Eddie’s Prize

by Maddy Barone

  If Lisa didn’t want to see her former husband, Taye would ensure she didn’t. And the Pack would gladly help.

  Taye went out the front door and strolled back to the gate, Snake on his right and Lobo on his left, and Tracker watching cold-eyed from the side of the door. Others of the Pack, in man form and wolf form, were scattered over the yard, watching closely. Eddie was still on the other side of the gate, pacing in small circles to keep warm. Taye could almost smell his impatience.

  He stopped at the gate and let his disdain show in his face. “She doesn’t want to see you. She doesn’t want to talk to you. Go home, Madison.”

  Madison’s face was set in hard lines.” I want to see my wife.”

  Taye arched a brow. “Are you deaf? I spoke to her, and she was very clear that she didn’t want to see you. She didn’t want to talk to you. She didn’t want to even think about you.”

  Eddie almost flinched, but he shrugged it off. “I want. To see. My wife,” he said again, through clenched teeth.

  Snake pushed close to the gate. “She’s not your wife, asshole.”

  Taye didn’t interfere. This language wasn’t like Snake. Few of the Pack used strong language like the townsmen did. Snake seemed to have appointed himself Lisa’s champion. Taye rolled the word “asshole” around in his mind for a moment before shrugging. It fit.

  Eddie Madison wasn’t intimidated by Snake. Taye thought he looked like he wanted to tear the new fence down. “I need to see her.”

  “Yeah?” Taye raised one brow. “Like I care what you need.”

  Madison’s fingers clenched over the heavy chain links of the gate. “I need to see her. I need to make things right with her.” The desperate, yearning note in his voice almost made Taye waver. Then his tone turned demanding. “Just bring her out here. Now.”

  Taye yawned as insultingly as possible. “If that’s the way you spoke to Lisa, I’m not surprised she repudiated you.”

  Madison didn’t explode. Taye thought his control was impressive, considering the way his face reddened. “I demand to see Lisa.” His voice was almost calm. “’Give me ten minutes with her.”

  Snake growled. “What do you want us to do? Grab her arm and drag her out?” His growl was audible as he thrust his chin out. “Maybe that’s how you would do it, but we don’t bruise women here.”

  Lobo shifted on Taye’s other side. “Go away, bully-boy,” he said, “or I’ll let The Beagle at you. She tore the last man to hurt one of our women into pieces.”

  Madison’s tired, angry eyes shifted from one to another of them. “What exactly are you hinting at?” His voice lifted in a snarl. “That I beat my wife?”

  “Hinting?” Lobo’s voice rose. “I saw the bruises myself just now. That sweet woman said it was an accident. You didn’t mean to. You know what I think? I think that’s what a woman who’s afraid of the man who hurt her says.”

  “I’ve never hurt Lisa!”

  Taye slashed his hand down to keep Snake and Lobo back. “So how’d that bruise in the shape of a man’s hand get on her arm?”

  Madison shook his head. “I’ve never hurt her,” he repeated, but there was a thread of doubt in his voice. “I love her.”

  “Funny way of showing it,” Snake jeered.

  “Go away, Madison.” Taye turned away from the gate.

  A clang and rattle sounded when Madison kicked the fence. “Fine,” he called. “But tell her I love her. I’m coming back as often as I have to until she’ll see me!”

  Snake spun back to the gate, but Taye grabbed his arm. “Let him go. It’s up to Lisa whether she’ll see him or not.”

  “You know he should be dead. Lisa is Pack now, right? Any man who hurts one of our women dies.”

  Lobo grunted agreement. Tracker, falling into step with them, nodded.

  Taye gestured them to a halt before they went into the den. “Yeah, I’d agree too, but what if Lisa changes her mind? She said she still loves him.”

  Snake growled “I won’t allow her to go back to him. Neither will my wolf.”

  Laura huffed. “Your wolf has chosen her?”

  “No!” yelped Snake. “I didn’t mean it like that. Last night at the party Lisa said I was her little brother. Don’t brothers look out for their sisters? That Madison is no good for her.”

  Taye shook his head. “Lisa is an adult. We’ll let her decide what she wants.”

  “What if Lisa decides to go back to him and he hurts her again?” Snake protested.

  Tracker spoke quietly. “Then we kill him.”

  * * * *

  After her nap, Lisa went back to the rec room where the fire was warm. Sleeping in a bed alone was cold. Eddie had been warm to cuddle up to, and not just for sex. Lisa had grown up in Minnesota, and even with central heat she had always been cold. It was one reason she’d chosen to move to California. Without central heating, Lisa was perpetually shivering unless she was working in the kitchen or snuggled up to Eddie.

  Eddie was no longer her heat source. Feeling alone, she nodded to the four men sitting on the floor playing a card game, walked to the chair by the fire, and dug her pathetic attempt at knitting out of the bag. When Carla had offered to teach her to knit, she’d said a scarf could be a good project because a few messed up stitches wouldn’t affect its warmth. Lisa held up the strip of knitting with a defeated sigh.

  Tami, The Grandmother, and Rose came in just as she sighed.

  “How is it coming?” Rose asked, as if it wasn’t obvious that Lisa was a failure as a knitter.

  “Not so good.” Lisa’s smiled wobbled. “Maybe I’m just not destined to be a knitter.”

  Rose nodded sympathetically. “It took me a while. You should see how my first project turned out.”

  “Would you like to try rug braiding? I could show you that,” Tami offered.

  Another little rug in her room would be nice to step on instead of the cold floor, Lisa decided. “Yes, that would be great.”

  “We have an hour or so before supper. Let’s get started now.”

  By supper time Lisa decided she wasn’t destined to be a rug maker either. Tami was a good teacher, but Lisa couldn’t seem to lay her fabric strips in the right order, and when she tried to stitch the resulting wonky braid to the previous coil, it wouldn’t lay flat.

  “That’s okay,” Tami said encouragingly. “It takes time to master a craft.”

  “I’m not very crafty.” Lisa sighed and went into the dining hall for supper. The dining hall at the den reminded her of the cafeteria in her junior high school. At one end was the service area, where she got a plate and silverware and stood in line to be served whatever the meal was. After her plate was loaded with a far too big portion of shepherd’s pie, she headed for the table where Taye and Carla sat.

  Rose obligingly scooted her chair over to make room for Lisa. “You know, I think you might like to crochet,” she suggested. “It’s lots quicker than knitting, and there’s only one hook to hold instead of two needles. I can show you after supper.”

  Lisa tried to sound enthusiastic. “Okay, let’s give it try.” She would suck at that too, but it was better than thinking about Eddie and crying.

  But she didn’t suck at it. For some reason, using a hand-carved wooden hook to pull a loop of yarn through another loop of yarn made sense to Lisa. Rose sat close to Lisa by the fire in the rec room, with Carla strumming her guitar lazily on the other side of the fire and Snake sitting on the floor beside Lisa’s chair. Lisa glowed with the satisfaction of success as she held the beginning of a granny square up for everyone to see.

  “It’s only three rounds so far, and it’s a little crooked, but I did it!” she proudly proclaimed. “What can I do with it?”

  She remembered a photograph of her mother as a child wearing a white turtleneck under a hideous granny square vest in avocado green and harvest gold.

  “Not a vest!” she said, with only half-joking horror. “Ewww!”

  Rose laughed. “No, but you could ma
ke a bunch of squares and sew them together to make an afghan.”

  Lisa made a face. “Sewing?”

  The Grandmother woke from one of her frequent dozes. “Or just keep going and make one big granny square.”

  That would be warm. “Do we have enough yarn?”

  The Grandmother pursed wrinkled lips. “We have plenty. The great thing about granny squares is that they can use up scraps. Even a yard of yarn can be used. You know, these days nothing goes to waste. We can’t afford to throw out scraps. Snake, go fetch the bag of yarn from the cabinet in the Lupa’s room. If that’s okay, Carla?”

  Lisa went back to making careful double crochets in the spaces Rose showed her. This was fun! When Snake set the large canvas bag next to her, she eagerly dove in to see what colors she could find. There was dozens of balls of yarn, some big and some tiny, all fascinating.

  Snake hovered close. “How about this one?” He held up a ball of lavender wool and then a dark bright purple. “These go together. And this pink one too.”

  More and more men came into the rec room to sprawl on the floor or hang around Carla. Lisa recognized the bald-headed man, Laura. Er, Lobo. He sat against the wall close to where Tracker sat working with a chisel and a small piece of stone. Tami was braiding fabric strips for her rug. Laura’s dog was dashing from one man to the next, begging for affection, with her tongue hanging out until she finally collapsed on Carla’s foot. Taye shoved the dog away to make room for himself on the floor. He smiled at Lisa’s eager treasure diving.

  “I like that bright yellow,” he commented. “It goes good with the purple.”

  “You must be a Vikings fan,” Lisa laughed.

  She laughed again at his blank expression and arranged her yarn by color. This was the happiest Lisa had felt in a long time.

  Taye nodded to Lobo. “Lobo has news from the Clan.”

  Laura cleared his throat. “The best of news. Wolf’s Shadow and his mate Glory will be parents sometime in August.”

  Werewolves could raise the roof when they were excited. They leaped to their feet and howled a feral chorus of joy. Lisa suppressed a pang. She had just finished her period before the Gala. She and Eddie hadn’t been together since then. A baby would have complicated things, but she still felt regret.

  Snake sat back down and leaned against her knee. For a second Lisa was afraid he was flirting with her, but his boyish face held only enthusiasm. “A baby!” he said happily. “Isn’t that great?”

  “It certainly is!” she agreed with more enthusiasm than she actually felt. “I could make them a baby blanket.”

  He beamed with delight for her new skill. “You like doing this?”

  “I really do. It will keep my mind off…”

  “Madison,” he finished for her. “You don’t want to think about him? If you wanted to talk to him, you could.”

  Lisa wound the lavender yarn around her fingers and picked up her crochet hook. “No, I think it’s best to try to forget about him.”

  “Even if he wants to talk to you? Even if he wants you back?”

  Except for the guitar, the room was suddenly quiet. Lisa swallowed against longing. “It would depend on whether or not he was willing to change. I won’t go back to him if he doesn’t trust me enough to share everything with me. He’s not willing to do that, so there’s no point in talking to him.”

  Snake patted her knee. “He doesn‘t deserve you.”

  She smiled to keep back the tears. “Snake, how old are you?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe twenty now. I was born in late January or early February.”

  In some ways he seemed older. She examined his face, not seeing a physical resemblance to her brother Derek, but it was there somehow all the same.

  “You really do remind me of my little brother. Derek was three years younger than me. We were best friends growing up.” With their mother’s love affair with alcohol, they’d only had each other to depend on. The many boyfriends and stepfathers their mother had foisted on them wouldn‘t look out for them. “He watched out for me, and I looked after him.”

  “I’ll be your brother,” he vowed. “I’ll look after you. Tami doesn’t need me anymore, but you do.”

  She let her hand slide down one of his braids. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

  Chapter 24

  Lisa woke freezing cold the next morning and automatically reached for Eddie’s warmth. When she encountered only cold sheets, she curled into a ball of misery. Even her nose was cold. She tucked her face under the covers and considered. A phrase from a motivational speaker she’d once heard came to her.

  “You may not be able to choose your circumstances, but you can choose your attitude.”

  To mourn a failed relationship wasn’t wrong, but did she need to let it control her? She stretched out and then pulled her legs up in a fetal position, curling her toes to conserve warmth as she pondered the events of the last three months. She may not have been a perfect wife, but she had truly given Eddie everything she had. Should she have stuck it out longer and given him a chance to be more open with her? Maybe, but she didn’t think so. The failure of their marriage sat on his shoulders. Starting today, she was moving on.

  Of course, she’d have to leave the bed and brave the cold to do that.

  It took her another fifteen minutes to drag herself out of bed and into the bathroom. The only advantage of sitting on a toilet seat that could double for a block of ice was that it woke the sitter up in a hurry. With a laugh, Lisa rejoiced that the toilet flushed, unlike the facilities she had used in Kearney, and tonight was her turn for a hot shower. Lisa raced to dress and hurried to the fireplace in the rec room. Snake was already there, adding wood to the fireplace.

  “Breakfast won’t be ready for a half hour,” he announced in a cheerful voice. “I could fetch you a cup of hot tea, though.”

  “I wish we had coffee,” she sighed, before cringing at her ungrateful words. “But tea sounds terrific, thanks!”

  She picked up her crochet hook and selected a new color for the next round on her granny square. She thanked Snake when he brought the tea.

  “Your blanket is getting bigger,” he commented as he sank to the floor beside her chair and leaned against her.

  “It’s taking longer to go all the way the around the square,” she agreed. “It’s fun to see how the colors look together.”

  He was quiet for a minute, watching her fingers flick the yarn around the hook and pull loops through. “Did you want coffee?”

  Lisa shrugged, continuing to crochet. “I like coffee, but tea is fine. I asked Eddie once to get some coffee and he agreed, but he never did.” She shrugged again. “He doesn’t like coffee.”

  Snake made a feral sound not too different from some of the sounds Eddie used to make when he was angry. “Selfish son of a…”

  Lisa gasped. Snake was really angry. He broke off and cleared his throat. “Sorry. It just makes me mad he treated you so bad.”

  “He didn’t treat me badly,” she said quietly. “I think his problem was he never saw things from my side.”

  At breakfast she was quiet, thinking about how Eddie had treated her. Except for the few times he had grabbed her arm too tightly, he’d never hurt her physically, and she honestly believed he hadn’t meant to hurt her then. He probably hadn’t meant to hurt her with his mistrust either, but he had.

  Oh, God, she had to stop thinking about him! She went into the rec room with Carla and The Grandmother and took up her granny square, determined to not think about Eddie for at least the rest of the morning. The sight of Tracker and Tami entering the dining hall late made her smile. She couldn’t quite imagine Tracker as a passionate lover. He was just too coldly unemotional to be passionate about anything, but Tami didn’t seem to have any complaints. They tended to run late for breakfast, and when they did show up, both looked very satisfied. It reminded Lisa of the mornings she and Eddie had overslept… Quit that! Lisa told herself fiercely. Crochet!

&
nbsp; A howl from outside cut through the quiet conversations in the rec room. Snake got up and went to the window to see what was going on. He stood for long minutes, staring hard, until Taye came in with a flyer in his hand. The Alpha went to Carla and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

  “Sweetheart, bad news,” he said in sober tones. “Three women have died, JaNae and Kathy from the Plane Women’s House, and a woman visiting from Omaha.”

  Lisa felt something inside crumble. Being here in the den, its own little world away from Kearney, had made the quarantine seem silly. This was real.

  Snake put a hand on her knee, patting her anxiously. “What other news, Chief?”

  Taye looked at the paper he held. “Three other women have fallen ill.”

  “Only three?” said The Grandmother. “This might not be such a bad episode of the Plague. Normally, there would be twenty women sick by now. Especially when you consider so many were together in one place at the mayor’s party.”

  Taye’s face lightened before turning sober again. “It’s early days,” he sighed. He scanned each of the women in the rec room, Carla, The Grandmother, Lisa, and Rose, before saying, “Being cooped up inside isn’t good for you. We’ll meet in an hour in the back behind the stable for fight practice.”

  The Grandmother said firmly, “Count me out, young man.”

  Rose seemed happy about it. “Will you show me how to swing my arm to block a knife again? I always get that wrong.”

  “You put your weight on the wrong foot,” Taye explained patiently. “We’ll go over that again.” He looked at Lisa. “We’ll start you off easy this morning.”

  “Me?” Lisa pointed her crochet hook at her chest. “Learn to fight?”

  Snake pulled her up. “It’ll be fun! Besides, you should know how to defend yourself. If you’d known a week ago how to twist away from a man’s hand, you wouldn’t have those bruises now.”