Howl for a Highlander

by Terry Spear

  She was smaller than a male wolf, but the impact of her body and his unpreparedness to handle her jump knocked him back.

  He smiled darkly as he regained his equilibrium and readied himself for another attack as she circled around and faced him again. Having wrestled with his brothers and cousins over the years, sometimes as wolves, sometimes as humans, and sometimes like this—human to wolf—he was game. He had to admit he’d never tackled a female wolf in such a manner.

  The newness was not only refreshing but momentarily took his mind off his other troubles.

  “I’m late, and I apologize, but—”

  Her tail waved like a dog pleased to see its master—instinctively wanting to play. Her gaze was on his, watching his reaction, and he knew she was calculating her next move and his, too.

  Adrenaline and testosterone raced through his blood, preparing him for the mock fight. When she lunged this time with no warning, he seized the ruff of her neck in a natural reaction to protect himself, and she exposed her teeth, an instinctive response in play or battle. He held on as she snapped and snarled, twisting her head to free herself from his iron grip. Still, she didn’t try to bite him, which told him she was only pretend fighting, showing her irritation in a wolf’s way for standing her up and breaking into her place without permission.

  With a strong jerk of her head, she broke free of his titan grip, jumped aside, and again lunged. Not expecting her attack to follow so rapidly after the first, figuring she’d pause to determine her next strategy, he fell back, tripped over a suitcase, and landed on his back.

  He swore she would have been laughing her head off if she could as a wolf. She quickly stood on his belly, triumphant, panting, chest heaving, looking down at him with a proud expression, eyes gleaming, and almost a smile. Yeah, she was damned amused. He’d been bested by a she-wolf and one flowery suitcase.

  A beautiful she-wolf at that, with dark red-brown fur covering most of her body and the top half of her muzzle, pale cream underneath, black-tipped ears and tail, and sharp green eyes.

  He smiled. He could have wrestled with her further, but he was afraid that, in his exuberance, he might injure her by accident. Besides, he wanted to make it right with her about his being late and breaking into her villa without her permission. She had to realize he had only done so out of concern for her.

  “You win.” He tried to look as without guilt as he could. None of his people would accuse of him of having that trait, either. Not even when one of his brothers had done something wrong and Duncan had been completely blameless of the infraction. He just didn’t have the knack to ever look—innocent. “I apologize for arriving at your place late.”

  She closed her mouth, staring at him with her front paws still standing on his chest, waiting for an explanation.

  “My room wasn’t available.” He sighed. Hell, might as well tell the truth. “I mean to say I don’t have a place to stay. The hotel was overbooked. So I’ve been all over the blasted island, trying to find another place to stay. None of the other places I checked have accommodations. I’d planned to sleep in the car tonight, then take care of business and leave for Scotland tomorrow night if I couldn’t find some place to stay in the meantime.”

  She didn’t move, as if considering his words and what she might do.

  “I worried something had happened to you.”

  That’s when she finally stepped off him and studied him for a moment more, judging his sincerity as he sat up. She turned and headed into what he suspected was a bedroom, her tail whipping back and forth. He took a deep breath of the sexually enticing smell of female wolf. Their brief physical encounter had definitely turned her on, not that wrestling with her hadn’t done a job on his libido, too.

  He got up off the floor, and she suddenly reappeared in the doorway with just a long T-shirt clutched against her breasts and hanging barely to mid-thigh to cover her torso before she shut the door.

  He stared at the door that she’d disappeared behind, wanting to see the rest of her long tanned legs, her breasts, and hell, the rest of her.

  Trying to get his mind off the tantalizing nearly naked sight of her imprinted on his brain, he finally noted the decor. Everything was light and airy, nothing like Argent Castle in Scotland. All the fabrics were covered in flowers—the sofas, the chairs, the seats at the kitchen table. All the tables were light bamboo, and the curtains over the French patio doors were also floral.

  On the kitchen table her laptop sat open, the screen saver scrolling across it showing myriad wolf pictures in woodsy settings, whether wolf-wolves or werewolves he couldn’t decipher. What had she been looking at? Business? Emails? Something else? He wasn’t going to look, yet he was dying to, which was inherently part of a wolf’s curious nature. He wanted to know everything he could about her.

  Before he could get himself into hot water by checking out her laptop, she walked out of the bedroom dressed in the clothes he’d seen her wearing previously, minus the silver sandals.

  “You have whiskey on your breath,” she said, in an accusing tone, her arms folded.

  That didn’t look good. Either she thought he was a real drinker and had been in a bar all that time, or that he’d lied about his lack of accommodations.

  “After looking for places for an hour, I stopped at a bar, aye, lass. Sometimes a whiskey improves the disposition.”

  She smiled slightly at his comment. “I imagine you looked perfectly lethal to the clerks at every hotel you chanced to query.”

  “Aye, I did.” He liked that about her. That she wasn’t afraid of him, even if he might look perfectly lethal.

  “You didn’t have to break into the place,” she said, still sounding peeved.

  “I worried about you.”

  Her head tilted to the side, she gave him a look that said she didn’t believe him.

  He conceded, “I couldn’t believe you’d hold my being late against me, so I began conjuring up all kinds of trouble you might have gotten into.”

  “Okay,” she said, sounding like she did buy that to an extent, or at least wanted to. “So you were a warrior coming to my rescue.” She smiled a little, gloating over having knocked the warrior flat on his back with one good wolf lunge and a well-placed flowery bag. “You really don’t have a place to stay?”

  He felt hopeful for the first time tonight. “Nay. My brother made the reservation, and when I arrived, the clerk said none were available.”

  Brow wrinkled, she took a deep breath. “Why are you here?”

  “You offered to buy me a drink.”

  “No. I mean, are you here on vacation? Business? Why are you here on the island? You don’t appear to be the type who would come here alone on vacation.”

  He hadn’t expected that question, and he was certain if he told her what he planned to do, she wouldn’t care for it one wee bit.

  “You’re right. I have business. Banking business.”

  She frowned a little at that, then nodded. “I have a proposition for you, since I have a bit of a situation myself.”

  “Aye?”

  “You can stay here with me… if you don’t cause any trouble.”

  He wanted to remind her that she was the one who’d attacked him, not the other way around. To his way of thinking, she was the cause of any trouble. Good thing they hadn’t damaged the furniture in the rental, and the villa was isolated so no one would have known about their mock fight. All he intended to do was make this his base of operations. Beyond that, he’d be out trying to find a way to get the clan’s money back.

  “What about your roommate?” he asked, hoping Shelley didn’t have one and that he could stay there for the entire week without any problem.

  “I got an email from the college that was paying my grant. Seems someone has absconded with a whole lot of the college’s money. My grant money isn’t coming. I’m a college professor, and I can’t afford the villa on my own. I’ve saved enough money to take some excursions, but paying for the rest of the vil
la is a little beyond my means. I’ll keep the master bedroom suite on the first floor. You can have the guest bedroom with the two twin beds on the second floor.”

  “Twin beds,” he said, figuring his feet would hang off the end of the bed, even though he had to remind himself that his only other alternative was sleeping crunched up in a compact car. Beyond that he’d been hoping for at least a couch.

  “Yes. If you’ll pay half price.”

  “Seems to me if I pay half…”

  She gave him a pointed look. “I don’t have to make the offer at all. Since you seem to be without a castle at the moment…”

  She was going to hold the grudge about the way the chiefs had cleared the crofters from their lands in the old days.

  “How much is half?” he asked.

  “You’re a true Scot, I see.”

  He ignored the jibe, not wanting her to know how poor his people were, but also he wouldn’t have ever agreed to a price without knowing what it was.

  She sighed. “Five thousand.”

  His mouth gaped. “Per day?”

  She gave a little laugh, and if it hadn’t been at his expense, he would have loved hearing the melodic sound of it. “Per week.”

  That wasn’t much better than per day. “Each?” He hoped she meant that was the total.

  “Ah, yes, each of us has to pay $5,000. I had to have a villa where I would be isolated from others—because of my wolfish nature, of course.”

  He scrubbed one hand over his face, which he noted was getting more whiskery by the moment. “If you have a grant covering part of your cost, and I’m getting the twin bed…”

  “Two twin beds.” She stood firm. “You pay half or…”

  “Or? You’ll be stuck for the whole ten grand,” he countered. If he paid $5,000 to stay in the villa, Ian would surely kick him out of the clan.

  She chewed on her bottom lip, her eyes narrowed as she focused on him, both of them at a standstill.

  “Think, lass, I have a rental car that I’ve paid for, and as long as I’m not taking care of business—”

  “Banking,” she said, sounding skeptical.

  “Aye, then I could take you where you’d like to go.”

  “The Mastic Reserve,” she said.

  “The what?”

  “It’s an ancient dry forest.”

  “Dry forest.” He envisioned a petrified forest or a deciduous one with no leaves in the dead of winter, but in the tropics, he couldn’t imagine such a thing.

  “Yes, the reserve has examples of a deciduous semi-tropical dry forest. I want to see it, and take notes and pictures. I teach botany at West Texas A&M, so I’m taking the information to my classes when I start back the fall semester next year. Most of the West Indies have had substantial deforestation, so this is one of the last holdouts that has existed, growing and changing for two million years! You must appreciate ancient things if you live in a castle.”

  “Dry forest.” He did feel the same way about the ancient Caledonian Forest in Scotland. He just hadn’t thought of her as a plant kind of person. “Sure. I can drop you off to check out the trees.”

  “That would work. Tours last two and a half to three hours, but I plan to stay for longer than that to take notes.” She hesitated, then added, “If you’re to stay with me, it’ll cost five thousand dollars.”

  He couldn’t believe she wasn’t budging on the price. With her agreement to his taxiing her around the island, he’d thought she’d cut him some slack. Now he was surprised she hadn’t tacked on additional charges!

  When he didn’t respond quickly, she added, “You were in a movie. Had it filmed at your castle, even. Own a castle, for heaven’s sake. Are you trying to tell me that you’re the youngest son and your laird brother doesn’t support you like he should? You obviously have money or you wouldn’t be here doing banking business.”

  He had never intended to tell the woman what his real business was here. That a wolf had financially taken advantage of his wolf pack, which was downright embarrassing. They had no intention of telling the world.

  But he didn’t feel he had any other choice. “All right. The truth is that a man stole most of my clan’s savings, and I’m here to track him down and get it back.”

  Her eyes widened. “Your money was stolen?” She was frowning now and seemed uneasy. “How do you plan to get the money back?”

  “Any way that I can. He’s a wolf.”

  Her mouth parted in surprise—that sweet mouth that he was wanting more and more to kiss.

  But she was still waiting for him to explain his family’s predicament, and she wasn’t thinking of kisses. “We didn’t know it at the time since all the financial transactions were done either through correspondence or phone conversations and wire transfers.” He let out his breath, not sure how she’d feel about what he was telling her.

  “We deal with our kind any way we have to. I have to admit, my brother, Guthrie, who got us into this financial mess in the first place, had been adamant that I not spend a lot of time or money on this effort. For one thing, he doesn’t believe I’d get the money out of one of those secured banks no matter how hard I try. Worse, nearly six hundred banks or trust companies are located in the Cayman Islands.”

  “Wow,” Shelley said. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nay. Not only that, but forty-three of fifty of the world’s largest banks are here.”

  “I would never have imagined.”

  With only about 56,000 residents on the island, the size of the banking industry was mind-boggling. Especially to Duncan because money and numbers were not his strong suit. Ownership was, though. What was his family’s would remain his family’s.

  “Even though the banks subscribe to anti-laundering money regulations to avoid having proceeds from serious crimes deposited in accounts here, I assume Salisbury Silverman has enough connections he can still make the system work for himself. And he does have a home here. Guthrie had learned that foreign investment in property or homes was perfectly legal.”

  Her lips were parted in an inviting way, but her brow was furrowed with concern. “Salisbury Silverman? He’s been on the news everywhere. He’s stolen from major players in several countries.” She swallowed hard. “Couldn’t it be dangerous? To confront him?”

  “Aye. For him.”

  She looked as though she was fighting a smile as she sat down on one of the floral couches. “I knew when I saw you that you couldn’t be here for fun and games. Will you find him before you leave, do you think?”

  “I know where his estate is located. I just have to find a way to get to him. I don’t have time not to. We can’t afford for me to fly all over the world trying to catch up to this bastard.”

  “What do you do back home? Do you have training in taking down criminals?”

  “I am a Highland warrior.”

  Her lips parted again, then she shook her head, sounding sarcastic when she responded. “I’m sure that will help you with this case.”

  “If airport officials had allowed me to carry my sword on the plane, I would have ensured that the criminal got my point.” He smiled a little at his dark humor.

  She didn’t smile but continued to frown at him. “You’re going to be trouble, aren’t you?”

  “I won’t get you involved in this. I’ll just stay here as a stopping-off point, take care of my business, and drive you wherever you want to go to take care of yours when you need me to.”

  “You say he’s a wolf?”

  “Aye, an American gray wolf.”

  The look on her face said it all. She just knew that Duncan was going to be real trouble and she’d regret the day she’d met him.

  He attempted a smile that would convince her he was safe and that she had no worries where he was concerned.

  She didn’t look like she believed it.

  Chapter 4

  “Do you still want to go out for a drink?” Duncan asked Shelley.

  Feeling sorry for him and his clan,
she was ready to reverse herself on making him pay the $5,000 rent on the villa. Even though she was irritated that he had a castle and was from a family of Scots who had kept their lands while kicking out their kinsmen, she couldn’t see using that as a reason to tell him he couldn’t stay at the villa. Her mother or uncles might feel a whole lot differently about Duncan’s family’s situation. She suspected they’d tell him to take a flying leap.

  But he was a fellow wolf in need, and she didn’t like the fact that an American wolf had stolen his clan’s money.

  Besides, she would be out all the money if she didn’t get him to pay at least $5,000.

  “Do you still want me to pay for your drink?” she asked.

  He had the balls to look chagrined, and she shook her head. “I’m going for a swim in the ocean. We can share cell phone numbers, and tomorrow you can drop me off at the forest reserve. I’ll call you when I’m ready to be picked up.”

  As far as she was concerned, this was strictly a business proposition. He was subletting the place. End of story. Even if he was one damned sexy hunk of a wolf roommate. Mostly because he was one damned sexy hunk of a wolf roommate.

  “I meant to buy your drink to thank you for allowing me to stay here, not the other way around, Shelley. And I’ll pay the $5,000.”

  Her mouth gaped, but she needed the money so she quickly snapped her mouth shut.

  She got the distinct impression that she’d cut him to the quick and he was displeased about it. She hadn’t meant to; her knee-jerk reaction had been due to being rather frugal herself and feeling a little put-out about her own financial woes. But she hadn’t expected him to cough up the rest of the money. She bit her tongue when she wanted to ask if he was sure he could afford it.

  “But more importantly, nighttime is shark feeding time,” he said, looking like he thought the idea of her swimming in the ocean at this time of night was crazy. Apparently the issue of payment for the villa had been settled.

  She stared at him in disbelief. “It’s an island paradise. The ocean is there to swim in. Day or night.”

  “Right, and sharks feed more at night. It’s a proven fact.”