by Dani April
Cautiously, she stepped up onto her front porch. She pulled her house key out of her shoulder bag and had it ready for the lock. Then she turned around at the sound of loose gravel kicked in her driveway.
Two men were stepping around from the back of her house. They were two of the biggest men she had ever seen in her life. They were young, probably a few years younger than she was, dressed in cowboy hats and cowboy boots. They had determined looks on their faces and didn’t look like they were in any mood for an argument. They looked serious, and she detected something not quite normal about them.
“Can I help you two?” she called down to them from her front porch. A wind blew across the prairie, and her voice sounded small.
The men tipped their hats to her. They didn’t seem polite. “We were hoping you could help us, miss,” the biggest of the two said. He was about six foot seven and seemed to be made of pure stone, his body was so hard. They took the steps of her front porch and came up to her. They towered over her.
She took a step back. She was afraid of them.
“My name is Luke Wildback and this is my brother, Kyle,” the second man spoke to her. She thought she might have to reconsider. Now that they were up close, he seemed like he might even be larger than his brother. He wasn’t as tall, but the muscles on his body positively rippled out of the tight-fitting T-shirt he wore. Both of their voices were baritone and severe.
“I’m Arielle Banks.” She didn’t feel comfortable with introductions to these two but forged ahead anyway. They had her cornered. “I’m the town veterinarian in Wolf Creek.”
“We know who you are,” Kyle, the tall one, said to her.
Luke, the muscle builder, reached deep into the pocket of his tight-fitting blue jeans and pulled out a photograph. He handed it to her. “Have you seen the man in that photo?” he asked.
She could hardly concentrate with both huge men up so close and on her own front porch. She felt claustrophobic all of a sudden and like she couldn’t breathe. She caught a scent from each man. Not that they smelled bad or had body odor, because they didn’t. On the contrary, they actually had a musky scent that was disturbingly male and aroused her. Arielle wiped her brow as she looked at the photo. It was too hot on that little porch.
“I’m sorry,” she told them and had to clear her throat. She had no idea why she should apologize to them except for the fact that they scared her. “This isn’t really a very good picture. I don’t think I’ve seen this man. Who is he? Is he from Wolf Creek?”
When she handed the photograph back to the muscle builder Luke, he was angry.
“Cut the crap, Dr. Banks.” He raised his voice. The lonely prairie wind blew against her face again. She felt very vulnerable and alone. “We know he’s been here.” He moved a step closer toward her on the porch.
“We know he’s been inside your house. We want you to tell us where he is now.”
Arielle swallowed before she spoke. She had no spit left in her throat. “I don’t know what you guys are talking about. No one has been here to my house. I live here alone.”
“I’m an honest man by nature. I don’t like it when someone lies to my face,” the muscle builder Luke said, and his voice was mean. She could feel his anger as he addressed her.
Arielle had backed against the door. She had her key inserted in the lock, ready to bolt inside. However, these men scared her so badly she didn’t even think she could turn the key. “I’m not lying to you,” she pleaded with them.
The men looked at each other and exchanged a silent communication. They both were obviously very angry from their words, but their anger was controlled, not seething, but calculated. The tall man leaned down to her. He rested his hand against the front doorframe. Now he was not twelve inches from her. His facial features beneath his Stetson were well defined, his jaw strong and a cleft in his chin. His brown eyes pierced her to her very core as if he was able to read her mind. She realized in her moment of panic that he was the most handsome man she had ever seen in her life.
“I would like to help you if I could,” she told him, her voice quivering. “Perhaps if I only knew what this was about, why you wanted to find this man, I might be able to remember if I’ve seen him around town.” She was surprised at her own reaction. She would have gladly helped these two men if she only knew how, but clearly they had her badly confused with someone else. They frightened her in the worst way, and at the same time, she felt inexplicably drawn to them, and that frightened her even more. She had never been drawn to the bad-boy type before. Why was she making an exception for these two just because of the way they looked?
“If you’re lying to us and we find out, you will be sorry, Dr. Banks,” Luke threatened her.
“We intend to find this man and take him with us,” Kyle informed her. “If he is with you, we’ll find him. By lying to us, you’re just making things harder on yourself.”
Arielle was so scared she felt paralyzed. She wanted to cry, but was not about to give them the satisfaction. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told them. She had backed up to the locked door behind her. She had nowhere left to move away from them and was trapped. “Tell me what this is all about.”
The men seemed to realize they had scared her. Perhaps this hadn’t been their intention, although they had sure done one hell of a good job. They backed off slightly. The tall one straightened up and stopped leaning against the door.
“I’m sorry if we’ve scared you, Dr. Banks,” Luke said, though his voice was still hard. “The man we’re looking for is our older brother, Jason.”
“We love our brother,” Kyle explained. “He’s missing, and we think he’s in trouble. We’d do anything to find him.” She sensed they told her the truth.
“What kind of trouble is he in?” she chanced asking them, some of the fear starting to fade.
“He’s missing. That’s all we know,” Luke said. “We own some land back in the mountains. We live out there. He was in Wolf Creek on some business. That’s the last we’ve seen of him. If you’ve ever had any family you care about you can understand how worried we are.”
“Well, why do you think he’s here at my house?”
They looked at each other again. “We’ve been tracking him,” Kyle said. “He’s definitely been by here, but it’s possible you weren’t aware of it.”
“I can assure you if he was here, I was not aware of it. No one has been inside my house. Like I said, I live alone.”
Luke gave her a wicked grin. “Then you wouldn’t mind if we came inside?” he asked her. “We could look around and satisfy ourselves.”
The anger rose inside of Arielle. “I most certainly do mind. I’ve said all I have to say to you two. I think it’s time you left.”
The men ignored her anger. They didn’t leave. Their eyes bored into her as they both stared. “You’re not very friendly, are you?” Kyle asked.
She got the key in her front door and opened it. She stepped inside with the door just opened a crack behind her. “I’m sorry about your brother, and I hope you find him,” she told them from the safety of the doorway. “I’ve never seen him before. Now please leave.”
“Are you always this frightened of everything, Dr. Banks?” Luke asked her, the wicked grin still turning up his lips. Then he tipped his hat to her again. Kyle did likewise. They backed off her porch. There was a silent communication that had passed between them. Their mood had suddenly changed toward her. Whatever had happened, she was glad to get them off her porch.
She shut the door and threw the bolt. Then she went to the front window and pulled back the curtain. She watched them as they strode across her front yard and got back inside their truck. They drove away, and she continued to watch them until the truck had disappeared in the rolling hills of the rural road. After a few more minutes, she decided it was safe and let the curtain fall back over the front window and gave up the watch.
She breathed a sigh of relief. What in the hell had those two
men wanted? Who were they? And why had they come to her house? She felt angry with herself because she didn’t call the police on them, or at the very least she could have given them each a good kick in the nuts. She felt like a wimp and a fool for not standing up to them better.
She took off her shoulder bag and sat it down on her coffee table. Her cell phone was inside the bag, and she brought it out and sat it down. If those men came back, she resolved to call the police.
Loneliness and isolation had made her into a different person, one she didn’t like. She wiped the tears out of her eyes and tried to get on with the rest of her evening.
Chapter Three
“I’m going to have a boy,” Bethany told Arielle.
“Oh, congratulations, sis.” Arielle beamed with joy for her sister. “I’m so happy for you and Adam.”
“You know me, I’m worried about everything, but the doctor says everything is right on schedule and I don’t have a thing to be worried about.”
Arielle and Bethany talked on the phone every Monday night. Ever since Arielle had moved away from the city, they had picked this night to get on the phone and talk for an hour and pour out all that had happened in the past week, their thoughts and their feelings. Arielle didn’t really know why Monday night had been chosen. It had just started when she moved to Wyoming, and they had continued the weekly phone conversation ever since. The only week they missed was the week Bethany and her husband Adam had spent in Wolf Creek with Arielle. That week they got to talk in person instead of on the phone.
“Well, I kind of had some excitement today when I came home from work,” Arielle said, and braced herself to tell the story of the two big men to Bethany. She didn’t want to make it sound like more than it was. “There were these two guys waiting outside of my house when I drove up tonight. Their truck was parked out front. I never get any visitors out here, so that was the first strange thing. Then when I walked up the front porch I caught them coming around the house from the backyard.”
“What did they want?” Bethany already sounded scared for her. Arielle had learned that people who lived in the city were a lot more suspicious of their neighbors and frightened than those who lived in small towns.
“That’s just it.” Arielle sighed, and attempted to keep her voice on an even keel to make Bethany feel better. “I don’t really know what they wanted.”
“Well, did you tell them to get off your land?”
“I talked to them for a couple of minutes,” Arielle admitted. “They told me they were looking for their brother and showed me a picture of him. They said they lived up in the mountains and their brother had gone missing.”
“Why would they come by your place?”
“That’s just it, I still don’t have any idea why they picked my house to investigate. I felt like they were giving me an interrogation. They didn’t have the best manners in the world.”
“Didn’t you ask them what in the heck they were doing nosing around your property?”
“I did.” Arielle didn’t want to say she was too intimidated by their size and their looks to ask them much of anything, so she left that part out. “They must have had me confused with someone else. They were really insistent that I had been keeping their brother inside my house.”
“I guess they don’t know what a hermit you’ve become out there by yourself. You don’t ever have anyone over to your house.”
“Don’t start with that again, sis.” Arielle knew Bethany was just teasing her, but it hit too close to the truth to be funny. “Anyway, when I told them I didn’t know what they were talking about, they left.”
“If that had happened to me down here in the city, I would have called the police.”
“Well, thank God I’m not living in the city now, Beth.” Arielle paced down the hall. The door to her bedroom was open. She spotted the wolf lying content on top of his bed on the floor. “That’s not the only interesting thing that happened to me this week. Saturday night I hit a…” She started to say wolf but then thought better of it. No need to alarm her sister unnecessarily. “I hit this great big dog with the Suburban. I almost killed him.”
“Don’t tell me you took him home with you, Arielle!”
“You know me. I’m a sucker for hard-luck cases, especially animals.”
“Yeah, I know you love animals and hate people.”
“I don’t hate people.” Arielle said it almost too sharply. “Anyway, you’re right, I did take him home with me. His leg was broken. I operated on him yesterday. He’s going to be okay, but he’ll have to stay with me for a couple of months while he’s recovering.”
“Maybe he’s got an owner.”
“I don’t know. He might. If he does have one, I’m the only vet in town so I’m sure they’ll contact me about him eventually.”
“Maybe you should keep him as a pet.”
“No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. He’s too big for me.”
“You wouldn’t get as lonely out there with a pet.”
“Who says I get lonely out here?”
“I do.” Arielle knew her kid sister could see right through her. “Anyway, maybe a dog isn’t such a good idea. That would just be another thing to keep you trapped out there in the country.”
“But you know I actually like it out here, Beth.”
“No, you don’t.” Arielle didn’t want to have this conversation with her sister again. They had talked too long tonight. It was time to hang up. “You know I was all for you getting away, Arielle. If I’d had a man do me like Gary did you, I would have wanted to get away for a while also.”
“It’s late, sis,” Arielle told her. “We’ve both got early days tomorrow.”
“Okay.” Arielle could hear her sister sigh on the other side. “If you think of any names you’d like to have for your new nephew, text them to me.”
“Will do. Love you, kid.”
“Yeah. Later…”
They disconnected. Arielle felt relief. She had never been comfortable talking about her private life with her family.
She took a long shower that night. She was so used to living alone that she never bothered to close the door anymore. When she stepped out of the shower, she glanced up to see that the wolf was staring inside the bathroom at her. She stood there naked and wet and met its eyes. It was normal for people to ascribe human emotions to animals that they really did not possess, but she could have sworn that was a look of lust out of those deep-brown eyes.
She quickly reached for the towel and covered her body self-consciously with it. She swung the door shut with her foot. “Give me a little privacy,” she told the wolf angrily. She wiped the steam off the mirror and watched herself blushing. Of course the wolf couldn’t have cared less about her body unless maybe he thought of it as dinner. He was an animal and not a man. She felt foolish as she brushed her shoulder-length, water-tangled hair in the mirror.
The self-conscious feeling of having her body stared at remained with her. When she came out of the bathroom, she had pulled a long T-shirt over her head in favor of the normal underwear she usually slept in. When she got outside, the wolf was still kneeling there on the floor staring at her. He didn’t seem violent or aggressive. This wolf had never exhibited those tendencies to her. He still wore the muzzle she had placed over his jaws for her protection. He looked uncomfortable. Perhaps he wanted her to take it off. Maybe that is why he stared at her so intently.
Later that night he was limping around the bedroom on three legs. Though she had left the bedroom door open all night, he had not come out of the room once. However, she caught him as he stared out the door at her while she dried the dishes and did a load of clothes. The way he looked at her made her feel unsettled. It didn’t scare her, but it was not the way an animal should look at a human. He was way too intelligent to be a wolf.
She sat down on top of her bed, and he limped over to her. He laid his head down on top of her lap, her T-shirt pooling down to her knees and his furry s
nout on top of it. She reached out and touched the muzzle. He looked up at her with proud and alert eyes.
“If I take this off, you’re not going to bite me, are you, guy?”
He held her eyes. She felt she had her answer from him.
“I trust you,” she told him and reached for the tie of the muzzle at the back of his head. As soon as she had removed the muzzle, he left her and went to lie back down on his bed on the floor. He looked back over his shoulder at her. She wondered what it was he thought about. With those deep-brown eyes, this animal definitely thought something.
“Are you hungry?” she asked him. He merely stared at her. “Okay, wait there, and I’ll bring you some food.”
She got off the bed and went out to the kitchen. She kept a couple cans of dog food tucked away at the back of the bottom cabinet next to the sink. She crawled into the big space and rummaged between sacks of flour and salt until she found the pet food. She took down a cereal bowl from one of the top cabinets. This dog food might not be exactly right for the huge wolf. To compensate, she scooped up a double portion for him. She would have to buy something more appropriate when she was in town tomorrow.
The wolf waited patiently for her when she stepped back into the bedroom on bare feet, the cereal bowl full of dog food held in front of her. She wanted to move carefully now. Once an animal smelled food, they might become more aggressive. With the utmost caution, she set the bowl down on top of the blankets the wolf used to sleep on and then moved quickly away from him.
She scooted back across the carpet and sat down on the bed again. The wolf hadn’t paid any attention to the food. He was too intent on her form as it moved across the room. She crawled back on the bed and brought her knees up in front of her, and covered them with her arms as she hugged herself against his stare. Why in the world would a wild animal make her feel embarrassed like this?
