by T. S. Joyce
“Go on, get warm inside. I’ll finish up here.”
She stood there for a moment, a few feet away from where he worked, unable to look up from the ground with the silly thought that had just gone through her head. She’d missed him. Really missed him. Especially when she’d thought she wouldn’t ever see him again.
Closing her eyes so she wouldn’t see the rejection, she took a giant step forward and wrapped her arms around his waist. He went rigid, so she whispered, “Hi.”
Dalton let off a long sigh and relaxed under her hug. Slowly, he slid his arms around her shoulders, then shocked her silly when he rested his cheek against the top of her head. “Hi,” he murmured in that deep, sexy timbre of his.
God, he smelled good. That same feeling of safety washed over her, making her feel two-shot tequila drunk.
“You’re shaking,” he said above the sound of his idling truck. “Go on, get in. I really don’t want you cold. It makes me…”
“Makes you what?”
Dalton shook his head and eased back, only inches from her face. His smile had disappeared, and his eyes were that blazing caramel color again. She should be scared, but she couldn’t muster any fear.
“It makes me want to take care of you.”
She let off a long, shaky breath. Oooh, she liked him. “I’m not shaking from the cold. I’m shaking because you make me the good kind of nervous.” Her stomach was currently doing flip-flops just being this close to him.
He searched her eyes, then dipped his too-bright gaze to her lips.
Please kiss me.
Smoothly, he eased her backward, step-by-step until her back pressed against the side of his truck. He cupped her neck and lowered his lips toward hers. But just an inch away, he hesitated. “Kate,” he whispered, a slight frown marring his handsome face. “I should leave you alone.”
That’s not what she wanted, though. She didn’t want him to leave at all. Pushing up slightly, she pressed her lips against his and reveled in the way he softened for her. Soft kiss, rough scratch of his short stubble. Such a sexy contrast. Dalton angled his head and moved against her, sipping her mouth until he’d built a fire in her middle. She gripped onto his sweater and pulled his waist closer to feel more of his body heat. Dalton drew her bottom lip between his teeth and bit it gently between kisses, and now she was four-shot tequila drunk. And when he pressed his hips forward, she could feel it. He was aroused, and it was because of her. She’d done that. She was turning on a man like Dalton Dawson, and a layer of insecurity slipped away like the exhaust from the back of his truck.
Dalton’s tongue brushed her lip, and she opened automatically for him, eyes tightly closed to fully melt into this moment. She’d never been kissed like this. She’d never felt like this.
He sunk his tongue into her mouth, and a helpless, needy moan wrenched up her throat. Dalton answered with a soft, sexy growl. He ended the kiss with a quiet smack, then rested his forehead on hers as his chest heaved.
“Sorry,” he murmured, hands slipping from her neck to her waist.
She laughed and blinked hard once, trying to clear her tipsy thoughts. “You should definitely not apologize for kissing me like that, mister.”
Dalton chuckled, but he was hiding his eyes now, veiling the color by looking at the ground beside them.
With a frown, Kate cupped his cheeks and tried to bring him back, but he wasn’t having it. He kissed the palm of her glove instead and eased away, then busied himself with shutting the tail gate.
“Kate, please. Warm.” His voice sounded strange now. Too deep, too gravelly.
She wished she could tell him she understood why he was pulling away. She wished she could tell him she knew about the animal, and that it was okay, but if he didn’t want to share that part with her, she had to accept that. Miller had hidden it for the six months they’d dated. Maybe it was werewolf law, or maybe Dalton didn’t trust her. Either way, he didn’t want to let her in. It stung, but this wasn’t about her. Hiding was his choice.
Pain burned through her chest, as if he’d dragged a hot poker underneath her sternum. To hide the hurt from his rejection after the most incredible kiss of her life, she pulled open the door to his truck and climbed inside while he finished strapping the ATV in the back.
When he climbed behind the wheel, his eyes were as dark as night again. She was already thawing out, but he turned up the heat anyway as she stared out the window.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“I’m sorry I kissed you.”
“Shhh!” She clenched her hands in her lap to stop the urge to punch him in the arm.
Dalton gripped the wheel in a choke hold. “Did you just shhh me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She crossed her arms over her chest as the tips of her ears turned hot. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Woman, I don’t get hints, and I can’t read your mind. Tell me what I did wrong and be done with it. I want tacos.”
She wasn’t confrontational, and she liked to think she was too smart to start an argument in the cab of a pickup with a freaking werewolf, but he’d seriously just slammed on the brakes and then apologized for kissing her like he regretted it.
“Kate!”
“If you regret kissing me so much, I don’t really want to get tacos with you anymore. I’m tired and have to work again tomorrow.”
“I thought you needed me to apologize! Women like that shit!”
Kate reeled back. “What women are you talking about? No woman wants to get the kiss of her life and then have it immediately taken back, Dalton.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face and relaxed back on the headrest. “I told you I would be shitty at this. I don’t know jack about girls or making them happy. It would be best for both of us if—”
“Don’t you freaking finish that sentence, Dalton Dawson. Save your break-up-before-we-begin speech for someone who wants it.” She sighed an irritated sound. “Buy me tacos.”
He rolled his face toward her, his dark brows drawn down suspiciously.
“I’m serious,” she said, daring to show him her blushing cheeks. “I want three. And extra hot sauce.”
Dalton’s lips lifted in a stunning smile, and he snorted. He threw the truck in drive and eased out of the parking lot. “Did we just have an argument?”
“Yes, and I hated it.”
“I don’t regret the kiss, you know. It was kind of amazing. I just…”
“Freaked out?”
“Yeah.”
“I had a man who was only half in with me before. I’m not looking for that again.”
“Miller?”
“Him and my first ex. I want to be a girl a man chooses, you know? I don’t want to just be a safe decision because a man is afraid of being alone.”
With one hand, Dalton turned the wheel onto the main drag in Galena. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Why Miller?”
Kate scrunched up her nose. “How well did you know him?”
“Well enough to know he was a grade-A mega-chode.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t figure that out until month three of our relationship. He was nice to me at first, and he was a bit of a bad-boy. I was spiraling after a rough break-up, and he took the edge off my loneliness for a while. It was fun to make a risky decision for once in my life.”
“And what happened?”
Kate ghosted a glance at his profile, then fiddled with a loose string on her gloves. How stupid was it to admit she’d been so naïve with Miller? After all, she wanted Dalton to actually like her and stay interested.
“You don’t have to talk about it. I totally get it. You don’t know me, and you don’t owe me any explanations.” There it was, the out. Dalton was offering her a way to stay hidden, just like him.
She balked. “He posted the video, and when I confronted him about it, he showed no remorse. I was hor
rified. My mom and dad called because they’d found out about it. They were so deeply disappointed, and my sister left all these awful messages about me ruining our family’s reputation. Anyway, Miller got real mean after that.”
“Why didn’t you break it off with him?”
“I did. He didn’t take no for an answer. He kept coming over. Showing up late at night. Scaring me. He kicked in my door during one of my shifts and was waiting for me when I got home.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Of course. They’d seen the video, though, and didn’t do anything about our little lover’s spat. One of the officers said it wasn’t right that I was raising red flags on a man when I was obviously a willing party in that tape.”
“Shit.” Dalton sounded disgusted. He pulled into an iced-over parking spot near the Taco Trailer. “Did he hurt you?”
“Once. He choked me, and I thought I was going to die. He looked insane, but he doubled over on himself and dropped me, then ran out the back door.” Into the snow where she’d watched him change into a gray wolf just on the edge of the back porch light. His contorted body and white eyes still visited her nightmares. “Dalton?”
“Hmm?” he asked, more growl than question.
“How did he die?”
Dalton inhaled deeply. “He hurt a woman, cut her face with an ax and went after her man.” He slid an unsympathetic look to Kate. “The woman hurt him back.”
“Good for her,” she murmured. The blinking neon lights cast Dalton’s face in greens and blues. She liked Dalton’s wolf eyes much more than Miller’s. They weren’t crazy, just enthralling. “Since we’re full speed ahead on this mortification train, do you want to see what I got in the mail the other day?”
Dalton held out his hand. “Yep.”
She giggled and pulled out the ripped envelope from her purse, slid the wedding invite out of the thick covering, then set it gingerly onto his palm.
“Dalton read it in the glowing lights of the Taco Trailer. “Whose wedding?”
“My pre-Miller ex.”
Dalton slid her a grossed-out look. “Why would he invite you to his wedding?”
“Because Nadine Bertrand,” she explained, pointing to the bride’s name on the invite, “was my best friend for more than twenty years. Basically since we were fetuses.”
Dalton’s eyes went wide. “Your ex is marrying your best friend?”
“Ex best friend.”
“Please tell me they started dating after you broke up.”
She stifled a laugh at his expression. “Nope.”
“That’s fucked up. Wait, you’re not going, are you?”
“Heck no. I haven’t talked to either of them since I found out. Nadine keeps calling me though, wanting to be friends again. Apparently, she misses me. As you can see, I don’t have the best taste in…people.”
Dalton huffed a dark laugh. “No, you don’t. Wait there,” he said, shoving his door open.
“Why? I’m hungry.”
“Because, you impatient woman, I’m going to open your door for you.”
“I knew this was a date,” she murmured, feeling giddy.
Dalton gave her a heart-stopping grin before he closed his door and jogged around to her side. He helped her out of the high cab and settled his hand on her lower back as they approached the food truck. Bats flapped around her stomach as his touch lingered at the base of her spine. How could a man pull such a potent reaction from her body with nothing more than the brush of his palm?
Giddy and a little off-balance, she took a spot in line behind a couple of slurring bar patrons ordering what sounded like one of everything.
After Dalton put their order in and collected their paper-lined baskets of tacos, she sat down at one of the tables right beside the giant heater. It was warm on her back, and she offered Dalton a shy smile as he took a seat right beside her rather than across the table.
At the first bite of steaming taco, she rolled her eyes closed and groaned in ecstasy. It had been a long shift under Dr. Vega, and she hadn’t eaten since this morning. “This is my favorite food,” she said around a mouthful. “What’s your favorite food?”
“Pussy,” Dalton said through a baiting grin.
She nearly choked on corn tortilla. “Dalton,” she admonished.
He was laughing now as he poured hot sauce over his own tacos. “Meat. I like any kind of meat. The rarer the better.”
Another tongue-in-cheek werewolf admission, and now he was looking at her, daring her to ask questions.
“Favorite color?”
The smile fell from Dalton’s face. “It used to be blue, but now it’s green.”
Huh. Her eyes were green. She ducked out of his serious gaze so he wouldn’t see the color in her cheeks. “I like your truck.”
“Thanks, I just bought it today.”
“You did?”
“I borrow my alph—” Dalton shook his head hard and let off a bitter laugh. “I use my friend’s snow machine when I visit, but I figured I’d go ahead and get my own ride. I don’t have a truck up where I work near Kodiak.”
“Do you visit Galena often?”
“Not as often as I should.”
“Who is your friend? I bet I’ll know him. Everyone knows everyone around here.”
Wariness slashed through Dalton’s dark eyes. “Lincoln McCall.”
Kate squeezed her tortilla so hard the meat plopped out and onto the table. “Lincoln McCall is your friend?” she asked in a choked whisper.
Dalton dipped his chin once in affirmation. He looked like he wanted to say more, but he gritted his teeth and took another bite of food instead. She hadn’t missed the slip-up, though. Alph? She’d bet her tits Lincoln McCall, Miller’s brother, was his alpha. She knew about wolves. She knew about dogs. She’d been raised around them for goodness sake and was well versed in the similar hierarchy of dog sled teams and wolf packs. She had only met Lincoln a few times. He’d been the quiet one, but still, his eyes had glowed just as terrifyingly as his brother’s.
The food sat like a tasteless lump in her mouth, and she gulped it down. She wiped her hands slowly with a napkin, stalling. If she spoke too soon, her voice would shake and give away just how scared she was. He was in a pack with a freaking McCall werewolf.
“You’re the one who’s freaking out now,” he said, scanning the filling tables around them.
“I’m not freaking out.”
“Well, before you go make a snap judgement, Link isn’t anything like his brothers. He isn’t anything like any of his family. He’s actually a good guy.”
“What do you do out near Kodiak?” she asked, desperate to talk about anything else.
Dalton narrowed his eyes like she wasn’t fooling anyone with her subject change, but being the smart man that he was, he dropped it. “I’m an outdoor guide at Silver Summit Outfitters.”
“Do you guide hunts?”
“Yeah. I’m good at tracking things. We do seasonal hunts depending on when each animal is legal to take, but I do a lot of camping, hiking, and fishing excursions, too. Right now is our slow season, but in the next couple of months, we have a lot of people from the lower forty-eight who have booked us.”
“Who is us?”
“My cousin, Chance, and my friend Jenner Silver.”
“Hey, I know him! Jenner lives here now. He moved outside of Galena with his wife last year. They live up on Elyse and Ian’s homestead.”
“You know Elyse?”
“Yeah, I was her nurse when she got clawed by a bear last year and again when she fell on an ax a couple winters ago…” Kate gasped as something clicked firmly into place. “Elyse. She got cut by an ax across her face.”
“I think it’s time to go,” Dalton said, standing with his empty basket. “You finished?”
She was definitely finished. She stared at him so hard, her eyeballs were actually getting cold. “Elyse killed Miller, didn’t she?”
Dalton looked around nervousl
y and lowered down, arm locked on the table. Voice full of warning, he murmured, “Kate, stop. Stop picking at this one.”
“But—”
Dalton spun and disappeared around the Taco Trailer. A moment later, he strode off for his truck, hands empty of the baskets. The door slammed, and he floored it out of the parking spot, only to hit the brakes and slide to a stop an instant later.
Through the front window, Dalton lifted his light gaze to her as he gripped the steering wheel.
This was a man who had trained himself to run. Whatever had happened to make him this way, she didn’t know and would likely never find out. She’d done this before and didn’t want to feel like this again. Like she couldn’t ever really get to know the person she cared about. Like an outsider…always a guest in someone’s life, but never a main player.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and dared to hold his gaze as she walked up to his truck, then past it to the tailgate, which she lowered.
“What are you doing?” he asked, by her side too fast. She would’ve startled, but she’d seen speed like his before.
“I think you have too many secrets, and I think you’re a runner. I already told you I’ve done this before. I want more. I don’t want to be afraid that you’ll bolt when things get hard.” She pulled the ramps from between her ATV’s tires, rested them at an angle on the tailgate, climbed up into the truck and over the seat of her ride, and turned it on.
Dalton looked ill as he watched her back it down out of his truck, but he didn’t stop her. Instead, he stood there with his hands linked behind his head. As she drove away, she looked back once when the word “shit” echoed down the street. He flung his hands forward, his eyes reflecting strangely in the red glow of her taillights. With Miller, that would’ve scared her, but with Dalton, it filled her with immense sadness.
His wolf intrigued her, but his wolf had pushed her away.
Regrets, regrets, regrets. Dalton Dawson had been broken, too, and though she hurt for him, he wasn’t in the same spot she was. She was finally hopeful and wanted something meaningful with someone she cared about. Dalton had started that change in her, but he wasn’t capable of seeing it through. There was tragedy in that.