“Very much.”
She was nervous. It had been a very long time since she’d had a man in her house without Sophie there also acting as unofficial chaperone.
Chris sat down on the living room sofa. Funny, Jonathan had sat in just that spot this morning.
“Would you like some coffee?” she asked, a little nervously.
“I don’t think so. Come here,” he said, pointing to the spot next to him. “You’re nervous. Don’t be. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“I’m not sure what I want,” she said as she sat down next to him.
“Then let’s try a few things and find out.”
Where was the kind, a little bit nerdy man she thought she knew? This Chris was much more sure of himself. He took her gently by the shoulders and moved her closer to him, then slowly leaned in to kiss her. She wasn’t expecting sky rockets. She was much too old for sky rockets, but what she got certainly came close.
How could her body melt and tingle all over at the same time? It had never felt like this before; certainly not with Jonathan.
She banished he ex-husband from her mind. She wouldn’t think about him now. She couldn’t think about anything right now. She just felt.
She wanted more; somehow he knew that—maybe it was the little moaning noises she was making—and he pressed ever closer, kissing her harder, deeper, as his hand crept under the back of her blouse. Everywhere he touched her skin seemed to come alive. He reached higher, expertly flicking open the clasp of her bra and reaching around to caress her nipple. It had been so long. His touch was lighting fires inside her she had thought long banked.
“More?” he asked, without moving his lips from hers.
“Yes, please.”
He unbuttoned her blouse and moved his mouth from her lips to her breast. She gasped again, she needed to touch him, too. She pulled his shirt from his waistband and ran her hands up his body. She loved the feel of the springy hairs on his chest and ran her fingers around his nipple, then explored down until she found his belt.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked, stopping her hand.
“Yes. It’s been so long. Yes.”
“Then where’s your bedroom?
“Upstairs. First door on the right.”
He picked her up and headed up the stairs.
“Really?” she giggled.
“What? You don’t think I can carry you?”
“No one’s ever carried me before.”
“Then no one knew how to treat you right before. Let me show you how a woman should be treated.”
He placed her on the bed, pulled her top over her head and discarded it and her bra on the floor.
“So beautiful,” he murmured, and bent to give her breasts attention once more. Then pulled off her boots and her leggings, leaving her only in her panties.
Ana felt vulnerable. She was the only one without her clothing on. “It’s my turn now, she said, and reached up to unbutton his shirt. She ran his hands over his chest. “I was right the first time, you’re like a teddy bear.”
“A teddy bear?” he asked, surprised and a little affronted. “Is that how you think of me? I think I’m insulted.”
“Oh no, I mean it in a good way. I feel safe with you.”
“Woman, you are very hard on my ego.”
“Well, I want other things about you to be hard,” she said, then blushed. Where had that come from? Ana Dugan was shy and quiet and, well, proper. In this past week it was as if a new Ana had come to life. Or perhaps it was the old Ana, the young Ana who had been sure of herself, who’d love to joke, to dance, to sing, who was resurfacing.
But Chris seemed to like this new, teasing side of her. “Then you’ve already got your wish,” he said as he pulled off his pants and joined her on the bed.
~~~
The next morning Ana felt awkward. She had just spent the night with Chris and she had a date this evening with Alexander. When had her life become so complicated? This wasn’t the kind of problem she had; it was the kind of problem that Monica had. Should she tell Chris about her date tonight? Would he think she was cheating on him? On the other hand, if she mentioned how guilty she was feeling would he think she was trying to tie him down? What was he thinking? Had this just been a one-night stand for him, or did he want something more?
Chris seemed to sense the jumble of emotions she was feeling.
“I hope you aren’t regretting last night, Ana,” he said as they drank coffee. “I don’t jump into bed with women lightly. I want you. I want to get to know you better—and Sophie, too. I understand she is a big part of your life. I’m not going to ignore her, or ask you to put me ahead of her.”
“If it were only as simple as just me and Sophie. My life is very complicated, Chris. You don’t know how complicated it is.”
“No, but I’m willing to learn if you’ll let me. Complications don’t scare me. There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, either. Maybe we can spend the rest of the day learning a little more about each other.”
“Oh, Chris, I can’t. I have to study and I…I have something I have to do this evening.”
Why should she feel guilty, she thought defiantly? She hadn’t planned to go to bed with Chris when she accepted dinner with Alexander. And after all, he was just a colleague, and they were working on a project together…
“All right. Then how about I leave you now so you can study. Then I’ll meet you tomorrow and walk you home again after your classes.”
“You aren’t angry? Jonathan was always upset if I had something to do rather than be with him.”
“My name is not Jonathan. If there’s one thing I want you to remember, it’s that. You haven’t told me much about him, but from what you have said, I already know he is a first class ass. I understand you had a life before you met me. I have a life, too. We’ll just have to see if we can figure out how to make our two lives work together.”
She walked him to the door, where he kissed her again. “If you keep doing that I won’t let you leave,” she said.
“Then I’ll just have to keep doing it.”
He pressed her close and gave her one more spine-tingling kiss. “That’s so you’ll have something to think about until I see you again tomorrow night.”
Chapter 13
Ana had just cleaned up the breakfast dishes and pulled out her school books to begin studying when the doorbell rang.
“Grandpa! What are you doing here?” she asked in surprise when she answered the door. You don’t usually stop by on the weekend. Sophie isn’t here. She’ll be so disappointed she missed you. Jonathan is keeping her until Monday morning.”
“I’ve been waiting to talk to you without Sophie—or anyone else—around,” Hank said. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek as he headed straight through her living room to sit down at the kitchen table. “Got some coffee for your grandpa?”
Ana looked at him sharply as she added fresh water to her Keurig and popped in a packet of her grandfather’s favorite French roast blend. He couldn’t know about her night with Chris, could he? Chris had been gone for several minutes before he came to the door; surely they had missed each other. It was just her own guilt feelings, she told herself.
When she had poured him a cup of coffee and handed it to him, Hank came right to the point.
“Do you know who you are going out with?” he said sharply.
“You mean Alexander Fontaine?” she said. Of course that was who her grandfather meant. Alexander was the man he had seen her with just yesterday. He had no way of knowing how complicated her love life had become in less than twenty-four hours.
“Why do you seem so accusatory?” she added. “You acted as if you were delighted to meet him yesterday afternoon. Besides, I’m not dating him. I’m working on a project for him at the university.”
She was babbling. She knew it, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “Yes, he is taking me out to dinner tonight, but I don�
�t really have any idea of ‘going out’ with him. And what business would it be of yours, anyway?”
Why should she feel so defensive about her date with Alexander? It wasn’t like it was any business of her grandfather’s if she wanted to date two men, she told herself. She realized her long-winded answer had probably clued Hank in that she felt guilty about something. Family! It didn’t matter how old you were or how independent you became, when it came to some things, like who you were dating, parents and grandparents could always make you feel like a little girl again.
“Not him. The other one. The one you just spent the night with.”
“How do you know I spent the night with anyone? Are you spying on me? And besides, what business is it of yours? I’m a grown woman.”
“Your brother saw you eating dinner with him last night at Flannery’s and I saw him leaving here just as I was pulling up to your house.”
“Danny saw me last night? Why didn’t he stop by my table and say something to me? Why did he come to you?” Ana paced the kitchen, becoming more and more irritated with her family with each passing moment. “I’m thirty-two years old. I have a thirteen-year-old daughter. I have a house and a job. Why would my brother go running to tell you who I was having dinner with? I’m tired of being treated like a child by everyone in this family. I swear, when I get my degree I’m getting out of here. I’m going somewhere where Sophie and I can live our own lives, on our own terms.”
“Because Danny knew who the man you were with is, and he was concerned for you. That’s why he called me. Then he kept an eye on you and Spier.” Her usually genial grandfather said the name as if it were a curse. “You can imagine how your brother felt when he realized his little sister was sleeping with a Hunter.” Hank slammed his coffee mug onto the table, folded his arms and gave her a penetrating stare that usually cowed everyone in the family and had them jumping to obey him.
“A Hunter? Chris? Grandpa that is just the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. You and Danny have got it all wrong. Chris is the man who saved me from the attack the other night. He didn’t know what that animal was.”
“And you think it was a coincidence he was right there when the wolf attacked?” he grandfather responded. “I know, I know, everyone is saying it was a dog,” he added when Ana started to protest his description of the animal who had attacked her. “But let’s not pretend here. You and I both know what it was. What it had to have been. And if you had been with the rest of the family, you wouldn’t have been in danger at all.”
Ana felt as if she had just fallen down a rabbit hole. Nothing her grandfather way saying made any sense at all. She continued to pace back and forth.
“Grandpa, we’ve gone over this and over this, and I thought we’d come to an understanding,” Ana said, finally flopping down in one of the kitchen chairs and putting her head in her hands. “If I’m ever going to get my degree, I can’t make every family get-together. You know that. You let Danny and Jennifer off the hook while they were college.”
“They didn’t come home their first semester pregnant and married to that damn jerk who thought he could use you and your family to climb some social ladder and give his career a jumpstart. Jonathan Dugan was bad enough, but now you’re fraternizing with a Hunter! I am the head of this pack and I won’t have it.” He slammed his hand on the table again for emphasis.
“That is so not fair, Grandpa! And you know it.”
“I know Dugan ran off and left you and Sophie as soon as he figured out I wasn’t going to lift a finger to help him get into a high falutin’ law firm or finance some congressional campaign.
“But that’s water under the bridge,” he said, taking a deep breath and visibly working to calm himself. “We need to look to today. You’ve been away from the family too long if you call a pack meeting a ‘get-together’ as if it were some damn Fourth of July picnic,” Hank spit out. “You’re going to make the next one, though, and no excuses, because it is going to be tonight. You just told me Sophie is with her father, so you can’t use that that to wiggle out of it.
“And I want Sophie to have a chance to be with the pack, too, but we aren’t going to go into that today. I’ll save it for later,” he added in a tone that Ana knew meant that ‘later’ would come very, very soon.
“You get home tonight and you bring this Alexander Fontaine with you.”
“What? Are you out of your mind?” Ana cried. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “First, you’re talking about Chris, now you’re talking about Alexander. I know you’ve always admired his books, but it is one thing to ask him over for lunch and tell him a few old legends, and it is quite another to invite him to a pack meeting. You’re the one who has preached secrecy to me my whole life, and now you want me to bring a man who studies paranormal legends home to meet the pack?”
“I have my suspicions about Alexander Fontaine and I want to know if I’m correct.”
“You have your suspicions? You have your suspicions!” Ana couldn’t sit still any longer. She got up from the table and began to pace again. “First you tell me you think Chris is a Hunter, and now you have suspicions about Alexander. Grandpa, are you feeling okay? This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Just what are you suspicious about?”
“He’s a wolf, honey. And if I’m right he’s the rogue who attacked you and killed a man a few days ago.”
“This is all insane. You’re out of your mind. I would know if he were the wolf. Grandpa, I am starting to get really worried about you.”
“No, honey, I’m not going crazy and don’t you worry, I’m not getting Alzheimer’s, either. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” Hank said, shaking his head. “As soon as a man gets a little up in years, these days, everyone is sure he is losing his marbles. Pretty soon I’ll have your dad and Danny challenging me for leadership. My senses are working just fine, thank you. It’s your senses I’m worried about. If Alexander Fontaine is the rogue you should have known. You should at least have known he was one of us. You’ve been with him how many times?”
“The night of the attack I used my mace. I couldn’t smell anything for hours. I wasn’t about to do anything else right outside my own front yard with all the neighbors watching.”
“And don’t you think it a little suspicious that he just happened to run into you at the flea market? When I’m there? It seems a little orchestrated to me.”
Ana quit pacing and stopped in front of her grandfather. Ys, she’d wondered that herself, but that was crazy. Wasn’t it? She shook her and said as much to her grandfather. “That is wild. It was a coincidence. And, anyway, I don’t like the way you say, ‘been with.’ We’ve had a couple of professional meetings at the university and I ran into him at the flea market yesterday. That’s all.”
“Well, and how am I to know that? First Dugan and now this Spier fellow.”
“Grandpa, that’s two men in thirteen years!” Ana came back to the table, pulled a chair out and sat right in front of him. “How many women has Danny dated in that time? Talk about double standards!” Ana huffed.
“It is not a double standard. Danny hasn’t come home with a child yet.”
“Don’t say it like that. You adore Sophie, and you know it. You have doted on her from the day she was born.”
Hank’s face softened at the mention of his great-granddaughter. “Yes, Sophie is certainly a good thing. But that’s another reason you need to be with the family more often. Sophie is one of us. She needs to be trained, and she needs to be able to spend time with others who are like she is.”
“I know, I know. I worry about it, too. And I promise she can spend as much of the Christmas holidays as possible out at the farm with the family.
“But Sophie is not what you came here to talk to me about. Let’s get back to Chris and Alexander. What makes you think they are each…well…what you think they are.”
“Because Danny and I have checked them out. And why haven’t you? My god, girl, you’re the
one with the fancy college education, not me. You’re the one who has made it clear you know all about the modern world. That your backwoods family doesn’t know anything. Don’t you know enough to check out your dates on the internet?”
“Of course I checked Chris out on the internet. I looked at his website and his LinkedIn profile. He’s a consultant. He does business management. It’s boring. He told me so himself. And Alexander is not only a professor at the university where I work, he’s a well-known author. You’ve talked about him for years. I didn’t need to check him out.”
“I don’t mean just on the internet. Didn’t you check them out on PackNet?”
“You know I don’t have a connection here at home. I don’t want to take a chance of Sophie getting into it. She’s too young. I don’t care how many spells and enchantments and encryptions are on it for security. Sophie doesn’t need to wander onto PackNet accidentally until she is old enough. You’ve said that yourself about the other children in the pack.”
“Sophie is fast getting to be old enough to learn more about who and what she is. Yes, I know there are places on PackNet you think she’s too young for, and maybe you are right. But she still needs to learn about tradition, and where she comes from. As soon as we get all this business about a rogue wolf and a Hunter under control it will be time to for her to learn all of her family’s traditions.”
“I’ll decide when it’s time, Grandpa. Not you.”
“I’m the head of the family, Ana.” Hank stood up to go. “I’ve given you a lot of leeway. More than I’ve given anyone else in the family. You always could wrap me and your father around your little finger. Looking back on it, I’m not sure it’s always been good for you.
Hank put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to face him as he looked her straight in the eyes.
“But this time, Ana, you are going to listen to me, and you are going to do what I say. Go out and have your dinner with Alexander Fontaine. Talk to him. Find out about him.
“Then, when you are done you are going to come home to the farm tonight. And you will bring Dr. Alexander Fontaine with you.”
The Patient Wolf (Wicked Urban Fantasy #1) Page 7