by Eve Langlais
Kelso had a violent temper. Her saving grace was he’d needed her alive.
But Rory might prefer her dead.
The worry and doubt and, yes, even the feelings of guilt ran in circles inside her head. All of her instincts told her to move on and forget him, forget about the piece of paper saying she was his wife.
But she couldn’t.
Is it because you can’t forget how he made you feel? After their initial rough start, she’d warmed to him. Warmed to his charm. Laughed at his absurd claims of having two fathers and a soap opera life. Their attraction was mutual and fierce. She’d tried to fight it, telling him she wasn’t the type of girl to indulge in sex lightly. But he’d pursued her, and perhaps it was the alcohol or drugs talking, but for some reason, she recalled him saying he’d known from the moment he smelled her—yes, smelled, not saw—that she was his mate.
His woman. And the way Rory said it, his expression alight with a primal wildness, intent and truthful, she’d believed it. Wanted it.
Who knew if it was real or imagined? All she could state with any degree of certainty was he’d left a mark on her. One that couldn’t be washed clean and hopefully didn’t leave human rabies. Who the hell bit hard enough to break skin? For that alone he deserved she take his damned car. At least when she left it at the truck stop, she’d placed a note with the key so it could be returned to him. At that point, she fled by foot then bus, making her way farther south, almost to the Mexican border.
She spent the night in a small town before hitching a ride, which was as dangerous as it sounded. Yet what choice did she have? There were no buses running to Galveston and she wasn’t spending any of her earnings on renting a car. She lucked out and made it alive. The burly female driver let her off at a gas station. Dani walked a few blocks until she reached a street with grand houses, closely built together, towering beach homes.
A street for rich folk.
She didn’t have the nerve to march up to his door and knock. What would she say? Hi, I’m your Vegas bride. I want a divorce. Yet, at the same time, she didn’t. Which made no sense. All Dani knew was meeting Rory, the parts she remembered at least, was fun. Exciting. Waking to his solid body? Not exactly horrifying. What would it be like to wake beside the same person every day?
To not live in fear. To not be alone. She used to remember how that felt, but nowadays, she only knew how to run and look over her shoulder.
She peered at the house. A solid house, old enough to have weathered storms. Like her old house, the one she shared with her daddy. A Craftsman style, with a wide porch and woodwork all over. Old floors that creaked when she walked and her bed on the second floor, with the ceiling slanted to match the pitch of the roof. The window seat was where her father snuggled her and read her stories at night.
Sniffle. It still seemed surreal to think he was gone. It didn’t help being on the run. She’d had little time to truly grieve. Because I don’t want to believe he’s gone.
A part of her held out the hope that Kelso had lied. That her father lived and was simply detained. Perhaps he was home right now. Wondering where she was.
I could go home. If only she could.
Impossible. Just like remaining married to a stranger would never work even if her heart raced a mile a minute at the prospect of seeing him again.
Don’t get confused. It would be easy to let the attraction overwhelm. It was too dangerous for them both. Kelso would never understand. He’d see her marriage to Rory as a direct challenge. He had very little control over his rage. He’d let the monster out to shred them as punishment.
If only you were still here, Daddy. However, the safety she’d come to depend on was gone. I’m on my own. Sure, he’d not always been there when she was growing up. His business trips kept him away more often than not, but she knew she could count on him.
With the loss of her rock, she faced the world alone.
A heavy sigh left her, and she turned from the house and shifted her backpack higher on her shoulder. She headed down the road, recalling the motel she’d seen on her way in. With her Vegas winnings, she had more than enough for a night. She could use a soft bed and a shower.
The several miles took her the better part of the afternoon to walk as the sun beat down on her head. She was a sweaty, parched mess by the time she arrived at the dingy hotel office, and in no mood to look for another hotel, even though the price tag was more than she liked to pay. She was trying to be stingy with her winnings. They wouldn’t last long, and she still hadn’t reached her final destination.
Once she checked in, the shower proved well worth it. Standing under the spray, she thirstily drank, her head tilted back, mouth wide open, letting it pour into her mouth. Only once the dryness left her tongue did she turn to let the spray soothe her tired and aching muscles.
The relief was short-lived. All that lovely water she drank? Promptly thrown up.
Her body rebelled and heaved every single drop. The spasms left her shivering and hunched on the floor of the tub, watching the mess swirl down the drain.
I’m so tired. Tired of running. Tired of hiding. It would just be so much easier to…
Nope. Dani didn’t need to hear her father’s voice—only cowards quit—to know that wasn’t the solution. She’d not done her best to escape so that she could give up now. She was free. And yes, things were hard right now, maybe even impossible seeming, but she would find a way to prevail.
She had to.
Wrapped in a towel, she made her way from the bathroom to the bed and collapsed. She fell asleep almost instantly, only to suddenly come awake at a noise.
What the heck? She couldn’t tell if her dream startled her, or something else.
Her eyes opened, and she saw only darkness. Her room on the backside of the motel didn’t have the glaring neon of the street to peek through the thick blackout curtains.
Rolling over, she noted the alarm clock on the nightstand showing the wee morning hour of three a.m. Way too early, and yet she was wide awake.
Great.
Some drunk must have made a noise, staggering back to his room after the bars closed. She snuggled deeper under the heavy brocade-style comforter, the air conditioning set to an arctic sixty-eight degrees, and inhaled. A faint hint of bleach scented the sheets, but she didn’t mind. She liked feeling clean.
Dani closed her eyes and did her best to find that dark hole of sleep that so often eluded her.
Snuffle.
Her eyes shot open at the odd sound. What was that?
She held her breath and listened. Only the hum of the air conditioner filled the air. Click. It shut off as it reached ambient temperature, and a white noise filled her ears. Which made it easy for her to hear it again, louder and more distinctive this time.
Snuffle. A noise that reminded her of a hound sniffing a trail. Or, in this case, an animal outside her door, nosing his way around.
Probably a raccoon. They loved cities with all their garbage treasures.
But did Texas have raccoons?
Snuffle.
The only thing she could be sure of was it wasn’t a bear. Bears didn’t roam the city. But what of wild cats that weren’t really cats?
Oh my God. Did Kelso and his crew find me?
The very idea had her slipping out of bed, still naked, the towel under the sheets a lumpy, damp mess.
In the dark, she fumbled around for her clothes. Her fingers groped and found her bag. She quickly pulled out items and began slipping them on in the dark. Putting on her pants, she hit the edge of the dresser, causing it to rap against the wall, the noise sharp in the silence. She paused, one leg in her pants, one leg out, and, once again, held her breath.
Did someone hear? She strained to listen. Heard nothing.
A noisy gust of air left her.
I’m being silly. Kelso isn’t outside. How could he find her? She’d been careful about not leaving a trail. Hadn’t used any cards that could be traced. Never used her real name.
Except for that wedding. For some reason, she’d used all her real information when filling in the license information.
But surely that wasn’t common knowledge? Then again, with the Internet nowadays, who could tell?
It’s not Kelso. And even if it were, she was in a locked room. He couldn’t get in, and if he tried, why, she had a phone on the nightstand. She’d call nine-one-one. Or animal control.
With that thought bolstering her, she flipped on the lamp by the bed, blinking in the sudden bright light.
The room still looked the same, done in a teal color scheme with dark, woven furniture meant to feel beachy but instead looked cheap and worn.
She finished pulling on her pants. Then she found her bra and hooked it on. A T-shirt next. She had her shoes in hand when she heard the weird snuffling noise again. She almost lost control of her bladder when she saw the handle to the door into her room turning.
The door rattled, but held. Not an animal outside after all.
She dove over the bed and reached for the phone. Dead air met her ear. Did she need to dial a number for an outside line? She jabbed the number nine. Then the pound symbol followed by every single damned number to try and get a dial tone. Nothing. Not even the zero worked to connect her to the front desk. The door shook again.
“Go away!” she muttered. Then louder. “Go away. I called the cops. They’ll be here any second.”
No one replied. The door stopped rattling.
Fear kept her heart pounding. Would the person on the other side of the portal leave? Perhaps they’d stumbled to the wrong room and even now went off in search of the right one.
She didn’t dare check out of the window to see. She felt better once she’d wrenched the second unlit lamp off the nightstand, a hard yank pulling the plug free from the wall. Dani clasped it with sweaty fingers.
She faced the door and called herself all kinds of paranoid, especially since she heard nothing. It was probably a drunken guest who’d gotten the wrong room. Or a transient looking for a place to sleep. Or a psycho murdering bastard. All better scenarios than Kelso, who wanted to keep her alive and his prisoner forever.
As nothing happened and no more attempts to open the door were made, she relaxed. The arm holding the lamp dropped. She exhaled.
Then almost choked on a scream as the door was kicked in!
Chapter 6
The scent caught Rory as he brought down the cans to the curb. Usually he wasn’t the one putting out the garbage, but his cleaning lady had taken the day off due to an unexpected family emergency. Even then, one might wonder why he chose the wee hours to do this particular chore. Surely the morning would have been better suited; however, he’d yet to go to bed, as he’d spent most of the night chasing down false leads online looking for his vanished bride.
All dead ends. Despite having a name and even a face, he couldn’t find her. Not a single trace, which led him to being awake at three a.m.-ish, tired, and in no mood to get up in a couple of hours just to put out a few cans.
Setting them on the curb, he paused for a moment. More like his wolf told him to stand still.
What is it?
He didn’t get a reply, more of an impression.
I smell something. Someone had been here and left a lingering trace.
He turned his head left and right, looking at the dark shadows, even as he knew he wouldn’t see anyone. The scent trail was old. Long gone and decidedly familiar.
Follow it. He didn’t question his wolf’s demand, his fatigue forgotten as he followed the faint scent trace—and he meant faint. At times he lost it entirely, the soft, elusive fragrance like a misty remembrance. A tendril he would have sworn only he could see.
Twice he almost turned around, thinking he’d finally lost it, but then he’d catch it again. A scuff of the scent along a brick wall. A hint in the air going around the corner.
He told himself that he followed a smell and not a strange tugging that had his feet marching without his direction. And yet, that was a lie.
It was as if an inaudible call directed him, telling him where to go. A strange sensation to be sure and nothing he’d ever experienced before.
He covered the miles between his house and his destination quickly. His pace rapid, his stride long. Soon he stood before a motel that doubtfully ever saw better days. The peachy pink stucco was everything he hated about tourism on the coast. Not his type of place to stay. And none of his friends would either.
Yet, he found himself here. The question being, why? Who did he follow? Had he met them before and forgotten? Perhaps during a drunken binge. A recent Vegas trip came to mind.
A glance at the front office showed it dark. The sign on the door flipped to Closed. The knob not budging, the place locked tight when he yanked.
Yet he didn’t turn around and go home. The scent—and that tickling feeling—was stronger here. Whoever he followed had gone into the office and a person only did that for one reason.
He surveyed the darkened block of rooms. Which one had they rented?
And why did he damned well feel like he knew that scent? Who did it belong to? The answer taunted him, teased his wolf, who wouldn’t tell him either. His beast simply urged him to keep following.
Despite it looking suspicious, he walked across the front row of the building, sniffing the air by each unit, waiting to get hit by the scent of his prey.
Yes, prey. A wolf didn’t follow things out of curiosity like a cat.
Nothing jumped out at him along the bottom floor of the motel. A quick climb up the stairs to the second story and another walk across netted him nothing as well.
He grabbed hold of the railing and leaned on it. Surely the trail didn’t just end here. Perhaps the one he followed had gotten into a car and left. In which case, he wasted his time.
Go home. There was nothing here. His wolf had led him on a wild goose chase—except, this time, there was no goose with flying feathers turning around to attack a hungry wolf cub who wanted to bring home some dinner.
The stairs shuddered as he took them down to the first level two at a time. He hit the parking lot, and he might have kept on going except…the asphalt drive curved around the building. Having never been here before, he didn’t know if it was for delivery, more parking, or more rooms.
Go look.
He sighed at his wolf’s demands.
You do know we could be at home sleeping in our bed instead of chasing some interesting smell several miles from home.
His wolf didn’t say it with words; however, the term “stop bitching, princess” did come to mind, given the disdain his beast oozed.
Knowing he’d never hear the end of it if he didn’t, Rory rounded the corner of the motel and was hit by it right away. The scent. Stronger than ever. And not alone. There was something else. Something that shouldn’t be here. Someone in my territory.
His hackles rose. Now he should note that, technically, this was his father’s area—stepdaddy to be correct—as pack alpha for the wolves. But as his son, albeit one who wasn’t speaking to him right now, Rory would inherit—once he beat his father in a one-on-one match for dominance.
It was how things worked. One didn’t simply inherit a pack. One had to earn it by the might of his teeth and claws.
The fact that he wasn’t a natural-born son of the pack leader wouldn’t matter. His mother was wolf. It gave Rory every right to rule if he so chose. And, as a wolf, he had a duty to his pack to find out who dared invade their territory without permission.
He didn’t need to sniff to notice the door partially ajar, the crack of light from within lighting the edges of it. The splintered jamb let him know not all was right with this scenario. A fact reinforced when the door suddenly swung open and a bulky figure appeared, made even larger by the bundle slung over his shoulder.
Rory took note of the interloper’s appearance. Tall, wide, and hairy, his whiskers in need of a good barber. But personal hygiene aside, the large man s
melled feline, which naturally caused Rory’s lip to curl.
“Who are you?” he barked—with real words and not a woof-woof.
“None of your business, asshole.”
“Actually, it is my business. You’re on pack land without permission.”
“Fuck you and your permission, puppy chow. I’ve got what I came for. Now get the fuck out of my way, eh?”
A Canadian feline? This got more interesting by the minute, especially when he noted the bundle slung over the other man’s shoulder was actually a body wrapped in an ugly comforter. “What have you got there?” Rory asked.
“None of your fucking business, and if you keep yapping at me about it, I’m gonna show you why it’s a bad idea to get in my way. Now move.”
Rory stood squarely in his path. “As son of the pack leader for this area, I am making this my business.”
“You’re Beauchamp’s son?” The lip curled. “Doubtful, seeing as how he gave my boss permission for me and the boys to conduct our business.”
His father had sanctioned a kidnapping? How interesting. “Who is that you’re abducting?” Because, despite the blanket wrapped around the shape, something smelled good.
Mine.
His wolf claimed it without seeing it. The last time that happened…
It couldn’t be. The coincidence would be too much, but now that the idea had entered his mind and taken root, it wouldn’t leave.
“The girl is none of your business,” said Cie, short for Canadian Idiot, Eh.
Cie was kidnapping a girl? Ah, fuck. Walk away. Don’t look back. Let her handle her own trouble. Don’t get involved.
Rory’s tarnished inner gentleman polished off his dusty pride and held his ground. “Hand the woman over.”
“Like fuck.”
Predictable, which meant he had to at least give him fair warning. “Listen, you can either do this the easy way or the hard way. But either way, you are not leaving with the girl.”