Page 12 of To Challenge a Wolf

“I told you. Extensive knowledge of wolves. Up close and personal.”

Another growl.

Vivian smiled with bright innocence. “Mm-hmm. Just call me a wolf expert.”

“You sound like a Yankee.” He said it as if only vampires lived in the North.

“I’ve been in Chicago for a few years now.”

“When you’re not driving around the country visiting wolf packs.”

“Pretty much.”

Everything she said seemed to vex him further. Well, good. He deserved a little vexation. He deserved to wonder, if for the first time in a decade, what she’d been up to. He even deserved to worry about her, at least a little. Since clearly he never had.

But now they’d rammed up against an impasse. They sat there, silence turning to stone, both refusing to break it. To give an inch. Well, fine. She hadn’t started this; he had. He could finish it.

Rhett sprang to his feet. “There. We had a conversation.”

“Hardly,” she said.

“Just proves my point. We’ve got nothing to say to each other.”

“And you won’t talk to your alpha, so I can meet your pack?”

“Nope.” He took a step away from the table, then stopped. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“I’m walking you to your car.”

Vivian laughed. “You think I need you to protect me, Rhett? Who do you think’s protected me for the last ten years?”

“You’re with someone?” he asked calmly, without a hint of jealousy.

Which was really disappointing. “No, you lug.Iprotect me. And I don’t suck at it. Just go home. We both know you don’t actually want to walk me over there and say good night.”

Rhett didn’t move. With a huff, Vivian gathered up her cross-body purse and headed for the gravel lot on the far side of the park. He fell into step beside her, and they walked in silence to her salsa-red hatchback. He nodded at it, as if he approved, as if his opinion of her vehicle mattered one iota. Fortunately he didn’t try to open her door, or she’d have had to disengage her purse from across her chest in order to whack him with it.

She slid inside and looked up at him. “Well, this was fun.”

“Good night,” he said.

From anyone else it would have been a polite parting phrase. From Rhett the deadpan tone and the half-smirk and the defiance in his eyes all made her want to yank fistfuls of her pixie cut. Vivian shut the door and glared at him through the window until he sauntered off. Then she started her car and drove to the bed-and-breakfast where she’d already secured a room. It was nearly eight o’clock. Not talking to Rhett took as much time and energy as talking to anybody else.

Her room was clean, tidy, and stuffed to discomfort with frills. Fortunately nothing was pink. The skirt that draped the circular nightstand was periwinkle paisley, and the pale-yellow comforter on the bed was burdened with a periwinkle floralprint. Did they match? Well, they probably had the year she was born but ceased to shortly thereafter.

Vivian dropped her suitcase at the foot of the bed. The four-poster featured a gauzy white canopy and tied-back curtains that trailed to the floor like bridal veils. But the linens smelled fresh, and the adjoining bathroom smelled faintly of bleach. All that mattered.

She got her phone and her steno pad out of her purse and sat cross-legged on the bed. Plan B was risky, but Rhett had killed Plan A. She flipped to the correct page and dialed.

“Hello?”

Her shoulders gave a little jump at the rasping male voice. He sounded like a prank caller. She nearly hung up, but she’d called him, so… “Hi, I’m trying to reach Malachi Fuller.”

“Speaking.” The voice didn’t change, so maybe this was how he spoke naturally. Or maybe he’d hurt his vocal chords somehow. Wolves didn’t get cancer, and their senses were too acute for smoking.

“Hi, Malachi, my name is Vivian Rossi. I’m a friend of Rhett Helvering’s.”

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