Justin (Fairplay Shifters Series Book 1) Read online

  Justin: FairPlay Shifters

  (A Paranormal Romance Story)

  Serena Meadows

  Copyright ©2018 by Serena Meadows - All rights reserved.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

  Contents

  Authors Note

  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

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Also By Serena Meadows

  About the Author

  Exclusive Offer

  AUTHORS NOTE

  FairPlay Shifter Series

  Book 1-Justin

  Book 2-Jake

  Book 3-Quinten

  Book 4-Steven

  Book 5-Dalton

  Book 6-Daniel

  You should know that Justin is the first book in the Fairplay Shifters romance series. Although each story can be read independently and all end with a HEA with no cliffhangers, to get the full experience of the series, you should really read them in order.

  Chapter One

  Annabelle couldn’t take her eyes off the scenery outside her window; they’d just dropped down into one of the most beautiful valleys she’d ever seen. Nothing they’d seen so far could compare to the sight that had greeted them when they came down off the pass. The contrast between the lush green grass of the valley floor and the blue of the mountains with their white, puffy clouds ringing the highest peaks took her breath away. She could tell that her sister was just as taken with the view because the car slowed to almost a crawl as she scanned the valley, making the cars behind them honk.

  Joslin pulled the car off the road as soon as she safely could, and they both got out without a word, too caught up in what they were seeing to speak. Looking across the valley, Annabelle could see a few ranches, complete with cattle, dotting the landscape. But if she turned just right, it was possible to believe that no one lived in this beautiful country, to see what it might have looked like before people came to tame it. She’d never felt this kind of affinity for a place before, but something about the valley had captured her, had reached a place inside her that no person or place had been able to before.

  “It’s beautiful,” her sister said, pointing to the mountains.

  “Look, you can tell that it’s raining up there, but the sun is shining too,” Annabelle said in a hushed voice.

  It only took a few minutes for the rain that had been up in the mountains to roll down to the valley, and all too soon raindrops drove them back into the car, but the feeling of awe hadn’t faded. Joslin got them back on the road, but neither spoke as they drove across the valley. The rain didn’t spoil the beauty of the land; if anything, it made it even prettier. When the sun began to set, it went down in a fiery blaze composed of the most brilliant reds she’d ever seen.

  As the last rays of sunshine faded, she saw a road sign for the next town. “Fairplay: now that sounds like the kind of place I’d like to live,” she said: the first words that had been spoken since they’d gotten back in the car.

  Her sister sighed in that way she had, “I thought we came on this trip so you could forget about everything back home.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. I won’t say another word,” Annabelle said with a wink so Joslin would know that she wasn’t mad.

  “Like that’s ever going to happen,” her sister said with a big smile. “Besides, you’d go crazy in a little town like that.”

  “Oh, I don’t know; I think I might be tired of the city,” Annabelle said, then cringed when the car began making a terrible thumping noise. “What’s that?”

  Joslin’s eyes got big, and she looked down at the dashboard as if the answer lay there, “I don’t know. I had the car checked before we left.”

  But it was clear that something was terribly wrong with the car; it began to slow down until they were moving at a snail’s pace. “We’re going to have to find a mechanic,” Annabelle said, her frustration clear in her voice.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” Joslin said, but deep down she knew that something big was wrong with the car.

  Luckily the outskirts of town came into view, and one of the first buildings was a garage. “See, no worries. We’ll just pull in here, and they’ll get us fixed up and back on the road,” Joslin said, relief in her voice.

  But it wasn’t quite that simple, “Sorry, ladies, it’s already late, and I’ve got dinner waiting for me at home,” the mechanic said, wiping his hands on a greasy rag.

  Annabelle and Joslin looked at each other, but Joslin was the one to say what they were both thinking. “So, we’re stuck here all night.”

  That evidently hadn’t occurred to the mechanic, “Oh, well…I…” He seemed at a loss for words, then he said, “I could give you a lift into town, you could get a room for the night, and first thing tomorrow I can take a look at your car.”

  They exchanged another look, silently communicating with each other as they’d done their entire lives. Neither felt any animosity from the man standing across from them; in fact, all they could feel was goodwill, so Annabelle said, “Thank you, that would be nice.”

  He dropped them at what he called the best hotel in town, which considering where they were was probably an accurate description. The furnishings and architecture were clearly from a different century, giving it the kind of charm that only came with age. When they walked up to the front desk, the girl behind the counter didn’t even look up from what she was doing on the computer.

  “Welcome to the Fairplay Hotel. How can I help you?” she asked, then looked up. “Oh, you’re twins, how fun.”

  Joslin and Annabelle exchanged one of their looks; they’d heard this so many times, neither bothered to comment. Instead, Annabelle said, “We need a room for the night. Our car broke down.”

  “Well, I only have the two suites on the third floor available, but you might like the governor’s suite; it has two bedrooms and a sitting area,” the girl said, then she pointed behind her to a collage of pictures in a frame behind the desk. “I do have to warn you that it’s haunted though; some people can’t make it the entire night in those rooms.”

  Annabelle groaned knowing that the second Joslin heard that, she’d want the room. “Oh, we’ll take it then,” Joslin said, looking around the hotel as she opened up her power.

  Within seconds, the spirits attached to the hotel began to appear, their forms floating around Joslin, and Annabelle knew that before the night was over, she’d have to quiet them with a spell or risk total chaos until they’d spent the energy Joslin had just given them. She elbowed Joslin in the ribs and shot her a dirty look; her sister had the good grace to look contrite, but she could see the smile hiding just under the surface.

  When they got to their rooms, Annabelle gave her sister a dirty look when she saw the spirits hovering there. “Why did you do that? This place is going to be wild tonight; you woke up every spirit in here,” she said, her annoyance obvious, then she walked to the doorway of o
ne of the bedrooms. “This room is yours; I’m not sleeping in there with him.”

  Joslin looked over her shoulder into the room and shrugged. “I’ll get rid of him, but that’s fine, you take the other room.”

  “Don’t be crossing them over; this isn’t our problem,” Annabelle said, taking her bag into the other bedroom which was spirit free and closing the door.

  ***Justin***

  Justin stopped at the tree line and sniffed the air; he knew that he was dangerously close to town, but his brother had hidden here before, and he suspected that he’d done so again. He’d found everyone else but Steven, who was still on the loose and he wasn’t about to give up until he found him. They’d been playing this ramped-up game of hide-and-seek since they were teenagers and keeping score all that time; he wasn’t about to lose his top ranking because his brother liked to break the rules.

  Keeping to the trees, he got as close to town as he dared and sniffed the air again, but instead of smelling his brother’s scent, he smelled something else, something intoxicating. He was old enough to know that he was smelling the scent of a woman, but what he didn’t understand was why it was having the effect on him that it was: why all he wanted to do was find her and mate with her. It was a deep and driving need that nearly propelled him into town, but he managed to catch himself just in time.

  He’d long ago sworn to live his life alone; losing the woman he loved more than anything in the world had almost been his undoing, had almost destroyed his life. The only thing that had saved him was the daughter she’d given her life for, leaving him with a little piece of her that he’d have forever. But he’d promised both himself and the universe that he’d never put someone he loved in jeopardy again. He’d been selfish, so sure that their love would protect her that he’d ignored all the warnings from his family and married her anyway, then gotten her pregnant.

  Sniffing the air again, he turned and loped back into the forest, no longer caring where his brother was. He had to get away from town, and the woman whose scent seemed to reach right into his soul, before he did something he’d be sorry for. The game had suddenly lost its excitement; now all he wanted to do was find his brother, finish the game, and go home where he’d be safe from the desire that had suddenly come to life inside him. Desire was nothing new to him, he was a man after all, but this desire was frightening, threatened to consume him with its intensity.

  He was a mile out of town before he dared to sniff the air again and was relieved when all he smelled was the forest, the creatures in it, and just the slightest hint of his brother. Following his brother’s scent, it didn’t take him long to find him crouched behind a boulder. He crouched and sprang at him, landing just a foot from Steven who sprang to his feet and rushed at Justin, snarling and bearing his teeth. Together, they rolled down the hill, fighting like they had when they were little until, with a crash, they landed in a rose bush, it’s sharp thorns pulling and tearing at their fur.

  The fight over, Justin shook his fur and used his teeth to pull an especially large thorn from his paw, then changed from the tawny mountain lion back into a human. “Got you,” he said, dancing around his brother who was still in the form of a big cat.

  His brother growled and changed form, just as their brothers came racing down the mountain. “You win again, Justin. I don’t know how you do it,” his brother James said when he’d changed back into his human form.

  “It’s not fair that you always win,” Paul said, a sour look on his face.

  “I’m the oldest; that’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Justin said, strutting around the clearing with his chest puffed out.

  There were three answering growls, and before Justin knew it, his brothers had changed again and jumped on him. It only took seconds for him to respond and turn back into a mountain lion, but they had the advantage: three against one. It wasn’t long before the fight turned into a wrestling match, teeth flashing in the moonlight, claws digging into to flesh, but a loud growl from the trees above them stopped the fight.

  Panting, the four of them looked to the trees to see their father standing on a rock in the moonlight. “That’s enough, boys; time to go home,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t think the four of you are ever going to grow up. Your mother is preparing dinner for us back at home. Let’s go.”

  Justin wanted to tell his father about the scent he’d picked up earlier, but he knew what his father would say, so he pushed it out of his mind and loped up the side of the mountain and fell into a run behind him. They had miles to go before they reached the ranch that was home to them all, plenty of time to erase the feeling from his mind, but as he ran, he realized that it wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d hoped. The memory of the feeling he’d gotten when the scent had wafted into his nostrils made desire blossom again, and he knew that he was in trouble, that his years of celibacy might be coming to an end whether he liked it or not.

  Chapter Two

  ***Annabelle***

  Annabelle and Joslin slept late the next morning; thanks to Joslin’s decision to awaken the spirits in the hotel, it was late before things finally quieted down. To Annabelle’s horror, three guests checked out in the middle of the night. Her sister still thought it was funny, but Annabelle never liked messing with the dead, preferred to cross them over rather than keeping them around like Joslin liked to do. It was one of only a handful of things that was different about them and one of the few times that Annabelle didn’t really understand her sister’s motivation.

  When Annabelle stepped out of the shower, she could hear her sister in her bedroom and decided that her call to the mechanic hadn’t gone as well as they’d hoped. She was proven correct when Joslin came bursting out of the bedroom. “It’s going to take three days to fix the car,” she said, flopping down in one of the chairs in the little sitting room.

  Annabelle groaned, “I was afraid of that,” she said, flopping down in the other chair.

  “He has to order the part, and that’s going to take two days, then a day to fix it,” Joslin said, then added, “I could speed things along a little.”

  Annabelle shook her head, “We swore that we wouldn’t use our magic on this trip unless absolutely necessary and you’ve broken that promise more than once. We’re going to wait for that part just like normal people.”

  Joslin stuck her tongue out at her sister and jumped to feet. “Fine, let’s go talk to the front desk and find out what they have to do in this town.”

  Annabelle shook her head; that was one thing about her sister: she never stayed upset for long. Grabbing her purse, she followed her out of the room and down the stairs to the front desk. When they got downstairs, the same girl from the night before was standing at the computer, but she looked exhausted, the dark circles under her eyes broadcasting a sleepless night. Joslin had the good grace to look a little guilty when she saw her and Annabelle promised herself that they’d do something nice for the girl before they left.

  “Good morning,” Annabelle said, then winced when the girl looked up at her. Clearly it wasn’t a good morning for the girl, so she added, “Looks like you didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  The girl snorted, “You could say that; it must have been a full moon or something because everyone was seeing spirits. I had to come in last night in the middle of the night and check three guests out. I love this place, but I don’t know if it’s worth it.”

  Annabelle shot Joslin a dirty look. “I bet it will be nice and quiet tonight,” Joslin said, then patted the girl on the arm.

  “I sure hope so; I need to get some sleep,” the girl said, then looked at them suspiciously. “Didn’t you hear all of the commotion?”

  “Nope, not a thing,” Joslin said, before Annabelle could answer.

  “You must be deep sleepers,” the girl said, shook her head, then asked, “What can I do for you today?”

  “It looks like we’re going to need to stay for a few days; they don’t have the right part to fix our car,” Anna
belle said, sliding her credit card across the counter. “We were hoping that you could help us find something to keep us busy while we’re waiting.”

  The girl perked up a little then bent down and started digging around under the reception desk. When she stood up, she had a handful of brochures. “Well, there’s a great museum just down the street; I love to go there, and I live here,” she said handing them the stack. “If you like horses, I could probably get you on a trail ride. I know someone from one of the outfitters in town, and I bet I could get them to pick you up.”

  Annabelle didn’t even hesitate; she’d always wanted to ride a horse. “I’d love to do that,” she said. “Sign me up.”

  “You’ve never ridden a horse in your life, and we don’t have any boots. Don’t you need boots to ride a horse?” Joslin asked, hopefully, clearly not pleased with the idea.

  “So, we’ll buy some boots.”

  “The horses are really docile; it’s perfect for beginning riders, and there’s a great store downtown that should have just what you need,” the girl said, picking up the phone. “I’ll book you for tomorrow.”

  Joslin groaned, “Are we really going to do this?”

  “Why not? We came on this trip to experience new things.”

  Joslin shrugged, knowing that her sister was right. “Fine, but breakfast first; something smells good,” she said, heading for the hotel restaurant.