A SEAL in Wolf's Clothing

Page 13

“Looks like someone didn’t like the gloom of Oregon weather and tried to preserve the sun indoors.”
“Probably someone from California.”
She raised her eyes to the ceiling as if asking for divine intervention, and then headed for the deck door. “I lived in California, and I wouldn’t decorate my place here in Oregon like it was one giant sunflower.”
He smiled a little and then disappeared.
She glanced back, wondering what had happened to him. When he reappeared, she realized what he was up to. Checking out the place. Making sure they were alone. Alone. She’d hoped to find a mate in the next two weeks, and what had happened instead? She had been swept into a dangerous situation that Hunter and his team had been involved in, and now she was stuck alone with one of his teammates. One who was not on her list as an acceptable mate for her or any other she-wolf. Not in the line of work he was in, and as far as she knew, he wasn’t on the mate mart.
“So where are you from originally?” she asked. She noted a very large doggy door for a wolf next to the regular door, and then she walked out onto the deck, leaving the door wide open.
The air was wet and heavy. She hadn’t thought she’d ever get used to living next to the ocean after having lived in the redwoods for so long. She wasn’t good at adapting to new locations, but she was beginning to really like coastal life.
She walked back into the kitchen as Finn hauled in the ice chest and set it on the floor next to the fridge. Her rifle was already lying on the kitchen counter, and she figured later she would put it under the bed where she would sleep.
She opened the fridge and peered inside. Empty. Except for a few condiments. “Great. No food. Guess they cleaned it out before we arrived.”
“My associate must not have had time to get here with the food,” Finn said, pulling out the remainder of the baked chicken, potato salad, bottled water, and milk she’d brought with them in the ice chest. “We should have picked up something at the market. But I didn’t want to get too much stuff in case we had to leave again. And I didn’t want to chance him picking up our trail.
“I had intended to stay at your cabin and just watch you there in the event someone turned up to bother you. But with the gunfire we’d heard, a dead body, and a man who claimed to be another…” Finn shrugged. “Time for a change of plans. As to your question, I’m from southern California. I used to belong to a gray wolf pack that still lives down there.”
“No siblings?”
He put a chicken thigh and leg in a microwave dish and heated them for a couple of minutes. When the microwave dinged, he offered her a piece of chicken.
“Thanks, but I had enough chicken to eat in the car.”
“No siblings,” he said, glancing out the window at the view and taking a bite of the chicken. “Hmm, good stuff.”
“Thanks. It’s all in the lemon and pepper spice I used.” She tucked a curl of hair behind her ear and asked, “Do you ever wish you had any siblings?”
He grabbed a bottle of water, twisted off the cap, and took a swig. “Nope. Look at the difficulty it causes.” He motioned to Meara with the bottled water. “With no family, I don’t have any worries about anyone targeting someone close to me.”
“Ah. So you’re a loner wolf.”
“Yep. It’s perfect for the kind of work I do.”
That was just the way she’d had him pegged. She wasn’t all that surprised. Hunter had never mentioned that Finn was looking for a mate, although her brother probably wouldn’t have said anything to her about it anyway. Even though she hadn’t meant to feel anything one way or another about it, a hint of disappointment formed at the edge of her awareness, until she watched Finn dish a huge amount of potato salad onto a plate.
He scarfed down the salad, then refilled the plate. She couldn’t help but smile. The only one she knew who had that much of an appetite and loved her potato salad as much was Hunter.
Finn looked up at her, saw her smiling at the way he was eating her cooking, and grinned. “I didn’t think you’d catch me getting seconds. Hunter didn’t tell me you were this good of a cook.”
“I doubt he would. He just eats second and third helpings, which clues me in.” She pointed at the potato salad. “That’s an old German family recipe passed down through the generations with a few minor changes.”
“I have some German roots, too, but no one ever cooked anything that tasted this good.” He finished his second plateful and eyed the container of potato salad. Looking reluctant, he finally replaced the lid and set the salad in the fridge.
“You could have more,” she said.
“I will,” he promised. “A little later.”
She glanced out the window. “So what do we do now? The place is furnished, but there’s no food. Are we just supposed to hole up here for a few days? What if the guy who died was the assassin? We wouldn’t need to hide any more.” She quickly backtracked. “But then the guy who killed him could be even worse trouble.”
Finn nodded. “If someone else is pulling the strings, he most likely will still want the job done right. When the word gets out that the assassin is dead and we’re alive, what do you think will happen?” He finished his chicken, washed his hands, and then punched in a number on his phone.
“Cheery thought. Aren’t you supposed to be reassuring me instead of trying to frighten me out of my wits? I’m a civilian, if you recall. And not trained for all this deep-cover work.”
He gave her a small smile and shook his head as if he didn’t think she scared that easily. She didn’t. But she was surprised he wasn’t trying to whitewash the trouble they could be in. Or maybe he was smiling about her comment concerning the deep-cover work.
“When Hunter and I hooked up for missions this past year, you always wanted to know what was going on,” Finn finally remarked. “In fact you insisted on it.”
“I did. I was speaking tongue-in-cheek about wanting reassurance. I want to know the truth.”
He frowned, undoubtedly not reaching his party, and then punched in another number.
She expected him to leave her alone, to take his call in private—for all this superspy stuff—but instead he remained in the kitchen with her. Watching her? Worried about her? She was ready to ask him more about what was going on when he lifted his head. The person he was calling must have answered the phone.
“Hi, it’s me. I’ve got a situation. A man named Joe Matheson was found dead near Hunter’s place,” Finn said into his phone.
“My place,” Meara cut in.
“Yeah,” Finn said to the person on the phone, as he glanced Meara’s way but didn’t comment on what she’d said. “So I’m sending you the picture in an email. ID says he’s a news reporter. Did you get anything on the other man I sent the picture of?”
The other Joe? When did Finn take a picture of him? Finn had been naked, wearing only a towel, for part of the time when Imposter Joe was in the room. She frowned at Finn.
His gaze locked onto hers, and he frowned back. “All right. Keep trying to track down anything you can on either of the men. We’re holed up in a safe house for now. Get back with me when you can.” He repocketed his phone.
“It’s not Hunter’s house. It’s mine,” Meara reiterated to Finn. Hunter might interfere in a lot of things in her life, but when he’d moved into Tessa’s home, he’d given up the rights to owning their uncle’s house. It was now all Meara’s. Initially, she hadn’t wanted to move to the Oregon coast, but she’d made the cabin her home, and she really enjoyed having her own place without any of Hunter’s bossiness.
“My contact doesn’t need to know that the house is now yours. Only that the dead body was in the vicinity of your brother’s home. It shows intent to follow through with some master plan to hit all of us.”
“Why? Why would anyone be doing this? What was going on with your last mission?”
“It’s classified. We should be safe here.”
She gave him a ladylike sound of annoyance. “Yeah but since I’m involved now, too—through no fault of my own, I might add—I should know what’s going on.”
He shook his head, and that was the end of the discussion.
But not quite. “When did you take a picture of Imposter Joe? I saw you take one of the dead man with your camera. But you were wearing only a towel and, for some time, not even that when you saw my pretend renter.”
Finn hesitated to say but acted as if he’d come to a turning point in their relationship, moving beyond him being the protector and her the protected. He finally said, “I bugged your place and had placed cameras in various locations in the cabin.”
Her mouth dropped open. Then she snapped it shut, glowered at him, and said, “In my bedroom and bathroom, too?”
“No. I hadn’t gotten that far when you arrived, and then Joe came calling.”
“When were you going to let me in on that secret?”
“I didn’t think I’d need to since we’d have to leave your place anyway. Besides, it was only for your protection.” He turned to open a cabinet and found food, canned and boxed. Tons of it. “Looks like we’re not going to starve.”
She was still thinking about what he’d seen on his camera while she had been talking to Imposter Joe—the way she had slipped him the note, all that she’d said to the guy and what he’d said back, and all the while Finn had been watching and listening—when Finn pulled out a package of marshmallows, a box of graham crackers, and chocolate bars.
“Want some s’mores?”
Her irritation instantly dissolving, she eyed the ingredients with a sudden wistful craving. “S’mores?”
Chapter 7
Meara had expected super-espionage spy stuff—locked doors, lights out, and whispered voices—as the dark gripped the cliffside home. Instead, she was sitting on a bench on the private beach, heating up marshmallows on a metal skewer while chocolate melted on graham crackers over the fire.