Taming the Moon

by Sherrill Quinn

  “We’re fine, darlin’.” Declan handed Sully a pair of folded jeans.

  Sully shook them out and slid his legs into them, watching as his friends did the same. He yanked the jeans up and fastened them, then took the T-shirt Ryder handed him and shrugged into it.

  “Thank God.” Pelicia’s voice was soft, shaking. Declan tossed his shirt down onto the bed of the SUV, walked over to her, and dragged her into his arms.

  Sully needed to do that to his woman, after he got some answers. He hopped up onto the floor of the cargo area and brushed the dirt off the bottom of his feet. He pulled on socks and shoes. “Please tell me you know where Olivia went.”

  “She mentioned something about a hotel. She didn’t say which one,” Pelicia added as she and Declan moved around to the back of the vehicle.

  Ryder pulled his mobile out of the front pocket of his trousers and dialed a number. As soon as it was answered, he said, “Everyone’s fine.”

  “Not everyone,” Sully muttered. “Just the ones that count.”

  “Thank God.” He heard Taite’s voice almost as clearly as if he was holding the phone to his own ear. She took a few breaths, and he could tell she was trying not to cry.

  He glanced at Pelicia to see she was pale but composed, her back straight and determination clear in her gaze. He was amazed at the strength of these two women.

  And of Olivia. She’d been through hell in the last three years and still managed to raise a daughter that was as feisty as she was.

  That said something.

  “Let me talk to Taite for a minute.” Sully held out his hand for the phone.

  “Sweetheart? Sully wants to talk to you. Hold on a moment.” Ryder handed the mobile over.

  Sully wasted no time. “Listen. If I gave you a mobile number, do you think you have any friends at the local police department who could run a trace for you? I’m pretty sure the phone has a GPS.”

  Taite was just as no-nonsense. “Let me see what I can do. I’ll call you back. Give me the number and yours.”

  Sully rattled off the numbers, then flipped the phone closed and handed it back to Ryder. Hopping down, he closed the SUV’s hatch and headed toward the other vehicle. “You guys go on without me.” He walked around to the driver’s side and opened the car door.

  Pelicia smiled. “You’re going after Olivia?”

  He sighed. “I think I have to. We have a lot to talk about.”

  “She’s a good person, Sully. Faced with an impossible situation, she at first acted against her instincts. Which is why you were turned.” Declan’s gaze held his. “But then she followed her instincts in the end, which is why you’re still alive. Otherwise, she probably could have killed you—would have killed you—back at Pel’s two weeks ago.”

  Sully stared at him. God. It had been exactly two weeks to the day when he’d been attacked by the wolf—Olivia!—at Pelicia’s bed and breakfast. A vicious assault that had been instigated by a man bent on vengeance, muted by an attack of conscience on Olivia’s part.

  He had to talk to her. Get all of it sorted out.

  “She asked me to tell you that she’s sorry.” Pelicia’s voice was soft with compassion. “Go to her. Listen to her. Let her explain. Let her tell you how she feels.”

  He bent his head and stared at the ground. “She told me she loves me.”

  “And you? How do you feel?”

  That was the million-dollar question.

  He hated her. He loved her. He wanted her with him. He never wanted to see her again.

  “Hell if I know.” He looked up in time to see Pelicia’s quick smile.

  “Well, I know from experience it’ll sort itself out when you see her. Trust me. I was certain I never wanted to see Declan again, until I saw him again.” She shook her head. “All the old hurts were still there, but the love was there as well.” She put her hand on his where it rested on the open window of the door. “Give her a chance. Give yourself a chance.”

  He nodded. “I will.” He waved his hand in the direction away from the scene of carnage. “Now get out of here.”

  “You go get your woman.” Declan clasped Sully’s hand, the other hand on his shoulder. Pelicia climbed behind the wheel of the SUV. Declan raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything as he walked around to get into the passenger side.

  Ryder gave Sully a one-armed hug. “Call us if you need us.” He opened the back door of the SUV and got in the vehicle.

  “I will.” Sully shook his head. “If she’s stubborn, I may need you to come talk some sense into her like you have me.”

  Pelicia laughed and started the vehicle. “Good luck, Sully.”

  “Thanks. I’m sure I’ll need it.”

  Olivia brushed Zoe’s hair away from her face and smiled down at her. The little girl kept yawning but fought sleep with everything she had in her. It was early, but she was clearly tired and needed to rest.

  “Go to sleep, baby.” Olivia put her palm on top of Zoe’s hands where they were clasped across her tummy.

  Zoe shook her head, her curls dragging over the pillow. “I don’t wanna go to sleep yet.”

  Olivia smiled in spite of the tears that threatened at the anxiety lingering in Zoe’s voice. “I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

  “Promise?” Sleepy eyes blinked at Olivia.

  The uncertainty in Zoe’s young voice brought Olivia closer to tears. “I promise.” She bent over and kissed Zoe’s forehead. “No one’s ever going to keep us apart again. Ever.”

  “Good.” The little girl’s voice was already thickening with sleep. She sighed and wriggled a bit, then her breathing evened out, and Olivia knew she slept.

  Olivia sat there for a few more minutes and watched her daughter sleep. Whispering a quick prayer of thanks, she pushed aside thoughts of Sully. She had her daughter, and she’d be happy with that.

  She’d learned long ago that life wasn’t always fair—wasn’t usually fair. As long as Zoe was healthy and happy, that’s all Olivia would ask for.

  Chapter 20

  Olivia heard the heavy tread of footsteps a few seconds before the knock came on the door. She jumped up from the edge of the bed and whirled toward the door, reflexively ready to do battle. Then she realized that anyone who meant to do harm to her or Zoe most likely wouldn’t have knocked.

  She checked to make sure Zoe still slept, then partially closed the bedroom door and walked through the living room of the hotel suite. She smelled him as soon as she neared the front of the room. Out of habit, when she reached the door she peered through the peephole. Her heart leaped into her throat at confirmation at what other senses had already told her.

  Sully.

  Even as she wondered how he’d found her—she hadn’t told anyone where she was staying—she unlocked the door and opened it just enough to be able to see him. Feeling defensive, she took the offensive way, lifted her chin, and asked, “Have you come to take your revenge?”

  Not that she would blame him if he did. But it wasn’t in her to go down without a fight. She was done rolling over and showing her belly to someone who was physically stronger than her. If tonight had proven nothing else, it was that she was a survivor. She had to be, for Zoe.

  He glanced over her shoulder toward the bedroom where her daughter lay sleeping. “What kind of man do you think I am?” he asked quietly. “Poor kid’s been through enough, even if she doesn’t quite realize it.” He met her gaze again. “I came to talk.”

  She swung the door wide and stepped aside without a word. He had questions; she had answers. He deserved that much from her.

  He walked into the room. Olivia closed the door and followed him, watching as Sully stood for a moment in the doorway to the bedroom, staring at her sleeping daughter. “She’s beautiful.” His raspy voice remained soft. He glanced at Olivia, his green eyes dark with a mixture of regret, anger and confusion. “She looks like you.”

  “All I see when I look at her is her father.” Olivia moved closer
and looked in at Zoe and then back at Sully. “She has his eyes, his nose, his mouth.” She bit her lip and glanced away.

  “I’m sorry.” When she looked at him again, he added, “For the loss of your husband. It had to have been tough, with Zoe being so young.”

  Olivia nodded. “She was six months old.” God, David had loved his little girl. His face lit up every time he saw her. Pushing away the memories of happier times that would never come again, she pulled the bedroom door mostly closed, leaving it open about an inch so she and Sully could talk without disturbing Zoe but ensuring that Olivia could hear her daughter if she wakened. Of course, with her werewolf senses she’d be able to hear her through a closed door, but habit died hard. It made her feel better to have that little bit of open space between her and her little girl. It meant she could get to her just that much faster.

  Olivia squared her shoulders and walked over to a sofa beneath the front window of the room, ready to face the future. Whether it would be with Sully remained to be seen. He seemed ready to talk, but what he hated about himself couldn’t be undone. And what he hated was what she’d done to him. Would he—could he—forgive her?

  “You said you wanted to talk?” She sat down and crossed one leg over the other. She held her hands in her lap, fingers laced, and tried to stay calm when all she wanted to do was scream at the unfairness of it all. She’d never asked for any of it. Nor had Sully. Yet there they were.

  Sully joined her, angling his body so he could watch her. “I understand why you tried to kill me. I do. I also understand why you couldn’t. What I don’t understand…” His dark brows dipped, and he shook his head. “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t tell me it was you.” His tongue swept out over his lips. “How could you say you love me and not tell me you were the one who’d turned me?”

  She twisted her fingers together. He sounded so…hurt. Confounded. “I was afraid.” She drew in a breath and expelled it quickly. Unable to look at him, unwilling to see censure in his gaze, she stared down at her hands and poked at the cuticle of one thumb with the other. “I was afraid you’d refuse to help me if you knew.”

  “You think I’d let a child suffer because I was angry with you?” His voice went even raspier as anger built.

  Olivia shot him a look. His face was hard, tight, the green of his eyes speckled with amber as his emotions rose. “You weren’t angry, Sully. You were furious.” She shook her head. “I knew even then that you were a good man, a decent man, but I couldn’t take the chance that you’d let that fury cloud your thinking. Not with my daughter’s life at stake.” She drew in a deep breath. “Not once I had hope again that there was a way out of this without her getting killed. Without me getting killed and her then raised by that monster.”

  Sully studied her a moment. “You could always have tried to kill me again.” On a purely intellectual level he understood that she couldn’t have tried again—that once she’d made the decision it was the wrong thing to do she’d stick to her ethics. But he felt the need to prod her, to dispel the sorrow in her eyes. To get to her true feelings. He knew firsthand that in anger people spoke the truth they held the deepest. “I mean, why not? Since it was all about keeping your daughter safe, damn any consequences.”

  Her eyes flared with anger. “You…you bastard.” She kept her voice low. “Just what was I supposed to do? You tell me that. It was just me, Sully. Me and Zoe. She had no one else.” She bit her lip. “I had no one else. At first I tried to do what he demanded so I could protect her. If I wasn’t there, Eddy would have kept her and raised her as his own, and then made her into a werewolf on her eighteenth birthday.” Her fists clenched in her lap. “Then he told me to kill you or he’d kill Zoe. And I knew he’d do it.” She spread her hands. “That’s why I went after you to begin with. If I hadn’t, he would have killed her. But…” She seemed to run out of steam and slumped back against the sofa. She wrapped her arms around herself, a heavy sigh leaving her.

  “But?” he prompted. He needed to know her reasoning, needed to understand her.

  “What kind of message would that have sent my daughter?” Her gaze was full of conflicting emotions. “Because I promise you Eddy would have made sure to tell her what a bad person her mother was and how lucky Zoe was to have him.” Tears glistened in her eyes as she looked toward the bedroom. “The wrong thing done for the right reason is still the wrong thing,” she whispered.

  He saw the internal struggle she’d gone through, and admired her all the more for her ability to sort through all the crap and still come to the right decision.

  She met his gaze and continued in a louder voice. “I kept trying to convince myself that I had to kill you, even though it felt wrong the whole time. But if it was between a stranger and my daughter…” She shrugged. “Then I fell in love with you, and I couldn’t kill you. Not even to save Zoe.” She bent over, covering her face with her hands.

  He saw a shudder go through her and knew she was trying not to cry. He knew, too, that she’d probably not had a really good cry in nearly six years. There was a lot of grief and anger built up inside her. He wasn’t making things any easier.

  He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder.

  She jerked away from him and stood, holding one hand out. “Don’t.” Her voice was strangled, her face wet with tears. “How can you be nice to me? I made you a monster.” Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m the one who took you away from the life you knew, took away your humanity.”

  At that moment Sully accepted the fact that his life was more complicated than he’d ever thought it could be, and recognized that he wouldn’t have it any other way. He’d survived four attacks on his life—the initial one in the Isles of Scilly, Olivia’s attack as a wolf in Tucson, the hit-and-run, and finally tonight’s showdown. If it hadn’t been for the initial assault that had made him what he was, he wouldn’t have survived any of the others. He would never have been able to be there for his friends at the final battle with Miles.

  He wouldn’t have been able to play a part in saving an innocent little girl from a lifetime of horror and pain.

  He had Olivia to thank for that. With her help and Declan’s, he could learn to control his wolf so that it didn’t interfere with his ability to make a living. To be the kind of man he should be.

  The kind of man she needed him to be. The kind of man he wanted to be for her.

  Still keeping his voice soft, he said, “Look at me.” When Olivia shook her head and partly turned away, he repeated, “Look at me.”

  Her shoulders lifted with her deep breath and she turned to face him. But she didn’t raise her eyes.

  “Olivia, please look at me.”

  He saw her throat move with her hard swallow, and she finally lifted her gaze to his. Fear and despair warred in her eyes, and he hated that he had any part in making her feel either emotion. From now on, he wanted those eyes to only reflect love and happiness. He wasn’t naïve enough to think that grief would never come their way again, but it wouldn’t be because of anything he’d done.

  Sully stood and moved closer to her, but didn’t touch her. He didn’t want her distracted by a touch she wasn’t ready for. “I’ve been a werewolf for two weeks, so I hope you’ll cut me some slack for my behavior,” he said in an attempt at humor. A lame attempt, because neither of them laughed. “I didn’t want this.” She made a face and started to look away. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t look away. You didn’t want this, either, Liv. Not for yourself. Not for your daughter.” In a softer voice he added, “Not for me.”

  “No, I didn’t,” she agreed softly. Her blue eyes were round and pleading. “I didn’t mean to…I just couldn’t kill you. But then I told myself I had to, and Eddy gave me a deadline…” She trailed off and sighed. “I just didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Yes, you did. You asked us for help.” He went to her then and put his hands on her shoulders. “But the sticking point for me is that you didn’t trust me enough t
o tell me the whole truth.”

  A tear rolled from the corner of one eye as she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  He swiped the tear away with his thumb. “You were right.”

  She lifted her startled gaze. “What?”

  “You were right.” He frowned as he thought it through. “Not to think that I wouldn’t still help, because I couldn’t have lived with myself knowing I’d let an innocent child suffer. But my hatred of the person who did this to me overshadowed everything else I know about you, and that could have endangered us all.”

  Her gaze searched his, the slightest hint of hope in their depths. “What is it you know about me?” Her voice was a breath of sound, anticipation hovering in its depths. He hated that, too, that she was afraid to feel hope, afraid to think that there might just be a happily-ever-after in all of this for her.

  “I know that you’re a survivor. Like me. That you don’t like asking for help. Like me.” He couldn’t stop stroking his thumb over the silken skin of her cheek. “That you love your daughter and will do everything you can to protect her.”

  “Not everything.” She blinked and another tear dropped from her lower lashes.

  In any other situation he might find it funny that she thought not killing him was a failure on her part. But it wasn’t the time for humor, and certainly not gallows humor.

  “I couldn’t kill you.”

  “And for that I’m grateful.” At her startled look he said, “Really.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said a lot of nonsense, Olivia. For which I’m sorry.” Unable to deny his feelings, he dipped his head and placed a gentle kiss on the corner of her mouth. It felt so good to be able to touch her again, to hold her. He couldn’t imagine going on with his life without her by his side. “I can only hope that if I’d been placed in the same untenable position as you that I’d have acted as courageously.”