Dancer's Heart (10 page)

“Son, son,” he said, putting his hands up in
defense. “There’s no need for violence. I came to wish you
congratulations on your engagement.”

Adam froze, and then a lethal growl rumbled
in his chest. “Get lost.”

Richard said, “Maybe I can talk to your
fiancée. Maybe she’s more reasonable than you.”

“We’re not engaged, we’re mated,” Dani
said.

Adam glanced back at her. His face was bright
red, his fangs were elongated, and his eyes shimmered with the
amber of his beast. He turned his attention back to his father and
took a menacing step toward him.

“Oh, I’m sorry, son. I didn’t mean to spoil
things.”

“How the fuck do you even know anything about
me or my mate?”

Richard wrung his hands. “I have a friend at
the bank, and he told me that you took out a large chunk of change
and that you were heading to a jewelry store. Only one reason a
fellow goes to a jewelry store.”

Dani’s mouth fell open. Adam was going to ask
her to marry him? Despite the weird circumstances, she couldn’t
help but be excited.

“You need to get gone. Now,” Adam said
sternly.

Richard coughed and rubbed at his neck. “You
see, the thing is that I need some money. If you’ve got enough to
buy a big rock for your girl, you can spare some for your old man,
right? I did give you a roof over your head for eighteen years, not
that you’ve ever said thank you.”

Dani’s mouth fell open again, but for an
entirely different reason. She stood up, rubbing her aching elbow,
and put her hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Leave and never come back,”
she said firmly. “My mate told you to go, and I don’t want to have
to explain to the police why you’re dead if you stick around.”

“I’m in trouble,” he said, whining.

“Not my problem,” Adam said. He guided Dani
back into the truck and slammed the door with enough force to make
the vehicle rock on its tires. “You don’t talk to my mate and you
don’t ever come back here. You’re dead to me, and I won’t hesitate
to make that literal if you show up again.”

Richard stared at Adam for a long moment and
then trudged away to a beater car idling at the curb. Adam stared
at the car until it pulled away and the taillights faded into the
darkness. He seemed frozen in time, a murderous glare in his eyes
and his lips pressed into a tight, white line.

Eventually he moved, joining her in the truck
and turning on the engine.

“Adam,” she said.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, hands
tightly gripping the steering wheel as he stared out the
windshield. “I never wanted you to meet him.”

She opened her mouth to say something
reassuring, but no words came. Closing it again, she leaned against
his shoulder. His muscles were tight, and she could see that his
knuckles were pale.

“He can’t seem to stop ruining things in my
life.”

“What’s ruined?”

“Come on, Dani. You heard what he said.”

“I’m trying to pretend I didn’t,” she said,
smiling hopefully.

He chuckled mirthlessly. “Thanks for
trying.”

“We can skip dinner if you’re not feeling up
to being social.”

He shook his head adamantly. “No. If we stay
home, then I’m not going to get a chance to do what I’d planned,
plus I’ll just be wallowing in anger at him.”

“Okay. No more wallowing, then.”

He kissed her temple. “I don’t know what I’d
do without you, Dani. All I can think about is how many things in
my childhood he ruined because of his gambling addiction, and I
didn’t want him anywhere near you. He’s like a plague. Everything
he touches turns to shit.”

He sighed deeply and shifted the truck into
gear. As he turned toward Honey and Jeremiah’s home, he continued,
“He promised me a birthday party when I was eleven. I had
invitations and everything. When I got up that morning, he was
gone. He’d never come home the night before and the money he’d set
aside to pay for my cake was gone. I went next door to stay with
the neighbors until he came back, which wasn’t for two days. When
came home, he apologized and said that
my
birthday made him
miss my mom and he couldn’t deal with it.”

“Oh, Adam,” she said.

“He showed up at my high school graduation
with a broken hand, doped up on pain pills. He’d failed to make a
payment to a bookie and gotten beaten up for it. I found out he
gave my car to the bookie as a down payment on the debt.”

“I’m sorry you had such a crappy
childhood.”

He shook his head. “I feel like an asshole.
Your family was killed. You could have died out in the woods when
you were little. I have a dad, I have actual family, and I stopped
trying to help him years ago, and that makes me feel guilty.”

“I don’t think your dad really wants help,
Adam. I think he wants a way to stave off the wolves so he can keep
gambling. Giving him money wouldn’t do anything but make the
problem worse.”

“I sure as hell don’t want my father anywhere
near us.”

“Me either.”

“Good.” He inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly,
the tension melting from his body. “Let’s put this behind us and
concentrate on tonight.”

“You got it.”

* * * * *

Richard Cruz swallowed hard as three vehicles
swooped in on him just outside of Wilde Creek and forced him to the
side of the road. The car in front of him stopped short, and
thankfully the shitty brakes on his beater stopped him before he
nailed the back of the expensive sedan.

His door opened before he could even turn the
engine off, and a large male who smelled like a mixture of grizzly
and wolf grabbed Richard by the collar and pulled him from the car.
Richard crashed to the cold pavement, his hands scraping on the
gravel as he tried to get to his feet. A boot connected with his
stomach, and he flew a few feet before landing in a pile of snow.
Coughing and groaning, he rolled to his knees and gripped his side.
He wasn’t wearing a coat, and his jeans and shirt were
threadbare.

A pair of shiny black shoes came into his
field of vision. He knew who they belonged to: Bradik, a grizzly
shifter and the enforcer of the loan shark Richard was currently in
the shit with. Richard looked up to see Bradik tugging on the cuffs
of his dress shirt. “Boss wants to know why you think you can just
skip town whenever the fuck you feel like it.”

Hands gripped Richard’s shirt and hauled him
onto his knees. He shook his head as his vision swam for a moment.
“I was trying to get the money from my son.”

“A piece of shit like you actually bred? I’m
surprised you could get a female to touch you,” Bradik said,
chortling. The two males with him – one wolf and one grizzly –
laughed loudly.

Richard scowled. His mate had been a good
female. Her memory was the only thing that kept him from putting a
gun in his mouth some days. But he knew better than to say anything
to piss off Bradik. The guy had a hair trigger.

“You owe fifteen grand. You’ve got
twenty-four hours to come up with the cash or we’re going to start
breaking bones.”

Richard shuddered. He’d had bones broken
before. They did it slow, letting the pressure grow until the bone
shattered. It was excruciating. He didn’t want to go through that
again. His mind spun as he struggled to come up with a way to get
the cash he needed to pay the debt.

Suddenly he knew.

The female.

“Make sure he remembers what will come if he
misses the deadline,” Bradik said. He turned away, and Richard
shouted.

“Wait!”

Bradik faced him slowly. “Yeah?”

“I know a girl the boss can have.”

He snorted. “He has zero problems getting
girls.”

“No! I mean, she’s a unique shifter. I heard
that unique shifters are worth money on the black market.”

Bradik’s brows rose. “That depends on how
unique she is.”

“Reindeer.”

The wolf at Richard’s side gave him a hard
shake. “Reindeer rarely stray from their herds, and they stay under
the radar. No one’s actually seen a reindeer herd before.
Tight-knit doesn’t begin to describe their people.”

“She’s mated to my son. I scented what she is
– reindeer smell like peppermint.”

Bradik lifted a cell to his ear and took a
few steps away from the small group. He spoke in low tones, and
Richard held his breath, hope filling him. It was gonna work. It
had
to work.

Bradik turned and said, “Give us the address
and a description of the female.
If
it turns out she is a
reindeer shifter and we’re able to take her, the boss said he’ll
forgive your debt.”

Richard blew out a relieved breath and
rattled off the description of the blonde female who was mated to
his son, and Adam’s home address. He had no regrets. If Adam had
helped him like a good son, he wouldn’t
have
to trade the
girl for his own safety.

The wolf pulled Richard’s arm up and wrenched
it out of the socket. Richard shrieked in agony as he fell to the
ground, pain shooting through his body.

“You’re a shitty father,” the wolf said.

Richard gasped. “I never wanted a kid
anyway.”

* * * * *

Dani loved Honey. She was the nicest woman
she’d ever met; gracious and kind, with a sweet laugh and a silly
sense of humor.

“I think being a steward is kind of like
being a doctor,” Honey said, spearing several glazed carrots on her
plate.

“How so?” Dani asked. The meal was delicious.
Jeremiah had smoked ribs all afternoon and shredded the meat, which
Honey soaked in their homemade barbecue sauce and served along with
three-cheese pasta, glazed carrots, and buttered rolls. Dani didn’t
think she’d eaten so well in a long time.

“Well, we have to be on-call all the time,
and the hours can be strange. Last night, Jer and I were salting
sidewalks until one a.m.”

Jeremiah cleared his throat. “I offered to
let you stay in bed, love.”

She rolled her eyes at him with a sweet
smile. “It was more fun to be out with you, and then warm each
other up when we were done.”

Adam squeezed Dani’s shoulder as Honey and
Jeremiah stared at each other intensely. She looked at Adam and
cupped his face. With a whisper she said, “Lucky.”

“I am,” he said gruffly.

“I meant me,” she said.

“We’re all lucky,” Jeremiah said. “Dade told
me that fewer and fewer wolves are finding their truemates, but it
seems that recently, at least in Wilde Creek, it’s happening a
lot.”

“I wonder if there’s something in the water?”
Honey asked, her eyes dancing.

“Or the timing is right,” Adam said. “No one
had found a truemate for quite a while in the pack, and then Eveny
and Luke got together, which led to Brynn and Acksel, then Malachi
and Nila, and then you two,” he said, gesturing to Honey and
Jeremiah.

“I think it’s supposed to be this way. My
grandma used to say that wolves found their mates in groups and had
babies close together because it was the way that nature ensured
the next generation was close in age. Brynn, Nila, and Eveny are
pregnant. I can’t wait for the fall heat,” Honey said.

Jeremiah growled lustfully and Dani smiled as
Honey blushed. “What’s the fall heat?”

“It happens in September. All females who are
twenty-five or older and aren’t nursing a pup go through a heat. It
lasts about a week. A female can go through the heat with a male
and not get pregnant if he uses condoms, but that makes it last
longer.”

“Condoms make the heat last longer?”

“Because they prevent pregnancy. It’s like
the body gets angry because it’s not being allowed to conceive, so
it takes it out on the female,” Honey said.

“Sounds painful,” Dani said.

Honey shrugged. “We are what we were made to
be. Do reindeer have anything like that?”

“Nope.” Dani was thankful that she didn’t go
through a heat the way that Honey described. It sounded painful and
unpleasant. She couldn’t imagine expecting that sort of thing every
year. She wanted to ask Honey what she-wolves did when they didn’t
have a mate to tend to their needs, but she had a feeling that
Jeremiah wouldn’t like the answer, so she tabled the question for
later when she and Adam were alone.

After the meal was over, Adam and Jeremiah
shooed her and Honey into the family room while they got dessert
ready. Honey excused herself to the bathroom, leaving Dani in the
family room alone. She walked to the large window and pulled back
the curtain. The world was dark, the partial moon obscured by
clouds. She felt Adam before he joined her in the room, and turned
to face him, expecting Jeremiah to be with him, but he was
alone.

“Come here, sweetheart,” he said gruffly,
stopping in front of the couch.

She went to him, clasping his outstretched
hands. They were trembling, and she had just opened her mouth to
ask him what was wrong when he dropped to one knee. Her eyes
widened as he let go of her left hand and reached into the front
pocket of his jeans.

“I wanted to do something amazing so we’d
have a sweet story to tell our kids, but I realized, after what
happened at the house earlier with my…with
him
, that a
flashy story doesn’t make it mean more.” He pulled a ring from his
pocket and held it in front of her left hand. His eyes never left
hers as he very slowly pushed it onto the tip of her finger. She
could feel the weight of the ring on her hand, and her heart began
to pound as she waited what felt like an eternity before he
continued to speak. “I never thought I’d have a mate, let alone
find my truemate naked in the snow. You don’t look at me like I’m
broken. I feel like I can do anything when you’re by my side.
You’re already wearing my marks, but I want you to be mine in every
way. Marry me, Dani. Be my mate and my bride.” He swallowed audibly
and said, “I love you.”