Sometime later, Rachel shut off the light in the bathroom and walked over to the bedroom window. From his truncated view he could see that her ankles and calves were bare, but he couldn’t tell whether she slept in pajamas or in the nude.
“Wow, it’s warm tonight. I sure won’t need the quilt I gave you, wolf. The one you’re not using, as it turns out. But it’s downright hot in here, don’t you think?”
Yes, he did. Speculating that she might sleep nude made the room seem even hotter. He was overheated and squished under her bed, but he wasn’t going to come out and take a chance she’d try wielding that pink razor again.
“I should probably keep the window closed, but it’s stifling. I say we open it a crack. The security latch might not stop a bear, but it’ll slow one down, and at least we’ll have a breeze.” The window creaked and cool air slipped through the small opening. “Ah, that’s better.”
She walked back to the bed. “Alert me if you hear a bear at the window, okay?” Then she climbed in.
To preserve his sanity, Jake pictured her wearing pajamas. Baggy, opaque ones with no style whatsoever.
The sheets rustled, and she switched off the bedside lamp. “Good night, wolf.”
Good night, Rachel. He closed his eyes and hoped to hell he’d be able to sleep.
Time lost all meaning as he lay in his cramped position thinking of her stretched out only inches above him, maybe nak*d, maybe not. Perhaps he’d been there three minutes, perhaps three hours. In the end, he concluded he’d been stuffed under the bed too long and he was too damned close to Rachel. He might start howling if he didn’t get out of there.
He listened to her breathe. Slow and steady. No movement of sheets or innerspring. She must be asleep. He hoped so, because he was vacating his hidey-hole. The space was not designed for a full-grown male werewolf.
Moving carefully, he eased to the foot of the bed and stuck his nose out. Then he listened again. The rhythm of her breathing hadn’t changed. So far, so good.
He worked his shoulders free, wincing at the pain in his side. Rachel slept on. Another few seconds, and he was out and standing on wobbly legs. Ahh.
Moving slowly across the wooden floor, he walked into her living room. The endless twilight of an Alaskan summer night allowed him to see the room clearly, and he took a look around.
Typical cabin furniture filled the space. If he had to guess, he’d say she’d kept most of Ike’s stuff—a sofa and two chairs made of sturdy wood and green plaid cushions that had faded over the years. They were gathered in front of a rock fireplace positioned between the windows that looked out on the back deck. An oval rag rug and a scarred coffee table completed the arrangement.
Jake’s cabin didn’t look all that different from this, except his cushions were plain green instead of plaid, and slightly newer. Instead of a storm door leading to his deck, he had a slider so he could manipulate it as a wolf. His fireplace was quite similar to hers, even down to the slate hearth.
Glancing at the mantel, he noticed the driftwood wolf. It was a shade lighter than it had been while he owned it, which meant she’d cleaned and oiled the wood. As he gazed at it, he had the oddest feeling of shared custody. A link had been forged between them the day he’d bought the carving, almost as if he’d adopted her child.
But he’d given up all rights to it, and that was for the best. Turning away from the driftwood wolf, he continued his survey of Rachel’s cabin. Like many floor plans in this part of the country, no division existed between the living room and the dining area. The round oak table and four chairs at the other end of the space seemed to be the same vintage as the sofa and chairs. The entire area was tidy and unassuming.
Jake liked knowing that despite her newfound wealth, Rachel hadn’t changed the character of her grandfather’s cabin. He’d made the same decision about his, which was of a similar age. Although he could afford every luxury imaginable, he’d kept his place simple, the way it had been when he’d bought it.
Well, maybe not quite. He’d added a couple of things, like a towel warmer in the bathroom and the finest king-sized mattress money could buy. He was a big guy and he appreciated a firm bed. Rachel’s bed also looked new, come to think of it. He doubted Ike would have splurged on a king.
As he’d suspected all along, he and Rachel were very much alike, except for one significant detail—he was a werewolf and she was not. Thinking of that made him wonder if he could risk shifting while she was asleep. He could really speed the healing process that way.
Casting a glance toward the bedroom, he decided to move into the kitchen. It had a pocket door, and he nudged it closed. Shifting was risky, but his wounds hurt like hell and he needed relief.
With the door closed, the kitchen became darker than the rest of the house. Its only window was shaded by a large pine, and the lack of light made Jake feel relatively safe. Shifting was noiseless. With luck she’d sleep right through it.
Once he shifted, he’d be able to open either the front or back door and leave, but he’d rather not have her speculate about how he’d been able to do such a thing. No point in making her any more curious than she already was. Besides, he’d be nak*d. Not the best way to travel through the woods. So he’d shift to human form, shift back, and return to her bedroom as a wolf.
Lying on the linoleum floor on his uninjured side, he focused all his energy on his transformation. The glow from his shift began to flicker in the dim light. He was seconds into the process, caught halfway between man and wolf, when his concentration was shattered by the sound of Rachel’s voice.
“Whoever’s in my kitchen, be warned. I have a killer wolf on the premises and he’ll rip your throat out without a second thought.”
Jake couldn’t afford the luxury of panic, or even time to appreciate the irony of being threatened by his own bad self. Refocusing quickly, he poured all his energy into shifting into wolf form before she opened that kitchen door.
Chapter 4
Baseball bat raised and heart pounding, Rachel walked slowly through the dining area toward the kitchen. The soft rumble of the pocket door had roused her, but she’d had to lie there for a moment before she’d identified the sound.
She’d tried to dismiss it as distant thunder. But the sound had come from inside the house, not outside. Taking her baseball bat, which she kept leaning against the back wall of her closet, she’d left her bedroom. Sure enough, the pocket door was closed. And she hadn’t closed it.
Mr. Wolf, she assumed, was still under her bed, and he should probably stay there. Hurling himself at an intruder might cause his wounds to start bleeding again. Yet she was surprised he hadn’t challenged whoever had closed that door.
If he’d been willing to risk his life to save her from a charging bear, why would he allow a stranger in the house? Maybe he didn’t think people presented the same kind of threat as a grizzly. She begged to differ.
As she approached, light flickered under the door. It was an odd sort of sparkly light, as if someone had installed a disco ball in her kitchen. As she tried to make sense of that, a chill slid up her spine.
She had excellent locks on her windows and doors, locks she’d secured after the bear incident. Whoever, or whatever, was in that kitchen had managed to get past those locks without making any noise or arousing the attention of the ferocious wolf under her bed. That was completely illogical, unless . . . Her brain stalled.
She didn’t exactly believe in sparkly vampires or ghosts who could walk through walls, but she didn’t exactly not believe in them, either. She’d thought discovering that such a thing was real after all would be exciting. A cool experience.
Not. She was rigid with terror. Her ears buzzed and her chest hurt from holding her breath too long. Her grip on the bat grew slippery.
“Look, whoever you are.” Her voice quavered, and she cleared her throat and tried for a more commanding tone. “I won’t hurt you if you’ll just leave the way you came.” Yeah, right. A baseball bat would be as useless against a vampire or a ghost as a cardboard tube had been against a grizzly.
Something dark, a snout of some kind, maybe belonging to a demon, poked through a small opening in the door. She needed to get the upper hand. Without pausing to consider, Rachel whacked it hard with the baseball bat.
The demon, or whatever it was, yelped. A scrabbling noise like nails scraping on linoleum came from behind the door. The nails made sense, but the yelp? What kind of demon sounded like a dog?
No matter. She’d scared it. “There’s more where that came from!” Feeling braver, she wondered if she could order it to leave. In the movies, otherworldly things seemed to respond better if people talked like Shakespeare. Or Monty Python.
She took a deep breath. “Return from whence thou cometh, foul spirit, or I shall smite thee again!”
The demon whined in response. Exactly like a dog. Or . . .
“Wolf? Is that you?”
Another whine.
It could be a demonic trick, but if not, she’d just smacked an injured wolf on the nose with a baseball bat. She couldn’t imagine why he’d be in her kitchen, but ouch.
Stepping forward cautiously, she slid her fingers along the edge of the door and began to push. “It had better be you, wolf.” She gripped the bat in her other hand, just in case a demon shot through the opening and she had to defend herself.
When she saw the wolf standing on the other side of the door, her breath came out in a whoosh. “Holy shit! You scared the life out of me!”
The wolf gazed up at her in silent reproach.
“I’m really sorry I hit you on the nose. I thought you were some creature from another dimension. But what lights were flickering in here?”
The wolf looked away and sighed heavily.
“Yeah, I know. You have no idea. You can’t control lights. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation, but damned if I know what it could be.”
The wolf brought his gaze back to hers.
“Maybe the northern lights were shining through the kitchen window. I suppose it could happen, although usually you can’t see them because of the tree.” Finally she shrugged. “That was probably it. My imagination ran away with me again. But I’d like to know why you came in here and closed the door after yourself.”
Once again the wolf looked away.
“None of my business, huh? All right, I can accept that. I’ve heard that wild animals like to retreat to a cave when they’re hurt, and I can’t imagine you were comfy under my bed. Maybe I should put the quilt in here instead of in a corner of my bedroom.”
To her surprise, the wolf started forward, as if ready to leave the kitchen if she’d only move out of his way.
She stepped aside, and the wolf walked unsteadily toward her bedroom. “Look, don’t go under the bed again, okay? I won’t mess with you if you want to be left alone.”
Then something else occurred to her, which would have given the wolf more reason to go into the kitchen. “I’m such an idiot. I’ll bet you’re thirsty. You probably went in the kitchen looking for water. Maybe that’s where they kept your water dish wherever you lived before.”
As she thought about that, she wondered if the kitchen had been the wolf’s sanctuary when he lived with people. Lots of kitchens had pocket doors. He might have taught himself to close it to signal his need for solitude.
If so, she’d screwed that up for him. She hoped he wouldn’t go back under the bed, but at the very least she’d get him some water. Poor thing, he must be parched after his ordeal.
Hurrying into the kitchen, she chose a ceramic brownie pan and ran water into it. Then she carried it into her bedroom.
The wolf stood poised, as if ready to crawl under the bed again if she approached him.
“It’s only water. I’ll put it in the bathroom. I’d rather you didn’t drip water on the hardwood floor.” Turning, she walked into the bathroom and found a spot in the corner. When she came out, the wolf hadn’t moved.
“I would love to get a look at your wounds. Will you let me do that?”
He backed up.
“Okay, okay.” She held out both hands, palms forward. “I said I wouldn’t mess with you, and I won’t. Ever since I got out the scissors and the razor, you’ve acted different. I wonder if your former owners hurt you with a pair of scissors. Maybe they tried to trim your fur and nicked you. Is that what happened?”
The wolf, of course, said nothing.
Rachel blew out a breath. “I have to stop asking you questions as if I expect you to answer. I wish you could talk, though, because you’re a fascinating puzzle.” She looked into the wolf’s solemn eyes. “You’re not going to move until I get back into bed, are you?”
She could almost hear the answer just by looking at him. “Right. I’ll get into bed so you can have a drink of water.” Climbing in, she pulled the sheet over her and lay back on the pillows. “There, I’m settled. Get your drink.”
The wolf’s nails clicked slowly across the wooden floor as he walked into the bathroom. The sound of lapping told her he was drinking. Good. He needed to stay hydrated. She should have thought of it earlier, but she’d been so intent on his wounds, and then he’d hidden under the bed.
After drinking the water, he came back into the bedroom. She lay very still and hoped he would choose the quilt instead of squeezing under her bed. Or maybe he’d go back into the kitchen and close himself in again.
Following the sound of his toenails on the floor and mentally calculating where he was going, she relaxed when he walked over to the corner of her room and flopped down on the bed she’d made for him there. She’d rest easier knowing he had a comfortable place to sleep for what remained of the night. The luminous hands of the clock on her bedside table told her it was two in the morning.