Sean laughed, the noise sounding more like a snort from his large hound’s mouth.
“You know what I mean.” Niles smiled. “There’s more than something casual between Leigh and me and it’s time to start finding out just how much is there.”
“Whoa,” Sean said. “Don’t forget the Team rules. She’s got to accept you first—all of you.”
Anger ruffled Niles’s nerves again. Niles breathed hard through his nose and did what he was loath to do. He issued an order, blasting it into Sean’s mind: “I am your alpha. We will have this discussion later. You should not have left without talking to me. Times may be changing, that’s all I will say now.”
“But—”
“Not now, captain.”
At the instant when the hound lowered his gaze, dropped his head, his front quarters, and finally his hind quarters, Niles heard Sally say, “I want you to meet Dr. Saul VanDoren now that he’s getting back, Leigh.” Sally’s eyes met Niles’s briefly, then moved on. She said nothing to him and continued speaking to Leigh. “He’s someone you can trust with anything. I’ll introduce you. He comes into Gabriel’s most days.”
Sally’s sleek little cat strolled, tail undulating, to Niles and jumped effortlessly all the way to his shoulder where she sat staring at him. When Niles looked into her face she blinked slowly and wrapped her tail around his neck. She was weightless.
“Skillywidden really likes you, Niles,” Sally said brightly. “Blue, too. You’re two of very few. I guess she knows kindred spirits—familiars, perhaps.” She laughed.
Niles looked sideways at the cat. Another of the area’s shapeshifters, no doubt.
Leigh looked over her shoulder at him and they stared at each other. Niles swallowed several times. In the odd light, her hair shone more red than gold and her dark eyes looked not just at him, but into him. He wasn’t the only one who felt they were starting to touch—without having to touch. They didn’t need skin on skin to sense the absorption of one into the other.
He wanted to smile, to offer her the welcome he felt throughout his body and being, but he couldn’t move.
She had taken off her green down coat. A little woman, really, but shapely in her high-necked black sweater and those tight pants that ended just above the ankle where they tucked inside her short boots. She needed to be more warmly dressed.
Leigh smiled before he did. For an instant her eyes glistened as if she might cry.
“Hi,” he finally mouthed, a lump in his throat and something strong and all male flowing through him, hardening him.
The pucker between her brows, her steady stare directly into his eyes stole his breath and his ability to do anything but look back.
“Can you all excuse me for a few minutes,” Sally said. “I’m slow-cooking something and I need to make sure it’s progressing the way I want it to.”
She slipped away without waiting for a response.
“That’s convenient,” Leigh said. “I was just going to ask you if we could sit on one of those benches outside. I could use some air.”
Skillywidden jumped down and nuzzled Blue.
Niles didn’t need one of the shop’s neon signs to let him know Leigh was tuning in to him much more acutely than she should be. He put a hand on her shoulder and with a warning glare to keep Blue where he was, guided Leigh through the front door.
They sat on a crooked hunk of tree trunk, balanced on its side and highly polished on top.
“Something’s wrong,” Leigh said without preamble. “I can feel it. And I’ve felt it before. You want to do things for me all the time. Let me help you. I don’t like to take without giving.”
“Thanks for caring,” he said. “But there’s nothing, really.”
She turned toward him and wiped her fingertips along his brow. She showed him how wet they were then rubbed her hands together. Then, with the gentlest of touches, she rubbed between his eyes, and then the rigid corners of his mouth. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “But I understand if you’d rather not talk about it.”
Crossing his arms, he struggled with the iron will he had learned, and his own need to feel closer to this woman than he had to anyone. If he wanted Leigh to accept him, he had to begin to share the truth. “I thought I was over it all. I used to wake up from dreams, drenched in sweat. Most of the time I didn’t sleep. But I’ve been better.”
“And something has slipped backward for you.” She rested a hand on the side of his face and he could hardly breathe.
“Something like that,” he managed to say. “Years working with the contract special operations team in the Middle East had showed me the worst there was to see. I thought there’d never be anything worth getting angry about again. That had lasted until I lost a man, Gary. He was bringing up the rear. When we didn’t see him we went back but he was gone. There wasn’t any sign of him. I kept hoping that meant he was still alive but we never found him. He was a member of our team—a brother.”
“That’s horrible,” Leigh said. “But you weren’t there alone. You must all have depended on each other.”
“I was in charge,” Niles snapped. “The buck stopped with me. A split second of carelessness cost Gary his life.”
He thought Leigh trembled and hated himself for scaring her like that.
“If you didn’t find him, he might still come back. These things happen. Was there blood? Anything?”
The same questions haunted Niles. “Nothing.” He shook his head.
“I’m not much use, I’m sure,” Leigh said. “But I know something about loss. Please come to me if you need someone. We don’t even have to talk.”
“I—” her empathy amazed him. “Thanks. Just stomp on my feet or something if you see me getting nasty.” He laughed. “We’d better go in or we’ll start people talking.”
Leigh stood up and led the way.
Sally appeared at almost the same time. “You’ll have to see what we have here later,” she told Niles. “It’s a surprise for Gabriel.”
Smoothly, she unrolled brown paper across the board she and Leigh had been looking at and taped the paper down. Evidently whatever she had covered was not for him to see, at least not yet. He felt curious, but not enough to do anything about it.
How much of an act was Sally’s innocuous manner? What would she demand from him?
“Don’t worry, Leader.” Sean’s words came into Niles’s mind, muffled and edged with something different. “Whatever happens, we will all stand together and deal with it. I apologize for forgetting my place sometimes and that’s wrong. This all means so much to us. And of all of us, you are the first to walk the line between what we became and what we want to be again. It isn’t easy.”
Niles relaxed. He kept on looking at Leigh but told Sean, “Your apology is accepted but not necessary. We all came together as alpha hounds. The rest of you made me head of the Team but perhaps some areas—when we are not on a mission—some areas need to be revisited. Battle demands a chain of command but we are not in battle now.”
“Aren’t we?” Sean asked. “No one’s said a thing about Rose’s body being found so I guess it hasn’t been.”
“We will discuss more later. We should have thought this far and expected issues. I didn’t. Now let me deal with this.”
“Remember Dr. Saul VanDoren, Niles?” Sally said. “He’ll be back in Chimney Rock at any time now. He’ll be his usual helpful self. You can always rely on him to work out any problems.”
The message wasn’t lost on Niles. “Useful man,” he said, not happy the doctor was to be involved with their issues any further. After VanDoren’s brushoff earlier, Niles would rather steer clear of him.
But given the continuing worry about what he did or did not think about his examination of Innes, VanDoren remained a potential problem. Innes was convinced VanDoren was something other than a maverick general practitioner who had to do his own thing—on his own.
It was not possible for a knowledgeable technician to look at a w
erehound’s blood and not know he was seeing something that wasn’t purely human. VanDoren had his own little lab and did his own simple tests.
Sean, who was a volunteer fireman and medic, had been out on a call when Innes got hurt but still he blamed himself for not being around at the time.
A phone rang and it was Leigh who grabbed for her coat and took a cell out of her pocket. “Leigh Kelly,” she said.
Niles barely stopped himself from trying to listen to her thoughts. He had automatically picked up something when she’d been confronted by John Valley at Gabriel’s, but they could not build trust on trickery and that’s how she would see it.
For a werehound to read a human’s mind was rare but it did happen occasionally, usually when the human had suppressed talents of some kind.
“Hey, Jan,” she said, smiling. “You’re back… at the Camano house? That’s great. Is everything okay there?”
Curiosity came even closer to getting the better of Niles. Camano was the island immediately across Saratoga Passage from Whidbey.
For minutes Leigh only nodded, more and more slowly, and an expression of resignation gradually replaced her smile. “Of course,” she said finally. “Will seven be too late, though? My job—”
She pressed her lips together and waited, listening.
“That isn’t up for discussion,” she said. “Would you and Gib like to come around seven or should we do it another day?”
More listening.
She looked at the floor. “Cheer up. You know I want to see you. Seven then and tell Gib not to drive too fast. There isn’t a lot of light down by my house.”
Her attention gradually came back to Niles and Sally and she gave another smile, this one much stiffer, as she put the phone away.
“My sister and her husband have a vacation house over on Camano. They just got back there. It’ll be nice to see them.” Her discomfort was evident. “Thank you, Sally. I’ll talk to you about that”—she nodded toward the table—“and how we should get it installed.” Her grin turned very real. “Should be fun.”
Sally looked equally pleased. She picked up Jazzy while Leigh put her coat on. The fae woman puzzled Niles. He had not asked her to help him find a potential human mate; she had offered. But the rules remained the same. A favor granted was a favor earned, and the delivery of Leigh so that he had a chance to see if the two of them could become Forever Mates was, indeed, a favor. An even more baffling question was how Sally had known about either the Team and its gradual loss—over a hundred or so years—of all females of their own kind, or the single incredibly rare element in a tiny number of humans’ blood that could allow compatibility with werehounds. She was also familiar with Brande and his surly pack of werewolves, and had shown distaste for them.
“Thank you,” Leigh told Sally. She hesitated, then hugged the woman. “It’s wonderful to discover I have a real friend here. If I can do anything for you, just let me know.”
“I am your channel to help,” an unknown voice whispered in his mind. “Our connection will always be open. And you can rely on me to be your eyes when your own are not enough. Leigh is important to all of us.”
A glance into violet eyes very close to his own made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. This was no ordinary cat standing on his shoulder.
chapter TWELVE
THE ODD LITTLE CAT slithered fearlessly into Niles’s big hands. He held her gently while she kept her eyes on his.
Leigh watched them watch each other and she took a deep breath. He was a rugged man who appealed to her in ways she had almost forgotten. Rugged yet… tender? Would he be tender with a woman he cared for?
She quickly took Skillywidden from him, kissed the top of the creature’s head, which earned her a cross-eyed look, and gave him to Sally.
Jazzy took his opportunity to leap at Niles and take the cat’s place.
Leigh followed Niles from Sally’s shop to the broken sidewalk. Blue loped beside her.
She looked aside, embarrassed. Had he aroused her? Was that it? A sexual reaction to a man when she had not ever expected to feel such a thing again after Chris’s death. She stopped walking.
“We can get down to the beach over there,” Niles said, preparing to cross the road. “We won’t stay long but at least we can give Jazzy a little playtime. He’s been so good.”
Leigh went to the bike. She fingered the nearest handlebar. “That was my sister on the phone,” she said. “But I already told you that. They want to see me and it’s going to be time for dinner when they get here. I’d better not go to the beach now. I’ve got to get back to work, then figure out something for dinner.”
Her tummy turned and turned. Jan and Gib were coming to check up on her. They felt responsible for making sure she wasn’t falling apart at Two Chimneys and wallowing in sadness over Chris.
“What is it?” Niles took hold of her arm and turned her gently to face him. “You look so sad.”
“I’m not.” And she wasn’t. Not really. She was muddled up and trying to sort things out. She would mourn Chris forever. How could she not? But people mourned and learned to love again at the same time.
The thought startled her. She took in a sharp breath and stared up at Niles’s very blue eyes, filled with question now.
She owed him some sort of explanation for her mood. “Jan and Gib are sweet, but every time they see me they fuss about how bad it is for me to be alone.”
Niles looked thoughtful. “Maybe they’ve got some reason to believe that.”
“But they don’t,” Leigh insisted. “I’m doing so well. It’s almost as if they can’t accept—forget I started to say that. It was mean, but they do upset me. I almost feel as if I should be falling apart.”
“I probably don’t have any right to an opinion,” Niles said. “But for what it’s worth, you have to live your own life and you seem pretty sure of how you want to do that.”
She rubbed his arm and had a wild urge to kiss him. Unfortunately that wouldn’t be a good idea. “Thank you. Jan and Gib will get the picture eventually. Up till now they’re still trying to get me to live with them, which would be a horrible idea. Married couples need their own space. Besides, I’m a private person.”
She glanced at Niles, wondering what he would think about that statement—if anything.
“It’s natural for your sister to worry about you being okay,” he said, but he frowned at the same time. Jazzy crawled up his chest and put his head on the man’s shoulder. Niles stroked him.
“Thanks for saying that about Gib and Jan,” she told Niles. “I’m too touchy.”
“You’re thoughtful, that’s all. And there’s nothing wrong with being private. Beats the hell out of turning all clingy and needy.”
Blue went purposefully to stand near the sidecar. Evidently he also wanted to get back.
What Leigh wanted most was to keep on being with Niles. “You could give courses in how to say the right things,” she told him.
“Think so?” He looked as if he were trying not to laugh. “I know people who wouldn’t agree with you—not at all.”
“You are so easy to talk to,” Leigh blurted out. “I mean… ”
He waited for her to finish. When she didn’t, he said, “Ditto,” and rubbed a thumb quickly across her chin.
“I need a favor,” Leigh said rapidly before she could change her mind. “Would you please come to dinner this evening? I understand if you already have other plans. Or if you just don’t want to come. But I thought I’d ask—”
“Thank you,” Niles said simply. “I’d really like that.” His smile was one she would remember forever.
chapter THIRTEEN
IT WAS ALREADY DARK when Leigh got back from work and the grocery store and parked in front of Two Chimneys.
She got out of the car and poked around in her pockets for the front door key.
“Leigh?”
“What?” She jumped, spun around, and came face to face with Niles outside the cott
age. “Oh, you don’t know how much you scared me. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone.”
She needed to get into the habit of leaving the outside light on for when she got home late.
Niles looked chagrined. “I’m an idiot. I’m so used to moving around in the silence here, I never think about it. I’m sorry.”
It would be too easy to let him off the hook and tell him that now that she knew who had startled her she was thrilled to see him.
And right after she had spent the drive home giving herself a lecture about going very slowly with Niles—if she went at all.
She opened the trunk of her car but before she could lift out the bags of groceries, Niles had already swept them up. He wore a worried frown that made him look younger somehow.
“Thanks,” she said, locking the car, then sorting through her pockets again for the key to the house.
“Sean got called out to a fire and I was just fiddling around in my shop,” Niles said. “I need him for the job I’m on now. So I thought I’d come over and see if I could go to the store for you or help with something for dinner.”
She let him in. Jazzy rushed along beside him, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, panting blissfully.
Jazzy had never cared much for men. Who knew he would get to Whidbey and change personalities?
“Just dump the stuff in the kitchen,” Leigh said. “Thank you for coming to my aid—it was heavy.”
They stood in the kitchen, looking at each other, both of them clearly trying to come up with something to say.
“Give me your keys,” Niles said.
She frowned and he took both the car keys and the separate key for the door from her.
Gentle hands that could crush if he wanted them to. Once again she was too aware of how attracted she was to his power—and to how careful he was to use it wisely.
With a quick flick he slid the door key onto the same ring with those for the car and gave back the bunch. “Should be easier,” he said. “But I’ll take it off again if that’s not the way you want it.”
She grinned. “I’m still disorganized. Thanks for the help.”
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