“Hurry,” Sheri said breathlessly. “Open the hatchback and move these over.”

  Shocked at the thought Sheri was planning to leave with them, Elizabeth shook her head. “You can’t leave with us.” But even as she said it, Sheri was already moving her bags into Amelia’s car. Elizabeth grabbed two of hers and did the same. When in the world had Sheri packed her bags for her? While she went to the park? She couldn’t believe Sheri had planned this all along and had not let on at all. Then again, Elizabeth had smelled that Sheri had been just as anxious as she had been. Now she knew why!

  Amelia sat in the driver’s seat, hands tapping the wheel urgently. “Hurry,” she said, eyes panning from one side of the alley to the other.

  “If you don’t take me, they’re going to know I helped you. I’m already getting grief for being your best friend after you freed David and Owen. I’m going with you.”

  This wasn’t in the plans. Though Elizabeth knew from her tone of voice Sheri wasn’t about to be talked out of it.

  “Hurry, then. We have no time to lose. We’re wasting valuable time already,” Amelia said.

  “What’s the plan?” Sheri helped dump the remaining bags of Elizabeth’s into the trunk, then closed her own trunk and locked her car.

  “For you not to be with us,” Elizabeth said, choking on the words even as she closed Amelia’s trunk. She would never have thought her friend would do this. “You have a life here.”

  They both climbed into the rental car. Amelia headed down a street that would be out of view of the café and after a few more turns, she drove in the direction of the airport.

  “And a boyfriend I have dumped numerous times who won’t get the message. Bentley’s like Kintail. Once he owns you, it’s for life, even if you try to convince him otherwise.”

  “You have family.” That made a world of difference. Elizabeth had no one who would miss her—but Sheri. Well, Kintail would, but for a very different reason.

  “Yes! My parents and my brother. My brother is still just as angry with you for freeing Owen and David.”

  “But David is mated now.” Elizabeth didn’t know why she even said it. Sheri obviously never bought that story, and it made no sense anyway.

  Sheri shook her head at her. “Right.”

  If Sheri didn’t believe it, then Kintail and the others probably didn’t either.

  They could be in grave danger.

  “This is what I know,” Sheri continued. “David suddenly has a mate, your grandmother dies, you unload all her clothes and food the same day, and you have plans with a friend I’ve never heard of before? It all leads to the same place: you getting the hell out. So no, I don’t think David has a mate. The woman in the photos is probably one of his packmates mated to one of his PI partners. And on top of that, I had to run some major interference with Bentley, giving him all sorts of excuses for all your running around today to charities and food banks and wherever. You would make a terrible criminal.”

  “And you would make a great investigator,” Elizabeth said. “But if you don’t believe it—”

  “You should have made up the story about David mating someone a long time ago, like last year or something,” Sheri said. “Still, I think there’s enough speculation that hopefully it sows doubt. I bought the story at first, so maybe everyone else did too.”

  “I only just thought of it,” Elizabeth said defensively. “And who knew my grandmother was going to pass so all of a sudden like that?” Yellowknife went by in a blur outside her window, and she wanted desperately to take it all in, this last look at her home, but also desperately wished Amelia could drive faster. Amelia was smart though. Getting pulled over could ruin everything. They were so close to leaving for good.

  Elizabeth sent a text off to David: My best friend, Sheri Whitmore, is with me. I hope that’s okay, and we have enough room for another passenger. She knows everything. She wouldn’t stay behind…unless I can convince her of it by the time we reach the airport. We have six suitcases with us. She brought them—four of them mine. I didn’t know she’d done that.

  David had told her the plane had six seats, but now they would have six suitcases too.

  David texted her back: If Amelia is okay with it, we’ll manage just fine. Don’t worry about a thing. Just get here safely.

  Elizabeth: We’re working on it.

  “I’m your best friend. I would do anything for you,” Sheri finally said, her voice soft.

  Elizabeth figured she would, but she hadn’t wanted her to get this involved in her bid for freedom. She wanted to take Sheri with her and continue their close friendship, but she didn’t want to be the reason for breaking up Sheri’s family unit. No matter how she looked at it, someone was going to be hurt. Trying to get her mind off the distance they had to drive, Elizabeth asked, “What did you pack for me?”

  “Honestly, I’m not even sure. I just grabbed what I could, jammed everything into your bags, and threw them in my car.”

  “What if I hadn’t planned on going anywhere? I would have come home to find I’d been robbed of all my clothes.”

  “You would have had your pajamas.”

  “What?”

  Amelia chuckled.

  Sheri sighed. “I figured where you were going, you wouldn’t need them.”

  Elizabeth’s mouth fell open, and she let out a laugh. “Sheri!”

  Sheri smiled. “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” Her smile faded. “It’s okay I’m coming, isn’t it? David is okay with it?”

  “He is. As long as Amelia thinks the extra weight on the plane will be okay.”

  “Yeah, it will be,” Amelia said, “or I would have told you both to ditch the bags.”

  Elizabeth explained the plan. “Amelia and her brother are taking turns flying the plane. You’re just lucky we’re not taking a commercial flight and have to leave you to fly standby.”

  Sheri gave a big sigh of relief.

  Outside, the lights of the airport came into view. Elizabeth glanced behind them, making sure no one was following. A thought brought her up short. “Did you tell your parents you were leaving with me?” she asked.

  “They don’t know anything about this. I figured they might tell Kintail, even if they thought it was for our own good. Still, all in all, they will be happy for me if I’m happy. I can’t believe you planned to leave me behind.”

  Elizabeth had felt guilty about that. “Sorry, Sheri.” To Elizabeth’s guarded relief, Amelia parked the car in the rental place, Elizabeth paid for the gas, and then they hurried toward the waiting plane, bags in tow. The sense of unease Elizabeth felt in the car doubled, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end, but when she looked behind her again, there was nothing. After being afraid for so long, it was hard to shake her paranoia.

  David’s expression was strained when he first saw her, but then he managed a brilliant and sexy smile. The hug he gave her felt way too brief, and she promised herself a longer one, a much longer one, when they were safely away. He grabbed one of Elizabeth’s bags and one of Sheri’s. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked Sheri.

  “Yeah, I’m doing this unless you refuse to take me,” she said.

  David glanced at Elizabeth. She let out her breath. “She’s like a sister to me. If it hadn’t been for Sheri’s help, I’m not sure we would have made it. I’m good with it if she really wants to do this.” She stared pointedly at Sheri as she said it, and Sheri gave her a firm nod.

  “All right,” David said, “join us for a wild ride out of here.”

  Amelia was already warming up the plane. Slade joined her in the cockpit as David, Elizabeth, and Sheri got settled.

  “So where are we flying to first?” Sheri asked.

  David smiled. “Seattle, where else?”

  Chapter 6

  It didn’t feel real. The line of her body against his, the joy in his heart, the sense that everything really was going to be okay. He’d been waiting so long, and finally, finally, they were together. Elizabeth pressed into his side, and David was overjoyed to be with her at last, giving her a big warm hug and kissing her as if he had never been separated from her.

  Elizabeth smiled, looking as overjoyed as he felt. She snuggled closer and offered up her lips for a kiss.

  An offer he couldn’t refuse.

  When they finally pulled apart, there was no denying the spark between them hadn’t dissipated with time.

  She blushed, belatedly introducing her friend as the plane taxied down the runway. Sheri nodded, then busied herself looking out the window, giving David and Elizabeth as much privacy as she could.

  “I can’t believe it.” Elizabeth kept touching him, rubbing his arm, gliding her fingers along his leg, anywhere she could reach, as if afraid the moment the connection broke, he’d disappear. “After all our planning, we did it.” Tears of joy slid down her cheeks, and she kissed him again.

  David kissed her right back. “It seems like only yesterday you were in my arms, just like this. I’ve missed this, missed you, so much.”

  The nose of the plane lifted, then the tail, and then they were soaring through the cloudy sky on their way home. Elizabeth settled back under his arm, a small, contented sigh escaping her mouth.

  David savored the moment, but as he glanced up and caught Sheri giving them a happy smile, his thoughts shifted. Sheri might be a problem. When her pack learned she had escaped with them too… He just hoped Kintail wouldn’t think they forced her to come with them to give them more time to escape.

  “So you left your car back at the café?” David asked Sheri.

  “Yes. Behind it in the alley. My brother and ex-boyfriend were still in the café when we left. We got into Amelia’s car and took off. If they followed, they never knew where we went. I watched the whole way to the airport to make sure we weren’t being followed. I think Elizabeth did too.” She smiled at Elizabeth, who nodded, her soft hair tickling under his chin. “It will probably take them some time to even figure out my car is back behind the café.”

  “That’s good to hear. I doubt they have any power to do anything about this now that we’re in the air.” David tightened his arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders. “You know we only have one unmated wolf in the pack, don’t you, Sheri?” He figured Elizabeth might have told her that all the PIs were already mated.

  “I thought all of you were mated,” Sheri said, sounding surprised and interested.

  “I’m still available,” Slade said. “What’s your ex-boyfriend going to think of you running off like that?”

  “It’s none of his business. I’ve been trying to break up with him for years. He just doesn’t take me seriously. Which was part of the problem with our relationship. We’re done, though, and maybe now he’ll actually get the point.”

  Or not. If he was that hardheaded, David thought, he could see him coming after Sheri. A lone wolf would be easy to deal with. Different pack, different dynamics, different rules. As long as they didn’t have the whole Arctic wolf pack from the Northwest Territories coming down to force them to give Sheri up, David was glad to have her stay with them. But he didn’t like the issue of her leaving her family behind and not giving them word beforehand, particularly if she was close to them.

  “And your parents? Your brother? Will they come after you?” David asked, needing to know just what kind of a bind they could be in.

  “Hans, my brother, does anything Kintail tells him to do. He has no mind of his own. In that regard, he’s just like Bentley. I love my parents, but I needed to spread my wings, and believe me, under Kintail’s rule, no one can do that. When I realized Elizabeth was leaving, I knew I wanted to go with her. I’ve been planning this one way or another probably for as long as she has.”

  Smiling, Elizabeth shook her head. “I wish I would have told you. Or that you felt like you could tell me.”

  Sheri sighed. “I kept worrying I would give myself away and was so afraid you wouldn’t take me with you, or I would have talked to you about it all along.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “Did my grandmother ever hint to you that I was leaving?” She couldn’t imagine that she would have, though her grandmother did really care about Elizabeth and Sheri’s friendship.

  “She didn’t need to. I knew you would never give David up, and I knew he wouldn’t give you up either. I figured you were keeping in touch somehow. I was really worried you would slip out on me before I could catch you at it. When I went to your house, I fully expected to see a couple of suitcases packed and ready to go. Or find suitcases in the trunk of your car or something.

  “Since you said Bentley was following you all over the place, I knew you couldn’t just race to the airport or head out of town to the south. When you said a friend was meeting you for dinner, I figured this was it. I told my parents I was having dinner out with you and you needed the company and needed to get away from the house. They didn’t question it. Why would they? They know I know you the best, after all. And since they were leaving for Cancun around the time we would be having dinner, there was no better time. So I packed my bags and threw them in the trunk of my car and…here we are.”

  “Well, you know, if you ever change your mind, we’ll get you on a flight back home. You never have to worry about that.” David wanted Sheri to know they weren’t anything like her pack. That she could come and go freely as much as she wanted to visit with her family and friends or whatever. Though if she returned to Yellowknife, he suspected she wouldn’t be allowed to leave ever again.

  “There’s no going back for me. You’re stuck with me. And Elizabeth too. If things don’t work out between the two of you, then… Well, I don’t know what we’ll do, but we’re not returning to Yellowknife. Are we, Elizabeth?”

  “No. I’ll never go back there.” Elizabeth sounded adamant about that.

  David squeezed her shoulder. She could leave whenever she wanted, too, even though the thought of that all but brought him to his knees. But he would do everything in his power to show her he was the only wolf for her.

  “Okay, so what’s the deal with your new ‘mate’?” Sheri asked.

  David laughed. “One of our pack members. That’s Candice, Owen Nottingham’s mate. She was delighted to help. Owen is—”

  “The other one Elizabeth freed. I know all about the two of you. Kintail won’t let us forget that Elizabeth freed you both and caused all kinds of trouble for the pack. So Candice is new?”

  “Fairly. She’s a romance author, and when I asked her if she would help me by pretending to be my mate, she was all for it. Owen took all the pictures while she and I were pretending to be the happy newly mated couple,” David said. They had all been laughing so hard, they’d had a difficult time trying to be serious about it. But everyone in the pack had been willing to do anything they could to help bring Elizabeth safely home to the pack.

  David got on his cell and texted Cameron and Faith, letting them know he and Elizabeth had successfully made it out and were flying to their first destination—Calgary. And he told them about the additional passenger, Sheri Whitmore, Elizabeth’s best friend.

  Cameron called David, and he answered the phone. “Yeah, Cameron?”

  “Any strings attached that could cause the pack trouble?”

  He glanced at Sheri, who looked at him curiously. “Parents and a brother. An ex-boyfriend might be an issue. Of course Kintail could be a bigger one, depending on how he takes this. You know how Kintail is.”

  “Yeah, he had a fit that he’d lost you and Owen, didn’t get Faith, and had me as such a thorn in his side. I’m glad you got out of there without a hitch,” Cameron said. “And tell both ladies welcome to the pack. We’ll have a celebration tomorrow for them, when everyone’s had a bit of a rest.”

  “I’ll tell them.” David ended the call. He could tell Sheri was nervous, so he said, “Ladies, Cameron officially welcomes you to the pack, and we’ll have a pack celebration after we get some well-deserved sleep.”

  Sleep. Or maybe not sleep. He glanced at Elizabeth, hoping she would join him in his master bedroom suite and not stay in one of the guest rooms. He’d stayed with her in hotel rooms before, but she might want to take it slower with him at the very first. He would go as slowly as she needed.

  “I have a couple of guest rooms,” David said, “that you can choose from.” He left it open-ended, meaning that Sheri could choose from one while he hoped Elizabeth could stay with him.

  “Okay, thanks, David,” Sheri said. “You can’t know how much I appreciate this.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Elizabeth was quiet, just snuggling with him, looking drained.

  “I’m going to rest for a while,” Amelia said. “Slade, can you take over?”

  “Yeah, no problem,” Slade said.

  Sheri’s phone chimed with a text. David and Elizabeth looked back at her. “It’s Bentley, asking where we all went. I’ll tell him we went to the park to hike and camp, and we’ll be back in a few days. Elizabeth needed a break after giving her grandmother around-the-clock care. We used to go for hikes like that, just Elizabeth and me. It definitely sounds like something we would do.”

  “Go ahead and tell him that,” David said. “The only problem I see is that your car won’t be at the trailhead.”

  “I’ll tell him we went in ‘Amy’s’ car. But I won’t say the make or model. He wouldn’t expect me to anyway,” Sheri said.

  “Okay, that sounds good. And if they happen to find your car behind the restaurant?” David asked, hoping they didn’t find it for a while.

  “We’ll have to take that chance. I would tell my brother to move it, but I’m afraid he would tell Kintail.”