by Terry Spear
“What did you say?” Bjornolf asked carefully.
Nathan frowned at him. “I didn’t say, ‘Hey, I’m a werewolf. Imagine that.’ I just said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if other paranormal beings existed? Like werewolves.’”
“And?” Bjornolf prompted, not believing Nathan would risk saying anything.
“She told me that werewolves do exist. She said it so cheerily I thought she meant for real.” Nathan frowned. “‘In books,’ she said. Then I wondered if she was seeing some guy who was a wolf.” His hands tightened into fists. “Maybe he’d had his hands all over her. Maybe that’s why she smelled like a wolf.”
“You would have smelled the male wolf, Nathan,” Bjornolf said, seeing just how upset he was becoming. “You would have recognized his scent and known him. You didn’t, did you? Only smelled wolf on her? Like she was a wolf?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. When was she adopted? What age?” Bjornolf still couldn’t believe it without checking the situation out himself.
“When she was a baby, she said. Before she even knew her birth parents.”
“You don’t know her birth name?”
“No. She doesn’t know it. Her parents don’t know it, either, or are keeping what it was from her, afraid she might try to find her birth parents.”
Bjornolf let out his breath. “Anna and I are going to need to meet this friend of yours as soon as we can.”
Hell, if Nathan had sex with her and she turned out to be one of them, he was essentially mated to her for life.
* * *
Anna had been stunned to hear Nathan speaking to Bjornolf about sex and human girls. But Nathan obviously needed a parental sounding board, so she didn’t want to stifle him. She cleaned up the kitchen, unable to quit thinking about the trouble Nathan could be in.
She went out back and cut some lower branches off a few fir trees to use on the mantel, taking in great breaths of the chilly air, thinking about how Tessa and Hunter had met each other in these very same cabins.
Bjornolf was right about Tessa. It was really rare that a lupus garou could get a human pregnant, but all it took was one mistake like that. From what she’d seen of Nathan, he was responsible at working a job and had been great about decorating for Christmas, but raising multiple babies at once? She was sure he wasn’t ready for that.
Why hadn’t the boy’s father discussed the subject with him?
Not that her parents had ever done so with her. Which had gotten her into a lot of trouble.
After a short while, Nathan and Bjornolf came inside where the cabin was fragrant and warm. Anna loved the piney smell of the greenery she’d used to trim the mantel.
Nathan touched Anna’s arm, breaking into her thoughts as he delighted in showing her all the decorations he’d bought. He demonstrated how to put them on the tree to make sure that the silver, gold, blue, and purple balls were placed evenly around it. “You can get the branches lower on the tree while Bjornolf and I can get the ones higher.”
She shook her head. “I’m not that short. Besides, the bottom of the tree needs more ornaments than the top.”
Nathan took the hint. “Uh, yeah, right. I’ll help you with the lower branches.”
“I’m impressed with your selection of decorations,” she said, genuinely feeling so, though she was having a really difficult time not worrying about Jessica now that they suspected she might be a wolf. Jessica needed to be with their wolf kind, if she was one of them. She needed to learn how to live like they did. The problem was that they couldn’t just take her away from her adoptive parents.
Then a new worry plagued her. How long ago and how many times had Nathan had sex with Jessica? Was she pregnant? As a human, that was one thing. But as a werewolf?
What a nightmare.
“I’m impressed, too,” Bjornolf said, kissing Anna on the cheek, but being careful not to be overly affectionate with her in front of Nathan. Bjornolf hooked a silver ball near the top.
“Nathan said that the man who owns the tree farm, Everton, is a half brother of William Wentworth III.”
Her jaw dropping, Anna stared at Bjornolf. “That’s too much of a coincidence.”
“I agree. Hunter said the two murdered men were DEA.”
“DEA.” She thought about that for a moment, pausing to place a purple ball midway up the tree. “Remember, Wentworth has a big pharmaceutical company. Twenty-five percent of drugs come from tropical plants and trees in the Amazon. When we were given the assignment to extract him and his family, I wondered if there was a connection. I did a little research. His company discovered one of the anti-cancer drugs that was extracted from periwinkle and other rainforest plants. One of the drugs has greatly increased the survival rate for acute leukemia patients. So his company is doing a good job.
“But what if legal drugs are only part of his business?” she continued. “The legit side. What if he hooked up with one of the Colombian cartels to access the illegal kind, too? Or to distribute them here, using his cover of making legitimate drugs? Making lots more money at it. No expensive research. Just grow the stuff and distribute it and collect the dough, tax-free. Because of his other connection, no one would even suspect he’d have other kinds of dealings down there.”
Bjornolf nodded. “Very possible. No one would ever know, except for maybe two wolf agents with the DEA who suspected the truth.”
“Why would they have been at the Christmas tree farm, then?”
She knew Nathan was listening to them. Normally, she wouldn’t have talked shop in front of someone who wasn’t on the investigative team. In Nathan’s case, he seemed to have inside knowledge. The only drawback was if Everton was involved, Nathan might feel a need to warn Jessica.
He didn’t say anything about what was being said, but she was certain he was trying to think of anything that might help them with piecing the puzzle together.
“Wentworth might have tried to set Everton up if the two don’t care for each other,” Bjornolf said.
“What if Everton is in on this?”
Nathan was in the process of moving an ornament already on the tree to another spot when he paused to look at Anna, but he didn’t offer anything.
Anna sighed and folded her arms across her chest. “We have to look at every possible reason why Wentworth would tell his brother, Jeff, that we shouldn’t have killed their kidnappers in the Amazon, and why DEA agents were murdered at the Christmas tree farm. It’s possible that Everton is involved up to his eyeballs. He may know about his half brothers’ involvement and have blackmailed them even, wanting a share of the money. Maybe he got rid of the DEA agents for Wentworth.” She paused. “Remember when William and Jeff were talking, and the one said they had led trouble to someone’s doorstep, but they weren’t there to take care of the mess this time?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“I wonder if the agents disappeared around the same time.” Anna shook her head. “Without more to go on, it’s a guessing game.”
Nathan went to the sack to get one last ornament out. “Are you ready?” Nathan pulled out the angel. “See it’s gold, copper, and silver with a gray wolf standing beside her long skirt.”
Warmed to the marrow of her bones, Anna smiled. “It’s beautiful, Nathan. The prettiest angel I’ve ever seen.” It had been killing her not to take a peek before the guys came in from outside.
“I was afraid you might want something else. That you envisioned a different kind of angel. Something softer, maybe.”
“She’s perfect.” Anna went to hug him, and he quickly looked at Bjornolf, as if seeking his approval.
Bjornolf gave him a nod and a smile, but Anna had already moved to embrace Nathan. “You’re so sweet, Nathan. I’ve never celebrated the holiday. You’ve helped to make this one so special to me, and I’ll never forget it.”
He hugged her back, then he said to Bjornolf, “My dad always put the star on the tree. Did you want to do the honors?”
Nathan w
as fighting back tears, just like she was. Bjornolf gave her a small smile and squeezed her hand, and she noted his eyes were misty, too. “I’d love to.”
She realized then she’d never think of the holidays again as one of those hassles in life, involving crowded shopping centers and annoying Christmas jingles played over and over again. She put her arm around Nathan’s shoulders and watched as Bjornolf put the angel and wolf ornament on top of the Colorado blue spruce tree.
“We’ll have the most beautiful tree of any of the open houses, guaranteed,” she said proudly.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool, isn’t it?”
Bjornolf cleared his throat. They both looked over at him. “Anna, you said you knew how to cook?”
In short order, they had baked chicken thighs, asparagus, and baked potatoes on a big serving dish sitting in the center of the cherrywood dining table.
Bjornolf and Nathan looked at the table, then at Anna. “We need holiday decorations for the table for the open house,” Bjornolf said.
“Yeah,” Nathan said.
They both studied Anna, waiting for her response. She wanted to say she didn’t “do” shopping. But after all that Nathan had done, she couldn’t say no. She sighed. “After lunch, all right?”
Nathan gave Bjornolf a high five.
She was doomed.
After lunch, Bjornolf and Nathan put away the dishes. She could really get used to this, but she figured when…
She paused as she wiped down the table. She hadn’t even considered what might happen beyond the mission—what would become of Nathan, or where she and Bjornolf would end up.
“I need to make a quick call. Be right back.” She headed into the bedroom and shut the door, then fished out her phone and called Hunter. “I need you to look into something for me.”
“About the murders?” Hunter asked.
“No. About a Jessica Everton, adopted daughter of the owners of the Christmas tree farm. She was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“To learn if her real parents were wolves.”
Chapter 16
Shortly thereafter, Anna got a call from Hunter letting her know that Rourke, their investigative reporter, had just called to tell Hunter that once he’d interviewed Helen Wentworth and after investigating some leads, he suspected Jessica Everton might be a wolf. First, according to Mrs. Wentworth, there was the case of a mysterious adoption—no evidence of papers, the Evertons’ own loss of a baby daughter, Jessica’s behavioral problems, no birth record for her that he could locate—and the scent of wolf when he’d dropped by to see the girl at the tree farm.
Anna shared the news with Bjornolf and Nathan. “We’ll finish decorating for the open house after we go shopping. Then Nathan, you arrange for Jessica to come over for dinner tonight.”
They couldn’t put this off any longer than that.
He looked skeptical.
Anna sighed and took his hand. “Nathan, if she’s truly a wolf, and if you two had sex, then you’ve mated with her. If you’ve mated with her, you could very well have gotten her pregnant. We have to learn the truth and deal with it.”
He frowned. “You shouldn’t have to do anything. Hunter took care of his mistakes all on his own.”
Anna nodded. “True. But he’s the pack leader. He had to. You’re not even legally an adult yet. We’ll help you in any way we can. Okay? Hunter and the rest of the pack will, too. That’s what a wolf pack is all about, Nathan. We take care of each other through the good stuff and the bad. You don’t have to do this alone.”
He bit his lip, then said, “She thinks she’s pregnant.”
Anna quickly closed her mouth, not wanting to look so astonished.
“I got angry with her because I knew I couldn’t have made her that way. That was one of the reasons I left to see Sarah.” Nathan glanced at Bjornolf. “Until he mentioned that in rare cases our kind could get a human pregnant.” He took a deep breath. “Jessica’s too afraid to get a pregnancy test and see what it shows. She swore I was the only one she’d been seeing.”
Anna didn’t say anything for a moment, shocked at the newest revelation, then nodded. “Call her, Nathan. Tell her you’ll pick her up for dinner tonight. That your aunt and uncle want to meet her. Then we’ll go shopping.”
Now, if only Jessica’s parents were all right with it, and Jessica was, too.
Anna suspected nothing would go as planned. When did it ever?
* * *
Bjornolf hoped they could learn the truth about Jessica tonight at dinner and then work on how they would handle it after that. For now, they were at a shopping mall for last-minute decorations to finish off the house for the pack parade of homes.
Anna had changed into a pair of cobalt blue jeans, the back pockets decorated with sequined hearts to catch the eye. She wore high-heeled boots and a white crocheted sweater that dipped low in front, showing off a hint of cleavage. She looked like a million bucks, and he couldn’t help staring at the ensemble, nearly running into a number of different customers in the crowded department store.
Casting Bjornolf a small smile, she said, “You like it?”
He and Nathan both were looking at her lacy sweater and they said in unison, “Yeah.”
She pointed to the decorations sitting on a table. They switched their gazes to the table set up with holiday trimmings, place mats, plates featuring reindeer, shiny gold silverware, and linen napkins bound in crystal and gold ties.
“Oh yeah,” Nathan said.
Bjornolf’s gaze drifted to the hint of the swell of her breasts. “Oh yeah.”
Nathan chuckled when he saw what Bjornolf was talking about.
Christmas music played overhead as shoppers seemed to fill every aisle of the department store. Some shoppers were in a rush, while others were carefully considering merchandise, poking at clothes, lifting china to examine it, and sifting through bath towels. Where Anna was concerned, Bjornolf had never seen a woman shop so quickly in his life.
Once she saw the Christmas settings displayed on the table, she said to Bjornolf and Nathan, “How about that? Isn’t it perfect?”
She didn’t really ask for their opinion, he wryly thought. Before they could answer, she gathered the eight placemats she had been eyeing on a shelf, and they helped her find matching linen napkins, and crystal and gold napkin holders. She took the whole centerpiece and shoved it into Bjornolf’s hands, grabbed the runner off the display table, and said, “Done.”
Bjornolf looked at Nathan to see his take on it. He raised his brows and smiled.
As if considering her choices, she folded her arms and looked at the table again. “Maybe we’re not done. We could use a set of red Christmas plates. They’d be perfect for Valentine’s Day, too. We can add blue and white decorations when it comes to Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Fourth of July celebrations.”
Bjornolf suspected Anna had never celebrated any of those holidays. Her enthusiasm was contagious and he was doubly glad she was a quick shopper. He looked forward to sharing every one of those holidays with her next year, and making up some of their own.
They were out of there in no time.
“Can we stop at a drugstore on the way back to the cottage?” Anna asked.
“Sure,” Bjornolf said.
When they pulled into the strip mall, both Bjornolf and Nathan were going to join her, but she said she’d be just a minute. Nathan sank against the car seat, looking relieved.
They parked in front of the drugstore situated at the end of a small strip mall of four shops: a card shop, a dress store, and a bookstore, in addition to the drugstore. In silence, Bjornolf and Nathan studied the drugstore display windows filled with Christmas decorations and a clutter of advertisements as the door closed behind Anna, and she disappeared from view.
Nathan cleared his throat. “She’s getting a pregnancy test for Jessica. Isn’t she?”
“I suspect so. Jessica needs to know if she
is pregnant as soon as possible. She has to realize she’s got us for backup. She has to have a support system now.”
“I really screwed up, didn’t I?”
Bjornolf had been there. His own messes had seemed insurmountable at the time, but somehow he’d managed to muddle through.
“Some lessons are harder to learn than others. You really do care for her, don’t you?” Bjornolf didn’t mean to sound so judgmental, but he hoped Nathan truly loved her because they’d be together for a very long time, and there was no undoing what they had done.
Nathan nodded. “Yeah. I do. Ever lie awake at night thinking of the day you spent with someone special, and you want to repeat the day over and over again?”
Yeah, he did. Anna had stolen his thoughts more times than he wanted to admit.
Nathan glanced at Bjornolf. “Like with you and Anna?”
Bjornolf fought a smile. No one ever questioned him about his relationships with women. He assumed Nathan needed confirmation more than anything. “Hell, yeah. You know you have it bad when you’re thinking about nothing at all, doing something, and suddenly out of the blue you’re thinking of her. Like driving the car, then there she is taking up space in my brain again. Bright as day.”
Nathan shook his head. “That’s just like me. I’ll be cutting a tree for a customer, and all of a sudden, I’ll think of the way she smiled at me earlier in the day and offered me a cup of hot chocolate. I mean, it’s more than that. I can’t wait to see her, to be with her again.”
“So you ran because…?”
“I was confused. She was raised by humans. I thought she was human. What Anna said was right. We can’t turn people just because we want to. I was using Hunter’s situation as a crutch to fall back on. He did it and it turned out okay, so I could, too. Except he’s not a teen. And he’s the pack leader. I thought… I thought if I saw Sarah, I would change my mind about wanting Jessica.”
Concerned, Bjornolf frowned. “With Sarah, you didn’t…”
“No.” Nathan gave him a get-real look. “I knew she was a wolf.”
