by Edie Claire
Wolf’s head snapped back. For an instant his blue eyes looked at her with a kind of wounded bewilderment, almost as if she had struck him. He stood. “It’s just my dad and my brother and me,” he said offhandedly, wadding his trash into a ball. He stepped to the nearest waste can and tossed it inside.
Ri cursed silently. She had known from the set of his shoulders that he was tensing up… why hadn’t she heeded the warning? He didn’t want to talk about his mother. Never mind that he had brought the subject up himself, however absently. There was something wrong there. Something very wrong.
“We’ve made fantastic time this morning, Ri,” he announced, forcing a change of mood. “You’re very efficient. I hate to say it, but if Chris had worked as hard as you, I doubt I’d still be here.”
Ri appreciated the compliment, but her answering smile was fake. For her own selfish purposes, she was glad that Chris was a slacker. She didn’t want their lunch to end, since it had marked their first real conversation about anything besides dogs, gas flux measurements, and drunken interns. But there was always dinner.
Ri got up and threw away her own trash, then shouldered her share of the equipment. Their break had taken all of fifteen minutes, which was actually good. They had a goal to hit. “Where to next?” she asked.
She turned and found Wolf watching her. She would not have guessed that the mere motions of jumping off a rock, throwing away trash, rotating her shoulders, and donning gear would come across as particularly beguiling.
The look in his eyes said otherwise. Ri’s heart thumped in her chest. She met his gaze and smiled back.
“We’ve got two more sets of readings near here,” he answered, his gaze still holding hers. “Then we’ll head to another location further down.”
There was nothing in his words or tone that was anything less than businesslike. But Ri knew lust when she saw it. She also knew that he was making no attempt to hide it from her. That, at least, was progress. Maybe he had a thing about not dating coworkers, and maybe he didn’t.
Maybe he was still trying to decide.
“I was going to drive back down and check on Bella in between sites,” he continued, breaking eye contact at last as he stooped to pick up his own gear. “But I got a text from Kenneth earlier telling me not to bother. He says he’s ‘got it under control.’”
“Sounds like if Bella plays her cards right, she might parlay her stay at the Doggie Hilton into something a little more permanent,” Ri suggested.
“That’s what I’ve been hoping, too. From what I understand, his last dog died a couple years ago. But before that, he always had at least one.”
Ri stepped up beside Wolf, and they began walking again. “Maddie told me that Kenneth lost his wife last year,” she said. “If he’s always had dogs, and now his wife’s gone too, he must be feeling pretty alone. Bella could be just what he needs. And vice versa.”
Wolf said nothing else. But as they walked, Ri could feel his eyes studying her again. And as they reached the next designated site and began to set up their equipment, it seemed that he hovered a bit more than before. Ri remained intent on her work. They didn’t speak other than the data readings, and Wolf’s manner remained professional. And yet, he did stand closer to her. So close that, once or twice, their arms brushed.
She wondered if he’d made up his mind.
Chapter 18
Anchorage, Alaska 1997
Wolf knew something was wrong as soon as he stepped off the school bus and saw his dad’s truck parked outside the duplex. His sneakers crunched in the dirty, day-old snow as he made his way to the front door. They’d been fighting lately, his dad and Shanna. He’d wake up at night and hear them through the wall. Whether the sounds were muted and tense or loud and angry didn’t matter. Any kind of fighting made his gut ache.
Bear loved Shanna. Bear called Shanna “Mama” now. He’d called Tori his mom, too, but Tori wasn’t around anymore. She’d left after Wolf started hearing those same kind of sounds coming through the wall at night.
Wolf opened the door and walked inside. His dad was slumped on the couch, his hand draped over his forehead.
Nels Markov pulled his hand away and sat up a little bit, then tried to smile at his son. The effort was pretty weak. “Well, hello there. How was your day?”
Wolf stared his dad down. He might only be eight years old, but he wasn’t stupid. His dad was never home from work this early. “Where’s Shanna?”
Nels sighed. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. “Listen,” he said gently, “Wolfie—”
“Don’t say it!” Wolf shouted, dropping his backpack on the floor with a thud. “She can’t have left!” Not her, too.
His father said nothing. Just sat there looking miserable.
Wolf’s vision got blurry. “No, Dad! Bear’s gonna hurt so bad. You know he’ll cry and cry and—”
Nels rose. “Wolfie, please listen. This isn’t about you or Bear. Shanna cared about you very much. It’s just that—”
“She did not!” Wolf argued, his voice beginning to crack as emotions long held in check exploded to the surface. “She didn’t give a crap about us! None of them did! They all lied! They’re all just a bunch of lying—”
“Wolf!” Nels took his son firmly by the arms. “That’s not fair. I told you that Tori and Shanna were not replacing your mother. They were never moving in to stay. They were just here for a little while. I thought you understood—”
“I understand they lie!” Wolf screamed. “Bear called her Mama, Dad! You heard him!”
Nels let go of his son’s arms. His lower jaw began to tremble. “I never should have allowed that. You’re right.”
“He’ll be up every night again!” Wolf raged on. “Just like when Tori left!”
Nels looked away. He swiped at his eyes.
“Where is he?” Wolf demanded.
“In his room,” Nels said quietly. Wolf took a step in that direction, but his father stopped him with a hand on the shoulder. “He’s asleep, finally. At least he was. He… he didn’t take it well. Please don’t wake him.”
Wolf couldn’t imagine what else his father expected would happen. He glared at his dad resentfully and shook off the hand, but stopped walking. “Why do you always fight with them?” he asked accusingly.
Nels took a deep breath. “Son,” he said quietly. “It’s all very complicated. I can’t explain it to you. But I’m sorry. I’m sorry I always seem to pick such… Well, what I mean is I’m sorry you guys have to suffer for my bad choices. I’m just sorry, period. It’s my fault, son. Not yours. And not theirs, either. You’re my boys, and you’re my responsibility.”
Wolf looked up into his father’s watering eyes and saw a man whose spirit had been broken. His usually strong, gentle, happy father had been crushed, bruised, and humiliated. Again. Wolf had seen his father like this too many times. And every time had been because of a woman.
Come on, Bear, honey! Shanna had said just this morning as she got his brother ready for kindergarten. She had been a little gushy, now that Wolf thought about it. I’ll miss you, squirt, she had told Wolf as she sent him out the door to the bus. She’d even given him a kiss on the top of the head. You be good. Then she’d turned back to Bear and hugged him tight. Come on, love, let’s not be late!
And she had known then, Wolf thought to himself, his insides aching again. She’d known then that they would never see her again. Just like his mother, Shanna didn’t even have the guts to say goodbye. At least Tori had said something. She’d said, “I can’t live with your Daddy anymore. But I’ll never forget you two. Be good, now. Have nice lives. Bye-bye!”
Have a nice life. Bye-bye.
Wolf stared back at his dad and words wouldn’t come. He wanted to scream. He wanted to kick something. He wanted to yell and to curse and to pound. And more than anything, he wanted to haul off and just plain cry.
But third graders didn’t do that.
“I won’t wake him up,” he said,
his choking, gravelly voice barely understandable. He moved quickly towards the bedroom he shared with his brother, seeking nothing beyond the privacy of a dark place with covers he could hide his head under for a while.
Maybe, if he were lucky, he could stay there.
Chapter 19
Maui, Hawaii, 2016
Wolf looked at the position of the sun in the sky. He couldn’t believe they were done already. Ri was a data-collecting machine. She took to the equipment and the instruments like any technogeek and the hiking posed no problem for her, even when the terrain got steep. But what was most amazing was her willingness to do it all in virtual silence, speaking only when she needed to read out data or ask a question. Otherwise, they just listened to the birds.
Now it was barely midafternoon, they had finished everything he’d expected would take them until seven, and he was the one who was speechless.
“So,” Ri said brightly as she adjusted her headband over her glorious curls. The grassy field in which they were standing was at a lower elevation on the mountain, and as the sun beamed down on them, beads of moisture welled up on her forehead. “I suppose we could start into tomorrow’s work if you insist. But unless you think the other jobs will go slower for some reason, I’d prefer to stop now and plan for five shorter days, rather than finish a day early.”
Wolf watched as a trickle of sweat ran down the side of her neck and disappeared under the collar of her shirt. The sight of her was driving him crazy. If he’d had any doubts before, working beside her all day had erased them. For a long list of reasons, not least of which was that she was both angelically pretty and unbelievably sexy at the same time, Ri Sullivan enticed him as much as any woman he had ever known. And whether he had the pleasure of her company for one day or twenty, there was no longer any question of his not making the most of it.
“If you’re sure you can keep up this pace,” he heard himself say in a voice far more calm and distant than what he was feeling, “then it doesn’t matter to me. You’d like the truck this afternoon, then?”
Ri threw him a mischievous smile and nodded.
“Where will you go?” he asked, suddenly regretting his offer. Cooling his heels alone at the field station wasn’t holding its usual appeal. He’d been trying to transmit his interest in her all afternoon, but he was attempting to be reasonably subtle about it. Their work arrangement was informal and he wasn’t her boss, but still, it seemed boorish for him to make the first move, particularly on the job. If she was interested in more, it was on her to make that clear.
He hadn’t thought it would take her so long. Perhaps he was misreading?
“I want to see that monk seal,” Ri answered with determination. “I am going to see that monk seal if it’s the last thing I do. I am going to see that monk seal if I have to camp out on the beach the whole rest of the summer waiting for it to come back.”
Wolf chuckled at her. Given her chosen profession, such an obsession was understandable. He knew that Hawaiian monk seals were rare and highly endangered, and that most of them lived off the remote northwestern islands. But the waters of Maui happened to host one that routinely flopped onto Ho'okipa beach for a snooze. The seal’s visits had become so routine that the county had put up a sign warning people not to harass him — never mind the fact that the unusual seal didn’t seem at all bothered by the crowds of people and dogs that regularly stopped to gawk at him.
Wolf nodded at her, his mind teeming with images of Ri camping on a beach… with him. If only she were serious. He would crawl into a tent with her anywhere, anytime. “Good luck,” he managed.
The angel face smiled at him guilelessly. “Want to come?”
His pulse picked up. This was all going splendidly. “Do I get to drive?” he asked.
“Oh, hell, no,” she answered, still smiling.
Wolf laughed. “Will you buy me drinks at my favorite little place in Pa'ia?”
Ri shook her head. “Negatory. All you get is a chauffeured trip down the mountain.” Her brown eyes held his with a twinkle. “And the pleasure of my sparkling personality.”
Wolf suspected his eyes were twinkling back.
“Sold.”
***
Ri could barely contain her enthusiasm. So many years she’d being dying to check “monk seal” off her marine mammal checklist, and there it was. A dozen feet away from her. Out like a light.
“She’s so cute!” she gushed. The giant, tawny colored seal lay on its back on the sand, flippers up and flopping to the side, looking just as relaxed as the Sullivan’s family dog, Dorie, used to look when napping on the couch with her paws in the air. The earless seal had a muzzle full of whiskers, a lighter-colored belly, and a streamlined but funny-shaped body that was plumpish in the middle and tapered at either end.
“Is it a she?” Wolf asked. “I always thought of it as a him.”
He was leaning against the railing next to her, close enough for their arms to touch. They had changed from their warmer clothes into shorts and tee shirts, which for him had caused quite a transformation. Switching out his work boots for sandals had cost him points in the rugged department, but Ri decided that exposing more of his sexy calves made up for it. And the shorter sleeves enabled skin-to-skin contact on their arms, which was distracting even with a monk seal in the picture.
“Truthfully, I can’t tell,” Ri confessed. “But I choose to believe it’s a girl. Oh, look! Her flipper moved!”
Wolf chuckled, but Ri made no effort to hide her enthusiasm. “This is my second new species in two days,” she gushed. “I am so stoked.”
They stood and watched the slumbering seal for a long while. Sometimes they chatted quietly, sometimes they didn’t talk at all. Ri kept expecting Wolf to get bored and go for a walk on his own, but he seemed content. She asked him about the wildlife in Alaska, and he asked her about hiking and camping in Maine. Their arms were touching almost the entire time.
Ri didn’t know if she would ever get tired of watching the furry pinniped, particularly when there were a dozen sea turtles roaming in and out of the water just a few paces down the beach. But the seal made the decision for her. With no warning, the giant animal suddenly lifted its head and swung its forebody around until it was upright. Then it trundled awkwardly the short distance across the sand, plunged into the breaking waves, and within seconds had disappeared from view.
“Come back,” Ri called sadly.
Wolf chuckled at her again. “I’m sure you’ll have other chances. Right now, what do you say we get something to eat? I’m starving.”
Ri looked up. He had stepped away from her. “What’s cheap?” she asked.
His brow creased. “Nothing. This is Maui. What exactly does your budget allow?”
She shrugged. “Probably enough to stop at a grocery store and buy a deli sandwich.”
Wolf frowned. Ri watched the muscles in his jaw tighten, and she figured she had a pretty good idea what he was thinking. He wanted real food, and although he didn’t mind helping her pay for hers, he was uncertain how the gesture would be taken. If he paid for her meal, would that make it a date? If they made it a date, would that screw up their work arrangement?
“However,” she continued, thinking fast. “I am allowing myself one meal out a week. I can do that tonight, I’ll just have to eat in all weekend. Tell me what you have in mind and I’ll see if I’m tempted. Because you look like you have something in mind.”
He grinned at her. “I do. I’m just afraid to say it.”
“Say what?” she wondered.
“Well, you see, there’s this little place in Pa'ia that I just love.”
Ri cracked up laughing. A few minutes later she found herself back in the exact same restaurant she’d spent the miserable evening before.
This evening, however, she was not at all miserable. They settled down at a wooden pub table in the quirky little cafe, and she ordered the duck salad she had wanted last night while Wolf requested the hot fish and chips
he’d been craving. The food did not disappoint, and being seated across a table from Wolf gave Ri the perfect opportunity to run through a few more of her non-threatening conversation starters. She asked more about his research and where he’d gone to college, and he asked her the same. The conversation drifted to where she could comfortably ask about his brother and what Bear was doing now, and he asked her about Mei Lin. Somehow they got off on the topic of dangerous animals and argued about whether a walrus was inherently more likely to attack a human — when threatened — than was a moose. They did not settle the issue, but as Wolf tried to illustrate his point by telling the story of a friend who had been forced to flee screaming in his underwear from an irate female moose after he stumbled onto a calf in the bushes while taking a leak in the middle of the night, Ri laughed so hard she nearly rolled off her chair and under the table.
Neither one of them ordered any alcohol, but by the time they left the restaurant, Ri was flying high. She had been attracted to Wolf from that first glimpse of him in the fog. But what she was feeling now went far beyond the physical. Maybe it was his quiet intelligence, coupled with his dry sense of humor. Maybe it was some of the other desirable traits she suspected he had, but couldn’t quite prove yet, because he kept so much of himself hidden. Maybe she just liked the mystery of him. Whatever it was, she couldn’t remember enjoying any man’s company more.
They left the cafe and strolled the streets of Pa'ia. It was a touristy little town on Maui’s north central side, the last commercial outpost before one began the long, winding drive to Hana along the cliffs on the northeast edge of the island. They walked aimlessly as Ri window-shopped and people-watched in turn. The little town gave new meaning to the term “local color,” with its bizarre mishmash of everything from dumpy bars to upscale art boutiques and everybody from shoeless surfers to women wearing diamonds and dogs riding motorcycles.
Ri laughed some more as Wolf gave an amusing account of the culture shock he’d experienced when he first arrived from Alaska. Though he would never be a chatterbox, she felt gratified that he seemed relaxed enough with her now to share a little more about himself.
