4. Juan

4

JUAN

J uan Alessandro, jaguar shifter and soon-to-be technical analyst intern, was having a very bad day.

It was blistering hot out, one of those blue-skied July Midwest days that sweltered along at a hundred percent humidity. There were faint storm clouds at the horizon, promising evening rain, but teasingly out of reach. Sweat prickled at the collar of Juan's shirt, and his new gloves were uncomfortably stiff on his overheated fingers.

And his jaguar would not shut up in his head.

Mate mate mate mate mate mate mate!

Will you STOP? Juan begged. I am trying to prove that I am capable of detasseling corn.

Our mate is HERE. Why would we move on? Mate mate mate MATE mate.

The man who met him at the farm just past the little town of Green Valley looked at Juan like he'd rather hire a cockroach. "Kids these days don't want to work no more," he said disparagingly. "Comes down to hiring people from out of town to do a decent day's labor. "

Juan didn't want to work for the farmer any more than he seemed to want Juan for the job, and he didn't blame kids for wanting to spend their summer vacation basking in the sun and skinny-dipping in the local ponds rather than working for this sour-faced man. But Juan had a very limited window of opportunity to make enough for his semester's expenses before his unpaid internship in Madison started, and there weren't that many jobs that paid well and would hire someone for just a few days.

As much as he wanted to give a good impression and secure the work, Juan was honestly as distracted as his jaguar was, and he couldn't stop thinking about the woman at the hardware store in the tiny town of Green Valley he'd passed through the day before. He kept picturing her golden-brown hair, and the way she stood up from the display of rakes and turned to stare at him in slow motion, like a scene out of one of those awful beach soap operas.

She wasn't wearing a bikini, though it was hot enough for one. And instead of running (slow motion) into his arms where she clearly belonged, she stared at him like she'd just been doused in cold water before she turned away and fled out the open front door.

Our mate! Our mate! Juan's jaguar was usually pretty mellow. Sometimes he made snide comments about Jaun's taste in art or cooked food, but generally he was a steady, silent companion in his head. Now, he was like a percussion instrument in the hands of a child. Mate mate MATE mate mate!

Juan dashed after her and stopped at the door as he barely remembered that a stranger chasing a pretty woman down the street of a small town with shifter speed was bound to draw unwanted attention. There were some people on porches, and a greasy spoon across the street had windows with couples sitting in booths looking out .

He got one glimpse of her vanishing around a corner much faster than a human ought to be able to, and had to fight his jaguar's eagerness to follow her further.

She was a shifter, Juan could tell, so she must know, just like he did, that she was his mate.

So why did she run?

There wasn't anyone else in the store. Juan even went into the attached auto shop and leaned on the bell trying to get assistance.

He didn't have any small bills, so he put a twenty on the counter and took a pack of gum with his gloves, scrawling a note describing the items before he left. The door tinkled behind him, and Juan had looked wistfully in the direction that the woman had fled, then looked at his watch. He hadn't have time to follow her, if he even should.

"You speak English?"

Juan had to stare at the farmer a moment, because his jaguar was wailing non-stop in his ear. Our mate. We should be looking for her right now. She's ours. We've waited so long for this. Our perfect, precious…

Shut up! "English. Yes. I speak English."

The farmer didn't look convinced.

J uan showered at the dingy hotel before he finally gave in to his Jaguar's insistence and they returned to the scene of the crime.

It's not a crime, he reminded himself. He'd left money for the gloves, more than enough. If anything, he should be mad about not getting change.

But why had she run?

The drive back to Green Valley was longer than he remembered it being, and Juan had to keep his foot on the gas pedal carefully light.

The town was off the highway a ways, nestled in the namesake valley between farms and fallow fields. Forested hills protected the little town, and it had all the Midwest hallmarks: churches, playgrounds, cemeteries, a tiny main street with a hardware store, a fire station, a brick bank, and a little restaurant quaintly called Gran's Grits.

Juan had eyes only for the hardware store, and he pulled his car into the diagonal parking in front of it.

The woman wasn't at the counter.

But there was a man about the same age and build. Could he be her brother? He had similar Midwest features. His attention was clearly on whatever was happening at his feet behind the counter.

"Hi," Juan said, approaching cautiously. When he was close enough, he could see that there was a baby gate fencing in the back area, and inside was a bedraggled dog in a surgery cone and a pink cast being patted by a crouching toddler. Both of them were being very careful, the dog sitting with his tail wagging behind him and his tongue licking air, the toddler barely even touching him.

"Gentle," the man warned. His nametag said Dean and he felt like a shifter to Juan's extra senses. "Don't hurt the doggy." Dean looked up at Juan wryly. "It was easier than trying to keep them separated."

Juan laughed understandingly.

The dog whined and came to the gate to greet Juan. The toddler fell back on his butt and bounced immediately up to follow.

Juan squatted to pet the eager dog and keep him from jumping up on the gate. "Easy, buddy," he said. If the dog was alarmed by Juan's jaguar, he gave no sign of it. Juan's jaguar, surprisingly, barely acknowledged the dog, all of his focus on the little boy behind him.

The toddler caught up with the dog, patting him harder. "Mine! My doggy!"

"Maybe," Dean cautioned. He looked up at Juan. "Might have made a tactical error introducing them this soon."

"Poor guy," Juan said. The dog looked like it had been through a thresher, covered in raw stitches and shaved spots. "He'll probably be pretty cute once he's filled out a little and bathed."

"That's on the to-do list. It probably would have been easier last night while he was still half-drugged from the surgery, but the vet said to wait 24 hours. Aaron, be gentle."

Juan's jaguar was still weirdly focused on the little boy, who was trying to very gently hug the dog.

"I'm AARON," the boy announced to Juan.

"Hi, Aaron," Juan said, offering a hand to shake out of habit. "I'm Juan."

"Shake hans!" Aaron said in delight, forgetting the dog for the moment. "Shake, shake, shake!"

The dog sat and tried to offer a front paw to shake, trying each of them in turn, but his casted leg wouldn't bend, and when he leaned on it to offer the other, he fell over on his side. Aaron scrambled to try to help him up again. "Good doggy! Good doggy! Gentle!" The dog's tail hadn't stopped wagging for a second.

"You new in town?" Dean said, a little too casually.

"Just passing through," Juan said, standing again. "Got some temporary work out of Alder Creek detasseling corn before I head back to Milwaukee."

"Anderssen?" Dean guessed. "Fields out on the two-oh with the blue farmhouse? "

"That's the one." Juan struggled for a moment, trying to figure out how to tastefully bring up the reason he'd come in. "I bought a pair of gloves here last night. Sort of. I left money, because the girl— woman —who was here left abruptly. I was wondering who she was."

Dean's whole demeanor changed on a dime. The dog and the boy might as well not have existed, all of his attention was on Juan now, and it wasn't friendly attention, not even slightly.

Was he mad because Juan hadn't waited for someone to sell him gloves? Had his question about the woman been disrespectful? Maybe this guy was her big brother and he'd unwittingly crossed some kind of small town line.

"You're him. "

Juan gave a short, confused laugh. "I guess?" His money was on brother. Someone that his mate would confide in, anyway.

Dean's face did a whole lot of things that Juan couldn't identify and settled into a scowl. "Deirdre is my wife," he said shortly. "This is our son ."

Kitten! Juan's jaguar said in delight.

Juan stepped back, trying to make sense of what Dean was saying around the joy of knowing Deirdre's name. Deirdre… Deirdre . It was the most beautiful name he'd ever heard. And she was married. Married and a mom . That couldn't happen, could it? Mates were perfectly made for each other; they didn't come with complications like existing marriages and families.

He stared at Dean in horror, speechless with dismay, and Dean stared intensely back.

Neither the dog nor the boy seemed the slightest bit bothered by their standoff. The dog got briefly up before rolling over on his side, and Aaron tumbled down after him .

This finished it, then, Juan thought. The woman had been a fleeting moment of hope, and now he knew what a dead end it was. "I'm…sorry," he said, though he wasn't sure what he was apologizing for. Nothing had happened. Nothing except the complete shift of his world understanding. Nothing except a heartbreak so keen that he didn't know how to go on living. "I'll go."

What? No, stay with the cub! Our cub! Find our mate!

It was a fight for his limbs to turn away.

"Wait."

Juan turned back as Dean opened the register.

"You have change. For the gloves."

"I got gum, too," Juan said numbly. He didn't want change. He wanted Deirdre. And he couldn't have her, so what was the point of anything else?

"One twenty-nine for the gum. Seven eighty-nine for the gloves." Dean's voice was short and clipped, like he was making polite conversation around the animal in his head.

"Sure."

Dean slapped the change onto the counter and slammed the drawer closed. "Sorry."

"Sorry," Juan echoed, but he wasn't sure what either of them was apologizing for.

"Yeah."

Juan felt obligated to say, "Look, you don't have to worry. I won't be back again. Don't even tell her we talked. I'm not— I couldn't— I won't!"

Dean was unhelpfully silent.

Juan stared at the money on the counter.

He didn't want the money. He wanted Deirdre . And she was this man's wife, he reminded himself. "I won't be back," he said in despair, and he left the change to turn on his heel and stalk out before he could throw himself over the counter and…what? Fight with a man who had done no thing wrong? Turn into some kind of possessive wild jerk? Over a woman who wasn't his?

Ours , his jaguar said confidently.

But Juan knew better.