Seal Wolf Hunting (9781402293832) (10 page)

Paul washed his hands, then began serving the beef ribs, parmesan noodles, and turnip greens. “This sure smells good.”

“Thanks. Hope you like it.”

“Everything you cook is great.”

“You still can't make coffee?”

“Sure, I can make it. It's god-awful, but I can make it.”

She laughed. “I'll have to teach you sometime.” They sat down to eat at the rustic pine table. “Did you finish trimming all that you wanted to?”

“There's more to be done.”

“I guess we can finish trimming back the tree branches and shrubs lining the drive and the deck tomorrow. Unless you want to cut them back while I go into town to look for the new couch and chairs.”

“Nothing doing. Your grandma questioned my decorating sense. I aim to prove I've got what it takes to decorate the place. Besides, it's on the list.”

She laughed. “All right. I was just trying to be nice and let you off the hook. Even if it
is
on the list.” She took a sip of her tea. “You seem to be taking this list business seriously.”

“I am. I'm going to lose sleep over not cleaning the gutters.”

She smiled and he loved that he could amuse her. “Do you make lots of lists?”

He shook his head. “Never. That's why this one is so important.”

She laughed again. “I didn't remember you having this much of a sense of humor.”

Paul wanted to say she was never around to see it, but he bit his tongue because they were having a good time and he didn't want to ask why she always took off when he came home. Though he had his suspicions.

Lori had just wound a bunch of noodles around her fork when her cell phone jingled. She pulled it out of her pocket. “It's Rose.”

Normally, he wouldn't take calls during a meal, unless it was one of their wolves, and then he always did to make sure everything was all right. He understood that Lori would feel the same way.

“Yeah, Rose? What's up?” Lori asked, still twisting the noodles on her fork.

Paul was taking another bite of his rib when Lori's mouth gaped a bit.

Instantly, he assumed Allan had called Rose and given her hell about the Cooper brothers, particularly when Lori's gaze swung around to Paul and she narrowed her eyes. He was in hot water again.

“Sorry, Rose,” Lori said over the phone, still giving Paul the evil eye, her voice sympathetic. “I didn't mean to tell Paul, but you know what he and Allan are like. I asked him to find my necklace since he has his scuba gear with him, and he grilled me for an hour to tell him how my necklace found its way to the bottom of the lake. We're having lunch right now.” Lori raised her brows at Paul. “
Paul
said we'd go to a movie with the two of you Tuesday evening?”

“I forgot to ask if you wanted to go. It wasn't on the list. It's fine with me either way.”

“Okay, sure, we'll go. We'll make the guys pay for haranguing us over the Cooper brothers. We'll meet you at the theater fifteen minutes before the show starts tomorrow night. All right. Bye.” Lori set her phone on the table. “You told Allan about us having the brothers up here?”

“What else could I do? Allan wanted to know why I was grabbing my scuba gear. I couldn't tell him it was a secret. Or lie and say I was cleaning the lake because Emma asked me to.”

“Humph. You could have said you were going to search for my necklace, and that's it.”

“You think I can get anything by Allan?” Paul shook his head. “He knows me too well. And he knows you too well. Besides, he asked. And Rose
is
his sister.”

Lori opened her mouth to speak, but then she didn't say anything.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

It was killing him to know what she was thinking. He was going to ask again, but he figured she'd tell him when she felt more comfortable about doing so.

After they ate, they cleaned up and headed for the furniture shop. It was a combination indoor-outdoor furniture place that carried everything from expensive to nice and affordable. Since the furniture was for the cabin, which wasn't often used, Lori said they'd go for something a bit cheaper.

Paul was all for that, but only if the furniture was comfortable enough. He planned to pay the additional expense if Lori thought something a little nicer cost too much. He couldn't remember a time when he actually went shopping for furniture. He didn't have any reason to have a place of his own. He just stayed with Hunter's pack members while he helped plan missions with the rest of his SEAL team, or stayed at hotels or camped in the wilderness while on missions. And Catherine's cabin on the mountain was his and Allan's home when they came back for visits.

Now, looking at couches and chairs with Lori as if they were a newly married couple trying to decide on furniture for their first home together, felt really odd.

“Sally Thurston,” Lori said as a woman approached. She looked to be a little older than Paul in human years, brunette, built, and with a lovely smile. “We're just looking for now.”

He knew Lori wanted to buy the furniture and get out of there, so they weren't just looking. He suspected she didn't want Sally's help.

“Oh, sure thing.” Sally smiled broadly at Paul while Lori turned and checked out more couches, running her hands over the fabric, lifting price tags, and moving on.

“So,” Sally said to Paul, stepping into his path when he was about to follow Lori, “what exactly do you do while you're on SEAL business?”

Paul caught Lori rolling her eyes a little farther away.

“The missions are classified.” Not that they were with the Navy any longer, and a lot of the jobs weren't confidential, but he didn't want to get in a discussion with the lady about any of them.

“Oh, sure. Did you know I bid for you? But then Lori's grandma raised the stakes way too high.”

“She needed a lot of work done.”

“I needed a lot of work done.” Sally smiled. Then her smile faded. “But now you're furniture shopping with Lori?”

“Part of the job and the fun. Got to check out the couches. Thanks for your help.” He stalked off to join Lori. “So what color are you looking for?” Paul didn't care about color schemes as much as how comfortable the seating would be.

“Something to coordinate with the green wall and complement the wood paneling, not get dirty and—”

“Is soft.” Paul sat down on one of the softest-looking sofas and found it as hard as a cement bench.

She grinned at him. “Burnt orange?”

“I never noticed. I was going for soft.”

“Is it?”

“No. Looks can be deceiving.”

She chuckled.

They ended up trying all of the couches they thought might work color-wise and selected a dark blue that looked good with the emerald green. She found accent pillows that matched the wall and two chairs with blue-and-green stripes that would work together nicely.

Lori took a picture of the couch and chairs and sent it to her grandma, but she didn't respond. “She must be busy working with her friends on their new quilting project.”

“She'll love it,” Paul said. “The brown wood paneling and the flooring are like the trees and the earth, the blue for the sky, and green for the grass and the forest.”

“She would feel just that way too. We did a great job.” Lori paid for it.

The owner said his son and a helper would deliver everything at four and take the old furniture off their hands.

Sally smiled at them. “Hurry back,” she said, more to Paul than Lori.

Lori climbed into Paul's vehicle. “Do all the women act that way around you?”

“Only when Catherine posts a picture of me in my swimsuit on a poster for a honey-do bachelor auction. Before that, no one knew I existed.”

“Well, we couldn't very well have posted a picture of you wearing all black clothes and black face paint.”

“You are never going to let me live that down, are you?”

“Nope.”

He laughed.

“I need to drop by the bank,” she said, pointing out the brick Colonial.

“Sure thing.”

He thought she was just going to run inside, but she waited for him to come with her.

“I know it's not on the list, but do you want to go with me?” she asked. “It's too hot to sit in the SUV.”

He was surprised she'd ask. “Sure.” He escorted her inside the cool, air-conditioned building while she went up to the teller and gave the woman a stack of checks, probably from her martial-arts classes.

He glanced around at the people either talking to loan officers or doing regular banking with the tellers. Ten customers total. When Lori was finished, she walked with him toward the exit.

“Sorry. I meant to do that on Friday but totally forgot.”

“No problem.”

“With Allan coming over for breakfast, we need to drop by the grocery store. I'll pick up more eggs.”

“All right.” He escorted her outside and saw a couple of motorcyclists drive by. Another pulled into the parking lot. Paul paused to consider the man. He'd seen a description in the news of the man who'd robbed a bank in the next county late last year. The robber had been wearing a black helmet and carrying a camouflage bag. But this guy had a black bag. Still, he was wearing a black helmet, and he was headed inside the bank. Because of his training, Paul couldn't ignore the coincidence.

“What?” Lori asked, waiting with Paul on the sidewalk when he didn't budge.

“I need to run into the bank,” he said, eyeing the guy. Instead of removing his helmet, the cyclist was wearing it into the bank, just like the bank robber had done. That was how he had gotten away with stealing the money and no one could identify him.

“What? You don't have an account.”

“No, I just want to see something. Why don't you wait for me in the car?”

Lori glanced at the man who disappeared inside the bank. Her gaze swung around to Paul. “You think he's the robber that hit that other bank in Lakeside?”

“I just want to be sure, one way or another.”

“And do what? Make a citizen's arrest?”

“Nothing, hopefully. Most likely he's just a bank patron like everyone else. Will you sit in the car?” He really didn't want her going with him. The robber had never shown a gun before, but that didn't mean he wasn't armed. And if Paul took him down, he didn't want Lori in the middle of it. The man had robbed two banks in western Montana and stolen forty-six thousand dollars already. Since the getting was good, the incentive was lucrative enough for the guy to keep “working” at this get-rich-quick business.

“Okay,” she said, sounding resigned.

Paul hurried back to the door and pushed it open, then entered the bank. He was certain
he
looked suspicious, returning to the bank when he hadn't had any business there the
first
time he went inside. He watched the man stalk toward the counter, hand the teller a piece of paper, and receive a wad of cash. Everything appeared to be on the up-and-up. The man stuck the bills in his wallet, jammed it into his pocket, and then turned and caught Paul watching him.

He stalked past him and outside.

Paul recognized the man's scent. He was the middle-aged guy who had been checking out the steaks in the grocery store when Paul was. So much for finding the bank robber on a hunch. Paul headed outside and found Lori watching the motorcycle guy as he climbed onto his bike, then took off.

“I thought you were waiting in the SUV for me. He just made a withdrawal. Nothing sinister.” But he wished she'd done what he'd asked, because if the guy had been the bad guy… Paul took a deep breath, hating that he worried about her when there probably was no need.

She pointed out two motorcyclists driving by the bank, four motorcycles parked at the Hamburger Stop, and another five sitting in front of Joe's Den of Inequities—a pool hall and diner. “It looks like there's some kind of motorcyclist get-together going on.” She handed Paul a slip of paper. “But…here's his license plate number. Just in case.”

He frowned at her as they got into his vehicle, skimmed over the note, and then tucked it into his console. “Did he see you writing down his license plate number?”

When she didn't respond, he glanced at her as they drove to the grocery store. She cast him a worried look, and he was afraid that whatever she was reluctant to talk about now had to do with
him
.

After grabbing a few more groceries, Lori and Paul headed back to the cabin. When they reached the main road to the lake, Lori cleared her throat. “Everything's all right with you, isn't it, Paul?” She couldn't help fretting about him.

“About…?”

Paul had a wolf's wariness, Lori reminded herself. On top of that, he was a highly trained SEAL used to dealing with crises and bad guys. Yet, she couldn't help worrying that his concern about the motorcycle guy, who was just making a perfectly innocent bank withdrawal, had to do with Paul's last mission. That Paul was seeing hostage situations or criminal acts going on where there were none—first at Catherine's house and now at the bank. Was he always like this after a mission? Or was it just because this mission had gone south, and he was having a difficult time coping?

When she didn't say what was bothering her, still analyzing it in her own mind, Paul said, “Something's troubling you. Are you worried about me? I'd rather you get it off your chest, and we'll clear the air. I'm not sorry about being concerned for you and Rose with the Cooper brothers though.”

“
Don't
get started on
that
again. I worry about you, okay?” Before he could ask her about what, she continued. “I worry about Grandma. She's getting up in years. Now with this issue of some, if not all, of us aging like humans and not having the extended longevity that we did, I'm more than concerned about her health. And I worry about Rose.” She didn't want him thinking she was only concerned about him.

He raised his eyebrows.

“I'm
serious.
”

“Okay, so you're a worrywart.”

“If you weren't driving, I'd sock you.
No
, I'm not a worrywart. I
don't
worry needlessly about things.”

“All right, so what are you worrying about with regard to Rose?” he asked, getting serious.

It was typical of him to ignore her concern for him and focus instead on the other members of the pack. “I don't know.” At least nothing for certain. She wished Rose would open up with her.

He smiled.

Lori really
did
want to sock him. “She's canceled a number of dates on me.”

“For no good reason?”

“No, she had sound reasons.”

He chuckled.

“I'm not kidding around. She doesn't cancel dates with me. Not normally. And not that many in a row.”

“Okay, so what do you suspect it's all about?”

“She was seeing some guy, but she didn't want me to know about it. At least that's what I suspect. I don't have any real proof.”

“Recently?”

“Some weeks back. And then, well, she wasn't feeling well for a while.”

Paul shook his head. “I've lost the logic in this. She canceled on dates for good reasons and hasn't since.”

“Right.”

“Even with our faster-healing genetics, we can get sick. Have colds or the flu, or eat something that doesn't agree with us.”

“Yes, yes.”

“But beyond this you…sense something is wrong.”

“Right.”

“But…not exactly what.”

“Right.”

He was still smiling indulgently. Cad. “Okay. So what are you fretting about with regard to me? Don't say it's because I wanted to check some guy out at the bank to make sure he was just making a legitimate withdrawal.”

“And barging into Catherine's house, thinking we were in a hostage-crisis situation.” She let out her breath and said what was really on her mind. “Does this have anything to do with your last mission?”

“
No.
”

He said the word with such finality that she knew she couldn't convince him to talk about it, at least for now.

“Is that it?” he asked, but he didn't sound annoyed with her. Just that he didn't believe she had anything to be concerned about.

“If you don't want to talk about anything, then, yes, that's it.” What she didn't expect next was for him to ask a question she was totally unprepared to answer.

“If we're going to get touchy-feely here, without the touching,” he said, eyeing her like he wouldn't mind doing the touching too, “do you want to tell me why you make yourself scarce whenever I come for a visit?”

“No.” She folded her arms over her chest. If he wouldn't share with her, she had no intention of sharing with him.

* * *

When they returned to the cabin, the weather was perfect for swimming or scuba diving—a nice eighty degrees—and Paul hoped he'd find Lori's necklace without any trouble. He'd tried to ignore her concern about his reaction to the motorcyclist and the circumstances at Catherine's. He believed his reaction to both situations was due to his inborn wolf wariness and his SEAL training. Nothing more. He was not being paranoid, and it didn't have anything to do with the last mission.

“Do you want to show me where Dusty threw your necklace?” he asked as he carried the sack of groceries into the kitchen.

“Sure. Let me put my suit on.” Lori quickly put the groceries away. “You have one, don't you?”

He laughed. “Yeah, but I'm only wearing a wet suit for now.”

Her eyes grew big. He went into the bedroom and removed his clothes, then put on his wet suit. When he returned to the living room, she joined him, wearing a one-piece bathing suit and with a couple of beach towels featuring hawks slung over her arm. He took a moment to admire her bathing suit. He'd thought she might wear a tiny bikini, but this one was hot too, and perfectly wolfish. A gray wolf's profile was featured against an emerald green backdrop, and the bodice was cut nice and low, which made him want to give a little yank to the zipper smack-dab in the middle. The swimsuit was cut high on the leg, and when she headed for the door, he saw just how low it was in the back.

She was petite, but she had long legs and an adorable ass. He hadn't remembered seeing her in a swimsuit in forever. Although he had planned to scuba dive with Allan, he was already thinking of how much he'd like to teach Lori to dive, which had him thinking about her being naked beneath a wet suit.

He was already embarrassingly hard with the notion as he followed her out the door. Well, it would just show how much he appreciated seeing her in the suit. Wasn't that the ultimate compliment?

They climbed down the steps to the dock stretching out over the water. The lake had warmed up to a nice seventy-four degrees. Not good for the cold-water fish that lived there—they had to swim closer to the bottom of the lake where it was in the high sixties—but the temperature worked well for swimmers.

Lori dropped the towels at the end of the dock and dove into the water with grace and precision. Beautiful. He waited to see where she ended up before he entered the water. When she paddled in place, he slipped into the water and joined her.

“Out there somewhere.” She motioned in the general vicinity.

He was still angry that Dusty Cooper had yanked her necklace off and tossed it into the lake when the jewelry meant so much to her. If Dusty had broken the chain, the turquoise hawk would have fallen off, and Paul would probably never locate it.

He swam underneath the water, lower, until he was close to the bottom, searching with the beam of the waterproof diving flashlight, looking for any sign of something gold sparkling in the illumination. But the necklace could be buried in the sediment and he'd never find it.

Because of their scuba-diving training, he and Allan had taken a few jobs salvaging items from sunken ships off the islands, or locating valuable artifacts or those with sentimental value for folks who had lost them in various lakes. He always wanted to find the valued treasure, but this time it was even more of an imperative because he personally knew how much the necklace meant to Lori—first, because her mother had given it to her and it was one of the few mementos she had left of her, and second, because of the spiritual meaning it held.

He had never been scuba diving in this part of the lake, so he didn't know what he might find. At Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park, divers could find rakes, pitchforks, and axes once used to take out the trash. The lake was frozen over during winter when the locals put their trash on it, but when the spring thaw came, the trash would sink to the bottom of the lake. Sad, but true. Still, divers discovered the implements and placed them upright in the soft soil at the bottom of the lake, creating an underwater forest of shovels and pitchforks. Now divers came to see them and take pictures of the artifacts of an earlier century.

What would he find in this lake? Nothing that seemed out of place or unusual, he suspected.

After about twenty minutes, he saw a glitter of gold in the beam of his flashlight. Excited that it could be Lori's necklace, he swam closer, reaching for it. His fingers brushed something metallic covered in green moss—in the shape of a gun. An old gun. A flintlock pistol with a wooden body, a rusted ten-inch steel barrel, and a curved pistol handle. It looked to be from the nineteenth century.

He suspected from the moss growing on it and the rustiness of the barrel that the pistol had been there a long time. He lifted the necklace off the trigger guard, examined the carved turquoise hawk, and was relieved that it was Lori's. Best of all, the chain wasn't broken and the turquoise hawk was intact. He slipped the necklace over his wrist and left the gun there for now. He would use it to help find the location when he returned to see if anything nearby could tell him why the gun was there. But he wanted to let Lori know first that he had found her necklace.

He rose toward the surface, making his safety stops on the way up. When he broke the surface of the water, he saw Lori had returned to the dock.

Standing so she could see into the water at a higher vantage point, Lori was waiting with her brows furrowed, her whole posture stiff and anxious. He held the necklace up for her to see, and her face broke into a sunny smile. “You found it!”

Her enthusiastic response was reward enough. She looked at him as though he were her hero, and for the moment, he felt like it. He was more than thrilled that he could make her that happy.

He considered where he was in relation to the dock so he could retrieve the pistol next. He would explore a bit, though he planned to swim to her and hand over the necklace first, afraid he might lose it while he was retrieving the gun. He removed his regulator mouthpiece. “I found a flintlock pistol there too.”

Her cheerful expression quickly turned dark. “Grandpa Greypaw's gun?”

Hell. Why hadn't Paul thought of that? He hadn't considered that it might belong to her family, but they had lived on this lake for over two hundred years, right here where the newer cabin of fifty years had replaced the old one. “Your grandfather's gun?”

“Yeah. We never found his body either.”

She sounded anxious, and now he worried what else he might find.

They had looked forever for all the families in the pack that had been killed by the rabid wolves. Her grandfather's remains were the only ones they had never recovered; the others had been buried in the old cemetery plot set aside for their families on the Greypaws' land.

He began to swim toward Lori. “Let me give this to you, and I'll return to get the gun.”

“Wait, let me swim to you and get my necklace so you don't lose the place where you found the pistol.” She dove into the water and swam to him.

He lifted his mask, and when she reached her hand out to him, he didn't give the necklace to her. Instead, he placed the long, gold chain over her head.

Then he held the turquoise between his fingers. “This is where it belongs. With you. Always.”

With tears in her eyes, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. It wasn't just a thank-you for finding her treasured memento, but something deeper, more heartfelt, and he realized this wasn't a thank-you at all.

He felt the same wolfish need, the same lustful attraction and, he was fairly certain, the same desire to take this further. He was torn between ending the kiss and wanting to prolong it, while she wrapped one leg around his, anchoring herself to him, her body moving against his in the gentle ripples of the lake, up and down. Despite the wet suit and her bathing suit between them, he felt his erection rising to the occasion again. Of course, all he really needed was to see her in that bathing suit, her nipples standing out against the stretchy suit, to make his cock stir.

With her body moving against his in such an erotic way, he was suffering. Their tongues were doing a slow slide together, back and around, as he kept one hand against her naked back and the other cupping her head for maximum kissing pleasure. The sun shone off the water, the heat of their bodies keeping them warm. He sure loved kissing her like this and felt like one hot SEAL wolf wrapped around a wolfish mermaid. He wanted to be sliding between the sheets with her inside the cabin.

But he knew he had to be careful how he handled this. She was special to him and to the pack. He sure as hell didn't want to screw things up between them.

He'd certainly thought about them being tangled beneath the sheets when he'd visited before, or even on a mission. Not seeing her the last couple of times had only made the yearning stronger. Yet he hadn't wanted to chase her down. Maybe she hadn't really wanted to see him. Then again, maybe her avoidance had to do with the knowledge he'd have to leave again, and she didn't like having to always say good-bye.

He kissed her intimately, lovingly, knowing he was going to have to make real changes in his life—for the better. When she finally pulled her mouth away from his, tears streaked her cheeks.

Hell, he hadn't meant to upset her. He hugged her close. She nestled her head against his chest, and he rested his chin on the top of her head.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly, hating that she was feeling bad and that he could have been the cause of it.