Wolf With Benefits

  “Yeah.” Ricky waited until the door to Vic’s room closed, then stood in front of Toni’s door for several more minutes. He stared at it, debating with himself if he should stand out here all night or not.

  When he didn’t hear anything hysterical coming from inside, he decided to go to his own bed. Room service would be shutting down soon and he really needed something to eat. A steak and fries would really hit the spot.

  “All she needs is sleep,” he softly reminded himself. “A good night’s sleep and she’ll be just fine.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The unfamiliar ring of his in-room phone woke Ricky up the next morning. He’d managed to get a few hours’ sleep the previous night, but it hadn’t been easy. His body was still on New York time, but he had a job to do. So Ricky picked up the still-ringing phone off the receiver.

  “Yep?”

  “Ready to face the day?”

  Ricky growled. “You are too damn cheery.”

  Vic laughed. “See you in thirty?”

  “Yeah. That’ll work.”

  “We’ll go get breakfast down in the restaurant.”

  Ricky grunted, sounding a little like his daddy at that moment, and hung up the phone. He took a shower and put on black jeans, black T-shirt, black boots, and secured a holstered .45 semi-auto to the back of his jeans that Vic had given him when he’d arrived in Russia. He pulled a denim jacket on to hide the weapon and left his room to go over to Toni’s. He knocked but there was no answer. He knocked again.

  By now, Vic was standing next to him.

  “Nothing?” he asked.

  “Nope.” Ricky looked down one end of the hall, then the other. When he didn’t see anyone around, he leaned in, pressed his nose against the doorjamb, and sniffed.

  Ricky stepped back. “She’s in there.”

  Vic reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a keycard.

  “Had an extra for her room made?”

  “Yep.”

  Vic was just reaching for the door when it opened from the inside. The two males instinctively reared back, but Toni only smiled.

  “Sorry I took so long to get to the door. I just got out of the shower a few minutes ago.”

  Dressed in blue jeans, sexy, knee-high brown boots with three-inch heels, and a plain white T-shirt, Toni motioned both men in. “I’m almost done,” she said.

  “Okay.” Ricky closed the door. “Vic suggested we get breakfast downstairs in the dining room.”

  “Sounds good,” she said from inside the bathroom, the door open. “The room service was good, too.”

  She stepped back into the room with a towel. Her hair was dripping wet, thick curls reaching past her shoulders, bangs in front of her eyes. “Did you both sleep well?”

  “Yep,” Ricky replied.

  She smiled—appearing much more relaxed than she had been last night—bent at the waist, and flipped her hair over. While Toni proceeded to carefully squeeze the water out of her hair with the towel, Vic bumped Ricky’s shoulder with his own. When Ricky glanced over, Vic motioned to the bedroom door with a jerk of his head.

  Ricky looked behind him, his eyes immediately widening at what he saw. And what he saw was paw marks on the back of the door. As if a wild animal had been locked in a room and unable to get out.

  Disgusted, Ricky returned his attention to Toni. She stood straight, shook her hair. The curls were shorter now, getting curlier as her hair became drier.

  “Okay. I’m ready.” She threw the towel back into the bathroom and grabbed a small backpack and thick file folder from her bed. She walked to the door, pulling it open with her free hand.

  “What happened to the back of the door?” Ricky asked her.

  “Huh?” Toni asked, eyes wide as if she didn’t know what he was talking about. She continued to keep moving, saying nothing more.

  “Going to say it now?” Vic asked him.

  “No. I’m not.” He pointed at the hybrid. “I know it’ll be impossible for a bear-tiger freak of nature to understand, but although every dog may be a canine, not every canine is a dog.”

  “Did you get that from your college Logic one-oh-one class?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Come on, guys,” Toni called from the hallway. “Let’s go. I’ve got a lot of work to get done today.”

  “Just leave it,” Ricky warned the hybrid. “She’s fine.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Watch that tone, son.”

  Vic chuckled and walked out of the room; Ricky followed.

  Still disgusted.

  She saw the girl, Delilah Jean-Louis Parker, sitting on the steps in front of that church. She couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen, but Miss Parker was strikingly beautiful.

  It was extremely late when she sat down beside the girl. Glancing over her shoulder, she realized that Parker wasn’t alone. At least three men, probably members of the church—or cult, depending on whom you talked to—were standing in the shadows, there to protect Parker.

  That was all right. She had her own backup.

  “Hi,” she finally said to the girl. She knew she had a “warm way about her” as it said in her evaluations. It was something she used to her benefit.

  “Hello.” Parker looked at her. She had a soft smile and dead eyes.

  “I got your message through our mutual friend and we are definitely interested.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re willing to pay you—”

  “I want a million. In this account in the Cayman Islands.” She handed over a piece of paper with numbers on it. “Get me that and I’ll give you what I have.”

  “A million? That seems . . . substantial. For something we’re not even sure will work.”

  “A million or you get nothing.”

  “Look, Miss Jean-Louis Parker—”

  “Gasp,” Parker said flatly. “How do you know my name? Oh, no. If you know my name . . . you know where I live. What will I do now? The horror. The horror.” Parker leaned in a bit. “Is that what you wanted to hear? Was that the reaction you needed?”

  A girl this one might be, but smart. And cold. Ice fucking cold.

  “I’ll talk to my superiors, Miss Parker.”

  Parker gave a little shrug, her small, misleading smile still in place. “Okay.”

  Tucking the piece of paper into her jeans pocket, she stood and walked down the steps and out onto the street. She walked a block until her team picked her up. She got into the Town Car and closed the door.

  “Well?”

  “Snotty little slit.”

  “We know where she lives.”

  “Strong-arming this girl isn’t going to work. Not with this one.”

  “Then what do you want to do?”

  “We’ll see if we can find it on our own.”

  “And if we can’t?”

  She thought back on her superior’s excitement when she’d shown him the information one of her contacts had sent her. “Then we give the bitch what she wants.”

  Although Toni had been to Russia before—several times, in fact—she’d never been this far outside a major city. She’d never been to Siberia.

  And Siberia was, in a word, astounding.

  So lush and green. Not at all what Toni expected.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Barinov asked as he glanced at her in the rearview.

  “It is. I guess I expected—”

  “A snow-covered wilderness?”

  “It’s Siberia.”

  “There’s summertime here, too. It’s actually kind of extra hot for this time of year. Nearly sixty-five Fahrenheit when I checked this morning.” Considering Toni had just left what she considered the oppressive heat of the East Coast, she had to chuckle a little.

  The drive took a good thirty minutes until they reached the location where they’d be meeting with the bears. A ridiculously large . . . well . . . palace. Yeah. It was a palace. Not a mansion. Not a castle. A palace.

  “G
ood Lord,” Ricky muttered.

  Barinov chuckled. “This is the house—”

  “House?” Toni asked, incredulous.

  “—that belongs to whoever is currently running this town. And for the last century and a half, that’s been the Zubachevs.”

  “Why do I know that name?” Ricky asked, yawning and taking off his cap to scratch his head.

  “Lots of Zubachevs in the States, a bunch of them in Maine. Like my mother’s family, they’re from Kamchatka.”

  “Lovely.” Ricky put his hat back on his head. “Just lovely.”

  “What’s wrong?” Toni asked.

  Barinov shrugged. “Kamchatka bears kind of hate—”

  “Canines,” Ricky filled in. “They hate us a lot. Wolf. Jackal. Wild dog. Foxes. Doesn’t matter the breed or where you fall in the genetic line, if you’ve even got a bit of canine blood in you, they hate you.”

  Barinov pulled to a stop in front of the palace. “It’s called the one-eighth rule.”

  “The one-eighth rule?”

  “If there’s more than one-eighth canine blood in a shifter, Kamchatka bears consider them canines.”

  “And let’s face it,” Ricky said, grinning at her, “we all know there’s a little canine in everybody.”

  She rolled her eyes but couldn’t help smiling. Such a goofball, this guy.

  “Any special instructions before we get out of this car?” Ricky asked Barinov.

  “Yeah. No sudden movements. Even if there aren’t any grizzlies within a mile of you, no sudden movements. None of them will like you, just accept that now. And all of them hate Novikov.”

  “That boy sure has made a name for himself.”

  “It’s not his fault,” Toni felt the need to remind them, since she was sure that one day she’d be having the same conversation about any or all of her siblings. “When you’re the best at what you do, it’s hard to remember there are other human beings standing right next to you.”

  Ricky turned, rested his arm on the back of his seat. “How long have you been practicing that speech?”

  “Since Kyle was six. Only this time I didn’t add, ‘it’s hard to remember there are other human beings standing right next to you, Senator’ or ‘your honor’ or ‘Mr. Prosecutor.’ ”

  “The thing you need to keep in mind, Miss Parker—”

  “Just call me Toni.”

  “That’s Toni with an ‘i,’ ” Ricky felt the need to explain. “Not a ‘y.’ ”

  “Right. Well, what you need to keep in mind, Toni, is that no matter what the bears here say, all they care about is keeping their territory safe, playing hockey, and making money off hockey. Keep that in mind, and you should be just fine.”

  The front doors to the palace opened and very large males began to walk through those double doors. Toni had assumed the double doors were there just to look fancy; now she realized they needed to be there to allow males that wide to enter and exit the building.

  Toni nodded and reached for the door handle. By the time she was stepping out of the car, Ricky was there, his hand pressed into the small of her back.

  “No matter what,” he told her, “just remember I’m here. Vic is here. You’re not on your own, darlin’.”

  “I know that,” she said honestly. “Because otherwise I would have made a wild run for the woods by now. Jackals are brave when our pups are around, but we’re not stupid.”

  Toni headed up the stairs with Barinov leading the way. He spoke in Russian to the bear standing at the top of the stairs, a grizzly who was surrounded by a bunch of other bears that ranged from grizzly to black to polar to speckled.

  “Ivan Zubachev,” Vic finally said in English, “this is Antonella—”

  Zubachev cut Vic off with an angry snarl. “That American bitch, Malone,” he grumbled in an impossibly low voice, “sent this dog to talk to Yuri Asanov. Greatest hockey coach to ever live?”

  Toni fought the urge to roll her eyes. She had to agree with Kyle. She simply did not understand the love of sports.

  Instead of pointing that out, she said, “Miss Malone apologizes for being unable to attend, but she had a prior—”

  “I don’t want to hear! Your mere presence insults this team. Insults Yuri Asanov. Go, pet doggy. No one wants to talk to you.”

  “Wait a minute.” Toni couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I do understand you’re upset about this, Mr. Zubachev. But I am authorized to negotiate with Mr. Asanov and the team.”

  The bear glowered down at her. He had to be at least eight feet tall while human. She didn’t even want to imagine how big his bear form was.

  His lip curling, he growled, “I hear dog barking . . . but it means nothing to me.” He gestured with his hand. “Go, little dog. Go play in next town with other dogs. There’s no place for you here.”

  With one last glower, Zubachev turned on his heel and stalked off. The rest of the bears followed him.

  Rage ripped through Toni’s system. She heard roaring in her ears. And as she saw those double doors begin to close, the proverbial leash she’d always used to keep herself calm in any situation snapped.

  Ricky stared at the empty spot where Toni had been standing. Usually he reacted quickly in dangerous situations, but he had to admit he just never expected anyone to suddenly bolt after bears. Away from bears, yes. But after?

  “Fuck,” Vic snarled. The hybrid charged up the stairs after her, but by the time he got to the doors, they were shut in his face and locked.

  “Can we kick in the door?” Ricky asked as he ran up behind Vic.

  “This palace was built by bears just before the Russian civil war hit Siberia in 1918. And none of the things that happened in the rest of Siberia happened here, because no one could get past the bears who guard this territory or their incredibly strong wooden doors.”

  “We can’t just leave her in there.”

  “I don’t think we have a choice.” Vic shrugged. “But her mangled body should be tossed out here anytime now.”

  Ricky gawked at the man. “Not. Helping.”

  Toni was aware that hands were grabbing for her as she moved around unbelievably large men to reach her goal. But she was fast and she was scrappy, so she ignored those hands until she’d gotten to the front of the group and jumped in front of Ivan Zubachev.

  She stopped and held out her arm, palm out. “Hold it just a second, Poppa Bear.”

  Zubachev did stop walking, but his expression suggested he wouldn’t wait for long.

  “You’d do well to move from my way, little, tiny dog.”

  “I thought I was here to talk business.”

  “That cat bitch was supposed to come. And yet she is not here, but you are. I don’t talk to dog.”

  He started to move forward so Toni took several steps back, her arm still held out. “You don’t want to talk to dogs? Do you think I want to talk to you? Do you think I’m comfortable around human beings this large? I’m not. But I have a job to do, so I sucked it up and I came here. And now you won’t even talk to me. How is that acceptable?”

  “I don’t talk to dog,” he repeated, and Toni knew he was serious. He was not going to talk to her simply because she was canine.

  Bigots!

  So if the bear was going to be as difficult as all stubborn bears could be, then Toni was going to be as difficult as all dogs could be.

  “Leave by door,” the bear said, walking around her with the others following. She watched them all lumber by and, once they were a healthy distance away, Toni yipped. Several times.

  The bears stopped. Zubachev covered his ears, spun to face her.

  “What is that noise?” he bellowed.

  “That’s how jackals talk. I’m a jackal, not a dog. Dogs bark. Jackals yip.”

  “Well, stop it!”

  Toni shook her head. “No.”

  She yipped again.

  Zubachev dropped his hands to his sides and took an angry stepped forward. “Stop it,” he ordered. “Or we
make you stop.”

  “You’d have to catch me first, and I can assure you . . . jackals are way faster than bears. Because we have to be. And this place you have”—she raised her arms and spun in a circle—“has wonderful acoustics. I can hide all over the place and just make this noise all . . . day . . . long.”

  Then she began yipping and yipping and yipping.

  Ricky and Vic pulled away from the door.

  “Good God, what is that noise?” the hybrid demanded.

  “That’s the soothing sounds of your local jackal.”

  “Are they cries for help?”

  “Nope.” Ricky shook his head. “Just her saying ‘hi.’ ”

  Vic’s eyes narrowed. “It makes me want to kill.”

  And that’s what was worrying Ricky. Especially when he heard the distinctive angry roar of bears coming from inside the building.

  “She’s going to get herself killed,” Vic warned.

  Ricky stepped back and studied the front of the building. “Come on. We’ve gotta find a way in.”

  “Make her stop!” a polar screamed at Zubachev in Russian. She knew what he was saying only because he used phrases that one of Coop’s piano teachers, a great player from Moscow, had used. Usually just before the man whacked her brother’s hand with the riding crop he kept on him at all times. Toni had let that go the first time it happened, but the second time he’d done it, she’d decked the prick and that had been the end of her brother’s relationship with that particular piano teacher.

  Zubachev tried to grab Toni, but she was, as she’d said, too fast for him. Plus, unlike many canines, she’d taught herself to climb when she was eight because a rich cub from the Pride near their home had told her dogs couldn’t climb. Toni had felt it was her duty to prove all cats wrong.

  So she now stood comfortably on top of one of the big statues lining the marble hallway.

  “You know how to stop me, Ivan.”

  The grizzly glowered up at her.

  “You know how to stop me,” she repeated. When he still didn’t reply, she began to howl for her siblings. It was a sound that her family always found soothing. It meant that someone was there to watch out for you, to care for you. Others, though—like bears, lions, hyenas, cheetahs, leopards, et al.—found the sound so painfully annoying that they couldn’t get away from jackals fast enough.