Something About Harry(24)

Mimi had crawled into her bed and cuddled with Nina like she was her new best friend until she’d fallen fast asleep, and Nina dropped a light kiss on the top of her curly head before tucking Coconut in and turning off the light. Nina was the Beast-Whisperer. If that wasn’t irony, what was?

It was only then that she’d returned to the snarling brute of a female he’d met via the phone, when she’d told him if he didn’t get his shit together and forget about finding a way to reverse this, she’d eat his kidneys like pâté.

He’d have been jealous of the kids’ reactions to Nina, if not for the notion that for the first time in such a long time, Fletcher and Mimi seemed to have found peace. Their laughter was open and free with her. Nina brought comfort and security to them in just a matter of seconds. Something he’d failed miserably at from the word go.

That hurt like hell. Yes, he blew at the little things like cutting their sandwiches into fun shapes and making smiley faces on pancakes with chocolate chips that melted faster than ice cream in July, leaving angry globs of brown in the batter.

Yes. He also blew at braiding Mimi’s hair, making sure Fletcher had his science binder on Thursdays, and remembering that Saturday night was always pizza night.

He was a no-nonsense, all-business kind of guy. That they were in school on time, even if they were a little rumpled and minus a binder, didn’t seem to count as love to them.

And he didn’t know how to show them, prove to them, that no matter what, Uncle Harry would take care of them, protect them—love them—at all costs.

Then there was Mara. A woman he’d found so incredibly attractive since he’d begun working at Pack, and not just because she was petite and rounded, but because she was as smart, if not smarter than him. So smart, she’d made a baby serum. Damn, that needed to be admired, but it would have to happen at another time when he wasn’t so appalled.

He’d kept his distance all this time for a reason—he wanted no repeats of Brigitte. Since her, he’d promised himself he’d focus on work and avoid any sort of female temptation until he at least had a savings account again.

Then Donna and her husband Caleb were killed and the kids had needed him. He didn’t have time for anything else other than focusing on their best interests.

But every chance he had, he’d watched Mara from afar—at lunch, when she dropped off her budget for the lab in his department—while she was strolling on her break around Pack’s manicured lawns with her posse of equally smart friends.

He watched, and he drooled, and he mourned what a jackass he was for realizing way too late she’d been showing interest in him at Pack’s Christmas party last year—or at least that’s what Dwyer from his department said—confirmed tonight by Nina.

And now, she’d turned him into a motherfucking werewolf. Maybe that had been the plan at the Christmas party last year? To seduce him and turn him into one of them? Maybe that was the goal within the corporation? To turn everyone into one of them? They claimed not true. But all maniacal plotters claimed the plan didn’t exist, didn’t they?

But then to what end? If Pack had been around for forty years—if the intent was to mass turn, why hadn’t they turned everyone into werewolves by now? Why wasn’t everyone on the planet a paranormal species of some kind?

He shook his head. His vivid imagination and his love of a good sci-fi story were getting the best of his powers of deduction. He didn’t sense the goal was world domination—or any domination. No matter how hard he tried to dislike the women of OOPS, he just couldn’t make it mesh with his gut feelings about them.

And now they were babysitting.

Mara, in particular, had been eager to offer her babysitting services while he “adjusted.” Of course, that was guilt talking—not attraction. She was the one who’d done this to him—she should feel guilty. And afraid.

If he’d heard correctly, some group of people, whose name had escaped him as he’d been thrust into consciousness, weren’t going to love the idea that Mara had turned an innocent into a werewolf.

But the idea that she’d been making a formula to impregnate herself left him infuriated and in awe of how brilliant she really was. Almost all of this left him in awe.

Werewolf.

Harry snorted, the cold air blowing from his mouth making puffy clouds. He wouldn’t deny what had happened to him back at Pack. There was no denying the excruciating physical changes his body had gone through back there. His bones had shifted. His flesh had separated, stretched, torn, and it hadn’t killed him. He’d molted into a werewolf.