Honey, I Shrunk the Werewolf!
Dakota Cassidy
“I’m a what?”
“A werewolf.”
“A werewolf who can’t remember he’s a werewolf because he has amnesia.”
That pretty much sums it up. The timing couldn’t be worse, too. Just when the pain of booting her asshat of a husband to the curb has started to lessen, Ella gets stuck babysitting his hairy amnesiac ass. Well…she is a psychiatric nurse, after all. In exchange for helping Crosby rediscover his inner werewolf, Ella has the pack’s word she’ll be granted a divorce. She’ll be free to move on. Maybe continue the Twitter flirtation she’s got going with @Hairofthedog. Hey, it’s a start.
But Crosby isn’t playing fair. No longer the Grand Poobah of Douchebaggery, with his memories gone, he’s more the charming, fun-loving man Ella fell in love with. How’s she supposed to hate him when he keeps smiling and charming and, oh yeah, screwing her six ways to Sunday? Though Ella’s body is game for more physical therapy, her mind hasn’t forgotten his betrayal. Crosby will need a damn fine excuse for what he’s done.
As it turns out, he has one—and it’s a doozy.
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
www.ellorascave.com
Honey, I Shrunk the Werewolf!
ISBN 9781419936272
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Honey, I Shrunk the Werewolf! Copyright © 2011 Dakota Cassidy
Edited by Kelli Collins
Cover art by Syneca
Photography: Anetta/Shutterstock.com
Electronic book publication August 2011
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Honey, I Shrunk the Werewolf!
Dakota Cassidy
Chapter One
“I’m a what?”
“A werewolf.”
“A werewolf who can’t remember he’s a werewolf because he has amnesia.”
“If you’re into labels then, yep.”
“Is this some kind of joke? Because, so not funny.”
“Funny is in the eye of the beholder.”
“This beholder’s eye isn’t laughing.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Beholder, but that’s how your unfortunate cookie has crumbled.”
He scowled. “Cookies are stupid.”
But oh so yummy. Especially his cookies.
“I’m a werewolf? Really?” he asked once more.
Ella Stills sighed with a sharp hiss that was meant for audibility and leaned back against the doorframe of the hospital bathroom. “You heard me.”
“Just say it one more time so I can let it really sink in.”
“You, Crosby Nash, are a werewolf. You know, big-and-hairy, howl-at-the-moon, eat-uncooked-cow werewolf.”
Crosby raised a dark eyebrow, a rather condescending one. “I eat uncooked cows?”
“Like you’re on death row and it’s your last meal before you hit the lethal injection chamber.”
“That’s ridiculous. This is ridiculous. I feel like I’m in some werewolf version of Twilight.”
Huh. Crosby the Amnesiac couldn’t remember he was a werewolf, but he could remember pop culture phenomena? She had to keep reminding herself that Crosby’s amnesia was declarative, and while he couldn’t necessarily remember his name or anything relating to his life, his memories of almost everything else remained intact.
She let her eyebrow raise right back at him, mirroring his arrogant expression. “Lucky for you, this means you won’t have the grueling yet necessary task of choosing a team.”
“Damn. I was so going Edward, too,” Crosby joked with a crooked grin. “He needs more friends, in my humble opinion. He’s always standing in the shadow of that kid Jacob’s ridiculously perfect abs.”
Ella rolled her eyes. “Speaking of ridiculous…you don’t know ridiculous until you find yourself babysitting a thirty-eight-year-old man while he attends mandatory ‘find your werewolf’ therapy so he can search for his long-lost inner howl. All this because your pack says you have to. And let’s not forget the fashion statement you’re flogging to death here.” Ella waved her hand up and down, scanning the length of Crosby’s rock-hard body in a hospital gown. “That’s a whole new level of ridiculous. Not to mention, quite possibly epically apocalyptic, as fashion goes.”
And hot. So. Damn. Hot. No matter what he wore. But she wasn’t going to let his brand of hot woo her ever again.
Ever.
As was the norm with Crosby, he ignored the important information and focused in on what really mattered—what had always mattered. Him, him and him. His eyes scanned his reflection in the bathroom mirror with a critical glance, brushing his lean fingers over the dark stubble on his chin. “So I’m thirty-eight?”
“And a half, if you want to split hairs in human years.” Ella peered around his broad back, ignoring the longing sting it brought to see her image next to Crosby’s again after so long.
“I look damn good for my human age, huh?” he asked, his lips tilting upward in a very familiar Crosby smirk. His green eyes twinkled while he waited for her response.
She shot him a bored look and yawned for affect. “We’re werewolves. We all look good for our age—it comes with the gift of the shift, Crosby.” Ella kept her face impassive and her words dry.
He cocked his dark, unwashed head. “So you know me?”
In the biblical sense even. She bit the inside of her cheek, swallowing hard. “Well, yeah. I am your babysitter. Would you leave your thirty-eight-and-a-half-year-old werewolf with a babysitter he didn’t know? That would be crappy pack parenting, right? So, yes. I know you.”
Crosby squinted into the mirror at her reflection, dragging his long fingers through his thick black hair. “Who are you again?”
“The babysitter. Was your hearing affected?”
“No. I mean, what’s your name?”
“Ella Stills. The werewolf.” She curtsied, holding the edges of her cropped denim jacket out while forcing her face to remain emotionless to the fact he didn’t remember her name…or her face…or her anything.
The doctors had warned her that showing any signs of shock about Crosby’s amnesia could be detrimental to his recovery. The pack didn’t like hearing that. They needed him on his feet, memory intact.
But it wasn’t just the pack that need
ed him to recover his memory. Ella needed it, too. So she could get the hell away from him. Soon.
Thus, she’d ixnayed on the ockshay.
Crosby’s strong jaw clenched, leaving behind a tic she remembered well. Translation—she’d irritated him.
“You’re really a werewolf, too?”
“Really. Who isn’t these days?”
“And I’m told I belong to a pack.”
She twirled a long strand of hair around her index finger, examining it under the harsh glare of the bathroom lights. “A werewolf pack. Not to be confused with a clan.”
His lean face distorted with disbelief and one raven eyebrow rose in that irritating way it did when he was shooting for patronizing. “A clan?”
“Yeah. If you were part of a clan, you’d be a vampire. I’m not sure what a group of demons call themselves. Gaggle o’ Spawned from Lucifer—or Minions of Mayhem, maybe? I dunno, but you’re not one of those either. Just a plain old werewolf from a plain old pack of werewolves.”
Crosby flipped on the tap in the sink and splashed water over his face before he spoke again. He used the front of his hospital gown to dry his jaw, the sound of material scraping over his unshaven cheeks harsh to her ears. “So let me be sure I’ve got this right. I’m a werewolf who had an unfortunate accident on my way to a destination no one knows but me—”
“Sort of. Though let’s not confuse the issue. You did have an accident. But it was an unfortunate shoe incident, to be precise.” Ella studied her nails with another yawn.
He nodded his head, the lean muscles of his neck flexing. “Right. Someone hit me over the head with a shoe. That’s what I was muttering before I lapsed into a coma. This, according to Nurse Jenkins—uh, the witch. Not a bad witch, as seen on the Wizard of SomeplaceIcan’tremember, mind you, but a good one—or so she claims.”
Ella nodded her head in return, catching a glimpse in the mirror of the dark part in her otherwise sun-kissed, dirty-blonde hair. Leave it to Crosby to screw up a long overdue trip to the salon for some highlight-lowlight love. “That’s right. Everyone who works here in the hospital is paranormal, and yes, someone clobbered you with a work boot when you were in your were-form. Left a hella bruise, too.” She pointed to the misshapen egg on his head. “But we heal quickly. So your chiseled good looks will be back to their Calvin Klein-esque status in no time flat.”
His brow furrowed. “The accident. Any thoughts on why someone would hit me with a work boot?”
“The pack suspects you freaked out some unsuspecting human. When you’re in were-form, you’re just this much shy of Cujo.” Ella pressed her fingers together to emphasize just how scary Crosby could be when he shifted. “The human nailed you with the boot, clearly unaware, as most humans are, that we’re peace-loving. Anyway, somehow, big, brawny ninja-were that you are, you clawed your way back to Harry Levine’s house, shifted back and muttered a few clues to what happened to you before collapsing.”
Crosby frowned again, deep ridges gracing his forehead.
Ella decided a small nudge to his memory probably wouldn’t scar him for life. “Remember Harry?”
His green eyes, fringed with smoky lashes, went blank. “No clue who Harry is.”
“Bummer, that. You might want to try to dig deeper into your muddled were-brain for his stats. He’s your golf buddy. You love golf. He’ll be devastated that, even with amnesia, you don’t remember the power of his magic nine iron. Anyway, you told him what happened then lapsed into a coma and woke up with amnesia. Voilà. Now you’re here.”
And so was she. Here. With Crosby. After a no-contact, three-month-long separation.
“At the werewolf hospital.” His lips flat lined into the position grim.
Ella clucked her tongue in admonishment. “Don’t be so narrow-minded. This is an all-inclusive hospital, silly, designed specifically for the paranormal in you. Every species of the paranormal is welcome here. Including, to my dismay, trolls. Watch for the trolls. They’re tricky bastards. And speaking of all-inclusive, get some clothes on. We have group therapy to hit.”
“Seriously?”
“If you want the doctor to sign your release papers so you can blow this Popsicle stand, you have to go to therapy. Hopefully, hanging around others like you in similar situations will unlock your memory. So, yes. Seriously.”
Crosby grinned as he took the pair of jeans Ella handed him, and she turned her back so as not to get even a small glimpse of his sculpted ass.
“No. I meant the trolls. There are really trolls here? That might be just a little more cool than werewolves and vampires.”
Ella fought a grin while she studied her black, low-heeled suede boots. “Get dressed or we’ll be late.”
“One more question before I do.”
Ella let her hands slap against her thighs when she turned back around—now almost hoping she hadn’t missed the glimpse of his sculpted ass. If only to prove to herself she didn’t want his ass anymore. It was, after all, just an ass. “Fine. But note, you’re almost at your legal limit for allowable questions in a perilous predicament.”
He grinned again—charmingly one-hundred watt. “Noted. Now, if I agree to go to this therapy thing three times a week starting today, they’ll release me and let me go home with you?”
Ella fought a groan. Bringing Crosby home with her was a bad idea. Way bad. What if he, being the stubborn asshat he was, took as long to get his memory back as he’d taken to admit he was wrong when they’d argued? Jesus Christ and a fuzzy kitten—he’d be at her house until the end of millennia.
But in an effort to do the doctor’s bidding, she kept her misgivings on the inside and replied to him as though he were merely one of her patients—which was the only way she was going to get through this. “Yes, Crosby. You can come home with me. Physically, you’re fine, so there’s no reason to keep you here. You just can’t be alone in case you have flashbacks of events you need explained to you. Sometimes they can be debilitating. Or on the off chance you shift and don’t know what’s happening. I can help you with that, too. I’m a nurse. A psychiatric nurse, by trade.”
Crosby’s eyes grew wide with clear wonder. “Shift? Shut. Up. I shift? You mean like in-the-movies shift, where I morph and snarl all drooly? I can really do that?”
Ella’s response was purposely dry. “You can really do that.”
He grinned, apparently pleased by this turn of events. “Then this is way more like Twilight than you’re letting on.”
“Did you actually see Twilight, Crosby?” She couldn’t stop herself from asking or keep the astonishment from her tone. If he had seen the movie, he hadn’t gone willingly. Getting Crosby to watch anything that didn’t involve a ball, big or small, was like asking the Pope to move out of the Vatican and into a one-bedroom walkup.
He scratched his head, wincing when he hit the lump with his fingers. “I think I did…is that something I’d do?”
Hah! “Let’s not worry about what you would or wouldn’t do. Let’s focus on the moment at hand.”
“Right. And the focus is on going home with you.” Crosby, as an amnesiac, was handing out smiles like they were Halloween candy. He grinned yet again. That was more than two times in less than fifteen minutes and, on the whole, probably more than he’d grinned in the last six months.
But she maintained the effort to divert him and winked. “You’re in luck, too. I have a spare bedroom. It’s a little lavender for such a manly man, but the mint-green ruffles on the bedspread are very tasteful. Promise.”
His groan rang in her ears when she tossed his T-shirt to him and shut the bathroom door behind her.
Ella took a shaky breath before turning to grab her purse from the lone chair in his hospital room. She hadn’t seen Crosby in nearly three months. Seeing him now, like this, was a sharp pain in her heart she could have done without.
As an amnesiac, he was more like the Crosby she’d fallen in love with three years ago. Quick to smile, easygoing and funny.
And she didn’t want to learn to like Crosby the Amnesiac, because Crosby the Asshat was sure to reappear when his memory returned.
Boo-hiss.
Then he’d surely remember she’d called him a fuckwit. But that had only been after she’d thrown all his things out the door of their house and into their small koi pond, and just before she’d set his favorite set of golf clubs on fire—bag and all.
Like a big, four-alarm kind of fire. Impressive and blazingly colorful, with lots of blues and greens.
Pressing her cheek to the cool hospital room wall, Ella fought for another breath and sent up a silent prayer she’d navigate this pack demand unscathed.
But then she smiled.
If not, she’d just set his shit on fire again.
It really had been an awesome fire.
* * * * *
“Ella?”
She’d been pondering her new circumstances while Crosby changed and freshened up when a familiar voice roused her. Without turning around, she responded, “Morton.” She didn’t need to ask why her pack elder and friend was skulking in the shadows of Crosby’s room. The pack wanted answers. They’d sent him to find out if she’d gotten them. Because she was magical and mystical like that.
Morton placed a hand on her shoulder, his grip firm. “How’s Crosby?”
She shrugged him off, pivoting on her booted heel to gaze up into his sweet, moon-shaped face. “Oh, I dunno, Mort. He has amnesia. He doesn’t know who he is, much less who I am. He’s got a lump the size of a basketball on his fat head and he’s just been told he’s a werewolf. How do you suppose he is?”
Morton leaned into her, his eyes warm, his words hushed to keep Crosby from hearing them. “Save your pissed-off for the people you should be pissed off with. I told the pack they shouldn’t drag you into this. We could have found someone else to look after him while he recuperates. I was unequivocally shot down.”
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