Hungry Like the Wolf(70)

Chapter 10


Gage couldn’t help returning Mackenzie’s smile as he held open the door to the restaurant. “After you.”

He would have been quite happy hanging around her apartment again tonight, watching TV, talking, and making love like a couple of minks, which was what they’d been doing for the past two days, but she’d wanted to go out to dinner. And whatever Mackenzie wanted, Gage was ready to give her. She’d picked this place way out toward Bonham. He’d never heard of it, but she promised him it’d be worth the hour-plus drive to get out here. He didn’t care where she wanted to eat. As long as it was with him, he was game.

Across from him, Mackenzie scrunched up her nose as she studied the menu. He smiled. She looked so cute when she did that. He still couldn’t believe how well things had worked out. Last night—sometime between dinner at her place and making love on the couch in the living room—Mackenzie had told him she was dropping the whole SWAT-team-on-PEDs story. They both knew there’d never been a PED story, but that had been her way of saying she was done snooping around. His pack was safe.

But while he’d started out hoping to keep a nosy journalist from finding out his pack’s secret, somehow, he’d wound up falling for Mackenzie and finding the one woman in this crazy world he clicked with. It was way too soon to say he was in love, but he was more serious about her than he’d ever been about any woman. And he liked to think she felt the same way about him.

“So, what do you feel like eating?” Mackenzie asked, still studying the menu.

When he didn’t answer, she gave him a quizzical look. She must have read his mind because she grinned. “On the menu, Gage. On the menu.”

He chuckled. “I’m feeling like a big cheeseburger with a huge pile of fries.”

“Sounds good to me. Make it two.” Mackenzie closed her menu and placed it on the table. “So, what were you asking me as we pulled in the parking lot?”

She was looking at him expectantly, her blue eyes dancing. Apparently, this was a test, and if he didn’t remember what they’d been talking about, she was going to seriously start thinking he was some kind of deviant who constantly thought about sex when he looked at her. Which was actually true, but he forced his mind back to their previous conversation. They’d been talking about his work schedule, then her schedule, then what she’d be working on next week. Yeah, that was it.

“I asked you what story you were going to work on next. Since the SWAT piece didn’t pan out.”

That sounded so smooth he almost patted himself on the back, but then he noticed she was grinning at him like she knew exactly how hard it’d been for him to remember. She didn’t call him on it, though.

“I wouldn’t say it was a complete waste of time.” She gave him a sultry look that made him wish they’d stayed at her place. “I’m not really sure what I’m going to work on. I haven’t given it a lot of thought.”

Gage let the waiter set down their drinks and take their order before asking her something he’d wondered about more than once.

“How do you decide what story to go after? I know you mentioned your boss gives you a lot of leeway, but how do you even start? I mean, do you look at the news and wait until something grabs your attention?”

She stirred artificial sweetener into her iced tea. “Most of the time, yeah. I see something that’s just wrong—a person getting away with something everyone knows they did, someone lying about something important with a perfectly straight face, a group of bad people using the system to get away with hurting people over and over. I see things like that and I just have to do something about it.”

“You want to right wrongs then.”

She sipped her drink. “Unfortunately, I rarely get to right the things that are wrong. The most I can usually do is make sure the truth comes out.”

In his experience, truth could be one hell of a four-letter word. It was frequently held up as this amazing tonic that cured all ills, but it didn’t always work out that way.

The funny thing was, he’d been wondering all weekend—in between romps in the bedroom and intimate conversations on the sofa—if he should tell her that he was a werewolf. Not right away, but soon. There was just something about her that made him want to be completely, one hundred percent honest with her.

But this wasn’t just his secret, and that was what held him back every time he thought about opening his mouth.

“What about those situations where the truth coming out will only lead to more problems?” he asked.

She regarded him thoughtfully, as if she was wondering if he was just making conversation or whether this was one of those other secrets he had.