How to Run with a Naked Werewol(29)

He practically dived across the room and under the covers, fluffing them into a strange, nestlike configuration around him. He lifted the corner to let me crawl in next to him. Leaning against the headboard, he pulled me against his chest. He pushed my tangled hair back from my face. "So you're a doctor?"

"Mostly emergency medicine, but then I transferred to more of a family practice a few years ago. I had to leave that job for, uh, personal reasons."

"I know," he muttered. When I shot him a confused look, he added, "It's just a surprise, that's all. I thought we were on a more even playing field."

"I'm still the same person. I just have a couple extra pieces of paper you didn't know about."

"But you must have made a lot of money before, been comfortable. Why are you living in cheap motels and working in grocery stores?" he asked.

"I did make decent money early on in my medical career. I was very comfortable. And I can honestly tell you I have never been so miserable in my life. Living up here works better for me."                       
       
           



       

"Why?" he asked, and we both laughed a little.

"Because Glenn can't take it all away again. I had just enough time to start thinking of Tampa as home before he showed up and broke my face. And that was after he harassed me ‘anonymously' at work until my new coworkers were scared to be seen with me or go out with me, because they didn't know what my crazy ex-husband would do. I made the people around me tense and nervous. It felt like I was taking everybody around me down with me."

Caleb seemed to grasp the fact that he needed to ignore the unusual number of details I'd just let slip in favor of mocking me in some way. "What was your plan? Just bounce around the country forever?"

"Not forever, just a couple of years!" I exclaimed.

"That's a crappy plan."

"As opposed to your plan of waiting until you phased next to me in my sleep to tell me that you're a supernatural creature?"

"I was going to tell you!" he protested. "It's a difficult thing to fit into conversation, that's all. Do you realize how much easier this would have been for me if you'd just told me you knew I was a werewolf?"

"So you keeping secrets from me was my fault?"

"No. That's . . . wrong. But people who live in lampshade-note-shaped houses shouldn't throw stones." He tapped me on the nose with his fingertip for emphasis.

"Any other little secrets I should know about?"

He pursed his lips. "No."

"You hesitated."

He made an alarmingly human helpless-man face, complete with flailing outstretched hands. "Any guy would hesitate in response to that question!"

"So no more surprises."

He raised his hand in a mockery of the Boy Scout salute. "Not so much as a surprise birthday party. If you ever decide to tell me your real birthdate. I'm assuming the one I found on your ID is fake."

I gasped. "You looked through my wallet?"

"While you were asleep that night at the motel, when we went after Jerry," he said, wincing when I smacked him. "You didn't think I was going to do some checking up on the woman riding in my truck and sleeping in my bed?"

"I'm not the one who's cagey," I muttered into his skin.

He tucked my head under his chin and hugged me tight. "Glenn-that was his name?"

I blinked, tensing up against him. Caleb rubbed circles on the small of my back to try to get me back into a relaxed state. Glenn was such an enormous part of my head space. Avoiding him was the motivation for so many aspects of my life, and I hadn't shared anything about him with Caleb, someone who had so recently taken up another considerable chunk of my thoughts. While I didn't want them to meet under any circumstances, it seemed unfair to shut such a big part of my life away from Caleb-especially when Glenn could be the reason I eventually left.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and resolved to tell Caleb everything.

"Have you ever had one of those moments in your life where you wish you had a time-traveling DeLorean?" I asked Caleb as he settled against my side to listen to my tale.





11


Foxy Boxing Is Way More Difficult Than It Looks on Those Questionable Cable Channels





Caleb listened to every word, stopping me to ask a question here or there but never judging, never demanding answers. I poured out the whole sorry story and felt better for getting it off my chest. I explained about the e-mails and how Glenn claimed to have found me. And while he still wasn't happy with me for sneaking away instead of telling him, he dropped the subject. Exhausted by relating the sad story of my marriage, I fell asleep balanced on Caleb's chest and woke up just before noon. Caleb had left a note by the door (as far away from the lampshade as possible) stating that he'd gone for a "run."

I felt very sorry for the woodland creatures that might have crossed his path.

Unfortunately, this honesty seemed to have put another space bubble between us. Caleb suddenly seemed worried about rushing me physically or crowding me. He didn't sniff me or touch me casually as much as he did before. I had to initiate kissing or any other fun-time activities. I made it a point to become even more affectionate with him, to try to snap him out of it. But the stubborn wolf was going all noble on me.

Caleb managed to get Glenn's basic information out of me: name, last known address, birthdate. He seemed determined to find some solution for my situation, which was sort of sweet and at the same time a little insulting, as if he was going to magically find some easy fix I hadn't thought of yet. A nearly impossible-to-file restraining order, restarting my stalled divorce proceedings, even a legal name change-all of that paperwork could be tracked and could lead Glenn right to my door. Living a little less legitimately was inconvenient, but it kept me off of Glenn's radar. It was my choice, and it made me feel safer. So I rebuffed these suggestions-and any attempts to get personal information about Glenn-with indifference and subject changes, making Caleb restless and snappish.

We didn't talk about my running away because we had new subjects to discuss, namely Glenn and my history with the werewolf pack. Caleb did, however, spend a lot of time talking to Suds, taking several calls out on the porch of the motel, despite temperatures dipping near the single digits. He was worried and agitated, and part of me wished I hadn't told him about my past. He knew everything now. He knew how damaged I was, and I couldn't be that quirky, mysterious girl who had saved him from a half-assed bullet wound.

One morning, he strode into our room and tossed me a case file. "We're going to Goose Creek. You have twenty minutes to pack."

"Now?"

"Yes," he said. "Or at least, in twenty minutes."

I harrumphed at this sudden change in demeanor, as if he hadn't spent the last week in a state of grumpy old werewolf-ness. Phasing issues or no, I didn't appreciate mood swings that left me feeling gaslighted. I flipped through the file, reading the summary. "We're looking for a stripper named Trixie?"

Caleb cast me another smirk. "I think they prefer ‘exotic dancer.' "

"Why are we looking for a stripper named Trixie?"

"See, that's a question a man would never ask."

I gave him my best stink-eye, but he only grinned impishly at me. Holding his gator jerky over the garbage can got his attention.

"Hey!" he howled. "Trixie is the errant girlfriend of Lolo Kardakian, medium-sized hood out of Anchorage. They've had a disagreement."

I inadvertently dropped the bag of jerky, more out of surprise than revenge. "We're chasing down a woman to drag her back to her angry criminal boyfriend?"

"Do you know how hard it is to find that brand of gator jerky?" he asked, peering into the garbage can to see if the bag was salvageable.

"You have a jerky problem. Suds and I are going to have an intervention."

"I had to order it over the Internet!" he exclaimed.

I dug a fingertip into his side, making him wince. "Caleb!"

"We're not exactly dragging her back. Look, I know both of them pretty well. He isn't going to hurt her, he just wants a valuable item she took with her when he and she had their last, um-"

I raised my hand to cut him off. "Let's go with ‘date.' "                       
       
           



       

"OK, then. On their last date, Lolo informed Trixie that he wasn't planning on leaving his wife. And while he was in the shower, she took his wedding ring from the nightstand."

"Why doesn't he just have the ring replaced?"

"Well, it's Lolo's father-in-law's ring. It's an antique and apparently pretty distinctive. Plus, Lolo's sort of superstitious. He wants his wedding ring back. He's afraid that without it, his marriage will be doomed."

"Yeah, his carrying on with a stripper named Trixie won't have any effect on it at all."

"All we have to do is get the ring back to Lolo in Anchorage. I thought you'd be excited to finally get there."