Werewolves in Love 2: Yours, Mine and Howls (14 page)

“Who’s hot?” asked Becca.

“No one you know, baby,” Ally said as she and Heather laughed. She got a silly warm glow from knowing Cade had fired a nanny who came on to him.

Every woman in the shop suddenly turned toward the door, so Ally did too. Sure enough, it was Dylan. As he made his way toward them, she caught a breeze from all the female heads whipping back around to watch him walk past.

Heather looked at her in amazement. “Is he with you?”

“Yes,” Ally smiled. “How’d you find us?” she asked Dylan.

“I asked someone on the street where you’d go to get a kid’s haircut.” He wasn’t looking at her. He was smiling at a mesmerized Heather.

“Dylan, pay attention.” She slapped his arm lightly. “Did you see the guy?”

“What? Oh yeah, I did. He followed me after I split off from y’all. He…” He stopped and looked at Heather, hanging on his every word. “Excuse us a sec,” he said smoothly. When had he learned to speak
smoothly
to women? He and Ally stepped aside for some privacy.

“He was really good at it,” Dylan continued. “If you hadn’t seen him, I don’t think I would’ve known he was following me. I walked around for a while, waiting for him to approach me, but he never did. Finally I got bored and just asked him what he wanted.”

“You
what?
” She didn’t mean to squeal.

He raised an eyebrow and grinned. “I asked him what he wanted. Why not? I didn’t see a gun or anything.”

“But— Oh, forget it. What did he do?”

“Well, I shocked the hell out of him. He looked around like he was gonna try to dodge me or something, but he didn’t. So I walked up and said, ‘Dude, why are you following me?’”

“And what did he say?”

“He seemed kinda scared—like, he didn’t know what to say, or he was embarrassed, I don’t know. He had a weird accent—kind of like Swedish or German, you know? He asked me who my mother was.”

At her appalled squeak, he held up a hand. “Let me finish. He looked surprised. He said ‘no, that can’t be, you look just like her’ and I said ‘well, sorry, my mom was Gracie Fontenot’, and he asked what I was doing here, and I said that was none of his business, because I’m not totally stupid, okay?”

He paused and then said, more quietly, “Then he asked me who Becca was.”

Ally’s head snapped up. “Who Becca…why would he want to know that?”

“I don’t know, but that’s when I got pissed off and I said, ‘Dude, stay the fuck away from us, it’s none of your business who we are and I don’t want to see you again’.”

She swallowed. “Okay. Good. That’s more like it. Don’t say fuck. So? What’d he do?”

“He looked straight at me and said, ‘You didn’t see me’.”

“
What
?” She laughed uneasily.

“Yeah. He said ‘you didn’t see me’, and I said, ‘Uh, dude, I’m standing here looking at you’. ’Cause now I’m thinking he’s tripping on something, right? And he gets this weird—like, even weirder—look, and he said, ‘but you are war gulf’.”

“
War gulf
? What does that even mean?”

“Who knows? He said, ‘but you are war gulf,’ and then he said, ‘you didn’t see me’, one more time and I was like ‘yeah, still seeing you, dude’, and then he disappeared. He ran away as fast as a wolf, and that’s when I decided he was some messed up high Fae who was out of his head on something.”

She sagged with relief. “Oh, thank God. You’re right—that must be it. He thought he recognized you, then tried to pull some mind whammy on you, but he was too stoned to do it.” She smiled in embarrassment and bumped her head gently against his chest. “Sorry, but that really freaked me out for a minute.”

There were few pureblooded high Fae—the ones known in earlier times as elves or fairies—in the U.S., and most of them were in a sorry state. High Fae didn’t handle certain aspects of modernity well. Many of them preferred to live on special homelands in Canada, Iceland and parts of Scandinavia. They were impervious to human diseases but unfortunately susceptible to human vices, particularly drugs. Drugs that suppressed the human nervous system gave the Fae a treacherously sweet high. It also suppressed their talents and wrecked them mentally and emotionally. The drugs wouldn’t kill them—full-blooded high Fae lived hundreds of years and were tough to kill—but long exposure could leave them in a state worse, in some ways, than death. It sounded like their weird guy was more to be pitied than feared.

Dylan declared Fremont boring and himself hungry. Ally went to pay. She realized Dylan wasn’t behind them and when she looked back, she saw him chatting up Heather. She almost—
almost
—went back to drag him out, but she remembered what he’d said about her treating him like a grownup. So she and Becca waited outside. Ten minutes later he joined them, looking pleased with himself.

They had a nice lunch with no further signs of Pitiful Fae Guy and headed back to the ranch.

Chapter Twelve

The sight of so many werewolves in the woodshop that evening had surprised her, because the gravel parking lot remained virtually empty. Michael had grinned and explained the wolves had sneaked back onto the ranch on four feet. A few of them also came up every night for guard duty.

Now, two hours into the game, Ally sat behind the fattest pile of chips.

“Michael, my wolf—she’s good. She’s really good,” laughed one now—Roman, if she remembered correctly.

“Oh yeah, our Wendy is dangerous,” Dec drawled, sitting on an empty workbench and dangling a beer between his outstretched legs. “It’s that whole sweet and innocent thing.”

All the tools and work tables had been pushed up against the walls with the lumber. The large, custom-made poker table sat in the middle of the room. Wolves who weren’t playing drank beer and watched the game.

She’d been a little hesitant to play poker in a room full of alphas, but aside from the testosterone dripping down the walls, there’d been no trouble.

“I knew it was an act,” Michael said over his shoulder. “Nobody could be that sweet and innocent.”

Dec took a long drag on his beer. “Actually, the sweet and innocent is genuine. But it distracts poor saps such as yourselves from her fearsome poker skills.”

Everybody except Michael laughed.

Dec’s nonchalance in the presence of so many alphas was odd, and the alphas’ easy acceptance of him even more so.

Dec was odd, in fact. She’d never really noticed it ’til she’d been able to compare him to lots of other werewolves.

“Are we playing cards here or what?” Michael groused.

“Bet’s to me, right?”

“Yeah. Ally, if you can’t beat three of a kind, you don’t need—”

“I know how to play the game,” she said without looking up from her cards. “That’s why my stack’s so much bigger than yours.”

More than one wolf snickered. Michael looked around with a fearsome scowl and the room settled down.

“’S not
that
much bigger than mine,” he said under his breath.

“It’s about to be,” she cooed, and threw in two dollars. Everyone else stayed in. When the bet got around to Michael, he raised. Ally called him and tossed in two more dollars. Everyone else folded.

“Okay, Wargman,” she said, propping her elbows on the table and leaning forward. “Show ’em.”

He grinned at her as he laid down his hand. “Here you go, Kendall,” he growled triumphantly to a chorus of wolfish “whoos”.

She stood up and leaned forward on the table a little more, peering at his full house as he watched her smugly. She looked up at him in wide-eyed gravity, and a couple of wolves began to chuckle.

“Michael,” said one, “that doesn’t look like a female about to lose some money, bro.”

Michael’s smile froze, his eyes narrowing at her expression.

“You know what, Michael? Most of the time a full house would do it, but tonight I got—” now she began to lay her cards down one at a time “— a seven, and a nine, and another nine, and another nine
and
…one more nine.” She beamed as widely as he had just a moment ago. Wolf-whistles and applause erupted.

Michael couldn’t speak for a minute. “I don’t believe it,” he whispered.

“Neither do I!” she laughed once she’d finished high-fiving everyone in the room. “I had three of ’em to start with. I mean, when am I gonna get dealt something like that again? And why doesn’t it ever happen in a casino?”

“Did anybody bother to shuffle the fucking cards?” Michael addressed the air with feigned heartbreak. “Hey, where you going?” he asked as she scooped up her chips.

“I’m going inside. It’s late and I’m tired and I don’t want to take
all
your money, because that would just be mean.” Michael started to smile but managed to turn it into a grimace. “Besides, I want to check on Becca.” Another wolf had already slid in to claim her seat at the table.

“Ally, you don’t have to check on Stinky Butt.” Michael shuffled a fresh deck and looked up at her with that sardonic smile. “You’re not really the nanny. Cade would never let you work for him.”

“Why not?” she huffed, wounded.

“Well, I mean—because, you know, he’ll hire someone to do that, and you…”

“I do know how to take care of children, Michael.” She hadn’t realized the idea was rolling around in her head until he shot it down.

“Oh yeah, I know, I know. I just meant, you’re a guest, and Cade wouldn’t expect…”

“Whatever. I’m going inside,” she muttered.

Michael stood up. “Ally, wait, you don’t understand…”

Stung, she stuffed her winnings in her jeans pocket and hurried out of the woodshop, nearly running into Seth as she rounded the corner at the front of the house. He grabbed her elbow as she brushed past.

“Hey, what’s up? Where you going?”

“Nothing. Inside.” She pulled away and hurried on.

“Wait, what—? Ally! Stop! What’s the matter?”

She didn’t want to explain it to him. If he knew how messed up she’d allowed herself to get over Cade MacDougall, how much she wanted to stay here and was afraid to leave, he’d worry. She wouldn’t allow that. Seth was enjoying himself here, she could tell, and he deserved the chance to relax and let himself be part of a pack for the first time in his life.

And besides, what the hell did Michael know? Cade might think hiring her was a great idea.

Just because they bickered didn’t mean she couldn’t work for him, she thought as she stamped into the house. They wouldn’t fight all the time if she just shut up and let him be the boss. And she could. She could be polite, do as she was told. She could live here, take care of Becca, stay with Dylan and Seth.

And Cade.

Could she work for him, feeling the way she did? She paused halfway up the stairs to ponder that. Why not? He’d soon be distracted by some other woman—maybe he already was. Besides, constant proximity offered the surest cure for infatuation. And Becca already adored her.

Okay, Ally, there you go—a practical, efficient solution to the pitiful-Dead-Girl-has-no-place-to-go problem
.

She could make it work. She had to.

She walked into Becca’s room to find an empty bed. A Hello Kitty nightgown lay on top of the sheets, but there was no sign of the little girl who’d been wearing it.

For a split second she suffered one of those heart-stopping panic seizures, like when she’d lost Dylan at an Astros game for all of ten minutes.

Wait a second—she’s just rambling.

A quick check revealed no Becca in Ally’s room, so she headed downstairs. Sarah Jane and Sindri were talking in the kitchen. She didn’t pay attention as she hurried to Cade’s room.

His bedroom. Where his bed was. Where he slept and showered and dressed. And made love to hundreds of women… No, that was stupid. He wouldn’t bring hundreds of women up here. Maybe just dozens. He probably got most of his nookie in town, away from Becca.

Cade’s four-poster bed stood at least two feet off the floor. The kid couldn’t climb up there by herself. A quick glance in the spacious bathroom revealed a garden tub that set her heart to racing. No sign of Becca, though.

Maybe she’d joined her grandmother and Sindri.

Once out of Cade’s room, she was about to turn left into the kitchen when she paused. Sarah Jane and Sindri were whispering. Ally had no trouble picking up every word and, only somewhat ashamed, she couldn’t resist.

“How can I tell him now, after all these years? He would never forgive me. Why have I waited? Why did I not talk to him when he returned?” Sindri sounded as if he were weeping.

“Calm down, honey, please,” Sarah Jane urged. “Don’t do this to yourself. I promise you, everything will be all right. We’ll talk to him soon, and in the meantime, the three of us can keep an eye on her. That’s the main reason I’m here, to look after her. You’ve got to quit fretting, baby. Shh…” They fell silent.

Very quietly, Ally padded back the way she had come, stopping when she got to the door of Cade’s room.

Sindri and Sarah Jane were friends? And who were
the three of us
? Should she mention it to Cade? She’d have a hard time explaining the circumstances, especially since it didn’t concern her and eavesdropping wasn’t an attractive habit.

But she’d pay close attention to them in the future. That wasn’t nosiness, it was just…interest.

She walked back through the den and into the kitchen, calling out to make sure they heard her coming.

“Sarah Jane? Sindri? Have you seen…oh. There she is.”

Sindri sat at the big kitchen table with his head in his hands. He didn’t look up when she walked in. Sarah Jane, cradling a nearly naked, soundly sleeping Becca in her lap, smiled warmly. “Ally, honey, were you looking for our girl? It seems she likes to wander at night. I found her clear on the other side of the house.”

“Yeah, Cade had told me she does that sometimes.” She dropped into a chair across the table from Sarah Jane. “I was pla—” she almost blurted out that she’d been playing poker with the wolves “—planning to take a walk when I decided to check on her. I got scared when she wasn’t in her room, but I figured she had to be somewhere in the house.”

“Sindri gave her some milk and she fell asleep before she finished it.”

“Would you like some? Or hot tea? I will make you something to eat…” Sindri stood up and pushed his chair back, his wizened face drawn but dry-eyed.