12. Bar
BAR
The words hit Bar like a kick in the gut.
She looked so open, so sincere, as she claimed this impossible thing.
For his entire life, just like his father’s life, people had been lying to him, manipulating him, trying to get his money. He liked to think that he had gotten pretty good at recognizing a would-be gold digger at 200 paces. He couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that Joy was one of them.
But this was exactly what his mother had done to his father.
And it was true that she had immediately oriented on him. All his suspicions about the roadside meeting having been manipulated in order to get them together came crashing back down on him.
Bar sat up, shaking his head—partly at her words, partly in denial of what he was starting to suspect. No, she wasn’t lying, she couldn’t be. “Joy, there is no such thing.”
Joy sat up as well, her full breasts bouncing gloriously—and distractingly. “Bar, it’s real. I was never sure about it either, but I knew as soon as I saw you. We’re meant to be together.”
“Says who?” Bar asked, feeling like an asshole. “Fate?”
“Well—yes,” Joy said. A hint of frustration was creeping into her tone. “I felt it as soon as I saw you. Don’t you feel it?”
No. Yes. No.
“I felt something,” he said slowly. “I mean—you’re a very beautiful woman. We—we fit together in a way I’ve never ... But we’ve only known each other for a couple of days.”
“It’s not just that. We’re mates. We’re meant to be.”
“Stop saying that,” Bar said sharply.
“Why shouldn’t I say it? It’s true!”
“So—what? We’re fated in the stars or something, so you want to marry me and be with me forever?” Until you walk away with my money, like Mom did to Dad.
“I think it’s a little early to be talking about marriage and forever!” Joy huffed.
“You’re the one who started it!”
They were both on their feet now, facing each other. It was hard not to be distracted by Joy’s glorious nakedness, but that same old suspicious part of him wondered if that wasn’t why she had chosen to do this now, when he was at his most relaxed and inattentive.
“It’s true,” Joy said sharply. “Shifters can feel it.”
“Well, I can’t. What does that mean?”
Joy drew back as if she had been slapped, and he regretted the words the instant they were out of his mouth.
“I don’t know.” She began gathering up her clothes, ramming her sweater over her bare torso.
“Did Hester put you up to this?” Bar demanded, a terrible suspicion dawning on him. “Is this all about convincing me to change my mind about the lodge?”
Joy’s face popped out of the neck hole of her sweater, practically bristling with fury. “ What ?”
“This is a con, isn’t it? I have to say, you’re very good.”
“You—you—ooh!” She was hopping on one leg now, trying to get back into jeans that were still damp from their skiing excursion. Even with everything he was feeling right now, or trying not to feel, Bar had to restrain himself from reaching out a hand to steady her. In fact, he was already reaching for her when Joy snapped, “Don’t touch me!” and he jerked his hand back.
She stood glaring at him with an armful of her underwear and shoes.
“A con artist! I don’t believe it!”
“I don’t believe it either,” Bar flared. “What I really don’t believe is that I’ve learned my whole life to look out for it, and you got right past my defenses and?—”
“Don’t even talk to me!” Joy flared. She opened the door and stormed out barefoot, clutching her boots.
“Wait!”
The word burst out of him as if coming from some deeper, more instinctive part of him.
Joy slammed the door with enough force that, rather than latching, it bounced open again. He got to the door to see Joy storming down the hall.
At the far end, the door to the sisters’ suite had opened and Leah was leaning out of it. Wonderful.
“Is this an actual, bona fide walk of shame?” Leah asked, her voice suffused with a mix of emotions, amusement dominant among them.
“Shut up!” Joy snapped, storming into the suite.
“What did he do?” Leah now sounded furious. “Joy? What did he do?”
Bar hastily closed his own door before his once-and-apparently-former lover’s sister decided to come down and beat him with a crutch. Also, he had just realized he was flashing the entire hallway, including Leah.
That had gone .... not so well.
Bar didn’t dare come out of his room until he heard the sisters go down to dinner. He was stewing in a mix of anger, betrayal, and despair.
He wasn’t wrong—was he?
Everything felt so real with her. So wonderful.
Bar’s stomach growled. He sighed and buttoned his shirt, glowering at himself in the mirror and resigning himself to an evening of cold, extremely late food eaten alone in a corner of the hotel restaurant.
Yeah, because you drove off the only person in this place who really likes you.
He slunk down the stairs. There was the sound of cheerful voices and rattling cutlery from the restaurant. One of the voices had Joy’s cadence, and it went through him like a knife.
On second thought, even after a hard day’s skiing, shifting, and sex, he wasn’t sure if he was hungry enough to face Joy yet. Especially not Joy with her sister.
Maybe there were vending machines.
He went on a vending machine quest down the side hallways. Instead, he came upon a door that led to the outside, which swung open just as Bar reached it. Mauro came in, dusted with snow and carrying an armload of wood.
“Oh, hey there,” he said, raising his dark eyebrows when he saw Bar. “You’re gonna want a coat if you go out. It’s snowing again, and the wind is blowing.”
“Yes, I—well, I mean, no.” Bar had a wild thought of going back to his ancestral mountain home to spend the night. He could shift, curl up in the ruins of the chalet, use dragon’s fire to keep himself from freezing ... no, that was a spectacularly depressing way to spend Christmas Eve, even in his current frame of mind. Also, while he theoretically could hunt something as a dragon, he had never actually tried and had no confidence whatsoever in his ability to kill anything, let alone eat it. Maybe if he could hunt down a nice dressed steak to flame-broil ...
Yeah, no, he was likely to be hungry as well as alone and cold.
“Can I give you a hand with that?” he asked instead.
Mauro shrugged and offloaded some of the wood into Bar’s arms. They carried it into the lobby, where a welcoming fire snapped and crackled on the hearth.
“I would have thought you got enough outdoors after that ski trip earlier,” Mauro remarked, stacking wood in the old-fashioned iron firedogs. “You two were out there for a long time.”
“I’m definitely still feeling it,” Bar admitted, stretching his legs. “No, I was just wondering if you had any more of those granola bars around.”
“Dinner’s being served in the restaurant.”
“I know,” Bar said. “I kinda would rather not show my face in there right now.”
“Doreen and Hester giving you a hard time again?” Mauro sounded amused, with a hint of sympathy. Then, looking up as he finished stacking the wood, he saw the expression on Bar’s face. His smile faded. He straightened up and dusted off his hands. “You know what? I could really use a hand covering up the wood out there before the snow really gets going. There’s a coat you can use, if you want.”
Mauro wasn’t wearing a coat himself, just a light flannel work shirt, jeans, and boots. Bar gave him a hopefully manly-looking shrug and didn’t take the coat. As they stepped outside into a sharp wind laden with stinging snowflakes, he immediately regretted it, and regretted it more as his shoes sank into snow. His dragon could keep him warm, but nobody enjoyed soggy socks.
The crisp lines of the neatly shoveled walks, which Mauro had tended during the day, were now barely visible under drifting snow. The snowflakes swirling on the wind were small and icy, but the gusts rearranged the snowdrifts and piled them up against the side of the lodge.
“Just so you know, we might lose power during the night if this wind keeps up,” Mauro remarked as Bar followed him around the side of the lodge; Bar was unpleasantly conscious of melted snow soaking into the legs of his pants. “But don’t worry, there’s a generator, and Doreen just gave it a tuneup. You’ll barely notice a thing.”
Recalling the heating woes when they’d first arrived, Bar decided not to offer any comments. Instead he took one end of a heavy canvas tarp, crackling with ice, that Mauro handed him, and helped Mauro haul it across the front of an open woodshed.
“So what’d you do?” Mauro remarked as they tucked in and fastened the ends of the tarp securely by its straps to metal hooks on the woodshed.
“What do you mean?”
“Look, the last I saw, you didn’t mind sitting in the restaurant being served cold food as long as our lovely guest was with you. Even when her sister looks at you like you’re something she picked off the bottom of her shoe.”
“She might be right,” Bar said glumly. “Joy and I had a fight. I—I think I might have taken something she said in the wrong way.”
“Oh?” was Mauro’s noncommittal response.
“Yeah, but I’m not sure, I—” Bar broke off. He shook his head. Standing here with snow swirling around them, helping Mauro secure the tarp, was probably the closest to privacy that he was going to get in this entire hotel, at least without going out into the snow-covered woods surrounding them. “Mauro, do you know anything about fated mates?”
Mauro thoughtfully finished tying a knot and came over to inspect Bar’s handiwork. “Big topic, fated mates,” he remarked. “I wouldn’t say I’m an expert or anything. I just knew, the minute I saw Hester.”
A strange, sharp feeling went through Bar’s chest. His first sight of Joy, cheeks flushed and heart-shaped face framed with snowflakes, would live in his memory forever. “Yes, but—do you mean, you knew she was the one, or you knew she was your mate?”
“That,” Mauro said. “Both of those things. My animal told me. I mean, it’s a moment of clarity, like nothing I’ve ever experienced.” He looked at Bar. “Did you have that with Joy?”
A moment of clarity. Strangely, that was the part that made sense. Fated mates was a concept he still couldn’t quite understand. But that clarity, that inner peace and calm, that certainty that she was the one ...
I felt it. I just didn’t trust myself enough to know it.
It was like with the land, he thought—the way that he felt connected to it. He knew things like that in ways he couldn’t quite justify, not in the realm of rational thought, but with a clear depth of certainty beyond knowledge and intellect. Sometimes, you just knew .
And it didn’t matter what it was called, if it was fated mates or instinct or something even deeper. It was true, and that was what mattered.
“Mauro,” Bar said slowly, “I think I have been a very stupid man.”
Mauro grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Everyone is sometimes, human and shifter alike. The question is, what are you going to do about it now?”