Page 11 of The Protector’s Heart

When he didn’t continue, she swallowed the lump in her throat and said, “What’s the second reason?”

He grabbed his coat from where he’d hung it on the hooks by the front door and said, “Because I want to do it for you. You made me hot chocolate with marshmallows and you let me crash on your couch when it had to be hard for you to do that since we don’t know each other well.”

What he didn’t say was that he was a wolf, and he knew she didn’t like his kind. “The shovel is on the porch.”

He went to the door, and as he pulled it open, she said, “Malachi?”

“Yeah?” He looked at her, his beautiful blue eyes regarding her with nothing but kindness.

“Thank you.”

“It’s no hardship to shovel snow.”

“No, for everything.” She hugged Jack a little closer. “Thank you for everything.”

He smiled at her, a dimple forming in one cheek that made her think of wicked things, and walked out, shutting the door firmly behind him. By the time the drive was shoveled, the power was back on and Jack was happily playing on the floor with his toys while she went through the fridge and salvaged what she could.

“Can I make you some breakfast?” she asked when he stopped back in the house and picked up his shirt.

“No thank you, sweetheart. I have to get going. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

He ducked down on one knee and brushed his knuckle over Jack’s cheek. “Take care, kiddo. Thanks for sharing your blanket with me.”

Jack banged two wooden blocks together, giggled, and then looked at Malachi and said, “Carrot.”

Nila smiled at the sweet scene and said goodbye to Malachi, closing and locking the door when he was gone. She turned and looked around the family room. It seemed empty now without Malachi’s big muscly body taking up room on her couch. “I hate to admit it, J-man, but I miss him already.”

“Carrot.”

“You bet, sweetie. Carrot.”

* * *

With the world unstuck from the snowfall of the previous day, Nila drove to the daycare and dropped off Jack, and then headed to the doctor’s office. She liked her job and the people she worked with, but she didn’t usually look forward to working as much as she did that morning. She pulled her car into the parking lot and turned it off, staring at the big green SUV that belonged to Malachi.

A little streak of jealousy sliced through her, but she shoved it aside. Brynn’s life wasn’t totally idyllic. Her mate had treated her pretty badly and left her floundering while she was pregnant and he hid behind pack laws. She might be loving life now, but she’d been really miserable not too long ago. Nila could relate to that. She’d been pretty naive about wolves when she met Damien. He seemed like a nice guy. He’d treated her like a queen, said all the right things to ease her mind about her concerns that she was a human and he wasn’t. He hadn’t let her near his pack for the first few months of their relationship, and then she found out she was pregnant. She had been taking the pill faithfully the whole time and was surprised by the pregnancy, but she and Damien were in love and he was excited by the thought of having a child with her. He married her immediately and then he took her to meet his pack.

What a rude awakening that was. She was treated like a second-class citizen because she was human. The females were hostile, some of them even threatening to harm her and the baby because Damien was the son of the alpha and therefore a prized male. It was that night, the first time she met his father, that she saw the real Damien. His nice guy persona melted away so fast that she wondered if she’d ever really seen it in the first place.

Shaking her head to clear the dark thoughts, she exhaled loudly and turned off the car. It rattled a bit as the engine stopped, and she grimaced. She didn’t have the money to deal with car repairs right now. She walked through the freshly salted parking lot, the crunch of the salt under her boots loud in the quiet morning, and opened the door of the clinic. She smiled at Brynn and said hello, but walked through the door without saying anything to Malachi as she made her way to the employee breakroom to stow her things.

She wanted to believe that Malachi was different from Damien, but she’d already been fooled once by a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Jack counted on her to make good choices. He might have a lousy biological father, but Nila could give him a worthy step-dad, and that man would not be a wolf. She just couldn’t risk Jack’s safety and happiness because Malachi happened to make her heart thud irregularly in her chest.

She put the yogurt that Malachi had bought for her on the shelf in the fridge and stared at the white container with the strawberry and banana images on the front. He’d even gotten her favorite brand, which showed just how much he’d been paying attention to her.

She hated that her stomach flipped at the idea of him watching her.

Gritting her teeth, she closed the fridge door hard enough to make it rock back and forth. Then she smoothed her hands down the front of her scrub top, which was covered with pink and purple bunnies, and strode out to the front to get the first patient. If she ignored Malachi long enough, he’d get the hint and move on.

She hoped.

* * *

Malachi didn’t know what had happened between yesterday and today, but Nila was acting like an ice queen toward him. When she came to get the first patient, she ignored him so expertly that he felt like he’d suddenly become invisible.

“Whoa,” Brynn said softly as Nila took the young girl and her father to an exam room. “What the heck did you do to her?”

He frowned. “Shoveled her driveway.”

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