Desert Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  Her black silk shirt had opened just enough below her collarbones for him to get a quick view of Paxton’s flawless ivory skin. It was rare to see pale people in the West, and the contrast between the black silk and the porcelain skin beneath it seemed to him a metaphor of sorts. All this time, she had assumed she was human. How could she have thought otherwise if things had never been explained to her? But the silk was only a top layer. Peel that back, and what lay beneath would reveal the real Paxton Hall.

  Bathed in moonlight and the slanted glow from the motel’s neon sign, Paxton seemed vulnerable and alone. Her mother had died long ago. She’d never known her father. Grant hated to leave her, but he had to.

  After one quick brush of his hair with his fingers, Grant set his hat on his head, feeling the need to offer Paxton something, even if what he was about to say might sound trite.

  “You’re not alone. I want you to understand that,” he said.

  Confusion crossed her features.

  “I’ll take you there tomorrow,” he continued. “I’ll take you to Desperado first thing in the morning.”

  Relief softened her expression. Happy with that, Grant added, “Whatever you might be thinking, I’m not the enemy.”

  Another step brought him close to her. After a second quick glance toward the window, he lowered his voice. “No one here is out to hurt you. Please remember that.”

  Daring to touch her, Grant placed a finger against her lips, fighting an overwhelming urge to replace those fingers with his mouth. But that kind of unanticipated incursion would have ended any future dealings they might have. He got that.

  Her lips were soft against his fingertips, though. And she didn’t back away from his touch.

  Damn those haunted eyes of yours.

  Damn those lips.

  He almost said those things out loud.

  Hiding a shudder similar to the one he saw pass through her, Grant spoke again. “Good night. Sleep well.”

  It took all of his willpower—every last ounce of it—to leave her there and keep walking.

  In the back of his mind, he was sure she wanted to call him back.

  *

  Fighting the impulse to shout for him to return, Paxton watched Grant go, believing the sincerity in his voice when he’d said all those things about her not being alone. Instincts seldom led her astray and were telling her now that Grant Wade would have capitulated about the property if he had been able to. Something held him back, some part of the deal he’d made with her father that hadn’t been made public or available to her. Besides the mess she had found herself in, it seemed there were more secrets to uncover.

  “Is it gold?” she mused. “The grand reopening of Desperado?”

  If either of those things governed his deal with her dad, why hadn’t Grant just come out and mentioned it? They both stood to gain from public access to the old ghost town. Land value surrounding a viable business would make her property worth more. And if that were the case, maybe Grant would make enough money to eventually buy her out—if, in fact, he was short on funds at this point.

  That had to be the sticking point here, right? Money? Otherwise, owning everything would be of benefit to him. Truthfully, she didn’t give a damn about his plans for the old place. Right now, she just wanted nothing more than to go home and forget about all of this.

  Her cowboy stopped when he reached the truck, and turned around. He didn’t wave. He wore no smile. His only offering was a quick nod in her direction before he climbed into the truck. After that, he sat for some time before starting the engine, as if he might be reluctant to leave.

  Did he have more to say?

  Did she?

  Paxton waited until the truck backed out of the lot, feeling caught up in the treacherous thrill of having been close to Grant Wade for a minute or two. His brief touch had contributed a lot to the current heat spell.

  She was burning up, on fire and hog-tied until she got what she wanted.

  Behind her, inside the room, the air conditioner waited for her to punch the button. Overhead, the small neon sign buzzed. Moonlight flowed across the desert in the distance, unbroken by barriers and buildings, having risen above the mountain range.

  She remembered damp skin and unrequited longings, as if those feelings had merely been temporarily buried somewhere. Rushing back to her were more remembrances of heat, wind and moonlight, along with memories of running through the brush howling like a coyote and pretending to be one of them.

  Paxton closed her eyes.

  Somewhere near those distant mountains the buildings of a decrepit town nestled. The place had been legit once, a real mining hub that had fallen on hard times when the mines were tapped out. In the forties, movies had been made there with bronco-riding cowboy stars. At present, who knew what kind of shape the place was in? Twenty years had passed since she played on those dirt streets, and the buildings had been older than shit then.

  The truck had disappeared. Only the hum of neon was left in a quiet night. Paxton wanted to raise her face to the night sky in search of a nonexistent breeze, and experienced a sudden feeling of abandonment that was both odd and absurd since she had just met Grant Wade.

  “If you’re hiding something that affects this decision, I need to know what it is,” Paxton whispered. “I won’t care. I swear I won’t care. I just need the truth.”

  Her mind turned toward a darker theory.

  Knowing she’d be going to see Desperado in the morning, had Grant set out tonight to clear up whatever he was hiding? There was plenty of time between now and sunrise for him to accomplish whatever he had in mind. Hide things. Keep his secrets from her.

  Backing into the room, Paxton closed the door and stripped to her underwear. She pressed the button on the air conditioner and waited impatiently for the machine to kick on. Cool air felt good on her hot, bare skin. So good, she almost discarded the plan she was formulating.

  Almost.

  Chapter 6

  Grant pulled over a block from the motel, let the truck idle and sat awhile in thought. Should he go back? Forget that last look on Paxton’s face and move on?

  She might not have realized how good his eyesight and hearing were. He now figured that she suspected money was a deciding factor in his holding out on a sale. She didn’t trust him. Her wary expression made that obvious. But how far would she go to get what she wanted? “You won’t do anything crazy?” he muttered, hoping he was right.

  Though there had been a glint of wildness in her eyes when their gazes connected, Paxton didn’t seem the type to blatantly ignore his warnings about a visit to Desperado being ill-advised. Still, the look she had leveled at him from the motel balcony left him unsure about how far her defiance might take her.

  “Pain in the ass is right,” he mumbled.

  What an idiot he was, Grant decided, for worrying about the woman when there was a more important situation at hand that required his full attention. His pack would be hunting the rogue tonight, hoping to find where the bastard hung out, and he needed to be with them.

  Turning the wheel, he put the truck in gear and stepped on the gas, heading for home. When the last of the city lights finally dimmed behind him, Grant breathed easier. Out here, in the open, he was more at ease. Far from the city, he and his pack were free to be what they were, and that kind of freedom was rare for his kind.

  “Did you really think I’d open Desperado to the public, Paxton Hall?” he muttered, as if she still sat beside him.

  Reopening the town was about as feasible as getting down and dirty with Paxton tonight in that motel room would have been. As for any other bright ideas, the only one pestering him at the moment was his desire to run his hands over Paxton’s incredibly soft blond hair.

  “No secret there.”

  Enough desert fragrances came through the open window to dislodge the scent that had taken root in his lungs. Paxton’s alluring, woodsy sent. It was no joke that his thoughts kept returning to her. She also was part wolf
, and he had never met anyone quite like her. Nevertheless, Paxton couldn’t be allowed to see behind Desperado’s walls unless she was a fully formed she-wolf in on the secrets of his kind.

  “Will your first shape-shift happen here, Paxton Hall?”

  What would she think about the fact that behind Desperado’s facade lay cages, ropes, chains and other devices used for aiding the transition from human to Other without hurting the Were or anyone else? And that when he found creatures in need, he brought them here to help them avoid the trauma of becoming a werewolf in a human world?

  This is what he did and what he was needed for.

  “Somebody has to do it,” he said aloud before realizing he was again speaking to the absent Paxton. Grant supposed he was, in a way, apologizing for the uniqueness of her father’s will and how it had affected her.

  “Like it or not, I have to watch over you now that your father sent you to me.”

  Maybe one of those cages would have her name on it if she sought answers so close to the full moon. Possibly Paxton was here for a reason altogether different than she assumed.

  But having Paxton and a dangerous trespasser here at the same time was bad news any way he looked at it. And if, without knowing it, Paxton had arrived in time to set her wolf free, and Andrew Hall had sent her, then he owed her father another round of respect for executing that plan so perfectly.

  Pushing the truck to eighty on the open road, Grant voiced one more thought before vowing to shut his mind down. He spoke a final word to Paxton through clenched teeth.

  “I’ll be here for you, no matter what you think of me.”

  And then, hearing the echoing report of gunshots, he jammed on the brakes.

  *

  Minutes had gone by since Grant had left her, and as luck would have it, the proprietor of the motel had a car to rent. It was an old station wagon, the likes of which Paxton had only seen on late-night TV.

  Dressed in an old T-shirt and jeans, she plugged into her cell’s GPS and drove along the highway for several miles before turning off on a smaller, unsigned road where she lost sight of other cars. Desperado wasn’t in her GPS app, but the ranch next to it was. If she was careful, she might avoid Grant Wade’s current residence and find Desperado on her own, though darkness might make locating the entrance to the town difficult.

  Her goal, though, was to spy on Mr. Grant Wade.

  The back of her neck tingled as she drove over ruts in the road. Thoughts of how many rattlesnakes existed per square yard of desert sand would have made anyone shudder, but she didn’t plan to get out of the car. All she wanted was one look at the town from the front gate leading to it, to see if there were lights. She had to know if Desperado was as vacant as it was supposed to be, and if Grant had nothing to hide.

  Honest to God, she hoped Grant had been straight with her. He seemed like a good guy. She got no bad vibes from him, just the odd sense that he was keeping something to himself. Some secrets were okay. She didn’t need to access his life, just his plans for Desperado.

  Paxton blew out the breath she’d been holding. She couldn’t stop thinking about Grant. Only a fool wouldn’t have envisioned what life with a man like that could be like, and she was no fool… usually…except for maybe right now, as she drove on a dark road in the middle of nowhere just to prove a point.

  Men weren’t always accommodating or trustworthy. She knew that firsthand. So it was important she made sure the man her father had left Desperado to had nothing to hide and therefore might be coerced into either selling his inheritance or buying her out. The key word here was selling.

  Wondering if all these thoughts about Grant were truly rooted in business, she pounded the wheel with both hands. After meeting him, she was no longer sure. Still, plan B was to go after that sale tomorrow and then go home.

  “Too damn dark,” she said aloud to ease the discomfort of being alone so far from civilization. The road made the going slow at twenty miles per hour. It had to have been ten minutes since she passed another car, and so far, she saw no twinkle of distant lights.

  She’d traveled fifteen miles from the motel Grant had put her in, and damn it, Desperado was out here somewhere. In the old days there had been signs leading to it and paper maps that an ancient tourist attraction might have been noted on. Current technology wasn’t always so hot for things that had fallen off the radar.

  Her phone, on the seat beside her, beeped, giving her a start. Paxton stopped the car and found that her battery was getting low. She sat there a couple of minutes more, trying to get her bearings and breathing in the delicious desert smells she had never really forgotten.

  Reaching again for the gearshift, she hesitated, listening, hearing a noise that hadn’t come from inside the car.

  Rustling brush? Desert animal?

  She jolted upright as a terrible thud came from the roof of the car, sounding as if something heavy had landed there.

  Her muscles seized. White-hot streaks of adrenaline shot through Paxton as her pulse began to pound with a new, raw kind of fear.

  She cried out when another thud came, this one from the hood of the car, and again when something dark and shapeless peered at her through the front window.

  Fear froze her in place. Her frantic mind worked to dig up an explanation for what that dark thing could be, and what was going on. Hell, was it a bear?

  She was shaking so hard, the keys in the ignition rattled. Her heart exploded with wild, erratic beats she felt in her throat.

  Damn it. Did Arizona even have bears?

  Breathing became difficult. Each new effort she made to take in air only partially sufficed. No scream would come now. Paxton thought she might pass out. The thing on the hood had its big eyes trained on her, and those eyes looked nothing like a bear’s. Those eyes looked sort of…human.

  And then, as if she had merely blinked this beast away, it was gone, leaving behind a loaded silence filled only by Paxton’s racing heartbeats as she sat there, unable to move.

  Eventually, a survival instinct nudged her to get going and hightail it out of there before that awful thing came back. Finding Desperado in the dark now seemed like a ludicrous idea. What had she been thinking?

  What was that thing that had landed on the hood?

  Slowly, with adrenaline continuing to push her, feeling returned to her body. Enough of her focus returned for Paxton to acknowledge that although she had been born in this desert, she’d long since become citified.

  She didn’t like that realization. Didn’t like feeling weak or vulnerable.

  Her thoughts fluttered in much the same way her heart did.

  In Hollywood horror movies, she recalled, the chick in this situation would have opened the door and stepped out of the car to see if there’d been damage to the roof and hood. That would have been a duh moment because, in the movies, monsters always returned to finish off their prey.

  She didn’t intend to become a bear’s next meal. Swallowing the fear that clung to her like an unwelcome guest, Paxton shoved the car into Reverse. Backing onto the dirt lining the narrow stretch of road, she two-fisted the wheel into a U-turn without looking back.

  Icy licks of fear chased away any thoughts she might have had about Desperado and Grant Wade. At the moment, she needed light. She needed people. Dents in the car were nothing when compared to the perks of civilization. She doubted that even a bear that had built up an appetite for humans could outrun an old station wagon.

  At least, she hoped not.

  Chapter 7

  Grant drove the last stretch of road leading to the ranch like a NASCAR driver. Relief came when he turned into the driveway between two large posts still supporting the Hall sign—a reminder that this ranch was part of Paxton’s legacy.

  The house itself was dark, but one outdoor light illuminated a portion of the yard leading to the front porch. Another light flooded an area beside the barn, showing him that he wasn’t alone. The black sedan parked there was Shirleen’s.

/>   Before he stepped out of the truck, she was beside him, utilizing the kind of speed built into most Weres. Shirleen still wore her apron, which told Grant she’d been in a hurry to get here from work.

  “It’s back,” she said with a hand on the truck’s door frame.

  “Back?”

  “I tried to tell you in the café, but you were busy,” she said.

  “Tell me what, exactly?”

  “That rogue bastard’s trail was found this afternoon in the hills.”

  Grant knew that none of his pack would have fired the shots he had heard, which meant the ranchers were already onboard tonight, just as he’d feared.

  “What kind of trail was found?” he asked.

  “An old campfire. I don’t want to tell you what else was in that fire.”

  “Bones,” Grant guessed, praying he was wrong.

  “Yep. Bones,” Shirleen replied.

  “Cattle?”

  Shirleen’s face tensed. “Human.”

  Grant was out of the truck before the meaning of that word fully sank in. He didn’t have to ask Shirleen to repeat what she’d said, or quiz her. She wouldn’t have said it if she wasn’t sure.

  Part Native American, she’d been born and raised just twenty miles from Desperado, and she was their resident expert when it came to finding things in these hills. Being bitten by a werewolf in her eighteenth year had sent her Grant’s way just twelve months ago. What had been bad luck for her turned out to be the welcome addition of an expert tracker to this pack.

  “How old is that campfire?” he asked, heading for the house with Shirleen in his wake.

  “A month at least. We had missed it because the sucker used an old mine shaft and then sealed it up afterward.”

  Over his shoulder, Grant said, “Those bones. Do you recall hearing about any disappearances? Has there been any mention of missing people at the café?”

  Besides waitressing to pay the bills, Shirleen’s job at the café was to gather information that might be important to the pack. Like a missing hiker or two, the theft of horses or more about missing cattle. Lots of conversation went on in that diner, which was a hangout for regulars and local law enforcement. Waitresses weren’t usually given much notice during discussions like that.