“I need to get dressed.” She looked around until her eyes settled on a red bag covered in stickers from several different countries. She walked over to it and lifted it. “Do you have a pickup truck or only that car?”
“I have a pickup.” Everyone in Smithtown had a pickup.
“Good. We need to get this horrid couch out of your house and we need to go food shopping.” She marched past him. “I need to bake.”
Eggie didn’t know if that word meant something else but he wasn’t about to ask. Not when she was in this mood. So he just nodded and watched her head up the stairs. She stopped halfway up, though, and looked back at him.
“I am so sorry for what my sister said to you, Egbert Ray.”
He shrugged. “She ain’t my problem. She’s Bubba’s. Didn’t mean to cause you any problems, though, Darla.”
“You didn’t do anything. But I won’t let anyone talk to you like that.. I don’t care who they are.”
“You ready to fight the whole town then, darlin’?”
She pursed her lips and said without even a bit of hesitation, “If I have to.”
CHAPTER SIX
Considering the mood Darla had been in when they left the house, Eggie expected a confrontation with his Aunt Daphne, but Darla had walked into Daphne’s furniture store with a big smile and even two hours later, she’d lost it only when convenient for her to do so. How she’d managed that, though, he still didn’t know.
“Look,” Daphne had sighed, “I just can’t be running around, taking back furniture willy-nilly.”
“Oh, I know,” Darla had said with what Eggie now called her deeply concerned expression. “I know.” Her smile had suddenly returned and Eggie had felt like the whole store lit up. “But that’s why we brought the furniture back in Eggie’s truck. That way you don’t have to worry about having it picked up. We’ve taken care of all that. It’s all wrapped up nice and clean.”
“I’ll have to sell it at a loss.”
Back to deep concern. “Oh, I know. I know,” she repeated yet again. It had been her favorite phrase the entire time they were at the store. “But think of the benefit of showing how important family is to you.”
Daphne’s eyes had flickered over to Eggie and back to Darla. “Family?”
And that had been the first time since they’d walked into the store that Eggie had seen something other than a smile or deep concern . . . he saw anger. Real. Raw. But she had hidden it just as quick and repeated, “Family. Let me tell ya, I’ve been livin’ ’round those Yankees in San Francisco for a while now and those people do not know about family. And it affects their business even in a big ol’ city like that.” She leaned in and said low, “So you could imagine how it would go over here in Smithtown. But that won’t matter to you because when I start telling everybody from here to North Carolina what a wonderful store you have and how loyal a Smith you are to your kin, you won’t be able to keep the wolf Packs out of here.”
Daphne had sucked air between her teeth and looked back at her mate. He’d only shrugged, leaving it up to her.
“All right,” Daphne had finally said, shocking Eggie because that woman didn’t care if you were blood, Alpha of the Pack, or the president of the United States . . . she didn’t give nothing away. “Fine. You know what you want to replace—”
“That set.” Darla had pointed across the showroom to a dark brown couch, a couple of matching king chairs, a coffee table, three side tables in mahogany, and a matching dining set.
Normally Eggie didn’t care about furniture. He spent most of his life in trees with a high-powered rifle and scope, so whether he had chairs in a house he was rarely in or not didn’t really matter. But he had to admit . . . when he did come home, it would be nice to come home to this.
But now, after Benji and Frankie had helped him with the heavy lifting, Eggie sat on all that fancy furniture and felt a little . . . out of place. And anxious. Sitting like this, doing nothing, was not really his way. He’d go into his kitchen if he didn’t have a still-angry She-wolf baking in there. Although he would say that whatever she was whipping up smelled delicious.
Eggie glanced at his watch again. New furniture, grocery shopping, a family fight, and not even four yet.
“What are you doing?”
Eggie dropped his arm to his lap and looked at the She-wolf glaring at him from the entryway.
“Uh—”
“Your nervous energy is making me tense.”
He was making her tense?
“Well—”
“What would you normally do if I wasn’t here, baking delicious goods?”
“Uh . . . huntin’.”
“Then go hunt.”
“Can’t leave you alone.”
“If I need you, I’ll howl.”
“As far as we know, you’re still in dang—”
“Out!” She pointed at the front door. “I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”
“You do know this is my house?” When Eggie saw a flash of fang, he quickly raised his hands. “All right. All right. No need to get testy.”
He stood. “But if you need me for anything—”
“You’ll hear my howl a mile away, I promise.”
Taking her at her word, Eggie walked out of his house, stripped off his clothes, and shifted to wolf. He was just trotting down the porch stairs when his brothers came out of the woods. Something told him that they’d been ordered from their homes as well. The Lewis sisters did like to bake when angry.
Bubba Ray barked and they followed him deep into the woods until they ran across an elk and chased it down. Unfortunately, they crossed into bear territory, aka Collinstown, and right into the Buck brothers. Twin polar bears that hated the Smith boys.
The fight was ugly, but nicely distracting.
Around eight, Darla walked onto the porch of Eggie’s house. She wiped her hands on a rag and called out, “Eggie!”
Before she could even turn and head back inside, Eggie charged out of the woods. He dived into the dirt in front of his porch steps and rolled around there for a few seconds, jumped up, shook the excess dirt off, and charged into the house.
Darla ran after him, yelling out, “Don’t you dare get on that couch, Egbert Ray!”
He was in mid-jump when she yelled at him but, as Darla had done the other night, he jerked himself back, landing in the unused fireplace. At least he didn’t end up with a deadly wound. Because that would definitely ruin dinner.
“Go on upstairs and get showered,” she told him, unable to stop herself from turning up her nose at all the blood on his muzzle. Messy eater. Yuck! “Dinner can wait.”
His head cocked to the side and he turned, but instead of heading to the hallway and the stairs that would lead to the only working shower in the house, he traipsed into the dining room. Putting his front paws on one of the chairs, he looked over the table she’d set up for their meal. She hadn’t had much to work with, but Darla had managed to dig up a tablecloth, decent plates and glasses, and tolerable silverware. She also found some candles shoved in a drawer and some wild flowers near the house. Considering the circumstances. . . she’d done a really good job.
Eggie looked at her, turned away from the chair, and headed upstairs.
Deciding not to worry about the strange ways of Smith wolves, Darla returned to the kitchen.
One look at the little kitchen table told her how angry she’d been after the argument with her sisters. She had way too many pies and pastries for one wolf to ever eat. Even a wolf Eggie’s size. Even a bear couldn’t eat all this. Although a lion male could, but that was neither here nor there.
Well, she could give whatever was left over to Eggie’s family. Not her sisters, though. Damn heifers.
See? Now they had her cussin’. Heifers!
No matter how far Darla went, no matter what she did with her life, no matter her individual accomplishments, her sisters still saw her the same damn way. As a weak Omega pup they had to care for. Her p
arents respected her. Her brothers. But not her sisters. They couldn’t just watch out for her, no. They had to make fun of her, not take her even the least bit seriously. When she’d turned eighteen, her daddy finally gave her the option of moving up north to work at one of the Van Holtz restaurants. Although the Smiths and Van Holtzes considered each other enemy Packs due to some murder rampage from ages ago, the Lewises didn’t bother with all that. At the end of the day, they were business wolves and liked to make their money. They had ice-cream shops and candy stores all over the U.S., and they didn’t care who bought their products just as long as their products were bought. And the Van Holtz restaurants were big buyers of the Lewis Family’s Old Time Ice Cream—the grizzlies loved their Honey Nut Brittle Strawberry and the polars loved their Caramel and Sea Lion Fat Vanilla—so it had been easy for her father to get Darla a job at the restaurant.
He’d just wanted to give her a break. What no one expected was that Darla would become a really good pastry chef. Of course, because of her age, she’d had to start at the bottom, assisting the full-time pastry chefs and doing all the grunt work with bread dough. But within the year, the head of the Baltimore restaurant—Wulgar Van Holtz—offered to pay for her to go to France for some training in actual French patisseries. Always wanting to travel, Darla had jumped at the chance to go. They’d also sent her to Italy, Spain, England, and Germany—she made the best Bienenstich or bee-sting cake this side of Bavaria—and when she finally got back stateside, they’d put her in the San Francisco Van Holtz restaurant. A really great place for her because of the interesting people she met. As a pacifist—and no, her fight with her sisters didn’t count—and feminist, ’Frisco was a good fit for her. At least for now.
Some days, though, it could be a little too hectic, a little too loud. And so big that the Van Holtzes were planning to add two more restaurants over the next few years. She’d thought about moving back to the South where she felt most comfortable and maybe opening her own little pastry shop, but the thought of dealing with her sisters every day . . .
No. Just the thought of it made her shudder. She loved them. She really did. But some days she just wanted to slap the living shi . . . tar out of ’em.
Starting to feel a little peckish—which meant her anger was beginning to drain away—Darla glanced at the clock on the wall. It seemed like ages since Eggie had gone up to take a shower.
But she could wait for him.
She looked at all the desserts she’d made. She’d need to cover most of these and wondered if Eggie had any plastic wrap. Or, more appropriately, if his mother had left him any plastic wrap.
Going into one of the cabinets she hadn’t explored yet, Darla found some already seasoned cast-iron pans, which meant she could make some of her delicious cornbread for breakfast tomorrow; a couple more Mason jars of’shine, making a total of six she’d found so far; a roll of much-needed foil; and another snub-nosed .38. Sighing, she grabbed the foil and the weapon. The foil she put on the table with the desserts for later, the gun she took to the growing pile on the kitchen counter. The wolf had hunting knives and guns all over his dang kitchen. Who needed that many weapons in a town with wolves? Well, wolves that were family anyway.
About to place the gun down, Darla sensed someone behind her and looked over her shoulder, expecting to see Eggie. But, instead, she saw a stranger, a handsome, clean-shaven young man with wet brown hair. She immediately panicked and swung the .38 still clutched in her hand at the intruder, yelling out, “Eggie! Eggie, get down here!”
The man held his hands up and growled out, “I’m standing right in front of you, woman!”
Darla blinked. “Eggie?”
“Just put the gun down, Darla. Everything’s fine.”
“But . . . Eggie?”
“Darla, put the gun down!”
“Oh!” She put the gun on the weapons pile and turned back to the man who sounded like Eggie Ray Smith.
Fascinated, she walked up to him. “Is that really you?”
“Well . . . yeah.”
She leaned in closer, his wet hair smelling nice from whatever shampoo he’d used. “Really?”
“Yes, really!”
Darla took a quick step back. “Oh. You just look . . . so . . . different.”
“All I did was shave.”
But what a difference a shave made. Still, she had to ask, “Why?”
He shrugged. “I saw that fancy table and figured it would be nice.” He looked down at the jeans and Led Zeppelin concert T-shirt he had on. “Didn’t really have anything fancier than this to wear, though. So I shaved instead.”
Darla smiled. “You didn’t have to do that for me. I liked your beard.”
“Thought a little effort couldn’t hurt.”
“Well, I really appreciate it.” Darla went up on her toes and kissed Eggie’s cheek. She heard him swallow, saw those bright wolf eyes turn toward her.
That’s when she realized she was hoping he’d kiss her back. Not just on the cheek either. She might be a virgin, but she was hardly a nun. But he didn’t kiss her; he simply said, “Hope I didn’t ruin dinner taking so long.”
“Not at all.” She took his big hand in hers. “Let’s go eat.”
The food was good. The lemon meringue pie astounding. But it was her smile that was making him kind of a mess.
Eggie wasn’t used to feeling this way about anything. He was the wolf that Packmates and the Marine Corp called on to handle dangerous situations. He could sneak in anywhere, kill anybody, and get back out again without anyone noticing. He’d been known to sit in a tree for three days straight waiting for the right moment to take his shot. Unlike others who might snap from the pressure, Eggie never snapped. He never had nightmares or woke up in a cold sweat. He never lost his temper or went up into towers so he could shoot the unsuspecting populace.
So why this pretty little gal was making him all kinds of nervous and, to be honest, a little sweaty, he didn’t rightly know.
Even stranger, he didn’t know why he kind of liked feeling that way. He shouldn’t. It wasn’t normal for a wolf to feel weak and sort of helpless because a She-wolf had dimples. Honestly, just the cutest dimples. Dimples she kept flashing at him while they ate and she talked and he occasionally grunted. The fact that he wasn’t much of a talker didn’t seem to bother Darla, she just kept chatting away. Normally all that chatter would annoy Eggie something awful, but he liked the sound of her voice. He found it kind of soothing.
“Pecan pie? Cherry? Boston Cream?”
“You sure did a lot of baking.”
“It’s what I do when my sisters get on my nerves.”
“Must explain why your pies are so damn good.”
That smile returned. “Thank you. Janie may think her pecan pie is better than mine, but she can choke on it.”
“She’s just protective of you. It’s the Alpha in her. She’ll make a good mate for Bubba.”
“Does that bother you?”
“I don’t care who he picks as a mate.”
“No, no. I mean . . . everyone assuming he’ll be Alpha of the Smithtown Pack one day.”
Eggie picked up his glass of milk. “Why should it bother me?”
“You’re older . . . stronger . . . have wider shoulders.”
Eggie choked a little on his milk, and quickly grabbed a paper napkin to wipe his chin. “Uh ... I don’t really want to be in charge. Not of a Pack. Don’t mind handling a team or even a squad but anything other than that is more damn people than I want to deal with. I mostly like being on my own.”
She winced. “Then I’m sorry I took over your house . . . or at least your kitchen.”
“Don’t mind. I like having you around. You smell nice.”
You smell nice? Really? You idiot!
She bit her lip, but it couldn’t hide that she was laughing at him. And she should. He was pathetic!
“Well . . . thank you. I do try.”
Desperate to stop looking like the bigges
t loser this side of the Mississippi, Eggie stood and grabbed his empty plate and milk glass. “Guess I’ll get this cleaned up.”
She stood as well. “We’ll do it together.”
“You don’t have to. You did cook.”
“It’ll get done faster if we work together.”
“Okay.” Eggie piled up a few more plates and lifted them.
“Think we can sleep together again tonight?”
Eggie, who could take out a target nearly a mile away with a good scope and in a high wind, nearly dropped the plates, barely catching them in time.
He put the pile back on the table and turned. And damn the woman, she was right behind him.
“Something wrong?” she asked, having the nerve to look innocent and sweet.
“This ain’t fair, Darla Mae.”
“What isn’t?”
“You,” he accused, forcing his gaze to look at anything but her, “smelling nice and looking so damn pretty.”
“You think I’m pretty?”
“Everyone thinks you’re pretty.”
“Not really.”
“I just can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
He took a step away from her, ended up banging his butt into the dining table. “This. With you. Ain’t right.”
“Why?” She moved in closer. “Because of my sisters? Because they said horrible things to you?”
“No, of course not.” Besides. He was used to her sisters.
“Because they make me look like an idiot?” she asked flatly.
“No and they don’t.” He swallowed. “It’s just you’re . . . you’re . . .”
“What? I’m what?”
“You know,” he shrugged. “Untouched by a man.”
“I wouldn’t say all that,” she muttered.
Eggie frowned. “Pardon?”
“What I mean is, I’m not some innocent, Eggie. I’ve just been waiting for the right . . .” She grinned, nearly killing him. “The right wolf to come along.”
“Well that’s not me,” he told her plain.
Darla didn’t understand this man. Did he want her or not? He seemed to want her one second but then seemed ready to bolt the very next.