If anyone had told me this morning I was going to spend the night in a run down barn with fucking Cooper Brady, I’d have stayed in bed, called in sick. But then again, someone like me didn’t get sick days. Groaning, I shifted uncomfortably under the thin horse blanket I’d covered myself with.
I should probably just shift, but the whole thing was 50 shades of fucked up as it was. There was no need to add another layer of awkwardness to his ordeal, or give Brady more fodder for his stupid file he kept on everyone he knew. No idea what he needed these for, but he had a memory like an elephant. Every tiny detail you ever told him wormed its way into his brain, and once it had settled there, it was there to stay. I usually didn’t mind much. I kept the important stuff for myself, and didn’t care if he recalled my shoe size, or height, or how I liked my burgers.
Yet shifting in front of him was different, especially seeing as I’d have to shift back at some point, and getting naked before Cooper Brady was entirely out of the question. And it wasn’t as though I could communicate with him in my other form to get him to turn around.
It was freezing, though. The horses added a bit of body heat, but not nearly enough to stop the bone deep cold that had seeped into and spread through me.
This was bullshit. I was going to freeze to death in a draughty barn, and the last face I saw would be Cooper fucking Brady. The fourth. That was important. Well, to him at least. He was all about family. His great-grandfather, the late Chester Brady, had emigrated from fuck know where in the UK about a hundred and fifty years ago, had staked his claim on a plot of land here in Plainford, and shaped the tiny settlement into what it was today. Bull’s Ridge, WY, a handful of ranches, a little shop, and even a place where you could get bog standard American food.
