by R. E. Butler
“Gosh, I don’t know what that would feel like.” She rubbed her arms.
His heart panged. “I want that for you.”
She blinked, tilting her head up until she was looking into his eyes. She stepped closer to him, the sweet wildflower scent of her skin making his mouth water. “Safety?”
He nodded, not daring to open his mouth because he really wasn’t sure he wouldn’t say something completely idiotic like please be mine forever.
Something splashed loudly and he looked over her head to see that the milk had boiled over. She gasped and lurched toward the stove, lifting the pan as he grabbed a towel and turned off the gas.
She cursed under her breath and carried the pot to the counter, setting it on a hot pad. He sopped up the spilled milk and wrung the towel out in the sink. Within a few minutes, they were sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace drinking hot chocolate, both of their mugs topped with marshmallows.
While they stared into the fire, they talked about everything and nothing, the sort of light conversation that people tend to make when they don’t want to talk about the elephant in the room. For Malachi, that particular elephant was wearing a giant flashing sign that read, ‘You’re my mate.’ From what little he’d learned about Nila’s ex, he’d spent the better part of their relationship treating her like property and terrifying her. She didn’t need Malachi acting all ‘me Tarzan, you Jane.’ He really wished that relationships came with a manual so he could flip to the table of contents and figure out where to start.
Nila put her empty mug on the coffee table and turned to face him. She blinked slowly, fatigue showing on her face, and then her eyes closed and didn’t open again, as her breathing evened out.
Shit. He should go like right fucking now. As if on cue, his phone buzzed and a text from Mia read, “I hope you got home safely. They just declared a state of emergency because of the road conditions.”
“I’m safe,” he texted back.
“Home?”
“None of your beeswax.”
“Oh that’s mature.” She signed off that she loved him, and he replied back the same, sliding his phone onto the table and yawning.
“I’m stuck here, sweetheart,” he whispered.
Nila’s answer was a sigh, as she snuggled into the cushions.
Being stuck wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
Chapter 5
Nila yawned and stretched, rubbing her eyes. She looked to the right and was surprised by what she saw. Malachi was leaning against the arm of the couch, his head propped up on one hand, and his other arm holding Jack as he slept, snuggled against him.
She swallowed hard at the sight. She’d never seen anything sweeter. A blanket was covering her, and she knew that Malachi had done that for her, and also must have caught Jack before he woke her up. She was oddly grateful, but wary at the same time. Glad that he’d helped Jack, but concerned that he’d stayed the night. Why hadn’t he gone home?
Easing from the couch, she walked to the front window and pulled back the curtain enough to see in the morning sunlight that another foot of snow had blanketed the world outside her door. She’d lured him into her home with hot chocolate and marshmallows when she’d known that the snow wasn’t letting up. A part of her knew that she’d been desperate for some kind of extra protection, because the lack of electricity had meant the security system was useless. But the bigger part of her knew that she just hadn’t wanted Malachi to leave.
“It’s pretty bad out there.” Malachi’s voice was soft and deep, and it wiggled down her spine, making her whole body tighten.
She turned slowly and looked at him, so comfortable on her couch with her son in his arms, Jack’s blue baby blanket over top of them both. Malachi looked even more handsome with his short hair mussed from sleep and a shadow of stubble on his chin.
“I’m sorry you got stuck here.”
He smiled at her in a way that said he knew exactly why she’d let him stay, even though she hadn’t consciously made the choice. “I’m not.”
“I didn’t hear him.” She looked at her son, his tawny head tucked into the crook of Malachi’s neck as if he belonged there.
“I got him pretty quick. He just went right back to sleep, but I think that he leaked on me.” He grinned wryly.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay, I promise.”
She moved toward them and stopped next to the couch. He looked up at her, and there was nothing sinister in his eyes, no look that told her a fist might come flying at her at any moment, or that a scathing insult might be hurled in her direction. “It is okay, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
She took her still-sleeping son from him and saw that Jack had indeed ‘leaked’ since Malachi’s dark shirt had an even darker stain on it. Jack made a snuffling sound as he began to wake, and she said, “I’ll be right back.”
When she came out of the bedroom after changing Jack, she found Malachi, naked from the waist up, talking on his cell. “Okay, thanks, I appreciate it.” He tucked the phone into his back pocket and said, “A wolf from my pack works for the power company, and he said that the power will be back on this street in about an hour. Do you have a shovel?”
She realized she was staring at his chest. His amazing chest. When he cleared his throat and said her name, lifting her eyes to meet his was possibly the hardest thing she’d had to do. Him and his damn lickable chest. “I’m sorry?”
“A shovel?”
She blinked. “I can wash the shirt; you don’t have to bury it.”
He laughed, and the sound was so sweet she wanted to make him laugh again. “No, sweetheart, I want to shovel your driveway. And you don’t have to wash the shirt, I can do my own laundry.”
“You don’t have to shovel the drive.” He called her sweetheart. She cursed herself for thinking that was awesome.
“Well, I’ll give you two reasons why I do. One, I’m snowed in because the plows that came through very early this morning blocked me in.”
When he didn’t continue, she swallowed the lump in her throat and said, “What’s the second reason?”
He grabbed his coat from where he’d hung it on the hooks by the front door and said, “Because I want to do it for you. You made me hot chocolate with marshmallows and you let me crash on your couch when it had to be hard for you to do that since we don’t know each other well.”
What he didn’t say was that he was a wolf, and he knew she didn’t like his kind. “The shovel is on the porch.”
He went to the door, and as he pulled it open, she said, “Malachi?”
“Yeah?” He looked at her, his beautiful blue eyes regarding her with nothing but kindness.
“Thank you.”
“It’s no hardship to shovel snow.”
“No, for everything.” She hugged Jack a little closer. “Thank you for everything.”
He smiled at her, a dimple forming in one cheek that made her think of wicked things, and walked out, shutting the door firmly behind him. By the time the drive was shoveled, the power was back on and Jack was happily playing on the floor with his toys while she went through the fridge and salvaged what she could.
“Can I make you some breakfast?” she asked when he stopped back in the house and picked up his shirt.
“No thank you, sweetheart. I have to get going. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”
He ducked down on one knee and brushed his knuckle over Jack’s cheek. “Take care, kiddo. Thanks for sharing your blanket with me.”
Jack banged two wooden blocks together, giggled, and then looked at Malachi and said, “Carrot.”
Nila smiled at the sweet scene and said goodbye to Malachi, closing and locking the door when he was gone. She turned and looked around the family room. It seemed empty now without Malachi’s big muscly body taking up room on her couch. “I hate to admit it, J-man, but I miss him already.”
“Carrot.”
“You bet, sweetie. Carrot.”
* * * * *
With the world unstuck from the snowfall of the previous day, Nila drove to the daycare and dropped off Jack, and then headed to the doctor’s office. She liked her job and the people she worked with, but she didn’t usually look forward to working as much as she did that morning. She pulled her car into the parking lot and turned it off, staring at the big green SUV that belonged to Malachi.
A little streak of jealousy sliced through her, but she shoved it aside. Brynn’s life wasn’t totally idyllic. Her mate had treated her pretty badly and left her floundering while she was pregnant and he hid behind pack laws. She might be loving life now, but she’d been really miserable not too long ago. Nila could relate to that. She’d been pretty naive about wolves when she met Damien. He seemed like a nice guy. He’d treated her like a queen, said all the right things to ease her mind about her concerns that she was a human and he wasn’t. He hadn’t let her near his pack for the first few months of their relationship, and then she found out she was pregnant. She had been taking the pill faithfully the whole time and was surprised by the pregnancy, but she and Damien were in love and he was excited by the thought of having a child with her. He married her immediately and then he took her to meet his pack.
What a rude awakening that was. She was treated like a second-class citizen because she was human. The females were hostile, some of them even threatening to harm her and the baby because Damien was the son of the alpha and therefore a prized male. It was that night, the first time she met his father, that she saw the real Damien. His nice guy persona melted away so fast that she wondered if she’d ever really seen it in the first place.
Shaking her head to clear the dark thoughts, she exhaled loudly and turned off the car. It rattled a bit as the engine stopped, and she grimaced. She didn’t have the money to deal with car repairs right now. She walked through the freshly salted parking lot, the crunch of the salt under her boots loud in the quiet morning, and opened the door of the clinic. She smiled at Brynn and said hello, but walked through the door without saying anything to Malachi as she made her way to the employee breakroom to stow her things.
She wanted to believe that Malachi was different from Damien, but she’d already been fooled once by a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Jack counted on her to make good choices. He might have a lousy biological father, but Nila could give him a worthy step-dad, and that man would not be a wolf. She just couldn’t risk Jack’s safety and happiness because Malachi happened to make her heart thud irregularly in her chest.
She put the yogurt that Malachi had bought for her on the shelf in the fridge and stared at the white container with the strawberry and banana images on the front. He’d even gotten her favorite brand, which showed just how much he’d been paying attention to her.
She hated that her stomach flipped at the idea of him watching her.
Gritting her teeth, she closed the fridge door hard enough to make it rock back and forth. Then she smoothed her hands down the front of her scrub top, which was covered with pink and purple bunnies, and strode out to the front to get the first patient. If she ignored Malachi long enough, he’d get the hint and move on.
She hoped.
* * * * *
Malachi didn’t know what had happened between yesterday and today, but Nila was acting like an ice queen toward him. When she came to get the first patient, she ignored him so expertly that he felt like he’d suddenly become invisible.
“Whoa,” Brynn said softly as Nila took the young girl and her father to an exam room. “What the heck did you do to her?”
He frowned. “Shoveled her driveway.”
“Oh, you bastard,” Brynn said, grinning.
He snorted, looking down the hallway, his wolf whining. He didn’t like her ignoring him like that. Before he’d spent time at her house, she’d kept her distance, but now he was sure she was just trying hard not to look at him. Something had happened to change her mind about him.
Brynn spun in the chair and folded her arms across her chest, giving him a long look. “Acksel said you don’t want to sit here all day anymore.”
“I talked to him about it yesterday. I’ll still drive you to and from work, and pick you up for lunch anytime you go out to eat, but I won’t be stuck here when I need to deal with my company.”
“I’ll miss you hanging out here.”
“You’ll survive. If I don’t start paying more attention to my company, though, it might not make it.” He rubbed his temple, worry about Nila’s change in attitude clouding his mind.
“What’s up with Lucian? Mia said he hasn’t been around in months.”
Malachi made a face. “Mia shouldn’t worry about him.”
Brynn snorted loudly. “Oh, okay, then why don’t you stop worrying about Nila?” He gave her a confused look and she shrugged. “You can’t stop thinking about Nila, so why would Mia stop thinking about Lucian?”
He growled. “They are not mates. She has a childhood crush on him and needs to get over it.”
“Man, you’re a dick sometimes. You don’t know what she and Lucian are, because you’ve done your damnedest to keep them apart, what with your never touch my sister rules. You can’t stop nature, Mal, no matter how hard you try. You should just let them get together and see what happens. If they’re mates they’re going to be together no matter what, and then you’ll be the jackass who kept them apart for all those years.”
“His life is too dangerous; she could become a target.”
Her brow arched. “Isn’t he like a scary-ass body guard or something like that? Luke is human and he kept Eveny safe from those wolves who tried to hurt her.”
“Don’t remind me.” Acksel’s only sister Eveny had been intent on going through the heat cycle alone in a family cabin in the mountains, and Acksel had attempted to intervene, telling one of the wolves where she was so he could ‘help her out,’ in her time of need. Instead, the wolf had gathered some friends and gone up there with the intention of brutally raping her, and it was only Luke’s intervention that kept Eveny safe. Luke’s protection of Eveny had begun the slow transformation of the pack from wolf-only to accepting of humans. Before Eveny and Luke became mates, a wolf in the Wilde Creek Pack would be banished forever for choosing a human mate. Now, with Brynn, there were two human mates in the pack, and Brynn’s status as alpha female went a long way toward helping the pack accept humans. It didn’t matter a bit to Malachi that Nila was human. She was his, and that meant he accepted what she was. A bit of bitterness swam through him. Didn’t Nila know that Malachi was her mate? Even if she was human, couldn’t she feel some kind of connection to him? Why couldn’t she look past what he was to the male he was inside, and see he was nothing like her ex?
“Wow, I’m sorry if I insulted you or something,” Brynn said, rubbing her arms and shuddering.
“What?”
“You’re growling, and your eyes are amber.”
He pressed his palm to his forehead and forced his wolf down. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to talk about Mia and Lucian anymore, okay? I wish a lot of things were different right now, the least of which is Lucian’s dangerous life and my sister’s interest in him.”
Brynn smiled softly. “It’s okay, Mal.”
The front door opened and a patient walked in. Malachi turned back to the laptop and went over security footage once more, just to give himself something to do so he didn’t obsess over Nila’s change in attitude.
Unfortunately he didn’t have much luck with that.
* * * * *
Nila pulled a bottle of apple juice from the refrigerator and poured some into a sippy cup, closing the lid and setting it on the highchair tray. There was a knock at the front door and her heart stopped in her chest for a long moment, before she reasoned that Damien would never knock. He’d bang his fists on the door and demand she open it.
Glancing at Jack and seeing him happily playing the drums on the tray with his plastic spoons, she walked quickly to the front door and looked
through the peephole.
Malachi.
She’d spent the day pretending to be aloof about him. About lunchtime, she’d become aware that his mood had soured and he looked really unhappy. She knew her own behavior was to blame, and part of her had felt bad.
“What do you want, Malachi?” she called through the door.
“I said I’d upgrade your security system, and I’m here to do that.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “Why?”
“I keep my promises.”
“You didn’t make a promise, though.”
She could hear his aggravated, low growl, but for once it didn’t frighten her. “If you don’t want me here, Nila, I can have one of my people come and do the upgrade instead. I just want you to feel safe, and if you don’t feel that way with me here then I’m defeating my own purpose.”
She opened her mouth to tell him to send someone else, but she couldn’t make herself say the words. Unlocking the deadbolts and security bar and twisting the lock on the knob, she pulled the door open and stepped aside to let him in.
He had several bags that he carried in with him. As she shut and locked the door, Jack called out, “Carrot?”
Nila wasn’t sure, but she thought that Jack was calling Malachi ‘carrot.’ He hadn’t said his favorite word since he’d said it to Malachi the day before. Was it a coincidence?
“I was getting ready to feed him dinner.”
“Go on and do whatever you need to, I’ve got this.”
He seemed tense; his lips were drawn into a tight line, and he looked like he was clenching his teeth together. She stared at him for a moment longer, feeling the need to apologize. She’d made him mad. Unlike her ex, he wasn’t lashing out at her physically or verbally. In fact, he seemed to be doing everything in his power to remain non-threatening and calm.
