Молли Харпер - How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf

“I didn’t mean to yell,” I told her. “I hate feeling so . . . helpless. I don’t want this to cause problems between the two of us. You’re one of the few people I can talk to about this stuff.”

“Agreed. We will not allow werewolves to cause problems in our friendship,” she conceded, hitting “frappe” on the blender. She asked loudly, “How many girlfriends can say that?”

THE DRINKS AND Sandra Bullock–based confections were consumed, a bonding experience that repaired the minor damage to my friendship with Evie. The next morning, Lynette troubled herself to bring an order to the pass and grumbled, “Mo, you’ve got a customer who’s asking for you. He’s cute.” Lynette looked supremely annoyed, which was her general expression when it came to me. I didn’t know if she was upset by the loss of a potential tip or a potential date.

As I crossed the dining room, Buzz came through the door, stomping mud off his boots. Evie flung her arms around him and squeezed until I thought he’d turn purple. He chuckled. “I missed you, too, babe.”

“How’s Alan?” I asked when Evie let him come up for air.

“Glad to give the boys’ families some closure, but otherwise, he’s sick and tired of this shit,” he said. “He’s still up at the site, helping the coroner, well, gather everything up.”

“Did he see any tracks in the ravine, anything to help track the wolf?” I asked, even as Evie arched her brow at me.

“Washed away by the snowmelt,” he said, lowering his voice. “Besides, in the winter, food gets scarce. A dead body is going to attract every scavenger for ten miles. There’s no guarantee you’d get the right wolf if you could follow tracks.”

“What about setting traps in case it comes back?”

“No more scavenger talk,” Evie said, shuddering and giving me a pointed look. “People are eating.”

Apparently, Evie had given more thought to my “pack member” theory since last night. And she obviously didn’t appreciate me telling Buzz to try to capture one of his in-laws. I put my hands up in a defensive “subject dropped” gesture.

“I’d better get to my table,” I said, smacking Buzz’s shoulder affectionately with my order pad. “I’m glad you’re home safe.”

When I approached the booth in question, Eli looked up from the menu, flashing his perfect white teeth. “Mo, it’s nice to see you again!”

I looked back at Evie, who was so absorbed in her husband that she hadn’t noticed the werewolf politician. “Eli, to what do we owe the honor? I’ve never seen you in here before.”

He tapped the table, indicating that I should sit. There was something imperious about the gesture. This was a man used to giving orders and having them followed. Eyeing the string of tickets lining up at the pass, I stayed on my feet. A flicker of annoyance, of doubt, sparked in Eli’s eyes, but he covered it well. “Well, I wanted to touch base with Cooper. I figured he made the effort to come to the valley, I can do the same. Maybe if we’d reached out a little more before, we wouldn’t have come to this point. But I guess I missed him.”

“Have you heard about the hikers?” I asked quietly. He nodded. “Evie says that a rogue, uh, hunter could be responsible. She said that the . . . NRA could track the responsible party down and keep them from hurting anyone else.” Eli nodded again, his face grave. “Do you think the organization could do that sooner rather than later? I don’t think this is going to stop. I think it’s just going to get worse. The warm season’s coming up. We’re going to have more people going into the woods—”

“So, what do you do while Cooper’s out of town?” he asked, interrupting me with a blithe expression.

Caught off-guard by his abruptness, I shook my head. Was I talking too loudly? Was my gun-control analogy not clever enough? “This,” I told him, my eyes narrowing. “I work. I live my life. The world doesn’t stop because Cooper’s not right here.”

“Trust me, I know that,” he said, giving me a thin smile. “And that’s where I think we could help each other out, Mo.”

“I know there are parts of the pack that he misses, Eli. But I also know that there are . . . relationships that he feels are beyond repair. I wouldn’t put a lot of pressure on him to come back. At least, not right away.”

Eli leveled his gaze at me and used what I can only call a tone of subdued authority. “You need to understand that we are going to get him to come back, one way or the other. Just having him visit the other night did a lot for my pack. Made them feel like things were back to normal for the first time in years. I want that for them. The stability. And I want Cooper to have his family back. It would be nice if we could all get what we want.”

I leaned across the table and whispered, “So, you’re saying that you’ll search for the rogue if I encourage him to move back to the valley? I would think you would want to do that for your own good, for your family’s safety.”

His lip curled as he peered up at me with those guileless brown eyes. “Well, you’re in a position to help nudge him back home, aren’t you? I’d hate for you to nudge him in the wrong direction, especially when this situation could work out so well for us. Work with me, Mo. It’s what’s best for you.”

I wasn’t quite accustomed to werewolf social interactions, but I knew when I was being threatened. I smiled blandly, refusing to rise to the bait. “Excuse me for a minute.”

I went back to the kitchen and returned a short time later with a rare steak, sausage, bacon, four scrambled eggs, and a little sliver of toast. I slid it in front of him with little fanfare. His eyebrows rose. “What’s this?”

“Breakfast. I thought I should serve you something; otherwise, people in here might think we were having an unpleasant conversation. I would just hate that.”

“Think about what I said, Mo.”

I turned on my heel, then whirled back toward Eli. “You’re right, you know. What you told Cooper the other night? You’re not him. You’re not the man he is.”

Eli had the sense to look chagrined as I stalked away. I told Lynnette that Eli and his tip were all hers. It was the first time she smiled at me. I was pretty sure it would be the last.

BY APRIL, MISSISSIPPI WOULD have been green and unbearably muggy. Daffodils would have sprung up in random splashes of yellow in the tiny patch of grass I called a yard. I would be wearing shorts and sandals and getting ready for the Reynoldses’ annual Easter weekend barbecue.

Here, late winter bled into what passed for spring. One morning, I noticed an icicle dripping on my front porch. It was as if the earth had woken up and flexed, releasing all of this energy in the form of rushing water. Tree limbs, no longer burdened by a season’s worth of ice, snapped up and sprang into power lines. There were a few short outages but none lasting so long that people bothered to turn on their generators.

The people of Grundy became exuberant in the “heat wave.” My neighbors flooded back into town. The grocery shelves at the Glacier were swept clean of everything. It was as if people had survived for weeks on gruel all winter and suddenly couldn’t wait to glut themselves on Cap’n Crunch and Cheez-Its.

Everything seemed to burst into bloom at once, which was familiar. Back home, it seemed the foggy, chilled days of February had barely set in before dogwoods and redbuds exploded to life among barely greened trees. Here, there were more exotic colors and textures. Delicate yellow poppies and flamboyant purple irises grew wild by the side of the road.