by Edie Claire
And then, inevitably, she would notice his own injury, and that would start a whole other line of intrusive questioning, complete with implied judgment. What did you do to your hand? Are you crazy hitting a guy like that? What if he comes after her? What if he comes after you? What are you going to do now?
He waited. They continued walking up the hill towards the Hilton, but Ri said nothing more.
That was odd.
After a moment, it seemed a little awkward. “I didn’t see you,” he acknowledged finally. “And if I was cursing — and I’m not saying I was,” he added wryly, stealing a sideways glance at her, “it’s only because I was frustrated at the lousy job I was doing.”
He watched as her eyes darted covertly toward his swollen knuckles. So. She had noticed. Still, she said nothing.
After another few steps, he surprised himself. “I hurt my hand earlier,” he offered, “and now it’s nearly useless. But the roof’s fixed, anyway.”
There, he thought with pride. That had been unusually forthcoming of him, hadn’t it? She deserved as much, since she hadn’t asked. Now they could move on to safer topics. Like the weather. And what kind of food she liked. And exactly how long she’d be staying at the Hilton.
But Ri had stopped walking. He’d made the mistake of lifting his hand and attempting to flex his fingers as he mentioned his injury. Now she was staring openly at his swollen knuckles, her pretty brow furrowed, those large doe eyes of hers wide and troubled. “Can I see?” she asked.
Wolf could think of no polite way to refuse. He lifted his hand. Ri took it, ever so gently, in both of hers, and he fought back a primal urge to flinch. Not because his hand hurt — although it did, and abominably — but because her touch gave him a jolt he was wholly unprepared for. Her eyes did not meet his but focused on his hand as she tenderly traced the swelling with a fingertip. “How long ago did you hurt it?” she asked.
Wolf couldn’t answer for a moment. He was too distracted. The fact that a woman could affect him this much merely by stroking the back of his hand was a sad comment on his current lifestyle. He needed to get down into the valley more. “This morning,” he choked out.
Ri looked up and studied him a moment. She had heard the strangled note in his voice, but fortunately she seemed to interpret it as pain from his injury. “I’m sorry,” she said, releasing his hand. She held his gaze a few more seconds as she contemplated something. “I don’t pretend to have a huge amount of medical experience,” she said finally. “But if you did ask me, I’d put the odds of you having a fracture in there somewhere at about sixty:forty. What odds are you giving it?”
Wolf let his hand drop to his side. At the mere sound of the word “fracture” a piercing ache had shot through the bones of his palm, but the pain proved a welcome diversion. As Ri waited for an answer with no obvious sign of either censure or pity on her face, he began to notice a few things about her that he hadn’t before. First off, her hair wasn’t one color. It was mostly dark brown, but with the sun shining in her ringlets at just the right angle he could see highlights that shone auburn, even chestnut in places. And second, she was damned clever.
“Eighty:twenty,” he answered. He’d had no intention of fussing with his stupid hand tonight. All he’d wanted to do was ice it up, take two acetaminophen, and go to sleep. But it was probably broken and he knew it and he was just being stupid. And this tantalizing woman he’d never met before had known it, too. She’d also known that almost anything she said about it in either an accusatory or a motherly way would almost certainly cause him to puff out his chest and insist that he was perfectly fine.
Everything except posing a straight-faced scientific question that required a numerical answer.
Perhaps she really was an angel. Either that, or she was a witch.
He started walking again. “I’m driving down to urgent care as soon as I get something to eat,” he said matter-of-factly, as if it had been his plan all along. She wouldn’t buy that. But he had a feeling she’d let him save face.
She did. They walked another few paces in blissful silence. Invisible birds chirped softly from somewhere under the bushes nearby, while others chattered loudly in the distant trees.
Wolf felt like he was dreaming again. This female was way too agreeable to be true. “Maddie said you were staying in Ilma’s room. Do you know how long you’ll be here?” he asked. He considered his co-workers at the field station, like his fellow researchers anywhere else, to be strictly off-limits for anything but a friendly business relationship. But Ri was not technically a co-worker.
“Until Ilma gets back, most likely,” she answered. “Unless by some miracle I can find a place closer to Ma'alaea before then. But it’s more likely I won’t find another place at all, in which case Maddie said she would talk to Kenneth. If there’s anything here that would go empty otherwise, I might be able to stay. But I’m afraid to count on that.”
Wolf kept a straight face, but on the inside he was smiling. His last few weeks on Maui were looking up.
“Kenneth’s bark is worse than his bite,” he remarked. “I’m sure if he can help you out, he will. Maddie said you were here for some kind of internship?”
Ri’s face lit up at the question, and Wolf found himself genuinely interested in her answer. Perhaps she would eat a quick dinner with him in the Hilton kitchen before he headed down the mountain. He was anxious to get to know her better.
He had a feeling he would enjoy her company very much.
Chapter 13
“I was going to make a box of mac and cheese,” Ri told Wolf as they reached the Hilton. “You can have half if you want. It’ll only cost you eighty-four cents.” She kept her tone teasing, guessing that Wolf was the type who hated asking for help. But he obviously needed some. The man’s hand looked like it could barely hold a spoon. How he’d managed to repair a doghouse she had no idea, but she wondered if his condition hadn’t worsened in the process. Had he dislocated a fracture that wasn’t dislocated before, maybe?
Wolf raised an eyebrow at her. “Can I get a price cut if we use my milk?” he bargained.
“I was already going to steal Maddie’s milk,” Ri confessed.
He cracked a grin. “So was I.”
They shared a laugh as they walked into the kitchen. Ri dropped some ice cubes into a plastic baggie and handed it to him without comment, then put a pot of water on the stove. Wolf sat down at the small table and relaxed with the ice on his hand. As Ri began exploring the rest of the kitchen’s wares, she could feel his eyes following her every move, and her cheeks burned with heat from the attention. He was attracted to her. How cool was that? She wasn’t wearing anything special or doing anything special. She was used to receiving some attention from the opposite sex, but no one had ever considered her a knockout. Odd or interesting or even exotic, sometimes, but she was never the hottest girl in a room. And naturally, the guys most attracted to her “exoticness” were the first to lose interest when they met the real “girl next door.” She had always supposed the study-in-contrasts thing didn’t translate as particularly sexy.
She stole a glance in Wolf’s direction as she reached up to fetch a spaghetti strainer from a high shelf.
Maybe not to New England men, anyway, she thought with satisfaction.
Wolf appeared mesmerized.
“Tell me about your research,” she suggested, sounding nearly as cheerful as she felt. “Maddie said you were a volcanologist. Can’t say I’ve met one of those before.”
He smiled. His smile was beyond sexy, just like the rest of him. He wasn’t overly tall for a man, but he was muscular, with a broad chest and strong limbs that made him seem solid as a boulder. Ri wouldn’t have guessed that the rugged, half-tamed type would appeal, but she had the feeling that he wasn’t exactly what he appeared. With his longish hair, unshaven face, cargo-style work pants, and dirty hiking boots, he looked like the prototypical mountain man — a stalwart recluse. But on closer inspection, his mass of wavy d
ark blond hair framed a face that was too handsome to be rough, and his intelligent blue eyes shone with too much awareness to be insensitive. Furthermore, no smile as charming as his could come from some gruff loner with no use for the human race. Ri thought, rather, that it came from a man determined to stay on his guard and remain private.
“I’m working on my doctorate,” he answered. “I’ll spare you the formal name of my thesis, but the upshot is that I hike around various volcanoes collecting gas flux measurements. I did my master’s work on Mount Wrangell, up in Alaska, and I found something unexpected. I’m trying to chase down the source of it now, by making comparisons between it and two similar volcanoes.”
Ri felt her cheeks burning as the “arctic wolf” image reappeared in her mind. It didn’t help her runaway imagination to know that he’d come from Alaska. Picturing him roughing it on a snowy mountaintop was all too easy, as was picturing him taking off his boots before a roaring fire in a stone fireplace in a snug little cabin. She wouldn’t mind being in such a place, herself. There would be a giant featherbed with homemade quilts piled high. And every evening they would roast s’mores…
Stop that!
“Similar how?” she asked, trying to engage the analytical side of her brain. “You think Mount Wrangell is in danger of erupting again soon, or is this more academic?”
Her interest seemed to please him. “It’s too early to tell. First we need to see what’s causing the anomaly in the first place. That’s why I’m doing the comparisons. Haleakala and Wrangell are both shield volcanoes, whereas Frosty Peak in the Aleutian Islands is a stratovolcano. But Wrangell and Frosty Peak were both formed the same way geologically, different from Haleakala. Have I lost you yet?”
“Terminology-wise, yes,” Ri admitted. “But I get the gist. You want to see where else the anomaly shows up, then try to link it to certain characteristics of the different type volcanoes.”
He flashed her the sexy smile again. Fortunately the water began to boil, giving her an excuse to tear her eyes away before her knees weakened. She opened the macaroni box and dumped in the shells. “So have you worked on the volcano in the Aleutians yet?” she asked.
“Yes, but I’m not finished there,” he answered, his voice taking on a new angst. “Everything at Frosty has to be done in the summer. I should be getting ready to go there now, but I’m behind schedule because my equipment broke down here on Maui. It’s going to be tough getting all the measurements I need before the weather turns again.”
He stared at the bag of ice on his hand, and Ri could feel his tension. She hadn’t thought about what an injury to his hand could mean to Wolf’s research. But she could tell by his face that the consequences must be serious.
She hadn’t asked him how he had broken his knuckles, and she wasn’t going to. She’d seen hands like that on guys before, in college. Such injuries generally showed up on Saturday or Sunday mornings along with hangovers, black eyes, and pathetic excuses. Wolf had no hangover, nor did he have bruises. What he did have was the custody of an injured dog, a dog he claimed to have “found” somewhere but which he had been friendly with “for some time.”
Ri could assume the worst. She could assume that Wolf was a troublemaker and that he had beaten some guy up. Maybe he’d taken the guy’s dog because it had gotten injured in the process of the fight and Wolf felt responsible. But even then, he could have just paid the rightful owner’s vet bill — no one was making him patch up a doghouse with a broken hand.
No, Ri would not assume the worst. Assuming the worst was never her habit. Her habit was to make up a story that suited her. As far as she was concerned, Wolf had rescued the dog from some horrible situation and gotten himself injured in the process. And she was sticking to that theory until proven otherwise.
She hated seeing him look so miserable. “You’re a dog lover, aren’t you?” she asked, changing the subject as she stirred the macaroni. Whatever he was worried about with regard to his research, he could do nothing about it at the moment.
His expression softened, and he nodded. “I love dogs. I haven’t seen mine since January. I miss them.”
The wistful tone in his voice was so poorly concealed, Ri had to stop herself from sighing. Good Lord, this infatuation was going to be terrible. Who could resist a man who pined for his pets? He could pretend aloofness to the rest of the world, but he couldn’t hide a tender heart from Sriha Mirini Sullivan. She hoped its favors extended beyond canines.
“What breed?” she asked, guessing this was one line of questioning he’d be happy to answer. She was correct. His eyes twinkled at her. Ri was fascinated by the color of his irises. Such a light shade of blue, yet without a hint of gray.
“Suka’s pure Husky, and her son, Tog, is a mix. His dad ran the Iditarod, but Tog didn’t quite have the drive. Failed out of training as a pup, and I was happy to keep him. Suka had a lot of promise when she was young, but she lost a toe in an argument with a wolverine and had to be retired early.”
“Poor thing!” Ri sympathized.
“You’d never know it to watch her run. She’s forgotten she ever had that toe. But she has backed off a bit when it comes to debating wolverines.”
“There you are!” a woman’s voice cried out happily. Maddie and Kai popped through the doorway and Maddie saw that Ri was cooking. “I guess you were serious about not wanting to go out with us?”
“Some other time,” Ri answered. “I really appreciate the offer, but you two have done more than enough for me today. Now go out and have fun. And thanks again.”
“It was our pleasure,” Kai told her. “And we will.”
When Maddie noticed that Wolf was sitting in the kitchen also, her face practically glowed with delight. Ri was surprised that Maddie didn’t comment on Wolf’s obviously injured hand, until Ri realized that he was hiding it under the table. Before Maddie could say anything else, Kai slipped an arm around his fiance’s waist and wrangled her back out the doorway. “Later, Wolf,” he called over his shoulder. “See you, Ri. Text us if you need anything!”
“Will do!” Ri replied. No sooner were the couple out of sight than Wolf pulled his hand back up onto the table and repositioned the ice over his knuckles, wincing as he did so. He looked slightly pale.
Ri stirred the macaroni thoughtfully. Wolf’s desire for privacy must be strong indeed. Hiding his injury had seemed like a kneejerk reaction. He’d obviously hurt himself just by messing with it. “This will be ready in two minutes,” she announced. “Are you sure you want to eat first?”
“Yes,” he snapped. A beat passed. “Thanks,” he said genuinely.
Oh, he was so busted, Ri thought with satisfaction. He only pretended to be crusty when it suited his purposes. Now how to get his pride to allow her to accompany him to urgent care? He could drive down the mountain with one good hand, but if the bones were dislocated he might require sedation to set them. Even with no more than an awkward splint and painkillers, his driving himself back home again left-handed would be uncomfortable, potentially unsafe, and completely unnecessary.
She didn’t want him to feel manipulated. That was not what she was about. Perhaps he would prefer a direct approach.
She walked over to the table and sat down. “I’m sure you’d rather drive yourself,” she said frankly. “But if they give you anything that makes you drowsy, either you or your truck — or both — are going to wind up stuck down there. I’ve got nothing to do tonight and I don’t mind going with you if you want. It might even be fun to drive up and down all those switchbacks in the clouds. As long as it’s not my truck I’d be totaling.”
Wolf’s lips drew into a slow, smug smile. He had nice lips. What made nice lips in a man, Ri wasn’t sure, but she was certain that she liked his.
He spoke in a low, gravelly voice that caused a flutter in her stomach. “If anybody totals my truck, it’s going to be me.” The words didn’t sound good, but he was still smiling. “You have a point, though. How about I drive down, and t
hen if I’m incapacitated on the way back, we’ll decide then who’s the greater threat?”
Ri smirked. “Deal.”
His blue eyes sparkled warmly at her. “Thanks, Ri. I appreciate it.”
No, she reconsidered. Not warmly. The look in his eyes was hot.
She rose — on uncharacteristically shaky legs — and returned to the stove. Had everything in the past hour really happened to her? She was beginning to doubt that it had. Because stuff like this didn’t happen to her. She got crushes on cute guys, sure. But they were taken. Or they weren’t interested. Or they were very interested, just not in her sparkling personality. This business of her liking someone who liked her back was way too simple and way too fast to be real. In fact, everything that had happened to her since her plane landed — meeting Kai, finding out that she was part Filipino, waking up to a house fire, becoming homeless, finding an amazing place to stay, having a gorgeous guy look at her the way Wolf was looking at her… It had all happened at light speed, in a matter of days. After slogging away at a third-rate aquarium with not much changing in her world for three solid years, in the past five days her new universe had been upending at every shift of the winds.
Lucky thing she was the adventurer in the family.
Chapter 14
Anchorage, Alaska, 1995
Wolf was halfway to his little brother’s bed before he even knew what he was doing. His response to the wailing and snuffling had become so rote that he didn’t even have to wake up all the way to drag himself out from under his own covers and walk across the room.
“It’s okay, Bear,” he said with a yawn, crawling up onto the other bed and yanking at the covers that were — as always — knotted up into a useless ball at his brother’s feet. “I’m here.”
“Mama,” his brother whined pitifully, half asleep himself. “I want Mama.”