She’d been thrilled with the box, but she’d left it on a shelf in the spare bedroom at her grandparents’ house because she’d been afraid her brother, Pete, would try to mess with it if she took it back to Arizona. The box was still there, and she and Grandpa Earl had joked about it just the other day.
She glanced at Roarke, whose blush was fading. She’d thought that blush was cute. “Would you like to see the pictures, so that you know I’m not bluffing?”
“Oh, I know you’re not bluffing. But yes, I’d like to see them.”
Opening her purse, she pulled out a five-by-seven manila envelope and passed it across the console. “I printed them last night after Grandpa Earl was asleep. I really don’t want him to know about this. If he realized that you were . . . different, he’d never let me go with you.”
Roarke unfastened the envelope’s metal clasp. “He wouldn’t have let you meet me for lunch, either, I’ll bet.”
“Not without him.”
He glanced at her. “You did take quite a chance, meeting me today.”
Her pulse quickened. It had seemed like a grand adventure when she’d planned coming here, but maybe she had been a little naive, a little foolhardy. Cars came and went in the garage, but would anyone hear her if she yelled for help? Would anyone respond?
Roarke pulled out the pictures and glanced at the first few, which were of him fully clothed. Then he came to one of him in his birthday suit. He flipped through the rest quickly and shoved them back in the envelope.
Then he sighed. “Yes, I’ll be taking you with me.”
But now she wasn’t so sure she wanted to go. She’d be all alone out there in the woods . . . with a werewolf. What had she been thinking?
“This whole situation is unfortunate,” he continued, “but I’m going to do my best to see you through it safely. Please don’t ask too many questions along the way, because if I give you the answers, then—”
“Then you’ll have to kill me?” She said it lightly, trying to make it into a joke, but still her chest tightened with fear. She’d thought she was so smart; yet if Roarke didn’t want anyone to know he was a werewolf, he had one way to guarantee that she wouldn’t tell.
But his expression softened. “Abby, it’s not your fault that you saw me shift. It’s mine. Because of that . . .” He paused and when he spoke again, his tone was resolute. “Because of that, I will protect you with my life.”
That knocked the breath right out of her. Her hand to her chest, she struggled for air. “You . . . sound as if that might be necessary.”
“Not if we’re careful. I don’t want to frighten you, but you’ve stumbled into something you don’t understand.”
“Then I need to understand.”
He shook his head. “The less you know, the better. Your best bet is to destroy these pictures, wipe that flash drive clean, and stay out of the woods while I take care of business.”
“Unless you have one of those gizmos from Men in Black that wipes out my memory, I just can’t do that. I’d feel that I’d let down Grandpa Earl.”
“That was a handy little item Tommy Lee Jones had.” Roarke gave her a wry smile. “Believe me, if I had one, I would have used it on you by now.”
“Lucky for you I can be trusted not to blab.”
His gaze intensified. “Everything depends on that, Abby.”
In for a penny, in for a pound. She’d come this far, so she might as well see this through. “But in return for not blabbing, you have to take me on your Sasquatch hunt.”
“Looks like I do.”
“Then let’s get going.” She reached for the door handle. “We could make some progress this afternoon. Where should we meet?”
“At Dooley’s General Store. I want to accept your grandfather’s offer of camping supplies so we can stay out there. That would increase the chance of finding the Sasquatch pair and decrease the chance that the Gentrys will know you’re with me.”
“You don’t want them to know?”
“I think it’s better if they don’t. They’d think I was fraternizing with the enemy by taking Earl’s granddaughter along on a Sasquatch hunt.”
“Sure. Okay.” She squashed the uneasy feeling in her tummy. Better not to think about the fact that she’d just agreed to spend at least one night in the woods with a werewolf. “Small matter, but do you . . . ah . . . shift every night? I mean, it’s okay if you do. I’m totally cool with that. Don’t worry about me freaking out or anything, but it might be good for me to know what—”
“I only shift when I choose to.”
“Oh.” What a surreal discussion. “So that whole full moon thing is not an issue?”
“Not anymore. We’ve—I’ve evolved to the point where the phase of the moon or time of day doesn’t matter.”
“Good to know.” But she’d caught his little slip with the we part of that sentence. He wasn’t the only werewolf in the world.
“So in other words, I’m in full control of my shift, so you don’t have to worry about . . .” He smiled. “Spontaneous fur.”
“I do believe you just made a joke.” She lowered her voice. “A werewolf joke.”
“You were looking a little tense.”
“I think that’s perfectly understandable, under the circumstances, don’t you?”
“Yes. In fact, I think you’re handling this amazingly well.”
“Thank you. I do have one question.” A car with the sound system blaring drove past and she waited until the noise died down. “Let’s say we’re out in the woods, and you feel the need to shift. And then let’s say you bite me, either by accident or on purpose.”
“I won’t, either by accident or on purpose.”
“Pretend that you did, for the sake of argument. Would I become one of your kind?”
“No. That’s a myth.”
“Yes, but you’re a myth. If you’re real, then anything is possible, including the stories about bites turning the human into . . . you know. Those stories must be based on something.”
“They’re based on fear and superstition.”
“So if you don’t make new werewolves by biting people, then how do you become one?”
“Born that way.”
She knew a little something about genetics. If Roarke had been born a werewolf, then he had others in his family tree. And she suspected that the Gentrys did, too. It was a lot to assimilate. She took a shaky breath and told herself to stay calm.
Roarke crossed his forearms over the steering wheel and glanced at her. “You don’t have to go with me. I can come back and tell you what I saw. Wouldn’t that be enough evidence for you to relay to your grandfather ?”
She shook her head. “Not if I can be an eyewitness.” Obviously he’d picked up on her nervousness. “I was just trying to get an idea of what to expect.”
“No biting.”
Taking another deep breath, she studied him. “I believe you because your eyes didn’t flicker.”
“What?”
“When you were giving your talks and you insisted Bigfoot was an imaginary creature, your eyes flickered. I’ve learned at work that people do that when they’re falsifying a claim.”
“Are you saying that I need some practice at lying?”
“No, I’m saying that you might as well tell me the truth, because I’ll know when you don’t.”
He met her gaze. “Fair enough. So how did you get here?”
“In my grandfather’s old truck. It’s parked on the next level.”
“If you’ll give me the keys, I’ll drive you there.”
She unzipped her purse and took them out. “I suppose if you’d really wanted to harm me, this little ploy wouldn’t have mattered.” She handed him the keys.
“No.” He took the keys, put them in the ignition, and started the car. “Confronting me today was a reckless thing to do.”
As the truth of that sank in, she leaned back with a sigh. “Guess I’m lucky you decided to be nice about this, huh?”
“Yes.” He checked the rearview mirror and backed out of the parking space. “Yes, you are.”
Roarke texted Cameron that he was heading out into the woods and wouldn’t be back until he’d located the Sasquatch pair. Cameron’s return text was short and to the point. C that U do.
After gathering up a change of clothes and some toiletry items, Roarke tossed them in a backpack and set out for the general store. He would have loved to drive the red Corvette, but he couldn’t risk parking it anywhere near the store, so he walked the two miles separating the Gentrys’ front gate from Earl’s place. The ever-present light rain settled on his shoulders, but he wore a waterproof jacket and an NYU ball cap, so he didn’t get very wet.
The mechanical bird noise twittered when he opened the door, and Earl came to greet him, all smiles. “Abby’s in the back getting her stuff together. This is terrific, Roarke, just terrific. When Abby told me you wanted to mount an expedition to hunt for Bigfoot, I felt like dancing a jig, although I decided against it because I might fall down.”
“That story of yours was very persuasive, Earl.”
“But you had to take time to let it sink in.” Earl’s blue eyes were bright behind his glasses. “I understand that. I’m the same. Don’t like to jump on the bandwagon until I’ve had a chance to assimilate the information. I admire that kind of caution in a man.”
“Maybe I’m just dense.” Roarke slipped off his backpack and left it by the front door.
“I don’t think so.” Earl clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go pick out some camping gear. And before you even offer to pay, I want you to know the supplies are on the house.”
“That’s not right.”
“Of course it is. I feel as if I’m mounting an expedition, sort of like when Queen Isabella sent Christopher Columbus out to find the New World. She couldn’t go herself, but she provided the wherewithal. That’s my position right now, and the least I can do is finance this trip.”
“But—”
“I know that you can afford to pay me. Anybody who wears a watch as valuable as yours could probably buy the entire contents of my store without putting much of a dent in your checkbook.”
“Earl, I—”
“But your ability to pay is not the issue. You’re going out on a mission that could settle the Bigfoot question once and for all. You can’t imagine how much that effort means to me. Now let’s go look at tents.”
Feeling guilty as hell because he didn’t deserve Earl’s goodwill, Roarke followed him to the shelves stacked with various types of tents. If Earl knew he was sending his granddaughter out in the woods with a werewolf, he wouldn’t be so eager to outfit this expedition.
“I favor this one, myself.” Earl patted a box containing a one-person nylon tent that resembled the kind Roarke used himself on research trips.
“I have one like that at home.”
“Good. Then you’ll be used to it. You might as well take the same type for Abby. I doubt she’s been camping in a good long while, so she’s not familiar with the new models. She’ll like this one. It’s light enough that she can carry it and a sleeping bag.”
Tents. Sleeping bags. Roarke had been trying not to think of the night to come, when he and Abby would be alone in a secluded part of the forest. He had a special fondness for sex in a forest setting, and that, added to his growing fondness for Abby, could create a perfect storm of lust.
The irony wasn’t lost on him. Several months ago he’d lectured his big brother, Aidan, for getting into a similar fix with Emma. Casual sex with a human was one thing, but when the chemistry was this strong, the Were community advised against sexual involvement.
Of course, in Aidan’s case, Emma hadn’t known he was a werewolf when they first had sex. Abby already knew, so Roarke no longer had to worry about revealing that particular secret during pillow talk. But Abby’s knowledge was still very limited, and he needed to keep it that way, which meant staying out of her tent and her sleeping bag.
“These sleeping bags are great, too.” Earl pulled a couple of small packages from a different shelf. “They roll up into practically nothing, but they’re warm as toast.”
Roarke eyed his backpack propped by the front door. “We’ll need some food, too—enough for a couple of days, anyway. I don’t think my backpack is going to be big enough.”
Earl gestured toward a row of packs and frames hanging on the wall. “Take your pick.”
“Do you have one I can borrow rather than taking one that’s new?”
“Sure, I do, but—”
“Then let’s do that. You may not get to go, but your backpack can.”
Earl grinned. “I like that. Man, I wish I could tag along! Abby offered to call me from the trail, but from what hikers tell me, the reception’s no good out there.”
“Probably not.” Roarke took his BlackBerry out and wondered if he should have left it back at the Gentrys.
Just then Abby walked out with a medium-sized pack over her shoulder.
He held up his BlackBerry. “Are you taking yours?”
“I’m taking it, but I doubt it’ll get reception.” She hefted her backpack. “I just realized this pack might be too small for what I need to carry.”
“No problem,” Earl said. “Roarke and I have that covered, don’t we, Roarke?” The old guy sounded like a kid with a new best friend. “I’m loaning him my big pack. I’ll have it out here in a jiffy. Abby, help Roarke pick out some food.”