Chapter 5

  Becky knew Max was right. Worrying that cameras could have caught their actions tonight, that listening bugs or cameras could be in her home—though Max said there weren’t any—made her feel unnerved. And she didn’t want to feel that way working for Pamela. But what if they did discuss what Pamela knew about wolves? She would still be an outsider, still have the ability to expose them if they let on that wolf shifters did exist and she wanted to share that news with the world. Becky just felt disquieted about the whole thing.

  After Max left, she was going to call her mother and talk to her about the incident.

  “I’ve got to be on my way,” Max said. “I’m sure we’ll have a pack meeting over this, because it does affect all wolves.”

  “I agree.” This time when they kissed goodbye, it was a long, lingering tongue kiss. He warmed her to her toes and spread the warmth throughout her body to the tips of her fingers that were clinging to him.

  He continued the kiss, and she was thinking that, if they could, she would like him to stay here with her tonight. Because of the way Pamela called on her so frequently, she was afraid staying at his place overnight would present a problem.

  “You know, it’s getting harder for me to give you up for the night,” Max said, kissing her cheeks reverently.

  “I was feeling the same way about you and wondering if it would be better for you to stay here because of my job or safer for me to stay at your place, because of us both being wolves. But not tonight. I think you need to discuss this business with your pack leaders.”

  Max sighed. “Yeah, as much as I would love to just stay with you tonight, I agree.”

  Then they said good night, and he left her home and drove off. She really enjoyed being with Max, and she couldn’t believe how swept up she’d become in his job too. She sighed and took a shower, but when she was coming out of it, her phone was ringing. Naturally.

  She answered it, and yes, it was from her boss. “Yes, Pamela?”

  “Invite Max to have lunch with us tomorrow. I want to hear what he has learned about Christopher.”

  “Okay, sure, I’ll call him and see if that works for him.” He was on Pamela’s case after all, and Becky didn’t know where he would be while he was in the middle of it. Maybe that was another reason Pamela wanted him to work only on her case. Because she was still pulling the matchmaking strings.

  “When I said ‘us,’ I of course meant you too,” Pamela said. “I just wanted to clarify that.”

  “Thanks, Pamela.” Becky did eat with Pamela sometimes—because her boss enjoyed her company, Becky figured—and then they would discuss some of the ongoing situations Becky needed to be made aware of or that Becky needed to talk to Pamela about.

  “Did he learn anything?” Pamela asked as if her curiosity was getting the best of her and she couldn’t wait to hear about the investigation from Max.

  “He might have. He had some promising new leads, and he wanted to check into them further.”

  “And you?”

  “Me?” Becky’s cheeks heated. She was certain her employer was referring to Max and her dating, but she didn’t want to assume as much.

  Pamela chuckled. “Coming along fine, I hope.”

  “We’ve been enjoying each other’s company, yes, Pamela.”

  “Good. If you ever need any time off to have dates with him, just let me know.”

  “I will, thanks.” But Becky didn’t think she would. She would just do her job, and she and Max could be together around their work schedules for meals and maybe some overnight get-togethers. She didn’t think she would have to take any extra time off to do that. Her boss really needed her to keep her schedule straight for her. It made Becky feel useful in a good way.

  “Well, good night, and I’m glad things are working out. We’re having chicken salad for lunch.”

  “I’ll tell him. What time?”

  “Noon. Maybe that will give him more time to learn more about the situation with Christopher. And, Becky? If Max needs to go to some other location to run more leads down, I’ll send him, all expenses paid.”

  “I’ll tell him. Thanks.”

  Once they ended their call, she called Max. “Lunch with Pamela at noon; a chicken salad is on the menu. And I’m invited. Also, she’ll pay for your expenses if you need to go anywhere else to track Christopher down.”

  “I’m still trying to learn where he ended up. I’m calling Ryan now about this wolf situation. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Okay, good luck and good night.”

  * * *

  On the way home from Mountain View, Max called Ryan and told him about the business with Pamela and the wolf who had rescued her.

  “Becky’s mom rescued her as a wolf?” Ryan let out his breath. “Okay, we need to talk to Carol about this and get her take on it. We’ll have to decide with the rest of the pack how we’re going to handle it. I’m sure Carol will want us to meet tonight about it. Then you’ll have your decision when you have lunch with Becky and Pamela. If Pamela has any plans to mention the wolf business to you, we need you to be ready.”

  “Right, though I suspect the lunch date has to do with Christopher and not anything to do with wolves, but you never know. Already this has gone in so many different directions that it’s hard to say.”

  “Correct. I’ll give you call in a little bit.” Ryan ended the call but called back only a few minutes later. “The meeting is scheduled in fifteen minutes. Everyone’s headed to my place now.”

  “All right. I’m almost there.” That was one thing Max loved about his pack leaders. They weren’t wishy-washy about taking action. They got things done right away.

  When he arrived at the pack leaders’ house, several wolves were already there. Some lived close and others lived across the town, but it still would only take them about ten minutes to get there. No traffic issues in Green Valley, especially this late at night.

  Max explained the situation to the pack members. Some of the older wolves shook their heads. He took that to mean they thought that Becky’s mother shouldn’t have rescued the human girl. But if it had been him, he would have done the same thing. Carol had been more recently bitten and turned, so she was more sympathetic to the human equation. They could very well have eliminated Carol after she had been bitten. She was also a nurse, so her goal was to save people and not let them die without doing everything she could in her bag of tricks to get them through. Ryan felt the same way.

  Most everyone did, except for five of the elders, one female, four males.

  “So we let Max tell her straight out that she was right all along? A wolf shifter saved her?” one of the elders asked.

  “I think we’ll let it ultimately be Max’s call. He’s seeing the woman tomorrow for lunch, and we assume they’ll be discussing the case he’s working on for her. But if the other situation comes up, we want everyone to be in agreement on how it’s handled,” Ryan said.

  “Kill her or turn her?” the she-wolf elder asked.

  “Or let her live among us as she has all along,” Max said.

  “Okay, so do we put it to a vote? Three different options. We let her live as she has before, we eliminate her, we turn her. I think everyone knows what the repercussions are for each of the options. She’s not some drifter, so if she’s turned and can’t fight the shift, that’s going to be an issue for someone as important as she is. The same if she somehow just vanishes. Or if we leave her be, she might tell on us,” Ryan said.

  “But she hasn’t before,” Carol said.

  “She did in the beginning, but she was just a kid, scared, and nearly drowned,” Max said, having to be perfectly honest about it. If she learned they were really wolves, if she only suspected so now, then what? Would she want to tell everyone who hadn’t believed her before? They couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t. Then too, if she decided she wanted to marry Christopher, the husband would be her closest confident. Would she tell someone who had such a special place in her heart the truth? It was hard keeping secrets like that from someone you loved, even if it could protect them.

  Carol passed around pieces of paper and pens for everyone to write down their choices. Then once everyone wrote a 1, 2, or 3 down to choose their selection—let her be, death, or turned—Carol collected them in a bowl. Then she said, “Okay, so this is only in the event that she truly knows what we are. If she doesn’t or doesn’t make any hint to Max and Becky that she does, we take no action.”

  Everyone agreed. That was one thing Max liked about their pack. They had a really tight-knit pack. Ryan and Carol made a good team. The pack members had been a little worried that Carol might be a problem with her shifting issues, but she was a nurse and well liked, so they couldn’t have been more pleased with the way things had turned out between her and Ryan.

  “So what about you and Becky?” Asher asked before Carol could read the votes off the papers in the bowl.

  Max smiled and everyone laughed. Yeah, he wasn’t giving her up to any bachelor wolf in the pack or anywhere else.

  Then Carol began reading off the notes, and at the end, not one person voted to have her eliminated. Most wanted her turned. Five were willing to let her live as before.

  If Pamela wanted to be turned, the good thing about that was Becky would be there to help her out. Max would too. Well, the whole pack would, if they turned her. But the boyfriend could be an issue unless someone who was in their pack appealed to her and became the boyfriend.

  “Okay, so if we turn her, she would need to date one of us,” Asher said, smiling. “Forget your quest to look into Christopher for her. She would have us there to watch over her every step of the way.”

  “Can we have another vote?” Stephan Wright, one of the single males, asked. He was only twenty and not old enough to be Pamela’s mate, Max was thinking.

  Carol smiled. “We’ll have another vote as soon as we know what’s going on with Pamela. For a decision that affects all of us, we want this to be unanimous.”

  Max agreed and so did everyone after a fact. Then the meeting ended, but Ryan and Carol wanted to talk to him further before he went home.

  “Asher does have a point as far as turning her and then keeping her in the family, so to speak. If she knows about us or highly suspects, she has already set in motion a plan to work with us. Still, we have to cover all bases, and keeping her as one of our own would assure us she wouldn’t talk. Unless she made a mistake in appearing in public when she couldn’t stop the shift, she would be okay,” Carol said.

  “I agree,” Ryan said. “For the sake of the pack, for the sake of our kind, I think that Asher is right, actually.”

  Max took a deep breath and let it out. “We have another issue. If she truly loves Christopher and wants to be with him, what do we do about him? Turn him too?”

  “Well, if we talk to her about us being wolves, maybe we can convince her she wants to be one of us, and she shouldn’t be with Christopher,” Ryan said.

  Carol shook her head. “If Pamela is in love with Christopher and she knows about us as wolves for sure, we’ve got another stumbling block in our path and it’s back to the drawing board for us.”

  Chapter 6

  Becky was already apprehensive about having lunch with Pamela this afternoon, but when Max called her to say he had canceled with Pamela already, she just felt it was bad news.

  “I’m still trying to get a lead on Christopher and hope to have some information for her soon. Tonight or tomorrow,” Max said.

  “Uh, sure.”

  “I’m so sorry, Becky. I know how difficult this is for you what with worrying if she knows about us.”

  “No problem. I’ll ask if she wants to cancel lunch with me too. Hopefully she will.” Becky had managed a number of tasks this morning for her employer, and so far, everything was fine. But sitting down with her at lunchtime? Becky was afraid it would be too tension-filled, since she now knew about Pamela’s past experience with a wolf shifter. It was just something she couldn’t forget.

  Then she called her boss. “Pamela, since Max is in the middle of chasing down leads on Christopher and can’t make it for lunch, do you want to cancel our lunch date?”

  “Heavens no. It’s about that time. Why don’t you join me in the dining room?”

  Becky could imagine ominous music playing in the background as they had their lunch.

  When she finally sat down with Pamela and the server set their dishes of chicken salad, a teapot and teacups, and glasses of water on the table, Pamela said, “I’m glad Max is working so hard on this case and might have some good news one way or another soon. Has he told you about any of what he has learned?”

  The server left them to have their lunch in privacy.

  “No, but I’m hopeful it all turns out the way you want it to.” Talk about being put on the spot! Becky wanted to spill the whole story—that Max and she were wolves. That the wolf who saved Pamela as a girl was her mother and that her father and sister and brother were all wolves. Instead, Becky concentrated on eating her lunch, feeling uncomfortable when normally she enjoyed meals with her employer. Becky wondered if she would have felt any better if Max had been there explaining some of what he’d learned during his investigation.

  “My staff has been dismissed for the lunch hour so they can go off and enjoy a lunch in town for a couple of hours.”

  Becky took a bite of her chicken salad, trying for nonchalant, but she was afraid of what that meant. Pamela wanted to discuss something private with her, and that probably meant about them being wolves.

  “I wanted to mention the reason I’m always reticent about you going to the pond in winter. I fell through the ice there when I was six.”

  “Oh, that’s awful.” Becky’s blood felt chilled.

  “Yes, and a woman saved me.”

  “A woman?” Becky hoped she was sounding as surprised as she was trying to let on that she was.

  “Yes. I learned later that she was your mother.”

  “My…mother?”

  Pamela smiled. “Yes. It’s not the reason why I hired you. Well, I mean, certainly, you were my choice over seven other candidates because of it. I can’t lie about that. It did help me to make my decision.” She took a sip of her water. “Did your mother ever tell you about it?”

  “It must have been before I was born.”

  “So she never mentioned it?” Pamela asked again.

  “I…I vaguely recall some talk of it. As a kid, I wasn’t paying much attention, I guess. And she didn’t boast about it or anything. I just remember her warning us when we were kids not to cross frozen lakes or ponds in the event they weren’t all the way frozen. She didn’t want us falling through the ice. We used to ice skate on a pond in a park, so she just made a point to remind us of it every winter. There was a case of two kids falling through the ice one year, about the time I was learning to ice-skate with my brother and sister and friends, so I had believed that’s why she kept mentioning it to us.”

  “She had saved me before that. She took me to her home to warm me up and dry my clothes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Nobody believed me.”

  “That she saved you? Why wouldn’t they?” Becky acted as sincerely as she could that she had no clue that a wolf had saved Pamela.

  Pamela smiled. “I had a big imagination back then—according to family and friends.”

  “You are very creative. That’s why your liquor line continues to be such a success.”

  “Right. I…” Pamela shook her head. “If it wasn’t for my imagination going wild on me, I would swear that what I had seen was all true.” She took another bite of her salad. “You went for a walk with Max in the woods yesterday.”

  “Yes. We had a great walk. Lots of fun.” Becky was dying to ask if Pamela had any security cameras set up anywhere.

  “Good. You’ll have to swim in the pond together. When I was a kid, I swam there all the time.”

  Becky smiled. “Sure, if you don’t mind, we could do that.”

  Pamela sighed. “I just wish you knew something about Christopher’s whereabouts and what he’s doing.”

  “Hopefully, Max will have something substantial for you tonight.”

  “Do you believe in the paranormal?” Pamela asked.

  “Uh, psychics? Sure. Not that all people are sensitive to things that some experience, but I believe some can see or hear things the rest of us can’t.” This was so not good. Paranormal as in werewolves? She bet that was what Pamela was getting at.

  “Right.”

  “What about you?” Becky asked. Pamela had never said anything to her about any of this before. She always seemed the most levelheaded kind of person.

  “Well, I do believe that there are those who sense things that the rest of us don’t. Not me. I don’t have a paranormal cell in my body. But what if what I thought I had experienced was real? That a werewolf saved me from the pond when I nearly drowned.”

  “A werewolf?” Becky’s mouth dropped open. It wasn’t an act either. She hadn’t thought her employer would really come out and say that to her.

  “Yeah, it was in all the papers when I was a kid. I told everyone I saw that a wolf had run to the edge of the pond and turned into a woman to save me.”

  Becky ate another bite of her food, unsure what to say.