Page 66 of To Challenge a Wolf

“As alpha, to welcome the pup?”

“More like as Aaron’s friend, to keep him from tearing the cabin down.”

She’d never been present at the birth of a pup, but in a moment the pieces fit together. “Because a wolf feels pain when his mate does.”

“Or so they tell me.”

He tapped out a reply and set the phone aside. And then…they made small talk. Loathsome, pointless small talk. He seemed stiff, almost as though nursing some invisible injury. He was guarded. Just as he had been since Sunday night.

By the end of the meal, she could hardly contain her need to talk about something real. No, not just something.Thething.

“We’re out of tourist attractions,” he said as he paid the check. “Thoughts on how to spend the day?”

“Actually I was thinking… Could we go for a drive? No destination, just a drive where we look at things passing by, turn around and come home.” They needed privacy for the upcoming discussion.

“Sure. Some nice drives around here. Twisty, side-of-mountain stuff. No guardrails.”

“Perfect.”

When she laced her fingers through his on the way to his truck, he didn’t pull away. She let him get a few miles from town, headed up a narrow road with long-distance views of splashy autumn colors and layered mountain slopes.

Then she said, “Rhett, you know we can’t keep ignoring it.”

“Ignoring what?”

The question sounded honest. She focused on the beauty out the windshield and just…said it. “The episode you had. Whatever it was. We never talked about it at all.”

“Oh, that.” He shrugged. “It’s not worth talking about. It won’t happen again.”

“Then…you know what happened to you? And why?”

Another shrug. “Self-explanatory. I overreacted for a minute.”

“A minute? Try close to an hour.”

If he shrugged one more time… But he did. “Okay, for close to an hour. But it won’t happen again.”

Her heart was pounding, adrenaline flowing as though Rhett were in actual danger. This was a mode of Rhett she recognized. This was the Rhett-mode of reinforced locks and double-plated armor.

She engaged the corresponding Vivian-mode, developed by the time she was fifteen. It came with a toolbox for the locks. It came with knowledge of the armor’s numerous hidden buckles.When no one else could, Vivian could get inside his fortress, unfasten layers of his armor.

“Rhett,” she said.

He glanced from the road and met her eyes without avoidance. His were charcoal gray. “Nothing else to say, Vivian.”

“Okay.”

One eyebrow arched at that.

“If there’s nothing else to say, if you’re perfectly fine now, then why are you different with me?”

“I’m not.” The words came too quickly. Too flatly.

“Don’t lie, Jamie. Not to me and not to yourself.” But then she went still and silent. When she’d used his nickname, the telltale muscle had jumped in his jaw. Her special name for him was never supposed to cause that.

“It wasn’t as bad as it looked,” he finally said.

“You weren’t fighting awful memories and a raging fever? Becausethatis how it looked.”

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