Dakota Cassidy - The Accidental Werewolf 2 - Something About Harry

Again, it didn’t matter. She was never showing her face to Harry Emmerson again—not willingly anyway.

Mara clung to Marty’s faux-fur vest and shook her head. “Oh, no. Absolutely not. I am not going in there.” She nodded toward the darkened lab with the surrounding glass windows. Not with hot, geekified, slurpilicious, totally-oblivious-to-her-existence Harry Emmerson on the other side of that door.

Emphatic no here.

“Honey?” Marty soothed, staring into her sister-in-law’s eyes. “We have to help him. It’s our duty as his employers to help him. At least give me a hand until Nina and Wanda arrive. He’s trapped in there. Plus, if what he says is true, he’s suffered a huge trauma.”

Ah, but it probably wasn’t the kind of trauma her self-esteem had suffered because Harry didn’t even know she existed. As far as Mara was concerned, he deserved all the trauma he got. How the trauma had happened, right here at Pack in the lab she’d just exited an hour ago, left Mara a little worried.

Which made her pause.

No. It couldn’t be. She shrugged off her concern and took in Marty’s pleading blue eyes. “I’m sorry he’s suffered a trauma, but I’m no trauma specialist. You three are. I just work here at Pack.” With Harry. Scrumpdelicious Harry.

“Mara Flaherty?”

“Marty Flaherty?”

“If you don’t help me, I’ll take away your lab coat and your pocket protector.”

Mara waffled. Oh, noes. Not her lab coat. It was new and shiny. “That’s a cheap shot. You’re a mean taskmaster, Marty.”

Marty’s snort was sarcastic. “Nina’s my best friend. Nobody does cheap shots better ’n me, honey.” But Marty’s eyes held sympathetic warmth when she made an obvious note of the fear her sister-in-law was displaying.

She brushed a strand of Mara’s hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “Why don’t you want to help me, sweetie? I don’t get it. Whenever there’s a Pack crisis, you’re the first one to roll up her sleeves and help out. This isn’t like you at all. So tell me what’s going on.”

Here’s what’s going on, dear SIL. I’m a dirty, dirty whore and once, long ago, and far, far away, I attempted, awkwardly, foolishly, and miserably failed, mind you, to seduce Harry Emmerson. Totally against my better judgment, and worse, mostly against Pack rules .

Since that night, she’d hidden behind her group of friends at lunch whenever possible, avoided and sometimes even run from Harry, due to her embarrassment.

Oh, God. She couldn’t say that to Marty. Never, as long as she lived, would she ever confess to what happened that night at the Pack Christmas party.

So she lied. Like all washed-up temptresses did. “Um, I’m afraid? So, so afraid.” Mara cocked her head in the direction of the sound of something smashing. “Whatever’s going on in there sounds pretty bad. Maybe he’s hurt and all gushy with blood. Ick.” She made a big show of wrinkling her nose. “I hate blood.”

Marty ran her tongue over her lips with a frown, her blond hair perfect and smooth under the lights of the hallway leading to the lab. “Afraid of blood. You? A lab tech and the woman who threatened to rip off her brother’s head and shit down his windpipe?”

Oh, stop. She’d just been joking. All her brothers ever did was razz her about her pathetic lack of dates, and during family dinner date night, mostly because the accusation was true, she’d flipped and made one little threat while she had Sloan in a choke hold. Now they all called her the Mara-nator. Ha. Ha.

“I was just joking. Sloan and Keegan are always harping on me about mating and having babies. They got the better of me, that’s all. It was just once . . .”

A low, definitely feral growl from behind the lab’s doors brought both women to silence.

But not for long. Not with Marty. “You did hear that, didn’t you?”

A thread of fear and a moment of startling realization accosted Mara all at once. Nuh-uh . . .

But wait. Here was a thought. If Harry were hurt, why wouldn’t he call 911? How the heck had he gotten hold of the OOPS hotline? Unless . . . Oh. The connection was becoming clearer.

Can ya hear it now, Mara? She shook her head at the niggling voice. No way. She gulped, shuffling in her knee-high boots. It couldn’t be. “Did Nina say what this nine-one-one is about?”

“Somehow, according to the tweets Nina’s been sending me, this Harry Emmerson ended up inside the lab, and he claims he’s been turned into a werewolf. He took the test on the OOPS website and everything. Now, I don’t know about you, but my ears say he sure sounds like a werewolf. And if you let your nose do the walking, this Harry smells like one. Which means he needs help.”

Oh, bullshit. He was no more werewolf than she was vixen . “But Nina said she’d be here ASAP to help. She’s a vampire. She runs fast. Also, might I point out, Keegan already pitches a hissy every time you and your cohorts get involved in an OOPS case. Imagine the hell I’d get if I did, too . . .” Which was ridiculous. Mara, as well as anyone knew, if Marty wanted to do it, her brother wouldn’t dream of stopping her.

Sure, he groused. Sometimes he even complained out loud, but he loved his wife’s commitment to saving others who’d gone through what she’d gone through, whether he liked to admit it or not.

“And you always, always listen to your brother,” Marty jabbed with sarcasm and rolled her big, blue eyes. “Look, if you don’t want to help, I’ll go in alone. But sometimes, in situations like these, things get a little wonky. I only have so many limbs to use to my advantage. He might get loose.”

A high keening wail, one that sent shivers up Mara’s spine, made her grab Marty’s arm. “Wait!” The moment she thwarted her sister-in-law was the moment that first ludicrous suspicion moments ago turned into a terrifying thought.

Marty shrugged her off. “I can’t wait, Mara. He needs help. Jesus, it sounds like he’s giving birth in there. Now let go!”

She had no doubt Marty could handle Harry. None at all. But there was a little something else troubling her . . . She tightened her grip on Marty’s arm. “No!” Mara licked her lips in nervousness. “First I need to know something.”

Marty’s mouth pinched when Harry crashed against the door. “Hurry it up—he’s going to take the door out!”

“How did this accident allegedly happen?”

“Nina said something about vitaminwater. I don’t know the rest, and I don’t have time to scroll through the tweets. We have to help poor Harry!”

Mara’s gut clenched tight. Vitaminwater? Right. Harry liked vitaminwater. He drank one with his bologna and mustard sandwich on whole wheat every day at lunch and two when he worked out. He liked the kiwi-strawberry best.

But there was something Harry probably wasn’t going to like: the fact that the alleged vitaminwater he’d mistakenly sipped from wasn’t vitaminwater at all.

Because she’d grown weary of searching for her Prince Charming, Mad Scientist Mara had made a concoction for making werewolf babies sans a male werewolf—easily disguised in a bottle of vitaminwater.

If she couldn’t pull off something as simple as “Operation Seduction,” not just with Harry but with any man she found interesting and attractive, she surely couldn’t be trusted to obtain something like a sample for artificial insemination. Not to mention the guilt she’d harbor if she used a man to create a child he didn’t know about just to ease her burning desire to have children.

And in one crazy, ridiculously stupid, insane moment, single, childless Mara Flaherty had decided she didn’t need a husband or pack mate to have a family. She’d make one of her own. Lots of single women did it. But lots—nay, most —single women weren’t werewolves.