How to Run with a Naked Werewolf (9 page)

Shaking off those depressing thoughts, I shuffled into the bathroom, whacking my ankle against the bed frame. I showered in the surprisingly clean bathtub, hoping the hot water would help unwind the muscles in my back and neck.

After stepping out of the shower onto an improvised washcloth bath mat, I mopped the water from my skin with the thinnest towel this side of cheesecloth. I carefully sorted through Caleb’s bag, praying I wouldn’t find anything else that would set off my weirdo alarm. The gray boxer shorts swamped me, but they kept me from wandering around a strange motel room bottomless.

I shrugged into an old flannel shirt of his, curled back under the covers for warmth, and buried my face in the sleeve of the shirt. I may have looked like I was wearing the latest in refugee chic, but Caleb’s mossy, spicy smell made me feel . . . safe. As safe as I’d felt in a long time, which, considering how little I knew of him, was disconcerting at best.

I glanced down at the soft, well-worn plaid I was wearing.
You will not steal this man’s shirt and shorts
, I told myself.
There are limits
.

I was totally
stealing Caleb’s shirt and shorts. I’d never slept more comfortably in my life. No dreams of screaming ex-husbands, confusion, and bruises. No
dreams of running down the winding halls of the hospital, looking for coding alarms in a patient room, only to find that battered, flatlining patient was me. I didn’t dream at all, and it was lovely.

I woke up hours later to find Caleb reading through a case file from a plastic mobile drawer I’d seen earlier in the back of the truck. Each file was tagged with its own color-coded label and contained newspaper clippings, police reports, and carefully typed notes. Caleb was sitting on the uncomfortable wooden chair, stretching his long legs against the little wood-laminate dinette table. It would have been more comfortable to sit on the bed, but I appreciated that he gave me the space. He’d taken the time to change into a soft blue-and-gray plaid flannel shirt and jeans. I’d seen men in three-thousand-dollar tailored suits who didn’t make their clothes look that good. The lamp behind his head gave his black hair a bluish corona, as if some dark paper-pushing angel had fallen to earth.

Stupid good-looking, confusing werewolves.

He’d glanced over at me every few seconds, in a pattern that took me a minute or two to pin down. Review a page, check on me, review a page, check on me. It was as if he thought I would jump out of bed and launch myself out the window if he read two pages at a time.

I sat up, blinking blearily at him. “You have very neat files.”

“And you have ink on your back.” He grinned at the outraged expression on my face. “I never would have expected that from a girl like you.”

My cheeks flushed as I pulled at the hem of his shirt,
covering the dark shapes dancing up my spine. Somewhere in Indiana, I had started getting tattoos, one star for every place I’d lived for more than a few nights. I’d read somewhere that foster kids do that sort of thing, keeping a list of all the families they’ve lived with. For me, it was a galaxy of tiny stars swirling along the ridges of my spine to remind myself of the number of times I’d managed to start over.

I’m not generally a superstitious person, but all this stuff started happening to me less than a week after I added the thirteenth star for McClusky, Alaska.

“Lucky star, my butt,” I muttered, knowing Caleb probably heard me but not really caring.

“I made some calls to Emerson’s and the motel where you were staying,” he said in a faintly bored tone, without looking up from his files. “Belinda is worried about you, and the state police want you for questioning in connection with the explosion in the parking lot. I told her I was your parole officer. She wasn’t surprised, by the way, figured anyone as quiet as you had to have some sort of past. But other than that, she—and the motel clerk—had nice things to say about you. Hard worker, dependable, honest but cagey.”

My cheeks flushed hot. I supposed I should have expected him to check out my story. He was a sort of semi-private-investigator with a secret supernatural lifestyle. The man had trust issues. Still, the recovering wife inside of me resented the intrusion. I didn’t like people checking up on me. Better not to bring it up. Better to ignore it and distract him with something else, avoid an argument.

“What did Belinda mean by ‘cagey’?” I grumbled to myself. “Just because I didn’t blab all of my personal problems doesn’t mean I’m cagey. I thought we were friends.”

Caleb smirked at me.

“I’m discreet,” I told him.

“Rabbit, I know cagey. And trust me, you’re cagey.”

“
Hmph
. Where were you while I was in my coma?” I asked, wiping at my face, because I was pretty sure I could feel dried drool patches on my cheeks. That was unfortunate, because Caleb was staring at me. Really hard.

“A bar down the street,” he said. “The owner is a friend of mine, and I thought he might have some information about Jerry. Nothing happens in this town without him knowing about it.”

“Your friend is a big gossip?” I asked as he held out a foam cup of lukewarm coffee, with little packets of sugar and creamer stacked carefully on top, which I drank greedily. It was bitter and tasted a little like battery acid, but it was also caffeinated. I would take what I could get.

“Bartenders are like priests armed with truth serum. People tell them everything,” he said. “If Len ever decides to start a blog, every marriage in Flint Creek will—
poof—
dissolve, just like that.”

I snorted an unladylike amount of coffee up my nose at the thought of a rural Alaskan bartender turning
Gossip Girl
. The coffee splashed down my neck, soaking into the front of his shirt. I blotted at it with a minuscule paper napkin. The intensity of his stare as he
watched me dab at my chest made me feel . . . warm, fluttery sensations I had not felt in a very long time.

Get a grip
, I chided myself. He was probably just irritated that I’d snorked coffee all over his shirt. “Sorry, I find myself in clothing crisis.”

“Looks better on you than it did on me, Rabbit,” he said, going back to his paperwork.

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that or by calling me Rabbit. But frankly, it was probably better that we couldn’t go for a shopping spree at the moment, since, well, I didn’t have cash to pay for clothes and didn’t want to have to ask Caleb to cover me, literally.

“I suppose it’s too late to argue for my own room,” I said. “Or my own bed.”

The very idea made Caleb’s mouth turn downward. He leveled me with those dark eyes and told me, “You stay with me.”

“See, that’s what you said this morning. But I think it would be better for me to have my own room,” I said, feeling small and selfish in my request. But really, sharing a bathroom, a bed,
and
underwear was just a little too much intimacy with someone I’d known for less than two days. “And it still doesn’t explain why I have to be your mattress buddy.”

“They didn’t have any double rooms,” he said, clearing his throat. “I don’t want to be separated from you . . . you know, for safety reasons.”

“The shortage of double rooms in this state is an epidemic,” I muttered, padding toward the bathroom. But since I didn’t have the cash for my own room, it was hard to argue. And honestly, if he was going to hurt
me, he would have done it already. He’d had ample opportunity.

“There’s a spare toothbrush in my bag,” he called after me.

How had I missed that in my digging through his duffel? Giggling like mad, I scampered back to his bag to search again. I felt ridiculously grateful at the thought of being able to brush my teeth.
This must be how people develop Stockholm syndrome.

When I emerged from the bathroom, teeth freshly brushed, a bemused Caleb was holding out a leather duffel bag. “What’s this?” I asked him.

“I told Len that I knew a young lady who needed some clothes, and he happened to have this in his lost and found.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and unzipped the bag quickly, hoping the original owner wasn’t particularly tall or busty. My hands swam through neatly folded jeans and a series of progressively smaller tank tops. Whoever this woman was, she had not packed for cold weather.

“It belonged to some biker’s old lady. Len said she was pretty short, so I figured it would fit you.” When I glared at him, he seemed confused and exclaimed, “You’re not tall. This can’t be news to you!”

The defensive tone, so different from the voice I’d heard before, martyred and resentful, made me giggle. “There’s got to be something in there you can use,” he said, clearing his throat.

“I think the jeans and T-shirts might work,” I told him, holding up a shirt that read, “The Booby Hatch—The South’s Finest Gentleman’s Club.” I could probably
wear the panties, too, I noted, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “I’m going to have to wash it all first. I have my pride and parasite-free status to think of. Thanks, Caleb.”

He grinned, although I couldn’t tell if it was from pleasure or relief that I was, in fact, parasite-free. “There’s a laundry room next to the motel office,” he said. “I’ve got a bunch of quarters in the ashtray in my truck.”

“So . . . you spent some time with your friend Len. Now what?” I asked as he plopped back into his chair, replacing his files in their neat little box.

“Well, while you were getting your beauty rest—”

“Necessitated by lifting someone’s unconscious ass and dragging him around like a sack of wet concrete the night before,” I pointed out.

The corners of Caleb’s mouth lifted, and he amended, “While you were getting your much-deserved beauty rest, I visited my friend Len, who said that Jerry has been out of town but should be back tonight. I’m going to go to the bar, explain the situation, tell him he’s coming with us or I kick his ass in front of witnesses. He’s the kind of guy who won’t like that much.”

It was so strange that Caleb could sit there, perfectly relaxed, and talk about apprehending someone not quite legally as if he was planning a trip to the park. For that matter, it was rather hilarious that the man whose truck floorboards were covered in a thick layer of jerky wrappers kept such meticulous files. He was vicious when threatened but had been relatively gentle with me. Caleb was a study in contradictions. “And then?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Jerry will let me take him in, or I will actually have to kick his ass in front of witnesses. Either
way, he ends up in the backseat of the truck. I arrange a drop-off point with the client.”

“Who, again, is not a legitimate law-enforcement authority?” I asked. He snorted but didn’t answer. “And what will I be doing during this complicated and delicate negotiation process?”

“You will be here at the motel,” he said. “This is my job, not yours. Just hang out, watch some TV, get some rest. You look like you could use a little more sleep.”

I scoffed. “It’s just a bar. I’ve worked in plenty of them,” I admitted, making Caleb frown and shake his head vehemently.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “I’ll stay home and do some laundry. Darn some socks. Maybe curl my hair and alphabetize coupons while I’m at it.”

He lifted a dark sable brow, all the while looking terribly amused, as if I was a barky little puppy trying to intimidate him with fluff and boot chewing. “You’re mocking me.”

“No, that’s sarcasm. And if we’re going to spend time together, you’re going to need to learn to recognize and respect it. You’ll know when I’m mocking you.”

Hours later, my
newish clothes had been washed and dried. I was now richer by several T-shirts and pairs of jeans. I’d showered and even shaved my legs, a luxury I hadn’t taken time for in more days than I cared to admit. Our respective duffel bags were packed and ready to be thrown into the truck at a moment’s notice. I’d read the one magazine I could find in this
godforsaken town, a six-month-old copy of
Glamour
, and taken all of the quizzes. It was good to know that Channing Tatum was my celebrity boyfriend. I would definitely bring this up the next time I ran into him. A game show played on the TV as I determined what my “sleep style” said about me (
night terrors + insomnia = insane person
). The low rumble of applause from the TV provided a pleasant enough background while I mulled over glossy, airbrushed vapidity.

In other words, I was bored out of my skull.

This, combined with sudden nervous fidgeting, was hell on my lips, which I chewed mercilessly. I checked the glowing red numbers on the bedside alarm clock. Caleb had been gone for almost three hours. I was getting increasingly uneasy without his warm, gruff presence in the room. What if he didn’t come back? What if he decided I wasn’t worth the trouble of hauling all over the state? And why was I suddenly so concerned about him not coming back?

Someday, if I ever had my career back, I would write a peer-reviewed journal article on werewolf Stockholm syndrome and its effects on hormones and mental health.

Oh, wait, that would probably get me committed to a long-term-care facility.

I wasn’t sure when exactly I’d decided to slip into the most demure of my biker-mama tops, the black V-neck T-shirt that fit like Saran Wrap, and sneak down the street to Len’s bar. I’d paced and fretted around the room, the growing unease settling into my chest like an acidic weight, until I suddenly found myself scampering down a dark, mostly abandoned street.

“What are you doing?” I muttered into the collar of my jacket as I braced myself against the wind. “You’re running in the dark toward a bar inhabited by at least one criminal and one werewolf. What are you doing?”

OK, I was worried about Caleb. He’d been gone for hours, and I didn’t know what he was dealing with in this Jerry character. It certainly wasn’t because I was afraid he was off flirting with some cocktail waitress, because that would be insane . . . right? What if he had been hurt? What if he wasn’t able to get to help? The more I thought about it, the more the nervous tension constricted my chest, making it harder to breathe. I needed to see Caleb. For reasons no medical training could explain, I knew that once I saw Caleb and heard his voice, I would feel better.