Linda O. Johnston

by Alpha Wolf

  Where Dr. Melanie Harding stood.

  Had she called a press conference to talk about the Mary Glen werewolf stories, complete with her brave rescue of a poor dog and removal of a silver bullet from its shoulder?

  Why the hell did he feel so deflated? Because he’d been attracted to the pretty vet? Imagined she was above snatching at her moment of fame? She wouldn’t know it was potentially at his expense. Hell, why would she care?

  When he had sneaked inside that morning, it hadn’t been through the front door. He had found a more vulnerable entry in the back, through a window into a room where pet food and medical supplies were stored.

  He could head there now but didn’t want to attempt to spirit Grunge away surreptitiously. He needed everything to happen aboveboard. He’d sign out his partner, get the prescribed meds and instructions on how to administer them, then scram.

  But now he would have to wait until the crowd dissipated.

  In the meantime, he could listen to the woman make a fool out of herself on camera, patting herself on the back. Fomenting the local werewolf legend.

  Squelching any desire he may have had for her.

  He edged closer.

  One of the reporters was talking, a female in a tight top and short skirt, eye-candy who was trying to sound flippant and sophisticated at the same time. “So you saved the life of a werewolf on your doorstep last night, Dr. Harding? Tell us all about it.”

  “What I’d really like to do is get back inside and help my patients, but even though I’m sure your viewers are smart enough to have understood the first time—” she rolled her eyes from the interrogator back toward the camera, which Drew took to imply that the audience was a lot brighter than the reporter “—yes, I discovered a poor dog outside the clinic last night. A very intelligent dog, to have come here, by the way, so I could help him. He’d been shot by a lowlife who apparently wanted to encourage the local werewolf legend.”

  “Then he was shot with a—”

  “Yes, as I told the reporters who interviewed me before—but I would imagine you were primping for the camera instead of listening, right? Oh, excuse me. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  Which was exactly what she was doing. Drew smiled a little in admiration.

  “In any event, you’ve got part of this right: my poor patient was shot with a silver bullet. But was he a werewolf? Well, I’ve started to bone up on the legends so I could be sure, and they say that werewolves change back to human form when touched by daylight. I was with my patient at dawn and he didn’t metamorphose into a person. Too bad.” Her smile was mocking. “I’m a scientist, you know. I didn’t move to Mary Glen because it was reputed to be overrun with werewolves. A good thing, too, since I haven’t run across any.”

  She looked indulgent. She looked exasperated. She looked completely in control.

  And then her eyes met Drew’s. And as soon as she saw him, even at this distance, that sensuous energy that had pulsed between them before was back. Her face flushed, and she looked away.

  Heat surged through him that had nothing to do with the warmth of the spring afternoon. Damn, but Dr. Melanie Harding was one incredible—and hot—female.

  “You haven’t met any werewolves yet,” contradicted the reporter, mugging for the camera. Apparently being insulted before her audience hadn’t fazed her.

  “Yet,” Melanie agreed, her attention back on the microphone. “But as a veterinarian, I’m a scientist. I’m open to learning new things. If Mary Glen really has any werewolves, bring ’em on.”

  Drew snorted silently. The sexy vet might have had the drooling media leeches in the palm of her hand right now, but she didn’t know what she was saying, not really.

  Bring on the werewolves?

  If she weren’t careful, Dr. Melanie Harding just might get a whole lot more than she had bargained for.

  Chapter 4

  D espite the cacophony of noise from the media scum and their eager audience, Drew heard the quiet sound of familiar footsteps behind him. He turned.

  “What are you doing here, Truro?” he asked even before his gaze landed on his longtime friend and colleague, Captain Jonas Truro.

  “Same as you, Major.” Jonas lifted his right arm and gave a mock salute. “Even though you said he’d be okay, I was still worried about the spoiled old mutt.”

  “Grunge isn’t old,” Drew countered.

  “Just a spoiled mutt.”

  “That’s a highly trained, well-cared-for army issue K-9 to you.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jonas grinned. He was about thirty years old, nearly as tall as Drew but with a heavier build, mostly muscle. His skin was the shade of the chocolate kisses he popped in his mouth almost as often as he drank water. Drew sometimes goaded him about how he was turning into one of the sweets. In turn, Jonas always kidded him about his jealousy. Drew and chocolate didn’t go well together.

  Like Drew, Jonas was ostensibly on duty, but they weren’t on base so neither was in uniform. Jonas wore jeans, too, but Drew’s wine-colored T-shirt was plain compared with Jonas’s, which proclaimed the University of Maryland around a black, gold, red and white depiction of the Maryland state flag.

  “That the vet?” Jonas jerked his nearly clean-shaven head toward Melanie.

  “Yeah,” Drew said. She was chatting vivaciously with her receptionist, Carla, while using her body as a blockade against the media horde and the tourists who might rush the clinic to check out the supposed werewolf. She combined tact and determination, both admirable qualities.

  “She seems to think the werewolf legends are really crap, doesn’t she?” Jonas asked. “I’ve been here long enough to hear her give it to those reporters.”

  “Sounds that way to me, too.”

  “Some interesting lady, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, interesting.” Drew had intended to make the word sound a lot more scornful than it came out. Ignoring Jonas’s smirk, he continued, “Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

  He led the way through the dissipating crowd to the clinic’s front door. As the now-ignored reporters finally turned away, the vet met Drew’s eye. There was a challenge in her expression, as if she expected him to try to barge past her, too.

  Instead, he stopped several feet away.

  “Hi, Major,” said Carla, giving him a big wink.

  Drew was used to her flirtatiousness and didn’t take it seriously. He nodded at her, then turned to Melanie. “Dr. Harding, this is Captain Jonas Truro. We’re here for Grunge.”

  Jonas stepped around him. “Major Connell told me about all you did for Grunge last night, Dr. Harding. I work with him, too, and really appreciate it. And I watched you handle those media types. Great job.”

  “All in a day’s work in werewolf country,” the vet said with a rueful smile. She shook hands with Jonas—and Drew found himself envying the small contact.

  Which irritated him.

  “I’d never have expected so many reporters here in Mary Glen.” Melanie’s tone sounded both baffled and disgusted.

  “Yeah, the tourists like to get word out there if any hint of shapeshifter stuff happens around here,” Jonas said. “They’ve lots of contacts at the D.C. and Baltimore newspapers and TV and radio stations.”

  “So I figured.” Melanie shook her head.

  “How’s Grunge doing now?” Drew interrupted, more abruptly than he’d intended. “You’re sure it’s okay to take him home?”

  He ignored the annoyance and curiosity in the vet’s bright blue eyes. She seemed to be scoping him out, trying to read why he’d snapped at her. Damned if he knew. But that conversation with Jonas had gone on long enough.

  “He’s doing well,” she finally said. “And, yes, he can leave.” She led them into the building, closing the door behind Carla, who followed them. She locked it.

  The place smelled like a hospital—clean and medicinal—even with the overlay of multiple animal scents.

  “It’s after six o’clock, at least,” Melanie sa
id. “No more appointments today, right, Carla?”

  The receptionist nodded. “Right. I checked the voicemail at my phone extension just in case, but no one’s called, so our next appointment’s tomorrow morning at nine.”

  “Good. This way, gentlemen. Oh, that’s right, Major Connell. You know the way.” Melanie shot him a look full of irony, then turned and preceded them down the hall. Her hips swayed gently, causing her white lab coat to swing in an enticing manner. They passed a guy wearing a turquoise medical top. “All the dogs okay, Brendan?” Melanie asked.

  “Sure are, Doc. I’m outta here now, okay?”

  “As long as you’ve fed everyone and made sure their crates are clean.”

  “Always.” The young man grinned and hurried past them.

  Melanie’s dark hair, clipped at the nape of her neck, flicked around as she stopped and looked back at Drew and Jonas. “You’ll need to keep Grunge on antibiotics for the next ten days. I’ll give you pills for him to be taken with food. A painkiller, too, if he needs it, poor dog. I’m sure silver bullets are just as painful as lead or whatever they’re made from these days.”

  “Join me for dinner and you can tell me more about how you saved him,” Drew said. “And your suggestions for his continued care.”

  He had decided that this vet could be a useful resource. But only if he could learn what she knew.

  They’d had access to her predecessor, of course, but Dr. Worley had known the truth about what was going on. Although he had always passed along anything he heard, he had lived here all his life. No one would have attempted to update him with anything supposedly new, sway his opinion.

  Could be very different with Dr. Melanie Harding, fresh to the area. What had she heard about the alleged Mary Glen shapeshifters? This wasn’t likely to be the new vet’s only encounter with the legends, maybe not even the first. And his unit’s gathering of knowledge, even of rumors, could make the difference between life and death.

  More important, she might hear something about whoever shot Grunge. And how the tourist was attacked. Drew wanted answers to both—fast.

  “Well, I don’t—” she began.

  “I’ll take Grunge back to the base,” Jonas said.

  “Good,” Drew said. “Let’s see Jonas off with Grunge, and then we’ll eat.”

  Why had she agreed to this? Or at least not given Drew an unequivocal no?

  They stood outside the Mary Glen Diner. “Would you like to eat out here, on the sidewalk?” he asked.

  Although half a dozen tables sat there, only a couple were occupied. It was still early enough in spring that the air was brisk. She had traded her lab jacket for a navy cardigan, but Melanie shivered anyway at the idea of staying outside.

  Or maybe it was the idea of staying longer in Drew Connell’s company that made her tremble—in suppressed irritation at his continued arrogance. Yet there was something about him that chiseled away at her decision to swear off men. And it wasn’t his sparkling personality.

  “Let’s go inside,” she said, as much to take control of the situation as anything.

  They were met at the door by Angie Fishbach, who owned the diner. She was a short, slightly chubby woman with laugh lines crinkling the edges of her small eyes. Only she wasn’t smiling now. And deep lines were gouged into her forehead by her frown.

  She wore thick-soled athletic shoes that made her yellow uniform-like shirtwaist look even dowdier. “Two?” she grumbled, then turned her back, leading them down the aisle between the rows of booths.

  Odd. Angie had always been cordial to Melanie before.

  The diner was one of only a couple eating establishments in town that weren’t a pizza parlor or fast food joint. Melanie dined here now and then, mostly at breakfast before the clinic opened. Alone, with her copy of the Baltimore Sun, delivered each morning to her door.

  Angie often stopped at her table and chatted, unless the place was too crowded or the staff too thin.

  This evening, competing aromas of grilling meat and baking pastries also filled the air. Most booths and tables were occupied, and the acoustics turned the atmosphere into a loud hum of conversation. Melanie recognized a lot of people, some from prior visits here and many who brought their pets to the clinic.

  Angie showed them to a booth near the windows. “Here.” She slammed the laminated menus down on the stone-look Formica table. “Crystal will be with you soon.”

  Melanie shot a glance toward Drew. He slid into the booth and opened the menu, without seeming to notice Angie’s abruptness. Maybe he hadn’t been here often enough to expect anything else. Melanie sat down, too.

  “Hope you’re hungry.” He lowered the menu and looked at her. “They charbroil a mean steak here.”

  “I know,” she said. “But not for me.”

  “Are you a vegetarian, Doc?”

  “No,” Melanie said. “I believe in the natural order of things, and of course animals devour each other to survive. We’re theoretically more advanced, but as much as I love the taste of red meat it’s not healthy for humans to eat a lot of it.”

  “Could be. But it’s okay to live dangerously now and then, don’t you think?”

  One corner of his full lips quirked up in an almost-smile. Melanie’s insides ignited. Was that last sentence intended to be a double entendre?

  Well, sure, she found the guy hot. Who wouldn’t? And here they were, out for dinner, on the first date she’d had since arriving in Mary Glen. The idea of sex with this man had crossed her mind more than once since she’d caught him in the clinic. In fact, it had flowed down from her brain and now sizzled in her body as if her blood had turned into lava.

  It had been ages since she had thought about sex, longer still since she had indulged.

  Which was, of course, the problem, she realized as she pretended to study the menu without responding to his provocative question. Not only was she rusty at the whole dating thing, but she was also horny. She would read innuendo into the most innocent of statements.

  He was simply teasing her, right? Only, he didn’t seem to be the teasing type. Her deprived, conservative nature was undoubtedly obvious to this man who had to live dangerously more than the now and then he’d suggested. He was in the military, wasn’t he?

  The most daring thing she had done in her life was to leave everything and everyone she knew in her hometown of Los Angeles and buy the veterinary practice here.

  But she’d had to make a change, a drastic one, after all she had gone through at the time. Her parents were dead, and her sister lived with her husband and kids in Seattle. There had been much more reason to leave than to stay, once she had learned what her former fiancé had been pulling.

  Well, she could take care of herself. And that meant flirting. Why not? It wouldn’t hurt to practice, even if she had no intention of anything more.

  “You convinced me,” she said to Drew. “I’ll go for the small sirloin. And a salad on the side. Need to have something that’s arguably good for me.”

  “T-bone for me,” he said. “Large. If I have any leftovers, Grunge will be willing to take them on. Without the bone, in case it’s the kind that’ll splinter. Right, Doc?”

  “Sure.” Rusty or not, this was a date. She wasn’t here to be super vet, lecture the guy against feeding his injured friend table scraps instead of sticking to dog food. Drew’s raised eyebrows suggested he was prepared for her to give him an earful. Instead, she shrugged and smiled. The extra treat would be good for Grunge’s recovery.

  Their waitress, Crystal, soon came over bearing glasses of water, and a notepad to take their order. “Decided what you want?” She was an older lady with a bored expression. She had served Melanie before. They gave their orders and Crystal moseyed off.

  “Where are you from, Melanie?” Drew took a sip of water, and his unusual amber eyes regarded her steadily, as if he gave a damn about her answer.

  “L.A. And you?”

  “A huge place like that, and you wind up i
n pint-sized Mary Glen? Why?”

  “Why not?” she countered, slightly miffed that he had ignored her question. He’d asked, and she had responded. It was his turn. But she decided not to make an issue of it. “It’s a great area,” she finally said. “Lots of people with pets. And obviously a vet’s services are needed. And you? Where are you from? And why are you—”

  Before he could answer—assuming he would—Angie appeared at their table. “Why would you do such a thing, Melanie?” Although her voice wasn’t raised, her words pelted Melanie as if hurled at her. “How could you save the life of a…a murdering creature like that? Didn’t you know what he was?”

  Melanie blinked as she stared up at the obviously upset woman. “Would you like to sit down, Angie?”

  “No,” Angie snapped. “Everyone in town knows about that supposed dog you found last night, Melanie. I heard that a bunch of reporters came to ask you about it, and you didn’t even have the courtesy to tell them the truth.”

  Melanie swallowed the retort that sprang to her lips.

  “Dr. Harding told the truth, Angie,” Drew said, his voice low. “She saved my dog’s life.”

  “Why didn’t you just let that creature die?” Angie didn’t look at Drew as tears flowed from her puffy eyes.

  Melanie felt herself stiffen. She hadn’t sought answers about who had harmed Grunge. That was Angus Ellenbogen’s job. But now she had to know. “Did you shoot that poor dog, Angie? Or do you know who did?”

  “Someone smart,” the woman shot back. “And brave. Oh, yes, I’d have done it if I’d been there and seen that damned wolf, believe me. I knew it was a full moon last night. Everyone talked about it. I thought about hunting, but…but…I was afraid. And now one of our tourists is suffering because I was a coward.” Her last words came out in a wail.

  Swallowing her anger, Melanie put a comforting arm around Angie’s back as the woman began to sob.

  “I don’t understand,” Melanie said, puzzled. What was wrong with the woman? How could she—

  “You saved the life of a fiend,” Angie screeched. “A shapeshifter. A werewolf, the one who must have chewed up poor Sheila Graves. And he, or a creature just like him, killed my husband.”