by Julie Kenner
“Chad?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Gussie smiled sadly. “They were engaged to be married once. But Sally up and went off to college in the city, and Chad went somewhere else. He was here when Sally came back to look for that bird, though. I thought they might get back together again.”
“But they didn’t?”
“Maybe they would have, but Sally…that’s when she went missing.”
Chad and Sally?
Dana leaned her head back against the armchair, absorbing this new and surprising information.
Chapter 7
Everything Aunt Gussie had said about the Arceneaux seemed to be true.
Dana talked to several people in town, including the man at the gas station who’d mistaken her for Sally. He was the first, though hardly the last, to clam up at the mention of Remy and Tristan Arceneaux.
Others had more to say. The elderly couple who ran the combination hardware and grocery store on the main street were eager to regale her ears with superstitious tales of men who could change into wolves and hunted by moonlight. Grand Marais’s sole hairdresser told Dana how all the girls had been after Remy Arceneaux in school, and how their parents had warned them away from him. Not that he’d ever shown interest in any of them; no, he’d always had his sights set on escaping Beaucoeur Parish. And he had escaped—for a while. Until Sally vanished and the rumors started. That was when he and Tristan went to live in the swamp, and the rumors grew.
By the time she had spoken to a dozen townspeople, Dana was used to being stared at as if she were a ghost. She knew that Remy had left behind a career in the city to take care of his brother, though it was still unclear what had happened to make such a radical change necessary.
It all came back to Sally Daigle, and the suspicions that one or both of the Arceneaux brothers were responsible for what had happened to her.
No one, however, had any facts. No evidence of any kind had ever been found, not even Sally’s body. She’d been seen talking to one of the brothers a few hours before she disappeared. That, and the way the Arceneaux were viewed in Grand Marais, was enough to settle their guilt in the minds of many.
But that wasn’t good enough for Dana. All her life she had relied on her own judgment when there had been no one else to trust. That judgment had told her that she had to get out of San Francisco, away from her staid routine, and search for the one essential element her well-ordered life was missing. If she was ever to trust her instincts again, she had to learn the truth. She owed her cousin, and herself, that much.
Lost in her own troubled thoughts, Dana became aware that someone was shadowing her along Main Street. The damp hair on the back of her neck prickled in alarm. But when she turned her head, all she saw were the usual scattered pedestrians, moving slowly in the midafternoon heat.
She was just about to turn for home when Tristan stepped around the corner of a building. His eyes darted from side to side as he approached her.
“Tristan?” she said. “Are you looking for me?”
His lips parted. “Sally?”
“I’m sorry, Tristan. I’m not Sally. I’m her cousin, Dana. We met yesterday, remember?” She took a step toward him. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” he said, ducking his head. “Remy said you helped me.”
So he didn’t remember. Perhaps his problems were more severe than she had guessed. “Does Remy know you’re here?”
Alarm lit his face, and at first she thought she had frightened him with her question. But the sound of footsteps from behind told her that Tristan was concerned with someone else. She turned quickly.
“Detective Landry,” she said. “I was just—”
“I told you to stay out of town,” Landry said to Tristan, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Go home. Allez.”
“Wait a minute,” Dana said. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
In the time it took for her to address Landry and turn back to Tristan, the young man was gone.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Dr. St. Cyr,” Landry said. “You’ve been warned about the Arceneaux brothers. I suggest you pay attention to those warnings.”
“Detective, if you know something about Sally, if you can tell me anything at all—”
But Landry was already walking away. Dana clenched her teeth on a shriek of frustration. What was the matter with the people in Grand Marais? Were they all crazy? Was she crazy to get involved with the bizarre doings in this peculiar country?
No, not crazy. Just a little reckless, which she so seldom was. She continued to walk in the direction she’d been headed before Tristan arrived, brooding over Landry’s words. She couldn’t stop thinking about Tristan. Was he in some new trouble?
Just as she completed the thought, she caught sight of Tristan’s dark-haired form moving among the shadows of a side alley. She turned into the alley, hoping he wasn’t spooked enough to run away from her as he had from Landry.
But he came out at once, greeting her with a smile that transformed his face to a remarkable and astonishingly masculine beauty. “Miss Dana?”
She breathed out a sigh of relief. “Tristan, how did you get to town? Did you drive?”
“Walked. It’s not far.”
Somehow she guessed that “not far” to the Arceneaux brothers might be quite a distance by her standards. “All right. I’m going to take you home. Will you come with me?”
He nodded, and she led him to the Lexus she’d left parked at the curb half a block down the street. Faces, staring from the sidewalk or gaping out of storefront windows, turned to follow their progress. Dana thought she was beginning to understand Remy’s extreme protectiveness.
It was easy enough to retrace Chad’s route into the swamp, first on a paved road, then gravel lanes, and finally onto an overgrown jeep trail that proved a challenge for the Lexus. Dana realized how foolish she’d been to offer Tristan a ride. She had only the vaguest idea of the direction in which Remy’s houseboat lay.
“Stop here,” Tristan said. “I know the way.”
Dana parked the car on a dry patch of ground. “Can I get there and back before sunset?”
“You don’t have to come.”
“I’d like to, Tristan, if it’s all right with you.”
He smiled with genuine pleasure and offered his hand. She took it. This time she would pay attention, so that she could retrace her steps the next time she came. She had no doubt that she would.
Tristan was very solicitous of her as he set off through the trees, pausing frequently to make sure she kept up. After a half-hour’s walking, they reached a familiar open space.
That was when she saw the wolf. It stood, quite still, in the center of the field, red coated and bigger than any wolf had a right to be. Its face was turned toward her, its triangular ears pricked and alert. It definitely knew she and Tristan were there.
Hadn’t Remy said there weren’t any wolves in Louisiana? Was this animal a fugitive from some local zoo, or someone’s exotic pet? Even she knew that wolves didn’t make good pets. She also knew they usually didn’t attack humans, but that thought was not particularly comforting.
Tristan showed not the slightest sign of fear or wariness. He started forward, moving confidently toward the animal. Dana caught his arm.
“Tristan! It might be dangerous.”
The sound of Tristan’s laugh startled her as much as the wolf. “Don’t worry, Miss Dana. It’s only Remy.”
The game was up.
Remy heard Tris’s casual statement and knew his choices were very limited. He could remain a wolf and scare Dana away, in which case he might soon be facing a mob of unwanted and hostile visitors; he could vanish into the swamp and hope Dana would continue to believe his brother was crazy; or he could decide to trust her.
“It’s all right, Remy,” Tristan called, making the decision for him. “You can tell Miss Dana. She’ll understand.”
A wolf’s eyes didn’t roll nearly as well as a man’s. Remy’s
curses emerged as a series of growls. Dana continued to grip Tristan’s arm, her eyes wide and fascinated, her scent only a little tinged with fear.
Dana St. Cyr was fundamentally levelheaded, intelligent and very, very stubborn. Once she saw what he was about to show her, she would probably believe. For good or ill.
Remy flattened his ears, shook his coat and willed the Change. When it was finished, he found Dana sitting on her rump with her mouth open and her skin very pale. Tristan patted her shoulder.
“I told you,” he said. “Remy won’t hurt you.”
“He’s right,” Remy agreed, rising from the grass. “All those stories about loups-garou who hunt humans are pure hogwash.”
Dana gulped. “Loo…gah-roo?”
“Close enough.” He was keenly aware that the grass wasn’t quite tall enough to cover his anatomy above midthigh. Well, she was a doctor, wasn’t she? Embarrassment was the least of her problems. “In English, you’d say ‘werewolves.’ I’ve always preferred the French term, myself.”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. And then, as he’d predicted, she took firm hold of herself and scrambled to her unsteady feet, leaning on Tristan for support. “This isn’t a trick, is it?”
“No.” Remy took a step in her direction, and she stiffened. He took another, but she held her ground.
“You…are the wolf?” she demanded.
“Oui.”
“You don’t even need a full moon?”
Either her dry sense of humor was returning, or she had already begun to accept. “That’s only a story,” he said. “Just like silver bullets and wolfsbane.”
“I see.” She glanced at Tristan and ran her tongue over her lips. Remy’s eyes were drawn to the motion, and he continued to stare at her mouth with as much fascination as she observed him.
“Is Tristan…?” Her expression cleared. “When we found Tristan caught in the trap, he had just…done what you did. Hadn’t he?”
The practical question drew him from his study of her very enticing mouth. “You catch on quickly. I think we’d be more comfortable talking back at the houseboat.”
“Is that where you left your clothes?”
He grinned, showing all his teeth. “You sound disappointed, chère. I can send Tristan back, and we can stay right here, you and me.”
“What if I say that I want to go home?”
“’Fraid not. Not yet. We don’t like our little secrets bandied around, you see.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “And if I decline to go with you?”
“You have such an elegant way of saying things, chère.” He bowed, a foolish gesture in his current state. “Tris and I would be heartbroken if you didn’t come for supper tonight.”
“Yes,” Tris said eagerly. “You’ve got to come, Miss Dana.”
In spite of her poker face, Dana’s thoughts were easy to read. “People will start asking questions if I don’t come home. My great-aunt will be worried, and several people saw me with Tristan.”
That might, indeed, pose a problem. But Remy wasn’t about to let Dana go her own way until she’d heard a more complete explanation of what she’d seen today.
“Nothing will happen to you,” he said, setting all levity aside. “You do want to know more, don’t you? About what we are?”
“And about Sally?”
“You won’t know unless you come.”
She tilted her head to one side, challenging him with a direct stare that should have set his hackles on end. Instead, he felt a strengthening of that attraction he’d felt since their first meeting. She wasn’t loup-garou, but she might as well have been.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll come for a few hours. If you promise to put some clothes on.”
“Je vois. Then there is some flaw in me you can fix, Doc?”
“I don’t have a remedy for your current…difficulty.”
Difficulty, indeed. He was aching with desire, and this particular distress manifested itself in a very public fashion.
“That’s too bad, chère,” he said. “Maybe one will come to mind.”
“When this swamp freezes over.” She smiled and tapped Tris’s shoulder. “Lead on, Tristan.”
Remy was tempted to run as fast as his legs would carry him on the unlikely chance that he could outdistance his lust. He broke into a trot ahead of Tris and Dana, reaching the boat in time to pull on jeans and a T-shirt before the others arrived. He sat on one of the oft-mended lawn chairs on the deck and watched Dana stride up to the ramp.
Maybe it was because she had accepted his true nature so readily, or maybe it was her unruffled courage in the face of the impossible. She looked far more beautiful to Remy now than she had at the side of the road in her pricey couture. Putting on clothing had not eased his lust in the slightest.
He stood up as she approached and extended his hand, making a bet with himself. If she walked past him without stopping, he would resolve to stay away from her, listen to his common sense and ignore this inconvenient attraction.
But if she took his hand…if she looked into his eyes…
She glanced at his hand and then at his face. Slowly she clasped his fingers in her own.
Remy didn’t know whether to howl or curse.
Chapter 8
I’m the captive of a naked wolfman, Dana thought, sitting at the kitchen table across from Remy while Tristan puttered around on deck. Make that formerly naked.
Not that Remy’s clothed state was much comfort. He could be dressed for a jaunt in the Arctic, and she would still be painfully aware of him and what she had seen.
She could reconstruct everything in perfect detail: Her first view of the wolf; the remarkable change to human, half-hidden in a reddish veil of mist; then Remy himself, standing there, utterly shameless, in all his glorious nakedness.
She’d been thinking about Greek statues the first time she saw him. She just hadn’t been imagining in quite enough detail. Certain parts of Remy were more impressive than on any statue she’d ever seen.
And while she was sitting here trying to fight off a long-unfamiliar sensation of pure sexual attraction, a part of her stood back and asked all the sensible questions her body preferred to disregard. If there really were such things as werewolves, and if Remy was one of them, could she believe his insistence that they weren’t what legend and film made them out to be? Could she afford to discount the possibility that Sally might have fallen prey to men who weren’t quite human?
“I had my lunch.”
She started at Remy’s voice. “I beg your pardon?”
“Just wanted to reassure you that I’m not going to eat you…at least, not in the way you’re thinking.”
A wash of heat gathered at the pit of Dana’s stomach. “I thought you said that werewolves don’t kill people.”
“They don’t. Not as a rule.” He leaned his chin on his hand and stared at her with unblinking turquoise eyes. Now that she looked at them more closely, she could see that they had a feral quality, slightly tilted above his high cheekbones.
Wolf’s eyes.
“Go ahead and ask,” he said.
“All right. Are there more of you…how do you spell that word?”
“L-o-u-p-s-g-a-r-o-u. Plural. And yes, there are more of us. We generally don’t go around announcing our presence.”
Maybe they didn’t need to. Maybe people sensed the truth without knowing exactly what it was. “Your parents? Family?”
“Most of my immediate family live in this or adjoining parishes. But we aren’t the only loups-garou.”
“In Louisiana?”
“In this country, even in San Francisco. Probably other countries, as well.”
“You’re serious.”
“I am about this. Like I said, we make sure that not too many people know about us.”
That meant that she, Dana St. Cyr, was one of a privileged few. What would happen if she couldn’t persuade Remy to trust her? She wanted very badly to trust him.<
br />
“You said that you can change whenever you want to?”
“Oui. We’re born with the Change, the way people are born with their eye color.”
Oh, not nearly so simple as that. “You don’t consider yourselves human?”
He smiled. “Depends on who you ask.”
“Where did you come from?”
“We don’t know the answer to either question. Our lineage goes back to Canada, and then to Europe. We know there are others.” He flexed his hand on the table. “We heal quickly—you saw that with Tris. We’re stronger and faster. We keep some wolf senses even when we walk as men.”
“But when you change…can you still think like a man?”
“Ordinarily, yes. We keep our intelligence and all our memories.” He frowned and glanced toward the door. “Tris…he’s different. He—” Abruptly he rose from the table. “Let’s just say that there are always exceptions.”
What had he been about to reveal about Tristan? That something wasn’t right with his memory?
“There’s still one question you haven’t asked,” he said.
“Only one?” she said with a lame attempt at humor.
“You want to know why all the stories say that we’re killers. What happens if we ever lose control of the wolf side of ourselves.” He paced back and forth across the floor of the kitchen. “We’re like anyone else—we come in all kinds, all beliefs. My family has never liked to deal with ordinary people. They keep to themselves and stay in the parish. Few of them have ever left, even for a short time.”
“But you did.”
“You’ve been asking around.”
“I like to know whom I’m dealing with.”
“So do I.” He favored her with a lopsided smile. “Yes, I left the parish. I attended L.S.U. in Baton Rouge, got my degree. Everyone at home thought I was crazy.”
