by Becky Flade
She’d long ago run out of things to do, and she doubted the wolf would return this night. After five nights in the forest, Maggie didn’t need her watch to tell her sunrise was beckoning. When the night sky began to lighten, she packed her belongings. Maggie stood there, contemplating, wondering if her newfound friend was in his clearing keeping guard over her. “I’m leaving. I’ll be back tomorrow. Same bat time, same bat channel,” she said to the emptiness. Feeling foolish now, Maggie hurried through the trees and to her car, wanting to beat him back to the house.
• • •
Aidan stayed out of sight just inside the line of trees that bordered the meadow between his home and the forest. He could see the very edge of her car parked in his drive and didn’t wish to spar with her while half naked and unwashed. He was angry with himself, with her, but mostly with the wolf. Continued contact with Maggie the reporter was a mistake. He and the beast had learned long ago to coexist in peace. Aidan even managed, through no small effort, to exact a certain amount of control over the beast’s intuitive nature. It had made it possible for them to stay safe and live in secret for as long as they had. Maggie endangered that. Endangered them. He knew it, and yet he’d put up only a token protest when the wolf had acted on instinct and engaged the woman. Since he was in the mood to be honest, with himself at least, he admitted he was as intrigued and compelled by her as the beast now hidden inside him. And there was no reason he couldn’t keep avoiding the woman as a man while indulging himself as the wolf. As she so succinctly put it, the wolf couldn’t answer her questions.
When he saw her car finally pull away, Aidan headed across the meadow, retrieved the hidden key, and let himself in through the deck’s double glass doors. They opened into his bedroom. A room he seldom used. Every morning he “awoke” completely refreshed, but he missed sleeping. He missed dreaming. Dropping his clothes into a hamper, he headed into a room he used often, the master bath. The tub was large and deep with multiple jets, the shower just as richly appointed. Aidan enjoyed and indulged in comforts he considered supremely human. A long, hot soak or shower, an ice cold beer, fine fabrics, electronics and the like were always in fair supply in his home. But his horses were his favorite obsession.
He couldn’t have them anywhere near the house; they’d panic at the first scent of wolf. He’d worried at first that they’d sense it in his human form and he’d never be able to ride again, but it wasn’t an issue. The horses and he seemed more in tune to each other since his transformation. He fancied they sensed the wild spirit trapped within, the kindred soul that didn’t want to be restrained. His horses loved to run and, truthfully, the only thing about his fate he truly enjoyed was a full out run in the moonlight.
Though the tub beckoned, he needed the release of a hot shower. He was amazed at how aroused he’d become while she’d petted him. He was equally confused by the wolf’s possessive and sexual reaction. The wolf rarely had a sexual urge and when he did Aidan quickly suppressed it. That wasn’t something Aidan wanted to experience. But never before had the wolf expressed a desire to mate with a human woman. Aidan didn’t know if it was the wolf responding to this woman specifically, if he’d be equally attracted to any human woman since they didn’t go near humans as a rule, or if they’d been sharing body and mind for so long that their needs were melding. Aidan shuddered at the final possibility. If the wolf’s mind was becoming more human, would his then become more of an animal?
He soaked himself under near scalding water for several minutes while questions tumbled through his mind. Some questions he could get the answers to with little effort. The internet made it possible for him to interact with the world; he decided to learn as much about Maggie O’Connell and continue avoiding her at all costs.
After dressing, eating, and tossing Maggie’s notes, one from last night and the other from this morning, in his desk drawer, Aidan headed back out the sliding glass doors and began the routine mile walk to his horses. He’d tucked his cell phone in his back pocket, which was unusual; normally he left it at the house when working with the horses, and he didn’t find much use for it at other times. It was basically part of the public persona he encouraged. Normalcy was the key to survival in Trappers’ Cove and most anywhere else for that matter. The phone surprised him, as few things did, when it began ringing halfway there. He pulled it out, looked at the number in confusion, and flipped it open.
“Gael.” His tone was curt. He expected it to be a wrong number.
“Good morning.” Her voice flowed over him and he stopped in his tracks, looking around as though she was nearby instead of talking through a little electronic device. “We almost met at the market yesterday, maybe you remember? You’re a hard man to get hold of, Mr. Gael.”
“Most would take the hint, Maggie. And obviously not so hard, as you found both my home and my cell phone number easily enough.” The simple joy the wolf felt excited Aidan, too, and it made him surlier. Her laugh was just as husky as it had been in the woods last night. He thought she’d tempered it to the circumstances but obviously not. Her laugh caused desire to swirl deep in the pit of his stomach, and he remembered the wolf’s visceral response the night before. As if he needed more proof that he must avoid this woman, he couldn’t have asked for a better example.
“I’m not most people, which I find greatly beneficial in my line of work. I didn’t say my name was Maggie. Well, I didn’t tell you, per se.” She was clever, he thought, as he started walking again. He’d be damned if he’d let his enjoyment of his horses be tainted by sexual attraction and a pretty reporter.
“This is a small town, ma’am. I know probably as much about you as you do about me.” Maggie laughed again.
“I sincerely doubt that. I’ll see you tonight, sort of, unless you decide you want to actually talk to me.” She hung up without saying goodbye. As irritated as Aidan wanted to be, he couldn’t help the smile that stretched across his face as he entered the stable.
Chapter Four
Maggie was naked and shivering, her skin glistening in the moonlight like gemstones, but still she splashed the cold stream water over her skin. She seemed frantic to be clean but didn’t know what she needed to be cleaned of. Time was unclear—minutes or hours could have passed, Maggie had no way of knowing—when she spotted him through a break in the trees. The moon caused his gray pelt to shimmer like molten steel as he approached her from higher ground. The relief she felt washed over her and finally she felt cleansed. But she also felt the cold. Chilled to the bone, her body shook as she navigated the stones and climbed out of the stream. Unable to move much further, Maggie simply laid down on the mossy bank. The wolf met her there, and she curled her frozen body around him, like a child hugging her dog. Suddenly a loud ringing shouted through the silent forest and tore the dreamscape into pieces.
Maggie’s hand shot out toward the old-fashioned dial phone that decorated the nightstand and, gripping the handset, grumbled into the receiver, “Someone had better be maimed, dead, or dying.”
“Hello to you, too.” Maggie sighed internally as her editor’s voice reverberated through the line, and she pushed the sleep mask high on her head before shoving herself into a near sitting position.
“Hey, Bobby, how are you?” Maggie glanced at the travel alarm she’d brought with her; it would have gone off in almost a half hour anyway. She wished desperately she could simply drop the phone, grab her notebook, and jot down the basic outline of the dream he’d interrupted before the images faded to just feelings. But he would know she wasn’t giving him her full attention. He always did.
“Well, Mags, I’d be a lot better if you had emailed me your story instead of a cryptic message about needing to extend your stay. You know what a deadline is, right, Mags?”
“Yes, Bobby, I know what a deadline is and I know I missed mine. But I’m really on to something here. You want it unfinished, I’ll have the rough draft to you in an hour.” Bobby didn’t bother biting back his sigh like she had when she�
��d answered the phone.
“Maggie, you know full well you could’ve written this piece from here. The initial research you’d done before you left would have more than satisfied any other writer plus the legal department. I never should have allowed you to talk me into flying you out there. The paper is spending a small fortune for a one hundred-word article that’s going to run between an alien abduction and botched celebrity boob jobs.” This wasn’t the first time she and Bobby had had this conversation. The fact that his little sister had been Maggie’s best friend all through childhood was how she kept getting away with stuff other staff writers wouldn’t have. “I want you on the next flight home immediately.”
“I can’t,” she said softly to reduce the sting. “I’ll take some personal time and finish what I started here. If you want to, you can take the travel and hotel expenses already charged to the paper from my next few paychecks. If not, I’ll write you a check, Bobby.”
“Mags, what’s going on out there?”
“I don’t know, not yet, but I know I can’t leave until I figure it out.”
“Are you quitting on me?”
“Consider it a leave of absence—a temporary leave of absence even. But Bobby, we both knew I wasn’t going to be at The Inquisitor indefinitely. It’s a great job; it was a godsend right when I needed one. I know you’ve taken some hits from the money men and I’ve heard some of the gossip. Eventually you were going to have to let me go if I wasn’t able to adapt. I wasn’t cut out for tabloid journalism. There’s nothing wrong with it, but there’s more I want to do.”
“I know there is, Sweetie.” Bobby had slipped back to using her childhood nickname so Maggie knew she was already forgiven. She suspected she’d lightened his load by quitting before he was forced to fire her. “And you are way too talented for The Inquisitor. I just thought you’d be with us for a little longer. I liked having you around. I’m worried about you, Mags. Be careful out there.”
“I always am. I love you. Kiss Claire and the kids for me and tell Jenna I’ll call her as soon as I have something really good to tell her. And thanks, Bobby.” Maggie hung up and though she knew she should feel sad, she felt oddly excited about not being tied to the paper anymore. She made a couple of quick calls, the first to her neighbor to ask her to forward the mail that had already accumulated and to continue keeping an eye on her apartment and plants, the second to the front desk so that all future expenses were charged to her personal credit card and not The Inquisitor.
Maggie threw on a robe, brewed a cup of coffee with the in-room urn, and took it and her laptop back to bed with her. She punched in her password, Smurfette, and smiled smugly while wondering if Susie Monroe had even come close to cracking it. The maid was constantly asking Maggie questions. Questions Maggie was sure Susie thought were subtle about her favorite movie, color, flower, and so on. Add that to that the fact that Maggie kept her notebook with her at all times, and Susie Monroe must be going nuts.
Maggie pulled up her bank’s web page and reviewed her balances. Between her line of credit, the balances in her checking and savings accounts, the final two paychecks she could count on, and, if she was very careful, a few months of unemployment she could swing two months, maybe three. Of course, the longer she stayed here at the inn for sixty-six dollars a night not counting meals and incidentals, the sooner she was going to need work. She didn’t want to deplete her savings and she had a nice cushion right now, but she knew she needed to do this. She just couldn’t be sure why she needed it so badly.
She had contacts and an online news outlet and a successful blog had recently offered her freelance jobs. A former professor had called the internet’s immediacy the future of journalism. She had thought it a sad prospect at the time, the impending death of printing, but it couldn’t hurt to get in on the ground floor of a new medium. It would help make ends meet and could be done from virtually anywhere, like a small inn in Trappers’ Cove, Minnesota.
Satisfied for the time being that she wasn‘t going to fall into the cliché of starving artist, she sipped her coffee and tried to recall the details of the dream Bobby’s call had dragged her from. Unfortunately, the practicalities had chased away whatever lingering memory may have existed, leaving her with nothing more than a vague impression of the emotions the dream had engendered. Though she didn’t want to shrug off the emotional impact of the dream, she wasn’t going to get any real answers from it either. And Maggie wanted answers.
• • •
Aidan was slowly rubbing down Jezebel after a hard work out and listening with half an ear to his groom, Sly’s, running commentary. His topics were always the same: what was wrong with women, what was wrong with the government, and what was wrong with religion. Not God—Sly had no beef with God, as he was fond of saying—but he had some real problems with the church and how it was ran, yes sir. Aidan smiled at the old refrain. Sly and his rants were as much a comfort to Aidan as the horses were. And Aidan needed the comfort today, which was why he was in the stable on a Saturday, helping Sly exercise the horses.
Maggie hadn’t come to the forest last night. The wolf had waited for her by her usual campsite all night. He’d spent at least part of the last three nights with her, not counting Monday night when she’d given him the chew toy, while she talked and sketched. Thursday night she’d fallen asleep with her fingers wrapped in his pelt. Then last night, she was gone.
“And I’m telling ya, why would a woman, a city girl no less, want to play poker with a bunch of smelly old men?” Aidan’s hand paused, his grip tightening on the currycomb. Sly had his full attention now. “It’s like in that Crocodile Dundee movie. You ever seen that?” Not waiting for an answer, because Sly never did, he continued, “Well, there’s this line goes something like, ‘You’re a reporter and a woman—that makes you probably the most curious person on earth.’ Well, I’ll be damned if that ain’t right on.
“As pretty as she is, she’s not stupid, either, no sir. She won a fair lot more than the other guys noticed, and she bets clever, too. Didn’t ask a lot of questions, just listened, which I think is probably a good way to get information out of a person, especially around these parts. And you know, she didn’t even wince when she downed that shot of whiskey Johnnie dared her to pound.” Aidan easily pictured Maggie sitting around the table with Sly, Johnnie Carson, Barry Barnes, Red, and Old Man Stevens. “I was kind of worried that Johnnie was thinking ‘bout getting her drunk and seeing if what they say about city girls is true.” The currycomb broke in Aidan‘s hand as unanticipated rage filled him. “But she was onto him. She must‘ve seen I was concerned cause she slipped me a little wink and made her goodbyes shortly after.
“Once she left, Barry got to spreading gossip—I swear that man’s getting as bad as his wife—but word is her newspaper isn’t footing the bill anymore. That’s right, she’s here outta her own pocket. Which made me feel a bit better ‘bout the money she won all sneaky like when nobody was looking.” Sly chuckled. “Maggie wasn’t cheating but doing that dumb girl act. You know the one that only smart girls really pull off? Batting her eyelashes and talking pretty.” He raised his voice up an octave, “Is three aces a good hand?”
“I do hope I don’t sound like that.” Her voice filled the stable and Aidan’s head jerked up as though he’d taken a hit from a cattle prod. She was leaning against the frame of the door, the sun behind her, casting her face in shadows. But her voice was filled with amusement and he could hear the hint of a laugh under the words. Aidan tried to stifle the sudden arousal choking him while rage still simmered so close to the surface.
“No ma’am, not quite.” Sly laughed.
“Dammit, Sly, what did I tell you last night? Call me Maggie or I’m going to tell Betty Barnes what your given name really is.” She sashayed into his stable, her t-shirt proudly announcing her loyalty to Buckcherry’s “Crazy Bitch” and her hips wrapped in worn denim with a pair of sunglasses dangling from the back pocket. Her hair was pulled back into a br
aid and she had on hiking boots. Like she’d been or planned to go hiking—or like she’d planned on being in a barn. His barn. Aidan wagered the latter. She stopped several feet from Jezebel’s stall, legs planted wide, daring him.
“Why should I be surprised you would show up on my property uninvited, Ms. O’Connell?” Aidan’s tone was nasty and he felt slightly ashamed as he heard Sly suck in a breath. “Sly, why don’t you take Bessie out for some exercise?”
His tone was gentler and it was phrased as a question, but it was an order all the same and Sly knew one when he heard one. Sly nodded a goodbye to Maggie as he led the sweet, old mare out to the corral. Once they were alone, Aidan cursed himself a fool for excusing the buffer between them.
“I didn’t, I was invited.” She took up his question as if the interruption hadn’t happened. “I’d mentioned last night that it has been a couple years since I’ve been able to go out for a ride. Sly suggested I stop by, said he could use a hand exercising some of the stock since you don’t normally work the stables on Saturdays. I apologize for intruding on your land. Please don’t shoot.” She turned and stalked off. She was pissed, she had every right to be, and Aidan knew he should let her just keep on walking.
He was mad at her for not being in the woods last night. It was the first night since she’d come to town that the wolf hadn’t felt her presence. The first night since the chew toy that the wolf hadn’t spent some time with her. The wolf had felt it keenly. Aidan loathed to admit, even to himself, that he had missed her, too. He had assumed she’d given up and gone home. Then he found out she was playing poker all night with his only ranch hand, probably pumping him for information and making moo-cow eyes at Johnnie Carson.
