Holiday Wolf Pack

by Bridget Essex

  Holiday Wolf Pack

  by Bridget Essex

  Synopsis:

  Get in the holiday spirit as you read this collection of three romantic novellas featuring werewolves celebrating that most wonderful time of the year. Best-selling author Bridget Essex offers a trio of heartwarming tales of women transformed by love.

  Holiday Wolf Pack includes these three novellas:

  A Wolf for the Holidays: Mandy’s not having a great December. Her lackluster girlfriend has given her a massive dog--who looks a lot more like a wolf than a dog--as a gift. But all problems seem minor when she wakes up to a gorgeous, naked woman stealing jeans out of her dresser...a woman who swears she’s a werewolf.

  The Christmas Wolf: When Kat meets potential roommate Jewel, she has high hopes. For one, Jewel's gorgeous as hell. Distracted by that fact, Kat's budgetary concerns for the holidays fly out the window, and an intoxicating chemistry begins to brew between Jewel and herself. There's just one problem: Jewel just happens to be a werewolf...

  Howl for the Holidays: Georgia’s past mistakes still haunt her, and on her way home for Christmas, she runs into the girl who’d stolen her heart, bewitching, beautiful Carol. Now, fifteen years later, Carol is hardly happy to see her. And as a snowstorm moves over the Maine coast, Georgia and Carol find themselves reliving the past...and wondering if they might still have a future together.

  "Holiday Wolf Pack"

  © Bridget Essex 2016

  Rose and Star Press

  First Edition

  All rights reserved

  No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Rose and Star Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews. Please note that piracy of copyrighted materials is illegal and directly harms the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication:

  For the love of my life—thank you for making all my holidays (and, you know, the regular days, too) merry and bright.

  Contents:

  A Wolf for the Holidays

  The Christmas Wolf

  Howl for the Holidays

  About the Author

  A Wolf for the Holidays

  She forgot. Again.

  I pick up my phone from the table and fiddle with it for a long moment, running my finger across the screen over and over as I sigh. I consider the screen for a long moment, and then I press the “messages” section, and I’m typing two words, two words that I didn’t want to type ever again. But Clara, my best friend, made me promise to keep her updated on what happened.

  I mean, it’s not everyday that your girlfriend forgets the dinner you were making her a whopping five times in a row.

  And this time? It wasn’t just a normal dinner she’d forgotten.

  It’s December twenty-fourth, and my girlfriend didn’t show to our Christmas dinner.

  I take a deep gulp of the last of my red wine, and through the delicious winey haze that’s taking a little bit of the edge off my frustration (and, if I’m being honest, my hurt), I type into the message box on my phone: She forgot.

  And then, after the message sends, I turn off my phone, because I know Clara’s going to call immediately and tell me I have to go through with it, just like we talked about. That forgetting so many dates and so many dinners is absolutely inexcusable.

  And damn, I know it’s inexcusable. I know. It’s just...

  I take a deep breath and crumple the napkin covered in poinsettias I’d set on my lap a half hour ago, shoving it onto my empty plate. The tapers in the fluted silver candlesticks on the center of the table are beginning to gutter, they’re so low in their holders that I surrounded with sprigs of pine and holly. As I stand unsteadily (I haven’t had a thing to eat, and I’ve had a lot of wine), I snort, and think that’s a perfect metaphor for our relationship.

  Guttering, and about to snuff out into darkness.

  My girlfriend Angie had promised me up and down that she’d make this dinner this time. I’m a chef: cooking for people is one of my favorite things in the world, and cooking for the woman I’m in love with is probably the best act of love I can think of. But Angie canceled our dinners multiple times the past few weeks, and for the last five times, she hasn’t shown when she promised she would, after swearing up and down that she’d be there. Oh, sure, she’d text a few hours later and tell me she wouldn’t be able to make it, but the apologies always sounded half-hearted. And then, she’d tell me that the next dinner she’d definitely make.

  So I’d kept believing her, because I’m a shmuck, and, hell, I’d believed her the past four times, so what was once more? Especially on Christmas Eve? God, how could I be this stupid? It was just pathetic at this point, going all out on the meal, getting super dolled up (I was wearing my favorite red dress tonight...the one Angie loved. It’s super clingy and plunging in the front in a classy/vintage kind of way, and I thought it looked pretty damn festive) and then waiting here while the candles burn lower, the food gets cold, Christmas dinner is missed...

  And I fall out of love.

  I shove off from the table, straighten my skirt and because there’s nothing else I can do, I begin to take the cold food back into the kitchen. Plate after plate of my specialties, the specialties that people pay to consume and enjoy...wasted and forgotten. Here are the cranberry and goat cheese tartlets; the maple and bourbon glazed pork tenderloins; the apple, carrot and candied fennel warm salad. Now all of it’s cold, this Christmas dinner. Uneaten and forgotten.

  God, I know I’m feeling sorry for myself, but tonight is the last straw in a great big haystack of the stuff. It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m spending it alone because my girlfriend forgot about me. And, honestly, I’m tired of being forgotten and shoved to the back burner. Especially on this day of all days.

  I have to take a deep breath and acknowledge that this is it. It’s over.

  I’m going to break up with Angie.

  My legs are shaking as I enter the kitchen, and I set the plates down on the counter because my hands are shaking, too. As I wipe my hands on the kitchen towel, rubbing them together to try to warm them (I’ve suddenly gone very cold), I face that thought: am I really going to go through with this? Break up with her? On Christmas Eve? When we’re good together, we’re so good together. Isn’t that enough?

  But that’s just the fear talking, honestly. The fear of the unknown, the fear of the dating scene and wearing your heart on your sleeve again and trusting enough to let someone in...someone who could hurt you deeply. And probably will.

  My head’s spinning so much from the hurt and the wine that I almost don’t hear the doorbell. It rings again, the bright sound of the artificial bell chiming through my apartment.

  I stand, frozen with indecision in the kitchen for a heartbeat, two. And then I push off from the counter, take a deep beath and walk (a little wobbily, but with purpose) toward the front door.

  I’m so keyed up that when I pull open the door, it takes almost a full ten seconds to fully understand what’s on the other side of that door. And even then, I’m not quite certain I’m seeing things right.

  Because Angie’s there, a full four hours late to celebrate Christmas with me, and she doesn’t look remotely apologetic for that fact. And she’s not dressed for dinner (she’s actually still dressed in the clothes she wears to her community service work, the jeans with the tattered knees, and her old Melissa Etheridge concert t-shirt), and she doesn’t have the bottle of wine she swore up and down she’d bring (and that I bas
ed the meal around). But none of that is very important. I wouldn’t have minded if she’d shown up in pajamas if she’d only acted like I was important enough to her to remember. If she’d acted like Christmas Eve dinner was a big deal.

  But none of that matters, because the most important thing is that, as she leans against the wall out in the hallway, Angie just happens to be standing next to an enormous gray wolf.

  On a leash.

  Angie does community service work (nothing really bad, just a lot of parking tickets that piled up and weren’t paid because she forgot about them) at the local animal shelter. She’s actually not a big animal person, but it’s what the judge ordered, and--to Angie--it was better than “picking junk up off the side of the road.”

  So yes, she probably did just come from the shelter.

  But that still doesn’t explain what’s right in front of me.

  I stare at the animal with wide eyes, hardly believing what I’m seeing. I live in downtown Boston, by the way, and--impossibly--here is a wolf that has her shoulders level with Angie’s hips. The wolf is enormous, her great gray pelt of fur all shaggy and covered in snow. She has beautiful, intelligent blue eyes that immediately stare up into my own, and a graceful face as she lifts her long nose up to me.

  I open and shut my mouth twice before I manage to finally splutter: “Angie? What?”

  “Hi, Mandy,” Angie tells me, a big grin splitting her face as she wrangles the enormous animal--who resolutely does not want to step foot into my apartment--across the threshold. Angie pushes past me as she drags the wolf into my living room. “I wanted to get a big bow to put on her collar,” she begins, talking a mile a minute, “but all the stores were closed after I got off my volunteer shift, even the craft stores, and it’s not as if they would have liked me to bring her in there to buy a bow, and--”

  “Angie,” I say again, still spluttering, as the wolf sits down placidly at the front of my living room, and Angie sprawls on my couch, putting her muddy snow boots up on my coffee table with a thunk. “What?” I repeat again, a little more sharply this time. Angie glances up at my in surprise, tossing her black ponytail over her shoulder as she shrugs a little.

  “I brought you your Christmas present,” she proudly declares, indicating the wolf in the center of my living room. “Merry Christmas!” she adds almost dutifully, and then she crosses her arms in front of her and smiles smugly at me.

  I take a deep breath, bracing my hand on the door frame behind me, because the shock of a wolf in my living room is making me a little more wobbly than the wine did. I take a deep breath, try to keep my voice level. “You must be joking.”

  “What?” she asks, offense and hurt leaking into her tone. “You don’t like her? I thought you love dogs!”

  “That’s not a dog,” I point out, as the wolf practically sighs and shifts her weight on her back haunches, her tail thumping once against the carpeting. “That’s a wolf.”

  “Not true,” says Angie dismissively, standing and striding over to the wolf like she’s a small terrier. She pats the wolf’s head, ruffling behind her ears, an action the wolf clearly does not like, but that doesn’t stop Angie who keeps grinding her hand down on the wolf’s head. “Who’s a good puppy?” she drawls to the wolf in the most sappy baby voice possible. Admittedly, I use sappy baby voices on my two cats, but even I know that they require a pinch of dignity every now and again.

  And the wolf in my living room? Every line and inch of her exudes dignity, which is somewhat being marred by the fact that Angie’s ruffling her ears and cooing at her.

  “Angie, did you adopt her from the shelter?” I ask now, my heart starting to beat quicker. “Why would you do that without asking me? You know I can’t have dogs in my apartment,” I continue, a roaring starting in my ears. I have so many obvious thoughts reeling through my head that I don’t even know where to start. It’s like I’m telling my girlfriend that the sky is blue and that oxygen is kind of required for human life, and she doesn’t quite understand any of those facts.

  “What?” asks Angie, a little perplexed as she stares up at me, and then straightens. “What do you mean you can’t have dogs in your apartment?” she says, frowning as she crosses her arms. “You said you wanted a dog. You talk my ear off about it ever since I started that damn community service crap. Also,” she says, glancing pointedly past me and at the now-clear table, “where’s dinner?”

  I stare at her, my mouth open. I shut it deliberately. I choose to ignore that last comment on dinner, because if I acknowledge it, there’s no telling what exactly might come out of my mouth (though, at the moment, a few choice phrases are certainly coming to mind). “Yes,” I say slowly then, my brow furrowing. “I did say that I wanted dogs... But someday. When I eventually buy a house in Maine. I’ve told you that a couple of times. Remember?”

  We stare at each other across the top of the wolf’s head. The wolf stares placidly at the far wall and doesn’t twitch a whisker.

  “I thought you said you wanted one now,” says Angie quickly, her eyes narrowing. A brisk ring tone begins to play from her back pocket, something tech-music sounding, and Angie reaches into her back pocket and brings out her smart phone. She glances down at the screen as if we were discussing what movie to watch, not arguing. “Sorry, babe, I have to take this.” She sighs for a long moment. “It’s the damn shelter, probably checking in with my stupid schedule,” she says, then answers the phone without waiting for my reply and presses it to her ear, walking toward the back hallway and the bathroom.

  I’m so frustrated and angry in that moment, I can hardly breathe. How could she adopt an animal as a gift without consulting me first? It’s one of the most irresponsible things I can imagine.

  But then the anger just sort of drains away as I sink down beside this gorgeous wolf. This wolf who most certainly is not a dog. She didn’t do anything to deserve this--she deserves an adopter who will take her in and love her. And I would love her, if I could. But everything about this situation is so unfair to her. The wolf’s inquisitive, piercing blue eyes seem to be assessing the apartment like she’d assess a wilderness, but as I bury a hand in the thick fur of her shoulder, she turns that gaze to me.

  “Hi, girl,” I tell her softly. I reach out and give her my palm to sniff, which she doesn’t do. Instead, the wolf cocks her big, gray head and inquisitively reaches out her nose toward me.

  A quick, warm tongue licks my cheek. I take a deep sigh, and then bury my other hand in the fur of her shoulder.

  “The schedule they just gave me is a complete load of crap,” says Angie, striding back into the room. She looks frustrated, but then she pauses for a moment. “Give me the number for your landlord,” she says then, straightening her shoulders and not looking me in the eye. “I’ll call him and arrange for you to be able to keep the dog.”

  “Angie, you can’t lawyer everyone,” I tell her sharply, standing and shaking my head. I curl my hands into fists. “Also, you forgot about our Christmas dinner,” I say, my words knife-edged.

  Her eyes open a little in surprise, and then she narrows those eyes. Her tone has taken on an edge, too. “Really, Mandy? We’re going to do this now? I was getting you your present. Why the hell does that count for nothing?” She’s exasperated as she puts her hands on her hips. “Can’t you heat some food back up? I’m starved.”

  I stare at her so long, trying to find the right words to say. But I don’t find the right words, the words that will cut her to her quick like I want to, because I can’t cut her to the quick. No matter what she’s done to me, I loved her once. I have to remember that.

  So I take a deep breath and say simply: “Angie, we’ve been dating for six months,” I tell her, taking another deep breath, because it seems like the apartment has gotten far too warm too quickly. “And you’ve canceled twice the dates we’ve actually been on, you’ve forgotten the last five dinners, and that includes Christmas dinner. I can’t have a dog in the apartment, and even if I could, I
own a studio apartment,” I tell her, gesturing to the tiny space we find ourselves standing in. “It would be extremely unfair to have such a big dog in such a tiny space. And my cats--”

  “I got you what you wanted,” says Angie then, an edge to her voice. “I didn’t want you to throw yourself at my feet in gratitude, but this isn’t exactly what I’d been expecting.”

  We stare at each other across the head of the wolf. And then I shake my own head, and I say what I rehearsed over and over again. It doesn’t sound like it did in my head, all full of fire and vinegar. It sounds tired.

  “I don’t think we’re working out, Angie,” I tell her. “I think we should stop seeing each other.”

  She doesn’t give it a second thought. She doesn’t give me a second glance. Her eyes narrow and sharpen like knives, and then she’s brushing past me. “You’re right,” she says, and then she’s standing at the door. “And Merry Christmas to you, too,” she spits out, and then she’s out of the apartment, slamming the door shut behind her.

  I stare after her, dumbfounded. Angie is irresponsible, I think. Utterly selfish. Unthinking and unthoughtful and she cares only about herself.

  But she’d been gorgeous and charming, and I’d overlooked a lot of stuff because I was attracted to her. And that had made me stay with her a lot longer than I would have... God, I really am such an idiot. I rub at my face as the tears begin to cascade down my cheeks, hotly making little circles on my dress’s fabric.

  Again, the wolf noses forward and licks my my palm quickly, glancing up at me with such intelligent, fiercely blue eyes that I smile at her, even through the tears, and pet her head gently, my fingers running through her thick gray fur.

  “Poor girl. I’m sorry about all this,” I tell her quietly, and then I sigh for a long moment. “Don’t you worry. We’ll figure out what to do with you tomorrow, all right?” I tell her.