Between a Wolf and a Hard Place

by Terry Spear

  As a wolf, Brett joined her, dropping the pack in front of her and then checking them both over. She quickly shifted, yanked out a blanket, and wrapped Billy in it. They would have to rig up a carrier that they could pull him on. The backpack appeared to be big enough that they could actually put him in it. Then maybe the two of them could pull it with their teeth as they walked backward until they reached a point where only one had room to move it. The entrance was too small for them both to pull at the same time.

  As she tried to move the lethargic boy into the bag, Ellie realized he was too big, so she set him on top of it and tied him to it while Brett waited. He was too big and wouldn’t have been able to maneuver inside the den with another human in the small space. Then she shifted and moved to where Brett was. He nuzzled her face, and she greeted him back. Then each grasped a strap between their teeth and backed up, sliding the backpack and the boy over the soft earth.

  Pulling him took so long that she didn’t think they’d ever reach the main tunnel that led back to the entrance to the den. They could still move the backpack side-by-side, but when they drew within about eight feet from the entrance, the tunnel narrowed too much. Brett nuzzled her in a way that said she should let him do it. He was stronger and could pull the boy by himself. She was afraid Billy might still slide off the backpack, so she maneuvered around him and followed at the boy’s feet, just in case.

  “You’re almost here,” Eric said, peering into the den with a flashlight trained on them. “Just a few more feet, and I can grab him and bring him out.”

  But Brett hauled the boy the rest of the way out. Eric and the wolf paramedics quickly took care of the boy while Brett and Ellie shifted farther away in the woods. Meghan had already brought their clothes over and returned to see if she could help with Billy.

  Thrilled to have located the boy but apprehensive about his condition, Ellie and Brett dressed and then checked on Billy. He had hypothermia and was slurring his words, but as dark as it had been in the den, and as out of it as he was now, he’d never remember that a couple of wolves had rescued him. Once the EMT crew stabilized him, they carried him out of the woods to a waiting ambulance. Brett wrapped his arm around Ellie and gave her a kiss on the cheek, warming her to the marrow of her bones on the chilly night, while Meghan and Laurel tried to pretend they weren’t there.

  “Good job, you two,” Laurel said, her back to them as they hiked to the parked cars.

  “Yeah. The boy’s going to be all right because of you,” Meghan said.

  “We all had a hand in finding him.” Ellie smiled up at Brett as he kept her snuggled under his arm. She was rethinking her mission of dating anyone else.

  Chapter 4

  “We’re still having dinner, right?” Brett asked. He hoped Ellie wasn’t too exhausted from their ordeal of locating the missing boy or too upset about it and wanting to call off the date.

  He was relieved they had found the little boy before it was too late and that he was going to be okay. Brett loved how the packs would come together and search for missing persons. They were perfectly suited for the job. And he was glad he was able to search with Ellie and her sisters. He realized that the more he was with her, the more he wanted to do pack-related activities as her partner.

  On the drive there, she’d been somewhat reserved, and he wasn’t sure how she’d be on the way back.

  “Yeah, I’d really like that—a way to unwind after all that’s happened. I don’t have anyone else lined up for a date tonight.” She smiled at him.

  “I wasn’t really serious about that.”

  “I still think it’s worth seeing what happens, don’t you? I mean, you could even go out with another she-wolf.”

  “Hell no.” Surefire way to really screw things up between them.

  “I saw my cousins searching through the woods at one point. I was surprised to see them there,” Ellie said as Brett drove her back to her home to have dinner.

  “Yeah. I saw them driving through town and asked if they wanted to help. I believe they’re eager to get on the pack’s good side.”

  “Good. As long as they leave our…inn alone, I’m happy to be friends with them.”

  Brett heard the hesitation in her words and wondered if she and her sisters were still aggravated about how the brothers had harassed them about the inn. “I meant to ask if I could bring anything for dinner. Do you want me to stop and grab anything?”

  “No thanks. You paid for dinner last night. I have all the fixings we need.”

  “Okay, good. When the weather warms up this spring and summer, I’d love to grill steaks, chicken, ribs, or anything that you’d like to eat outdoors. I’m not quite as handy in the kitchen.”

  “I’ve heard you often eat over at CJ’s.”

  “Yeah. I bring the food; he cooks.” Brett wondered how she’d feel about him not being much of an indoor cook. It was nice to give a mate a break from the daily chore of cooking. He’d be happy to grill all summer long. “Maybe I can hang some of the lights on the inn tonight for you too. And I’ll help hang the picture of Matilda next to the piano when we finish dinner.” When Ellie didn’t say anything, he wondered if she needed to get Laurel’s permission to hang it there. “If you want to.”

  “Uh, yeah. That would be nice.” She sounded a little apprehensive.

  “Are you thinking of the little boy? I still feel my blood pumping faster from the worry that we wouldn’t find him and then, when we did, that we wouldn’t get him out of the den in time before he died from exposure.”

  “Yeah. Me too. I’m so glad it was happily resolved, but I may be having nightmares about it tonight.”

  “Agreed. It’s always a worry when something like that happens. It reminded me of when CJ and I got lost in the woods once. We’d both had bad colds, it was summer, and we were searching for magical stones.”

  “Magical stones?”

  “Yeah. You know. The ones with the quartz crystal in them.” He realized once he’d mentioned it that she might think what they’d been doing was dumb. He and CJ loved collecting colorful rocks. “We were maybe five miles from home, couldn’t smell anything worth a darn because our noses were so stuffed up, and boy, did Eric give us hell when he caught up to us.” Brett still remembered how red-faced Eric had been. Sarandon had stayed out of it.

  “When Eric had realized what we’d been doing, he swore. Though he also appeared damned relieved and said he’d help us search for the rocks. Sarandon told CJ and me later that Eric had worried we’d run away because we didn’t like that he was in charge of us, and he’d really felt hurt about it. No way would he tell us that. So that’s why he offered to help us hunt for the special rocks. He looked like a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.”

  “Aww, your brothers are so sweet. Your dad wasn’t upset with the two of you for being lost like that?”

  “No. Eric never told him. He wasn’t sure how Dad would have reacted. As far as Eric was concerned, he had lectured us enough all the way back home. He and Sarandon had spent hours trying to catch up to us. Thankfully, they weren’t sick so they had no problem following our scent trail.”

  “That’s good. Did you ever find your magical rocks?”

  He smiled. He had magical rocks all right.

  “Your quartz crystals,” she said, her cheeks coloring crimson.

  Brett cleared his throat. “Eric found some and said we could have located them easily ourselves if we had been able to smell them.”

  “When you got better, could you smell them?”

  “No.” Brett chuckled. “We never went off on our own like that again when we didn’t have all of our senses. And we always let Eric know where we were going. Some members of the pack had trouble with bears, so it was important that we didn’t go off without alerting anyone. Well, Eric. As to our sense of smell, we don’t realize how much we rely on our senses until
we don’t have our heightened abilities.”

  “Yeah, I agree. Do you still have the quartz stones you picked up that day?”

  “You bet. Eric said we’d better never get rid of them after the ordeal of finding us. We really loved them, and they meant something special to us. Especially since Eric was the one who located them for us.” Mainly because of what Sarandon had told them about Eric’s concern. Brett would never have guessed his brother would worry that he and CJ planned to run away from home—just because of Eric telling them what to do.

  * * *

  Ellie loved how the brothers were with each other. Without a mother, and with a father who was mostly absent in their lives, they’d had to fend for themselves. No matter what, they had been there for each other. “So, did the magical quartz bring you luck?”

  “Absolutely. You and your sisters came into our lives.”

  She laughed. “You sure had to wait a lot of years for anything magical to come of it.”

  “Completely worth waiting for. Believe me.”

  Maybe he could deal with her ghost issue and not be bothered by it. She wanted to tell Laurel what she’d learned first: that the ghost was the brothers’ great-aunt.

  Which made her think of her aunt. Ellie was still trying to figure out how to run into a guy she could go on a date with. Maybe she could visit her aunt Charity’s candy shop in Green Valley to buy something, say hi, and see if she could casually run into someone in her pack. She hadn’t dated anyone in so long that she wasn’t sure how to go about it.

  When they arrived at her house, Ellie fixed steak medallions in mushroom-and-wine sauce, asparagus, mashed potatoes, and brown gravy. Glasses of Chablis and chocolate cheesecake made the dinner perfect.

  “Loved dinner.” Brett helped her clean off the table. He handed her the last rinsed-off plate to add to the dishwasher. “Let’s head on over to the inn, and I’ll hang those lights for you. Do you want to find a spot to hang Matilda’s picture too?”

  Ellie hesitated, afraid that Matilda would pop up out of nowhere again. “Sure. Let me grab a picture-hanging hook and a hammer.”

  He walked her down the path to the dark inn. No attic light on this time. She was glad for that.

  “I’m kind of surprised the inn was empty for so long. It’s been booked solid since you opened it before Christmas last year,” he said.

  “We left a monthlong break in reservations. We wanted to do the basement addition without disturbing any guests. Often guests are out sightseeing, exploring, hiking, whatever they want to do, but sometimes they return to the inn to have lunch and take a nap.” Ellie flushed a little after she mentioned it, thinking that napping guests were honeymooners and not exactly napping. “Anyway, we didn’t want to have construction going on while we had guests. The dust, the noise, the mess.”

  “Did you have any trouble with Chrissy while you were doing all the remodeling downstairs? I understand she lived in one of the rooms down there.”

  “We’ve had some strange occurrences. A roller brush went missing. Rolls of wallpaper were moved from one room to another. We did each of the rooms in different color schemes: lavender, blue, a Alaskan retreat, a jungle retreat, a forest-decorated room, and the black, red, and white rose room. I think lavender must have been Chrissy’s favorite color because she moved the lavender paper rolls into the blue room and the blue wallpaper rolls into the hall. Just dumped them on the wooden floor. The lavender rolls were neatly stacked on the marble-topped table.” She glanced at Brett to see his reaction.

  “So she liked the furniture.” He looked like he was still having a hard time believing someone real hadn’t done it.

  “Must have. The room has a window, and she took down the blue curtains. So we had to redo them in lavender. Luckily, the new blue room’s window was the same size as the new lavender room.”

  “And then she left the lavender curtains alone.”

  “Yep.”

  “Couldn’t it have been someone else messing with the stuff?”

  “Anything is possible because a lot of wolves have lockpicks for emergencies if they have to shift and hide somewhere. But we didn’t smell anyone in the room.”

  “Could have used hunter’s spray.”

  “Right. And the only ones I know who might have pulled something like that would be our cousins. But they’re trying really hard to please everyone in the pack, so I don’t think they would have had anything to do with it.”

  * * *

  They entered the lobby, and Ellie turned on the light. Brett smiled to see all the Halloween decorations inside. He held up the framed photo against the wall behind the piano, putting it in various positions, but Ellie was staring off to his right. “What is it?” he whispered, as if the ghost couldn’t hear him. Who else would be garnering her attention?

  Instead of answering, she said, “Okay, there. I think that’s the perfect spot.”

  He wondered if Chrissy was telling her where to hang the picture. He couldn’t believe he was starting to think ghosts existed.

  Then he hung the picture and plaque where Ellie thought they would be seen the best. He set the hammer on a nearby table and went to fetch the ladder out of the basement storage room.

  Soon, they were hanging the lights out front and Ellie was smiling. “This is going to be beautiful. Thanks for helping, Brett. We had planned to all get out and do it, so it was nice of you to help.”

  “My pleasure. It will be the showiest Halloween spot in town. I’ll have to take pictures of it for the special section in the newspaper we’ll have on Halloween activities.”

  When they finished, he put up the ladder, then carried the box of sheet music from his car to the inn and set it near the piano. He took a seat on the bench.

  She looked shocked, maybe because she didn’t think he could play very well. “What are you… What are you doing?”

  He smiled. “I’m going to play a little for you. If it’s too bad, I’ll quit and we’ll go for a wolf run, if you’d like.” He knew he could do a fairly decent job of it, or he wouldn’t have offered. And he wanted to play for her.

  She looked torn between letting him play and getting out of there as fast as she could.

  “Really, I’m not half bad. But you can be the judge of that.” Brett started to play “Silent Night,” and he didn’t do all that poorly, he thought. Then he played a little of “Greensleeves.” He didn’t know all of it, but he loved the song and wanted to learn how to play the whole piece.

  Glancing at the door, Ellie still looked like she was ready to leave any second.

  Brett sighed. If she was worried about how he’d view her ability to see ghosts, he would have to act as though it didn’t bother him. Then maybe she wouldn’t feel so troubled about what she could see when he was there.

  “I know mostly Christmas songs because I loved listening to my great-aunt play them when we were kids. You don’t know how much I miss her.” Then he played “Jingle Bells” and “Away in the Manger,” smiled, and rose from the seat, taking Ellie’s hand and pulling her in for a hug. “Well, what do you think?”

  “I’d love to go for a run.”

  “Don’t think much of my potential as a pianist, I take it.” But he didn’t think that was the trouble.

  Then, to his delight, she smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck. This was what he’d hoped for. Not a standing ovation, but a hug and a kiss. “I think you play beautifully. I’m sure with a lot of lessons, you could be as great as your aunt. Although, I thought it was lovely just the way you played.”

  He leaned down to kiss her. She kissed him back, then pulled away quickly and took his hand. “Let’s go for a wolf run.”

  She didn’t look back at the piano, but he did. He felt that she sensed Chrissy’s presence, and it was making her feel uncomfortable being intimate with him, as if a real person were there, watch
ing their every move.

  He hoped that if she came to his house, she wouldn’t see ghosts there. She’d never mentioned it, so he suspected there weren’t any. He realized then that Ellie didn’t exactly say Chrissy was watching them. Yet something seemed to have caught her attention.

  “Maybe we could both take up piano lessons. Then we could play duets.” He would love playing with her like that. Maybe practicing with him would take her mind off whatever was bothering her in the lobby.

  * * *

  Ellie smiled at Brett’s suggestion. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at sticking with things like that. I’ve tried to create all kinds of crafts, but rather than learning how to do anything well, I’m off to the next project.”

  He was trying so hard to please her, probably after the dating-others issue, when all she could think about was his great-aunt scowling at her for being in the same room. Maybe Matilda didn’t like him playing her piano when he hadn’t learned how to do it properly. Or she just didn’t like that Brett was kissing Ellie again.

  “Maybe taking piano lessons would be a different experience for you. You never know until you try. And if we did it together, it could be fun,” he said.

  After she exorcised his great-aunt, maybe. “Later. We would have to do it when we weren’t disturbing anyone.” Which could be never.

  “You’re on.”

  She could see Brett had his heart set on doing something with her that would mean something to the two of them. What if she couldn’t manage it at all? And wouldn’t she have to play for years before she would be halfway decent, if she had any talent at all? Then again, she was good at trying things out for a short while.

  “I’ve always wanted to take lessons.” Brett walked her back to her house where they could shift and run.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because my great-aunt was the most huggable, loving woman in my life. My mother had died. My dad was not affectionate in the least. He didn’t want me taking lessons. He felt we had to do chores and school lessons that meant something. Playing the piano was a waste of time. So, when I could, I’d sneak over and see her, and she had me sing instead. I was awful at singing.”