Secret of the Wolf

by Cynthia Garner

  Hmm. Maybe that was it. Maybe the person behind these communications was neither vampire nor shapeshifter. Maybe Natchook was acting on behalf of someone else.

  Dante followed Tori into a driveway and pulled his truck to a stop behind the car she parked beneath a carport. As he shoved the gearshift into park and cut the engine, he studied her home. It was a typical brick ranch house from what he could tell. The light from the portico shone onto the front yard, which he could see was desert landscaped with prickly pear and a saguaro standing like lonely sentinels to one side.

  He got out of the truck, tucking in his shirt as he went and hoping like hell he hadn’t made a mistake by coming here. As Tori unlocked the front door and invited him in, he gave himself a little pep talk. No sex, MacMillan. Just pie and coffee.

  And maybe a look at that rift device.

  But no sex. Sex would complicate an already complicated situation, and he had a feeling that once he got her underneath him he’d never want to let her go. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, except he wasn’t a love ’em and leave ’em kind of guy. If he took Tori to bed, it would mean he had feelings for her. Feelings he wasn’t ready to accept.

  “The kitchen’s through here,” she said.

  He followed her down a short hallway and into a larger-than-expected kitchen. “This is nice,” he murmured. Stainless-steel appliances and marbled green counter tops complemented the dark stained cabinets. “Are you a closet gourmet chef?”

  A smile lit her face. “Not gourmet by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like to cook.” She placed her small evening bag on the counter near a set of ceramic canisters decorated with bright red, orange, and yellow chilies. As a matter of fact, the entire kitchen was bright with smatterings of chili pepper decorations, even down to a couple of magnets on the fridge. He grinned at seeing a Snoopy magnet, too. It didn’t surprise him to see that slight hint of playfulness. “I like to eat more than I like to cook,” she went on. “So cooking’s rather a necessity.”

  Dante laughed. The admission was unexpected, yet not. Most women he knew were always on one diet or another, but he supposed that Tori, with her increased werewolf metabolism, didn’t have to worry as much about gaining weight.

  She bent and took off her sandals, giving him a great view of her shapely ass. As she straightened, holding the straps of the sandals between her fingers, she said, “I don’t think Rand is home, but let me check. I’d like you to meet him.”

  “Sure.” Appreciating her grace and beauty, Dante watched her walk down another hallway and stop in front of a closed door.

  She knocked with one knuckle. “Rand?” There was no response. With a slight frown she put her hand on the knob, her expression deepening as she twisted it. He saw her lips press together and then she turned and came back into the kitchen. “His door’s locked, but he’s not in there.”

  “How can you tell? Maybe he’s asleep.”

  “His scent is too muted. If he were here, I’d be able to smell him more.” She glanced back toward his room. “He didn’t want to go out earlier. I guess he changed his mind.” She sounded a little peeved.

  Dante wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to the olfactory abilities many prets had. Especially those of shapeshifters. To be able to smell not just scents but also emotions…He gave a slight shake of his head. He could understand why some prets looked upon humans as being inferior. He didn’t agree, but he understood it.

  Tori opened the refrigerator and pulled out two pies. “Which kind would you like?”

  Dante walked over to stand beside her and looked down at the desserts. The Dutch apple had that crumbly topping with what looked to be a drizzle of caramel over the top, and the peach pie had a crust that was flaky and golden.

  Tori laughed. “Maybe a slice of both?”

  “Works for me.” Dante met her gaze. “Can I help?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Just have a seat.” She motioned toward the adjacent dining area. “I’ll bring it over.”

  “At least let me start the coffee,” he said.

  Pleasure softened her face. “Of course. Coffee’s in the cabinet above the coffeemaker.”

  Dante quickly got the dark brew going and leaned one hip against the counter, watching Tori cut large slices of pie and dish them onto two plates.

  “I’m assuming you didn’t want small pieces,” she said without looking at him. He could hear suppressed humor in her voice.

  “You assumed right,” he responded. “Where are the forks?”

  “Drawer to your left. By the sink.”

  He put his hand on the knob of a drawer only to stop when she said, “Not that one. Next one.”

  With two forks in hand, he turned back to the coffeemaker. “Mugs?”

  “Cabinet by the fridge.”

  As he turned toward the refrigerator, she did, too, and they both stopped, eyes melded. Her hair was beginning to come out of her elaborate upswept style, and he wondered how much of that was because he hadn’t been able to keep from touching her. He didn’t have the pleasure of tangling his hands in her thick mass of chestnut brown hair, and that was probably a good thing. The feel of it cascading over the back of his hands would have started fantasies about how other parts of his anatomy would feel with her tresses dragging over them. His belly, thighs. His cock.

  It had a mind of its own and perked up, taking notice of the directions Dante’s thoughts had gone. With a soft oath, he sidestepped Tori and yanked open the cupboard door, staring blindly at a neat row of coffee mugs until Tori said, “Just grab any.”

  She took a gallon of ice cream out of the freezer and carried it back over to the counter. “How many scoops?”

  “Two’s fine,” he managed to say through a throat gone tight.

  Tori finished with the ice cream and replaced it in the freezer, then picked up both plates. “I take mine black,” she said with a jerk of her chin toward the coffeemaker.

  Dante usually took a couple of sugars in his, but tonight he thought he could use the extra jolt the bitterness of the brew would give him. He poured coffee into both mugs and carried them over to the dining room table, hoping Tori wouldn’t notice, or at the very least wouldn’t comment on, his renewed erection.

  She sat in the chair at one end of the table, and he took the chair to her right. He forked a piece of apple pie into his mouth. As the taste of fruit, cinnamon, nutmeg, and caramel hit his taste buds, he gave a little hum and closed his eyes. “This is really good,” he said and took another bite.

  “Thanks. It’s nice to see my cooking appreciated for once. Before Rand came, I often ate alone, and appreciating my own cooking isn’t quite the same thing.” Her tone was dryly self-deprecating.

  He looked at her with a slight grin. “My sister always goes on about what a grill-master I am. Between you and me, I think she does it so she can get out of doin’ the cooking.”

  “She’s all right now?”

  Dante nodded. “She still gets tired easily, but her energy levels are leaps and bounds over what they were when she was going through chemo.”

  Tori stared at him. “You haven’t said a whole lot about her. She had cancer, right?”

  “Breast cancer.” He cupped his hands around his mug and stared down into the dark coffee. “She got her diagnosis two days before her loser of a husband told her he was filin’ for a divorce.”

  “Oh, my God. Like she needed that kind of additional stress on top of everything else.”

  “Exactly.” He took a long chug of coffee. “My now ex-brother-in-law understood me clearly when I made that same point to him.”

  “I imagine he did.” She leaned one elbow on the table. “I take it you made it with your fists?”

  Dante started into the peach pie but paused at her comment. “Now, what makes you say that?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Maybe because I know you, and I know you wouldn’t let your sister get hurt and upset like that without doing something about it. Since you can’t fight her cance
r for her, I have a clear picture of your brother-in-law—”

  “Former brother-in-law,” he made sure to correct.

  “I have a clear picture of your former brother-in-law,” she repeated with a grin, “on the ground with a bloody nose and a black eye.”

  “Close enough.” The bastard had had both eyes blackened to go along with the broken nose and split lip. Dante finished his dessert and pushed the plate away, replete. “Damn, woman. You could put a man in a coma with food like that.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You should.” He stood, coffee mug in hand. “Get you a refill?”

  She shook her head.

  Dante filled his mug almost to the brim and went back into the dining room.

  As he sat down, Tori said, “I think it’s wonderful that you opened up your home to Lily.” Melancholy touched her dark eyes. “You have no idea how lucky you are. How lucky you’ve been to have your sister with you.”

  “But you have your brother.”

  She nodded, her smile so sad it broke his heart. “For now, yes.” She seemed to come to a decision and opened up to him in a way she’d refused to in the club. “But I can tell he’s pulling away from me. I feel as if I’m losing him and I don’t know why.”

  Chapter Eight

  Dante leaned back in the oak chair, his dark eyes fixed on her. “Tell me about him.”

  “Rand?” At his nod, Tori blew out a breath and wrapped suddenly chilled fingers around her coffee mug. There wasn’t much heat left, but it gave her something to do with her hands. “He’s five years younger than me. He’s smart. A little…indecisive, I guess. But he has a good heart.”

  “Where’s he been all these years?”

  “After our Influx he ended up in Leeds. England,” she clarified. “I was in London. Just a few hundred miles apart, and we didn’t know. I wouldn’t have had any idea whom he’d jumped into so finding him was virtually impossible. Of course, I could have traveled the countryside sniffing people,” she added dryly.

  Frankly, she’d been too busy trying to survive. Being a woman in the East End of London in the latter half of the Victorian era had not been an easy introduction to life on planet Earth. She’d done things that, once she’d gotten out of London, she’d vowed to never do again.

  Humans talked about how violent prets could be, but human beings could be just as vicious. And a woman on her own on the backside of poverty in the late 1800s, even if she was a werewolf, was a woman at risk every damn day.

  “So how did you find him?”

  “I didn’t. He found me.” Tori scrunched her face at his expression of surprise. “I know, right? He just showed up on my doorstep a week ago…well, not quite a week yet, but there he was. Said he’d been looking for me for a while and had finally gotten lucky.”

  “Really?” Dante looked skeptical. “How did he do it?”

  “He said he kept doing online searches for me, and eventually my name popped up in conjunction with the regional council of preternaturals.”

  “Wow, I’m surprised it took him that long.” He took a sip of coffee. “You’ve been doing this job for how long now? About three years? He must really suck at using the Internet.”

  She frowned. He had a point, and she’d wondered the same thing. If she’d been able to locate Rand, nothing on Earth would have stopped her from getting to him. But he’d shared enough about himself that she knew he was close to being, if not actually, destitute. “He doesn’t have a lot of money, Dante. Some people can’t just pick up and go whenever or wherever they want to. They have to plan for a trip. Financially.”

  He gave a small shrug. “Regardless, I imagine you were shocked.”

  “Shocked doesn’t begin to describe how I felt. Stunned. Gobsmacked.” She grinned, remembering the moment she opened the door to see that familiar stranger on her modest front porch. “I knew right away who he was.”

  “How?” He leaned forward, his entire demeanor one of keen interest.

  She shrugged. “It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s a…sense that I had. Plus, he…smelled like I remember.”

  “But his name wasn’t Randall in the other dimension, right? Just like yours wasn’t Victoria.”

  “Right.” Tori crossed her legs and swung one foot. “But that’s who we are now. Randall Langston and Victoria Joseph, formerly of Great Britain.”

  Dante twisted in his seat to hook one arm over the back of his chair. “Funny, you don’t sound British.” His square-tipped fingers played with the handle of the mug.

  She shot him a dry look. “I’ve been in America since just after the Civil War. Plenty of time to lose an accent.” She gave a slight shake of her head. “Or pick up a new one. Whatever.” She was tired of talking about her brother and their relationship. Or lack of one. The closeness that Dante and his sister had put a bright spotlight on what she didn’t have with her brother. She didn’t want to be so mean-spirited as to feel envious, but she did. She was jealous of the bond Dante and Lily shared.

  Tori sure as hell wasn’t about to volunteer that her cousin had recently wandered into her life as well. Any thoughts of physical intimacy with Dante tonight fled as sadness and regret came over her. All she’d ever wanted was to have her family close by, and now that she did, it wasn’t like she’d thought it would be.

  Dante seemed to sense her discomfort, because he leaned forward and said, “So, since we’re talking about the rift…”

  She raised her brows. “Were we?”

  “Yeah. We were.”

  Smart man, to know when to change the subject.

  He pushed his mug to one side. “Can I see the device?”

  “I’m surprised it took you this long.” She grinned and got up from the table. Going into the kitchen she took the lid off the flour canister and rooted around, carefully pulling out the baggie. She held it over the sink and swiped clinging flour away, then grabbed a dishtowel and took both into the dining room. “In case Rand comes home,” she said, holding up the towel before she dropped it onto the table. “If he comes in, put that over the gizmo.” She opened the plastic baggie and wrapped her fingers around the small black contraption, holding it out to him.

  Dante took it from her, the tips of his fingers grazing her palm, sending a frisson of sensual awareness through her nerve endings.

  “Finally I get to see this damned thing up close,” he muttered, turning the cell phone-sized device over in his hands. “Doesn’t look like much, does it?”

  “Uh-uh.” Tori pointed toward one of the tiny silver knobs on one end. “This one turns it on.”

  He looked at her, dark eyes holding a mixture of concern and curiosity. “Have you? Turned it on, I mean.”

  “Oh, yeah. A couple of times.” She grimaced. “But then someone always asks me for a password and I have to shut it off. We need to figure out how to turn it on without anyone on the other end knowing about it.” She took the seat next to him. The warmth from his big body was intoxicating, and she had to fight against leaning closer.

  “Turn it on.” Dante held the device out to her.

  Tori took it from him, her fingers brushing his once again. Thoughts of physical intimacy immediately flooded back into her mind. She wanted those strong hands on her skin, caressing her breasts, stroking her sex. Before she could do anything to act on those thoughts, Dante jerked his hand away as if he’d been zapped. With a sigh, she twisted the knob and turned on the rift device.

  For a few seconds nothing happened, then static emitted from the speaker. Several moments later, a male voice spoke in the standard language from the other dimension. Tori quickly twisted the knob and switched off the device.

  “What’d he say?” Dante asked.

  “He asked for the password.” Tori shook her head. “The other couple of times I’ve turned it on he’s done the same thing.”

  “Same guy?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.” At his lopsided grin, she said, “Does it matter?”<
br />
  “Probably not.” He picked up the device and looked at where the two sides were attached. “Do you have a small Phillips-head screwdriver?”

  “Sure.” She got up and grabbed the toolbox from the laundry room. She handed him the screwdriver and watched as he worked the small screws loose. With slow care, he slid the battery off the back and then separated the two sides of the device’s casing. “I opened it up a couple of days ago and realized it looks much more like a computer than a radio, so I called Tobias and asked him for help.” She stared down at the inner workings of the device. “This all looks like a bunch of wires and bits of…bits.”

  Dante gave a low whistle upon seeing the inside of the gadget. “Would you look at that.” It did in fact look like a computer, but it was by far the smallest one he’d ever seen. He pointed to a tiny square that was no bigger than a quarter of an inch wide. “That’s probably the microprocessor, and these”—he put his finger above thin copper wires—“lead to that.” He looked at what appeared to be an external connector. Studying the sides of the casing, he mused, “Looks like a USB port.”

  “To hook up to what?” Tori leaned closer, a long tendril of hair escaping her upswept style. It curled against her cheek.

  Without thinking, he reached out and brushed it behind her ear, his fingers lingering on her soft skin. When her eyes closed as she leaned forward, he remembered his resolve not to get romantically involved with her and dropped his hand to the table. He cleared his throat and her eyes flew open. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  She heaved a sigh. Her look was one of exaggerated disappointment, though he saw the hurt she couldn’t hide. The gaiety in her eyes seemed forced. “You are such a tease, MacMillan. A fisherman…woman…gets tired of baiting the hook only to have the fish get away time after time. So be forewarned: One of these days I may not let you get away so easily.”