by Unknown
“I know. That’s what I’ve been reading for the entire day. The Lupine shouldn’t be able to contract any kind of serious infection. But I can’t think of another explanation for her white cell count. It’s astronomical, even for an Other. And her stitches and surgical incision look good, but they’re not healing much faster than I’d expect in a normal wolf.” Josie shook her head and stabbed her mashed potatoes with unnecessary force. “There’s something going on there. I just haven’t been able to figure out what it is.”
“You will.”
She felt the Feline’s eyes on her and looked up. His mouth quirked as he glanced from her face to her plate. Following his gaze down, Josie realized she hadn’t taken more than a bite of her food. Mostly, she’d just hacked it into little bits and pushed it around her plate until it resembled a multicolored mess. She flushed.
At her feet, Bruce moaned at the tragic waste.
“Thank you for bringing dinner, Sheriff Pace,” she said hastily, feeling her cheeks flush with color. “I guess I’m more distracted than I am hungry. How much do I owe you? I can’t let you pay for my little art project here, since I didn’t even have the decency to enjoy it.”
“Eli,” he corrected, his cajoling even as he watched her face with a kind of subtle intent. “And sure you can, since I invited myself to join you for it.”
“Thank you. Eli,” she acknowledged, slipping a bite of meat loaf under the table to a heartily approving Bruce. It gave her an excuse to look away until the butterflies in her stomach settled down. “Frankly, though, I think you’re charging yourself too high a penalty. Trust me when I tell you I’ve dined with less pleasant companions. Of course, most of those have been patients . . .”
He grinned. “Well, I’m glad to know I rate higher than a sick Pekingese, anyway.”
“Oh, much. First of all, unlike most Pekingese, you’re not a mouth breather, and that kind of thing always counts with me.”
His grin turned into a laugh, and raw electricity danced along her skin until she had to clench every muscle in her body to prevent a visible shiver from coursing through her. So much for calming those butterflies. This man made her react in ways she hadn’t since she was a teenager.
Or even when she’d been a teenager, come to think of it.
“So, Dr. Barrett,” he said, bracing his forearms on the table and leaning toward her. “Tell me, what made you decide to become a veterinarian?”
“Please. Just Josie,” she said, jumping to her feet before she could give into the urge to meet him halfway across the expanse of surgical steel and see if her assumption that kissing him would send her into immediate cardiac arrest was accurate. “I’m going to grab myself a soda. Can I get you one? I’d offer you a beer, but I don’t keep any in the clinic.”
He smiled, a crooked, knowing sort of grin that only served to make her walk toward the fridge even faster.
“Soda is fine,” he said, “Josie.”
The way his voice dropped on those last two syllables almost made her drop the soft drinks. As it was, she wasn’t sure her walk back to the exam table would have passed a sobriety field test. His company was going to her head faster than the beer she hadn’t drunk.
“I’m not all that sure I had a choice,” she continued, setting both cans on the table and sinking back into her seat. “About being a vet, I mean. My father started this practice back in 1972, so I literally grew up in a vet’s office. Not that my dad pushed me into it—I think he secretly hoped I’d go into human medicine so I could make decent money one day—but it just always fascinated me. I used to practice wound dressing on my teddy bears and apparently had to be earnestly talked out of performing exploratory surgery on the neighbor’s cat to find out why it wouldn’t stop meowing one summer when I was seven.”
Josie knew she was babbling, but at the moment babbling seemed safer for her than any of the alternatives she could think of.
“It turned out the cat was in heat, which I didn’t really understand, but my mom said the only way to distract me was to let me help out in Dad’s office.” She grinned sheepishly as Eli chuckled. “Not with surgery, of course, but with cleaning the kennels and the exam rooms and alphabetizing charts. Things like that.”
“I’m impressed. Not many people know what they want so young and manage to go after it.”
“I like to say I was determined. My mom usually changes that to obsessed.” She looked up and met his eyes, and she could have sworn she saw a reflection of her own hyper-awareness mirrored there. She hurriedly took a sip of her cola. “What about you? Did you not grow up wanting to be a cop?”
Eli shook his head. “I wanted to be a professional hockey player. Or an astronaut. And I had a brief desire to be in a rock band, but that was mostly because Mary Pressman had a thing for guys with long hair and guitars.”
Josie fed Bruce more meat loaf and smiled. “Somehow I have trouble picturing you as the long-haired type.”
He ran a hand over his closely cropped hair, the length almost militarily severe. “Yeah, so did my mom. Mary ended up dating Eric Bosky, until he went to juvie for breaking and entering.”
“Poor Mary. But what killed your dreams of sports glory and space exploration?”
“Well, I gave up hockey because I realized I really sucked at it. I was fast and coordinated, but I had no real sense of the game. At least that’s what my coach told me right before he cut me from the team. And I abandoned the astronaut idea when I had my first change.”
Josie blinked in surprise. “Why? Are there no Others working at NASA? I find that hard to believe.”
“There are Others in the space program, sure,” he said, slipping her dog a bite of his own dinner. “But you won’t find them being sent up. Everyone is afraid of what might happen if they got trapped up there over a full moon.”
“But that whole full moon thing is a crock. Even before the Unveiling, everyone in Stone Creek knew that the moon can’t force shifters to change their forms. Sure, there are Lupines and Others out there who like to take advantage of a nice, well-lit night to do some hunting, but it’s not like something out of a Lon Cheney movie.”
Eli toasted her with his soda can. “Ah, but the people of Stone Creek have always been an enlightened bunch when it comes to the Others. Most of the human population still doesn’t really understand that much about us.”
“I so don’t get that. Is that why you took the sheriff’s job out here, though? Because you’d heard we were a haven for the things that go bump in the night?”
“Not really. I just wanted a change of pace. I’d started to feel a little crowded in Seattle. The work was exciting, but it’s possible to have a little too much excitement, you know?” He finished the last bite of his mashed potatoes and speared a broccoli floret. “I was ready for something different, and I knew I wanted to be somewhere more rural. More like where I grew up. Though I will admit that the idea of living in a place where the human and Other populations were so well integrated did have a certain amount of appeal.”
Josie pushed her plate away and picked up her drink. “That’s our claim to fame, all right.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say it’s the town’s only appeal.”
“No?”
Eli held her gaze and shook his head, his green eyes glittering brightly. “Not by a long shot.”
She leaned forward slightly, as if drawn to him by some magnetic force, which she supposed was as good an explanation as any. How else could she describe the attraction that seemed to be building between them?
CHAPTER SIX
Eli watched the object of his fascination sway toward him and bit back the urge to reach out and haul her across the table. For most of the last twenty-four hours, he might have wondered whether Josie Barrett felt even a fraction of the attraction for him that he had developed for her; but if that slightly dazed look in her eyes and the smell of her sweet warm skin were any indication, his question had just been answered with a resounding yes.
H
e might actually have thrown caution to the wind and eaten her alive if her dog hadn’t chosen just that moment to switch his allegiance from his clearly neglectful mistress and drape his huge, drooling muzzle on the thigh of Eli’s jeans. Clamping his teeth together, Eli pulled back and sent the mutt an only half-joking glare. Somehow, the feel of canine saliva soaking through denim proved to be a real mood killer.
“What?” he growled at the dog, hoping Josie would assume he was teasing. “Are you trying to tell us it’s time for dessert?”
The veterinarian blushed scarlet at that question and reached for the dog’s collar. At least, he hoped it was from the question and the knowledge that each of them would like very much to have the other for dessert, instead of from the embarrassment of having a hungry hound assault her guest.
“Bruce!” she scolded sharply, grabbing her half-eaten dinner with her free hand and hauling both food and dog toward another room of the clinic. “You know better than to beg from company. Come on. You can finish my leftovers in the file room, if you can’t be trusted to behave yourself.”
Frankly, the only one whose behavior Eli distrusted at the moment was himself. He’d been about three seconds away from ravishing the pretty veterinarian on her own exam table, so what did that say about his company manners?
Josie returned a second later, already apologizing. “I’m so sorry about that. He doesn’t normally do that to people he’s just met, but I’m afraid that when it comes to Laura Beth’s meat loaf, the idiot just has no self-control.”
“Don’t worry about it. I understand about the futility of resisting that kind of temptation.”
Believe me, I know.
“I should thank you again for dinner,” she said, beginning to fuss with the debris of their meal, balling up napkins and dropping them into the discarded take-out sack. “It was very nice of you to bring it over so late.”
“Is that what it was?” Eli growled. He crushed his empty soda can in his fist and tossed it into the recycling bin under the counter. “I didn’t buy you dinner to be nice.”
Josie blinked up at him, her eyes wide and wary. “You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because I wanted to. I wanted to get to know you better. I still do.”
She didn’t say anything at first, just kept her eyes fixed on the shiny surface of the exam table as she sprayed it with disinfectant and wiped it with a wad of paper towels. Eli almost found himself wishing for the first time that he were a vampire, so he could get an idea of what was going on in that head of hers.
“There’s really not that much to know,” she said finally. “I’ve already told you most of it. I grew up here in Stone Creek. I became a vet. I took over my dad’s practice when he and my mother decided to retire to Arizona. My older sister lives there, too, with her husband and two kids. And you already met Bruce. That’s pretty much the full story.”
They bumped shoulders when each of them reached to deposit their litter in the trash bin at the same time. Josie seemed to withdraw from the brief contact, and that pissed Eli off. He didn’t want her trying to get away from him.
He didn’t want her getting away.
Maybe he would have reacted differently if he hadn’t seen that he intrigued her just as much as she did him. He could read it in her eyes, in the rhythm of her breath. And he could smell it on her skin. This was a mutual fascination they had going between them, and he refused to let her ignore it.
Grabbing her gently by the elbow, Eli turned Josie to face him and softly tightened his grip. She lifted her chin, her gaze skittering away from his to settle somewhere in the vicinity of his left earlobe.
“That’s not what I meant, Josie,” he murmured quietly, but her shivers told him she heard. It wasn’t that cold inside the clinic, no matter how chilly it had gotten outside. He reached up and tucked an escaped strand of shiny dark hair behind her ear, and the shivering intensified. “I think you know that.”
She forced out half a chuckle. “Wow, wouldn’t I sound like an arrogant so-and-so if I said yes to that.”
“I don’t think you’d sound arrogant. Just honest. You want to get to know me, too. Don’t you?”
He could see that she wanted to deny it. He saw the impulse in her clear dark eyes, saw her wrestle with it, and saw when her conscience won out. She wouldn’t lie to him, not about that.
“I . . . maybe,” she admitted softly. “It’s weird. I mean, we must have bumped into each other a hundred times over the last three years. Stone Creek just isn’t that big. So how is it that this is happening now?”
“I don’t know. I’m just glad it is.”
A soft breath sighed from the softness of her mouth, and Eli could almost feel it part for him as he leaned down and brushed his lips against hers for the length of a stuttering heartbeat.
She tasted better than the scone he’d devoured that morning along with his coffee. Sweeter and richer and altogether more intoxicating. But what struck Eli wasn’t the way she tasted, but the way she made him feel. Just that gentle touch of lip to lip, skin to skin, made his heart pound as if he’d sprinted up the side of a mountain. His head spun, and his fingers literally itched and flexed with the need to touch her. It didn’t matter where. He just needed every bit of connection he could forge between them. He needed to convince himself that she was real.
He stepped closer. There was still space between them—he didn’t want to scare her off—but now he could feel the heat of her all along his front from his collarbone to his toes. He could feel the pulse of energy between them, and even without body-to-body contact the closeness soothed him. It calmed his restlessness even as it ramped up his desire, and he marveled that one woman could cause such conflicting reactions within him. She aroused and calmed, excited and comforted at the same time. He’d never experienced anything like it.
Never experienced anything like her.
Without thought he lifted a hand, cupped it along the curve of her jaw. His thumb swept across the baby-soft skin of her cheek, and his mouth swallowed the soft hitch of her breath as she shivered in response. She felt as much as he did; Eli could sense it.
The animal inside him urged him to grab her, pull her closer, devour her and assuage his hunger. It roared and snapped inside him, made his throat clench and his muscles tighten. But Eli instinctively knew that Josie meant too much for that; she was too important. He needed patience, needed to court her.
If only that could be done as easily as if she were Feline, too. If Josie were another Feline, he would find her in their cat forms, call to her from the dim cover of the trees. He would take her out on the hunt and trail her across the rocky hilltops, help her bring down their quarry and leave her the choicest bites.
That sounded so much simpler to him than the alternative. Since she was human, he’d have to settle for dinners and movies and conversations. She would expect them to talk and share their thoughts, compare opinions, and learn each other’s tastes.
Damn, why did humans have to make everything so complicated?
Of course, if there would be more of these kisses, Eli supposed he could take the strain of it.
His other arm reached out, intent on wrapping around her, pulling her closer. He wanted her leaning against him until he could feel her weight and the soft, feminine curves of her body. He wanted to see how they fit together, even if it meant he would get no sleep tonight because he’d be imagining the fit unencumbered by clothes or inhibitions.
The sound of heavy knocking on the clinic’s back door alerted him to an intruder.
Instinctively, he tore away from the embrace and turned, placing himself between Josie and any potential threat. For a moment he remained all snarling animal, tensed and waiting for an attack, his eyes scanning the horizon for threats. Then the door hinges creaked, and he caught the familiar scent of Lupine. Blinking away a thin haze of his animal self, Eli refocused on the sight of a short, sturdy male form peering around the
edge of the heavy, metal security door.
“Pace, are you in there?” the man asked, and the sound of his voice let Eli put a name to the still-shadowed face.
“It’s me, Bill.” He took a casual step forward and gritted his teeth against the loss of Josie’s warmth. It didn’t matter that he was plenty hot on his own; he wanted to keep touching her. “What can I do for you?”
Bill Evans stepped inside the clinic and frowned anxiously up at him. “I just got a call from the Alpha. He said you found an injured Lupine last night and brought her back to town. To the vet, since Dr. Shad was away.”
Eli nodded. Bill was a member of Rick’s Stone Creek Clan, and if the man was coming here ahead of his Alpha, it meant the local pack leader suspected Bill knew the identity of Josie’s patient.
“I did. A female. Do you know who it might be?”
The man ran a hand through a shaggy mess of light brown hair and drew in a shaky breath. “Lady, I hope not,” he said. “Rick said she sounded like she was hurt pretty bad. But—it’s just . . . my Rosemary didn’t come home last night. We had a real stupid fight just before suppertime, and she took off. She does that sometimes when she needs to cool down. She says it’s that or rip my balls off, so I didn’t think about it at the time. But then she didn’t come home. I went out this morning to look for her, but I didn’t find nothing, and then the Alpha called and told me about the one you found. But it can’t be my Rosie. Can it?”
Eli had a very bad feeling that’s exactly who it was. He searched for some way to break the news to the obviously distraught Lupine, but Josie stepped forward and spoke with a note of sympathetic professionalism.
“Bill? I’m Dr. Barrett. I can’t say for sure who I’ve been treating, since there wasn’t any identification on her, but I can tell you that her condition is stable. Either way, I’m sure you’ll feel better if you can see her for yourself. She’s resting in the other room right now. Why don’t you come with me, and I can let you see the patient, and you can tell me whether or not you know her.”