Page 6 of What a Wolf's Heart Decides

It was her turn to smile, except she knew hers was rueful. “Yeah, well, most people tell me I’m too young to know what I want.”

“Ah, that’s the funny thing. Sometimes we don’t know what we want until we find it.”

With anyone else, she would have rolled her eyes. But in this case, his words made sense. If anyone was an expert on love, it was Remy Arsenault. And not just because he’d spent years as the species’ resident playboy. If anything, his reputation had nearly stopped him from finding happiness. Most people focused so much on his exterior they forgot to look deep enough to see the kind, caring male underneath.

But Sophie had. As Remy was fond of saying, she’d saved him just as much as he saved her.

He nodded toward the invitations again. “If you leave them with me, I’ll make sure everyone gets one.”

“You will?”

“Yup. I’ll see most of the guys later today for a training run.” A wicked light entered his eyes. “I’m making them scale the gorge.”

She winced. Steps from the Lodge’s back door, the gorge dropped a hundred feet to a trickle of a creek. A rope bridge made crossing fast and easy—except for the times the pack’s trainers forced recruits to climb down one side and up the other. The last time she did it, her muscles ached for a week.

She handed Remy the invitations. “Just do me a favor and pass them out before you torture everyone.”

“Good idea.”

A thought popped into her head. “And Remy?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t . . .” She cleared her throat. “Promise you won’t force anyone to come, okay?” Because he could. Dom might be Beta and second-in-command, but Remy was the default leader of the Hunters—the wolves who served and guarded the Alpha and his family. When he wasn’t looking after the pack’s finances, he trained the next generation of wolves who hoped to serve as Hunters someday. If he told the young males at the Lodge to attend her party, they would.

And that would just make everything worse.

Shuffling Posey in his arms a little, he rolled the invitations into a tube shape and stuffed them in his back pocket. “I won’t. I promise.”

She let her shoulders relax.

“We’re off to the kitchen,” he said. “Wanna join us for snack time? I make a fine dinosaur-shaped sandwich.”

Haley laughed. “Thanks, but no. I was just going up to my—”

“What’s going on out here?”

She and Remy turned at the sound of the deep, French-accented voice. The Alpha stood in an open doorway half a dozen steps down the hall.

Max’s expression softened when he saw Posey. In a flash, the forbidding Alpha disappeared. He strode to Remy and grasped Posey’s tiny black sneaker.

“And how are you, mon chou?” he asked the little girl.

Haley hid a smile. It would never not be weird to hear people call their loved ones a “cabbage.” As Dom would say, though, who could explain the French? It had taken her a while to get used to the slang.

And goodness knew she was hopeless any time Max went off on one of his lectures. He tended to switch to French when he was angry. He also tended to speak more quickly. When he combined the two, the best she could do was stand still and nod.

Considering how often she ended up on the receiving end of a scolding, it was a decent strategy.

He looked at her now. “It’s a good thing you’re here. I need to see you.”

Panic jumped into her throat. “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”

Remy chuckled.

“It’s nothing bad,” Max said. He gave her a thoughtful look. “If anything, it’s more of a . . . project. One I think you might enjoy.”

Now why did that make her panic kick up another notch?

---