Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
“I think you’ve gained at least two pounds this week,” I told Duncan as I carried him down the stairs, positive I was straining more than I had the night before when I’d done the same thing. My right arm was getting tired, and I was huffing. Huffing!
When he’d shown up in my life as a newborn, he’d weighed a little over a pound. Over the course of the first year of his life, he’d reached twelve pounds and stayed at that weight for the next year. He’d had a little puppy belly, a soft innocent face, and he’d been all paws and preciousness.
But in the month since we’d arrived at the ranch, he’d gained six pounds.
Six!
He was taller, his feet were definitely bigger, and the boy had been asking for more food after meals. There was no doubt about it, my donut had thrived over the last four-ish weeks, physically and emotionally.
Me? I wasn’t exactly blossoming into a new person, but I hadn’t been unhappy. Things were going okay at the ranch—as long as I didn’t take into consideration how I still spent almost as much time alone as I had when it had only been the two of us in our RV.
It was all right, and that was exactly what I’d told Sienna when we’d video chatted a couple of days ago. “We’re good,” I’d promised.
She’d just blinked at me.
But it was the truth. Since dropping her and Matti off at the airport, I’d started working again, and when I wasn’t doing that, I volunteered at the nursery slash summer day camp, as I liked to call it. Shiloh and Pascal had gotten an early release out of prison—being grounded—and were now spending a few hours a day with me. When I wasn’t with the kids, Duncan and I did a lot of walking around the property at night. Mostly, we spent time in our room, doing the same things we’d done in our RV—playing tug, we did nose-work games around the clubhouse, we watched television, Duncan did puzzles, and then we headed outside for our midnight games of tag.
Which was what we were doing at the moment.
“I’m going to need to start lifting weights at this rate,” I kept talking to him as we went around the short landing before the other half of the staircase. I peeked at his face. “It’s all right. I’ll start bodybuilding if I have to.”
The cutest puppy in the world blinked ruby red eyes at me.
“Yes,” he told me.
He was worth lifting weights for. Having denser bones would just be a bonus.
“I’ve been thinking about it, Dunky, and I’m pretty sure you know you’re some kind of rare magical prince who has lived a hundred other lifetimes having people cater to you, and this time, it’s my turn, so you don’t expect any different. Say yes if I’m right.”
Duncan put a paw on the arm I was using to support the top half of his weight. “Yes,” he communicated, and I laughed.
That was another change, other than the weight gain, his telepathic abilities had gotten stronger.
He’d been communicating with me a lot more often, and his “voice” was louder and clearer. That part, I loved.
“I’m glad you know your worth.” I snickered as we came to a stop on the first floor. Leaning forward, I peeked around the staircase, down the hall where Agnes was usually standing—trying to scare the crap out of me, I knew it in my gut.
But she wasn’t there.
That was another of the biggest changes in our lives over the last month—Agnes had turned into the third member of our Musketeer party.
To be honest, she was mostly in it for Duncan— only in it for him—but it had been almost two weeks since the last time she’d snarled at me in her puppy form.
The little girl, who stayed in her wolf form 80 percent of the time, had joined us for the first time the day that Matti and Sienna had left. Since then, she went out with us every night we played tag. She was still as quiet and moody as she’d been on day one, but Duncan had worked his magic on her, and she’d turned into his poofy bodyguard. And even if that hadn’t been the case, I would’ve been nice to her, but her devotion to my donut made me like her so much more.
She was the person from the ranch I spent the most time with, since Franklin was still on whatever trip he’d taken that no one seemed to ever talk about. The three of us had breakfast together every morning, dinner almost every evening, and then our midnight playtime. Some days after the nursery, she went home with a different pup and their family, but she was back before we started eating most evenings. Then Duncan and I hung around in the kitchen until Liddie, one of her nighttime caretakers, showed up to get her, or the other one got there, and Agnes went to her room to find her, before we reconvened later on.
Deep down in that tough little body, she was a good kid. And right then, she was a missing one.
Hmm.
From the way the hallway was illuminated, it seemed like the light in the kitchen might be on. That had to be where she was. In the time since we’d started our post-dinner adventures, she hadn’t missed a single one. We could check the kitchen and then knock on her door to see if she was okay. That sounded like a good plan to me.
With Duncan Donut still in my arms, we headed in that direction first.
Half the lights were on, I realized soon afterward. I hadn’t been able to hear voices while we’d been making our way over, and if Duncan had, he didn’t give me a sign, but I wasn’t totally shocked to find Henri with a hip against the counter beside the range. Leaning against his leg was Agnes. Henri’s gaze was already on the doorway when Duncan and I walked in.
And just like I’d told myself every other time I’d been in his vicinity over the last few weeks, I did it again: Keep it together, Nina.
I hadn’t seen Henri much since our trip to the airport. When I had, it’d been in the mornings during breakfast on his days off, and a couple of times I’d seen him at a distance when Duncan and I went for walks. He’d sensed me and waved, but I could tell he’d been busy and hadn’t wanted to bother him. Unfortunately, that had been all the time we’d spent together.
I wasn’t going to say it hurt my feelings, he was a busy man, but… in my truck, he’d said we were friends. He’d even joked with me. I didn’t want to second-guess it. In my heart, I knew Henri wasn’t the kind of person to say something he didn’t mean. He was too serious, too polite, too used to having to say what he felt because there was no other choice when everyone around him at the ranch had a BS meter, but… it would’ve been nice to see him more.
Now though, Henri was out of that body-fitting uniform, and in black sweatpants and a dark gray T- shirt that said LOBO COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT in faded black letters.
At least they weren’t light gray sweatpants , I thought with a silent prayer of gratitude to the universe.
If I’d thought that I’d get used to the impact his face and body had on me, I would’ve been wrong. If anything, he got more attractive every time I saw him, and I’d been trying my best to wrap those thoughts up tighter than my ponytails.
“Hi,” I greeted him as Duncan wiggled in my arms, the universal sign to let him down.
I did, and the puppies ran toward one another like they hadn’t eaten dinner together. Or been within twenty feet of each other in the nursery for most of the day. Two tails—one dark and very fluffy, and the other light and slightly less puffy—wagged.
“Hey,” Henri finally said.
“I told you to marry him because he could use someone like you in his life,” Matti had told me on the phone a couple of weeks ago, after he’d purposely ignored my texts regarding the comment he’d dropped on me outside of the airline terminal.
“That makes no sense,” I’d argued, sitting on the step leading up to my trailer. I had wanted to keep an eye out on who was around so my chances of being overheard were smaller.
“I always make sense.”
We were both silent for a minute before we’d laughed.
“When he’s not at work, he’s still at work. He’s always fucking working. I’m not exaggerating. I don’t think he’s ever taken a real vacation. The times I’ve seen him in Denver were because he took days off to handle ranch shit because he only does business with people he meets in person. He has no chill. Think of it like this, Nina, he’s the principal, and you’re summer vacation, ” he’d explained. “I think he’d be good for you too. He’d be loyal. He works hard…. I know he’d take care of you.”
He'd take care of me. That had done something interesting to my insides. The point was, it had been a long conversation, and one I couldn’t get out of my head weeks later.
I could feel eyes following me as I circled the island and went for the fridge, opening the freezer and pulling out a few different popsicles. I’d found some naturally sweetened, organic popsicles at the grocery store in Lobo Springs that the kids liked. Agnes came over first, and I smiled as I crouched to offer her a choice.
I held out the popsicles, and the mini wolf nudged the one in the middle. I looked at Henri as I got up. His facial hair had grown in a little, and a light scruff covered his throat, jaw, and upper lip, making him look like the borderline mountain man I’d met when we’d first gotten here. “Want one?”
Short, thick eyelashes fell slowly over his eyes, and it took a moment for his shoulders to go up. “I’ll take whatever flavor you don’t want.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, thought about arguing, and picked a pink one—watermelon—to spice it up. Then I held them out again as Agnes pounced on Duncan, and he tried to nip her tail. Henri picked a green one—a surprising choice—and I kept the red one for my pup. I hesitated. He hadn’t been around before for our nightly expeditions. I knew he knew about them, but….
“I was going to take the kids outside. We usually play a little while and then have our popsicles…. Can I still take Agnes?”
He tilted his head to the side. “You don’t need to ask.” He wiggled the popsicle in his fingers. “I’ll go with you.”
“You sure?” I paused. “You’re not too tired? I heard you’ve been working a lot.”
“No.” He palmed the back of his neck. “I’m not too tired to play.”
He was going to play too?
I couldn’t do anything but smile at that idea as I nodded at him.
He just looked at me.
Was he being weird? Had I made him uncomfortable after all with the cinnamon smell and the cuddling before? That had been on my mind the last few weeks. Dealing with people was so complicated, especially when I didn’t have a magical nose. Because you could say whatever you wanted, but your body couldn’t lie about what it was feeling.
But I was the one who couldn’t hide anything, so too bad for me. I didn’t mind him coming. It’d give me an excuse to get a feel for him without the hectic pressure that came with breakfast. Just because we’d been in the same room together during that time hadn’t meant we’d gotten to talk a whole lot. On the mornings he was around, he’d been on his phone the majority of the time, sometimes answering his calls with “Blackrock,” but the majority of it being “Henri.”
Randall, the security guy I’d met in the woods right after we’d gotten here, hadn’t had a problem telling me all about how busy Henri was. The strawberry blond, I’d learned, was the only other person, apart from Henri, Agnes, MIA Franklin, and the other elders who were away, living in the clubhouse at the moment. We didn’t see each other often because he worked different hours almost daily, and he had family living at the ranch who he ate with often. He was a really nice guy, and my favorite part was that he gossiped as much as Matti did.
These freaking werewolves. There was a reason I loved them so much. I might not be willing to dig for details directly, but if they wanted to share that Henri hadn’t had a girlfriend in over a decade, I wasn’t going to tell them to shut up. But that was a thought for later.
For the time being, I decided to focus on the most important person in my life, not the one I wasn’t sure about. “Dunky, want me to carry you outside?” I asked as I put the popsicles into Agnes’s lunch bag, like we did every night. It had a unicorn on the side of it.
Red eyes met mine, and I felt that brush of consciousness touch my own. “No.”
I winked at him and focused on the little girl towering over my donut.
It was a shot in the dark, but I went for it anyway. You didn’t get anywhere in life unless you put yourself out there. Because my friendship with her might not have improved much yet, but she wasn’t someone I was giving up on, even if I was pretty sure she weighed about fifty or sixty pounds. “Agnes, would you like me to carry you?”
Her dead-eye glare said no, and I didn’t take it personally. What it did was make me smile. She was a tough cookie, but that was all right. Tough cookies didn’t crumble as easily.
If she let me, I was going to be one of the eggs that helped this snitch cookie stick together, because the little girl had gotten me appreciating who I’d turned out to be.
My story might not have been one that took place in an animated movie, but that was all right. I knew that my story was more of a gothic fairy tale than one with a castle in a sunny state, and I was okay with that. None of those princesses had puppies who could light someone on fire for them.
“All right then, come on, Donut and Mini Wolf. There aren’t too many clouds tonight, and maybe we’ll get lucky and see some shooting stars,” I told them before meeting Henri’s eyes and smiling a little again, just in case he was feeling awkward.
I turned and walked out of the kitchen, sidekick at my feet. Henri and Agnes followed behind us, the little girl carrying her lunch bag. The building was as empty as always. I led us down the hall and out the front door, warm fingers grazing mine on the doorknob when Henri almost beat me to it, gesturing for us to go ahead. I did, bending to pet both pups—Agnes only side-eyed me—before we kept going, through the yard and toward the familiar clearing where we’d had our snacks before.
Agnes set the insulated bag down, and I felt the tension radiating from the kids, who were used to our schedule, ready to play. We had our routine by now. It was Agnes’s idea to have popsicles afterward to cool off, and who was I to say no? Her bag kept them from melting.
I pointed at myself. “Eenie.” Next I gestured to Duncan. “Meenie.” Third was Agnes. “Miny.” Now we had a new player, and I pointed at Henri. “Mo.”
“Are we seeing who’s going to be ‘it’?” he asked.
“Shh,” I hushed him as I kept pointing at a different person with every word. “Catch a tiger by its toe. If it hollers, let it go. Eenie, meenie, miny, mo!” I hadn’t even finished pointing at Henri when the kids took off in opposite directions. Cheaters.
I made eye contact with him and winked. “You’re it, Fluff.”
That neutral face brightened just slightly, his eyebrows going up a fraction of an inch, but he knew what to do. He looked at me standing there, light-colored eyes glittering under the navy sky, and he went after Duncan.
* * *