He arched an eyebrow toward the broken-down jeep. Damn supercilious bastard.
Zoe glared. “Just because I can’t repair a busted radiator doesn’t mean I’m a damsel in distress. I could kick your ass any day of the week, Tyler Minor.” She put a rumble of a growl into the words, a challenge for supremacy and dominance. Just try to take me on, big boy.
The challenge caught something primitive and instinctive inside him. He stepped forward, looming over her, trying to use his size to intimidate her. At five ten in her bare feet, Zoe wasn’t the kind of girl who was easy to loom over, but when a man could manage it, it never failed to make her toes curl.
Tyler didn’t just manage it. Tyler loomed like an angry Greek god. Mouthwatering and imposing all at once.
His eyes held hers and her heart began to pound. Do it. Push back. Touch me. Zoe swayed forward.
And Tyler shut off.
Just like that. Between one heartbeat and the next, Tyler went from looming Greek god to aloof and disinterested. His gaze slid away from her, focusing on some vague point behind her left shoulder for a moment before he turned away.
“Wait over there until I have the jeep on the hitch.” He pointed to a dusty patch of grass off the side of the road without looking back at her or breaking stride as he walked back to the tow truck.
Frustration built in her throat, but she managed to keep from screaming. Or roaring her rage. She’d had a lot of practice.
Running away again. In the last year, Zoe had seen Tyler in retreat more than any other sight. Her gaze rolled over the tense muscles in his wide shoulders down to the lean hips and that God-almighty-gorgeous ass. She couldn’t seem to stop scaring him off, which sucked a little more every day.
But at least the view was nice.
Chapter Two
Tyler beat a strategic retreat back to his truck. Backing down wasn’t in his nature, but it was becoming a habit around Zoe. It was either that or pin her against the jeep and show her who was boss. Kiss her until she couldn’t remember her own name, screw her until all she could say was his—which was completely out of the question. The Alpha’s only sister was not someone you fucked around with, and the absolute last thing Tyler needed right now was another commitment, another goddamn responsibility.
So he walked away. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
Because it was the smart choice. The responsible choice. The only choice that wouldn’t completely fuck up the rest of his life.
He just had to remind himself of that whenever she was standing there in front of him with her eyes flashing with equal parts lust and anger. She looked like a walking invitation to all his best fantasies, but she might as well have had a neon flashing Hands Off sign on her forehead.
So Tyler kept his hands off and focused on the parts of his life he could get a grip on. Cars. Engines never made him feel like he’d jumped off a cliff without a parachute.
He drove the tow truck in front of the dead jeep and jumped out to winch it up onto the flatbed. He could feel Zoe watching him. No surprise there. He could never be around her without being excruciatingly aware of her presence. He couldn’t control that, but he could control his response to her. So he didn’t respond. He ignored her—as much as anyone could ignore someone who smelled like heaven on a stick—and put his back into cranking the old-fashioned flatbed down at an angle so he could drag the jeep up onto it.
But Zoe, being Zoe, couldn’t let herself be ignored for long.
“You know, they have these new handy-dandy mechanical thingies. You just hit a button and zip.” She snapped her fingers. “It tilts like magic.”
“This one works fine.” He grunted, leaning his weight into it.
She muttered something that sounded a lot like “ornery son of a bitch” and scuffed her boot in the dirt, kicking up a mini-tornado.
He didn’t bother to explain that he would rather put in the effort to keep up something with some history behind it working than buy a brand-new piece of crap that was just going to be outdated in a few weeks anyway. Too many things worth keeping got discarded when something bright and shiny and new came along. He enjoyed babying the old jeeps on the ranch until they purred for him.
But if Zoe thought he was a contrary SOB, that was simpler for both of them, so he let her think it. She paced restlessly at his side and he pretended not to notice the way the tip of her long blonde ponytail flicked against the small of her back with each step, guiding his eye down to the twitch of her ass.
“You really aren’t pissed at Michael? Not even a little?”
Tyler forced himself not to react visibly. Pissed couldn’t hold a candle to what he’d felt when Michael told him about going half-furry in public.
After twenty years of being the responsible older brother, raising his siblings, living his life for their happiness and their safety, avoiding unnecessary chances and sacrificing his own opportunities so they would have more…after twenty goddamn years, Tyler had been a heartbeat away from seeing all four of them settled—happy and safe. A whisper away from leaving the pride and taking off on his own—who knew for how long, but any time he had would be his and his alone. No responsibilities. No obligations. Responsible for no one’s happiness but his own.
Then Michael half-shifted in front of a bar full of witnesses.
Tyler had tried rationalization. Everyone was drunk on a Friday night—they wouldn’t know what they’d seen. He hadn’t fully shifted—lots of special-effects guys could make claws and fur seem to sprout on people’s hands, and who didn’t have a pair of fake fangs these days?
But no matter how he tried to rationalize it, the truth remained. The pride was at risk. And Tyler couldn’t leave his siblings—the only family he had left—until he knew they would all be safe.
So he was trapped. Again.
To say he’d been pissed at Michael… It was more accurate to say he’d wanted to shred his baby brother’s hide.
But there was no way in hell he was telling Zoe that.
Trust her to ask what everyone else was too tactful to say. Trust Zoe to shove her nose in where it had no business. The woman had no goddamn sense of boundaries whatsoever.
His anger with Michael was none of her business. It didn’t affect her or the pride or anyone other than himself. The pointless frustration boiled in his gut, but he refused to give it an outlet. He was a lion, not a goddamn dog. He didn’t howl at the moon over what might have been.
Life was one shitstorm after another, but there was no changing it, so you sucked it up and played the hand you got dealt with a fucking smile on your face.
Tyler kept his hands working steadily and didn’t so much as flinch when her question prodded the embers of frustration burning in his gut. “No,” he said flatly, working the winch up higher.
She inched closer, hovering right over his shoulder. “It was gonna come out eventually anyway, right?” She swayed from foot to foot, the constant motion tugging at his peripheral vision as he locked the jeep in place and cranked the flatbed level. “If not Michael, someone else would have been seen. And it’s not like he could help it. And who knows, it might be a good thing in the long run, right? If we weren’t trying to hide what we are from doctors and scientists, they might be able to help fix whatever imbalance keeps Michael from being able to control his shifting. Landon needs to get his head out of his ass and treat this like the opportunity it is.”
Tyler grunted and steered her toward the cab of the truck, careful not to touch her. Platonic touch was traded casually in the pride, but he always avoided putting his hands on Zoe, never entirely certain he would be able to get them off her again if he gave in to the temptation of her smooth, golden skin.