by Penny Alley
Karly watched until the truck was completely gone and the dry dust of the dirt road had settled once more. Still hugging the basket, she went into the kitchen and sat at the small table. She didn’t eat right away. Nervous as she was, she was afraid she’d throw up if she tried. She just sat there, for the longest time, thinking about Puppy and Margo.
Colton seemed very nice, too. Not that it mattered.
She doubted if she’d ever trust another man again. It just wasn’t worth the risk.
* * * * *
Colton drove with one hand on the wheel and one elbow hanging out the driver’s side window. He rubbed his mouth, thinking, and what he was thinking did not make him happy.
Her eye looked worse today than he remembered it, but then, morning-after black eyes usually did. So, it was that fresh. Someone had hit her yesterday. Judging by that haunted look she’d worn, someone had hit her more than once.
His hand tightened on the steering wheel.
She’s running, Mama Margo had said. Go and make your acquaintance so she’ll know who to go running to.
At the time she’d said it, her request had annoyed him a little, but now…his hand tightened even more. He despised bullies and men who beat on the women they should be protecting. He shook his head, already feeling that rock hardness tightening in his gut, spreading out cold before the heat of the oncoming shift tempted him. He didn’t need to check the rearview mirror to know the honeyed amber of his eyes was turning gold. Going wolf.
He swallowed back the urge. He had too much to do, too many responsibilities pulling at him to do this now. And over a woman he didn’t know? He rubbed his mouth again. He didn’t need this. Not now.
From the passenger seat, Gabe eyed him cautiously. “What are you thinking?”
He was thinking about his mother, hiding her own blackened eyes with her hair while they cowered under the basement steps, jumping at every crashing slam as his father raged through the house in his search for her.
“Nothing,” Coleton said, and tried to flash Gabe a poor imitation of his normal, everyday, easy-going smile. His knuckles on the steering wheel were white.
“Okay.” Gabe looked from Colton’s hands back to his face. “Does this mean we’re going up to North Ridge now?”
“Yup.” But Colton glanced in the rearview mirror when he said it. The trees had swallowed up the rental cabin. He couldn’t see it anymore and yet he couldn’t stop seeing her, the way she’d tried to tuck herself behind that rickety old door, a rabbit on the verge of bolting.
“Good.” Gabe looked him over carefully, before apparently deciding to accept him at his word. “Good!” He nodded, then grinned, his hands patting out a rhythm on his knees. “Let’s get our heads back in the game, then.”
“Right.”
“You won’t believe some of the ladies who have turned up for the Hunt this year. We are talking fine, fine, fine females. Even better, Maya’s mama told Margo she’s planning to join up.”
“Maya’s mama is already mated.”
“I’m talking about Maya, and you damn well know it.” Gabe’s flash of irritation faded and his hands stilled on his knees. “What I wouldn’t give to be the one to catch her. Have you looked into her eyes, Cole? God, she’s got the most incredible eyes.”
Colton barely heard him. All he could think about were bruise-rimmed baby blues staring out at him through the crack in the door—
“I swear,” Gabe continued, casting a soft smile out the passenger window. “Maya can look right through a man and just…stop his heart mid-beat. Have you ever seen eyes like that before?”
—Karly Smith, curled up next to him in her bed last night, her small hands pulling at his fur, jumping at every sound, crying herself to sleep—
“Cole?”
What kind of man would do that, take a woman he professed to love and break her down that way? A man like his father, that’s what kind.
Coleton grit his teeth, trying to keep back the canines itching to lengthen.
“Okay,” Gabe suddenly said. “What are we doing now?”
It wasn’t until then that Colton realized he’d stopped the truck. They were idling in the middle of the narrow dirt road with his white-knuckled grip anchoring him to the steering wheel the way her white-knuckled grip had anchored into his fur last night.
The chelovak was pulling at him and he didn’t know why. She wasn’t his mother, his sister, his lover; she wasn’t even a member of his pack. But she had run to Hollow Hills and this was his territory. In a roundabout way, that made her his, the same way every man, woman and child became his when he’d stepped into the vacant Alpha position.
His…
His belly heated, pulled. Tightened.
Shifting into park, Colton popped his seatbelt and got out of the truck. For the first time in his life, he actually found himself feeling grateful for the ill-tempered, gun-toting McQueens. He looked up and down the road, but there wasn’t another car in sight. Unless some out-of-town fisherman was roaming lost in these old hills, he wasn’t likely to be seen.
“Cole?” Gabe tried again as Colton began to strip out of his clothes.
“I’m going back,” Colton said, shortly.
“Why?”
No reason. Every reason. Hell, he didn’t know.
“Call it gut instinct. Margo was right; I think our Miss Smith is running. And if she is, that means trouble’s probably following her. I want to know what that trouble is.”
“What do you want to bet her name isn’t even Smith?”
“That’s a bet I wouldn’t take.” Colton kicked off his boots, stuffed his socks down into the toes and tossed them into the back of the pickup. His uniform shirt, he tucked into the cab behind the driver’s seat. Looking warily up and down the road again, he unbuckled his belt.
“What am I supposed to tell people when you don’t come to the Ridge for a Hunt you offered to host, for the express purpose of bagging yourself a Bride? The pack has to grow, Cole. The two of us, we’re good. But we won’t hold this territory another year if we don’t.”
“Don’t tell me what I already know,” Colton snapped, the same flush of irritation hitting him that he felt every time he had to think about this. He was the Alpha. An Alpha did what he had to for the good of the pack and that included finding a Bride and building their numbers. Brides for an Alpha and his lieutenants meant stability gained through other pack ties. Pups meant permanence, and until he gained that, he would never have the complete loyalty or support of the ferine residents of Hollow Hills’. Or the respect of other potential Alphas, like Sebastian McQueen and his brothers, all of whom harbored ambitions for stepping into his place if he failed.
Colton bristled. Over his dead body. Hot-headed males who talked with violence first and common sense later were not what Hollow Hills needed.
“Seventeen females have turned out already,” Gabe continued. “Seventeen. At least twenty-two males joined the roster to run for them, with another four days to accrue more.” He was quiet a moment. “The McQueens registered, too. All four of them.”
“I’ll be there for the Hunt.”
“You’d better be there for the pre-games,” Gabe said wryly. “You have to be. If they seduce one Bride, just one who’s willing to let them catch her and we don’t, then we’re done. We’ll either be showing our throats to Sebastian or we’ll have to find someplace else to live.”
“I know what’s at stake,” Colton muttered, and shucked out of both his pants and his underwear. Wadding them in a ball, he threw them behind the seat as well.
“Do you?” Glaring back at him, Gabe got out of the truck and came around to the driver’s side. “Then prove it. In four days, your head had better be out of that cabin, off that woman—that chelovak woman, who hit you with her car, I might add—and back up on the Ridge where it belongs, or else.”
Colton blinked twice, almost amused when his normally mild-mannered lieutenant shouldered past him and stepped up into the tr
uck. “Or else what, Gabe?”
“Or else I’m taking over the pack and finding myself a new best friend.” Gabe flashed him a grin that didn’t quite reach as far as his somber eyes.
“You’re lucky I don’t just give it to you,” Colton replied, but it was a bluff and they both knew it.
Standing naked in the road, Colton watched the truck drive off. He frowned, knowing he ought to be up on that Ridge, putting in a strong appearance while wooing females, attracting lone volka males looking to stop wandering and put down roots, and soundly beating his rivals in pre-Hunt games that would show everyone just how young, strong and in his physical prime he truly was. But his gut was pulling him in the opposite direction and, after a moment, he gave in to it.
Colton turned, shifting even as he began to run, back up the road toward Margo’s rental cabin and the last woman in town that he should be paying attention to right now.
CHAPTER FOUR
As the minutes passed and the Fish and Game—police, she had to remind herself; just like Dan, only in slightly different uniforms—failed to return, Karly let herself relax. Eventually, she even stopped hugging the basket. She’d held onto it so tightly one side was crushed beneath her arm. Not wanting to return it to Margo in anything less than perfect condition, she placed the basket on the table and quietly unpacked the contents to see if she could press it back into shape.
She found the pie first. It was right on top, with an orange and a couple of bananas underneath. On the very bottom were two sandwiches. Very simple bologna and cheese, wrapped in cellophane for freshness. She was about to open one when she heard a faint whine followed by scratching at the front door.
Karly ran to let Puppy in, surprised at how happy it made her just to see him moving so well. He sauntered across the threshold, ears alert and tail lazily wagging. “There you are! Where have you been? You missed the excitement. We had visitors.”
She couldn’t help glancing back down the road, but the officers and their truck were well and truly gone. That made her feel better too.
She closed and locked the door anyway. “Ready for breakfast?”
He followed her to the kitchen where she broke one of the sandwiches in half and offered him the larger piece.
“Come on,” she coaxed when he only looked at it. “It’s not the Ritz, but it’s what we’ve got. We’ll go shopping in a—”
Her cellphone rang. Knots seized her insides, strangling so tightly for a moment Karly couldn’t breathe. She got up to check the number. Only half those knots eased when she recognized it. It definitely wasn’t Dan.
Putting her sandwich down, she picked up the phone and by way of ‘hello’ said, “I’m out.”
“Good,” Beth Calloway, her lawyer—and as far as Karly was concerned, the best damn lawyer in the world—replied. “How far did you get?”
“All the way across state lines. I’m in Hollow Hills. I’m renting a place from a very nice lady who’s willing to keep the utilities in her name.”
“How are you for money?”
“I’ve got everything mama left me.” She choked a little at that. “I’ll be okay for a while. How long do you think he’s going to look for me?”
“You would know that better than I would. However, I do have some good news in that department. For one, your husband has already signed the divorce papers. They were delivered by courier first thing this morning.”
Stunned, Karly stared across the kitchen at nothing. “He’s not contesting anything?”
“No, and Karly—” Caution weighed heavy in her lawyer’s tone. “I’ve never had an abuser let go this easily. Has he tried to contact you?”
“No, not yet.” Karly rubbed her suddenly sweaty palms against her thighs. She looked down when she felt a nose nudge under her wrist. When Puppy ducked under her hand to rest his chin on top of her leg, she petted him instead. “He got a parting shot though. I’ve one real killer of a black eye.”
“Can you get a hold of a newspaper with today’s date on it?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“Use your new cellphone to take a picture of it and any other fresh bruises alongside the newspaper, Be sure the date shows, and send them to me. I’ll add them to your dossier, just in case. He’s not contesting anything right now, but that doesn’t mean he won’t later on just to make things difficult for you.”
“I’m not asking for anything. I just want out.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean he won’t look for ways to drag this out and punish you further. I don’t know that he will. He might not even try. I don’t think he wants all his cop buddies to know he beats his wife. That’s our wild card, and he’d better believe I’ll play it and go after everything he has—house, truck, boat, almost twenty grand in that savings account he’s trying so damn hard to hide at First Federal, his pension and his retirement—if he pushes me.”
“He has an account at First Federal?” What else did he have that she didn’t know about? Her stomach twisted into a hard knot of unease.
“Yes, and a lock box. God only knows what he’s hiding in that. A friend of mine in the Department told me Dan took the rest of the week off. If he’s smart, he’ll spend it hiring a lawyer and getting his act together, but no one’s contacted me yet. Still, I thought you ought to know. Keep your head down and be careful. Don’t change your driver’s license, don’t register your car, and whatever you do, don’t get pulled over for speeding. Do get me those pictures as soon as you can, preferably while the marks are still fresh and ugly. And do make a friend or two where you are now—someone who’ll keep an eye out for you.”
“I will,” Karly promised, burying her fingers in Puppy’s soft fur and drawing what comfort she could from his warmth pressed against her leg. She had no idea who that friend might be. Margo maybe. Mama Margo, they’d called her. Yeah, she could probably trust Margo.
Beth’s voice softened. “I can still get you into that shelter, Karly. You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of, and they’re very good at what they do. They can hide you in places Dan would never—”
“No.” Karly lifted her chin, shaking her head even though Beth couldn’t see it. For the first time in four long years, she had reclaimed her freedom. She wasn’t about to give it up again for any reason. “Thank you, but no. I…I’m going to be all right.”
She said it as if it were true. She even said it as if she believed it.
“You’re the boss,” Beth finally said. “I just want you to know the option is there if you need it.”
“That’s okay.” She looked down at Puppy, who looked boldly back up at her. His yellow eyes bored into hers, his ears perked as if he weren’t just listening, but also understood. Almost against her will, Karly smiled. “I’ll be fine. As it turns out, I’ve already got a protector.” Snapping her phone closed, Karly set the phone aside. She cupped Puppy’s furry muzzle between her hands, losing her fingers in the soft black of his fur as she stroked his massive head. “You’ve got more teeth than Dan does, don’t you, Puppy? You won’t let anything happen to me, will you, boy?”
Thumping his tail twice against the floor, he met her eyes without blinking and did not look away.
Comforted, she stroked his soft face again and then got up. “Finish your breakfast. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”
Because he was such a big dog, she gave Puppy the remaining sandwich while she made do with a banana and the smaller half of that first sandwich. Seeming reluctant to eat at first, it wasn’t until she lay half of Margo’s award-winning pie in front of him that Puppy gave in to chop-licking temptation. Karly was just hungry enough to eat the second banana too, but set the orange in the fridge for later and, while Puppy contented himself with licking up every last bit of the apple pie she’d given him, she went upstairs.
Fishing her cashbox out from under her bed, Karly counted out a cautious sum and then hid the rest again. Back downstairs, she gave Puppy a scratch behind the ears as she put the dishes in the
sink for later. Gathering her cellphone and her purse, she fished the car keys from one of the pockets and, with Puppy riding shotgun, headed into town.
The McQueens were sitting on their front porch when she drove past. One stood up to get a better look at her car. They all watched her go by with dark expressions and without waving. That was okay, she didn’t wave either.
Shortly after she passed the Dog Woods sign, she found the accident Colton from Fish and Game had warned her about. A utility truck from Montgomery Municipal was parked in front of the fallen pole with a few orange cones marking off the area. A new hole had been dug and a fresh pole planted to replace the one snapped off at about ground level. Currently, the long arm of the bucket truck was extended high in the air so two men, working side by side, could run new wires. Maybe she’d have power again by the time she got home. Karly was hopeful, though she still planned to pick up candles just in case.
It was a nice day, not too warm. Karly found a shady spot in front of the grocery store to park and before she went inside, she rolled the front windows down for Puppy’s comfort.
She got a few staple items, cereal and milk, sandwich and salad fixings, and then spent several minutes wandering up and down the pet aisle, agonizing over dog food selections. Was Puppy an Iams dog? And, good night, how could this stuff be so expensive? She hadn’t brought enough cash with her, not even to get a small bag. She ended up settling for Kibbles and Bits. Beefy bits, no less. With vegetables and real meat flavor, and supposedly all the nutrition that healthy, active dogs required. She picked up a collar too. If wandering free every morning became a habit, at least Puppy wouldn’t be mistaken for a stray.