Truth or Wolf: A Small Town Shifter Romantic Comedy (Wolf Brothers Book 1)

Chapter 26

Twenty-Six

You’re in my every breath and every thought, intertwined so deep inside me that love’s not a strong enough word—you have my devotion, your name branded on my soul, my wolf yours to command. A hundred years? It’ll never be enough. I want eternity.

— ANGELA KNIGHT

Sanye had lit out of her daddy’s barn as if her tail was on fire, Alice right behind her. The ladies had had an advantage, being on four paws and low to the ground.

We’d followed almost as fast, tearing through the barn, the backyard, and around the house. The thunderstorm that had been promising all evening had been pelting down rain.

I kept replaying our escape—because that was what it had been—in my head. The moment Alice had shifted.

The tabby cat bolting away from me.

The way Cat Alice—my Alice—had paused in the driveway. Maybe she hadn’t like the rain. Maybe she couldn’t remember where Sanye had parked. Maybe?—

Maybe she was waiting for us, blockhead.

Had Alice always been able to shift? Why hadn’t I known this? Did she like being a part-time cat? My brain twisted itself into more knots than a macramé project. I did not know what to think.

Snooze, you lose. My wolf sounded grumpy.

Or maybe he was just carsick because I was not giving the switchbacks anywhere near the sort of respect they merited. No, I was attempting to throw myself—along with my truck and its occupants—straight down the side of the mountain.

Ranger peeled off after a bit, taking the road that led to Alice’s place. Ours was in the other direction. I should follow her, shouldn’t I?

But what if Lucky followed me?

Should I decoy him? Stop and make a stand? What was the right thing to do here?

“Ford, let her go. There’s no time for shilly-shallying, and Alice has Sanye and Ranger to keep her safe. We gotta split up in case we’re being followed.”

I was not convinced. Not because I didn’t have a healthy respect for Sanye’s claws and her badass abilities, but because it should be me rescuing Alice. I needed to be her knight, keep her safe, hold her in the peace and quiet of our home. But Ranger was hauling ass, almost out of sight.

Muttering a curse, I nodded reluctantly. Atticus was right, and I hated it.

I sped away, vowing never to visit Lucky Jansen’s place again.

Twenty minutes later, it was silent as the grave inside my truck, and we were alone on the road.

I kept glancing in my rearview mirror, mostly expecting to see a posse of trucks, bikes, or wolves chasing our asses down the mountain. All I spotted was dust and mud.

By the time we’d hit the main road and were outside Moonlight Valley, I couldn’t take it any longer.

“Mav, call Sanye. Confirm they made it back safely.”

Maverick held up his phone. “Already did. Alessandro’s with them, pissed as heck because they went up that mountain and busted in on the Iron Wolves. Apparently, he thinks that should have been a job for law enforcement and not for pet groomers. He and Alice are arguing ‘job description’ versus ‘girl code’ right now.”

I blew out a breath. “So she shifted back okay?”

“She must have since she’s giving him hell.” Atticus frowned at his phone. “Apparently she’s mad as a wet hen that she did not get to help Deelie Sue or give her a ride.”

“Crap.” I met Atticus’s eyes in my rearview mirror. “We left Deelie Sue there.”

Abandoning Deelie Sue did not sit well with me. Not because I had feelings for her, but because I’d asked her to help me and then hadn’t followed up with her. The last message from her phone suggested the Iron Wolves knew she’d been planning on betraying their pack and someone had taken steps. I was not okay with leaving her unprotected and at risk. That was shades of our momma all over again.

Maverick cursed and thumbed his phone. “I’ll call in a few favors. Get someone to go up there and get her out. If she’s actually there.”

“You think she double-crossed us? Sold us out?”

Maverick hesitated. “Maybe?”

“Don’t think that.” But the thought was out there.

Despite Deelie Sue’s unabashed love of making money and looking out for number one, she was not—and would never be—a liar. Or deeply unethical (although very minor, ever so slight crossings of ethical boundaries might occur when she did her taxes or talked up a car she was selling). I decided I believed this whole-heartedly.

So leaving her behind, instead of fighting to bring her with us, was on me, although I had been out of options back at Lucky’s.

I turned possible scenarios over in my head for the next few miles and finally decided I could live with outsourcing this particular rescue.

I gave Maverick a nod in the rearview mirror. “Okay then. Please let me know when she’s safe.”

Atticus groaned. “Do we want to know what Ranger saw on May fourteenth?”

That one was easier to answer. “No. No, we do not.”

No one had anything else to say for a while after that. My thoughts turned back to Alice like a compass pointing true north.

I needed to go to her. Explain what I was feeling and why I’d done what I’d done. My instincts urged me to wrap my arms around her and carry her away.

We could go to my cabin, and I could lock her up there until we’d sorted out everything between us. That worked in books and in the movies, right? I wanted Alice to look at me with love again. Not anger and pain.

God help me, I needed a plan before I showed up in her life.

“You want to drop us off so you can head over to Alice’s?”

I glanced back at Maverick and shook my head. “No.”

“Why the hell not?”

I had no answer for this.

I’ve got nothing.

“I agree with Maverick,” Atticus said, then added, “Which is a miracle.”

When I didn’t say anything, Maverick groaned. “Look. That woman loves you. I saw the expression on her face when she spotted you, the fear in her eyes when you volunteered to fight for her.”

“I need to come up with a plan. I’ve got nothing. I cannot go to her empty-handed.” This was the truth. “I need?—”

Maverick cut me off. “Those last two words right there are your problem. It’s not about what you need. It’s about what she needs. What the two ofyou need. You can’t wait until you have a plan for every single moment of your life. You’ll spend all your time planning and none of it living. If you love her, you go after her. You go right now. Not tomorrow.”

“If not now, then when?” Atticus sang out from the backseat.

He makes a good point, my wolf chimed in.

I shot Maverick a glance. He was doing some waiting on his own woman.

He flipped me the bird and then turned in his seat so he could see my face. “Alice is all in on loving you. You don’t want to lose that, believe me. You can figure out the freaky cat and wolf shit later. You go now.”

I considered standing outside Alice’s bedroom window and singing some soulful ballad until she came out (I was tone deaf).

Writing a message in carnations (Moonlight Valley did not have a flower shop).

Tossing pebbles at her window.

Buying a carrier pigeon farm and sending birds with love letters every day until I was forgiven.

Truth was, I had no plan. I didn’t even have an idea of what I was doing, other than showing up and hoping Alice would give me a chance to explain what I felt for her.

This kind of reckless, impulsive behavior was out of character. I might fail or make her ten times madder than she was already, true. But Atticus’s words had resonated when he’d said if not now, then when?

My brother was not wrong.

The last time I’d made a spur-of-the-moment, impulsive decision, I’d kissed Alice Aymes after she’d literally fallen into my arms.

Maybe we should be asking the Universe for a sign.

I jogged down the road from our house to Alice’s tiny house—with no plan, no forethought, no practice run in front of the bathroom mirror—certain of one thing and one thing only. It had been a horrible, awful day, and I needed to see her.

I needed to fix our relationship before another day had passed and she’d had yet more time to consider the angry words we’d exchanged and decide that living a Ford-free, wolf-free life was in her best interest.

The Little Love Den was lit up like a pink cupcake by the moon. All the lights were off inside, but her car and one of the cats were out front. The cat bristled angrily at me as I came to a halt.

About time, it said.

The words were slightly tinny and fuzzy around the edges, like the voice was coming from far, far away except that it was inside my head.

This was…

Unnatural, my wolf suggested. Could be you’re bonkers. Everyone knows cats are unstable, evil dictators. We should make a strategic retreat.

The cat sniffed. Genghis Khat. My name is Genghis Khat. I have illustrious ancestors.

My wolf was silent. Neither of us wanted to find out what talents Genghis Khat might have inherited from his ancestor.

You may feed me, Genghis Khat announced. He stalked away, tail flicking, and disappeared through the cat door.

I walked around the house, collecting a few pebbles—and doubts—and stopping underneath her window. I was going with the pebble plan as the cats might interpret the carrier pigeons as a DoorDash dinner delivery.

The first pebble made a clinking sound, and I winced a little. If I damaged her window, she’d be upset. It took three more tries though before the window opened.

Alice stuck her head out, her lopsided bun catching on the frame and listing to the side. She frowned, inspecting the glass.

Now would be good, my wolf said.

He was right. I cupped my hands to my mouth and whisper-shouted, “Alice!”

There was a silent pause that I should have filled up with words. I wondered whether it was too late to whip out my phone and google something by Shakespeare.

There was that famous balcony scene, right? Although I seemed to recall it had not ended happily. And had involved prepubescent teenagers with no emotional maturity. Surely the Bard had written something happy and age appropriate?

“Ford?” Alice sounded confused. She looked around, but I’d apparently managed to park myself in her blind spot. My romantic gesture was off to a great start.

“It’s me. I’m here.”

She looked for me in a couple hardwood trees, then twisted to look up. I resisted the urge to tell her that, as I was not Santa Claus, I would not be lurking on her roof.

But we could ask her if she wants to be on our naughty list.

I ignored my wolf because I’d realized a flaw in my approach. I’d figured I’d wake her up and we’d talk. Maybe I’d romantically climb up a tree so we could talk face to face. I’d sit on a branch and she’d lean out the window. There would be moonbeams and shit. Possibly poetry, if I could surreptitiously search for it on my phone.

Except that when I’d removed that enormous, dead pine tree from on top of her Aunt Sally’s trailer, I’d been a responsible arborist and had cut back the trees all around her new cottage. If I wanted to sit in a tree outside her window, I’d have to wait fifty, maybe a hundred years.

Real smart.

“Can I come up? Or can you come down?”

I should have brought my ladder.

“What makes you think that I ever want to see you again?” She glared down at me. “You are something else. After tonight, I would be justified in never, ever wanting to see another Boone again.”

I didn’t answer because a plan had suddenly popped into my mind. I’d built a little sloping roof that covered the wraparound porch like a peplum on a shirt. If I jumped, I could…

I did and snagged the edge of the roof, pulling myself upward.

“Are you scaling my house? Are you delusional? You are not Spiderman, Ford Boone! You are going to kill yourself, and you’ve already used up all your luck for the day.”

“Hush, I’m coming for you.” I pulled myself up onto the porch roof. My boots rang on the tin, and three inquisitive, furry faces popped into view at the bottom of the porch.

Alice carried on haranguing me as I got myself across the roof. She was still grousing when I reached her window.

“…are you an adrenaline junkie? Do you have a death wish? You are not going to need to save for retirement if you keep this up. Have you updated your beneficiaries? You need to think about your safety…”

I climbed in.

She shut up.

For a millisecond.

Then she started in again, hypothesizing that I must have high-deductible medical insurance and had already met my deductive for the year.

This was not what I wanted to be discussing with her, not at all.

“Can I kiss you?” I blurted out.

Maybe I did have a death wish, because Alice stared at me for a long moment. It got horribly silent, and I found that I missed hearing her every thought (even if some of them did not paint me in a good light).

I didn’t know what to say, except the truth.

“I would really, really like to kiss you right now.”

And later, tomorrow, and forever, but I was starting small and working my way up.

“Why?” she asked finally.

And I…well, I gave her my second piece of truth.

“Because I desperately want to. And because I would like to verify for myself that every amazing, aggravating, independent, fierce inch of you is unharmed.”

“So, a safety check?”

That only covered a small fraction of what I was feeling, but Alice didn’t wait for my answer.

She kissed me. A small smack of a kiss against the corner of my mouth. Another kiss on my lips. A veritable hail of kisses on my cheek, my ear, and anywhere else she could reach.

It was only fair to reciprocate.

“Did you miss me?” My words were muted because my mouth was pressed against her throat, and talking through kisses was a muffled business.

Rather than using her words, Alice wrapped herself around me and kissed me back firmly. My fingers stroked up underneath her citizen science T-shirt and hers fisted in my flannel.

I loved her soft skin, the curves and the lines of her, the delicious heat and warmth beneath my hands. She did not hold back: she went up in flames everywhere I touched. My thoughts shifted from groveling to touching her everywhere.

I loved how she welcomed me so openly, how she arched into my touch, making small, greedy sounds, as if being with me was all-consuming.

But then she stiffened and slapped my hand away. Twisting in my arms, she popped herself out like a cork from a bottle and landed across the room from me. On the bright side, the room was the size of a closet (because tiny house). On the downside, she’d put the bed between us. She stared at me, accusation in her eyes,

“Why are you here?” She propped her hands on her hips.

“We didn’t finish talking earlier.”

“When?”

“Before now.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Be specific, Ford. Do you mean when you abandoned me in the middle of the night at your cabin? Or earlier today when we were held hostage by a pack of hostile wolves?”

I had done her wrong at my cabin, but the danger I’d put her in at Jansen’s compound was ten times worse.

“Yes,” I managed through my self-hatred. “I want to apologize for leaving you in the cabin and running off. I’m sorry. It was wrong and it was shitty.”

“And you want to discuss it right now? After midnight? I have Mace. And a baseball bat.”

“Good.” I never wanted her to be in danger again.

She chewed on that, then blurted out, “Deelie Sue showed me her phone. She claimed you were calling her because you had realized that you were in love with her. That you wanted a second chance.”

“Deelie Sue and I have never been in love. We were…friends with benefits.” Right now, no benefits were coming to mind. “I called things off when you came back to town because I wanted you and me to be together.”

“All right.” Alice wrapped her arms around her middle. “All righty. I told her that I was not worried about the two of you taking back up together again.

“But I don’t understand. Why did you go to Wheels of Good Fortune? Were you really going to ask her to make a secret video of Lucky shifting into his wolf form in public?”

I tensed. This was not public knowledge. “Who told you that?”

“The wolves—those were wolves, right?—at Lucky’s place were talking about it. They knew you were going to use her to get at Piston. She called me earlier tonight and pretended to be in trouble.”

“Deelie Sue lied to you tonight?”

“Yes. Well, she said she needed a ride home, to get away from the Iron Wolves. She acted like she was in a whole mess of trouble, and then she wasn’t even there when I showed up. Sanye’s daddy said it was a setup, a way to get you to come out to his place.”

“That was not okay, and I apologize,” I said, when her explanation finally petered out.

We should go back up there. Crack some heads. Make our point.

“Why are you sorry?”

“For sucking you into my mess with the Iron Wolves. For endangering you.”

She frowned. “None of that is on you. In fact, it’s mostly a Deelie Sue thing. But I am missing some pieces. Most of that conversation went right over my head, but I want to understand. Can you fill in the gaps for me?”

I sucked in a deep breath, returning her frown with my own. I owed her the truth, but there were parts I was not allowed to tell. There were wolf secrets here.

“You won’t.” She sounded disappointed. “You don’t trust me.”

“I can’t. No,” I corrected. “I shouldn’t. Some of it isn’t my story to tell, and there are rules I’m supposed to abide by. Shifter rules, although I guess you’re a shifter, too.”

“Part,” she said. And I thought I heard her mutter something about it being a long story and not speaking ill of the dead.

“I do trust you. The Iron Wolves have been blackmailing Atticus and me, demanding we join their pack and be their enforcers. We’ve been running out the clock, and I thought that pulling Deelie Sue in might help.

“She wasn’t picking up my calls, though, so Atticus and I went to see her at Wheels of Good Fortune. She agreed to help. As a favor.”

“What did the Iron Wolves have on you?” Alice chewed on her bottom lip.

I scrubbed a hand over my head, knowing this was not going to come out right. “That’s not something I can share. It was about Maverick. Not me, not Atticus. Just Maverick. We can ask him if he’ll tell you.”

Her face lightened. She’d lived in Moonlight Valley long enough to have heard the stories about my oldest brother and his wild child days when he’d run with the Iron Wolves. I was sure she was attributing all sorts of felonies to him. It was his problem.

“So we went out there tonight,” I continued, “to tell the Iron Wolves that we would not be acquiescing to their demands.”

“And Deelie Sue double-crossed you.”

I shrugged. “I honestly don’t think so. I think she’s sure interested in dating Lucky, which is not who I would choose to step out with, but I don’t know how the Iron Wolves found out we were planning to spit in their face, so to speak. We had a couple of aces up our sleeve that they did not see coming, and now there’s some bad blood between us all.”

“Do you think she’s okay?”

I nodded. “I do. Plus, Maverick’s checking on her.”

“Good,” Alice said softly. “No one should get left behind.”

“I would never lie to you, Alice. Not about this, not about how I…feel.”

“You are honest to a fault, Ford Boone.”

My heart ached fit to break. She was almost close enough to touch, to wrap myself around, and yet she felt distant.

That was my fault.

She’d offered me her heart once, and I’d refused it.

“Well.” She looked down at her feet. “I appreciate the explanation. You can use the front door to let yourself out.”

Leaving was the last thing I wanted to do. The first thing I wanted to do was close the distance between us. There were likely words or explanations, acts or deeds, that would have done the trick. I did not know what they were.

I’d come here without a plan, so all I could go with were my instinct and the words that were bubbling up in my throat, coming from deep inside my heart and—I suspected—my soul.

“I believe in being responsible. I look out for my family; I keep my word. I don’t ever take what I haven’t earned. No handouts or free rides, and absolutely nothing without permission.”

Her eyes shot up to mine. “Consent’s important, although that doesn’t sound like a bedroom question. But I have a question for you.”

“Shoot,” I said.

“If you had all the money and I had none and we were together, would you think I was taking a handout from you? Getting a free ride? And not a gift?”

This felt like a trick question. “Whatever I have is yours.”

“And vice versa. Plus, I’m the one who wants to live in Nashville, so how I ask you to pay for?—”

“Hush a minute?”

Alice frowned at me but nodded—I figured I had sixty seconds and no more.

“I want to…” No. That word—want—wasn’t correct. “I need to be with you. To go with you. And that’s what I’m fixing to do, if you’ll have me.

“You’ve been my one and only ever since our first stupid prank. I thought that I should be courting you, taking things slow. I had a whole plan worked out in my head, one that guaranteed that every step in our relationship would be successful. I hadn’t thought about your dreams. Or that you might have a different vision for our future.”

“Ford—”

“So I went back to the drawing board. I thought up something new. I figured that if I set a twelve-month limit on our being together, then my heart would be safe. I wouldn’t, couldn’t, lose it in a year. I could control the outcome, make sure it was what I expected even if it wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

“You were right about me. I held back. I was not all in. I was the one who was looking to leave the whole time we were dating, looking for an excuse to end things sooner because I already knew that I would never be able to walk away later.”

Alice wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were holding herself back, making herself wait. I hated that I’d made her second-guess her feelings, made her feel less than safe putting her heart into my hands.

“We don’t have to be over,” she said. “Not now, not in twelve months. I feel selfish, though, asking you to leave Moonlight Valley when your family is here.”

I needed to touch her so badly. I fisted my hands by my side.

If not now, then when, you fool?

The wolf was right. I crossed to Alice, holding out my hands, opening my arms because I needed the sweet warmth of her against me. “You did ask. And I’m saying yes, thank you. I couldn’t have asked you to stay here, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have invited myself along. But since you’re asking…”

Alice’s eyes widened, and her lips tightened as if she was holding in words. I closed my hands around hers, pulling her gently toward me, erasing all the awful, unwanted space between us. I was never letting go of her again.

“Since you asked, and since I love you, and if your feelings haven’t changed?—”

“Come with me!”

I folded my girl into my arms, brushing a kiss over the top of her head, and—even though we did need a plan for this, and I had no idea how to do this other than to let go and trust Alice to catch me—I said, “I will. I’m all yours.”

“But what about your family business? And your brothers?”

“We’ll work something out. Atticus and Ranger said I should go for it, that I was a fool to turn you down.”

“I could try an internet business. Or opening a place here.”

“That,” I whispered against her hair, “was not your dream, Alice Aymes. I am not compromising your dreams. Or your heart.”

Just your body.

“But what about what you want?”

“You. I want you. You’re my everything. When I think about my future, I see you.”

I wasn’t entirely reformed, though. I wanted her so badly, so I kissed her. I put everything I hadn’t said yet into that kiss, sliding my hands under her T-shirt and along her back to hold her closer. I pulled her body tight against mine, my hips pressed against her belly, my hands moving lower because my newest plan called for me to strip her panties right off her body.

She moaned a song into my mouth when my hand came back, cupping her core and parting her with my fingers. She was hot and sweet and I wanted her underneath me, me inside her, marking her as mine.

“I won’t give you my mating bite,” I promised her when we broke apart, panting. “Not yet. Maybe in a year. Maybe two. Someday when we’re both ready. But for tonight?—”

She exhaled. Maybe I heard my name.

I cupped my free hand around her breast, teasing and shaping the delicate weight. My other hand got busy loving her, stroking her center.

“I want you,” I growled. No more poetry, no grand declarations, were left in me. It was me and the woman I loved with all my heart.

She rocked against my hand. “Was this your master plan all along?”

“My only plan is to love you,” I promised, bending down to kiss her.

Her gorgeous mouth slanted up in a naughty smile. “Good idea. Let me make some suggestions.”

She ran her hand down my shoulder, over my chest, and straight to the front of my jeans. And then she cupped me, rubbing my hard length through my jeans with her palm.

This was fun, but I wanted more. I wanted to be balls deep inside her, making her mine. I backed us up until her knees hit the bed and then I took us both down. She stared up at me with excited, hopeful eyes as I braced my arms on either side of her pretty face.

“Get naked,” I suggested, parting her legs. “And make some room for me.”

I rolled off her long enough to strip off my shirts, toe off my boots, and unbutton my jeans. I shoved them down my legs and left them on her floor while she watched me. She made me feel like a million dollars and more.

With Alice, I felt like I was enough.

Alice pulled her T-shirt over her head and tossed it on top of my pants. Then she opened her arms for me, and she whispered, “Ford, you come and court me now.”

I climbed on top of her, opening her up and making room for myself, stroking her until her need matched mine, and then I whispered back, “With your permission, I’d like to court you hard all night long.”

“Penny for your thoughts?”

I stared up at Alice’s ceiling, through the skylight I’d put in for her, and out at the moon in the night sky. We’d been curled up together, lying here in happy silence for long enough that we should have been asleep. I’d spent the last three hours courting her hard, and both my wolf and I were finally satisfied.

Alice was, too, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t keep her hands to herself. She kept reaching out to touch me, to run her hands down my arms and along my back, petting and kissing, memorizing every inch of me.

I was not complaining. She could have whatever she wanted, and until she wanted to sleep, I would hold her and love on her.

“My Aunt Sally wasn’t my aunt,” she whispered. “She was my mother.”

Before I could process this, she buried her face in my shoulder and started crying. I wrapped her up in my arms. Listen, I reminded myself. Don’t fix.

“She was your mother?”

Alice nodded, pressing her damp face against my throat.

“And she was a shifter?”

Another nod.

“How long have you known?”

“A few days. I found out when I was in Texas,” she mumbled.

I muttered a curse, holding her tighter. I should have been there, by her side. I’d been a proud ass.

“I’m sorry you found out alone. I wish I’d been there with you.”

Alice shook her head. “In all those years, when I was right here with her, why didn’t she say something? She gave me to her sister, kept me at arm’s length during the summer, never told me that I was hers and a shifter until it was too late.

“I love my momma and my daddy, but I never felt that close to Aunt Sally. And now I never will. She’s gone, and it seems silly to feel so sad.”

I kissed her firmly before I answered. “It’s not silly. Or wrong. You had two parents who loved you, and your auntie tried to do right by you, even if she got it wrong.

“My father mostly saw us kids as an inconvenience, except for the rare occasions when we could do something for him or reflect well on him. I only wish Momma had been able to get away from him sooner.”

Alice wiped her tears on the back of her hand and frowned fiercely. “He was awful, biting her, forcing her to be something she hadn’t asked to be. I’d like to hunt him down and make him see how much he missed out on by ignoring you and your brothers.”

“It’s okay.” I combed my fingers through her hair, tucking her against my chest. “But you get to decide for yourself what you want to do about your Aunt Sally. There’s no right or wrong—there are only choices.”

Alice was my choice. She always would be.

Damn straight, my wolf said sleepily. Alice is ours.

As though reading my thoughts—perhaps we were developing a bond like the one I shared with Atticus—she pressed a kiss against my shoulder and said gently, “You know I’ve decided that I want you, right? You’re all mine, Ford Boone.”

“I accept.”

I felt her smile against my shoulder. “Do you promise? Do you promise that you’ll always pick up when I call? That you’ll never ignore me and always be here for me?”

“Yes,” I responded straightaway. “For forever. Including and up to when you’re up there in heaven, although you may have to pull a few strings to get me in.”

“No matter what happens?”

“Always. I promise, because I love you, Alice Aymes.”

“And I love you, Ford Boone. So very, very much.”

Want more of the Wolf Brothers series? The series continues with Wolf and Bare It by Anne Marsh. Read on for a sneak peek of Wolf and Bare It!

If you’re curious about more Out of This World titles from Smartypants Romance, check out The London Ladies Embroidery series by Laney Hatcher!

Sneak Peek of Wolf and Bare It by Anne Marsh

“I might be forgiven for having no magic, but I have no beauty, either. I am curvy where I should be thin and my hair is dark instead of blonde. I do not look like the other Fae maidens…”

— EVANGELINE ANDERSON, THE THRONE OF SHADOWS

~SONNET~

I was down.

Down, down, down. Rock bottom, leveled, knocked flat.

The metaphor had been driven straight out of my now oxygen-starved brain cells. One minute I’d been up on the ridge, reaching for a puffball mushroom shaped like a longish penis with a fat head and the next I’d been briefly airborne and rolling downhill in a gold-medal-winning somersault.

Perhaps Earth had spun too vigorously on its axis and overtilted. Perhaps an ice giant had stomped his oversized foot. Perhaps even now said giant was climbing down toward me, bigger and hungrier and closer. Instead of revealing his existence to my three million TikTok followers, I’d be lunch. History. The end.

Take your pick. Whether my muddy ending could be blamed on an ice giant or my klutziness, the patch of dirt that I currently resided in was damp. Leaves tickled the bare skin of my back, creeping underneath my sweatshirt. Or maybe those were deer ticks, the vampires of the insect world.

Duly motivated, I rolled onto my stomach, the crunch of dry autumn leaves almost but not quite drowning out the angry rumble of my stomach. I was hungry and grumpy. Grungry.

Which is why I sat up and shared my unrelated observations with the forest floor. Keeping my feelings to myself while grungry was like staying silent during sex: unsatisfying, off-putting, and sure to disappoint.

“Oye, stupid, warty, spiny, oversized puffball. What the pineapple?”

On the plus side, I was still in possession of two arms, two legs, and a head that remained properly attached to my shoulders. If I’d been a healthier, better person, I’d have sent some gratitude the universe’s way or at least done some yoga.

Instead, I fumed some more. Directed a few choice curse words at the hill, the hiking trail, and seductive mushrooms.

My fingers still clutched a giant frond of fern. That oversized piece of greenery had had it in for me. I’d reached for it, it had come loose in my hand, and there I’d gone, straight downhill. The world still spun around me, my lungs inflating with the slow, wheezy speed of a lawn Santa at Christmas, half wondering if I’d ever breathe again.

“YOU’RE SALAD, FERNHEAD FIDDLE! I’M GOING TO EAT YOU! I HATE THESE STUPID WOODS!”

Irrational anxiety bubbled to the surface, and I redirected it toward the piece of vegetation I blamed for my location in what could best be described as a fern-covered bowl. I’d lost a boot. There was no trail and no cell phone signal. In fact, I hadn’t seen another person, let alone a bar of cell phone service, since I’d left the trailhead to forage for mushrooms over an hour ago.

I dug my nails into my palms, carving crescents across my lifeline. Which, apparently, was nowhere near as long as I’d been promised by a Bolivian fortune teller who I’d met while filming an episode for my TikTok channel. I’d die out here. The epitaph on my tombstone would read: Her sense of direction was so bad, even the trail mix was confused.

I checked my phone again, just in case a massive cell phone tower had sprouted in Moonlight Valley and this isolated, people-less corner of the fine state of Tennessee miraculously had cell phone reception.

Nada.

This was one of those moments that had me second guessing my allegiance to gremlincore. Instead of wandering—or falling—around the woods in cold, damp mother nature, I could have been curled up in a cozy cottage that smelled like cookies. #CottageCoreForTheWin.

Cookies tasted a billion times better than mushrooms, too.

I stomped around my fern-lined bowl, flipping the woods the bird, and cursing my situation in both English and Spanish.

This was the longest hike I’d done since I’d live-filmed myself scaling a Mayan pyramid in the Yucatan.

Stupid fern, making me fall down a ravine! You’re definitely dinner!

“CRICKETS AND CLOVERS! I HATE THE OUTDOORS!”

I was a boss girl. In charge of myself, my life, and this stupid, stupid mushroom-foraging hike. This was merely an unscheduled and vertically challenged detour.

I was in control.

Not gravity or my stupid, challenged sense of direction. I’d find the trailhead and my stupid, stick-shift car. I army-crawled up the side of the ravine, which was unfairly slippery. It had rained recently, and the ferns taunted me, a layer of delicious green frosting a mud pie. Moss, more ferns, unattractively dead branches, ooh… sparkle.

I pocketed the rock because I deserved a souvenir of this near-death encounter. Quartz, my brain supplied. Black, slightly glassy, just a hint of sparkle. Diamond, my ever-hopeful heart whispered back. I totally wanted it to be a diamond.

Hope was enough to motivate me up and over the edge of the ravine, although I faceplanted in the muddy dirt more than I would ever admit. Stupid mushroom hunting, making me walk miles. I’ll eat you for dinner!

A distant, untuneful whistling tugged on my attention, but I ignored it. I was in my zone. I had my grungry on. There was a sort-of melody to the offkey sound, a cheerful if terrible warble that heralded a fellow hiker having a good day. Or an untalented bird with really powerful lungs. Did birds have lungs? They must do, right? I made a note to Google that after I’d returned to civilization and the land of working internet. Twenty minutes ago, I would have bellowed out a greeting to the mad whistler or at least headed in his direction. But I was now covered in dirt and leaves. My hair stuck out in a dozen different directions, none of them flattering. The last thing I needed was pictures of me looking like the crone from Shakespeare’s Macbeth all over the Internet… again.

The bad whistling morphed into an inexplicably peppy but recognizable rendition of the 1812 Overture, accompanied by the sound of booted feet crunching over the leaf-covered trail.

Commencing evasive maneuvers.

I sucked in a breath, pressed a hand over my noisy stomach, and assessed the terrain for hiding places while I got my shit together. I needed a plan in the next ten seconds. Barring that, I needed to calm down enough to turn up the dial on my usual glamour, prepare to charm the heck out of the incoming hiker, and hit him with some oomph and charisma.

Boss girl, I reminded myself. Say it until you BELIEVE it!

Now I regretted disinviting my sister—who was also my personal assistant, my manager, and my deputy showrunner—from today’s hiking fun. Elena had suggested she could film me foraging for mushrooms, while capturing my running commentary on the Smoky Mountains, Tennessee, and what waited for me in the charming small town of Moonlight Valley.

Hard pass.

I’d wanted time alone with Mother Nature, peace and quiet, space to recharge. Watch out, mushrooms! I’d thought. I’m coming for you! My time on set was too bright, too loud. Everything too scripted and predictable. The crew watched me, plus TV actors attracted paparazzi like my fruit bowl did flies.

In one recent but memorable moment in my life, the jumbo-sized package of toilet paper I’d been photographed carrying had inspired a wealth of punchy headlines: “From Red Carpets to White Rolls!” “VIP Wipe Out!” and “Potty-Couture!”

Reporters had speculated that I had resorted to diuretics to slim down with unfortunate consequences; an anonymous source whispered that I’d thrown a fit when my last set hadn’t stocked my favorite brand of TP.

People didn’t smile when they saw me: they held up their phones and started recording. They were waiting for me to do something interesting. Say something. Be something.

Unfortunately, I had run out of words. I didn’t know the next line in the script. The universe had written THE END in four-hundred-point font on my forehead.

I was tired of it.

So, I’d disinvited Elena from my me-time and then I’d doubled down by ditching both my security team and my social media team in Knoxville, Tennessee. I could do this! Boss girls of the world unite!

Rather than triumphantly scaling the mountain, however, I’d fallen down a ravine and my bra was now full of decomposing leaves. A simple mushroom hunt. That was all I’d asked for, a chance to not be Sonnet the star. But now…

I ducked behind a tulip poplar. My new tree friend was a good hundred feet tall, papered with shaggy brown bark, and slimmer around than I was. I peered around it through the curtain of my long, tangled brown hair. The product that kept my mane sleek and smooth had dried up two days ago and now random waves and curls sproinged and sprouted at random, unflattering intervals. I’d donated my hair tie to the forest floor. I was officially a mess, but I was, at least, still a private disaster.

I snuck a follow-up peek around the tree trunk—was Whistling Dude flashing a camera or a phone in my direction? Was I in imminent danger of being filmed? Did lumberjacks do social media?

If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to record it, does it make a sound?

No Instagram posts starring ax-wielding woodcutters came to mind.

I saw no phone, no camera, no drone.

The unbuttoned state of the black flannel that hugged his frame was entirely due to his chest being too muscly for his shirt. Or possibly it was protesting the truly awful biology pun on said shirt: DJ Enzyme breaks it down! A boring pair of khaki-colored hiking pants stretched over a far more interesting, broader set of thighs. He had one hand shoved into a pocket, plush lips framed by a thick beard as he whistled badly. Beneath an honest-to-God, beat-up black cowboy hat, his other hand gripped a Gandalf-worthy walking stick. Or maybe it was for beating off bears and other woodland creatures? He frowned up at the tree canopy as if the leaves had offended him.

BLESS YOU, DANU.

I twisted my hair up on top of my head, anchoring it with the backup tie from my wrist, brushed the dirt from the front of my sweatshirt, and exhaled. This was good. I didn’t need my glamour dialed to maximum effect or a script because random hikers didn’t film video to post online. We’d do the head tip thing, he’d point me toward the way out, and boom! End of social interaction.

As I inched out from behind the tree and faced him, his confident stride faltered. He hadn’t known I was here and for a second, I basked in my anonymity. Then his eyes narrowed, and interest tempered his surprise. Ugh. Showtime. I reached for my glamour, but it was sluggish and shy. That happened sometimes, when I was tired or hungry. For me, glamour wasn’t like flipping a light switch on or off. It was more like a dial that I turned up or eased back, a magical on-ramp rather than a sudden precipice or plunge.

Before I could wrap myself in the magic more securely, however, he’d recovered from his surprise and was swaggering toward me. That arrogance was strangely cute, a bold claim on my attention followed by a crooked grin and what looked suspiciously like a magnificent pair of dimples. Apparently, he found dirt and leaves amusing.

He gave up trying to hide his smile and grinned at me. “Afternoon, ma’am,” he said, his voice deep and rough, a dark chocolate burr that made me think of molasses and honey, whiskey and midnight promises. Dear Danu—the man could earn a fortune in Hollywood. He tipped his head, hanging back on the path.

He was a gentleman hiker.

He was trying not to scare me.

This was so funny, that I snort-laughed before I’d realized that I’d overlooked something important.

Mr. Lumberjack was a teddy bear.

A giant, adorable, dimpled teddy bear. Six-foot something, hazel eyes that look almost grey. A strong, chiseled jaw covered with a thick pelt of brown beard. Okay, so he wasn’t precisely cuddly. In fact, he was built along the lines of a bouncer or a professional wrestler. Hot was the more accurate adjective. Five years of Hollywood living, however, had inoculated me against male hotness. His good looks barely registered. His attractiveness flitted through my brain the same way I’d have noticed a cute dog someone had snuck into the coffee shop or a really darling mug in the window of my favorite boutique. La la la la that’s adorable too freaking cute but I don’t need it and it’s NOT coming home with me.

Hot men were the cute coffee cups of relationships: you never needed one more because you already had more in your life than you could use. Plus, they tended to be shallow, fragile, and required special treatment. Also: there was no room in my life for handwashing.

Early in my show biz career, I’d taken advantage of my star appeal and dated several really pretty actors—muscled, lean, dark and grouchy, dark and flirty, and all-round attractive—without settling on a particular type. Na?ve, young Sonnet had thought: why stop with just one chocolate in the sexy box?

Being older, wiser, and far more cynical, I had come to understand that too many chocolate-box men gave me a stomachache. Firstly: hot guys dated hot women. Secondly: the hot guy maintained the hotness dictionary and got to decide who was hot—or not. This meant he wrote the script, and I said the lines he wanted me to say. I was also routinely expected to re-make myself into whatever he thought was hot for a woman. As I liked maintaining creative control, this did not work for me. Also, it was a lot of work tweaking my glamour to charm them into believing I’d been poured into the dream woman package.

Thirdly, I couldn’t afford to waste time on dating. Being Sonnet Ruiz, successful author of paranormal romantic comedies and big-screen star, took all my time. There was no empty square in my planner for dinner out or couple time on my sofa. As Elena reminded me constantly, if I wanted to succeed, I had to put my job first. I didn’t have time for hot guys. Or regular guys. My life was a guy-free zone.

Ergo, I tipped my head once at the hot hiker’s polite greeting, shoving my tangled curls out of my face. There was a surprising amount of wind up here (wherever here was). “Greetings, fellow hiker.”

Noooooo. Cut! That terrible line was a stinker that I’d have ruthlessly revised in edits. I did not do well in real-time—I needed my laptop and twenty minutes to arrive at a decent opening line. But as I really did need his sense of direction, I hoped he was a smart hot guy. Or at least equipped with an excellent personal compass and a working cellphone.

His lips quirked as if he were once again trying really hard not to laugh.

How to interpret his interesting silence?

I girded my loins, so to speak. Sometimes people got weird when they met me. They’d ask me to reenact their favorite scene from one of my movies. Strangely enough, these were not always the kissing scenes. They’d also ask me to sign stuff: napkins, coffee cup sleeves, ballcaps, forearms, and other, more personal body parts. Most of the time, I’d decline the reenactment and scrawl my signature on whatever non-animate objects they produced. It was part of the job. But right now, I’d fallen down the mountain. I was covered in dirt, I was grouchy and hungry, and he was way too freaking adorable for me to repeat my more popular catchphrases, all of which had been memorialized on Etsy T-shirts: “I’ll kiss you if you promise to turn into a beast” and “Curvy gals love fated mates.”

I wanted to hex the lot of them.

But instead of holding out an arm for me to sign or mansplaining to me the plot holes in my latest paranormal romantic comedy where a curvy astronaut gal had crash-landed on a planet of alien werewolves with monster dicks, this man cleared his throat, pushed his cowboy hat back with one scarred and battered finger, and plucked my missing boot from beside the path like a rugged Prince Charming returning Cinderella’s slipper.

“Ma’am, do you need assistance?”

The expression on his handsome face conveyed his belief that this was very much a rhetorical question.

“Possibly.” I rushed across the path and latched onto his (very muscled, unsigned) arm. Hot or not, he was human, and I was lost in this mountain of green, trees, and rocks. His gaze dropped to my hands, clutching his flannel-covered forearm with obvious need. “Okay. Yes. Please. I fell down a giant hill and I’ve lost the trailhead. I don’t know where I am in relationship to the exit. My car is somewhere that is very much not here. Plus, it’s a stick shift and it’s sentient and hates me. And I’m hungry and I don’t have time to learn how to trap a poor, defenseless rabbit and barbecue its fuzzy ass just so I don’t starve to death. You are perfect and currently meeting all my needs. Don’t leave me here.”

His forehead puckered slightly as he leaned toward me, concern filling his eyes. The hand that had been in his pocket covered mine briefly and then retreated. It was a huge, warm, callused paw of a hand. In fact, it felt so unexpectedly good that I almost grabbed it except that?—

He”d handed me a chocolate bar.

I’d never taken candy from a stranger before, nor had a hot guy given me a present. Being a curvy gal, most people were more inclined to “helpfully” point out that I should eat a carrot instead of refined sugar.

This was guy was most decidedly not most people.

It was unexpectedly nice.

And unexpected.

“Where do you need to go?” he asked gently.

Stranger danger, my Mami’s voice shrieked in my head. Hija! You do NOT tell him where you live.

Mami had a point, but this man might have a map. Or, at the very least, directions. He definitely had chocolate.

Faced with the possibility of spending the rest of my (short) life lost on a Tennessee mountain, I discarded her sensible advice.

“Phantom Falls. I’m willing to consider selling my soul or making a deal with the devil to get there, too.” This was said around a mouthful of chocolate.

He frowned. “Phantom Falls? You live there?”

“Not exactly. I’m borrowing a place from a friend, Wyatt Reynolds.”

“Wyatt? You know Wyatt?”

“Yes, sir. We were college roommates.”

The adorable pucker in my lumberjack-cowboy’s brow deepened. The cutest pink flush colored his cheeks. “You don’t need to call me sir, ma’am.”

I looked him over. He was objecting to my formality, but he’d started it with the whole ma’am business.

“Do you have an alternate name for me? Mr. White Knight in Khaki Pants?”

The dimple in his cheek deepened. “You can call me Maverick, ma’am.”

I decided to ignore the ma’am business for now. Did I look like a ma’am? Had my wilderness trek aged me immeasurably? Was this what happened when my glamour started to fade—I turned into a wrinkled, wizened human crone?

“Your name is Maverick?”

Danger. That was either a hot guy name or a stripper name. And since I didn’t see a stripper pole or a dancing conga line of guys with toolbelts, I needed to be careful.

“My daddy was a big fan of trucks.”

I took that in for a moment, but I had nothing. “And?”

“And so, he named my brothers and me after his favorite vehicles.” My new friend Maverick lifted one big, flannel-covered shoulder. Clearly, he was just as flummoxed by his daddy’s naming choices as I was.

He was charming. Friendly and self-deprecating. It was downright adorable and not hot guy behavior. The alien heroes I wrote in my very popular paranormal romance novels were all swashbuckle and confidence. They were apex predators, giants of sexiness who swaggered around their planet until they met their fated human mates. Then my heroes got near their heroines and BAM. They knew. She was their one and only. They didn’t even have to see their ladies; they had magical love-proximity radar.

I was a big fan of fated mates.

Because, in my experience, real-life hot guys did not date normal-looking women…or look at us twice. My Hollywood boyfriends had asked me out under the influence of my glamour.

“Where did you leave your car?” he asked.

“The trailhead.” I whipped out my phone and showed him the picture I’d snapped. I guess I’d thought it was like the airport where it was helpful to take a photo of where your car was so you could find it after you staggered off a red-eye, sleep-deprived and grungry. Unfortunately, the pull-off where I’d parked was smaller and less obvious than an entire parking structure. I’d also come to realize that one tree pretty much looked like another tree.

Nevertheless, Maverick pointed back down the trail he’d come up. “Six miles that way. You go down this trail until you spot the white blaze on the dead tulip poplar. Take the left fork, go two miles, then there will be a small duck. Go right, then right again, and?—”

That was too much information.

Also: SIX MILES?

Maverick blinked impossibly long lashes. “My truck’s a half mile away.”

Then he hesitated.

He appeared to be performing complex mental calculus despite his hot guy looks. Or possibly he had correctly interpreted the look of desperate despair on my face and considered the not-so-remote possibility that he would have to carry my perishing but not so slight body down the mountain to said car.

“Or—” he said. Then stopped.

Dear Danu. He was that unicorn of the manverse: hot and sweet. Plus, he gave presents.

I gave him an encouraging smile, hoping I didn’t have chocolate smeared on my teeth.

“Bellend,” I volunteered.

“Excuse me?”

Maverick blinked again. It was likely Morse code for Help, I’m trapped on the mountain with a socially inept person and need rescue.

When I’m nervous or anxious, or just generally freaked out about how hard it is to swim upstream in life, I blurt out words. Mostly, they’re random words or words from a book I read recently and that struck my fancy. Occasionally, they’re scientific and masquerade as factoids. I collect them like rocks and shiny things. It’s just the way I am. Some might call it strange. Or a defense mechanism. It’s like, I have no idea what this woman is saying so perhaps it’s really insightful and interesting and the problem here is me? Focus on her weird polysyllabic choices and not on her very ordinary face or the magical way you can’t stop looking at her…

I was blurting out random words. Dear Danu. That meant Maverick made me nervous. Which was inexplicable because I’d been vaccinated against hot guys thanks to my last boyfriend.

It’s a miracle.

Or a curse.

My money was on curse. I should not have snagged the last doughnut at the coffee shop when there was a half-dozen hungry witches waiting in line behind me.

“Or we could go in my truck. To Wyatt’s.”

His eyes moved over my very ordinary face as he said this, still warm and interested. I double-checked but my glamour was still dialed down. I was mostly just me, with a little smoothing of the rough edges. A little less green and pointed. Maverick stared at me. I stared back. This was…

A hawk screeched overhead.

The ferns beside the trail rustled.

Maverick kept right on looking at me.

The way he focused on me, interested and intent, made me wonder if he recognized me. Perhaps he was a super-fan of my TikTok channel or my several television shows. Maybe he was a voracious reader of paranormal romance, defying the statistics that proclaimed my core reader to be female and an average age of forty-two. Maybe he was starstruck at meeting someone famous. Whatever his reason for this stare-fest, I needed him to take charge and get us out of this wilderness and back to civilization. I had to pee and his chocolate, no matter how delicious, was small.

Maverick blinked and his brain rebooted. He turned, placing a big paw on my shoulder and turning me with him so that I faced in an entirely different direction. Then he promptly removed his hand and gestured toward my old nemesis, the ferns. “This way.”

“Are you sure?” It looked like an optimal direction in which to lure me and then stash my lifeless body. You know. If the whole rugged take on Prince Charming was just a super clever ploy.

“Very.” His mouth quirked up.

Huh. On second glance, the direction he was indicating looked suspiciously like the direction from which I’d just come. Revisiting my Waterloo (aka the deceptively steep slope of fiddlehead ferns that had tripped me up so badly) seemed unwise. Nevertheless, faced with the choice of remaining out here alone or tromping along after my flannel-covered rescuer, I opted to tromp.

“Here.” He paused and held out his Gandalf stick. “For balance.”

I took it automatically, then looked down at the front of my sweatshirt, which displayed unmistakable evidence of balance issues.

“Water,” he finished, holding out a canteen.

I frowned as he turned back around and started breaking a path through the ferns. “I can’t take all of your stuff, Maverick.”

“You seem like you’ve had a rough day.” He stopped—I hoped it wasn’t because he was lost, too—and then gave me another thoughtful once-over with his eyes. “If you’re tired, I could carry you.”

He patted his ridiculously broad, flannel-covered, lust worthy back.

I shook my head automatically, then kicked myself. Not that he should have to carry me down a mountain when I had two functioning legs that had got me into this mess in the first place, but… holy research opportunity, Batman.

Pink colored his cheeks again. “Right. Down the mountain it is.”

He turned around and started forward again, holding back ferns and branches with one big arm so that I was not further assaulted by the wilderness. His thoughtfulness caught me off-guard.

This was more alien than the romances I wrote. Was he even human? I had never met a hot guy who was also empathetic.

It made no earthly sense.

Or I had met all the wrong people.

I thought about that for the next twenty minutes while we twisted and turned our way down the mountain. Once, he came to an abrupt halt and stared with adorable concentration as a slender ribbon of neon green snake peered at us from a tangle of vines.

“Rough green snake,” he said, far more excited than me. I was once again considering the disadvantages of gremlincore (instead of cute kittens, I had tree-climbing snakes to deal with). “Probably look for lunch.”

I gave him a look.

“Insects,” he clarified, with a grin. “Spiders. Miscellaneous invertebrates.”

Well, whew. I had a backbone, even if it didn’t always function.

“That’s a nope rope,” I told him.

This earned me another grin. We continued on our way, unmolested by the tiny snake.

“So.” He held a hand out to help me over a giant, fallen tree. “What brings you to these parts?”

I took his hand. “Mushrooms.”

He was solid and bracing. I had a feeling that I could throw myself off the top of the fallen tree and he would simply catch me. My imagination embroidered on this possibility, adding some pair skater lifts and delicious twirling. He was large enough to handle my substantial weight.

He nodded. “What kind of mushrooms?”

“Big ones. I love to eat big mushrooms and you guys have a reputation for having the largest, tastiest ones in the fine state of Tennessee.”

“Mushrooms.” He choked. I was so riveted by his lumberjack good looks that I didn’t miss the faint pink flush now painting his cheekbones. Oh my GOD. He was a blusher.

“Sí, claro que sí.” I rested against him ever so briefly. “Mushrooms are delicious. I could eat them every night. I love a nice, thick stalk. A fat head on a thick stalk and plump, juicy tips on massive clubs. There’s just a buffet of choices in your fine state.”

He thought about that for a moment. And then another moment. I hoped I hadn’t given him a heart attack or performance anxiety. We were not yet to the parking lot or civilization.

Eventually, a small smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “So, you’re not interested in a tiny frill of a mushroom?”

I had to clear my throat. “Big mushrooms are the best.”

After we’d exhausted the mushroom small talk, we mostly walked. He pointed out the occasional tree or bird, while I snapped pictures of ferns and moss for my social media. It was so nice, that I was startled when we popped unexpectedly out of the woods and into a neatly cleared rectangle of dirt parallel to a road. An oversized, mud-covered pickup truck the color of a rusty Halloween pumpkin was perfectly parked in a parking spot outlined by pieces of deadwood. My suspicions about his humanity grew: no one could parallel park with that degree of accuracy.

He strode over to the passenger side of his truck and opened the door. He hadn’t locked it, proving that either Maverick was the trusting sort, or we truly were in the middle of nowhere. Now he waited, a playful smile playing over his plush lips. The quirk of his mouth was happy and flirty. His eyes warmed as he looked me over, moving up and then down my body.

He likes what he sees.

I tripped over an invisible boulder the size of my head because I felt something unexpected and quite unusual in regions south of my brain. My heart gave a curious flutter in my ribcage, tapping out an SOS. My breath caught. I like what I see.

This had to be Stockholm Syndrome, or a really good survival instinct combined with my legitimate fear of starving to death in the wilderness. I knew exactly what my mother would say:

Hija, you do NOT get in a truck with a strange man!

I hesitated. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and pulled two cards out of it, holding them up so I could read them.

“My driver’s license and my college ID. I teach at the local community college.”

I tried and failed to imagine him in a tweed jacket and a rumpled button-up.

My rescuer waited patiently by the door. I got the feeling he’d wait a week if that was what it took—and he wouldn’t complain.

“Perhaps you’d feel better if you told me your name?” he asked.

Hold on…

I peered suspiciously at Dr. Maverick Lincoln Boone. “You don’t know who I am?”

“I’m a snake expert, not an existential crisis expert.” He tipped his chin at me, that mischievous smile lighting up his face once more. “We could try to learn it together, but I’m thinking you might be ahead of me there.”

Giving in to my desire to be anywhere other than lost on a mountain, I climbed into his truck. He went around, got in, and then waited for me to buckle up before he started the engine and drove us away. Presumably toward Wyatt’s place, but possibly toward the Outer Hebrides or his secret lair.

Not that he seemed like a secret-lair kind of guy.

I slouched against the window, folding my arms over my sweatshirt. “You really don’t know my name?”

Professor Mav’s smile faded.

He slowed the truck as the light up ahead of us on the sloping road switched to yellow, braking methodically and carefully. Then he set the parking brake out of an abundance of caution. His eyes examined my face, anxiety coloring his.

“Were you one of my students?” he asked warily.

This had not happened to me before.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d started out with a social blank slate with someone. I was covered in dirt, angry, and needy. So why?—

Slowly, the clues presented themselves to me.

The flirtatious grins, the hot eyes, the white-knighting with chocolate—Professor Mav was attracted to me.

Me.

He’d been testing the waters in the Sea of Attraction and flirting with me.

Not Sonnet Ruiz, the famous author, the TikTok and television star, millionaire, award-winner, everybody’s best friend and fun sidekick.

Just me.

Danu’s beard! I hadn’t gone unrecognized in years.

Judging by the way his forehead crinkled and his big hands beat out a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel, he seemed really worried about the whole student thing. Perhaps he thought he’d graded my performance, and I hadn’t taken it well. Perhaps he worried that there had been some flirtation—or more—in this putative teacher/student relationship and he’d forgotten all of it.

This was when I realized that I knew exactly what type of hot guy he was. He was the bad boy, always moving on, never called again hot guy, which was the deadly polar bear of dating bears. Because that kind of hot guy was funny and charming, so nice that you didn’t see the teeth until it was too late.

They were fun until they ate you for dinner.

And then, being bears of voracious appetite, they moved on and had some other lady for dinner. Lots and lots of ladies. Serial meals.

I didn’t begrudge Professor Mav his hot ladies. Even a year ago, I might have gone out with him for a night or two. It would have been fun. Sexual enjoyment would have been had by all. But seeing as how I’d given up dating for the greater good of my career, losing my heart to a serial dater was also not part of my life plan.

He frowned at the road as the light changed and he released the brake, looking fierce and anxious and so very large. I couldn’t help myself, I really couldn’t.

I snickered.