Not that she was going along with it.
She pulled aside the heavy, pale-blue velvet drapes and the matching silky sheers, her wolf senses allowing her night vision so that she didn’t have to turn on the lamp. She peered into the forest and actually could see, as if the woods were merely cloaked in shadows. Chilling the air further on this cold night, a stiff breeze tugged the branches, making them dance to its tune.
Then she saw him, the wolf from her visions, stepping lightly out of the woods, watching her, and catching her eye. Her lips parted in surprise, and she took a shuddering breath. Who was he? She still didn’t know all of Darien’s people in their wolf forms. Someone who was guarding the house? Watching that she didn’t leave in a crazy attempt to run away and start her life anew without Darien’s intervention? That would be plain ludicrous. She could never manage on her own, nor did she want to live that way.
Because of the wolf’s posture—his ears perked, his head lifting even higher—he had to be an alpha. It wasn’t one of Darien’s brothers. Someone from another pack then? Someone who wanted to fight Darien for leadership? He’d have to battle Darien’s brothers also. Jake and Tom would never allow some outsider to take over the pack.
The lone wolf’s gaze settled lower, studying the way she was dressed. Could he see well enough from that distance to note that her nipples had grown hard against the silky gown in the chilly air? Observing a wolf and realizing it was probably a werewolf, who would have a man’s desires even in wolf form, seemed surreal.
His gaze returned to hers.
Somehow, she was tied inexplicably to him, although the hazy visions weren’t clear enough to tell her how. She didn’t feel any apprehension, nor fear. He was safe, she thought.
Taking matters in hand, she would find out just who he was and, if she could, why he was here. She yanked the drapes closed, then with as much wolf care as she could manage, she slid a drawer open, hoping not to alert Lelandi, who was sleeping in the master bedroom down the hall.
Carol often got herself into trouble because of everyone’s heightened sense of hearing. She kept thinking they could foresee things as she did. Not at all. They were just very good at eavesdropping to spy on what she was up to. Not in a mean way, of course. But to protect her and themselves.
Intending to find out who the stranger in the wolf coat was, she yanked out a sweater and a pair of jeans and began to dress. If she could get close enough, she would be able to smell and recognize him if she ran into him later in his human form.
She hated how everyone watched her every move. She felt as though she lived in a glass exam room where everything she did or said was monitored. But what was said behind closed doors rattled her even more. She was one of them, but not.
Yet—she tilted her chin up a hair as she left her room and then crept down the stairs with the utmost caution—she wasn’t about to lose the person she had been before the change. She smiled as she got to the bottom of the stairs without signaling Lelandi that she was up after retiring to bed early and was planning an adventure she was certain none of them would approve. Now she only had to cross the living room to the back door and hopefully unlock, open, and close it without drawing attention.
The house was quiet, Lelandi also having retired unusually early to bed. Darien and his brothers were working late at the leather-goods factory as usual, so for once Carol wasn’t being monitored closely. Because she’d been so tired from her nursing shift and unable to sleep when she had the chance, no one expected her to leave her bedroom before daybreak.
Slowly, she twisted the handle on the door to the back patio. Without anyone’s permission or supervision, she’d be free for a few precious minutes and prove she could manage her own life without disastrous consequences.
Disgruntled with himself for slinking through Darien’s forest as a wolf so he could watch the house for any sign of Carol Wood, Chester Ryan McKinley hated his obsession. Even now when his P.I. practice had taken a back burner to his position as mayor and pack leader of Green Valley, he couldn’t give up thinking about Carol, whom he’d met five months earlier while investigating a murder case involving Darien’s pack. Ryan had found a lot of evidence against the murderer, but Carol’s testimony had solicited the confession and the truth of the matter.
Long-legged and stacked, with hair the color of the golden sun and eyes as deep and mysterious as a shadowed blue lake, she had often worn a troubled expression during the investigation. Most likely due to the mess she’d gotten herself into as a human. The fact she’d managed to get herself into such a predicament bothered him more than he liked to consider. As was his rescuing nature, he’d wanted to save her from her plight, ensure she didn’t become one of his kind, and shield her from what they were.
But how could he have? She’d recognized his kind were lupus garous through strange visions, or so she had said. There had been no way to change events. During an ensuing fight between gray and red lupus garou packs, a red had bitten her and turned her. Ryan sure the hell wished he’d been protecting her.
Carol had been an innocent, unprepared for what would happen and unable to fight back. He imagined she’d never before witnessed wolf combat, which for a human had to have been extremely unnerving. Although every ounce of logic he possessed told him that people couldn’t foresee the future, something about her—maybe her sincerity, the fear she’d exhibited, or the notion that she couldn’t have learned all that she had through any other means—chiseled away at his wall of doubt.
Most of all, he admired her for her fortitude and dependability. She hadn’t panicked or fought against her fate. Now he was sure Darien would be pushing for her to take a mate. For life… that’s how they mated. That she would need one bothered him more than he liked to admit. Those who were born lupus garous could do with or without having a mate. Their choice. But a newly turned lupus garou? Allowing a new werewolf too much freedom was too dangerous.
The drapes suddenly were thrust aside in the guestroom Lelandi had once used. And there, standing in the window in a diaphanous gown of pale blue silk, the blonde pondered the woods. Almost as if she knew he was there watching for her. Which sent an unexpected surge of feral desire through his bloodstream. What was wrong with him that she had such an effect on him?
Her appearance in the gown at this early evening hour surprised him. Had she worked a long shift at the hospital?
The lovely rounded form of her breasts and nipples, peaked in anticipation of a lover’s touch in the nearly see-through gown, became the focus of his attention. Hell. Not intending to enjoy the sight of her as a voyeur would nor to give into his wolfish yearnings, he stepped forward so she could witness she was not alone. He meant to encourage her to close the drapes and return to bed, to warn her that the wolves in these woods were much more than just wolves. They were also men, like any of his kind, with earthly desires that needed to be sated.
Instead of closing the curtains, she challenged him with those eyes of hers. What had caught his attention about the woman, even during the investigation, were her classically attractive facial features—the high cheekbones and the perfect skin, framed by golden hair, and the large, striking blue eyes that could swallow a man whole. When she had spoken, full kissable lips had captured his attention more than once. She wasn’t movie-star gorgeous, having instead the wholesome, girl-next-door look, but that appealed to him even more.
She frowned at him and then yanked the drapes closed. Good. She’d finally come to her senses.
He couldn’t let go of the notion that the nurse thought she had the ability to make psychic predictions. It was the principle of the thing, he told himself. He intended to prove to himself, and to her, that she had come by her information about the murder through means other than some form of sixth sense. Either she had subconsciously learned the truth, or she had meddled in the investigation and was unwilling to tell about it.
Yet something deeper plagued him about the woman. Some elusive feeling that she could be in trouble. She could be trouble—that was more like it. Any newly turned wolf certainly could be that.
He tried to tell himself his being here wasn’t about anything other than resolving the doubts that plagued him; although… something else bothered him, and he just couldn’t put his finger on what.
Ears perked, he sat on his haunches, unable to take his gaze off her window and thinking of her returning to bed and then buried under her blankets. The unsolicited wish that he could be with her, snuggling and heating her up, flashed through his brain. Hell, he didn’t need to be sidetracked anymore than he already was.
Despite the case having been solved, and him having no real reason to come back to Silver Town, Ryan was attending the spring festival the next morning to learn more about Darien’s celebrations. Like he’d done before, Ryan would take the information back to his own people who wanted something of what Darien and his people had—a town run by the werewolf kind.
But Darien had only reluctantly allowed Ryan to investigate as an outsider to discover the murderer in the pack. He was sure Darien wouldn’t favor seeing him again under the circumstances, not when Ryan intended to question Carol further about her visions.
Darien sure wouldn’t approve of Ryan lurking about his woodland estate early in the evening. Especially when Ryan didn’t have one good reason for being near Darien’s house like this, no matter how much he tried to convince himself he did.
A click on a backdoor lock got Ryan’s attention, and he quickly rose and backed into the woods to keep Darien or his people from seeing him. The door opened. Ryan’s jaw dropped.
Little Miss Nightingale stepped out of the house onto the flagstone patio, peering in his direction. Not dressed warmly enough for the out-of-doors this evening, she wore a robin’s egg blue tam that was perched on top of her head, a matching fluffy sweater that caressed her perky round breasts, pale blue jeans that showcased her shapely legs, and a pair of fuzzy blue slippers that made her feet look twice their size.
He raised his brows. Hell. She had no business coming out into the night looking the way she did—soft and cuddly and vulnerable—with no way to defend herself in the event someone dangerous was lurking about. What had she intended to do? Search for him? Ask him his business?