Then he backed away, his face long with dismay and alarm. ‘‘I never knew you were so cranky when you woke up.’’
So he wasn’t the dark wolf of her imagination. At least—not now.
‘‘I’m not if I’ve had more than five hours’ sleep.’’ And if her butt didn’t hurt from the stupid bike.
She hadn’t even seen the wolf since that first night, and when she looked back, that seemed the real fantasy. She knew the truth; she’d seen the truth. But she still couldn’t completely comprehend that Jasha became Another. This morning, as the sun filtered through the trees and scattered flecks of light across the forest floor, and birds sang their approval, she could easily pretend that this was a camping trip undertaken with the intention of fun in the forest.
A misplaced intention, to be sure, but the intention nevertheless.
Taking a sip of the coffee, she muttered, ‘‘Come on, caffeine.’’ She unwrapped the cookie and tasted it—healthy, but not too healthy, and it filled the empty space in her belly.
As the food and the coffee worked their magic, she began to rouse enough to survey their surroundings.
They had sheltered in a grove of magnificent old evergreens. Here and there mighty stones poked out of the soft earth. One stone was so close she could lean against it, and she did, and when she did, she looked up . . . and up.
Last night, she’d thought the trees dusted the stars.
In the broad light of day, she realized she was right. These trees—Douglas fir, cedar, western hemlock—had trunks six and eight and ten feet wide, with branches the size of the live oaks in her condo complex. She got dizzy looking up at the tops. ‘‘Where are we?’’ she whispered.
‘‘In the wilderness in the Olympic Mountains.’’ Jasha smiled at her as he cleaned up the Sterno.
Maybe yesterday’s shock and last night’s journey had combined to make her forget how gorgeous he was. Maybe it was the pure pleasure of watching a man wash something—anything!—that made her breath catch with amazement.
‘‘There’s no one for miles,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ll make a hard walk this morning, then rest for a few hours, then take another hard walk this afternoon to the place where I want to camp. We can have a fire, and I’ve got a tent stashed there. It’ll be like camping out. Fun!’’
‘‘Camping out is fun?’’ Her experience included one trip with the Camp Fire Girls to a national park for a wretched weekend that included a slow, steady downpour followed by a freeze.
‘‘It is with me.’’ With an efficiency of motion, he packed his backpack. ‘‘I’ll fish, and we’ll have trout and huckleberries, and wine—you gotta know I’ve hidden wine up there—and we’ll tell ghost stories around the fire.’’
Caffeine? Who needed caffeine? The sight of his compelling gold eyes gave her a bracing jolt. His voice was slow and deep and dangerous. His dark hair was ruffled with sleep; the start of a beard darkened his chin and the hollows of his cheeks—and his body! Camouflage emphasized the width of his shoulders and the length of his legs, and she got caught up in the memories they evoked.
More important, he seemed to think she looked good, too. He ran his gaze over her, and he smiled as if the sight of her pleasured him.
She dropped the cookie back into the wrapper and ran her fingers through her hair, trying to restore it to some semblance of order.
‘‘You’re beautiful, all mussed from sleep.’’
‘‘Sure.’’ She didn’t believe it, but she liked the way he said it.
He walked over and knelt on the sleeping bag, and his fingers joined hers, smoothing her hair, stroking her scalp, her neck. . . .
She relaxed into his touch, allowing him the freedom of her body if he would only massage away the kinks of tension, take the memories of terror and replace them with slow, sweet passion. He took her cup away, and she let him; then he eased her down on her back.
‘‘Do you know I can see right through your silk T-shirt?’’ His fingertips stroked her nipples through the thin silk.
‘‘Your silk T-shirt.’’ She could barely move her lips.
‘‘The sleeves are so wide, I could see inside every time you lifted that coffee to your lips.’’ His hands slid up her arms and into the shirt, finding her breasts, caressing them so lightly she could barely feel his touch . . . and she could think of nothing else.
‘‘Good view?’’ She closed her eyes to feel more acutely each pass he made.
‘‘Very good.’’ He lifted her shirt. ‘‘Getting better.’’
Cool air washed her skin, and her already tight nipples grew rigid, almost painful. But the old familiar habits of modesty couldn’t easily be broken. So she didn’t dare give herself up to passion. Not in the daylight. Not while he watched.
Her hands flew to push her shirt back down, but his hands were in the way, stroking her rib cage, her belly. . . . She pressed her legs together, not sure if she was intent on keeping him away or easing the discomfort passion brought in its wake.
But he made no attempt to go farther. His caresses grew lighter and more infrequent.
She opened her eyes. He knelt over her, a knee on each side of her waist, watching her as if he wanted to know everything that went on in her head. ‘‘What?’’
‘‘You’re a fascinating puzzle.’’ He lowered her shirt.
‘‘No, I’m not,’’ she snapped back with telling speed. ‘‘I’m plain Ann Smith.’’
‘‘No hidden depths? No skeletons in your cupboard? ’’
‘‘No.’’ She spread her arms wide. ‘‘What you see is what you get.’’
But he didn’t look at the body she offered as distraction. His gaze never left her face.
She worked for the man, had for four years, and she’d learned to read his moods. She prided herself on knowing what he thought.
But right now, she couldn’t read his expression. His eyes were shadowed; his face was enigmatic. She knew his deepest secret.
So how was it possible he had become a mystery to her?
Chapter 18
With elaborate casualness, Ann stretched a hand toward her coffee cup. "Where did my cookie go?"
Jasha pulled it from beneath his knee and handed it to her. ‘‘Hiding, Ann?’’
She looked at the slightly mashed breakfast cookie. ‘‘It was?’’
‘‘No. You are.’’ He was still kneeling over her, still too close, still knowing too much and revealing too little.
‘‘From what?’’ She looked into his face, but she couldn’t sustain the full-frontal contact for long. ‘‘Besides the Varinski.’’
‘‘I don’t know. But I can’t wait to find out.’’ Jasha rose and walked back to his packing.
She sat up. Her coffee was cold. She was cold, and more scared than she’d been when she’d seen him become a wolf, more scared than she’d been when she’d removed the arrow. She’d never thought Jasha would want to talk to her, find out about her background . . . but then, she’d never thought he would want her to meet his family. In fact, she’d been a little vague about what would happen after she seduced him. She’d had this idea that they would have an affair, a lot of good sex, really, really good sex, a lot and often sex, and then . . . and then what? She’d go back to work for him, see him every day, buy his girlfriends flowers, purchase his next fiancée’s ring?
Ann shot him a glare. Not in this lifetime.
Or maybe he’d fall madly in love with her, he’d want to marry her, and they’d live this ideal, problem-free life together forever, just the two of them? Jasha? The man who called or e-mailed someone in his family every day?
Ann hadn’t really thought this through. One of the things that had seduced her was his dedication to his father and mother, his brothers and sister. He seemed the kind of man who could have been Beaver Cleaver’s father: proud, thoughtful, a good disciplinarian.
Of course a man like that would think her background was important. She had to give him something, and really, what was w
rong with telling him the truth?
Or at least . . . some of it.
She rummaged in the bottom of the sleeping bag until she found her clothes. Then ever so casually and quickly, as she dressed, she said, ‘‘I’m an orphan.’’
He didn’t react. Didn’t clutch his chest and edge away as if her bad luck were contagious.
‘‘I don’t have any family.’’ As she buttoned her shirt, she shivered from the cold.
He didn’t glance up from his work. ‘‘Really? No family at all?’’ She could tell he was listening, and listening intently.
‘‘No family at all. I grew up in an orphanage in Los Angeles.’’
‘‘How did you get there?’’
‘‘The nuns took me in.’’ Had he noticed she dodged that question? She’d had a lot of experience.
‘‘You were raised in a convent?’’
‘‘Not in a convent!’’ Her laugh was carefully lighthearted. ‘‘It was a Catholic orphanage attached to a convent.’’
‘‘That explains a lot.’’
What did he mean by that? Did he know how many hours she’d spent looking in on the nuns, sharing their life, learning their rhythms? Yet despite her desire to be part of a family, any family, she’d always known she wasn’t welcome in the convent?
And after Sister Catherine . . . after that, she was welcome nowhere.
But she could pretend, so she babbled on. ‘‘Usually babies get adopted or at least put in foster care, but I was premature, in the hospital for four and a half months. The doctors didn’t give me good odds, but I survived, and I finally got out of the incubator and into the orphanage. Sister Mary Magdalene said I was the ugliest baby she’d ever seen.’’
His eyebrows rose steeply. ‘‘That’s harsh.’’
‘‘Sister Mary Magdalene prided herself on not mincing words.’’ An understatement. ‘‘But I’ve seen the pictures. I was this long, scrawny, hairless thing. The doctors already knew my eyesight was bad, and they were afraid there would be a lot of future problems, so no one wanted to take me on.’’ She touched the mark on her lower back, then lay back in the bag to pull on her pants. ‘‘An orphanage isn’t the best place to grow up, I guess, but we were in a bad part of LA, and an orphanage isn’t the worst place, either. I should have been grateful—’’
He straightened up and looked at her, amazed.
‘‘I was grateful,’’ she said swiftly.
‘‘Really? Who told you that?’’
‘‘Sister Mary Magdalene.’’
‘‘Do me a favor. Don’t ever be grateful to me for anything.’’
She liked the way he said it, wryly and as if things had returned to normal. Glancing around at the wilderness, she said, ‘‘Right now, I can’t think of anything I should be grateful to you for.’’
‘‘The coffee.’’
‘‘Self-preservation on your part.’’ She sat on the bag and pulled on her socks and tied her shoes. ‘‘You knew I’d kill without caffeine.’’
‘‘Yeah, I’m not the only one who grows teeth and claws. We just do it for different reasons.’’
He was teasing her . . . until he wanted more details.
But now he knew the almost-biggest shocker, and she could filter the rest through a screen of droll laughter. His wolf senses couldn’t smell a half-truth . . . could they?
‘‘Where did you go last night? You said something about a rat?’’ Completely dressed, she rolled up the sleeping bag.
He had draped a canvas over a hump in the ground, and he pulled it away in a flourish.
He’d created a little cage of twigs, anchored it to the ground, and inside—
She shrieked. ‘‘That’s a rat!’’ She kept the icon in her pants pocket, and she grabbed it as if protecting the Virgin—or asking the Virgin to protect her.
The rat ran in circles, looking for a way out, digging at the ground, clawing at the wooden bars.
‘‘You brought a rat here and it was right there the whole time we were sleeping? A nasty, horrible, bug-eyed, disgusting . . .’’ She couldn’t speak for shuddering.
‘‘Don’t like rats, huh?’’ he said with dry understatement.
‘‘Rodent. Filthy, awful . . .’’ She remembered them at the orphanage, breaking into the pantry, scurrying around the babies, menacing in their size and their malice. ‘‘I hate them.’’
‘‘I brought it here for one reason.’’ He reached into his pocket.
‘‘You’re not going to kill it, are you?’’ She clutched the sleeping bag to her chest like a baby’s blankie.
‘‘I thought you didn’t like it.’’
‘‘I don’t kill everything I don’t like. If I did, you’d be in deep trouble right now.’’ She glared as malevolently as the rat.
‘‘Watch.’’ He pulled out the plastic Baggie containing the tracking device. Taking it out, he wrapped it in a piece of cookie and offered it to the rat on the tip of his finger.
‘‘Be careful!’’ she squealed.
The rat sniffed, then scraped the proffered meal off his finger and swallowed it whole.
With a smile, Jasha pulled the twigs out of the ground and let the rat go. It ran in circles, then dashed into the underbrush.
Ann found herself on top of a tall boulder, screaming. She didn’t remember how she’d got there.
Jasha stood below her, offering his hand to help her down. ‘‘I never imagined my calm, unflappable Miss Smith could be such a girl.’’
‘‘Is it gone?’’ She tucked her feet under her and refused to take his hand.
‘‘Yes, and in case you missed the point, it’s taken the tracking device with it in its belly. Rats have fast digestive systems, but he’s not going to stop running for a while, and he’s lame. There’s a good chance an owl will pick him up, or a cougar, and he’ll be in another belly and traveling farther than ever. . . .’’ Jasha must have seen her horror. ‘‘I didn’t break his leg. It looks like he caught it on something . . . and why do you care? You don’t like rats.’’
‘‘I know, but I don’t want anything to die.’’
‘‘Everything dies. The point is to die in a state of grace.’’ Jasha’s lids drooped over his brooding eyes. ‘‘The Varinski believes the tracking device is in me, and he’ll be after the rat, and not us. Come on. Take my hand. We’ve got to get going, and in the opposite direction of that rat.’’
She slid down the rock and into his arms. ‘‘So if he’s lucky, he’ll find a pile of rat poo, and if he’s unlucky—’’
‘‘He’ll find a cougar.’’
He held her for a minute and looked at her as if he wanted to probe the depths of her mind. ‘‘You seem so softhearted, and yet I think that beneath all the uncertainty, you hide a core of steel.’’
‘‘Yes. But it’s rusty steel.’’
He smiled, as she meant him to. ‘‘I don’t think so. And I think, before this is over, we’ll discover the truth.’’
The truth? She shivered.
What frightened her more? The thing that pursued them? Or the chance that Jasha would discover that his assistant hid a past and a secret that damned her as surely as any devil’s pact?
And if he did find out, how could she explain something she didn’t understand herself?
Chapter 19
Jasha was right. When Ann camped with him, it was fun.
By seven o’clock, they had reached the campsite, a small, protected grove of trees high in the mountains with a stream nearby where she could wash her face and hands. By nine, he had caught trout, cleaned them, and cooked them over a carefully built fire. By the time the northern sun was finally setting, they settled down with a feast of fresh fish, huckleberries, slightly stale sourdough bread (produced with a flourish from his backpack), and a really good bottle of Wilder Wines’s 1997 Sangiovese sipped directly out of the bottle.
Food had never tasted so good, the flames warmed her hands and face while the air cooled her backside, and seeing Jasha acr
oss the fire from her gave her a thrill every time she looked up—and she looked up often.
A campout wasn’t the way she’d imagined their affair would progress, but it was pretty darned wonderful.
By the time the stars had started to dimple the night sky, Ann had laughed so much she thought she might be tipsy. That was the only reason she could imagine why she made the mistake of saying, ‘‘Tell me about this deal with the devil. Who was the idiot who thought that was a good idea?’’
An owl hooted. The stream burbled. A tall spiral of smoke slithered up toward the dark heavens, and the trees whispered in the wind.
Yet Jasha didn’t answer, and worry seeped into her mind and stained her carefree pleasure.
Had she offended him?
Today he’d been Jasha Wilder, kind, intelligent, thoughtful, needing help, consulting her . . . yet now the fire lent shadows to his face and flame to his eyes, and she remembered, really remembered, that he’d been the wolf that chased her through the woods, held her down, and forced pleasure on her.
He took a drink from the bottle, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. His voice, when he spoke, was slow and deep, reciting the story he seemed to drag from the depths of his mind. ‘‘The first Konstantine Varinski was a bad seed, a child given to cruelty, then a man who reveled in wickedness. People on the steppes said he was the devil, and that’s saying something, because a thousand years ago, life in Russia was brutish and short, and only the strongest survived. After years of vicious behavior, his father threw him out and told him to make his own way in the world.’’
Ann slid off her log to get closer to the fire, and wrapped her arms around her knees. ‘‘Did he throw him into the snow?’’
‘‘I can only hope so.’’ Jasha passed her the bottle.
She took a drink, then passed it back. ‘‘He was a psychotic? Maybe a serial killer?’’
‘‘If you want to put a nice face on it. To me, he sounds like a sadistic son of a bitch. For years, he wandered the steppes, fighting and raping and pillaging, and everywhere he went, the rumor that he was the devil continued to grow.’’ Jasha threw two logs onto the fire, and a shower of sparks rose toward the stars. ‘‘Finally the devil himself took note.’’
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