Hector: Outback Shifters Book One Read online

  Hector

  Outback Shifters Book One

  Zoe Chant

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  A note from Zoe Chant

  More Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant

  Zoe on Audio

  Special Sneak Preview: A Mate for the Dragon

  Chapter 1

  Myrtle Atkins was used to not looking her best. You spent enough time hiking your way through mountainous terrain as part of your job, and you pretty quickly got over the idea of things like looking nice and having neat hair and wearing makeup or even daily showers.

  Still. She was new here, and stomping into the only place in town she could get a hot meal looking like the creature from the Black Lagoon (if the creature from the Black Lagoon had kind of let itself go lately) might not have been the best first impression to make. She’d only been out getting the lay of the land for a few hours, but somehow, in that time, she’d managed to scrape up her legs on some boulders, have her hair frizzily tumble out of the bun she’d pulled it into, spill part of her lunch down the front of her shirt… and now she could feel the beginnings of a really nasty sunburn across her shoulders and upper back.

  Goddamnit.

  There was no way to deny it: her pasty Washington state complexion was really not cut out for burning hot Australian summers.

  She paused, standing in the darkening street, trying to arrange the strap of her bag so it was touching as little of her shoulders as possible. That done, Myrtle scratched her fingers through her sweaty hair, and tried to think.

  Go back to my hotel room, or just forget the humiliation and go get something to eat?

  Her stomach growled, urging her to forget how much of a complete mess she looked and just go get some dinner. And honestly, she was inclined to agree with it.

  What’s the worst that could happen? No one asks me out on a date?

  If anything, this was good. She could look like a scary frump now, but that would only make it even more impressive later when she returned looking amazing, like the nerdy new kid who magically transforms into the prom queen.

  Not that I was ever prom queen, Myrtle thought. Well, come to think of it, not that I even went to prom.

  Myrtle was just a little too old to be entertaining beauty queen transformation fantasies now. Like it or not, she was what she was: late twenties, unmarried (and not even boyfriended), frizzy-haired, way too dedicated to her job, and now, sunburned.

  “Hey, check it out. It’s the moth lady.”

  Myrtle glanced up just in time to see two girls in their late teens or early twenties looking over their shoulders and nudging each other, before they quickly looked away.

  Well, add that to the list, she thought. Moth lady.

  Word traveled fast ’round small towns like this, where, she guessed, there probably wasn’t a lot to talk about. She’d grown up in a town just like it, after all – albeit in a totally different hemisphere, and with way less chance of being killed by the sun. And everything was a little less coated in dust.

  Myrtle supposed that she’d brought moth lady on herself, really – when she’d been making her booking at the one motel in town, there’d been a question on the form: What is the reason for your visit to Good Fortune?

  Without thinking, she’d typed up the truth:

  I’m a lepidopterist visiting on an academic field trip funded by the American Advancement of Science Association to study the migration patterns of the valeleaf moth, which departs from this area’s caves and natural rock formations in the early summer in order to travel to cooler climes; I’m hoping that with study I can determine the reasons for certain moth species’ recent decline in numbers, putting not only their own survival at risk but also the survival of creatures such as the lesser possum, which relies on the moth as a food source…

  She didn’t necessarily like to include the part about the cute possums since they weren’t strictly her area of study, but after one too many confused or disinterested looks when she’d told people she studied moths she’d started adding it in – it seemed like the only way most people would care was if something with soft fur and big brown eyes was also being threatened. It was the way of the world – she thought the moths were plenty fascinating on their own, but not everyone agreed.

  And so, she’d typed up quite the paragraph and already hit Submit before realizing they were probably just after a more standard ‘Business or Pleasure’ type of answer.

  Well, too late now.

  Now, I’m Moth Lady.

  Clearly, word had gotten around. Myrtle wasn’t sure she liked the fact that the motel proprietress had blabbed about her embarrassing misstep all over town before she’d even gotten here, but it wasn’t like it was a HIPAA violation or something. Studying moths was what she did. Becoming a lepidopterist was something she’d dreamed about ever since she’d watched the moths playing in the porch lights when she was a kid. They were a lifelong fascination. Certainly, moths had played a more significant role in her life than any of her boyfriends had. All two of them.

  No, she really didn’t care if people wanted to call her Moth Lady. It was better than what her mom had been calling her over the past few years, which was ‘the only one of my daughters who hasn’t given me a grandchild yet’ and ‘ahh, the family brain,’ which should have been a compliment, but the way she said it – with a small sigh and a slight What can you do? shake of the head – left Myrtle with no illusions that her mom would way rather she was putting all that brain power toward finding a suitable man with whom to procreate, as quickly and as often as possible.

  All right, well, part of that doesn’t sound so bad, Myrtle thought, her lip twitching. And, she supposed, somewhere deep down, her mom was proud of her: she still had all her childhood report cards up on the fridge, after all, each of them with a perfect line of A+s, except for gym class, which had a perfect line of Ds. Could she help it if a bunch of asshole sixteen-year-old boys throwing a ball at her head wasn’t her idea of a good time? She was fit enough these days, though – mountain fieldwork saw to that.

  No, it wasn’t that her mom wasn’t proud. It was just that, ever since Myrtle’s eldest sister Lily had given birth for the first time ten years ago, their mom had contracted the condition recognized worldwide as ‘baby mania’, and she just couldn’t get enough of them. Myrtle had thought having six older sisters and two younger brothers might have spared her, but no chance of that, apparently.

  And so, here she was.

  She’d always wanted to visit Australia anyway, and this study opportunity had fallen right in her lap, just when she’d felt her mom was about to drive her completely nuts with her daily emails about the nice boy from her church who Myrtle just had to meet, since her then-boyfriend clearly wasn’t going to buy the cow if he could get the milk for free.

  Sorry Mom, can’t make a baby, gotta go to Australia!

  Not that even that had slowed her mom down – she’d just attached a photo she’d obviously googled of a bronzed, six-packed, thong-wearing man-god, standing on a beach holding a surfboard with the caption 100% AUSSIE BEEF underneath him.

  Bring one back for me too!! her mom had written, which Myrtle had only rolled her eyes at as she’d dragged the whole email into her trash folder.

  She
’d only guiltily gone and looked at the picture two or three more times – all right, five – before deleting him and his abs for good.

  It’d taken all her self-restraint not to email her mom to explain she wasn’t even going to be anywhere near a beach for the duration of her stay: she was going to the tiny one-motel, one-main road, one-restaurant town of Good Fortune, an eight-hour drive from the nearest beach, so the closest she’d get to any water or the tanned beefcakes who might be cavorting in it was when she flew over them.

  And that is that.

  Her stomach grumbled again, pulling her out of her thoughts of her mom back home and just exactly how far she was from any kind of beach where she might be able to cool off after her long day of exploring the vast, rocky territory outside the town of Good Fortune, following her terrain maps to the caves that the scientists and explorers who had come before her had marked.

  And all I have to show for it is some scratched-up legs.

  Myrtle winced a little as she crossed the only road in town, heading toward what she would have called a diner, but which she’d quickly learned she should actually be calling a pub. She’d been too exhausted to eat anything at all after she’d arrived last night, completely worn out from the what-seemed-like-100-hour bus ride from Coffs Harbour, so she couldn’t say what the food was like – but all she cared about right now was that it take the edge off the gnawing hunger in her belly.

  Rounding the corner, Myrtle stopped in her tracks. Parked outside the red brick facade of the Good Fortune pub was row after row of gleaming silver and black motorcycles, some of which looked bigger than her little hand-me-down hatchback back home. There were at least twenty of them, parked in lines by the side of the road – and, in some cases, even up the sidewalk.

  Myrtle bit her lip. On the one hand, she’d grown up in a small town by a highway, which had also been a pitstop for riders on their way across the country, as well as home to local charters of a few clubs. Her own father had shared plenty of drinks with the guys from the club, and she knew in a lot of cases bikers were pillars of their communities, using their fearsome appearances to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.

  There was no reason to believe things weren’t the same here – or that the bikes outside didn’t simply belong to people who loved riding, and who were on a roadtrip across the country. Sometimes those kinds could be rowdy, but it didn’t mean they were bad people.

  Either way, if she wanted a hot meal, then she’d have to go inside.

  Thinking of the canned fruit and saltine crackers in her motel room, Myrtle shook off her misgivings, and, setting her jaw, marched across the road and in through the front door of the pub.

  It was noisy inside – it was well after knock-off time on a Friday, and this was clearly the social center of the town for the farmers, workers and anyone else who wanted a drink after a long day. What she didn’t see, however, was a bunch of tough-looking bikers – that, or the men who’d parked the motorcycles outside weren’t conforming to any stereotypes about bikers that she knew about.

  Whatever the case, she let out a quick sigh of relief, sidling in past two men standing by the bar drinking beer and chatting.

  Looking around, Myrtle quickly realized she didn’t have anything to worry about in terms of sticking out, with her dusty shorts, scraped legs and old tank top. If anything, she was beginning to feel a little overdressed – ‘come as you are’ was clearly the dress code of the day, and Myrtle for one was grateful for it. Not feeling out of place at all, she slipped into a chair by the window and picked up the laminated menu, which had exactly four things on it.

  “What’ll you have, love?”

  Myrtle looked up to find a woman in her fifties, with platinum blonde hair, bright blue eyeshadow and bright pink lipstick, and several gold necklaces disappearing down a bust that was as impressive as it was tanned, with no visible tan lines. She was smiling at Myrtle in a way that made the corners of her eyes crinkle, and Myrtle couldn’t help but take a liking to her. She looked exactly like her father’s favorite waitress in his favorite steakhouse back home.

  “Can I get the steak, medium rare, with the side of fries and salad?”

  “No salad at the moment, love.”

  “Oh. Right. Just the steak and fries, then.”

  “Right, steak and chips. Coming up.” The woman paused. “American, eh? Don’t get many Yanks ’round here. Where’re you from, love?”

  “Oh – Washington.”

  The woman laughed, deep and rich. “Work for the White House, do you darl?”

  Myrtle shook her head, smiling. “Ah, sorry. I meant Washington state. I guess we just really love naming things Washington.”

  “Well, fair enough, love. Hope you enjoy your stay – let’s see about getting you that steak.”

  The woman bustled off, and Myrtle couldn’t help but smile a little. She’d been asked about her accent more and more the farther away she got from Sydney, but people had generally just been curious to know what part of the US she was from, what she thought of Australia, and whether she knew to be careful of drop bears (that last one she knew to simply laugh politely at).

  Looking around the pub again, she decided that perhaps small towns like this one and the one she’d grown up in weren’t so different as they might first appear: sure, the guys drinking beers after work back home were more likely to be lumber workers than farmers, and her hometown was surrounded by deep, dark green Douglas firs and gray, snow-topped mountains rather than the plains of dried grass and short scrub, red dust and even redder crags of rock that stuck up from the landscape at random here, but at this moment, they didn’t seem so different.

  It was a harsh environment out here – as her sunburned shoulders, scraped legs and blistered feet definitely attested to – but there was a raw beauty to it too, and the sky was the most brilliant, unbroken blue she’d ever seen.

  Or maybe she’d just been in Washington for too long, she thought with a sigh. As much as the jokes made her roll her eyes a bit, it really did rain a lot.

  “Righto love, steak and chips.”

  A plate with a thick steak and some thick-cut potato wedges landed on the table in front of her.

  “You want a beer with that?” the waitress asked, smiling down at her.

  “Ah, no thank you,” Myrtle said. She’d never been much of a drinker.

  “You sure about that? You’re missing out.”

  “I’m sure,” she said firmly. She was going to have a very early morning tomorrow if she wanted to get out into the landscape before the sun was up – the last thing she needed was to get even slightly tipsy the night before.

  “All right, love. Suit yourself.”

  Myrtle tucked into her steak – though she admitted, her lip twitching, that the thought did cross her mind to snap a photo of it with her phone and send it to her mom saying she’d found the 100% Aussie Beef she was after, but in the end she decided that would probably just encourage her, and she wouldn’t stop hounding her until she’d found Hugh Jackman and given him her phone number.

  Whatever the case, Myrtle decided that out of a choice between a man and this steak, she’d definitely choose the steak. It was rich, tender, smoky and just pink enough in the middle. She could definitely get used to these thick-cut fries as well – God, this was just what she needed after a long, hot day getting the lay of the land before she went off moth hunting tomorrow morning.

  Going out before dawn meant she’d see them when they were still active after a long night of flying and feeding.

  I can follow them back to their lairs and count their numbers, she thought, biting into another forkful of delicious steak. Find out whether they’re really down, like the ones in America are, and try to figure out why…

  She looked up, jerked out of her thoughts as the door of the pub suddenly swung open, and raucous male voices filled the air.

  Ah. It seems the bikers have arrived.

  These guys looked a lot more like sh
e would have expected – all long gray beards, leather vests and headbands. It seemed like bikers, just like small towns, were pretty much the same all over the world.

  She’d kind of been hoping she could relish her meal, but with the increased noise level in the bar Myrtle scooped up the rest of her steak and chewed it quickly. The waitress came and put her check down on the table, and Myrtle pulled out her travel wallet, sorting through the assortment of brightly-colored bills. That, at least, was something she wouldn’t have trouble with – the money came color-coded here.

  She hadn’t had a chance to get any coins yet, and, after dithering a moment or two, she put a blue ten-dollar bill down as the tip. Her grant money had covered the cost of everything else – she could afford to be a generous tipper with her own money.

  Myrtle had managed to sidle her way back toward the door when she heard the waitress’s voice, loud and brassy above the din, call out, “Oi, love! You forgot something!”

  Forgot something?

  Myrtle quickly glanced down at her possessions. Nope, she had everything – her bag, her water, her wallet…

  “Here, love.” The waitress appeared in front of her, the ten in her hand. “This is yours – I know you do things differently over there, but there’s no tips here unless you want to throw a few bucks in the jar at the front. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise they’re having a go – you send ’em here to me and old Barb’ll sort them out.”

  Myrtle blinked. “Oh – are you sure? That steak was really good –”

  “Sure as eggs, love,” Barb said, winking and pressing the bill into her hand. “You go spend this on a hair brush, all right?”

  Myrtle couldn’t help but laugh. “All right.”