Inking the Wolf: A wolf shifter paranormal romance (Wolves of Crookshollow Book 3)

by Steffanie Holmes

  “I have … a Lada. It’s a pile of shite—” Robbie stopped himself, “Er, I mean, a pile of rubbish, but it gets me from point A to point B.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful,” Mother exclaimed.

  Oh, that’s wonderful. Robbie’s Russian shitbox was wonderful? What Twilight Zone world have I stepped into? It’s time to get out of here before Mother asks Robbie take her for a drive.

  “Okay then.” I drowned Robbie’s second drink in one gulp and stood up. “So we’re going to go. Um, you’ll get a wedding invite soon, but there’s no pressure if you don’t want to come. It’s going to be a bit different—”

  “Nonsense, Bianca. You’re our only daughter. We wouldn’t miss it.”

  “There’s no crystal china, Mother. No string quartet. No flowers or church hymns.”

  “I never expected there would be.”

  “I’m not wearing white!”

  “As right you shouldn’t.” Mother fixed me with a pointed stare. “While symbolises a pure, virginal marriage. We will be there, no matter the date or the dress code or the number of prostitutes or clowns also in attendance. Goodnight, Bianca. Robert, it was a pleasure.”

  Robbie shook hands with Dad, and kissed my mother on the cheek. He waved goodbye to them from the driveway as he held my door open for me. As soon as he’d slid in the car beside me, I leaned over and rapped him over the head with my purse.

  “Ow!” He rubbed the back of his head. “You still have that flask in there.”

  “You deserve it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? What was that ridiculous act you pulled inside?”

  Robbie grinned. “I thought that went quite well.”

  “‘Quite well’? It wasn’t supposed to go quite well! They were supposed to hate your guts.”

  “It freaks you out that they like me, doesn’t it?”

  “It really, really does. You’re a man of constant surprises, Robbie. And you’ve made your life incredibly difficult.

  He shrugged. “Not as difficult as you were going to make it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We’re getting married, Bianca. That’s a forever thing. If we want your parents to believe us as a couple and let you keep the house, we have to keep up this charade for the rest of our lives. That means endless evenings just like this one. And I’d much rather do that with your parents as allies, instead of adversaries.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I got Elinor to check over the letter and June’s will. It looks as though there’s no stipulation on the amount of time we have to be married. I think that since to June the idea of divorce was so abhorrent, she didn’t even conceive of the idea that I’d consider it. So don’t worry, you’ll be free and clear of all familial obligations in a couple of years.”

  “Aye, right.” He glanced away. “Good, I guess. I wasn’t really keen on learning medieval Latin.”

  Is it just me, or does he seem less than enthused about the idea of splitting up our fake-marriage?

  Dammit. Ever since Bianca had confronted me at the shop, I’d been meaning to talk to Robbie about his feelings for me. Or his supposed feelings for me, because I still wasn’t entirely convinced there was anything between us other than two close friends who maybe happened to acknowledge that we found each other at least somewhat attractive. But the idea of talking about it with him terrified me. If it turned out Robbie really did have a thing for me, and it was influencing his decision to go through with the wedding, then … I’d have to reconsider the whole thing. And I didn’t want to reconsider. Primrose House was my dream. We were so close, and all we had to do was make this marriage thing work for a couple of years, and everything would be fine.

  But judging by the way Robbie wasn’t looking at me, everything wasn’t fine now. I rubbed my lips, remembering the kiss I’d sprung on him on the porch. Holy hell, that was a good kiss. If it was half as hot for Robbie as it was for me, then no wonder he was feeling a bit off.

  I guess we’re doing this.

  “Robbie?”

  “Aye?” He pulled over in front of Resurrection Ink.

  “About that kiss—”

  “I ken.” He still wouldn’t look at me. “That was for your mother’s benefit. It’s fine, Bianca, really. It donnae mean anything.”

  “But I—”

  “Look, it’s getting late. I should probably get back to the Hall before Simon locks me out.”

  “Oh, sure. See you tomorrow at Primrose House?”

  “Aye, right.” I leaned toward him, arms open, for our usual goodbye hug. Robbie didn’t seem to see me. Instead, he stared at the wheel, his hands gripping the side. Sighing, I dropped my arms, and got out.

  “Well … goodnight.” I waved at the window.

  “Aye … goodnight.” Robbie looked up then, the sadness in his eyes so intense that I reeled. He gunned the engine, muttering something under his breath as he backed into the street. It almost sounded as though he’d said, “I love you.”

  10

  Robbie

  After the dinner with Bianca’s parents, things started moving even faster on both the ring investigation and on Primrose House, which Bianca had renamed “The Prim.” My days blurred into each other as I worked from sunup until sunset. The relentless work was good, because it almost kept me distracted from the fact that I still desperately wanted Bianca, but I still saw no way to make that happen.

  Almost.

  In the mornings, I would head to the university library or local records office as soon as they opened to dig through the archives. Sometimes Anna would join me, giving me an hour or so of her wisdom while Luke watched the baby before hurrying off again to attend her motherly duties.

  Anna’s presence made me nervous. Every time she glanced over my shoulder or asked me why I was still on the same document, I panicked that she’d figured out I was struggling to read. But she seemed too preoccupied with the baby – checking her phone every few minutes in case Luke messaged her – to put it together, which suited me fine.

  I made slow progress. I dug through every piece of history on the Crooks Worthy monastery, Bartholomew Winthrope, and Bianca’s family, but there was no mention of the ring. I did discover a marriage announcement in the local paper for Sylvia and her Yorkshire Earl, as well as a pamphlet about the castle where she became Lady and gave birth to six children. I added that castle to my list of possible locations for the ring. Despite what Bianca’s mother had said about the Earl’s family not having the ring, I wanted to go up to York and look for it, but Caleb insisted he and Irvine would do it.

  When I’d told Caleb about Rolf’s visit to the library, he didn’t seem fazed. “He’s in town because Irvine invited him to meet with us,” he said. “We’ve already had one discussion, and we plan to speak again in a few days. I’m not surprised he’s taking the time to investigate my pack. I’d do exactly the same in his position.”

  “What are you discussing with a Wulfric alpha? You realise they—”

  “—are the bitter enemies of the Macleans?” Caleb said. “Yeah, Robbo, I remember. But Irvine says they can help us, and I trust him. So does your mother. You need to trust him, too.”

  I was never going to trust Irvine a single bit, but there was no way I could tell Caleb that. “I’ll try, man.”

  “You do that. And you find that ring.”

  The afternoons and evenings I spent at Primrose House, making repairs and painting and redecorating, readying for the opening of the art house. Bianca came after work to do her share of the work, but I didn’t stick around to socialise with her. I didn’t want to give myself any more false hope, and I had other work to do.

  By reading late into the night, I was also able to start sorting through the boxes of documents stored in the attic. Bianca kept offering to help me, but I didn’t want her to discover my illiteracy, so I took the boxes back to Raynard Hall and pored through them on my own. So far, nothing had come up connected to Silvia Sinclair and the
ring, but I was such a slow reader I’d barely made a dent.

  At least one thing was going right – “The Prim” had taken on a life of its own, and Bianca’s dream was starting to take shape. I lived for our afternoons together working on the house, and I hated them in equal parts. Bianca’s sweet scent as she bent in front of me to put more paint on her roller nearly knocked me off my feet.

  The memory of her lips haunted my dreams. That kiss … she said it was just for her parents’ sake, but how had she not felt what I’d felt? The electric charge surging through my body, the heat drawing us together, like two magnets desperate to be united. The force of our destinies trying to unite us at last.

  If Bianca felt any of it, she hadn’t said anything to me. She kept up a steady stream of excited conversation about our wedding, the grand opening, the renovations, but about us … about the marriage, her parents … nothing. Sometimes, I’d look over at her and catch her staring back at me, her bright blue eyes focused hard, as though she were trying to see right through me.

  The kiss hung between us, unacknowledged, but tainting every conversation, confusing every touch.

  Despite the weird tension between us, we got a lot done on the house. Mostly, I worked during the afternoon on the manual tasks. I took some of the larger, clunkier antique furniture to Abracadabra Antiques, the local antique dealer, as well as some of the silver. That gave Bianca the funds to pay for the renovations, fresh bedding for the guest rooms, get a decent website built, and send out an enormous stack of promotional flyers to art communities, tattoo studios, and underground galleries she had connections with. We replaced the stiff rose-covered couches with a big squishy sofa that took up the majority of the drawing room.

  Art started arriving. Bianca’s network of friends from all over the world wanted to donate paintings to hang on the walls. We painted over the garish wallpaper in most of the downstairs rooms, and started hanging the pieces in every available space. Most were for sale, with Bianca acting as a dealer taking a commission. She typed up a catalogue of the work while I unboxed each piece and we argued over where to hang it.

  “Where do you want the hideous cow?” I held up a picture of a giant, fat sow, her wrinkled face rendered in excruciating detail. A lolling tongue hung from her lips, dragging the British flag into her mouth to be chewed into a pulp.

  Bianca tilted her head, thinking. “Above the dining table?”

  “I think it will put people off their food.”

  “Perfect. That means we won’t have to order so much food. Even with Belinda doing the catering, that shit’s expensive.”

  I grinned as I banged a picture hook into the wall and hung the painting as straight as I could. Bianca typed “Ugly Cow” into her catalogue.

  “What’s next?”

  I tore off the packaging on the next piece, revealing a large square abstract canvas. Black and brown lines crisscrossed a brilliant blue background, the paint so thick it stood out in high relief, it reminded me of the sitting under the trees in the forest, staring up at the winter sky through thick, leafless branches. A slash of black in the corner made me think of a raven poised to swoop down for it's next kill. “This one’s dead pure brilliant.”

  “I agree.” Bianca hopped up from her place at the table and came over to look closely. “That’s my friend Odette’s piece. She’s this mega-hot German chick who does these incredibly gothic abstracts. I think this one’s supposed to be a scene from the Black Forest.”

  “I love it.” The image invoked the forest, all right. For a moment, a strange yearning for the wilds of Aberdeen washed over me. I’d lived in that forest my entire life, sleeping in the open air and hunting in the frigid valleys. Now, I was indoors all the time, trying to learn how to be part of society and fit myself into Bianca’s life, and it wasn’t exactly going the way I’d hoped. At least in the wild, everything was simple.

  “Odette’s coming to the wedding. I could introduce you if you like.” Bianca grinned. “I bet you’ll hit it off. She’s gorgeous, and she is an animal in bed. I know from experience.”

  Don’t do this to me, woman. I dropped the box of picture hooks. They scattered across the floor. I squatted to scoop them up, turning my back to Bianca so she wouldn’t notice my cock springing to life.

  It wasn’t the idea of meeting this Odette chick making my blood run hot, but the thought of Bianca in bed with another woman, their naked bodies rolling over each other, hands caressing each other’s breasts, playing with their nipples, tasting each other’s juices … I knew it was ridiculous, that Bianca’s bisexuality was part of who she was, not a party trick designed to make her more desirable, and yet, my most secret sexual fantasies involved her being with another woman …

  Of course, in my dreams, I was in the room, too. And even though Bianca was totally hot for this other chick, she was really there for me. The two of them would slide their hands over my body, their tongues licking—

  “Robbie, you okay?”

  “Yeah, fine.” I gulped, hopping over the floor to collect a hook that had rolled into the corner. “Is there … anyone at the wedding you want to … hook up with?”

  Bianca tilted her head to the side. “You know Willow, the wedding planner? That girl is so odd and shy. I just want to corrupt her.”

  Think unsexy thoughts, think unsexy thoughts … the vein on Dad’s forehead throbbing as he yelled at me, the sound of police sirens getting closer when I’m on a job, Irvine clipping his toenails …

  That did the trick. The tightness in my jeans faded away, and the heat rushed out of my veins. I waited a few moments longer, fiddling with the hooks in the box, before standing up and facing Bianca again, happy that at least I wasn’t embarrassing myself in front of her any more than I already had.

  “Sorry, a little clumsy today.” I stood up, clapping her on the shoulder the way friends who totally didn’t want to touch their friend’s naked bodies did. “Let’s get these paintings hung.”

  11

  Bianca

  The next two weeks passed in a blur. I worked long hours at Resurrection Ink, booking in as many clients as I could to fatten my coffers so I could afford some of the bigger decorating projects I wanted to do at The Prim. In the evenings, I worked on the PR for the grand opening and packed up my apartment. Luckily, the landlord had given me the okay to sublet it so I didn’t have to break the lease, and Willow was looking for a place, so she decided to take it over.

  Willow was an absolute legend. I had my doubts about her ability to pull off my crazy fake-wedding, but she totally delivered. She organised all the entertainment, scoured junk shops and eBay to find me the perfect vintage blue dress, managed to find a contractor who could secure all the circus troupe’s aerial stunt equipment to the ceiling of the ballroom without damaging the period features, made travel arrangements for my friends from all over Europe, and scored me exclusive coverage with London Underground – the hottest art blog in the UK, all without raising her voice above a whisper.

  And she was still fucking gorgeous, even though she never seemed to stop walking with that odd, slightly stiff gait.

  Ever since he’d been all weird when we were hanging the pictures, I hardly saw Robbie. He was at the house every day, working on repainting over the hideous wallpaper and pulling up some of the more dated rugs. But whenever I showed up in the evenings, he’d disappear back to Ryan’s as quick as he could.

  The day before the wedding, I was doing my last appointment in the shop. I tried to talk to Elinor about it, but she refused to discuss Robbie. “I’ve already told you what I think about what you’re doing,” she said. “I’m not going to repeat myself. If you have a problem with Robbie, you need to talk to him.”

  “But—”

  “Sorry.” Elinor turned her chair around and bent over her client, the buzz of her tattoo gun covering the frigid silence that permeated my usually cheery studio.

  I gritted my teeth as I focused on my own client – Kurt, the new drummer of Eric
’s band Ghost Symphony. Kurt had driven up from London today to be here for the wedding. Elinor and Eric’s house – a Victorian gothic manor just down the road from the studio that had been in Eric’s family for years – was already bursting at the seams with musicians here to play for my friends.

  I should have been head banging with joy about all the awesome people who were showing up and pulling out all this stops for this shindig. It seemed like all of my friends were as excited about The Prim as I was. But all I could think about was Robbie. If I wasn’t reliving that amazing kiss, I was tying myself up in knots worrying what he was thinking, how he was feeling.

  If I didn't know better, I’d think he was avoiding me. But why would he do that? It doesn’t make any sense. He’s still planning to marry me, and we’re still going to live together … he can’t avoid me forever.

  He’s not having second thoughts about the wedding, is he? Surely he’d say something? I mean, the whole thing is planned, everything’s ready, people are starting to show up … all he needs to do is say the magic words and sign the papers. If he pulls out now, all this work is for nothing.

  I’ll talk to him tonight.

  When I arrived at The Prim that evening, the driveway was crowded with cars. Many of my friends were arriving from the continent. I flung open the front door, and was instantly swept up in a giant bear hug. “We have arrived,” a deep German voice boomed in my ear.

  “Welcome, Hans.” I kissed his tattooed cheek. Hans was the Berlin tattoo artist who’d apprenticed me when I was an upstart teen. He introduced me to the underground arts scene in Berlin, took me out on 48-hour benders, and taught me everything I knew about tattooing. “Was the trip over a nightmare?”

  “I had a harrowing brush with your British cuisine on das Flugzeug, but I managed to survive. Your friend has already made us very comfortable.” Hans gestured to Robbie, who was chatting with a particularly attractive member of Han’s female entourage. His shoulder muscles bulged with the weight of two giant suitcases under his arm.