Brock gritted his teeth and gripped the mug harder. “I didn’t mean to cause a ruckus. I shouldn’t have come here,” was all he was able to manage. Partly because he’d never seen anyone shut Derrick up so effectively, and partly because he damn well shouldn’t have come here.
Martine snorted, settling back on the couch. “You didn’t. Cave dweller did. Now forget him and listen to me. So, you said you were here on Brock’s behalf? Where is he? Is he okay? I’ve thought a lot about him since I met Derrick and his family. Everyone always speaks so highly of him, even though his departure created so much speculation. I’ve entertained plenty of my own theories, in light of the kind words everyone uses in reference to Brock. Like maybe he’s been in a coma all this time? Or held hostage by some paranormal terrorist group. I know that sounds crazy, but I just know there’s a good explanation for his disappearance…”
As Martine rambled on, her words becoming a blur of sounds, Brock was hit square in the face with the ramifications of him showing up on Derrick’s doorstep. Slugged in the kidneys with the damage, the pain left in his wake.
And it all became too much. This had been an enormous mistake. He could have found out if the deal with Lorelei really had gone wrong some other way.
Maybe by going to Derrick’s bar and chatting up the locals. Or sneaking around like some skulking loner just passing through Cedar Glen with his ratty duffel bag and errant pocket fairy, listening in while crouched beneath Faith’s or Max’s windows. Anything but this.
“Eli?”
His head popped up and Martine came back into focus. “Um, sorry. You were saying?”
Martine cocked her head to the left and pursed her lips. “I asked how you know Brock and why you’re here in Cedar Glen?”
Winston snickered, the sound muffled by the fabric of Brock’s shirt, before he said, You do know there’s only one thing to do when caught in the glare of inquiring headlights, don’t you, Eli Kanye Winston?
My Bambi impression? Brock asked.
No, doofus. Think “we have ways of makink you talk!” Winston reminded in his best Hogan’s Heroes Colonel Klink impression. You know. Like what to do in case of intense interrogation? Like the stunt we pulled when we were on our way here and that drunken homeless guy in Santa Fe thought you stole his light saber? Think the possum maneuver, brainiac.
Oh, yeah.
“Eli?” Martine repeated, her eyes concerned.
Brock instantly let his face go slack, the coffee mug slipping from his fingers and crashing to the floor. Of course he’d replace it, but for now it was the only way to get out from under the eagle eyes of Derrick and Martine and their intrusive scrutiny.
He let his body slither down off the chair shortly behind the coffee mug, dropping to the floor and closing his eyes just as Martine was rushing from the couch with a yelp to Derrick to help him before he cracked his head on the coffee table.
When all else failed, when you owed money to someone you couldn’t pay, when you were in a tight corner—roll over and play dead.
Winston pinched his chest. Nice job, Kanye. Or should I say kudos, Eli Kanye Winston, aka Brock Adams. Better duck, ’cuz they’re going to lob Oscars at you for that performance. Now about that shitty reality TV you’ve been watching…
Chapter Two
Faith Adams propped her son Derrick’s door open with one foot while juggling the stack of gifts he and Martine had received from the townspeople of Cedar Glen for their mate, grunting as she kicked the door shut on the cold.
She paused when silence greeted her. Craning her neck and scanning the room, she called, “Derrick? Martine? Yoo-hoo, you guys home?” They had said today was a green light for dropping by, hadn’t they?
With a gasp for breath, she made her way to the living room and dropped the packages on the coffee table, flopping down on the big chair, exhausted from the run over here. God, she was out of shape.
Leaning back, she closed her eyes and sent up her millionth prayer of gratitude that Derrick had managed to survive the night of his mating, and that he’d found a mate as perfect as Martine. She loved Martine. She loved that somehow she’d managed to tame Derrick and convince him happily ever after existed. She loved that her son was so happy.
Happier than he’d been in a very long time.
She wiggled her nose as she burrowed into the puffy chair and sniffed the air…
Faith cocked her head, then shook it.
No.
She was crazy. All this mating and happiness had somehow caught her up in its whirlwind of love and romance and she was behaving like a melancholy idiot.
No, she noted, as she turned her head and took another, deeper whiff. She wasn’t crazy. That was definitely the scent Brock used to wear—woodsy, clean.
Tears stung her eyes, tears she immediately gave some hell as she swiped them away.
That smell was not Brock’s cologne, and even if it was, a million other men probably wore it. It wasn’t an uncommon scent.
But the other scent—the human one mixed with the cologne? Now that was odd. Did Derrick have some human friends over recently? Did he have any human friends at all?
She took a deep breath when her phone rang, and gripped one arm of the chair while reaching into her jacket pocket to pull out her cell, finding it was one of her closest, oldest friends in Cedar Glen.
Before she could even say hello, Cass began talking. “Don’t say a word, just listen,” she ordered in her sultry voice.
“If it’s about Gilroy Jones and his dowry of sheep, I’m out, Cass McCormack.”
Cass’s laughter tinkled in her ear. “Oh, stop. You behave as if you don’t remember the old days, when an offer of sheep for your hand in marriage was pretty enticing indeed.”
Her girlfriends were never going to stop razzing her about Gilroy Jones, hat in hand (literally), ringing her doorbell during a girls’ margarita and burrito night two weeks ago, asking her to marry him.
She sighed in exasperation into the phone. “But we don’t live back in those days anymore, Cass. We live in the twenty-first century. We even have this crazy thing called electricity nowadays. I’m not going out with a man who wants to pay my family in sheep for my hand in marriage. I don’t care if he does still have all his original teeth. I’d rather farm rutabagas.”
Cass snorted on her chuckle. “I can’t even believe you wouldn’t look at that as an asset, Faith. Pickins are slim here in Cedar Glen, Lamb Chop. A full set of teeth on a man as old as Gilroy is a mighty fine asset.”
Settling back into the chair, preparing her defense against taking up dating, she smelled Brock again.
No. She was just paranoid. Paranoid and raw from these last few months and the precariousness of her sons’ lives hanging in the balance. Raw because she’d had to face their possible deaths alone instead of with Brock by her side, the way they’d always planned when that awful time in her children’s lives arrived.
“I’m not on the market, Cass.”
“Why won’t you be on the market, Faith? The elders say you can officially find a new mate. Brock’s been gone for five years, sweetie, and that’s just the truth. I hate to see you pine like this. You’re vital and alive and dwelling on the absence of a man who left you and his family with no word since.”
Dwelling. That was fair. She was doing that—she was doing too much of it lately and trying to hide it from everyone. But there were times when she was wide awake in the middle of the night, when she allowed all the fears she swallowed every day to just eat her alive—to wrap their tiny tentacles around her nerves and squeeze until she shook.
Those were the times when her stalwart faith Brock would come back someday wavered the most, swaying like a rocking ship in rough waters. When she had to cling to it like a life raft in order to save face in front of her children.
“Faith? You still there? Or are you sulking because I’m telling you the truth? You do that. You sulk and get quiet when we try to tell you it might be time to move on.”
Never. She’d never allow anyone to see her falter. Not even her close circle of friends. Brock had been the best mate and the best father she’d ever known. Not a chance her children would ever have any other impression, at least not from her—despite her recent misgivings.
Faith closed her eyes and inhaled a biting retort. “I’m not sulking. I’m absorbing this conversation. One we’ve had a million times in the last couple of years. Brock was a good man. I’m not going to shit all over his memory by dating the first man who asks.”
She’d made a promise to herself that Brock’s leaving wouldn’t sway her belief in the legacy he’d left behind. She would not be bitter. She wouldn’t become one of those angry, man-hating women who cursed the opposite gender at every turn. Women who turned into rabid, angry feminist Nazis who grew so mired in their hatred, they twisted everything any male said until it was almost unrecognizable.
Yes, Brock had left to go on some curse-breaking mission he’d shared next to nothing about with her, and he’d hurt Derrick the most when he’d done it, but it didn’t change who he’d been when he’d run their pack. He’d been honest, kind…sometimes rigid and unbending like Derrick, and sometimes quieter and easygoing like Max.
He’d been a good pack alpha. The quintessential diplomat—no one would ever say otherwise as long as she was still able to tell them otherwise.
The silence over the line bit her eardrums before Cass said, “That’s not what I’m suggesting you to do at all, Faith, and you damn well know it. Don’t twist this to suit your own guilt about Brock. Moving on isn’t shitting on him. It’s moving forward.”
She clenched her eyes shut. Damn it all. Cass was right. She was defending an emotion no one was accusing her of having. No one but herself.
“I’m sorry. I’m touchy after the last few weeks with Max and Derrick. I guess I just missed Brock’s support and it’s showing.”
And she missed him with a ferocious ache. The mere mention of her dating, or whatever nonsense her daughters Avery and Nat kept coming up with to help her move on, made her want to crawl into her and Brock’s big bed, drag the covers over her head and never leave it.
They’d given her subtle nudges this last year about maybe moving on, but they’d picked up the pace since reading a letter from council she’d neither asked for nor inquired about, declaring she was officially considered a widow by pack standards and free to do as she pleased romantically.
She didn’t want to date. She didn’t want to make small talk. She didn’t want to have to get to know another man the way she knew Brock.
Could any man ever know her as well as Brock knew her anyway?
When Cass didn’t respond, Faith sighed. “I’m projecting my feelings onto all of you when you just want to help, and I’m sorry. Forgive me?”
Cass’s chuckle was soft. “Forgiven, and while I’m forgiving you, I’m running out the door. I have an important date with the dentist and a crown.”
“But wait, didn’t you have something to tell me?”
“Nothing that can’t wait, honey. Chat soon. Bye!”
The brightly wrapped packages came back into focus under a weak ray of sun as she clicked off her phone, shining in from the opposite windows, reminding her of when Derrick and Brock had built this house together and how much she wished he could see Derrick had filled it with love.
Then she realized she was really being maudlin today—reliving things better left alone. Brock was gone. She was here and growing more pathetic by the second for hanging on to his memory.
And no one would blame her for moving on. No one would likely even stop her. Brock had been gone long enough for the pack to consider a divorce. But…
But what?
But she wasn’t ready to give up hope. Yet she knew it was ridiculous to cling. She knew her pack talked about her situation all the time, which was part of the reason she put on such an outward show of unwavering calm.
Because the crazy she harbored on the inside—the worry, the anguish—could never be seen on the outside or they’d make her seek help. So she smiled. She pretended. She fought her anger with Brock daily, wherein she had entire conversations with him in her mind about exactly how angry she was that there hadn’t been a word from him in five solid years.
Not one.
He’d gone off to try to find a way to break the damn centuries-old curse their boys were under—and any male werepups the boys might have in the future—after becoming so eaten up with worry that neither of them could sleep at night.
Then he’d disappeared, and he’d left all of the worry to her. Every last heart-pounding, gut-clenching bit of worry, she’d shouldered alone, without even so much as a static-filled late-night phone call.
She’d known him almost better than she knew herself. They’d been married for centuries. And the Brock she knew didn’t just up and walk out. Not after everything they’d accomplished here in Cedar Glen.
There was a reason he’d done it. She knew damn well there was…but the reason grew dimmer with each passing day, making the anger shinier, more defined in its color and texture. And that would only make it harder to focus on keeping Brock’s legacy alive and in good stead.
Gifts, Faith. You came to drop off gifts and go back home, remember? You told Martine you’d drop them off today. Now knock it the hell off and get busy.
She slipped off the chair and rearranged the messy pile of gifts, grabbing a discarded T-shirt from the floor and making a face.
Poor Martine. Derrick was still leaving his clothes on the floor. The last thing Martine needed to worry about at this point was laundry. She had a relationship to work on, and Faith wanted her transition into the pack to be as smooth as possible.
Whatever concerns or worries Martine might have, she wanted to at least lighten her load with the trivial things like washing clothes.
Throwing the T-shirt over her shoulder, Faith made her way to Derrick’s laundry room to drop his shirt off in the basket. Then she had really pressing things to do—like plan the next five hundred years of her spinster life while she decided what to make for dinner.
God, she was as pathetic as pathetic got.
Head down, she plodded along the hallway, lost in her thoughts—until she noticed the wet footprints on the floor.
Her senses went on high alert when she heard a noise, but as she passed Derrick and Martine’s bedroom to find the door cocked partway open and the room empty, her defenses went up.
Faith’s eyes narrowed at the rustle of sound coming from the laundry room. Had someone broken in?
Well, someone was in for a surprise. Pausing at the doorway, she heard the slap of bare feet and took a quick peek, catching only a glimpse of sandy-brown hair.
Sandy-brown hair that absolutely did not belong to her son.
She decided the element of surprise was best in order to catch whoever this was off guard.
Knocking the door open with her foot, she growled, letting out a low, throaty warning before taking a running leap and pouncing on the wide back of the intruder.
The completely naked intruder.
* * *
Faith forced her eyes to the far wall while the no longer totally naked intruder readjusted the towel now wrapped snugly around his lean waist. “And you are again?”
He cleared his throat, pulling one of the pillows from the couch to his chest. “Eli. Eli Kanye Winston.”
Eli Kanye Winston with the wide, thickly muscled back and matching thighs.
“And you’re a guest of Derrick and Martine’s?” she squeaked, turning her gaze to his feet. He had nice feet. Not overly large, sort of square, and his toenails were in good shape, too. Overall, nice feet.
“Um, an unexpected one. I’m leaving today.”
Finally, she forced her eyes to meet his, skipping his mid-section so quickly, it became a blur of bronzed muscle and skin. “Oh, you’re bleeding! I’m so sorry. You just caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting anyone else in the house and
…” And she’d clocked him but good in the jaw, scraping his lower lip with her wedding ring.
Oh, Jesus.
He nodded, pushed his wet, a-little-too-long-for-her-taste hair back from his face and smiled. A warm, almost-as-though-he-knew-her smile. One that stabbed her square in the heart, making it jump in her chest. “You have a good right hook. With a little training, you could be cage fighting in no time.”
She giggled, her face flushing hot. And then she caught herself because she sounded like a flirtatious schoolgirl. One who’d twirl her hair and pop her pink watermelon-flavored bubble gum while she did that smoldering eye thing her daughters did so well.
Making a break for the kitchen, she rambled as she went. “Let me get a wet towel for you and we’ll get you cleaned up. Really, I’m so sorry. I was supposed to drop some things off to Martine and Derrick and when they weren’t home, I was just cleaning up after my very messy son so his new mate…er, fiancée wouldn’t want to pitch herself from the roof of this very house because he can be such a slob and there you were—”
“It’s all right. I understand. You were just looking out for your son. Taking a shot at some strange guy in your son and daughter-in-law’s laundry room is exactly how I would have handled it. If I had a son and a daughter-in-law, that is,” he said from behind her where she stood at the kitchen sink. His voice—low, rumbly, silky and easy—slid along her nerve-endings, creating a delicious frisson of heat.
Faith took a deep breath and grabbed the kitchen towel, running it under some water before flipping the tap off and turning around to find herself but an inch or two from Eli.
Not-quite-naked Eli.
His broad chest was so smooth, the skin stretched tightly over his pecs, his nipples dusky and rigid from wearing nothing but a towel.
She swallowed hard. Wow, he was hot.
Like pass-the-fan-please hot. Nay. Pass two—maybe one of those industrial strength ones.
Gotta Have Faith Page 2