The air was soft and warm on this summer evening, but Rachel couldn’t stop shivering. No doubt this was a horrible nightmare and she’d wake up from it in a few minutes. She pinched herself, and it hurt like hell. So much for that remedy.
The cry of a hawk overhead caused her to glance up . . . and remember. Years ago she’d been obsessed with Ladyhawke, a movie about two lovers placed under a spell. At night he’d turned into a wolf and at dawn she’d become a hawk. Rachel’s young heart had been captured by the love story, and she’d watched that movie over and over.
Had the story stuck in her mind and emerged now to create this wild scenario? Possibly. Her imagination could be her greatest asset or her biggest enemy. Even her friends said so.
And wait. Jake had a grill, for crying out loud. A werewolf wouldn’t need a grill. So there. The grill and the patio furniture were both normal guy stuff that didn’t fit with her goofy werewolf idea at all.
Also, she’d allowed herself to become too invested in the fate of Jake’s pet wolf. Of course he had one, and it was either in his cabin or in hiding somewhere. Jake might not have any intention of sending it to a zoo, either. Yes, she owed that wolf a lot, but he seemed happy enough here with Jake.
She might want to start minding her own business. She had a commissioned work in progress, and her client would be expecting it to be finished and hanging in the lobby of his office building within the next month. Taking a deep breath, she started back down the steps of Jake’s deck. Time to head home, brew a nice pot of tea, and get back to work.
Before she did that, though, she’d call her parents. She hadn’t done that in a couple of weeks. Inviting them up for a visit sounded like a really good idea, too.
She imagined how great it would be to see her mom and dad again, and the fun they could have grilling outside, just like her neighbor Jake, who was certainly not a werewolf, while they enjoyed the view of the lake and the mountains. She was a good ten steps away from Jake’s deck when she admitted why that image appealed to her so much.
She was scared to death. Scared and running away from something that might be outside the bounds of her experience. Way outside. Like a little girl, she wanted her mommy and daddy to make everything nice and safe again.
But damn it, she’d seen those welts on Jake’s torso and the bruise on his nose. She hadn’t imagined them, and she hadn’t imagined a wolf that had shown up right when she needed saving from a bear. Maybe that hadn’t been a coincidence, after all.
Jake had been careless enough to leave his sliding door open. Or maybe it was an ingrained habit. The wolf, who might or might not be Jake, needed an unlatched slider for easy entrance and exit.
She’d come this far. If she left now without checking inside his house, she might never learn the truth. She might search the place and find nothing conclusive, but at least she would have made use of this time while he was gone.
Retracing her route and climbing the steps back up to his deck took more courage than she’d expected. She felt like Belle in Beauty and the Beast. The wolf, an actual one, might still be inside the cabin, though, and she needed to be careful.
Then she thought of the message taught by the fairy tale. Despite his fearsome looks, that beast hadn’t been dangerous. She had no reason to fear the wolf, either. The creature that had attacked the bear, whatever that creature was, had been intent on her safety, not her destruction.
But all that self-talk didn’t stop her heart from beating wildly as she opened the slider. “Wolf? Are you in here?” Silence greeted her. “I’m coming in, and I mean no harm.”
After listening for any telltale sound of toenails on the floorboards, a growl, or a snuffle, she stepped inside Jake’s cabin. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until dizziness made her grab the back of an easy chair near the slider. Gulping in air, she stood beside the chair until she felt steady again.
“Wolf? Are you in here?” After spending twenty-four hours with him, she thought he’d surely come out to investigate when he heard her familiar voice. The utter quiet in the cabin told her the wolf was not here. Maybe because he’s in San Francisco.
Swallowing her nervousness, she slipped off her backpack and left it on the chair. Then she took a deep breath and looked around.
The cabin seemed much as it had the other day—ordinary. The layout resembled hers, as she’d noted before. Her grandfather had said the two homes had been built around the same time. Furniture selection was limited in a place like Polecat, so it wasn’t surprising that Jake’s looked quite a bit like hers, too.
At first she moved tentatively through the house, afraid to touch anything. But within a short time, when no wolf appeared, she grew bolder. Starting with the kitchen, she opened cabinets and drawers in search of mysterious items.
Nothing turned up. A bottle opener with a wolf’s head on it was the only slightly different utensil, but this was Alaska. Such things could be found in any tourist shop.
His canned goods revealed nothing, either. Apparently he liked organic cereal with dried fruit and nuts, because he had a supply of that. When she opened his freezer she discovered it was full of red meat, but that wasn’t significant, either. Many guys built like Jake enjoyed their burgers and steaks.
She found fresh veggies in the refrigerator’s bottom section—staples like potatoes, carrots, and onions. Obviously he didn’t live on an all-meat diet. In fact, he had a good variety of food for being a bachelor. He’d stocked in eggs, milk, and cottage cheese, along with several bottles of Spruce Tip ale. She left the kitchen feeling no wiser than she had before, but calmer. So far there was nothing scary about Jake’s place.
In the living room, she rummaged through his DVDs and discovered no werewolf movies in the mix. His bookshelf contained paperback mysteries, some science fiction, and a few nonfiction books on hiking trails in Alaska. Then she saw a book she recognized because she had one just like it at home. It was titled Alaskan Artisans of Today.
She was featured in that book, which was only about six months old. Why would he buy an expensive coffee-table book that included pictures of her and her work, yet be so determined to give away her original wolf carving? Maybe he’d read something about her in the book that had turned him off.
Flipping to the section devoted to her, she found a folded sheet of notepaper. It looked vaguely familiar, and when she opened it, she blinked in surprise. Instead of ignoring her note, as she’d imagined, he’d saved it. Even more astounding, he’d saved it for a couple of years before placing it in this book.
These weren’t the actions of someone who was indifferent to her, or who had tired of having her work in his house. She didn’t know if Jake was a shape-shifter or not, but he was definitely more complicated than she’d originally thought.
Replacing the book, she moved into his bedroom. The atmosphere here was so potently male that she caught her breath. Testosterone oozed from the oversized bed, with its massive peeled-log bedposts and huge mattress. She’d been drawn to it the first time she’d walked into this room, and now she had the luxury of being here without supervision.
Giving in to temptation, she walked to the side of the bed, leaned over it with her arms outstretched, and slid up onto the mattress. She let her feet dangle off the edge, but the bed was big enough that she could have laid crossways on it, no problem.