The Protector's Heart (Wilde Creek Three)

by R. E. Butler

  Brynn smiled. “Hi, Nila. How’s your sweet little boy?”

  “Great, thanks. How was your weekend?”

  As Brynn talked, Nila could feel Malachi’s eyes on her, and she managed to not look at him but only by sheer force of will. All day long it would be the same. She’d come up to get the next patient and Malachi would watch her like a hawk.

  Realizing she’d missed most of what Brynn said while she was trying not to think about Malachi, she froze when Brynn stopped talking and smiled at her expectantly. Nila felt put on the spot and she blinked and tried vainly to figure out what Brynn had just asked.

  Brynn’s eyes darted toward Malachi and she said, “I asked if you’d like to go to lunch with me this week.”

  Oh damn. Malachi drove Brynn everywhere.

  “Sure,” she said, not wanting to disappoint her friend.

  Don’t look at him.

  “Cool, how about tomorrow?”

  Brynn pushed the first patient’s folder across the counter and Nila said, “Sounds good.”

  Counting it as a victory that she didn’t look at Malachi even once as she opened the door to the waiting room and called the first patient’s name, she smiled at herself, greeted the little girl and her mother, and led them to the exam room.

  They were fairly busy that morning, and she’d had to wait to take her lunch until later. By the time she made it to the breakroom, she was starving. Malachi was sitting at one of the tables, a tablet in one hand and a sandwich in the other. She almost turned around and left, and then she felt like she was being an idiot. Going to the fridge, she opened it and reached for her insulated lunch sack. She gripped it and turned, looking at the only table in the breakroom, which currently held a very large wolf.

  She stared at him. He was so sexy, she had to force herself to remember that he was a wolf shifter and that meant he was off-limits. Her self-imposed sanction on wolf shifters was for her own good. It wasn’t just about finding a good guy to go out with, she had to think of Jack and find a father for him who’d treat him well. None of the wolves in Damien’s pack seemed to have a paternal bone in their body. The females were treated like toys and breeding machines.

  Malachi stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the linoleum with the motion. He walked near her to throw away the paper plate his sandwich had been on, and then he stopped and looked at her.

  “What?”

  He lifted his gaze and she realized he was looking at her lunch sack. “My sister, Mia, loves Star Wars. I was just wondering where you got that lunch bag, because it would make a great Christmas gift.”

  Nila’s hand had involuntarily gripped the bag when he’d turned and focused on her. She wasn’t afraid of him, not really. She just didn’t trust him, and she didn’t trust herself around him.

  “A friend gave it to me for Jack, but he doesn’t need a packed lunch at daycare so I decided to take it. I think she got it from a catalog.”

  “So you’re not a Star Wars fan?” He smiled and it felt like her whole body twitched in response. Damn him and his sexy smile.

  “I am.”

  “Let me guess, you had a crush on Luke Skywalker.”

  “No way,” she said, grinning. “I was all about Han Solo, are you kidding?”

  His smile turned into a full-on grin, and she realized that she was letting her guard down around him. This was how mistakes happened, how things had started with Damien. One minute he was charming and funny, and then his true colors came out and he was an asshole of the highest order. Malachi might be kind to Brynn because his alpha said so, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t an awful person behind closed doors.

  She frowned and looked down at her lunch bag. Her voice came out more cold than she’d planned, but it was effective. “I need to eat lunch now, if you don’t mind.”

  His smile died instantly as confusion lit his features. “Nila,” he said, and she put up her hand.

  “If you don’t mind.”

  His teeth clicked together audibly as he closed his mouth and turned, stalking out of the lunchroom. She sagged against the counter, a sigh of relief parting her lips. That male was dangerous to her sanity, and to her and Jack’s safety. He made her forget he was a wolf, because something inside her responded to him no matter what her brain tried to tell her body to do. She’d taken a chance on a wolf once before, and it had gotten her nothing but heartache.

  * * * * *

  Promptly at five, Nila said goodbye to Dr. Kimmi and her husband, Dr. Frank, and grabbed her purse and coat from the locker. The wool coat had seen better days, but it had been a gift from her favorite aunt, who’d passed away two years earlier, and she didn’t want to replace it. She said goodbye to Brynn, unable to keep herself from glancing at Malachi, who had his back turned away from her. She almost said his name, but clenched her teeth together and gave herself a mental slap. Pushing open the doors, she walked out into the bitter cold, burrowing into her coat to keep her cheeks from freezing off.

  She walked swiftly to her car, cursing the thought of spending a few minutes outside scraping off the snow, when she stopped in front of her vehicle and stared at the clean windshield. Someone had been out here and cleaned off all her windows, scraping the ice and snow away. She looked around the parking lot and saw that her car was the only one that had been cleaned. Turning her gaze to the front door of the office, she didn’t see anyone watching her, but she was almost positive that Malachi was the one who had cleaned her windows. Her treacherous heart thought that was fantastic, but her brain reminded her that it was just a trick. He was a wolf; they were tricky bastards, and she wasn’t going to fall for it.

  Tossing her bag onto the seat, she slammed the door shut and turned on the car. It took a few minutes for the heat to kick in, and she watched Malachi come out of the building, get into his big SUV, and turn it on. Then he got out, extracted a long-handled ice scraper from the back, and scraped the windows. After putting the scraper back, he walked to the office and escorted Brynn out, helping her into the vehicle.

  It made Nila’s heart hurt. She’d never had anyone treat her like that, ever. She pushed away the jealous ache and put the car into gear. She’d wasted enough time waiting for the car to warm up; she didn’t need to spend more time sitting around wishing for things that would never be. She wouldn’t get involved with a wolf again, no matter how sexy he was or how much of a knight in shining armor he appeared to be.

  The drive to Little Tots took only a few minutes. As she waited to be buzzed in through the front door of the daycare, she looked over her shoulder. Ever since Damien had beaten up the teacher, Nila hadn’t felt safe. She was afraid she couldn’t keep Jack safe, either, and that one day Damien would take him like he swore he would. He seemed to leave her alone for a while, and then he would randomly show up demanding she return to his home with his son.

  The daycare director buzzed Nila in and greeted her. “He had a good day once he settled down,” Dana said.

  Nila was glad to hear that. She stopped in the open door of the room where he spent most of his day. Jack was playing with foam blocks. He seemed to instinctively know that she was watching him, and he looked up and then smiled broadly.

  “Mama!” he squealed happily as he pushed himself to his feet and toddled over to her.

  She lifted him over the gate and he squeezed his arms and legs around her, giving her a loud kiss. “Hi, Jack!”

  He babbled at her, fisting a lock of her hair with his chubby hand and pressing his nose against hers.

  With one hand, Nila signed Jack out, accepted the diaper bag from the teacher, and waved goodbye. She paused at the front door, looking out into the winter darkness that lay beyond the lights of the parking lot. Steeling her spine, she fisted her keys and opened the door. Jack ducked his head into her neck, his fuzzy cap brushing her cheek, and she stepped out and let the door shut behind her.

  She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. She wished she had super hearing or super si
ght like wolves did, so she could tell. Fear had made Nila its bitch, and she wasn’t happy about it.

  Quickly walking to her car, which she parked as close to the entrance as she could, she unlocked the back door of her old sedan and set Jack in the car seat, buckling him in swiftly before shutting the door. She turned and scanned the parking lot. Not seeing anything — although she couldn’t see much of anything past the snow that was swiftly falling — she opened the driver’s door and sat down behind the wheel. Pushing the door lock and then starting the engine, she rubbed her hands together and pressed the button for the window defroster.

  “Did you have a good day, kiddo?” she asked, looking at Jack in the rear view.

  “Carrot.”

  She smiled at one of his favorite words, which he said somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred times a day, backed out of the parking space, and headed for home.

  She lived in a small house in Wilde Creek, at the end of a cul-de-sac. When she first came to Wilde Creek after leaving Damien, she had been desperate for a place to live. She’d just left Damien for good, taking Jack away in the middle of the night, and for a few days she had stayed with Diane, one of her aunt’s best friends, who happened to live in Wilde Creek. Within a week, Nila had moved into the rental and accepted a job at the clinic, and she’d been there for the last nine months.

  Parking in front of the house, she got out and unhooked Jack from the car seat. Jack clutched a lock of her hair as she walked up the steps to the front door and unlocked it. Once inside, she pushed the door shut and flipped the security bar and two dead bolts. The familiar sound of the door locking made some of her anxiety leak away.

  After divesting her and Jack of their winter things, she carried him into the kitchen and put him in his high chair. “Are you hungry, little man?”

  He banged his fists on the tray and grinned. It took only a few minutes for her to put his dinner together, and then she turned to the fridge for her own meal. Pulling out a tub of beef stew she’d made over the weekend, she poured some into a bowl and put it in the microwave to heat up. As the bowl rotated, she watched Jack as he gripped his plastic spoon and shoveled applesauce into his mouth.

  The hours passed so quickly. Dinner, then bath, then bedtime. She laid him down in the crib in the bedroom. The house was supposed to be a two-bedroom, but the second bedroom was where the laundry hookups were, so if she wanted clean clothes, she had to take up half the room with the washer and dryer. She didn’t want Jack in that room, so she’d given him the bigger bedroom and put a twin bed in the laundry room. Ever since Damien had attacked the teacher in an attempt to take Jack back several weeks ago, she’d been sleeping in the front room on the couch. She felt like she was being a better protector if she was sleeping closer to the bedroom, which was just off the front room.

  When she first moved into the house, Damien had shown up and tried to get in. She’d called the police and he scattered quickly, and she’d called a locksmith the next morning and had him install the extra deadbolts. A few weeks had passed and she wondered if Damien had gotten the hint that things between them were done, but he had shown up the night of the full moon in his wolf form with some of his buddies and they stalked around the house the entire night, howling and snarling, randomly throwing themselves at the doors. She’d been terrified. It seemed to go that way with him. He’d leave her alone for a little while and then he’d start up again, sending her threatening emails and leaving nasty voice mails, always threatening to get her back someday, calling her his property, issuing thinly veiled threats toward Jack. She was in a vicious cycle with a dangerous male, and she didn’t know what to do.

  Changing into pajamas, she settled onto the couch and listened to Jack settling down to sleep in his crib. The cul-de-sac was quiet at night. Her neighbors were older and there were no young kids on the street. Behind the house lay woods that separated her development from another one. She’d seen Damien in the woods before, him and his buddies. Watching. Waiting.

  She forced herself to stop thinking of her ex and get to sleep, but she couldn’t settle her thoughts, until she started thinking of Malachi. She was actually jealous of Brynn. Her mate didn’t treat her like shit. He cared about her. Made sure she was well protected with personal guards when he wasn’t around.

  Closing her eyes, she shoved those thoughts away, too. Thinking about the sexy blue-eyed wolf wasn’t helping her rest, it was amping her up. She wanted to call Brynn and ask for Malachi’s phone number. Then she wanted to call him and…well, she didn’t know what exactly, but the fantasy that streaked through her mind as she wiggled on the couch to get comfortable was of Malachi and her in the storeroom at work. But this time she wouldn’t freak out about him being a wolf; she’d settle into his arms and inhale that gorgeous spicy scent and give him the kissing of a lifetime.

  Groaning, Nila threw her arm over her eyes and thought about bunnies, and rainbows, and paying the bills. She’d never get to sleep if she thought about Malachi. Like all wolves, he was a dead end, and she needed to remember that. He was nice now, but Damien had been that way in the beginning, too.

  Bunnies. She was going to think about bunnies.

  Chapter 3

  Malachi couldn’t stop his body from reacting to Nila as she sat in the second row of his SUV with Brynn on the way to lunch on Tuesday. He was glad that his coat was long enough to cover his waist when he stood up, or everyone in the restaurant was going to get an eyeful of the erection that was pressing painfully against the front of his jeans.

  Brynn said something that made Nila laugh, and Malachi stifled a growl. He wanted to make her laugh and be on the receiving end of one of her killer smiles. Right now, Nila was treating him more like furniture than a person. The day before when he’d talked to her in the breakroom, it had been the first conversation they’d had since the day he found her in the storage room. She’d warmed up to him, and then just as quickly, she turned to ice and rebuffed him. He could admit to himself that it hurt his pride. He wanted her to want to be with him, to like being around him.

  He pulled into the parking lot of Luna’s and turned off the engine. Jumping out, he opened Brynn’s door and held out his hand for her.

  “You’re such a gentleman, Mal,” Brynn said with a chuckle.

  “Are you kidding me? The parking lot is icy and Acksel would have my head if you slipped and got hurt.”

  Nila stared at him from where she sat, fiddling with the seatbelt. He held out his hand for her. “I won’t bite, Nila.”

  He bit back the mildly sarcastic comment floating around in his head, unless you ask me to, and waited, trying to make himself appear harmless. Well, he knew he looked anything but harmless. He was too tall and muscular for that. But he could look genial, maybe. Friendly, even.

  She really seemed to be wrestling with herself, and then Brynn said, “Nila, I’m freezing my butt off. Would you let him help you out of the SUV so we can eat? I’m feeling like hamburgers.”

  Nila seemed to startle slightly, and then she scooted toward him, giving him a wary look that reminded him of a doe about to bolt. Her gloved hand grasped his and he wished there wasn’t any fabric separating their skin. Lending her his strength, he made sure she didn’t fall as she slipped from the seat and her booted feet hit the pavement. For just a moment, she squeezed his hand tighter and looked up at him, brown eyes searching his…for what, he didn’t know. Just as quickly as they had connected, she released his hand and stepped away, a blast of icy wind separating them as easily as the distance she created herself.

  Shutting the door, he growled at himself. He was supposed to be watching over Brynn, not ogling his sexy mate. Which made him wonder what the hell he’d do when he did manage to convince Nila to give him the time of day. How could he be Brynn’s personal guard and also take care of Nila and Jack?

  Shit. He’d have to talk to Acksel. That was a conversation for later, though, since Nila seemed bound and determined to keep Malachi at arm’s length.<
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  He took Nila and Brynn’s coats and hung them up on the hooks inside the front door of the restaurant, and then followed them to Brynn’s private table. A small placard sat on top of the small round table that read, ‘Reserved for the Alpha.’ Malachi took up his place against the nearest wall and scanned the restaurant. Luna’s was run by Quentin and Paula Smythe, who were pack members. Malachi considered it a safe place, but when Brynn and Acksel first got together, she was pestered by some of the female pack members who thought she wasn’t a good choice for alpha female. Acksel had made changes to pack law to protect the female mates of pack members if they were human, but Brynn had needed to stand up for herself and prove that she could be a leader. Which she’d done quite well.

  His phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket and saw a text from his younger sister, Mia.

  “Dinner tonight? I’m making pot roast.”

  “Sure,” he typed back.

  “I also need you to help me move the desk.”

  He snorted. “Of course you do.” She never invited him over to dinner unless she had an ulterior motive, like needing him to move furniture.

  “Don’t get snippy, I’m feeding you.”

  “See you at six,” he answered and slipped the phone back into his pocket.

  He scanned the restaurant again, nodded at Zander, a protector and the son of the owners, who was bussing a table, and tried not to appear as if he were eavesdropping on Brynn and Nila’s conversation.

  “I don’t know,” Nila said softly as she pushed a French fry through ketchup. “If he shows up at the daycare again and makes trouble, they’re not going to let Jack come back and then I’ll be up the creek.”

  “Hopefully he won’t, though. The cops told him to stay away, right?”

  Nila shook her head. “When the cops showed up, one of his cronies took the blame and said he was the one who beat up the teacher, not Damien. The teacher was so frazzled that she couldn’t identify Damien from a lineup and they took his pal’s confession. When the police went to arrest him, he’d disappeared.”