The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf nw-2 Page 7

  “It’s for you, hon,” she said, kissing the top of my sweaty head. “It’s your brother. He doesn’t sound happy. I’m making waffles for when he’s done yelling at you.”

  I groaned, stretching my aching legs and pressing the phone to my ear.

  “Would you like to explain to me why Nick Thatcher showed up at the Grundy clinic last night with a bite wound on his ass?” my brother demanded without bothering to say hello.

  Shit. I’d forgotten about Nick. After the Lee incident, Billie had had another spell, in which she claimed strangers were breaking into her house every night and moving things around. I ended up spending the night with her while Dr. Moder monitored her at the clinic. If nothing else, it helped give Alicia some rest. Dr. Moder had forced me to leave at around four A.M. I crashed and completely blanked out Nick’s mangled butt cheek.

  “I was provoked.” Cooper was silent on the other end of the line, so I continued, “He saw me, and he thought I was Mo. He was looking at me like I was Christmas morning, and then he called me by Mo’s name. Mo would have done the same thing.”

  Cooper didn’t dignify that with a response. “You’re lucky he’s telling everybody around here that he had a run-in with a stray dog. I don’t know why, but he doesn’t seem to want to make a fuss. If he had been anyone else, he would have called the Weekly World News as soon as his butt cheek got stitched up.”

  “Stray dog?” I spat. “Stray dog!”

  “Maggie, you were the one who said we should stay away from Nick. And then you not only let him see you in wolf form, but you bit him? What were you thinking? Were you thinking? You could have seriously hurt him.”

  “By biting his ass?”

  “Mo says there are lots of important nerves and stuff back there. She was laughing too hard to get a lot of information across. I’m serious, Mags. I’m not cleaning up this mess, you got it? You’re always going on about you being the alpha. Great, you’re the alpha. You take care of this.” He slammed the phone down.

  I yanked the receiver away from my ear, wincing. My dramatic eye roll was interrupted by a knock at the door. “What now?”

  I opened the door to find Mo, holding one of her sinful brownie cheesecake pies. Two of my favorite desserts combined in a chocolate graham-cracker crust.

  “Are you guys guilt-stalking me?” I huffed, closing the door behind me so my mother wouldn’t overhear. Mo, used to this sort of response from me, only smirked and stepped out of my way. “I told Cooper biting Nick was a mistake.”

  Mo’s coal-black eyebrows winged up. “So that was you. Nice, Maggie. Excellent job keeping a low profile.”

  I growled at her. “So, you drove all this way, bearing pie, to make sure Cooper’s lecture sank in?”

  “Cooper doesn’t know I’m here. I’m on the clock.” She pressed the pie into my hands and then pulled a note out of her jacket pocket. “Nick called the saloon last night—thoroughly hopped up on pain meds, I might add—and begged Evie to arrange for your favorite food to be delivered to you ASAP. Offered her an obscene amount of money and then rambled on about you being ‘Uhura pretty’ and how you were ignoring his calls and he had to find some way to get through to you. I guess he knew the way to that teeny-tiny Grinch heart of yours is through your stomach.”

  “Uhura pretty?” I repeated.

  Mo shook her head, exasperated. “I gave up trying to understand men around here a long time ago. Are you going to read his note or not?”

  Bobbling the heavy pie tin, I opened the little white envelope. I read Evie’s neat block print aloud. “Thinking of you, Nick. P.S. I think you may need to check your voice mail. It’s full.”

  I frowned. Voice mail? I hadn’t looked at my cell phone in days. Not since I drove to the Glacier.

  Aw, hell.

  As usual, I’d left the phone in my truck. I only used it when I was driving, and I tended to forget about it otherwise. I plopped the pie into Mo’s hands and ran to retrieve my dead phone. Mom was hugging Mo while I bolted back to my room to connect it to the charger on my dresser. I had five missed calls. And three voice-mail messages. All starting the day before, from a weird area code that could only be Nick’s.

  “Hey, Mom, when Nick asked for my number, which one did you give him?” I called, not really wanting her to answer.

  “Your cell phone,” Mom called back. “I thought you’d probably want any messages he left you to be private.”

  I heard Mo give a soft snicker.

  Well, now I felt horrible. I’d marred perfectly good ass cheeks for no reason. It was as if I’d sneezed on the Mona Lisa.

  Mo was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea, while my mother mixed more waffle batter. “Mom, I’m going to need those waffles to go. I’m driving to Grundy.”

  “Driving?” Mom asked, cracking a half-dozen eggs into her mixing bowl. “Today’s your running day.”

  “I owe Dr. Thatcher an apology . . . or something.”

  Mo hid her smirk behind her teacup, and Mom’s gaze narrowed. “For what?”

  I took a precautionary step back. “It was just a misunderstanding, Mom. I might have hurt his, uh, pride a little bit.”

  “Just his pride?” Mom asked pointedly.

  I smiled innocently and dashed for the shower.

  “You know, you’re going to have to get better at lying if you’re going to survive as a public servant,” Mom called after me.

  THE DRIVE TO Grundy was spent coming up with really awkward apologies for biting Nick on the ass. And then I remembered that Nick didn’t know I was the one who bit him on the ass and that saying so would tip him off to the whole “world of werewolves” thing. Maybe I could just continue to let him think Mo bit him on the ass. That wouldn’t make things awkward.

  The smart thing would be to send a detached, polite thank-you note for the pie or ignore him completely. But I felt this new, unpleasant gnawing sensation in my chest. I actually cared about what Nick thought of me. I worried about him thinking badly of me. I felt guilty for hurting him, not just little pangs of regret but full-on spasms of “why did I do that?”

  I was maturing emotionally. Ew.

  OK, pie. I’d stick with the pie. He’d taken the time to order me pie while he was laid up on a doughnut pillow. That he’d send me something edible was oddly touching. Courtship in this part of the country rarely centered on flowers and perfume. Nick had made an effort, and he’d put some thought into it. And that was doing strange things to my ability to produce coherent thoughts. By the time I pulled my truck into Nick’s driveway, I’d come up with “Thanks for the pie.”

  Brilliant, I know. I was considering a career in speechwriting if this whole werewolf-leadership thing didn’t work out.

  I forced myself out of the truck and considered Susie’s former home. “Susie Q” was the town’s former postmaster and the first victim of Eli’s weird string of attacks. I’d like to think that she was just a victim of opportunity, that Eli had stumbled across her as she was letting her ridiculous little wiener dog, Oscar, out to pee. Because the possibility that he spent time stalking a harmless, though eccentric, middle-aged country music fan was plain icky.

  Susie saw the world through Dolly Parton–colored glasses, you might say. Platinum blond and blessed with more boobs than sense, Susie wore tight western shirts and jeans that looked painted on. But when it came to running the post office, she’d been all business, save for the fact that she kept Oscar in the mailroom for company.

  Mo took Oscar in after Susie moved in with her daughter to recover from her injuries. When Susie’s daughter claimed to be asthmatic and allergic, Mo kept him. As a rule, werewolves don’t keep dogs. There are food-competition issues. However, Cooper considered it a mission of mercy. Susie was awfully fond of doggie sweaters.

  Shaken from my reminiscing by the sound of a TV clicking on inside the house, I raised my hand to knock. But I lost my nerve, turning on my heel and preparing to dash for the truck. I’d taken a step when I heard the
door open behind me.

  Double damn it.

  “Maggie?”

  Nick was looking all cute and rumpled, wearing sweats and a Tribhuvan University T-shirt. His hair was mussed, and he was limping a little, but he didn’t look too bad.

  “Hi,” I said hesitantly. “I just wanted to say thanks for the pie. That was very thoughtful. And I didn’t get your calls. I left my phone in my truck a few days ago, and the battery died. I hardly ever use it; I don’t know why Mom gave you that number. Well, uh, see ya.”

  “Wait,” he said, wincing as he stepped toward me. “Uh, if I’d started calling sooner, I might have gotten you before the battery died. I actually hiked by the valley to try to work up the nerve to try to talk to you, when this happened.”

  “Why did you wait so long?” I asked, trying to keep the demanding tone at bay.

  “Holding on to some scrap of my male pride?”

  “Says the man holding a special sittin’ pillow,” I noted.

  “It’s a small scrap,” he said, leading me into the house. The hitch in his stride needled at me. Watching him struggle down the hall, I wondered how he’d made it back to his truck from the valley. And I felt a cold flush of guilt and fear spread through me, thinking of what might have happened to him if he hadn’t been able to get to the truck. The image of him sprawled on the dirt, defenseless, unable to get to help, tore a hole through my chest, leaving me swaying dizzily against the wall. I took a deep breath, and Nick heard the huffing sound. He turned, his brow furrowed.

  “Hey, are you all right?” he asked, closing his fingers around my bicep, the warmth of his hand seeping through my sleeve. “Your face just went really pale.”

  I let a long breath stream out of my nostrils, marveling at the electric tingles traveling from his hand to my arm, easing the ache in my chest. I gave him a shaky smile. “I’m fine,” I promised him, looking up and gaping at my surroundings. “I’m just allergic to suede and rhinestones.”

  Susie’s house looked as if she’d decorated from Roy Rogers’s garage sale. The sofa was covered in denim-colored suede and had Bedazzled pillows made of red bandanas. There were posters for old country-western acts such as Hank Williams Sr. and Patsy Cline on the walls. There was even a longhorn skull over the mantle, where most of us would put a moose head or a particularly impressive fish.

  The only sign of Nick’s presence was a pair of night-vision goggles on the wagon-wheel coffee table and a laptop on the kitchen table, surrounded by books piled in wobbly stacks. They made a nice holding pen for the random pages of loose-leaf paper strewn around, covered in Nick’s neat block lettering. There were little sketches in the margins, of wolves, of the moon in various stages. I laid my keys on the table and picked up one of the more complicated pictures, a pair of wide, heavily lashed eyes. I tore my gaze away from the little drawings and smirked at the cow skull. “I had no idea that you were such a huge country-western fan.”

  He shuddered. “I’m not, but apparently, Susie’s daughter wanted to leave the house furnished for renters.”

  “Meaning she didn’t want the cowboy look encroaching on her carefully decorated McMansion,” I said, snorting. He shrugged. “Doesn’t it make you feel a little weird, living in Susie’s house while reading about her attack?”

  “Not really. It keeps it more real for me, reminds me that I’m dealing with actual people. Susie seemed like a nice lady. She didn’t deserve what happened to her.” He was watching my face for signs of change, deception.

  I gave him a placid smile. “Susie is a nice lady, and she’s lucky to be alive. Abner Golightly, another nice person, wasn’t so lucky.”

  He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I know we’ve gotten off on a, well, bizarre foot here. I know you think I’m nuts. And I know that you’re an unusual girl, so the usual dating tactics aren’t going to work with you. So I’m going to lay all my cards on the table, since that’s something you seem to respect. I like you. A lot. I like that you’re contrary and know how to say what you think. And you’re beautiful and strong and a little peculiar.”

  “Peculiar?”

  “I love peculiar,” he assured me, edging slightly closer, his voice husky. “Peculiar is sort of my thing.”

  Bolder now, he moved closer, bringing with him that delicious scent of man and spice and woods. I watched his cobalt eyes come closer and closer to my face as he leaned toward me. His mouth was a hair’s breadth away from my lips. I was torn between praying he would kiss me and hoping he wouldn’t, so my life wouldn’t get even more complicated. I whispered, “You’re very confident, Dr. Thatcher.”

  “I’m faking most of it,” he assured me as he leaned closer bit by bit.

  Behind him, I saw Susie’s less-than-plasma television showing a very young William Shatner romping with a green-skinned chick in a silver bikini. On the top of the entertainment center, I saw a DVD set labeled “Star Trek: The Complete Original Series.” The man had driven thousands of miles away from civilization, and he’d brought his favorite DVDs. I couldn’t decide if that was adorable or idiotic.

  “Why am I not surprised?” I exclaimed. “You’re a Trekkie.”

  Just call me Maggie Graham, Moment Ruiner.

  Startled, Nick blushed as he pulled away and looked toward the screen. “I simply enjoy the aesthetics and storytelling involved. I don’t take it to the creepy fan-boy level.”

  “Really?” I smirked at him. “How many conventions have you been to?”

  “Three, but only because my college roommate dragged me . . .” he spluttered. “Fine, there was a fourth incident as well. But just because the guy who played Chekov was auctioning off one of his communicators for charity.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “You know, even when you look past the great story lines and the compelling characters, the show is worth watching because it was groundbreaking. Star Trek was one of the first network shows to reflect America’s emerging youth counterculture. At the time, television was a wasteland of picture-perfect nuclear families and white-hat-wearing cowboys. There were no flaws, no textures. It was one of the first shows to really examine class warfare, racial justice, sexual equality, the role of technology in society,” he said, ticking the subjects off on his fingers as he got more and more flustered.

  I cannot explain why the “professor” tone he used while passionately extolling the virtues of geek porn sent tingles to my special places. All I knew was that I was having a hard time staying on my side of the couch. So, instead, I feigned disinterest and snickered. “And it was the first network show to feature half-naked alien chicks dressed in aluminum-foil swimwear.”

  “OK, fine, now we’re watching it.” He nudged me down onto the couch and slowly lowered himself onto a special doughnut pillow. I sank into the soft cushions, watching as he manipulated the DVD system he’d obviously installed on top of Susie’s TV. Susie was sweet but not exactly techno-savvy.

  He clicked on some episode called “The City on the Edge of Forever,” and the theme music started. From a little cooler he kept near the couch, he offered me a pack of Sour Patch Kids and a Coke. I wondered where to put my hands. Well, I knew where I wanted to put them, but I think that would probably be a felony if I did it without warning him first. I crossed my arms over my chest for safekeeping.

  This was strangely pleasant. I’d never done DVDs as a dating activity. I didn’t bring guys home. I didn’t force them into awkward interactions with my mom or brothers. Because that could end badly. And bloodily.

  I was hyperaware of Nick, the warmth from his body, the hints of his scent wafting toward me, luring me closer to him. His arm was stretched over the back of the couch as he struggled to find a comfortable position to sit. His fingers played with the ends of my hair as we watched Captain Kirk kick ass and make intergalactic booty calls. I found Spock oddly hot, though, considering my recent nerd-hag leanings, this wasn’t surprising.

  Still, three episodes later, I wondered aloud, “Why would anyone on the
crew put on a red shirt? Honestly, it’s like they’re standing in front of their closet, and they’re thinking, ‘Yellow? Blue? Nah, today’s a good day to die.’ “

  “Red shirts meant you were part of the operations crew, who spent most of their time in the engine room or on security duty, off-camera, so the audience didn’t care much about them.” Nick tilted the bowl of popcorn we were sharing toward me. “The writers needed a way to ramp up the violence without killing off characters people were fond of.”

  “Like on The A-Team or G.I. Joe.” I nodded. “When the bad guys would shoot and shoot at the good guys but never seemed to hit anybody?”

  Nick’s face was a mockery of solemnity. He clutched my hands to his chest. “Marry me and have my babies.”

  My voice was a little shaky when I chucked a licorice rope at him and said, “In your dreams, Thatcher.”

  “Well, until humans start procreating like seahorses or penguins, you would be the designated egg bearer.”

  “You just can’t help yourself, can you? You have to be the smartest person in the room.”

  “Doctor of zoology. It’s what I do,” he said as he popped a few more gummy candies into his mouth.

  “Nerd.”

  “Oh, come on, you love it,” he said. When I lifted my eyes to the ceiling and shook my head, he gently tucked his fingers under my chin and brought my face level with his. “You like that I’m smart. You like that I’m different from most of the guys you know. You even like the fact that I could be just a little bit crazy. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”

  My eyes narrowed at him. Damn it, he was right. But I wasn’t about to admit that. It would give him too much power. So I gave him a speculative look. “You’re a very direct nerd,” I mused.

  “I just want us to be on the same page,” he said, leaning close to me.

  Despite my saner, sensible half’s screaming at me to back away, to get my horny wolf ass back to my truck, I stayed still, feeling more like prey than predator for the first time in my life. He was cautious in his approach, just barely brushing his lips over my own, the faintest whisper of flesh against flesh. I sighed, mingling my breath with his. His thumbs traced lightly over my cheekbones, down the line of my jaw. I wrapped my arms around his waist as he drew me closer, parting my lips with the tip of his tongue.