by Lucy Monroe
He and her uncle got along well enough, but King had always been somewhat cold toward Frankie and she'd never understood why. His apparent disapproval of her had never stopped Ty from being her friend and so she'd never let it bother her.
She wasn't about to start now. "I always go for a ride when I first get home. No one was available to come along."
"Maybe your family didn’t expect you to ride over this way." Ty shot a sidelong glance at his stone faced older brother.
"I told Aunt Rose where I was going. She sends her regards, by the way. As for being out riding right now - I don’t see the problem. The storm front isn’t supposed to move in until tomorrow, tonight at the soonest." Which was why she’d traveled a couple of days earlier than she’d originally planned.
She hadn’t wanted to be snow bound in Billings on Thanksgiving. She'd felt an urgency about her trip home, a certainty that if she didn't secure her relationship with Ty now, it would never happen.
"The full moon is in thirty-two hours," King said like that should explain his concern.
She rolled her eyes thinking he probably assumed it did. He had the timing down to the hours no less.
"I know you all think the full moon has some kind of weird effect on the wolves in the Rocking M's refuge—"
"It does," Ty cut in, his voice brusque, his blue eyes cold. "You don’t have to believe it for it to be the truth. You had no business riding out here so close to one."
She blinked in pained surprise at the rebuke. Ty might have held back from deepening their friendship to something more, but he’d always treated her like a person he was glad to see.
Right now, she felt about as welcome as a skunk at a picnic. She lifted the reins, prepared to turn Flash around. "I’ll just go back then."
"You’re closer to the homestead," King said, staying her. "Ty can give you a lift back to your aunt and uncle’s. One of the hands will ride Flash back."
"That’s ridiculous. I can ride back now."
"You’re on our land. You’ll do as we say." Duke’s voice lacked even an edge of warmth.
She opened her mouth, but Ty forestalled her. "Don’t talk to her like that, Duke."
"You got a problem with it? Why? I thought you were interested that little French Canadian bitch."
Frankie’s jaw dropped. She’d never heard Duke refer to a woman with anything but unfailing respect. "Don’t you like her?" she blurted.
"Ignore him, he’s just feeling his age right now."
She would have laughed if she wasn’t battling pain at their obvious rejection. "You’re only gong to be thirty. That’s hardly ancient."
Duke said nothing, but wheeled his horse around. "Let her do what she wants," he called back over his shoulder. "But don’t blame me if a wolf decides she looks damn tasty right now."
CHAPTER TWO
Ty wanted to smack his brother upside the head.
He knew Duke wasn’t alluding to one of the pack eating Frankie, but to something that could be equally as devastating.
Beyond being a woman alone in the wild, she was single and she was ovulating. In heat.
Her scent would drive any unmated werewolf crazy...or to do something both the wolf and Frankie would end up regretting.
Hell, her scent was calling to the beast in him and it was taking all he had to keep his wolf under control. He could see that his attitude had hurt her feelings, but why did she have to show up today? It was the last damn thing he needed when he was mentally preparing himself to mate with another female.
On top of that, Duke was right. She was definitely at risk out here on the range.
Many members of the pack gathered on the Rocking M before the change so they were someplace safe to run when it happened. If another male found her alone out here this close to the full moon, there was every chance she could wake up tomorrow morning mated.
And that would be less than ideal for both her and the wolf. She’d have the trauma of an unwanted werewolf mating to overcome and if it turned out to be a sacred bond, some poor bastard would be rendered effectively neutered when she refused to stay with him.
"Ride back to the homestead with us, Frankie," he said, forcing his voice into a friendlier tone even though all he wanted to do was growl and rip her clothes off. "Mom’ll have a fit if she finds out you were close enough to say hi and didn’t."
Frankie was still watching Duke’s disappearing figure, but she turned to face Ty at his words, her soft brown eyes still filled with the wounding of their initial reaction to her. "Are you sure? Things are more strained between our families than I expected."
"It's not your fault," his dad said shortly. "Come on to the house."
For King, who hated the thought of either of his sons mating a non-wolf, it was practically an engraved invitation. He turned his horse and followed after Duke, his assumption Frankie would follow obvious in the set of the pack leader’s shoulders.
Frankie looked at Ty, her expression troubled.
He smiled, letting the warm feelings he'd always had for her show in his expression. "You don't want to disappoint my mom, do you?"
"No."
"Then come on." He spurred his horse and went after his dad. With a muttered imprecation about arrogant men that he was sure he wasn’t supposed to hear, Frankie followed them.
They reached the yard a few minutes later and Frankie let Jed take Flash into the barn.
They walked into the house together. He picked up the scent of his mother’s cinnamon snaps and her concern over having a human visitor this close to the full moon at the same time. She was smiling when she came into the living room though.
It was something he hadn’t managed when he’d first seen Frankie, but then he’d been too busy trying to fight his reaction to her scent in heat. He still was and he wasn’t winning.
Hell. The last thing he needed right now, or ever, was a hard-on for his best friend.
"Frankie, what an unexpected pleasure." His mom’s voice held all the welcome his dad, his brother and he had not extended.
Frankie’s pleasure in the greeting came off her in waves and she rushed forward, her sexy hips swinging slightly with her graceful walk. She hugged his mom, dwarfing the smaller woman, and kissed her cheek. "It’s been too long."
"You didn’t come home this past summer."
"The partners all took their vacations over the summer."
"And left you to work the clinic while they were gone?" he asked, anger at her being treated like that boiling through him.
She turned one of her brilliant smiles on him...finally. Apparently, she’d forgiven him his earlier coldness. She was like that, rarely holding a grudge, especially against him. It was one of the many things he liked about her.
Her doe eyes filled with a warmth he’d never been able to break his addiction to. "They didn’t all go at once and it is my job, Ty."
"You could have come home and worked with me," he reminded her. "I wouldn’t have forced you to go without a break all summer."
It had surprised him when she’d refused the job offer right out of college. It had hurt too. He’d thought that after she broke up with that pathetic fiancé of hers she’d be willing to come home, but she hadn’t.
If he needed more proof that thinking of her as a possible mate was beyond idiotic, there it was. He didn’t belong in the city and she’d rejected life out here. Not to mention the fact that she was no more stable in relationships than any other human, as her ex-fiancé could attest.
There was no official pack law against taking a human mate, but it was strongly discouraged. While a werewolf mated for life, a human could leave his or her mate behind and seek another. It had happened often enough to make the pack leery. Every werewolf was taught from the time they were a cub that humans made poor choices for mates.
That didn’t stop it from happening, unfortunately.
Ty’s own grandmother had been human and had left Ty’s grandfather to marry another man when the cubs were less than ha
lf grown. Ty’s father had been more adamant than most about drilling into his sons the need to mate with pack. Or if not with pack, at least with their own kind.
His father's admonitions had not been necessary for Ty. After he had witnessed the grisly results of a werewolf breaking the pack law about mating for life as a cub, he'd never considered mating human anyway.
"Maybe I should have taken the job you offered at that. Living in the city hasn’t accomplished what I wanted it to." There was another layer to Frankie's words, his wolf senses said so, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
"Leah moved to Billings." Ty was glad his brother hadn’t come into the house as his mom’s words settled in the air between them.
Frankie reached down and squeezed his mom’s hand. "I heard she left. I’m not carrying tales if I mention neither Uncle Ben nor Aunt Rose know what Marigold did to send her away."
"But they know their daughter was involved," Ty said.
"I guess it’s kind of hard to miss how Duke cuts her now."
"She played one of her selfish, all-about-me games." Ty frowned. "Both Leah and Duke got hurt because of it, but in some ways, I think it was better in the long run."
His mother glared at him. "Not all human females are like your grandmother McCanlup."
He sensed that if she could have gotten into his head to yell at him some more without being overheard, she would have. He didn't understand why, but his mother and father did not agree on this issue of out-of-kind mating.
But she couldn't yell at him that way. The only one in the family who shared the telepathic link with him was his brother.
Duke and their father shared a bond too. It was even stronger than Ty’s was with Duke. He had to be close to his brother to reach or to hear him, but Duke and their dad could be a mile apart and hear each other.
"Let’s not get into this right now, Carolyn." His dad had come into the room and towered over his mom in a protective stance. "You know what they say..."
He guessed his dad finished the saying about werewolves mating with humans in his mom’s head because she glared. She’d liked Leah. A lot.
"They say men aren’t good for anything but shoveling horse manure and breeding babies too, but I don’t buy that either."
"Um...I didn’t mean to cause a family fight." Frankie had peeled off her outer layer while they’d been arguing and her soft brown hair crackled around her head from static after taking off her stocking cap.
It was silky fine and she wore it longer than you’d expect a tomboy like her to keep it. It brushed her bottom seductively when she walked, something he’d started noticing when she was about fifteen....and had spent the last eleven years trying to forget or ignore.
The rest of her was something of a surprise too. She was wearing her usual jeans, but they had little red rhinestone roses on the pockets and down one leg. They hugged her hips instead of her waist like her old Levi’s and a narrow band of pale skin showed above the waistband when she reached up to finger comb her long hair.
The soft red sweater clung to her curves so lovingly it didn’t take his wolf eyesight to see the evidence that she was either still cold or someone was having a profound affect on her libido. He could smell her stirring arousal and guessed it was the second. Since he knew she didn’t have a thing for older men or women, he figured that someone was him.
The wolf in him sat up and howled and he had to clamp his jaw tight to stop from snarling his need. He had to get away from her soon, or all of his plans were going to go up in smoke from the bonfire of his own stupidity.
"Frankie, it’s been a long time."
Ty’s head snapped around at the sound of the other werewolf’s voice. Kurt Garrick was lounging in the doorway like he had every right to be there, his mouth crooked in a half smile, his eyes dark with interest as they rested on Frankie.
A low level growl rumbled in Ty’s throat. Too quiet for her human ears to hear, it nevertheless brought a frown of surprise over the other wolf’s features.
"Kurt! I didn’t expect to see you here." Frankie’s obvious delight in his presence irritated Ty more than Kurt’s intrusion.
"Same here, gorgeous."
She smiled at that, her cheeks turning a delicate pink that made Ty want to do more than growl.
She crossed the room in less time than it took him to figure out how to get rid of the other wolf and threw her arms around Kurt in a hug. He hugged her back, the scent of his instant arousal hitting Ty like a kick in the gut.
She kissed Kurt’s cheek and the damn werewolf kissed her back, his lips coming perilously close to hers. Ty growled again, this time loud enough to get his best friend’s attention as well as the wolf sniffing her.
She stepped back from Kurt, a look of concern on her face. "Something wrong, Ty?"
"Just wondering when I’d get my hug."
He could forgive her the look of surprise that crossed her features because the last time he’d accepted one of her hugs gracefully, she’d been fifteen years old. He’d withdrawn from her physically from the time he got his first hard-on at her touch. So as not to hurt her feelings, he made it clear he didn’t like hugging anyone.
However, he’d be damned if she was going to touch the other wolf and leave him standing around like some sixteenth century wallflower in the King’s Court. The knowledge that his wolf was more in control right now than his human only registered vaguely as he reached out and pulled her into full body contact.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her breasts against him like they belonged nowhere else. She sighed against his neck, the fluttery sound an obvious one of pleasure.
She hadn’t done that with Kurt and he would have smiled if he wasn’t having such a hard time not stripping her clothes off to mate with her. He’d wanted her for years, but she was in heat and this close the change that was like kerosene on the fire of his libido.
She went to kiss his cheek, but he turned his head and their lips met for the first time. Hers were soft and opened around a surprised oh. He tasted cinnamon, sweetness and a special flavor he could easily get addicted to. Frankie.
Oh, hell. He was losing it. No wonder humans kissed on the lips. It was the sweetest sensation he’d ever known. Werewolves avoided physical intimacies until they were ready to mate. It prevented them from taking an irrevocable step based on pure physical need...usually.
Unlike humans...who experimented in ways he’d never comprehended. But then, they could move on when and if they wanted to.
That cold reminder brought his lips tearing from hers and he thrust her from him a lot less gently than he wanted to.
Her eyes snapped open, mirroring more hurt at this rejection and he wanted to fix it, but he couldn’t. So he turned away.
His mom looked too damn smug and his dad looked angry and worried. Kurt...hell, he looked like a wolf on the verge of issuing a challenge.
"I thought you were sniffing around Olivia." Kurt’s voice came out a rumble just a hare shy of a growl.
A soft sound from behind him said that Frankie had heard every word. Ty couldn’t fix that either. It was truth. Damn it hell, how had things gotten so complicated so fast?
"I thought you were down in the barn with Duke," he said to Kurt with pointed emphasis.
"I saw Flash and knew Frankie was up at the house." He smiled at her, his teeth showing like the predator he was. "I wanted to say hi."
More like he’d scented Frankie’s pheromones on her horse’s saddle and had followed the scent like the wolf close to the change that he was.
"I’m glad." She was probably giving Kurt that sweet smile that always pricked Ty’s heart.
He gritted his teeth.
Kurt smiled back, confirming his guess. "Me too."
"Well, you need to get back to the barn," Ty said, sounding meaner than he had in a long time.
Kurt’s eyes narrowed, his body shifting subtly into a stance that said he was ready to meet Ty’s aggression. "Is that right?"
Ty glared, straightening to his full six-feet-three-inches and flexing his hands with intent.
Kurt’s eyes flared and then narrowed as if he was deciding whether or not Frankie was worth the challenge.
"That’s right." This time it was his dad speaking and his voice brooked no opposition.
Kurt stiffened, but then he nodded, his expression one of grudging acceptance. "I take it the word is to stay in the barn for the time being?"
"Right." King McCanlup had been pack leader since his father’s death and kept the role with a strength of will that even his sons rarely challenged in any serious way.
The last time had been when Duke had insisted on taking a human mate. King had been furious, but Duke had refused to back down and look what had happened.
Leah had walked away like any human could.
Kurt left and Ty realized he’d better make tracks too, or he was going to end up just as bad off as his brother.
He turned back to face Frankie and just seeing her was enough to erode one more level of his self-control.
He figured he needed to get off the ranch completely. It also wouldn’t hurt to see Olivia right now. According to his calculations, she should be in heat too. Exposing his wolf to her should counteract the effects of Frankie’s pheromones on him.
"I uh...I’ll just leave you here visiting with Mom while I go check on the Delacroix’s mare. She’s ready to foal, but it’s her first time and they’re worried."
Frankie’s eyes lit up and he could have kicked himself.
"I’d love to come with you. It’s been so long since I tended a pregnant horse."
"That’s not a good idea."
"Sure it is. Frankie will enjoy meeting Olivia and her parents. They moved to town since your last visit," his mom said, smiling at Frankie just as if she hadn’t screwed him over with an electric Phillips.
"The French Canadian family?"
"You’ve heard about them?"
Frankie’s face closed up, the joy that had been there seconds before now absent. "Yes. I’d like to go with you." She didn’t sound anticipatory anymore so much as stubbornly resigned.