by Terry Spear
Ian, the laird of Argent and the eldest of the quads, was busy running the clan and pack and distracted by one sexy red wolf, his new mate who was a werewolf romance writer. The second oldest brother, Cearnach, managed a lot of the details of operating the estate as Ian’s second in command. So Duncan was free to do as he pleased.
Simply as a matter of pride, though, he wasn’t going to let the bastard get away with the theft.
He finally spied Silverman’s white stucco house, a blue iguana running across the red tile roof. A gated entry kept Duncan from getting close to the beachside home, but he figured he could run along the beach and get closer that way. The place most likely had tons of security so Duncan’s best bet probably was to wait until the bastard left his estate on some errand or another and then confront him face-to-face.
He parked nearby, got out of the rental car, and began to jog down the beach toward Silverman’s house, wearing his black pants and T-shirt and boots. Only another wolf would see him in the dark. Although it was never a good idea to make assumptions about an enemy, Guthrie hadn’t found that Silverman had any ties to a wolf pack. He seemed to be a loner who only hooked up with humans. Not having a werewolf pack protecting Sal Silverman’s back gave Duncan the advantage, if Guthrie had been correct.
As Duncan neared the house, a couple of dogs barked. Silverman had guard dogs? Lights were on all over the place and security lights all over the grounds also. A couple of men headed for the back patio in the direction of the beach, looking to see what had disturbed the dogs.
Duncan growled and turned around and ran back the other way. No sense in being ID’d by a couple of goons. The guard dogs would be even more of a problem, though, if Duncan wanted to enter the house when Silverman was gone.
The good thing was that Silverman did seem to be in residence. Did he ever leave his estate, though? He might just seclude himself there until he left for some other hideaway.
Duncan had to get to him before that could happen.
Before long, he was driving back to the villa, feeling unsettled about not getting any further with Silverman, when he thought he spied headlights following him. He pulled off the road and killed his car lights, but the headlights behind him turned off down another road, and Duncan continued on his way. Had someone suspected he was trouble?
Whatever happened, he didn’t want Shelley involved in this. Tomorrow, he’d change out his rental vehicle in the event that Silverman’s people were watching for him, especially if the woman he’d met in the bar had alerted her boyfriend that some Scot seemed interested in Silverman and that she’d made the mistake of talking about him.
When Duncan arrived back at the villa, the lights in the master bedroom were off. A light in the living room had been left on, as if Shelley had meant to welcome him home. He appreciated the gesture, although werewolves didn’t need light to see at night. What he’d truly wished she’d done was left her bedroom door open and a trail of discarded clothes from the living room to the bedroom, inviting him to follow her there, close the door, and join her in bed. Not that it would be a good thing for either of them, but he couldn’t help wanting it.
He trudged up the stairs to his guest bedroom and the two twin beds, glad at least he had a bed to sleep in. And he stared at the woman sleeping in one of them, her auburn hair splayed across a white pillowcase and the floral bedcover tucked around her throat so that he couldn’t tell if she was dressed or not.
He smiled at her. Now he wanted to push the twin beds together and stay just where he was. With her. Forget the queen-sized bed downstairs that would accommodate his size better. She would accommodate his size even better.
“You may have my bed,” she whispered, half asleep, not even opening her eyes as if that might wake her up too much, but evidently he’d awakened her, or she had not quite drifted off. Probably felt the change in the temperature of the room as he stood next to the bed. Most likely smelled him with the breeze and night salt air on his skin. “’Night,” she added softly, confirming that the one-sided conversation was over.
He stood staring at her, not wanting to leave. Wanting to see what she looked like, how she felt underneath the covers. “Are you certain?” he asked. “These beds look pretty good about now.”
She still didn’t open her eyes, but she smiled her brilliant smile. “Good night, Duncan. I’m not moving downstairs now that I’ve got the bed nice and warm, and I’m not wearing anything. So run along like a good wolf, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
“You’re not wearing even a string bikini?” he asked, not taking a step from the room. Now he was really trying to envision all that tanned skin perfectly naked.
This time, she opened her eyes, a smile lingering as if to say that surely he knew she wouldn’t be wearing anything. “Most of us sleep in nothing.”
“Aye, but I don’t care what most do about sleeping.”
He swore she was fighting back a laugh.
“Good night, Duncan,” she said dismissively, her voice sounding amused.
He shook his head, grumbled something about how hard she was on him in a mostly teasing way, and headed back down the stairs.
Shelley chuckled as he stomped down the stairs. She loved his sense of humor and how honorable he was, and she felt like a good Samaritan for ensuring that he would have a restful night in a bed built more for his size.
***
Very early in the morning, she smelled ham and eggs and cheese cooking, and even a pot of coffee brewing.
“Hmm,” she said, stretching her arms above her head. Then she sat up abruptly in bed. He went grocery shopping without her? Not that she was upset about the circumstances—and she truly was glad he was making breakfast because after playing in the surf and having had no dinner, she was starving—but she still wanted to go to the grocery store.
She grabbed her shortie floral satin robe off a chair, the only robe she’d brought, figuring it would just be her here and no problem. She slipped it on and belted it, then hurried down the stairs. If she weren’t so hungry, she would have gotten dressed first. But she didn’t want the food to get cold so she wasn’t wasting any time in joining him.
Dressed only in a pair of black briefs, Duncan wore a shadow of a beard but still looked as sexy as the devil as he folded an omelet with melted cheese and ham and chives in a skillet in the kitchen. “Look good?”
She looked from him to the eggs. She kept thinking about how he looked—damned good, hot, wolflike, wearing only the pair of black briefs—with his perfectly muscled arms and chest, and bare legs. “Yeah, real good,” she murmured.
He smiled at her. “I meant, did the eggs appeal. Or would you like me to fix you something else?”
“No, what you’re fixing is fine.” She thought again about his clothes. He had the ones he’d worn the night before when he went in search of Silverman. So was he just showing off some more? She could handle it.
She studied the way he was working on the omelet, really impressed. No man she’d ever known cooked. “You can cook.”
“If you have a chance to speak with Ian, don’t ever let him know the truth.” Duncan’s gaze met hers, and she got the impression he was serious. “My brothers and I stick to the principle that unless it’s frozen pizza, we can’t make it. As long as he believes that, we’re happy.”
“Or he makes you cook for the clan?” she guessed.
“For him and his new mate when Cook or our cousin Heather is unavailable, aye.”
She laughed. “Your secret is safe with me.”
He looked down at her and smiled appreciatively. “First one’s for you. I’ll make another right away.”
“Thank you.” She took the plate to the kitchen table. “You went to the grocery store without me this morning.”
“I had to. You were sleeping so soundly that I figured you’d have quite an appetite when you woke, so I picked up a few items. If you want anything else, we can go out again.”
“I’d like that.”
“It was the least I could do when you gave me your big bed to sleep in. I had really hoped you might change your mind and come down to join me once I warmed up the sheets a little.” Duncan didn’t even glance in her direction; he just looked all sexy and forbidding. Getting too close to the flame was definitely going to get her singed.
She had just raised another bite of the cheesy eggs to her lips, but she paused to comment. “I’m afraid it might have gotten a little too hot.”
He winked, a look that promised he would have heated her up well and good. “That’s what the air conditioner is for.”
She laughed, loving his sense of humor.
He finished cooking his omelet and joined her at the table. “I also changed out the rental car early this morning.”
A frisson of alarm shook through her. “You didn’t have trouble last night when you were investigating Silverman, did you?”
He hesitated a fraction too long for her liking in answering her. “No. I just thought it prudent to swap out cars. Just in case.”
“Are you certain?”
“Aye, I am, but I wish to err on the side of caution.”
She finished her eggs and set her plate aside, leaning back in the chair and ready to have a serious discussion. “I overheard you talking to your brother about missing a lead in your investigation.”
“Aye. A lady said her boyfriend works for Silverman. I must have looked like I was ready to kill the bastard, and she quickly quit talking to me.”
That didn’t sound good. Shelley sighed and looked at the omelet he’d nearly polished off. “You’re a wonderful cook.”
“Thank you, but remember it’s our secret.”
That made her want to meet his brothers, including the laird, and see their interaction for herself. Since she had no siblings of her own, she was curious to see Duncan and his brothers in action. Her friend, Wendy, had four brothers, but Shelley thought that Duncan’s family would be different since they were nobility of sorts and owned a castle. And were Scottish.
She smiled, then turned serious. “Are you sure I can’t help you in any way with your mission?”
“Nay. I don’t want you involved in this. No telling what might happen.”
Partly relieved—because she wasn’t into spy and criminal apprehension scenarios—but disappointed that she couldn’t help him in any way, she looked back at the egg carton, cheese, and ham still sitting out. She was still hungry from swimming and not having eaten any dinner, and she was craving more of Duncan’s omelets. Not wanting to sound too greedy, she proposed, “If I promise to clean up after you, will you… fix me another omelet?”
He gave her the biggest boyish grin, and she smiled back, loving that she’d made his morning.
“Aye, it’ll be my pleasure.”
But he didn’t just fix her another omelet. He also mixed her champagne and chilled orange juice. The mimosa was a delightful drink, and she wondered why she’d never tried it before. He also helped her clean up, letting her put the groceries away while he handled the manly task of scrubbing the stubborn eggs off the skillet. She was ready to drag one hot Highlander home to Texas and keep him. Then she’d tell Wendy she was right. Shelley was a sucker for strays—but what a stray. Only he wasn’t really a stray. He had a whole pack relying on him to do right.
Afterward, they both dressed, and when she came downstairs to join him, she eyed his soft pair of faded jeans and black T-shirt, which had no logo, no design, nothing to take away from his sexy wolfish appearance. He didn’t need a smart remark emblazoned across his chest. His whole presence screamed hot male. She liked that she was the one who got to keep him for a while.
Within the hour, he had dropped her off at the trailhead of the Mastic Reserve. She felt the whole world beyond this one place vanish as she quickly immersed herself in taking pictures and notes of the lush, green vegetation. Wearing olive-green capris, a short-sleeved leafy shirt over a peach tank top, and black sneakers to navigate the muddier areas, she carried a lightweight canvas pack on her back filled with a couple of chilled bottles of water—courtesy of Duncan—insect repellent, and sunscreen.
Armed with a notebook and pen in one hand and a camera in the other, she was all set. She made her way slowly through the black mangrove forest. The long-leggy trees dipped into brackish water with their roots sticking up out of the wet soil, gasping for air, while ferns clustered together in the moisture. Vines crawled up tree trunks, reminiscent of where the ape man had swung through the jungle doing his Tarzan yell.
Snapping shots of all the plants, she was falling in love with the whole place. Normally she would have thought of nothing else, but at the back of her mind, a niggling concern about whether Duncan was all right kept worrying her. The fact that he’d changed out rental vehicles meant he’d been concerned about something. She hadn’t wanted to pry, considering he hadn’t wanted to involve her. She worried about his continued investigation today, though, and what trouble he might get himself into.
Having opted to take the self-guided tour, Shelley found herself blissfully alone, snapping a picture of a strangler fig, each of its snakelike tentacles like a boa constrictor wrapping around its prey. Not only was observing the vegetation a real treat, but the colorful parrots—with their iridescent green feathers, red cheeks, and white-ringed eyes—caught her attention as they nested in tree holes and twittered about in the foliage. Suddenly one took flight overhead, and she witnessed its brilliant blue wing feathers spreading out as it flew away while a cacophony of birds’ chattering filled the air.
A calabash tree towered above with huge, round fruit attached to the trunk—the shell of the fruit so hard that it could be hollowed out into bowls or cups. Thin corded branches drooped toward the ground, weighed down by heavy clusters of purplish and orange ripe mangoes, with others hidden by the thin green leaves.
She was so busy as she moved on to each specimen that she felt as though she was alone in a tropical jungle on an uninhabited island, seeing a world for the first time as explorers to the island might have. A stand of silver thatch palms caught her eye. The tree derived its name from the silver color underneath the fronds and was the only one in the islands with that feature. A blue iguana raced along a fallen tree trunk; a grass snake coiled on a slab of slate. No poisonous snakes lived on the island, thankfully.
Shelley looked up at the thirty-foot-tall palms, thinking how much fun it would be to see the silver reflected in the moonlight. She had read that the palms had been used to thatch roofs in years past, only needing to be replaced every five or six years. If the fronds were cut during the full moon, supposedly they would last for nine years. The full moon. It would be out tonight, and the urge to run as a wolf tugged at her senses. Made her want to strip out of her clothes and shift into the wolf to explore this world on four paws, nose to the ground and sniffing the air, running through the thick underbrush, not staying to the path.
She was pondering that bit of folklore about the viability of the fronds cut during the full moon, comparing it with werewolf lore and making plans to come back that night, when she heard the sound of shoes crunching on leaves and heading her way on the winding path.
A woman said in a gratingly syrupy voice, “Ah, come on, Sal. You know how much I love to get away from your house and spend the day taking walks along the beach or here in the forest. I mean, we can have sex there all the time, but I also like to get out and see the island while I’m here.”
Shelley did not want to hear about some strangers’ sex lives. Why couldn’t they have gone swimming at the beach or gone shopping or done anything but come to the forest?
The woman said, “No, before you say it, I wanted to be with you, not by myself while one of your goons followed along.”
“Not everyone loves me like you do,” Sal said candidly.
The mention of sex had caught Shelley’s attention first, but then the woman’s comments about goons made her ears perk up even more. Hearing that the couple sequest
ered themselves at his estate and that not everyone liked him or loved him, according to him, suddenly made her think of Duncan’s Sal—Salisbury Silverman. Neither Sal nor his girlfriend had mentioned his last name.
The couple was moving toward her at a leisurely pace. Shelley stood still, not knowing whether to move along the path in the same direction they were headed to try to get out of their way without them realizing she had overheard them, or to step off the path into the jungle so they wouldn’t see her. The problem was with the poisonous plants growing in the underbrush.
Maiden plum had sap that could cause serious skin rashes. The Manchineel tree’s leaves and fruit were poisonous to the touch, and even standing underneath the tree during a downpour could be hazardous to one’s health. The lady hair plant was also to be avoided because of the reaction of skin to the fiberglass-like stinging hairs, so she didn’t want to get into any of those. Of course, the last option would be to face Sal and his girlfriend as if they were insignificant in the scheme of things, unless…
Dread bunched in the pit of her stomach. What if it was Sal Silverman? The man Duncan was looking for. The one who had stolen the college funds. Could there be another Sal with goons residing on the island? Maybe. But probably not.
Then she took a sniff of the breeze and cursed herself for not noticing. The man was downwind of her so she couldn’t tell if he was a wolf or not, which would help her to further identify him as the one Duncan wanted.
But if this Sal was a wolf, he could smell her.
Chapter 6
Damn. Shelley wanted to call Duncan and tell him she thought she was soon going to be face to face with his quarry, but she knew how well her voice would travel in the forest. Just like Sal’s and the woman’s did as they sauntered closer to her.