So I Married a Werewolf (Entangled Covet) (14 page)

…

Carter dumped a can of corn and a sliver of butter into the pot on the stove and stirred. He couldn’t cook, but he could fake it. “What’s this about?”

Please don’t let it be about what Nate was worried about…

Paisely opened the fridge and bent to peer inside. “I like the married you. You’ve got chick food. Vegetables, Vitamin Water, Special K bars… Who would’ve thought?” She took out a bottle of Stella Artois and wagged it around. “Bottle opener?”

“So you’re solo tonight.” Carter took it out of the drawer and set it on the counter. “Does Nate at least know you’re here?”

“Of course not, he’d blow a gasket. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” She popped the top of her beer and drank. “Why do you want the detective position, Carter?”

He got to work prepping the indoor grill for steaks. “That’s why you’re here? To determine if I really want the job?”

Relief soared through him. Nate had been wrong about his wife. Clearly, she’d gotten over Carter. The disappointment he claimed to have read on her face when she discovered he’d gotten married must’ve been misinterpreted.

“Tell Nate I’ve dreamed of working the position since I started in the department,” Carter said, “and I’ve worked my ass off to get to this point. I deserve it every bit as much as he does.”

“I’m not here on his behalf.” She tapped her boot heel against the base of the cabinets. “So you want the job even though you’ll be working long hours away from home? Your wife is okay with it?”

He threw the meat on the grill and seasoned the steaks with garlic, salt, and pepper, and zoned. Where was she going with this?

“I mean, you’re newly married to that fragile wife of yours,” she said, coming to stand next to him. She reeked of floral perfume—lavender and something spicy. He fought the urge to sneeze. “Won’t she worry when you’re running late at the office or being swept away to bureau functions that last an entire weekend?”

“She’s not fragile,” Carter corrected.

“She’s not like us.” She leaned back against the counter, arching back slightly to accentuate the perkiness of her silicone breasts. They looked new. “She’s not confident in her sexuality and her ability to keep a partner happy.”

How did the conversation veer into inappropriate territory so quickly?

“If I’m not mistaken, you’re newly married, too. Are you going to feel the same way if Nate gets the position and is gone from home long hours?”

“I think I might get lonely from time to time.” Her red lips pursed as she curled her lips around the neck of the bottle. She took a slow drink, measuring him, before she whispered, “I’m here to see if there’s something I could do to take care of that.”

He got the message loud and clear, only there was no zinging response to the words. No excitement at the possibility of getting in bed with Paisely again or sneaking around behind his competition’s back. Three months ago—hell, three
weeks
ago, before he’d proposed to Faith—he might’ve jumped at the chance to have something physical with Paisely, so long as she wasn’t married, of course. That’s all it would’ve been…
physical
…but it would’ve been fun.

Now there was nothing. No desire to take her up on her offer, even if it was something thrilling behind the scenes.

Something had definitely changed.

A thumping sound came from the direction of the hallway. Carter strode around the wall separating the kitchen from the living room.

“Faith?”

His sweet little roommate was the reason things were suddenly different. He couldn’t deny it. She was getting under his skin, and damn it if he didn’t like it. If she would stop making it so difficult for him—bending over to scrub the floor or wearing those soft sweaters every day—he might actually have a chance at resisting her.

“Be right out!” she hollered from her room.

Good. She hadn’t heard what Paisely had said. For a second there, he thought that she might’ve been eavesdropping on their conversation. That could’ve been bad.

“I think you should go.” He took Paisely’s beer from the counter and tossed it in the recycle bin, then flipped the steaks so they wouldn’t burn. “I won’t tell Nate that you were here as long as you never ring my doorbell again.”

She tilted her head to the side, studying him. Her blond hair fell over her shoulder, and her eyes gleamed a sparkly shade of blue. The woman would be beautiful if she wasn’t so deceitful, but snakes often had the most beautiful design on their scales.

“I’m telling you now, Carter. When that wife of yours starts feeling lonely, she’ll look for other things to keep her busy, too. We’re women.” She shrugged. “It’s in our nature. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He didn’t have to worry about Faith cheating, or how that would affect him, because he wasn’t going to let her get that close to him.

He wouldn’t give her the chance to hurt him the way his ex-wife had.

They were friends.
They’d be divorced once he settled into the job, she’d move out, and things would go back to the way they were before.

A spike of something cold and bitter struck him in the gut.

After Paisely left, Carter laid out a red flannel blanket on the back lawn. The cold feeling remained, spreading to his hands and feet. He lit a few of the torches lining the grass and set the plates down, and then rubbed his hands together to bring the feeling back. When Faith didn’t join him, he went back inside to see how much more time she needed to get ready.

He knocked on her bedroom door.

No answer.

“Faith?” He liked her being so close. A few doors down, rather than a few football fields away. “Dinner’s ready.”

Why couldn’t he ditch the hollow feeling in his stomach? This wasn’t a date, though he had to admit he’d set it up as if it was. He cast a glance back at the yard. Wine, flickering lanterns, a blanket to keep them warm on a chilly night. Who was he kidding? He’d totally set this up as if he was trying to impress her. What the hell did that mean, anyway? That’s not what he wanted…was it?

“Eat without me, Carter,” she called, her voice weaker than he’d ever heard it. “I’m not feeling well.”

He tried the handle.
Locked.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m going to bed.”
Long, agonizing pause.
“I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”

Her voice cracked. He felt the tear in his chest.

Chapter Twenty

“Dogs are foragers by nature,” Faith wrote on the day’s post for
Have a Little Faith
. “They evolved from canines who scavenged for food in the early settlements. For this reason, dogs will often eat anything they sniff out, whether that be delicious or rotten food, crumbs on the kitchen floor, dryer sheets, or even poison.”

Gulping down a white mocha she’d picked up from Starbucks on the way home, Faith gazed out over Carter’s backyard. His house backed a few acres of forest; the towering trees provided shade and protection from the dusting rainstorm that had blanketed the city the last few days.

She hadn’t talked to Carter much since Paisely had shown up. He’d made it sound like they were long over, with no hope of getting back together from either side. But he’d been mistaken. Or he’d lied so Faith wouldn’t know the truth. It was clear Paisely still had feelings for Carter, sexual, sleazy, or otherwise.

How could Faith compare to the flawless blond bombshell? If the woman really turned on the charm, or if Faith wasn’t in the next room over, she couldn’t compare. Simple as that.

She had absolutely no right to be jealous. None at all. But jealousy didn’t listen to reason. Rain pattered against the windows, dragging Faith back to her computer.

“Men are the same as dogs, they truly are,” she typed away, talking as she went. “When they hit a sexual drought, they’ll bark up any skirt. Doesn’t matter if that skirt is on a bimbo, ex-girlfriend, wife of a colleague, or all three rolled into one slutty ball.”

She deleted the last few lines, though she would’ve killed to keep them.

Instead, she wrote: “Because of their inherent scavenging nature (dogs, not men), we need to teach our pets what is good to eat and when to leave something bad or poisonous alone. Today, our topic is teaching your dog the ‘leave it alone’ command.”

Oh, if men could train as easily.

She continued to type: “Your command can be ‘drop it,’ ‘leave it,’ or ‘away,’ whichever suits you.”

“How about, ‘keep your hands off the blond tramp’?” She laughed, as her thoughts dashed to buying Carter a shock collar. “Yeah, that’d work on Carter just fine.”

“What would work on me?” he said from the doorway.

Her heart raced and she looked up. “You scared me. I thought you’d left for work already.”

“I’m staying late again tonight, so I don’t have to go in until noon.” He sat in the leather chair across from her. “What are you working on?”

“How to teach dogs to leave things alone.”

He kicked up his feet on the desk and crossed them at the ankles. “So how do you do it?”

“Are you really interested, or really bored?”

“Both.” He laughed. “To be honest, I can see how much work you’ve been putting into this blog thing, and I’d like to hear more about it.”

This
blog thing.
As if writing a dog blog was a geeky adolescent phase that she’d suddenly recover from. Should she tell him now or later that the ads she’d placed on the sidebar had made her almost a thousand dollars since she’d put them up? She hadn’t met with Mr. Winchester to hear his proposal yet, either, though they’d set up a rendezvous next week, the afternoon after the bureau dinner.

“Well,” she said, talking as she typed, “you need two kinds of biscuits. One kind should be dry and bland, something the dog wouldn’t really desire but would eat if there wasn’t anything else available. The other kind of biscuit should be bacon-flavored and juicy, something the dog would naturally enjoy.”

Carter nodded, pretending to follow along, but he was probably bored out of his gourd.

“Put the dry biscuit on the floor,” she said, “and the dog will go after it. You’ll want to cover it with something heavy, your shoe being the best option. Because the dog is a scavenger, it will fight to get the biscuit from beneath your foot. It’ll probably cry and beg, paw and scratch, but eventually, when it realizes it can’t get what it wants, it’ll back off. That’s when you offer the juicy biscuit.”

“The poor dog,” Carter said. “You’re just teasing it with the dry biscuit.”

Faith looked up from her computer screen. “No, it doesn’t really want the dry one at all.”

“How do you know?” His brow looked puzzled. “Maybe the dog prefers dry biscuits over bacon-flavored.”

“The dog only
thinks
it wants the dry biscuit, because it doesn’t think it can get a better one. They’re opportunistic feeders.”

Carter slid his feet off the desk and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. Things must’ve been getting heavy—he had his serious, stone-set face on. “What happens after you tease the pooch?”

Rolling her eyes, Faith continued, “You reward the ‘back off’ or ‘leave it’ behavior. You give the dog the bacon biscuit and say the keyword you’ve chosen, whether it’s ‘off’ or ‘away’ or ‘leave it.’ The first time, you’ll say the word during the act, or slightly afterward. After this, you’ll say the command and expect compliance. You’ll continue to do the routine ten to fifteen times, or until the dog’s behavior leans solidly toward waiting for the bacon biscuit rather than scrambling for the one it shouldn’t eat.”

“This bullshit really works?” Carter laughed. “You’re torturing the poor dog who knows what he wants! Why not just give him the dry one?”

“Because, once again, the only reason he was interested in the first place was because it was in front of him, not because it’s what he prefers.”

“What if the dog is tired of bacon biscuits? What if he’s had them over and over again and wants something different?” Carter’s smile fell and an odd shadow crossed his face. “What if the dog realizes too late what’s best for him? What then?”

“Carter, are you all right?”

“Hmm?” He seemed to snap out of some kind of daze. “I’m fine. I just think you’re torturing the dog for no reason. If he wants the dry biscuit, let him have it.”

She sipped on her drink. “That’s not the point of the exercise. It’s how to teach dogs to leave things alone. Other species of animals could use similar training.”

Take
that
, Casanova.

“So that’s it, then?” he said. “Torment the animal and move on?”

“Nooo.” She shook her head and took another drink. “You move the exercise to the park, or on his next walk. You increase the temptation and remove the shoe over it. You leave something on the sidewalk that the dog really wants so when you go for your morning walk, you say the word you’ve been using to keep the dog under control.”

He seemed to chew over her words. “Humperdinck’s improving, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I can walk by him now without his tiny, fluffy legs attaching to the toe of my boot. Are you using the biscuit strategy to teach him to leave my shoes alone?”

“Partly.” She grinned. “Humperdinck and I have a lot of work to do.”

He frowned. “Why’d you say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“That you both have a lot of work to do.
Both
.”

She shrugged. “I’d like to be a juicy biscuit to someone someday.”

“You?” He cleared his throat and pounded on his chest as if something was stuck. “I think you’re juicy enough.”

Her cheeks flushed hot.

His gaze shifted to the back lawn, the desk, the floor. “I have to hit the gym before heading to work.”

“Okay,” she said, but he’d already scampered out of the office.

He’d just said she was juicy. Was he toying with her, flirting as he always did, or did he mean it?

Stupid.
She slammed her head on her desk.

If he meant it, he would’ve stayed in their bed in the Monarch. He would’ve made a move before now—she’d been sleeping two doors down from him for the last three weeks, for Christ’s sake! Now that she thought about it, why wasn’t he trying harder to get into her pants? He wasn’t the Alpha of their wolf pack, but he exhibited serious alpha qualities. He was possessive and rugged, powerful and strong. And he’d made only two attempts to get her between the sheets. The first time he’d told her he didn’t want her, and the next he’d run to the bathroom like his balls were on fire.

Even the dogs she’d trained would paw after a dry biscuit if it sat in the room next to them for weeks on end. She didn’t exactly want Carter to paw at her—okay, she totally did—but it’d be nice to turn down his advances rather than wonder why they weren’t there in the first place.

She’s not like us.
Paisely’s words ran through her head.
She’s not confident in her sexuality and her ability to keep a partner happy.

“I’m the dry biscuit,” she whispered to herself. “Wonderful reality check. Thank you very much, Barbie Paisely.”

Luckily, there were options to change her bland biscuit status, and Paisely would lack class forever. And she really did want to be someone’s juicy biscuit someday. She would’ve given her right arm to be Carter’s juicy biscuit, but it looked like that wasn’t in the stars anymore. She could exercise at home when Carter was at work. There had to be dancing videos available. Was Paula Abdul still around? The Tae Bo guy? Jane Fonda?

God, had it really been that long since she’d worked out?

She pulled up Amazon on the internet and punched “fun, sexy physical fitness” into the search bar.

Zumba. Pole dancing, portable pole included. An extensive twelve-week program called Intensity D60Z.

Things in the fitness world had really changed. There were so many options. So many things that looked surprisingly…
fun.

“I’ll show you confident.” She tossed her mocha into the trash. “I’ll be the juiciest bacon biscuit in the Pacific Northwest.”