yelling and swearing. There must have been something to make his mate upset and frustrated. And he just added to that.
Chloe, probably sensing him internalizing what she said as pointing fingers at Raif, clears her throat.
When Raif looks up, she has a small smile on her heart-shaped face. “Raif, it wasn’t your fault. Not really. She was probably just having a bad day. I’m sure the next time you meet her, things will go better.”
Next time. “Do you think-”
“Yes,” Chloe says with a smile, “I think you will meet her again. Mates of bear shifters are meant to be, true love, soul mates. You are bound to her as much as she is bound to you. You will meet again.”
He stands and leans over the desk, planting a chaste kiss on Chloe’s forehead. When he’s pulled back, she has a soft smile on her face, and he can see why Axel loves her so much. They are a good match.