Free His to Seduce by Elena Aitken Page A

he saw when he turned around.
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    “ W hat the hell is that ?” She left him standing behind her, ignoring the question on his lips, in his eyes. She needed space from him in order to think. She’d been clouded. Way too clouded. Luke had a way of getting up into her senses and distracting her from everything she needed to focus on.
    No more.
    Especially now.
    Chloe picked her way across the slick stones in the stream and climbed up the bank into the woods to investigate what had caught her eye.
    It hadn’t looked like much from the stream. But it had looked as if it might not belong in the forest. Chloe didn’t want it to be anything. She hoped it was nothing, but the closer she got to the flash of color that had caught her eye, the clearer it became that it was indeed something.
    Something that was definitely not going to be a good thing for Grizzly Ridge or Luke and his brothers.
    She kicked at the piece of green plastic that stuck out from the branches. Where it had been obviously covered up. And not well. Chloe grabbed a stick and used it to uncover the rest.
    Her heart skipped, and not in the good, heart fluttering way it had skipped earlier when she’d been in Luke’s arms. This was more of a crap-this-is going-to-change-everything and not in a good way type of flutter.
    “What the hell is that?” She didn’t turn around, but could feel Luke’s strong presence directly behind her. She hated to admit it, but her body thrilled with the proximity.
    She forced herself to focus. “It looks like garbage to me, Luke. An unlawful dumping ground if I ever saw one.” She pushed herself up, careful not to bump into Luke, who was still so close, and walked farther into the woods, following the trail that clearly looked as if it led to more garbage.
    “This is bullshit.” Luke followed her, kicking at the ground as he went. “This isn’t ours. We didn’t put it here.”
    Chloe ignored him and pulled her camera out of her side bag.
    “Don’t take pictures.” She dodged to the side as Luke lunged for her camera. “This is bullshit. I told you we didn’t put it here.”
    “Luke, I have to.” Chloe forced herself to stay calm in the face of Luke’s growing anger. “It’s my job.”
    “No.” His face was twisted in a snarl. “Your job is to investigate the truth.”
    She stood her ground, her chin lifted in the air, her hands firmly on her camera, her heart throbbing with loss.
    “Luke.” She spoke slowly but decisively so there would be no confusion. “The truth is, there is garbage here and it’s your land. My job is to investigate that connection.”
    “There’s no goddamn connection, Chloe. We didn’t put it here. It’s not ours.” His words were a snarl, and it wasn’t hard to see his animal was only just barely contained. She had plenty of experience with alpha types before, and Chloe knew enough to tread lightly. The only problem was knowing and doing were two very different things.
    “We’ll have to see,” she said.
    It was the wrong thing to say. Luke let out a roar that shook the trees around them and vibrated in her chest.
    Resolutely, she ignored him and once again pointed her camera at the evidence. She snapped a few pictures before he could try to grab her camera again and tucked it back in her bag. Chloe could hear him grumble and curse behind her, but she still didn’t turn to look at him. Nothing about what she was seeing made sense. Everything she’d already seen at Grizzly Ridge and with the Jackson brothers spoke to environmental consciousness of the highest level, but she couldn’t ignore what she was seeing. She just couldn’t. It was her job to investigate, and that meant that whatever she felt for Luke had to be put aside. Especially considering she wasn’t even sure what she felt for Luke.
    First things first. Chloe crouched down in front of one of the mounds. Using her stick, she poked through the pile.
    “There’s nothing to see , Chloe.”
    She ignored him