So I Married a Werewolf (Entangled Covet)

by Miller, Kristin

  One where kooky old Jameson Clark might be able to shed some light on what the hell is going on between you and me.

  “Dry business stuff.” Time for a subject change before she kept prodding. “How’s your blog?”

  Grinning, she stabbed a chunk of pork. “Good. Better than good, actually. If things keep going this way, I might be able to pay for Dawson’s Yale tuition myself.”

  “Really?”

  “Hell no, but if I say the words enough, maybe they’ll come true. I can hope, right?” She shoved the meat into her mouth. “I joined an affiliate program where I put items on the sidebar that are linked to an online store. Every time someone buys through the link, I get a percentage. I’ve already made a couple hundred dollars! Great, right?”

  “That is great.” He dropped his fork. “You’re well on your way.”

  She smiled smugly. “I’m still going to need you to help me pay for Dawson’s tuition, but I might be able to pay you back sooner than I thought.”

  Carter should’ve been thrilled for her. She was doing something she loved, and experiencing early success with it. Instead, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of sadness. As crazy and traditional as it sounded, he wanted to be the one providing for her. He wanted to be her rock, the one she came to when she needed something, anything. He wanted her to have independence and trust in her strength of body and mind, but he wanted her to need him, too.

  He was in too deep…

  Chapter Eighteen

  It’d taken two long weeks for Carter to track down Jameson Clark. Those two weeks had been somewhat of a reprieve. If he hadn’t had such an intense case to dive into, he might’ve obsessed over his wife. Where she went during the day while he worked the road. What appointments she made. And whether or not she was going to wear that red sweater again…

  She was about to drive him crazy. Jameson Clark’s case had come at a perfect time.

  While Carter had gotten a residence hit from the wolf pack’s computer system, Jameson’s blue-shuttered house was vacant. Weeds had claimed the yard and the oak trees in front were in desperate need of a trim. Carter had gone to the post office and requested to know if a change of address form had been filed.

  It hadn’t.

  Carter visited the house a second time and checked the mailbox.

  Empty.

  Either Jameson Clark didn’t get mail or someone was picking it up for him. According to the Seattle Wolf Pack’s system, Clark had lived at this address in the last year. Even if he’d told his friends and family about a sudden move, he’d still be getting junk mail.

  Parking in his usual spot down the street from Clark’s residence, Carter killed the engine of his Tahoe and waited for someone to show up.

  It’d been nearly two weeks of the same routine, the box was filling up, and he’d yet to see a single person show up to check the mail.

  His phone rang.

  Faith.

  He hated when she called; the fluttering feeling in his gut wouldn’t go away until he drowned himself in his work again. Not to mention she always wanted to talk about trivial, insignificant things.

  What color paint did you use on the walls? How do you defrost using the button on the microwave? How long have you been using the same lawn mowing service?

  “Hey, Faith.”

  “Chicken or fish?”

  “Both?”

  “I’m not cooking both in one meal. Which do you like best?” Her tone was much too chipper for a Monday morning, but he’d learned over the course of living with her for a few weeks that she was undeniably a morning person…after she had her coffee. Enough French vanilla creamer to drown Seattle. “I was thinking chicken since we had fish a few nights ago.”

  “Yeah, chicken sounds good.”

  Especially considering she’d burned the salmon to a crisp and the sauce she’d poured over the top had curdled. It’d been seasoned all wrong, with too much lemon pepper. He’d eaten it anyway, chasing each bite with a gulp of water, and had told her it was delicious.

  He simply couldn’t bear to watch her face fall when he told her how utterly inedible it was.

  “If you’re in the mood for salmon again,” she said, “I’ll make it.”

  Since she moved in, Carter found himself in the mood for a lot of things he hadn’t been before. Crispy salmon wasn’t one of them.

  A beat-up red pickup truck pulled into Jameson’s driveway.

  “Chicken’s fine,” Carter said, memorizing the license plate. “But, ah, are you using a recipe this time or going off the cuff?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, drawing the words out. “I’m thinking barbecue. ”

  That would work. Even if she seasoned the chicken with something strange, the smoke flavor would still save the meal.

  “Sounds great, Faith, thanks. I hate to run, but I’ve got to get to work.”

  “Wait, one more thing. I wanted to move a few dog training necessities from my place here so I wouldn’t have to run back and forth on training days, and since Tracy is staying at my cabin, I thought it’d give her more room in back for—”

  “Fine,” Carter interrupted. “Move what you need to.”

  She should feel comfortable in the place she spent her days and nights. She’d already moved over her bedroom set and bags of clothes, a few dishes, a toaster and blender…why shouldn’t she bring a few dog toys and things to help her with her workday?

  “Okay, great!” she said. “Thanks!”

  As she ended the call, Carter pocketed the phone and got out of the truck. A short, squatty werewolf with half a head of hair walked down the Clarks’ driveway and popped open the mailbox.

  “Excuse me,” Carter said as he approached the shifter who gave off a strong scent of bacon. “Are you Jameson Clark?”

  The guy turned and leveled Carter with a pair of haunting green eyes. “Who’s asking?”

  “Carter Griffin.” He pulled his badge out of his coat pocket. “I’m from the Enforcement Bureau, and I wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  Rolling his eyes, the werewolf peered into his mailbox, yanked out a handful of advertisement papers, a couple envelopes, and then slammed the lid closed. “If it’s about the mortgage with Wilder Financial, tell Drake that the check’s in the mail.”

  “I’m not here on the Alpha’s business.” Carter followed the wolf back up the drive and stopped on the lawn. “I wanted to ask about your rumored Luminaries.”

  “Rumored…” The wolf spun, facing Carter. “Is that right?”

  “Yes, sir. I read a few articles about the three Luminaries you reported having in the last hundred years. I wanted to ask you a few questions about how that came to be.”

  “You making notes for the pack newspaper? Going to write about how crazy I am? How I’ve become a recluse?”

  “I’m not writing a thing.” Carter shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m here for personal reasons.”

  “Yet you whip out that badge like it’s bureau business.”

  “You are Jameson Clark, correct?”

  The wolf nodded, narrowing his eyes. “How long have you been sitting in that truck, waiting for me to show?”

  Carter’s lips twisted into a grin. “Not long. Almost two weeks.”

  “How long have you been married?” Jameson tossed the mail onto the bench seat in his truck and pointed at Carter’s ring. “Not long enough to make a tan line, yet. I’m guessing a month.”

  “Three weeks,” Carter said, spinning the ring with his thumb. “You?”

  Jameson smiled, crossing his arms over his chubby chest. “You know how long I’ve been married. You read the articles. You happily married, Officer Griffin?”

  “Of course,” Carter fired. “Are you?”

  “You didn’t think about the question long enough before you answered, but I sense you gave the right one.” Jameson dusted lint off his shoulder, and Carter got the feeling he liked playing games. “I’ve been happy with every wife I’ve had. I’ve
loved each one wholly, with every part of my soul.”

  “How did that work, exactly?” Carter felt his face scrunch. “If you’d found your Luminary, what made you think to look for a second or a third?”

  Jameson took a giant step forward, until they were standing chest to chest. “You think I killed my first and second Luminary? You think I shot Francine because I was in love with Jenna? You think I waited for Jenna to get cancer and then went and found Cynthia? Of course that’s what you think. That’s what you all think. I’m tired of the bullshit, the lies, the sideways glances that isolate us from the rest of the pack. Let me tell you something. If you do the math, you’ll see the truth.”

  Carter squared his shoulders and looked down at the short man in front of him. There was fire in his eyes, and a spark of truth in his words. There’d been something about the dates that caught Carter’s attention from the start, though he couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

  “I read that Jenna was born a year after your first wife Francine died,” Carter said. “My wife passed away a few years ago.”

  Twenty-five years ago, to be exact—the same year Faith had been born.

  Hope sang through Carter’s veins, but he clamped down the emotion. No good came from hoping anything.

  Jameson backed against his truck, the anger in his sewage-green eyes simmering down. “There’s more to your story, isn’t there?”

  “How did you know Jenna was your second Luminary?”

  “That’s a ridiculous question.” Jameson laughed, the choking sound thick and staccato. “How do you know? Because you want to provide for them, protect them, and love them with every fiber of your being. You feel just as strongly about them as you did your first Luminary. The pull is just as strong.”

  Or in Faith’s case, Carter thought, it was stronger.

  “What about your second and third Luminary?” Carter asked. “You had two at the same time. How is that possible?”

  “Like I said, do the math.” Jameson glared. “Jenna was born a year after Francine’s death. When it was decided that my first Luminary would be taken from my life too soon, fate must’ve intervened. And the year after my second wife was diagnosed with the rare form of cancer that strikes wolves, Cynthia was born. Jenna and I knew that she’d lose the battle with cancer from the moment I felt the pull to Cynthia. It was a difficult time for us.”

  “I can imagine.” Carter’s thoughts whirled as he tried to judge whether or not Jameson was full of shit. Thing was, he looked earnest.

  “Once Cynthia came into our lives, Jenna dedicated the rest of hers to setting up a foundation that would take care of wolves who lost their Luminaries, in the case they never found another.”

  “I remember reading about that.”

  Not every wolf found his Luminary. Ones who never did could never understand the agony of losing one. Starting a foundation to assist with the soul-wrenching grief was an unbelievably thoughtful thing to do.

  But what did this mean for Carter? The chemistry he’d had with his wife had waned almost from the start. Immediately after they’d bonded, their connection had started to fade. Would he and Faith end up the same way?

  Could he ever be enough for her?

  Carter had one last question for Jameson, one thing to ask that would determine if he and Faith could actually have a future or if their chance at a relationship would fail before it began.

  “Tell me, Jameson, were the pulls to each of the Luminaries the same?”

  “I’m not sure my answer is going to be the one you’re looking for. You might find a more suitable one within you.” Jameson pulled a mint from his coat pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth. “But my connection to Francine, my first wife, was by far the strongest of the three. After that, the pull grew weaker. It’s still there, but has diluted down over time.”

  Carter’s chest deflated and his knees shook. If Jameson had the strongest pull to his first Luminary, and each one after had been weaker, how could he and Faith ever have a chance to have a lasting relationship?

  He left Jameson’s house and drove back to the office, turning up the radio to drown out his thoughts.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Carter tipped back his oversize mug and drained the last of his coffee. It’d gone cold. He’d been at his desk for the last three hours, organizing files in the wolf pack’s database. He deleted duplicate files submitted by enforcers and backed up critical information on the pack’s hard drive.

  Typing fast, Carter merged arrest records from the Seattle Wolf Pack with others in the area: Portland, Sacramento, Lake Tahoe, and San Francisco, to name a few of the larger ones. Each of those packs had its own system, but as wolves moved from one pack to another, their records should’ve moved, too. It was something their captain had been badgering the enforcers about. They’d talked about splitting up the task, but Carter had welcomed the large project.

  He’d been working on the merger for weeks. Before his shift. After. Loooong after.

  “You still here?” Nate said, peeking his head into Carter’s office. “Thought you left at five.”

  “No, I’m about to refill a second cup.” Actually, if he counted, it was his fifth. “Need something?”

  Nate folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorframe. “Nah, I just finished up the report on your little exhibition in front of those tourists. The captain kicked it back, said I needed to explain in more detail why I made a phone call to the zoo shortly after leaving Seward Park.”

  “Thanks for taking care of that,” Carter said, opening up the internet. “Did you make contact with the couple again?”

  Worry prickled the hairs at the base of his neck, making them stand on end.

  “Twice.” Nate picked a piece of lint off his sports jacket. “They’re either happily clueless or I’m better at my job than I thought.”

  “Could be both,” Carter said, relief coating his nerves. “You heading home?”

  “My wife is cooking something special tonight.”

  The way Nate said the word, as if he pushed it out as a deep growl, made Carter wonder if he should be envious of what he and Paisely had. He wasn’t. He was, however, slightly jealous of the special meal. Carter hadn’t had a delicious, mouthwatering home-cooked meal since he and Faith got married.

  What she lacked in culinary skills, she made up for in cuteness, though. Even when she screwed up, she was laid-back and laughing. Happy that she’d tried.

  They now had the number for Chinese food stuck to the fridge door.

  “Sorry we missed the wedding,” Carter said, though he really wasn’t. “How was it?”

  Nate’s eyes shadowed over to a matte black. “It was perfect. Gourmet food, bold wine, open bar. And you should’ve seen Paisely; she was a vision. Looked like a million-dollar Barbie doll.”

  “I bet.”

  Nate stared. “The best part was the honeymoon, though. We didn’t leave the suite for days.” He grinned, though his eyes remained dark and unreadable. “But I’m sure I don’t need to tell you—you’ve gone through it twice. Speaking of, I didn’t get the chance to congratulate you, either. How was your wedding in Victoria?”

  The wedding had been surprisingly perfect, but the wedding night had been one big horrible bust.

  “It was perfect.” Lie. “Better than the first time around.” Absolute truth.

  “Mmm,” Nate mumbled, his lips pressing into a tight line. “That’s good to hear.” He tapped the door. “Give Faith my best, would you?”

  Carter nodded. “Will do.”

  Nate turned to leave, but stopped himself, and then spun back around. “One more thing, Carter. I know that you’re married now, and there’s nothing to worry about, but if I don’t say this, it’ll bother me until I do.”

  Carter sighed and shut down his computer. “What is it, Nate?”

  “Paisely tells me you two had something special. That she loved you more than she’d ever loved anyone, and you broke her heart
.”

  They did? He had? And why the devil would she share that info with her new husband?

  Shock hammered through his system. He hadn’t loved her. Not even close…to what he felt for Faith, he finished.

  “I had no idea,” he said. What could he say? “We’ve been over for ages.”

  “I know that.” Nate adjusted his skinny black tie. “And I don’t think you have anything going on behind my back. Yet. But I saw the way the two of you were talking at the Owenses’ house, and I saw the disappointment in her face when she heard the news that you got married.”

  “Nate,” Carter interrupted, putting up his hand to stop him. “I’m not after your wife.”

  “You’re not after her yet.” Nate’s body went rigid, nearly filling the doorway. “I’m watching you, Carter. You won’t get the detective position and my wife. Mark my words.”

  He turned on his heel and left the office, leaving Carter stunned.

  What the hell had just happened? He felt reprimanded for doing something prematurely. Something he had no intention of doing in the first place.

  It didn’t make sense.

  “I’m so tired of this bullshit,” Carter said, and dived into organizing his desk drawers.

  …

  “Thanks for the help!” Faith yelled to her cooking instructor as she exited the senior center. “See you Wednesday!”

  She tucked her casserole dish under her arm and headed to her car. Dinner would be late tonight, but Carter hadn’t been getting home before 8:00 p.m. in weeks anyway. She thought he’d been avoiding her, but when she asked him about it straight up, he’d said that he wasn’t. Instead of getting home early, he’d been putting tireless hours in at the office. Working long and hard to get the detective position, he’d said.

  Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, after her cooking classes, she made Carter plates and left them in the fridge. She waited up in bed, updating Humperdinck’s progress on her blog, writing new posts and answering comments on old ones. As soon as Carter’s key turned in the lock, she listened for the refrigerator door.

  Every night, he’d eaten the food she left for him.

  She was either getting better at cooking, or he was minding his manners and wolfing down the food anyway.