Chapter 6 A Place to Work
Wade POV
She put the socket wrench back over the exact outline marking its place on the pegboard.
I noticed because nobody else did that. My seasonal hands grabbed whatever was closest and left it wherever they finished. Jules was better, but Jules wasn’t a mechanic. Nora Keane hung each tool in its shadow like she’d memorized the board in the first ten minutes, which she probably had.
I stood in the office doorway with a parts invoice I wasn’t reading and watched her wipe down the workbench.
She’d pulled the outboard’s lower unit, replaced the impeller with one from the parts room, reassembled it, and run the pump test in under four hours.
The outboard stood on its service stand with the cowling back in place, and the bucket she’d used to check the water flow was drying beside the bay drain.
Four hours. My last mechanic would have taken a full day and still left me checking the gasket.
Nora pushed her hair off her forehead with the back of her wrist, avoiding the grease on her fingers, and reached for a clean rag from the stack by the solvent tank. She worked it over her knuckles, between her fingers, then across each palm. She wasted no motion.
My wolf watched her through my eyes, and it wasn’t the socket wrenches he was looking at.
Her scent had been in the shop all day. It drifted through the diesel fumes and the anti-seize and the cold air off the lake, and every time the wind shifted, my wolf lifted his head.
I’d been ignoring him since I’d walked up to Toivo’s hauler and caught the first thread of something underneath the grease and road dust and the sour edge of an open rejection bond.
I knew what a rejected wolf smelled like. I’d taken in enough of them over the years. You could read the damage in the scent long before the wolf said a word about it. Nora’s bond was still open and raw, and its trace clung to her like smoke from a fire she hadn’t built.
But underneath it was something else.
Pine Harbor had taught me patience. I’d built the pack from strays and loners and wolves who showed up on the dock with nothing but the clothes they’d driven in, and I’d learned that you don’t reach for a thing until you understand what it costs.
So I didn’t reach. I stayed in the office doorway and watched her work and told my wolf to settle, and he didn’t settle, because whatever was growing beneath the rejection scent smelled like something he’d been waiting for.
Mate.
I didn’t let it show.
I’d heard of it. A second bond rising after a rejection.
The Goddess sometimes gave a wolf another path, but Nora’s first bond wasn’t closed.
She’d told me on the road, flat and direct, that she hadn’t accepted Rafe Sutherland’s rejection, and the open bond still pulled at her. I could smell it on her skin.
That meant the Goddess was doing this to a woman who was already tied to one man’s unfinished bond, and Nora didn’t know it yet.
I set the invoice on the desk and walked out into the bay.
“The outboard’s done,” Nora said without turning around. She’d heard me coming. She had good ears, good instincts, or both. “The impeller’s seated, the gasket’s clean, and the pump tested fine. I’d run it again in the morning before it goes back into service, but it’ll hold.”
“Good.”
She turned then, and her gray-green eyes found mine with the kind of directness that most people lost around an Alpha. She had the habit of looking at things straight on.
“The diesel’s next,” she said. “I want to pull the injectors tomorrow before I do a compression test. If the head gasket’s gone, we’ll know by the numbers.”
“Take what you need from the parts room.”
She nodded once, then reached for her jacket on the hook by the door. I stepped aside to let her pass without our arms brushing. The gap between us was deliberate on my end, and if she noticed, she didn’t show it.
I couldn’t touch her until I understood what was happening, and maybe not after. Contact with bare skin between potential mates would answer the question. I wasn’t ready for the answer, and she sure as hell wasn’t ready for a second complication.
So I locked the bay doors and checked the hydraulic lift’s bleed valve and walked the yard perimeter while the sun dropped behind the pines, and I kept my hands in my jacket pockets where they couldn’t cause problems.
? ? ?
The pack house sat up the hill from the boatyard, a two-story place with a wraparound porch and mismatched furniture that had arrived one piece at a time over the years.
The kitchen was the center of everything.
Jules had the roast in the oven by the time I came through the back door, and the house smelled like garlic and rosemary.
Bette had cleared two baskets of mending out of the spare room, and Jules had made the bed with clean sheets. Nora carried her own duffel upstairs. By the time she came down, there was a place set for her at the table.
The number at dinner changed with the seasons.
There were more of us during the fishing season and fewer in the dead of winter.
Tonight it was me, Jules, Arvid, Hank, Bette, and Nora.
Arvid Salo was the oldest of us, a Finnish wolf who’d come down from Thunder Bay after his pack dissolved, quiet and deliberate with hands that still knew their way around a net.
Hank Lindahl had shown up three winters ago with frostbitten ears and a story he never told.
Bette Rourke had been here longer than anyone except me, a compact, sharp-eyed woman who managed the boatyard’s books and didn’t tolerate nonsense from anyone, including me.
They regarded Nora with cautious interest, waiting for me to set the tone.
“Nora Keane,” I said, standing at the head of the table where everyone could see me. “She’s a mechanic. She’s working at the yard and staying in the spare room while she figures out what comes next.”
I let that settle. Then I said the rest.
“She came from Iron River. What happened there is her business, and she’ll share it when she’s ready. Anyone who treats her like Iron River’s runaway answers to me.”
Arvid nodded, the way he nodded at anything he’d already figured out for himself. Hank looked at Nora, then at his plate, then reached for the bread. Bette studied her for a long moment, then pulled out the chair beside her and tapped the seat.
“Sit,” Bette said.
Nora sat.
Most of the wolves at this table had arrived the same way, carrying damage they didn’t owe anyone an explanation for.
Some were old. Some had reached town injured.
My standing rule was simple: Jules and I met whatever came to the door, and everyone else held the house.
Tonight, what had come to the door was a mechanic who needed a room.
Jules served the roast, and the table filled with the ordinary sounds of people eating together.
Forks on ceramic, someone passing the salt, Arvid telling Hank about a net repair he needed done before the weather turned.
Nora ate like someone who hadn’t had a real meal in days, which she probably hadn’t.
She didn’t talk much, but she listened, and I saw her shoulders drop a fraction when nobody asked where she’d come from or why she’d left.
Her scent mixed with the food and the woodsmoke and the other wolves, and my wolf tracked it through all of it, pulling the thread of her out of the tangle. I ate my dinner and kept my attention where it belonged, on the conversation, on the house, on the pack I’d sworn to hold together.
Jules caught my eye across the table. He’d been watching me watch her, which was the kind of thing Jules noticed because noticing was half of what made him good at his job. His expression didn’t change, but his eyebrow lifted a fraction, and I gave him nothing back.
After dinner, Nora helped clear plates without being asked and carried them to the sink.
“Leave it,” Jules told her. “You worked all day.”
“I ate your food,” Nora said. “I can wash your dishes.”
Jules looked at me. I shrugged. She washed the dishes.
? ? ?
I found her on the porch afterward, sitting on the top step with her jacket zipped to her chin and her eyes on the lake. The wind had picked up, and whitecaps roughened Superior even in the last light. The temperature had dropped since sundown, and her breath made thin clouds in the air.
“About payment,” I said, sitting on the opposite end of the step, our sleeves not touching. “I can pay you by the job or put you on steady wages. By the job works out higher when repairs go clean, but it’s uneven. Wages pay less, but they’re consistent.”
She considered it the way she’d considered the outboard’s lower unit, taking it apart, looking at the pieces, and deciding what fit.
“Steady,” she said. “I want to stay long enough to prove the work’s worth keeping.”
“It’s already worth keeping. You cleared a repair that’s been holding up the autumn work.”
A smile almost formed before she killed it.
“Wages, then,” I said. “I’ll write it up tomorrow. Room and board are included as long as you’re working.”
“I’ll pay for the room.”
“It’s included.”
“Wade.” She said my name like she was setting a post. “I’ll pay for the room. Deduct it from my wages, I don’t care. But I’m not living off someone’s goodwill again.”
I looked at her. The wind pushed her dark auburn hair across her face, and she didn’t bother moving it. Her jaw was set, and she didn’t look away.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll deduct a fair rate.”
She nodded and looked back at the lake.
I should have left it there. The business was done, the terms were clear, and sitting beside her in the cold with her scent filling every breath I took was not the kind of thing a careful man did. But there was something else she needed to hear, and I didn’t believe in delaying hard conversations.
“The bond you’re carrying,” I said. “Rafe may come looking. If he doesn’t, one of the Alphas involved might send someone. Pine Harbor isn’t a big territory, and word moves along the shore.”
Her shoulders tightened. Through the open bond, I imagined Rafe Sutherland felt that spike of anger, and I hoped it ruined his evening.
“Rafe rejected me,” Nora said. Her voice was level, but the control cost her something. “He gave up any claim when he said those words.”
“I know how rejection works.”
“Then you know he doesn’t get to come here and demand anything.”
“You’re right. The open bond may give him a reason to find you, but it doesn’t restore that right.”
She turned to look at me, and the anger in her expression was real and clean and had nothing to do with me. “He can argue with the road I drove out on.”
“I take you at your word. I’m telling you what might happen so you’re not surprised.”
The anger eased. She studied me for a moment, and I felt my wolf strain forward toward the woman sitting four feet away.
“If he comes,” Nora said, “I’ll handle it.”
“You’ll handle it with Pine Harbor behind you. That’s what the pack is for.”
She didn’t answer that. But something in her expression shifted. She seemed to understand that the offer was real and required nothing in return.
I stood up before instinct outran judgment. “The kitchen’s open anytime. Jules keeps the pantry stocked. Towels are in the hall closet, the hot water’s reliable, and the sauna’s around back if you want it.”
“Thank you,” she said. Two words, and she meant them.
I went inside and climbed the stairs. If I stayed out there breathing her in, my wolf would do his best to finish what the Goddess had started.
? ? ?
Jules was waiting in the upstairs hallway, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his expression arranged into something that looked casual and wasn’t.
“She’s good,” Jules said.
“She’s good.”
“The outboard’s done. The fuel line on Toivo’s rig is clean. She diagnosed the diesel in five minutes.” He paused. “You haven’t taken your eyes off her since the road.”
I walked past him toward my room. He followed, because Jules always followed when he had something to say.
“The job is hers,” I said, turning in my doorway. “Whatever she decides about me, the job stays. She’s earned it.”
Jules’s dark eyes stayed on me. “Whatever she decides about you,” he repeated. “Want to tell me what that means?”
“Not yet.”
“Wade.”
“I said not yet.”
He held my gaze for a long moment. Then the crooked grin appeared, gentler than usual. He trusted me to tell him when it mattered, and he wouldn’t push until I did.
“Your call,” Jules said. “But if you need me to run interference on anything, you tell me before it walks through the door, not after.”
“Understood.”
He pushed off the wall and headed for his own room. At the end of the hall, he turned back.
“She’s going to fit,” Jules said. “The house already feels different.”
He disappeared around the corner, and I closed my door and stood in the dark.
Across the hall, I heard Nora moving in the spare room. The creak of the bed frame. The sound of boots being set down. A faucet running, then silence.
Her scent moved through the old house, finding me through the timber frame. Beneath the trace of Rafe Sutherland’s open bond, the grease, and the road dust, another scent grew clearer in the close rooms, one my wolf recognized even if I wasn’t ready to trust it.
I sat on the edge of my bed and pulled off my boots and set them by the door.
Through the window, Superior was black and restless, and the wind hit the glass in gusts that rattled the frame.
Autumn was close. The yard had six weeks of heavy work before freeze-up, and every one of those weeks needed a mechanic who could keep the equipment running.
That was the practical truth, and it was reason enough to keep her here.
The other truth was harder to hold, and I wasn’t fool enough to pretend it didn’t exist. My wolf had known on the road, the moment the wind carried her scent past the fuel and cold gravel. He was patient and certain.
I would avoid her hands, her arm, even the accidental brush of fingers while passing a wrench. I would wait until she was ready to know and until I was sure that knowing wouldn’t drive her out of the only safe harbor she’d found.
I wasn’t going to be another man who decided her life for her.
The house settled around me. Jules’s music played softly from down the hall, some French song I’d heard a hundred times. Arvid’s heavy tread crossed the kitchen below. The wind gusted, and the old timbers creaked, and somewhere underneath all of it, Nora Keane’s breathing evened out into sleep.
I listened to it longer than I should have.
Then I lay back on the bed and told my wolf to wait.