Timber Wolf (Virtue Shifters Book 1) Read online

  He'd put his big hands over hers, guiding her through the motions to carefully remove them. His hands were warm and certain and very gentle, and he was careful to keep enough distance between their bodies to be polite, although Mabs wouldn't have minded a little more press of hips, herself. Or a lot more, for that matter. On the other hand, she really appreciated the gentlemanly effort.

  He was patient, too. Where she would have given up in frustration and yanked at a board, he worked at it slowly and cautiously, removing it with a delicacy she wouldn't have expected from those big hands. She couldn't help thinking about what else he could do with that kind of patience, and found herself out of breath and aching with desire more than once as they worked.

  Fortunately—fortunately?—there was so much to do that sometimes she forgot that the virtual stranger in her kitchen was staggeringly attractive, incredibly kind, and had a touch that set her whole body alight with need.

  It turned out copper piping had been laid in between the exterior and interior walls at some point, which was great. Even Mabs could tell it was in good condition, with no leaks or damp places, as they gradually revealed it.

  That job meant they spent a long time lying on the floors, gently removing boards along the whole length of the wall so they could expose the pipes for insulating. Mabs eventually rolled over onto her back, sweating, and stared at the ceiling eight feet above her. "Oh God. I'm too old to be lying on the floor for hours at a time."

  "No one with purple hair is ever truly old."

  Mabs lifted her head to smile at Jake, who sat up to loop his arms around his knees, holding a hammer between his hands. "Lots of old ladies have purple hair."

  "That's accidental. Yours is carefully considered."

  "I'd toss it to show off how carefully considered it is, but my whole body hurts too much." She put her head back down and regarded the ceiling again. "We need to take that down too, don't we? So we can insulate it?"

  "Yeah. We're just gonna tackle this whole kitchen over the weekend. You won't know it, by Monday." Jake squinted upward. "Except ideally it'll look exactly the same when we put it back together, so maybe I'm wrong about that."

  Mabs chuckled, then groaned and stretched along the floor. It pulled her jeans against her crotch and reminded her of the considerable wet desire that had built up. She bit her lip, tried to think of something not-sexy, and said, "I don't know how I'm going to keep Noah out of here while we're doing all that."

  "First thing we'll do is insulate the pipes and re-board the bottoms of the walls so he can't get into them," Jake suggested. "Then insulation for the exterior wall space, and then we'll tackle the ceiling and the piping on the inside kitchen wall. You said some of it needed replacing?"

  "The faucet does. I don't know about the actual pipes." Mabs started to rise and Jake stood up to offer her a hand. He pulled her up so easily her feet nearly came off the floor, and he caught her with an arm around her waist, their bodies pressed together as she'd been imagining.

  Well, maybe not quite as she'd been imagining, but pretty close. An apology died on Jake's lips, turning into a cautious, curious smile, as if he felt the embrace was as right as Mabs herself did. She tilted her chin up, the beginnings of an answer...

  ...and Noah burst through the door, shouting, "Mama! Mama! I had chicken fries for dinn— whoa." He skidded to a halt, gaping at the empty kitchen, as Jake, looking guilty, released Mabs. Mabs staggered back a step, blushing, and Noah turned to her with wide eyes. "Mama, what happened here?"

  Sarah, still out in the yard, yelled, "Sorry, I lost control of the whirlwind!" and came in several steps behind Noah, carrying a bag labeled with the town's best takeout burgers. Like Noah, her jaw dropped as she came through the door, and she echoed his, "Whoa. Look at how much work you've gotten done!"

  Mabs, almost certain her blush had faded before Sarah arrived, and incredibly grateful for it, picked up Noah with a grin. "We're gonna insulate the walls tomorrow, like we did with the floor! What do you think, baby?"

  He took in the room with a dismayed gaze. "I liked it better before."

  "Aw." Mabs kissed his hair. "Me too, but it'll be back to normal in a few days."

  "Okay!" Noah slithered out of her arms and barreled toward Sarah to try grabbing the takeout bag from her. "We brought dinner! Mr. Collins said it was on the house, but I don't think we should put it on the house, Mommy. That would be messy."

  "And hard to get to, if we put it on the roof," Mabs agreed with a smile. "How about we eat on the porch instead? Although I hear you already had chicken fries, so maybe you don't need anything else to eat."

  "Mommy!" Noah spoke with horrified outrage that made all the adults laugh.

  Sarah said, "The porch it is," and led him out, while Mabs lingered to look over the kitchen, then at Jake.

  "They're right. We did do a lot today, and I couldn't have done it without you. Thank you, Jake. This morning I felt like everything was lost. I have some hope now."

  "I felt pretty lost and out of sorts this morning myself," he admitted. "I'm not sure I even meant to come back to Virtue, honestly. I just kind of...found myself here."

  "Lucky me," Mabs said softly, and meant it.

  "Lucky us," he suggested, and might have said more, but Noah yelled, "Mama!" from the porch, and Mabs laughed.

  "Dinner calls."

  Jake, deadpan, said, "I had no idea burgers had such vocal range," and they went out to the porch together, both smiling. If someone had told her six hours earlier that she'd spend most of the afternoon and evening with a smile on her face, Mabs just wouldn't have believed them. She owed Jake Rowly a lot, just for making her feel like her life wasn't a total loss.

  "I brought you curly fries," Noah announced proudly as they came onto the porch. Mabs's heart melted and she bent to kiss his hair.

  "Thank you, honey. And a burger? It looks great." She sank onto the porch seat beside her son and sighed with contentment as she took the first bite of burger. Maybe, just maybe, things would work out.

  SIX

  Jake was up way too early Saturday morning, with plans to lean heavily on relationships that had lain fallow since high school, over twenty years ago. One good thing about small towns, though, was there were generally two kinds of people: those who left and never came back, and those who just never left.

  Cynthia Bullock was one of the latter. She'd married her high school sweetheart, inherited the family hardware store, and remembered Jake with enough fondness that she lent him the insulation blower on a previously non-existent line of credit. Her older son, who was twenty, which seemed ridiculous to Jake, helped him load it, and a pile of other renovation material, into the bed of his truck, and he arrived at the old Brannigan place just before eight in the morning.

  Only after he killed the truck's engine did he think that maybe most people weren't up before eight on a Saturday, and that he would appear much too eager.

  Hnf, his wolf said. Not eager enough, if you ask me.

  I didn't. Before Jake could argue further, Noah came plowing out of the house, jumped down the porch steps, and ran full speed into the front gate separating him from the truck. "Mommy, did Auntie Sarah get a new truck ?"

  "Sorry, Noah." Jake got out of the truck, smiling apologetically. "It's just me. I rode over with Sarah yesterday, but I've got my own truck, see? And I came over to help your mom work on the kitchen."

  Noah gave him a vaguely suspicious look that dissolved into eagerness. "Mama says I can help. Mama! The strange man is here!" He went running back to the porch, leaving Jake bemused as the lady of the house came out, drying her hands on a dishtowel.

  "I'm not that strange!" he called to her, hoping he sounded amusing and reassuring. "Sorry I'm so early!"

  You're pretty strange, the wolf said. For a human.

  I'm incredibly boring and normal for a shapeshifter, though.

  "Well, come on in," Mabs called back. "We're always up early around here. I've got breakfast on the...flo
or..." His wolf-enhanced hearing caught her sighed, "Ah, man," at the end of that, as though she felt silly. In her defense—and Jake felt the impulse to defend her, even from herself, if necessary—they had taken all the furniture out of the kitchen the night before. The floor was kind of the only option.

  The scent of bacon and eggs came out of the open door, and Jake's stomach rumbled. God, she was adorable, brave, determined, and also cooked? He might need to reconsider his stance on no relationships.

  Good plan, his wolf said brightly. Jake said, "Ungh," under his breath, swung open the front gate, and took himself up to the house for crisp bacon and—to his surprise—homemade bread, fresh from the oven. "This is amazing. So you're actually a superwoman, is that it?" he said to Mabs around a bite of butter-laden bread.

  "You should see me in spandex."

  This time Mabs didn't blush, but Jake coughed on the bite of bread, tears springing to his eyes as he wheezed around crumbs. He finally managed to say, "I can imagine," at which Mabs gave him a smirking wink.

  The trouble was, he could imagine. He could easily imagine the form-fitting outfit, following her curves even more intimately than her jeans and t-shirt.

  He could imagine the stretch emphasizing her thighs, and the fabric squeezing her hips, outlining them, and he couldn't help but notice that in his imagination she wasn't wearing any panties under the spandex, either. He could imagine the snug fit at her small waist, and for some reason he very clearly imagined one of those universally-reviled-by-women 'boob windows' showing off a truly generous amount of cleavage.

  In his imagination, the costume had a high collar above the boob window, but cut away from her shoulders so he could see her collarbones and another hint of her tattoos. He wasn't sure about the physics of that in the real world, but it worked really, really well in his imagination.

  This was, he told himself shakily, probably a terrible kind of objectification, but God, it was hot, too. He wanted to get up for a drink of water, but he had an erection so hard he thought he might pass out if he stood up, even if he could somehow hide it from...

  ...from the mother of the four-year-old chowing down on breakfast across from him. Mabs being a mother wasn't a turn-off at all, but remembering there was a kid right there took the edge off his ardor. Thank God. "I picked up some foam pipe insulation," he said to Mabs. "I thought if I cut it to length, Noah could help installing that, since it goes down low."

  The little boy brightened and a soft bloom of astonished joy rose in Mabs's face. "That's an amazing idea. Thank you for thinking of that, Jake. That's...thank you. Most people wouldn't."

  "Kids like to help out," Jake said easily. He didn't know much about kids, really, but he did know they liked to do important work, just like adults did. He also knew they often got bored fast, and in fact, after breakfast was finished and Noah had put the first two or three lengths of insulation on the pipes, he lost interest and wandered off.

  Mabs took over where he'd left off, while Jake re-applied the boards they'd taken out behind her. "Thanks," she said again, quietly, when Noah had gone. "Really, it means a lot that you thought of something for him to do. Kids are a nuisance and most guys don't get farther than thinking about that."

  Jake glanced toward her to answer, and forgot what he'd meant to say. She was crawling down the floorboards to the next section of insulation she needed to lay, and her bottom was perfectly encased in her jeans at eye-level. The idea of just crawling over behind her and pulling her back against himself filled his mind for a moment, and got an unfortunately enthusiastic yip of approval from his wolf. His voice sounded hoarse to him as he said, "Not a lot of luck dating, then? I mean, not that it's my business, but..."

  She glanced back with a wry smile and didn't seem to notice—or care, at least—that he was checking out her behind. "No, not really. I mean, who has time, for one thing, but yeah, the single mom thing is a big red flag for a lot of guys. Oh, that looks nice." She waved at what he'd put back together, and went on to finish her own work.

  "Thanks." They worked in companionable silence until suddenly they'd reached the end of the pipes and walls. Jake, groaning cheerfully, got to his feet. "Wall insulation next, but I need to stretch first. Have you talked to the heritage society about the windows?"

  Dismay crossed Mabs's face. "They fall in a kind of no-man's-land. They're not original, but they're old enough to have heritage value, so the heritage society would like me to preserve them, but they're also only single-pane, so I'm guessing they leak heat like a sieve. Not that you can put heat in a sieve, but you know what I mean."

  "I do." Jake, rotating his hips and stretching his arms until he touched the ceiling, went over to study one of the 12-pane sash windows. "Well, let's be realistic. Tackling the windows isn't necessarily a job for this time of year anyway. We might have to think about it next summer."

  Mabs chuckled wryly. "Planning to stay in my barn that long?"

  Jake bit down the impulse to say yes! and said, "Or on Sarah's couch," instead.

  "It'd probably be warmer than my barn." Mabs sounded concerned, and Jake's wolf said, We have a fur coat. We'll be fine.

  Yeah, but she doesn't know that.

  Well, tell her, the wolf said, exasperated.

  Jake smiled. Out loud he said, "We'll worry about that when it gets colder," and to the wolf, said, If I tell her that I come equipped with a fur coat, assuming she doesn't freak out and run away to start with, then she'll never have reason to invite me in to sleep.

  The wolf said, ooooooh, in appreciation of Jake's subtlety, and Jake's smile widened as Mabs nodded, accepting "we'll figure it out later" as an acceptable way of dealing with problems that weren't actually immediate.

  Noah reappeared when they started filling the walls with insulation, his hands clamped over his ears and his eyes huge with interest. "You! Guys! Look! Like! Monsters !"

  Jake, glancing between himself and Mabs, thought the kid wasn't wrong. They had all the necessary protective equipment—masks, eye and ear protection, gloves, long sleeves—and looked nothing like they had when Noah had last seen them. Mabs went "Raar!" and started chasing Noah around the kitchen to shrieks of laughter so loud Jake could hear them over the blower.

  He turned it off and pulled his goggles up, delighted to just be part of their happy moment, even as an outsider. Once the blower was off, Noah bellowed, "What are you doing?" with roughly the same intensity he'd used before. Mabs explained it to him in normal tones, and he remembered to say, "Can I help?" in a more or less regular volume.

  "Um, I don't know, honey, you need all this protective stuff we've got..." Mabs took her goggles off, though, and put them on his face for a moment, and Jake, looking to her for permission, picked Noah up so he could guide the blower into the wall for a few seconds.

  "That's enough," he said after a minute. "You need all this gear, and I don't have extras, sorry. They don't come in kid sizes." The truth was Jake hadn't thought to bring them for Noah, but he was reasonably certain that he also wasn't lying about kid sizes.

  A sly look crossed Noah's face and he ran off. Mabs, watching him go, says, "I bet you five dollars he comes back totally prepped."

  "I wouldn't take that bet," Jake said with a smile. "Not against his mother, who must know him best."

  "Smart man."

  They turned the blower back on, and a few minutes later Noah arrived in swim goggles, a bandana over his face, and a superhero costume with sleeves tucked into winter gloves at least five sizes too big for him. "I'm ready!"

  No one, not even his mother, could argue with his preparedness, so the next half hour or so was spent trading a small child back and forth so he could fill walls with the spray insulation. A little to Jake's surprise, Noah's intense concentration lasted until they'd filled an entire section and the next thing that had to be done was replacing boards. Everybody washed up and Mabs made an actual stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while Jake carefully re-boarded the wall.

&nb
sp; Noah finished his sandwich at about the same time Jake finished the wall, announced he was going to go be a wolf, and ran outside with no further ado. Mabs, leaning on a wall, yelled, "Be careful!" after him with the air of a parent who had no expectation of the request being honored. "You were great with him," she said to Jake. "Thanks."

  "It's not hard. He seems like a pretty great kid."

  "He is." Mabs made a face. "Except when he's not."

  Jake laughed. "To be fair, that could be said about all of us."

  "So, so true. Well, we made pretty good progress this morning, even though he was helping us. Think we can get the rest of the front kitchen wall done this afternoon?"

  "With time left to spare," Jake promised, but Mabs didn't look like she'd heard him. She pushed off the wall and went to the window, frowning through it with her sandwich forgotten in her hand.

  "Who the hell," she said, almost conversationally. "I don't know that car." Her expression turned grim and Jake went to join her at the window as the pleasantry dropped from her voice. "Dammit, I never said he could come by. Excuse me." She brushed past Jake to the front door, and he looked out the window to see Preston Cole, high school bully and—according to the emblem on his car—present-day realtor, walking through the front gate.

  SEVEN

  "Ms. Brannigan? I'm Preston Cole." Cole let himself through the front gate like he had every right to, which set Mabs's teeth on edge. He had the look of an aging high school football star, with thinning hair, broad shoulders, and a bit of a paunch that his suit hid pretty well. His tie matched a yellow lapel handkerchief.

  "I figured." Mabs gestured at his car, with the company name emblazoned on it. "I didn't expect to see you, Mr. Cole." She was absolutely certain her tone conveyed and I didn't want to, either, but it was already clear that Preston Cole was the kind of man who only heard 'no' when he was the person saying it.