Laurie’s Wolves(2)

Melinda tipped her head up to look her mate in the eye. “Please tell me he doesn’t have an ulterior motive with my sister. You didn’t lead him to believe she looked like me or something, did you?”

Trace wrapped an arm around his mate and hugged her into his side, chuckling. “Believe me, that’s the furthest thing from Zachary’s mind these days. He’s far more worried about figuring out what man will share his mate than finding the woman.”

“Pardon?” Laurie lifted a brow in confusion.

Melinda swatted at Trace’s belly, making him buckle forward as though she’d knocked the wind out of him. She stood about five feet and weighed less than a bug. She turned her attention back to Laurie after giving him a stern look. “The Masters seem to mate only in ménages.” She nudged Trace with a finger and then nodded at Griffen across the room.

“Oh. Huh. I hadn’t really thought about that. But there are five siblings. Who’s to say they will all end in ménages?”

“History,” Trace added. “We have first cousins in Oregon. All four of the boys mated in threes—two men and a woman. By now, we have realized we’re all fated to the same thing.”

“Wow. That’s insane. It’s so rare. Wonder why?”

“We’ve all been scratching our heads over that one. Who knows?”

Laurie smiled. “So I’m safe with Zachary then.”

Melinda narrowed her gaze. “Don’t know if I’d go that far. Sometimes two of the partners meet before the third.”

Laurie shrugged. “It’s so unlikely. What are the chances?”

She glanced around the room and stiffened at her words. Both of her siblings had mated with a Masters. It gave her the chills. What if she did meet Zachary and find him to be her mate? Was she ready for that sort of commitment? And if that wasn’t bad enough, she’d never considered mating with two men. The idea was overwhelming.

As the activity around her continued, she smiled at the crowd of new family members and tried to block out the possibilities.

Slightly off-kilter was how she would describe herself as she settled into bed later that night.

Whatever happened…happened. Fate had her reasons. If she was indeed destined to mate with one of the Masters brothers, hiding out and avoiding them would solve nothing. And she had always been the sort of woman to face a challenge without hesitation.

She was only twenty-five, but she had a strong head on her shoulders. She could handle whatever fell in her lap.

Besides, what were the chances?

She fell asleep thinking of skiing while blocking out visions of what she assumed Zachary Masters must look like, judging from his two older brothers.





Chapter Two


Zach stepped into the ski lodge at ten o’clock. He’d already given lessons to a rowdy group of six-year-olds, who exhausted him. He normally didn’t mind giving lessons, even to small children, but today he was distracted by thoughts of the woman he was meeting for a private lesson at ten. It didn’t help that two of the kids had cried almost the entire time he’d been working with them, and one of them flat-out refused to pop her tiny skis onto her boots. Luckily, he had another kid working with him for the morning, or he would have had difficulty leaving the little girl behind while he worked with the other five.

He pulled off his gloves and lifted his goggles onto his head as he strode through the throng of people filling the lodge.

Laurie was to meet him by the fireplace. He had very little information about what she looked like, but there was no way she could mistake him for anyone other than a Masters after meeting his two older brothers. Most people said they were like quadruplets as they got older.

A woman sat on one of the deep couches next to the fireplace, her arms lifted in the air as she fought to pull her long, thick, strawberry blonde hair into a ponytail. With her neck bent down, she didn’t see him approach. He assumed she had to be Laurie, considering there were no other women alone perched close by.

In fact, at this hour most of the skiers were out on the slopes. The crowd inside the lodge was made up of small children and whatever adult had been designated to watch them, usually a parent or grandparent.

Not for the first time, it occurred to him they should open a daycare center to allow parents and older siblings the freedom to ski longer.

The giant room buzzed with activity. His parents had built the lodge so that it blended in with the natural environment—a log cabin look both inside and out. The ceiling was high, and the room was filled with inviting couches in clusters around the center, with the enormous fireplace as the focal point. During ski season, it was always blazing.