“Not yet. But maybe you’re beginning to believe me.” Carol studied Lelandi’s petite frame as she walked down the stairs, wondering how long it would be before she began to show. Soon, she imagined, with triplets on the way.
“Did you tell Darien about the babies?” Then it dawned on Carol: maybe that’s why Lelandi was cautious about Carol’s warning visions. Lelandi had more than herself to think of now.
“He guessed before we had the games. He wasn’t happy that I had tried to keep it secret from him. He’d worried that if someone had tackled me, I might have been hurt. Or the babies would have been. So he told all the guys in a special meeting that if they as much as made a hint of a move in my direction, he’d oust them from the pack. That’s why he didn’t have the tug-of-war game. Afraid I’d want to participate and might injure myself.”
Carol had suspected as much.
Lelandi glanced back at her. “During the game, I figured everyone would be afraid of touching me because I’m Darien’s mate. I didn’t know that he’d warned them away.” Then she gave Carol another award-winning smile. “Alphas are like that.” She turned around and headed across the great room as Carol hurried to catch up. “I imagine Ryan will be the same.”
“He doesn’t believe in my second sight.” Carol shrugged. “Things wouldn’t work out between us.” Then she frowned. “Who else knows that Ryan slept with me last night?”
“I imagine at least half of the pack. Maybe more. Tom was pretty incensed about it. When he talked to Jake, he didn’t get the support he wanted, so he spoke to Darien and Sam. Sam told Silva, and you know how that goes. She means well, though. She wanted to warn the wolves of our pack that if they desired having you for a mate, they’d better do something about it. If Ryan wants you, same thing. He’d better stop resting on his laurels.”
Incredulously, Carol shook her head.
“I’m serious.” Lelandi pointed to the sunroom. “You have a dozen glass or ceramic vases, brass pots, and baskets filled with flowers. Rosie, at the flower shop? She called and gave me a list of names. Silva wanted to know who hadn’t sent you flowers and wangled it out of her.”
Carol sighed. “Isn’t anything sacred?”
“Rarely, in a pack. You know who didn’t send you flowers?”
“Tom, Jake, and Ryan.”
“Two of the three did. I have to tell you, I was pretty darned amused.”
Carol pulled Lelandi to a stop outside the kitchen where the men’s conversation had died. She’d made out Darien and his brothers, Ryan, Sam, and even that lame Mervin talking in the room before they heard Lelandi and Carol’s conversation.
Lelandi’s expression brightened. “Everyone but Ryan sent you flowers. Sure sign he’s in love. Darien did the same with me when I was injured.”
Ryan and everyone else in the kitchen had to have heard what was said. Every inch of Carol’s skin heated with mortification. But then she concentrated not on who hadn’t given her flowers—she figured Ryan wasn’t a romantic—but who had… Tom and Jake.
Lelandi leaned over and whispered to Carol, “Jake didn’t give me flowers, either, when everyone else did. I figured he was too cheap.” She straightened. “So there might be something to it, you think?”
Lelandi gave her a conspiratorial wink, and Carol realized Lelandi was doing her matchmaking business with her, just as she was always doing with Silva and Sam.
But what if Ryan and she were already a match? Or maybe this was just a test on his part. See if the female wolf is right for the alpha male leader. She was reminded once again that she really didn’t understand this werewolf business as much as she needed to, if she was going to make the right decisions from now on. With her head held high and her stomach flittering with unwanted jitters, she walked into the kitchen.
Ryan instantly caught her eye, and as hot as her face was, she had to have flushed crimson.
Chapter 14
WELL, THAT WAS ONE MESSED-UP OPERATION, NORTH thought to himself as he and two of his men stood in the forest miles from Silver Town, trying to come up with an alternative plan.
“Hell, North. You said that it would be a piece of cake. That no one would even miss the red. Shows what you know.” Galahad, so named because he thought of himself as a knight who had been concerned about their pack’s direction while Bruin had run it, motioned to the ground and a rough-hewn map he was drawing in the soil. “Here’s the new plan. We grab her at the hospital. When she’s in the break room. Or when she’s coming or going. Maybe when she’s in with a patient.”
North shook his head. “Miller won’t like it.”
“Hell, I don’t trust him. He’s renovated the basement of that old place, turned it into his own private quarters, lab and all, and I swear it’s like a bunker. No telling what all he’s doing down in his lab with all that bioengineering crap. He’s quiet and thoughtful, too thoughtful. Something’s going on in that mind of his. He might be a genius, but I swear he’s a borderline nutcase, too.” Galahad gave North a hard look, emphasizing his dislike of Miller.
“One of us can be a patient,” Hank said. He was Galahad’s brother, a nice enough red but a little too preoccupied with computer role-playing games for North’s liking. Hank seemed to have missed the whole point of Galahad’s tirade. Or maybe it was that they’d heard it before, and Hank didn’t believe anything was wrong with Miller then, or now.
“If we wear the hunter’s scent, no one would be the wiser. As long as Lelandi doesn’t show up at the hospital and spot any of us. She’s the only one who knows us from the pack,” Hank added.
Galahad pointed a stick at North. “He was in the house when the fight was going on. Darien and others in his pack may very well recognize him. But the rest of us…” He shrugged. “We weren’t there, and as long as they can’t make us out to be reds, we could pull it off.”
North didn’t like it. The whole thing had been his plan—and it would have worked if that damned gray pack leader from Green Valley, McKinley, hadn’t spied Hank snooping around the forest surrounding Darien’s home. Now North was left out of the whole deal. “I don’t want Carol Wood hurt.”
Hank grinned at Galahad. “I told you he wants her for his own.” Then he scowled. “You shouldn’t have dropped her and left her for the grays.”
North gave him a look like he’d better watch his words. No one was exactly the pack leader yet. North wanted to be, but he was still butting heads with his cousin Connor. Because of that, no one in their newly formed pack took North as seriously as he thought they should. Then again, he suspected, the bioengineer in their renegade group of werewolves had some loftier plans of his own in mind.
Miller Redford liked to work behind the scenes. North felt as though the rest of the bachelor males would take all the risk, and then Miller would step out of his lab bunker and end up with the prize and maybe even the pack. He was sneaky and smart. He didn’t outwardly act as though he were the take-charge type, sticking more to his lab and his scientific studies. But Miller had a way of smiling and shifting his eyes when North questioned his intentions that made North leery.
“She’s a red, turned by my cousin, and since Connor is sick and out of the picture for now, it’s up to me to bring her home,” North said to Hank and his brother. “She belongs to us. As far as what happened? Hell, they were catching up to me. And would have if I hadn’t left her behind. I doubt they would have gone easy on me after we took Carol the way we did.”
Galahad poked his stick at the square drawn into the dirt that represented the hospital. “Hank’s right. Admit it, North. You want her. But she has to be agreeable. Any of us,” he said, motioning with a sweep of his stick, “might turn her head. So it’s up to the little lady.”
“She won’t agree to it.” Hank sat down on his haunches. “The grays already have brainwashed her about staying with them. Look at Lelandi. That Darien Silver did the same thing to her.”
North glanced in the direction of Silver Town. “Bruin and his two brothers were the reason for Lelandi leaving our pack. We should have killed the three of them when we had the chance.”
“That was the thing. We never had the chance. Hell, even your cousin who died was in thick with them.” Galahad slapped North on the shoulder. “What’s done is done. If we could have, we would have eliminated our leaders and then brought her home. But now?” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “The nine of us have a pact. Start anew. The three of us need mates. Carol Wood’s a red. And unmated.”
“What about the two women we paid off to attend their gathering?” Hank asked.
“They’re grays, and except for an interest in our money, that was it. We need Carol Wood. She belongs to us.” North looked back in the direction of Silver Town. “My cousin and the rest of us need her, and hopefully, soon she’ll have a solution to our problem. We just can’t let Miller know what we have in mind when we get hold of her.”
Carol and Lelandi joined Darien and his brothers, Sam, Ryan, and Mervin for a bite of breakfast. The men appeared to have finished theirs already, with dirty plates remaining, but they were all sipping fresh cups of coffee. The worst thing was that Carol and Ryan’s gaze instantly caught—and held—and she knew everyone was watching their actions. Which made it even worse when her skin flushed with heat as if she’d just stepped into a sauna.
Ryan looked like he felt her pain, yet he wouldn’t release her gaze, as if he wanted her to know he felt no remorse for what had occurred between them. She didn’t either, except that she had had an audience as witnesses, and she was certain she had given Ryan and her activities away.
She hurried over to the teakettle and heated water for a cup of tea.
“You’ve had a traumatic experience and need to stay here with… that cat of yours,” Darien said grudgingly, as she toasted a half a bagel.