Wolf Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire 4) (7 page)

“What did you do?” he asked.

Astonished, she sat up and pressed her palms over her heart, but her skin didn’t feel hot on the outside. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

Her limbs should’ve felt heavy or numb if she’d given him something of herself, but she felt fine. Whole. Energized even. The only remaining effect was that her chest still felt abnormally warm on the inside.

“You bound us.” Link shook his head back and forth, eyes wide. “You’re human. You can’t.” A long snarl left him. “Love her. I love you.” Link shook his head and held it in his hands as if he hurt. As if gripping it hard would keep him together. “I didn’t bite you! I was trying to protect you.” His voice went gravelly. “Can’t protect her from what’s coming. She’s ours now.” Link went white as a sheet. “Ours,” he repeated, his vacant eyes on the crumpled comforter. “We’ll hurt her.” Link looked at her with heartbreak etched into every facet of his face. “I’ll hurt you. You should leave. No. Get out of here. No. Stay away from me. Be okay.”

Fury pumped through her veins. She should leave? After that incredible moment they’d shared, she should stay away from him? She was almost watching him give up on himself and on her, and she hated it. “Stop it! I see you, Link. I see all of you. Fuck the curse, and fuck you waiting around to go mad and die. If I bound myself to you, or whatever it was that just happened, it was for a reason. I didn’t just find you to lose you.” She blasted off the bed and began dressing, rage shaking her hands and making her fumble with the clothes.

“You’re leaving.” He said it as though he expected nothing less, which made her even angrier.

“No, I’m not. Not like you think. I’m going home because you and Wolf need to have this argument without me here listening to you ruin a moment that meant everything to me!” Her shoulders sagged, and she blinked back the damned tears because she was not a crier. Never was, never would be. “It meant
everything
,” she repeated low.

She strode toward the coat rack at the front door.

“Don’t leave like this,” Link said from behind her.

She turned on him. “I’m in this now, and so are you, Lincoln.” Full first name—yeah, she was pissed. “Own your fucking last name. Own the wolf
and
the man. Own me! Spend every moment you can with me because I see the changes in you. I hear the way Wolf growled just now. It was less, it was softer, and twice it even sounded happy.”

“I have work,” he said with a frown. “Can’t spend every day—”

“I don’t give a shit about your excuses, Link. Avoiding me won’t erase either of our feelings.” She narrowed her eyes at him as an idea began to form. “But you’re right. You have a shit-ton of work to do. On Buck’s cabin. I’ll pay you to make up for the income you lose on the other jobs.”

“I don’t want your money—”

“I’m not asking, Link. I’m telling you
I need you
. I need you here with me and in control, not just for a day or a week. For good. Whatever happened between us…was big. Tell me you felt it, too.”

“Nicole,” he whispered, looking tortured.

“Tell me!”

“I can’t fix my curse!”

She shoved her arms into her jacket and opened the door. “No, but
we
can.” She arched her eyebrows and leveled him with a look. “We have to.”

She slammed the door behind her, but Link threw it open and followed her out, stopping on the edge of the porch as though the cold didn’t affect his bare skin at all. He didn’t even cross his arms over his chest to ward off the wind as he watched her get into her truck and rev the engine. She hit the gas, angry and scared for a future she couldn’t control any better than the weather. She’d meant what she’d said, though. They had to find a solution to the McCall curse because she couldn’t handle finally feeling like she belonged somewhere, with someone good, just to give up and let him accept his dark destiny.

And over the drone of her heater, she heard it. The first long, haunting note of Link’s lone howl. It was filled with sadness and heartbreak, and she gripped the steering wheel to resist the urge to turn around and hug the scruff of his neck, cry, and tell him everything was going to be okay when it wouldn’t.

She couldn’t fix the McCall curse.

Not alone.

Link had to make the decision to save himself.

Link paced in front of Vera and Tobias’s cabin. If he did this, it would be getting his hopes up again. It would mean setting himself up for the massive disappointment he’d endured when the cure fixed the Silver brothers’ hibernation issue, but couldn’t fix him.

He’d gone to a dark place and had only lifted above it when he’d met Nicole. Asking Vera for help could push him all the way into madness if she denied him.

The door opened and Vera leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest, a mix of sadness and relief swirling in her fox-gold eyes. “Tobias is out on delivery.”

“I’m not here to see your mate.”

Vera cuddled closer into the blanket she had draped around her shoulders. “Where have you been?”

Link twitched his head and hated himself for his weakness. “Spiraling.”

Her mouse brown hair lifted off her shoulders and whipped in the frigid breeze. “I’ve missed you. You’re my best friend, and you just bolted on me. On Elyse and Lena, too.”

Link made a ticking sound behind his teeth and closed his eyes. “Tobias and his brothers stay awake through winter now. You don’t need me anymore.”

“Bullshit. You think you were only protection for me? For Elyse and Lena?” Vera shook her head. “It was never about what you could do for us, Link. It was about being a part of this place, a part of us. You’ve wasted some of the time we have left together.”

“I have someone,” he blurted out.

Vera stood frozen like a statue, staring at him as though she’d never seen him before. “Who?”

“The one. Someone I shouldn’t have met so close to the end. She deserves better than what’s coming for her. She told me to get my shit together and own what’s happening.”

“I like her already.”

“Chhh,” Link said, hooking his hands on his hips and glaring off into the woods. “She doesn’t understand.”

Vera arched one delicate eyebrow. “Or she understands better than you.”

“Fuckin’ riddles,” he muttered. When his chest rattled with a snarl, he didn’t even stifle Wolf. He felt the same damned frustration with the women in his life right now.

“Eustice McCall died when I tried to fix him—”

“Yeah, I know, Vera. I get it. You already said you couldn’t fix me. I don’t want to hear about his death.”

“Eustice died—”

“Vera!”

“You shut the fuck up, Lincoln McCall. You’ll listen to what I have to say because while you’ve been running and spiraling, I’ve been here working. Alone.”

“Working. You mean planning your wedding?”

Vera shook her head, her eyes never leaving him.

Link swallowed down the damned hope in his chest. “On deliveries with Tobias?”

Vera shook her head again.

“On me?”

Vera dipped her head. “I couldn’t cure Eustice.
Couldn’t
. He had nothing tying him to this world but me, and I wasn’t enough. He had no reason to get through the pain and land on the other side. He gave up. Hanged himself. I found him—fuck.” Vera whipped her hair out of her way and angled her face away, eyes still on him. “He was my best friend on Perl Island, Link, and I lost him in an awful way. And when I met you, I thought trying to cure you would mean that someday, I would find you the same way—dead on purpose. And I was scared. But you aren’t Eustice. You’re stronger. You’re good. And now you have someone to anchor you. Someone to fight for.”

“Can you fix me?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, “but I can try.”

Link huffed a harsh breath as he shook his head over and over in disbelief that he was going to do this. In disbelief that he was really going to get his hopes up again after everything he’d been through. He’d accepted his fate, and it hurt less. Hope was a destroyer for a doomed man like him.

But we have Nicole now.

Wolf was right.

Nicole had changed everything.

She’d burned his white flag of surrender and spat on the ashes.

“What do you need from me?” he asked low.

Vera lifted her chin, and a proud smile slowly stretched her face. “I need your blood.”

Three days.

It had been three days since Nicole had left Link, and in that time, her cabin had stayed quiet. There were no fresh wolf tracks or boot prints in the snow. There was no howl in the woods, and no new dead game on her porch. She crossed her arms as she stood in the middle of her front yard, staring at the tall trunks of the evergreens and wishing he would appear from behind one.

She’d imagined him a hundred times. Every leaf flutter was the tail of her wolf sprinting through the trees. Every sway of tough winter grass peeking through the snow was her wolf’s fur.

Nicole had made a mistake and pushed him too hard, too fast and now, she’d lost him.

When she’d driven to his cabin, he wasn’t home, and more disturbing than anything, when she’d opened the door, the fire was out in the stove and the inside of his home was almost as cold as outside. He was gone.

In a panic, she’d driven into town, but he wasn’t there either, and no one she talked to had seen him.

She’d never felt so alone.

Full of regret, she made her way onto the front porch and opened the door to Buck’s cabin, but a soft sound halted her steps. She angled her face to the road and waited as the sound grew louder. It was the loud whine of a snow machine engine. With a frown, she stood on the top porch stair as a mixture of dread and hope unfurled inside her.

Link stood up on locked legs as he maneuvered the snow machine up the thick packed road. He pulled to a stop near her truck and hit the snow without hesitation.

“Oh, my gosh,” she murmured as she bolted off the stairs and ran for him.

Link caught her and lifted her off the ground, crushing her to him so hard she couldn’t breathe.

“I missed you, I missed you,” she chanted. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. You were right.” Link eased back enough for her to pull his sunglasses off.

His eyes were darker, more gray than silver today. Squeezing her eyes closed, she kissed him and reveled in the feel of his lips moving against hers. It had been so scary thinking she would never have this connection with him again. She laid little kisses on his cheeks, then rested her chin on his shoulder and hugged him as tightly as she could.

“I’m going to fight for us, Nicole, but you have to know it might not work. You have to come to terms with that, okay? I can’t do this thinking if I fail, you’ll be destroyed.”

“You won’t fail,” she said.

“I’m being serious.”

“What can I do to help?”

“Just keep doing whatever it is you have been. You make this easier by just being around me. The out-of-control feeling is more manageable when we’re together.”

She butterfly kicked her feet at the potent happiness that filled her. Jerking her chin toward the lumber-filled sled attached to the back of his snow machine, she asked, “Did you decide to help me with Buck’s cabin?”

“Yes, on four conditions.”

“Name them.”

“You stop calling it Buck’s cabin. It’s yours now, and I’m not fixing it up for you to sell. I’m fixing it up for you.”

She inhaled deeply at the thought of making this place a home instead of a temporary stop in her journey to discover where she wanted to be. “Okay,” she murmured, rubbing her gloves over the three-day designer scruff on his cheeks. “And what are the other conditions?”

“You help. This place will mean more if you have a hand in rebuilding it.”

“Done, and?”

“You don’t pay me.”

“No deal, Mr. Nibbles.”

“I’m not taking your money.”

“Do you know what the cost of living here is compared to Mission? I was just an administrative assistant for one of my stepdad’s companies, and I paid off this cabin and the land and still have enough in savings to live out here for half a decade before I have to get a job in town. I’m paying you. Now, what you do with that money is up to you. For example, you could buy us some cows, like you said Elyse runs. Or you could buy trapping supplies, or you can start an official construction business in Galena, or—”

Link’s lips collided with hers, and she giggled and gave in, melting against him.

“Stubborn,” he accused against her mouth as he walked them up the porch stairs.

“Wait, what was the last condition?”

Link set her down gently on the hollow floorboards of her entryway and pulled something out of his pocket. “The last condition is that you watch this.”

He handed her a clear case with a white DVD inside. In black marker, the words
Buck Lund
had been scribbled across the top.

“Did you bring a computer?” he asked quietly.

“Yes,” she said in a barely audible squeak. She cleared her throat delicately and asked, “What is this?”

Link didn’t answer. Instead, he kissed her forehead, looked around her cabin once, then left, closing the door gently behind him, leaving her alone holding the mysterious treasure he’d brought her.

A minute later, as she dug her computer out of the satchel she stored it in, the generator roared to life, and she abandoned the half-charged device for the DVD player and television Buck had left sitting up against the wall in the living room.

She put on the DVD and stood back, waiting. On the small screen, the camera shook, and a woman appeared, sitting down with a log wall behind her. She had big blue eyes, leathered, aged skin, and an easy smile. “This is for Buck’s daughter?” she asked someone behind the camera.

“Yeah,” Link murmured from off camera. “Her name’s Nicole.”

The woman’s smile got bigger. “I know. He talked about her a lot. Too much sometimes. He wouldn’t shut up about her.”

“Can you say your name and how you knew Buck into the camera?” Link urged.

“Okay.” The woman looked into the camera. “I’m Desdemona Lancaster, and I was friends with Buck Lund. Her daddy.”

“Perfect. And what did he used to say about Nicole?”

“That she was marked up just like him. He was really proud his birthmark had gone to his daughter. He had pictures he showed everyone. One was of her when she lived here. She was maybe two, in this little red jumper, and Buck was holding her tight while she grinned and pulled at his beard. He said that one was his favorite because you could see both their marks.”

Nicole stood stunned and slid her hand over her mouth. She sat heavily onto the couch and leaned forward to see and hear the interview better.

“And the other?” Link asked.

“The other picture was of her at high school graduation. She grew up pretty, but she’d covered the mark with make-up. Buck said his ex-wife had sent it to him. That woman wouldn’t let him be a part of Nicole’s life, but from time to time, she sent pictures and notes and little drawings Nicole did in school. He lived for those letters.”

“Did he ever re-marry?”

The woman’s face fell a little. “Not in the traditional sense, but he had a woman for many years. She was Yupik, like him.”

“Any children between them?”

Desdemona shook her head. “They were happy just the two of them. Affectionate. A good team. Always laughing when they came into town, even when they’d gone gray. She was heartbroken when he was killed.”

“If you could tell Nicole anything about her dad, what would it be?” Link asked softly.

“I would tell her he was a good man. He took care of everyone. Knew everyone’s name. He was never too busy to have a chat with someone who needed it. And he loved her.” Desdemona’s gaze arched from behind the camera to straight into the lens. “He loved you.”

As Nicole hugged a couch pillow to her middle, the next interview came on—an older man sitting in a rocking chair on a porch. He told a story about Buck going on a hunting trip with him, and them both being stuck out in the cold for a night and having to sleep on uncomfortable spruce branches in snow caves they’d dug. He told of Buck’s love for macaroni and cheese, and she laughed as he described his habit of carrying the pasta in every pack he traveled with, and how he and some of their other friends nicknamed her dad Mac. She loved macaroni and cheese, too. It was the only cheap, boxed food Mom had ever allowed her to eat when she was growing up.

The interviews came one after the other with Link always asking revealing questions, always guiding them to keep talking, to share good memories. Buck had liked cats, hated trapping wolverines, lost a pinky finger on a saw, walked with a limp after he fell off a ladder in his late twenties, loved witty one-liners, adored Alaska in the winter, built his cabin from the ground up, worked at a gas station in Galena in the off-season, never met a stranger, and he died loving two people. His woman, Clotilda Black, and Nicole.

“This is the last interview,” Link said from behind her. How long he’d been standing there, Nicole hadn’t a clue. Quiet wolf.

“Come here,” she said.

Link sat on the couch next to her, draped his arm around her waist, and pulled her against his side. The beating of his heart was steady under her cheek as a pretty woman with silver hair sat down in front of a log house. She smoothed her pants and clasped her hands in her lap before she looked up at the camera.

“Can you say your name and how you knew Buck?” Link asked.

The woman didn’t look at Link but stared directly into the camera, never glancing away. “I’m Clotilda Black, and I was with Buck for fifteen years until the day he died. I guess a part of me is with him still.”

“What would you like to tell Nicole, if you could talk to her now?”

The woman’s frail shoulders lifted and fell in a steadying sigh. “That even though I don’t know you and have never spoken to you, you feel like my daughter. Buck talked about you often. Coveted pictures and trinkets your mother would send. Sometimes, as strange as it sounds, you felt like ours. Like you were just away for school.” Clotilda blinked hard and cleared her throat. “You bought his cabin. I told him that when I visited his grave. He would’ve been so happy to have you back here where you belong.”

Where you belong.
Nicole bit her trembling bottom lip and snuggled closer to Link.

“I’m sure you have questions about how things got so messed up, and I guess the simplest explanation is that sometimes people just don’t fit together. Sometimes people bring out the worst in each other. You are part of this place, but your mother never was. She didn’t want to be. Her place was in a fancy house with a man who could give her warm winters and a comfortable life. You got stretched between two worlds, and you had to land somewhere. Alaska lost you for a while.” Clotilda rubbed her knuckle under her eye and smiled. “I saw you. In Galena, I saw you. I drove there as soon as I found out you’d come back, but I wasn’t brave enough to talk to you. You had that beautiful mark, and you look so much like him, but I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t strong enough yet. I followed you into the clothing store, and you smiled at me. Buck smiled at me.” Clotilda swallowed hard. “Look in the closet, Nicole. There is a box on the top shelf he left for you, just in case your mom ever slipped up and told you where you came from, and just in case you came back to Alaska looking for him. And when you’re ready, you come see me in Kaltag, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I moved in with my sister. Your man knows where. He loves you very much to go to this trouble, so don’t take him for granted. No day is promised us with the ones we love, and I’m sorry—
so sorry
—that you missed the chance to meet your father. But you should know that he knew you. And he loved you very much. You were never forgotten.” Clotilda looked away from the camera for the first time at Link. She nodded once, and a moment later, the screen went black.

Nicole’s shoulders shook as she tried and failed to keep her emotions inside. Link didn’t balk or try to soothe her. He stroked her hair and let her cry against his chest until his sweater was damp with her tears.

And when she finished, he kissed her gently, then stood and disappeared into the room she’d been avoiding since the day she moved into this place—Dad’s room. He wasn’t Buck anymore. He wasn’t some stranger she had no connection with. Link had brought her firsthand accounts of her father’s life that had shaped his image in her mind and given her the knowledge that she was loved. It wasn’t fair that she’d missed his vibrant life, but at least she had this. She had a piece of her dad, and that was more than she thought she would ever have.

Link returned with a small cardboard box with her name scribbled across the top. She sank onto her knees on the wood floor and carefully pulled the top open. It was full of pictures. The one of her in the red jumpsuit hugging him, her high school photo, and so many more. Baby pictures, and her as a toddler asleep on his chest. Her in a carrier on his back while he tramped through the snow with a grin on his face and a trap hanging from a chain in his hand. There was one of him and Mom. Her dad was grinning at the camera, so obviously happy, but Mom looked lost and haunted. That one, she folded in half so she could just see Dad’s joy. There were stacks of artwork she’d done as a child with dates and ages in the corner. A macaroni rainbow had scribbled across the bottom,
Look Clotilda! Macaroni! Told you she was my kid!
in the same scrawl that was on top of the box. She laughed thickly and set it down, then picked up a stack of letters. There were no addresses, but they all had her full name written across them, as if Dad had been planning on mailing them the second he found out where she lived.