An Alpha's Thunder (Water Bear Shifters 3) by Sloane Meyers Read Free Book Online Page B

But, then her face returned to its hard glare, and she shook her head at him. “Destiny is going to have to work a lot harder if it wants to convince me.”
    Lance couldn’t come up with a good reply, so he just stared at her for several long moments, taking in her beautiful face, and the impossibly dramatic way that her hair whipped around in the wind. She held his gaze, somewhat defiantly. She refused to be the first one to look away, and Lance almost laughed in amusement. She was a spunky one.
    “Do you normally go running in storms like this?” Caroline demanded to know.
    Lance sighed. “No. But only because I’m usually up in a helicopter working during a storm like this. I love the sound of thunder more than anything.”
    Lance saw the same strange look pass over Caroline’s face that he had seen minutes before. She furrowed her brow, and then turned on her heel. “I have to go,” she yelled over her shoulder at him. “I can’t work with you out here standing over my shoulder, anyway.”
    Lance watched as she trudged out of the water and up the beach. He wanted to run after her and spin her around, then cover her mouth with a passionate kiss. His bear snarled and growled within him, angry that Lance was just standing there and letting Caroline get away. But it was for the best. She clearly wanted nothing to do with him, and he already had one foot in Alaska. Once she disappeared from view, he turned and started running back in the direction he had come from.
    But no matter how fast he ran, he couldn’t outrun the image of Caroline’s face that insisted on filling his mind.

Chapter Six
     
    Caroline was doing some running of her own. She sprinted all the way to her car, cursing under her breath the whole way. She didn’t turn around to look until she was safely locked into the driver’s seat, with the car’s engine running and the heater blasting warm air on her shivering frame. She turned on the headlights, and peered as far as she could into the dark night, but she couldn’t see anyone else. As far as she could tell, she was alone. He hadn’t followed her, and she felt slightly foolish for thinking that he would. She had all but told him to take his feelings and shove them up his ass.
    But what else was she supposed to do? She had already decided she couldn’t have a relationship with him. There was no sense in sugarcoating anything and leaving him room to think that there might be any possibility of there ever being something between them. She had been completely fine with her decision until the very end of their conversation.
    He loved the thunder. She could tell from the wistful way he spoke about thunderclaps that there was a deep, meaningful reason for his appreciation of its sound. And not only did he love it, he loved it “more than anything.” Caroline had seen the passion in his eyes when he said that. For some reason, he had a respect and adoration for thunder that was as deep as her own. She had been caught off guard by that realization. Caroline had met plenty of people who claimed to love thunderstorms, but no one had ever shown the same zeal as she did for the mere sound of thunder. Until now.
    Caroline found Lance’s strange, seemingly offhanded comment about thunder to be deeply unsettling. And this was on top of the already unsettling comment he had made about destiny continuously bringing them together. Hadn’t she said to herself when she shredded his card that it was up to destiny to bring them together, if destiny wanted to?
    Is that what this had been? Destiny’s attempt to slap her in the face with a wakeup call? Caroline sighed, and rested her head on the steering wheel in frustration. She had to admit that every new piece of information she learned about Lance made him seem more and more like a good match for her. But destiny would have to give her a much stronger sign if it wanted her to take on a relationship guaranteed to land her in the tabloid section of the