Page 6 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
“Can you help us fix the bike, mister?” the boy asked.
“Sure. I’ve fixed a bunch of these. Here, let me show you.”
With a small wrench from the tool kit on the back of the bike, it was an easy fix, slipping the chain back into itssprocket and tightening a few links. The kids both watched as if he was doing a magic trick.
“What’s wrong with your hands?” the boy asked.
Jace hadn’t expected either of them to notice that he’d kept the gloves on. But it wasn’t just that. His fingers were slightly clumsy. He’d already dropped the wrench twice, as his right hand struggled to remember how to hold a tool like a human being.
“Billy!” the girl whispered, jabbing her brother with an elbow. “Don’t be rude.”
“It’s cold out here, that’s all,” Jace said. He straightened and raised the bike on its wheels. “Here, should be good to get you around for a while, at least.”
The girl grasped the handlebars and rolled the bike back and forth. She lifted a foot and spun the pedal and grinned. “That works great! Thanks, mister!”
“No problem,” Jace told the kids. “Just be careful with that chain, you’re going to want to get it looked at by a bike shop, or someone who knows what they’re doing.”
They both climbed on the bike, the boy riding, the girl standing up behind him with her hands on his shoulders, and pedaled away toward downtown. The girl twisted around to wave.
Jace grinned. Maybe he was still capable of doing some good in the world, after all.
He knew he would never see the beautiful woman with the summer-forest eyes again. He couldn’t afford to let her close to him. But that kiss under the mistletoe lived vividly in his mind.
When he finally returned to the community center, the adoption event was over and people had mostly cleared out. There were just a handful of volunteers left, cleaning up. Jace quietly moved in help stack chairs.
A flyer lay abandoned on a table. He picked it up to throwit away, but handwriting caught his eye. He wasn’t sure what made him pause to read it.
Holiday cottages for vets
Free - just call us
And a number.
Jace gazed at it. Was this the place Dave had told him about? Maybe they were still open after all. The serendipity of finding it like this made him feel as if it was meant to be, like something was gently nudging him in that direction.
He really did need a place to go. If nothing else, to get away from the memory of that woman who drove his wolf wild, with those green shifter eyes of hers. Whatever this place was like, it was better than sticking around in town, where he might run into her at any moment.
He folded the flyer and put it in his pocket.
HOLLY
It had snowedin the night.
In the gray light of early morning, Holly stretched in bed and curled her toes, luxuriously warm and lazy-feeling. She lay back and gazed up at the fluffy line of snow on the windowsill of her childhood bedroom. Her gauzy curtains were drawn back, letting in the soft predawn light. She could happily lie here forever, cozy and comfortable beneath a pile of quilts, watching the light grow slowly in her bedroom and imagining the entire farm buried under a cool blanket of pristine white snow?—
Her lazy drowsing was interrupted by a brisk rap on her bedroom door.
“It’s oh six hundred, rise and shine, sweetheart!” bellowed out the drill sergeant voice of her dad, retired colonel Douglas Porter.
From under the covers, next to Holly’s stomach, something warm wriggled and let out a muffled, squeaky bark.
Holly hastily reached a hand down, groped for Cupcake, and wrapped her hand around his muzzle.
“What?” the voice of her dad said through the door in a different tone.
“I said it’s a snow day!” Holly called back, although she was so burrowed down in the covers to get a grip on Cupcake that she was speaking through a mouthful of quilt.
“All the more work to do! Breakfast’s on the table in fifteen minutes!” With that, the Colonel’s footsteps clumped off toward the stairs.
