But he knew he had to be careful how he handled this. She was special to him and to the pack. He sure as hell didn’t want to screw things up between them.
He’d certainly thought about them being tangled beneath the sheets when he’d visited before, or even on a mission. Not seeing her the last couple of times had only made the yearning stronger. Yet he hadn’t wanted to chase her down. Maybe she hadn’t really wanted to see him. Then again, maybe her avoidance had to do with the knowledge he’d have to leave again, and she didn’t like having to always say good-bye.
He kissed her intimately, lovingly, knowing he was going to have to make real changes in his life—for the better. When she finally pulled her mouth away from his, tears streaked her cheeks.
Hell, he hadn’t meant to upset her. He hugged her close. She nestled her head against his chest, and he rested his chin on the top of her head.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly, hating that she was feeling bad and that he could have been the cause of it.
“Yeah. You don’t know how much this means to me.” She slipped her hand around her turquoise hawk. “But…”
Suddenly it dawned on him. Her grandfather. She felt bad about having never found him, and now they’d probably located his gun which brought the memories back to her. They all had been devastated by losing their families, but at least they were able to bury them, keep them in their memories, and get on with their lives. With her grandfather, they knew he couldn’t be alive, but not knowing what had happened to him had been the hardest part.
Paul kissed the top of her head, relieved she wasn’t upset that he had been kissing her. This was only the beginning, and he knew she had to be feeling the same way that he was about their relationship. “Okay. I’m returning to get the pistol and see if we can at least identify it as his. As long as you’re okay.”
“I am. Go ahead. I’ll just stay here.”
He brushed away the tears on her cheeks, and she smiled up at him, but her smile was only for show. She was trying to indicate she was all right when he knew she wasn’t.
“Be back in a moment.” He went for another dive and reached the area where the pistol had been, or so he thought, but with the way the water was moving, he and Lori had drifted a bit. He swam back to the location and saw the shape of the pistol. When he grasped it, the barrel hung up on what he thought was a stick, until he realized it was a rib snapped in two. Hell. In that instant, his stomach tightened with concern. This was definitely a mixed blessing.
Gently using his fingers to brush away the sediments collecting around the ribs and other bones, he found a human skull. A chill crawled up his spine. It had to be her grandfather’s. Their wolf pack had been attacked near the lake by a mix of lupus garous and the all-wolf pack that the Wolfgang pack had also infected. Those in the Cunningham pack who hadn’t been killed had hurried to leave the area as quickly as they could.
Eventually, the rabid wolf packs died from the rabies, or Paul and the rest of the pack finally hunted them down. They couldn’t have allowed any settlers—humans in the area—to kill off the lupus garous because the wolves would have turned into humans upon death. The wolves that were all wolf was a different story, but it was difficult to tell the two apart when they were in wolf form. So Paul and those left in his pack had to take care of them.
Paul brought the gun with him, planning to come back for the bones later when he had his diving bag in hand and could retrieve them.
He hated to mention what he’d found. Lori and Emma would want to know. After spending the required amount of time to return safely to the surface, he resurfaced and said, “I…found bones.”
More tears pooled in Lori’s eyes and he hated that he’d upset her further.
“What do you want to do? We can let anthropologists know. They’ll take them and analyze them to determine age, sex, and origin or we can…”
“Give my grandfather a proper burial. Grandma has always wanted that.”
Paul knew that would be Lori’s choice and Emma’s. It would have been his own, if her grandfather had been his flesh and blood.
He gave her the gun and she wiped away some of the moss. “It’s his. He carved an eagle on the handle.”
Paul recognized it too. His own grandfather had given Emma’s husband the pistol and taught him how to shoot it. The pack had been a mix of Native Americans and settlers, but they were all lupus garous and had worked together as a pack.
“What if the bones aren’t his?” Paul asked, though he couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t be, not when the pistol had been with them.
“The gun was with him, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“It was him then. He never let that gun out of his sight when he was in the woods or near the lake because of the all-wolf packs, grizzlies, and cougars in the area. He was the only one of our pack members still unaccounted for. So we bury him in the family plot. I don’t want scientists cutting up his bones. Grandma wouldn’t want that either.”
He hated to tell her he couldn’t get them right away. “I’ve…got to get some equipment and come back for him later.”
She looked disappointed that he couldn’t do it this minute.
“I can only dive one more time, but not for as long as it will take me, and then not again for another twelve hours or so.”
She nodded. “We’ve got to make sure the Flathead County sheriff’s office doesn’t get word of this and send out their search-and-recovery dive team. If they do, we’re going to lose Grandpa’s bones. How would we be able to explain we knew they were his?”
“Agreed. We should be fine. No one should ever suspect what we’re up to. People get caught at stuff like this because they show it off on Facebook, or tell friends or family who share it with the world. Then they’re in trouble.” The two of them swam back to the dock.
When they climbed out, Paul was curious about the local dive team, since that always interested him. “Is the search-and-recovery dive team a good team, do you know?”
“Yeah. Rated one of the best in the state of Montana. They have twenty-four divers with all kinds of dive agency ratings—dive masters, master divers, rescue divers. But they also have training in underwater criminal investigation with specialties in underwater body-and-evidence recovery. So we really don’t want to get them involved, or we’ll have to make up some story about how my grandfather died so long ago. We’d have to say he was an older descendent because no one could know about how long we actually live.”
“Right.” But Paul’s thoughts were already headed in another direction. “How do you know so much about the recovery team?” He suspected that unless she had read a bunch of stories of missions they’d gone on, she wouldn’t know that much about them. He hadn’t realized how much it bothered him that he hadn’t been here in her life all this time. He assumed if she hadn’t dodged seeing him for the past couple of years, things would have been different between them.
“I dated one of the guys.”
Surprised, Paul raised a brow.
She shrugged. “He’s human and I only went out with him twice. He was nice, but I had to let him know pretty quickly that I couldn’t do anything long-term with him. If I’d still been seeing him, I would have asked him to locate my necklace.”
“He would have found your grandfather’s pistol and bones.” Paul couldn’t help frowning, not only because the guy would have uncovered them and then the situation would have been out of the family’s hands, but also because she’d dated him. Paul couldn’t help being a little jealous when he had no right to be.
She sighed. “Yeah. That would have been a disaster.”
Paul would like to meet some of the team members and swap stories, maybe even let the guy she dated know she was off-limits. It truly was a wolf condition—at least that’s what he told himself. She was part of Paul’s wolf pack, and wolves looked after eac
h other. With just a few of them in this area, they needed that lupus garou support system.
When he didn’t say anything, she teased, “If you had been around and wearing your wet suit, I probably wouldn’t have dated him.”
He smiled a little at her comment. He knew for certain she wouldn’t have dated the guy, wet suit or no, if he had been around.
He’d tried damned hard to see her only as part of their decimated wolf pack and not a potential mate, because that meant giving up what he loved doing. But didn’t Bjornolf, Hunter, and Finn end up doing that in the best way possible? Got the girl and still went on missions? Though while the babies were on their way, the guys were sticking closer to home—as good wolf mates would do. Which was why Allan and Paul had been taking a lot of jobs as a two-man team lately.
She let out her breath in exasperation. “I’m only kidding.”
He recognized the frustration in her words, but they didn’t ring true. He reached out to touch her arm and…well, he wasn’t certain what he could say, but then they heard a truck’s engine rumbling as it drove up the dirt road to her cabin.
Lori turned to look in that direction. “It’s got to be the furniture truck. I’ll go see to it.” She sounded like she was relieved to have a chance to leave.
“All right. I’m going to make another sweep over the area.” He was off the hook for the time being, but he knew these…feelings between them were bound to come into play until they dealt with them.
He’d considered that Lori and the other women needed to locate a wolf pack and even find a mate among them, since he and Allan weren’t home long enough to make a difference. Yet, every time he thought about it, he hadn’t liked the idea.
This was their home and had been forever. Like territory marked by a wolf, this was theirs. He didn’t like the idea that another alpha male would show up and take control of their pack. They were a pack of a sort. Semi-autonomous, though he’d kept in touch with Catherine and Emma to ensure everything was all right back home. They’d gotten along fine for years like that.
In his heart, he knew that if an alpha male tried to take over, Catherine or Emma would apprize him of the situation immediately, and he and Allan would chase the interloper off. Which meant it was past time that they did something about the situation with the pack and how it was currently being run.
Chapter 10
The furniture movers were early! Lori’s heart pounded as she worried she’d be caught holding her grandfather’s flintlock pistol. She quickly hid it underneath the dock—she couldn’t let the men see it. She hurried to the end of the dock and grabbed one of the beach towels. Wrapping it around her, she ran up the steps to the front door. Emotions warred within her as she went inside and threw on a long T-shirt before she had the men haul out the old couch and chairs and carry in the new ones.
Between being overjoyed that Paul had found her necklace, saddened to learn of her grandfather’s final resting place, and confused about Paul’s interest in her, she felt her feelings ping-ponging all over the place when she never thought of herself as that…well, emotional.
She couldn’t believe that her grandfather had been so close by all these years and they’d never discovered his body. She wanted to call her grandma, but the furniture movers had to leave first. She hated that she and Paul had to wait to bring her grandfather out of the lake now that they knew he was there. Yet she reminded herself that after all the time that he’d been down there, no one would be the wiser. Still, knowing he was there, she kept feeling like someone else would discover him.
She glanced out the window, looking for Paul, but he must have gone diving again. In a way, she wished the furniture guys hadn’t come when they did. What had Paul planned to say to her when they were at the water’s edge?
She let out her breath. When it came to him, she was always overthinking things.
But how could she not, when he’d kissed her so passionately in the lake? Like he’d wanted her, every bit of her, just as much as she did him. And then? He’d leave her again.
* * *
Still feeling hot and, well, aroused, and unable to get his mind off Lori and the kisses they had shared, Paul continued his descent to see if he could locate anything else in the vicinity of the pistol. He ended up back at the bones. He couldn’t help but be drawn to them, remembering the terror when he and the others had fled, every wolf for himself, trying to get away from the rabid wolves that senselessly attacked everyone they could reach: young, old, and every age in between.
Then he saw more bones about ten feet away—wolf bones, three ribs broken, and a war hatchet lying next to them. It was definitely her grandfather’s weapon; though the iron blade was rusted, the wooden handle still was intact. Lee Greypaw had shown all the youngsters how to throw it, and Paul and Allan had gotten quite good at that.
Lee seemed to have thrown the hatchet at the wolf, hitting him in the side and possibly breaking the three ribs, but the wolf had still managed to attack him. Then both had died. Since the bones were of a wolf, even in death, it had been a full wolf, not a lupus garou. What if her grandfather had used the gun to defend himself but it jammed—and then he and the rabid wolf ended up in the water, and her grandfather didn’t make it?
Saddened that her grandfather had died, Paul was glad to know that the wolf that caused Lee’s death had perished at his hand. Paul knew the elder would have felt some satisfaction that he’d been a warrior in his last fight. Paul took hold of the hatchet and made his graduated return to the surface. That was enough diving for the day. He’d gather up the bones tomorrow.
When he left the water, he removed his tank and flippers, then slipped the hatchet under the dock where Lori had placed the pistol. He could imagine her walking up to the cabin with a weapon in hand while the men were moving the new furniture into the house. Grabbing the towel that Lori had left for him, he stalked up to the house.
When he reached the living room door, he noted Lori had thrown a long T-shirt over her wet bathing suit, though it was clinging to all her curves. That had him thinking about kissing her in the water again.
He greeted the three men and headed for the bedroom to strip out of the wet suit and throw on some clothes.
By the time he left the bedroom, the men had packed up the old furniture in the truck and driven off.
Pleased at how well the furniture looked, Paul sat down on the couch, sank into the soft cushions, and ran his hand over the velvety material. He loved this couch. He could just stay here forever.
Lori disappeared into the bedroom and returned wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top. She sat next to him and patted his bare leg. “They look great, don’t they?”
Yeah, with her sitting on the couch, her leg pressed up against his, the whole setup looked even better. “Yeah, your grandma is going to love it.”
“I’ll bring her up to see it when you leave to stay with Allan at the Rappaports’ cabin.” She sounded a little sad.
“We haven’t even gotten to half the work we need to do. Did you want to call her about your grandfather?”
“I hate to, but yeah, I’ll do it now that the furniture guys are gone.”
“I’ll give Allan a call and see if he wants to help me retrieve the bones in the morning. It would be quicker and better if the two of us could do it. One other thing…” Paul explained about the hatchet and the wolf, and what he suspected had happened.
Lori let out her breath on a heavy sigh. “Good. I’m glad to hear he had a fighting chance. He would have been pleased to kill his attacker but saddened at the same time. He was a fighter to the last, but they were brother wolves. We know they weren’t responsible for their actions, not when the rabies had infected their brains. They couldn’t help what they did.”
Paul put his arm around her and pulled her close, feeling it was a natural thing to do. She snuggled back, as if she felt the same way. He stroked
her arm soothingly. He just wanted the closeness, the comforting, the knowledge they had been through so much in the past. Now they were coming full circle on the event that had turned their pack lives upside down.
“I know. As upset as all of us had been, we never blamed them. We knew if we had been infected instead, we would have reacted in the same way,” Paul said.
“I wholeheartedly agree.” She raised her head off his chest and looked up at him. “Did you get it? The hatchet?”
“It’s down by the dock next to the pistol. I didn’t want to carry it up to the house and have anyone see it.”
“I don’t blame you. No telling what the furniture movers would have thought. Do you want to go get the weapons while I fix a light dinner? I was thinking we could trim the branches next to the deck after that. If we have any more time before it gets dark, we could trim back some of the trees beside the private drive.”
He wished Emma had asked him to help out before. He realized then just how much work they’d needed to get done. He certainly didn’t mind doing any of this kind of work when he came home on vacation. That was what being part of a pack was all about.
“Sure thing.” He didn’t make a move to leave the couch or release Lori.
She chuckled. “It sure is comfortable. No springs stabbing us in the butt, no rough wool scratching our bare legs.”
“No musty smell, feels like velvet, and is cushiony soft.” Having Lori tucked under his arm was what he loved most. He sighed, really liking the feel of Lori nestled against him and thinking how he’d like to do this again. “If you’ll fix dinner, I’ll get the weapons.”
She left him on the couch and then went to prepare the chicken wings. He finally dragged himself off the couch and left the house. He ran down the steps to the dock to the beach and called Allan. “Are you busy?”
“From the dark tone of your voice, it sounds like a SEAL mission. What’s up?”
“I found Lori’s necklace, but I also found her grandfather’s remains.”