Dawson Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire 5) (7 page)

Kate shoved the covers off her legs, utterly frustrated with her inability to sleep. She’d even counted sheep in desperation, but as she’d almost drifted off, she imagined a wolf chasing the sheep and got upset all over again. She’d spent an hour with her watercolors painting, but that hadn’t even settled her enough.

She’d never in her life had trouble sleeping until Miller McCall, and she was desperate to get back to that. She wanted it all—good dreams, that well-rested feeling in the morning, not dragging all day, and looking less exhausted. It had been two years since she’d seen Miller. Two years the man was dead, and she was still as pathetic as she was when he was around. She’d spent too many nights waiting for him to break into her place and hurt her, she supposed. Too many nights feeling like the world was suffocating her and she was alone with her fear, and now her body was trained to never rest.

Dalton had changed that for a moment, and now she was downright desperate to have more of that warm, well-rested feeling.

She almost wished she’d never met Dalton. One day of relief had made her insomnia unacceptable now.

A soft knock sounded on the door, and she jumped. Fear dumped adrenaline into her system. Slowly, quietly, she opened the drawer to the bedside table and pulled out a machete she kept there. She slid the long blade from its nylon sheath and padded over the cold tile floors toward the door.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“It’s Dalton.”

Kate lifted one of the blinds on the door window with the tip of the curved blade. “It’s late.”

“I know.”

“If this is some kind of booty call, I’m not interested.”

Dalton locked his arms on the doorframe and frowned at the wall beside him. “I’m not here for that. I came to apologize.”

“At four in the morning?”

“Were you asleep?”

Irritated, she sighed, flipped on the light, and opened the door. “No.”

Dalton straightened up. “If I met you a month from now, things would be different. I would be different. Better. Easier. Not so…fucked up.”

“Everyone is effed up, Dalton. At some point, you just have to find someone to share the baggage with.”

He chuckled and scratched the side of his lip with his thumbnail, attention on the machete in her hands. “You would get along well with Nicole.”

Jealousy snaked through her like a poisonous green fog. “Is she your ex?”

His nostrils flared softly, and a smile stretched his lips. “Possessive,” he accused. “Two days with me and already—”

“Stop it. Don’t joke right now. I was hurt tonight. Pushed aside. Pushed away. You kissed me and took me out and then kept me at a distance.”

The smile faded from his face. “I know.”

“Come inside so I can lay into you properly without letting all the heat out.”

Dalton inhaled deeply and strode past her like he was headed for the chopping block. Dutifully, he sat on the couch, rested his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands, and waited.

Kate tossed the machete onto the table, and it clattered over the stack of sketches and paintings she’d been working on. “I like you. A lot.”

Dalton’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “This isn’t how I thought this would go.”

“Shhh. I thought about you today to the point of distraction. I don’t know why. You look half out the door already, ready to run away at any moment. I know you don’t feel the same about me, but still, my stupid heart latched on.”

“Is this the part where you tell me you hate me?” he asked, looking utterly baffled.

“What? No. I would never say that. I’m trying to explain how much I disliked you bolting for your truck when we dipped into a serious conversation. Who said they hated you?”

“Well…” He frowned. “My ex.”

“Well, your ex sounds like a bit—” Kate stopped herself, swallowed the curse down, and sat in the chair across the coffee table from him. “She sounds like a bit of a handful.”

Dalton canted his head like a curious animal. “Elyse is a friend, and Miller’s death wasn’t exactly handled by the police, if you catch my drift. You figured out where that scar on her face came from surprisingly easy, and it scared me.” He dipped his voice lower. “
You
scare me.”

She scared him? That was laughable. She was a buck-thirty of submissive human and he was a danged werewolf whose eyes had lightened to the color of caramel just now. She knew what kind of power he hid. Miller had been able to lift her off the ground by her throat like she weighed no more than air. “The feeling is mutual.”

He watched her for so long she fidgeted and dropped her gaze. The air felt heavy around him now, making it hard to breath.

“Kate, I…” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple dipping to the neck of his white sweater.

She waited for what seemed like hours as he struggled to say something. He scrubbed his hand down his dark stubble and sank back into the couch cushions. He was breathing too hard, looked panicked, so she stood, moved across the room, and sat next to him.

She searched his stunning eyes for a few seconds before she relaxed against his side and slid her arms around his waist.
Let me in.

“I want to be a dad,” he whispered, his body rigid as an ice sculpture beside her. “I always did. I lost—” Dalton inhaled sharply as though he couldn’t breathe, so she loosened her embrace and rested her cheek on his chest. “I lost a baby. A girl. There’s something wrong…with me. I can’t make children right. The girls get sick. And I knew that going into the pregnancy with my ex. We got pregnant accidentally, but I was so fucking happy when she told me. She was scared, and I wasn’t scared enough. I was convinced it was a boy. That I couldn’t have a loss like that. Not me. I’d been a good person. I thought that was it, the family I always wanted. I wasn’t ready at all, didn’t even want an ultrasound to determine the sex because I was just that confident it was a boy. I was cocky. Or maybe deep down I was too scared to find out, I don’t know.” Dalton wrapped his arms around her, too tight, but she kept quiet. “The day she was born, I felt like someone had hit me in the middle with a hammer. We’d packed baby clothes to bring her home, but the second the doctor said it was a girl, my entire world burned. I knew we wouldn’t be taking her home. And my ex wasn’t bonding with her. She wasn’t looking at her. Wasn’t looking at me, like she knew I’d failed her and ruined our family. Or at least, that’s what I thought at the time because I blamed myself completely, so it made sense that she did, too. I held her…” Dalton dragged in a long breath, so Kate held him closer. “I held her all night, listened to every breath because I knew what was coming. And I loved her so much. I wanted her to live. I prayed that I could die instead. I got one day with her. It was quick. Shelby didn’t cry. She was in shock maybe, I don’t know. She held her little body afterward because the doctors said it was good for her to do that for closure, but she didn’t seem interested, and I couldn’t hold her anymore. Just couldn’t. I didn’t want to feel her cold.” Dalton let out a shaky breath. “Shelby broke it off with me then.”

“April first?”

“Yeah.”

“What was her name?”

Dalton rested his cheek against the top of her head and whispered, “Amelia.”

“Beautiful name.”

“For a beautiful girl. She was perfect. Dark hair, dark eyes. She looked Ute, like me.”

“Ute? I thought you were Alaska Native.”

“Nah, I’m Native American. I look like the first Ute in my lineage, Ukiah Dawson. I have pictures of him. My cousin got none of the Ute looks. He looks like a blond Viking and Shelby was blond, too, so I thought I would have a fair-haired baby. I like that Amelia got my traits.”

“You marked her up good,” Kate murmured.

He let off a soft chuckle. “Yeah.”

Carefully, she straddled his lap, then tucked her arms underneath her and snuggled against his chest. Dalton hugged her close, and little by little, his heartbeat settled into a steady, thrumming rhythm under her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For telling me about Amelia.”

“Yeah, well, someone once told me I have to find someone to share my baggage with.”

“Whoever told you that sounds like a genius.”

Dalton snorted, then stood lithely with her in his arms. “Time to sleep, insomniac.” He walked past the coffee table, but froze, then settled her on her feet slowly. “What’s this?”

Horror seized her as he bent over and picked up one of the half-buried watercolor papers she’d painted. She hadn’t hidden that one well enough because she’d never thought she would see Dalton again.

“Nothing,” she rushed, pushing a stack of blank paper over the dark ink rendering of a red, black, and violet phoenix.

“Oooh, you have a big crush on me,” Dalton said, pulling it from under the pile of paper shields she’d created.

She yelped and plucked the damning painting from his fingertips, just to have him yank it back and hold it too high for her to reach.

“This is badass,” he said, studying it.

“I was inspired by your tattoo and was looking for something to paint, and this was a fun idea. I like phoenixes.”

“A phoenix that looks just like my tattoo?” he asked, one eyebrow arched down at her.

“I don’t like people seeing these. I’m not an artist. It’s just something that helps me sleep. Sometimes.”

Dalton folded the painting and shoved it in his pocket. “I’m keeping this.”

“No, you’re not!” She scrabbled for his pocket, but he angled away from her with a teasing grin.

“Too slow, tiny human.”

Kate jolted to a stop, and Dalton’s face shut down completely. He backed away a few steps.

“You should be more careful.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Dalton said. A growl rattled his throat, but he shook his head hard, and the noise cut off.

He was giving her Amelia, but he was keeping the wolf.

Kate swallowed down bile at what she was considering. He wasn’t telling her, and he had his reasons. Reasons she couldn’t comprehend. But he was hinting. Baby girls dying? That must be a werewolf thing. Calling her tiny human? Growling? Allowing her to see his blazing eyes now? He was telling her without telling her.

“Don’t run.” Dang her voice as it trembled, but she was scared. If she let him know she knew, would he kill her? Would he be forced to silence her by whatever laws he and his people abided by? Would he leave and never come back? Miller, Miller, Miller. That man had been crazy and would’ve killed her if he knew she knew. Would Dalton react the same? No. She had to believe he wouldn’t. Had to believe her heart wouldn’t fail her twice. Slowly, she turned around and peeled her thin, red, cotton night gown over her head. She wore panties but no bra so her shameful scar would be visible.

Shaking, she covered her breasts to feel less vulnerable, even though he couldn’t see them with her back to him.

She didn’t hear him approach, but she knew he was there, standing just behind her. A soft touch traced the shameful bite mark in the middle of her back.

“Who besides Miller has seen this?” he gritted out.

“Just you.”

“Did you ask for it?”

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Couldn’t release a single word because admitting this would expose her feelings of helplessness.

Dalton turned her slowly, then hooked a finger under her chin and forced her gaze to his. “Did you?”

“No,” she choked out. “I thought…”

“Say it.”

She closed her eyes, because the fury in his face was terrifying.

“I thought I would turn into one of you. For months, I lived in fear that he would come back and hurt me again. That he would come back and kill me. That I would turn out to be just like him.”

“Open your eyes.” When she did, he said, “That’s not how it works.”

“Well, Miller didn’t exactly explain anything. The sex was consensual, but the bite was not. He left afterward, laughing. He said I was stuck with him now, and I would make a pretty little breeder.”

“That’s not how this works either,” he ground out.

“He disappeared. Or…died. And I didn’t Turn. I figured I was safe when nothing happened.”

“Who have you told?”

“Only you.”

Dalton’s eyes were so light, a blazing gold now. “Just so you know how I am, so you know what I’m capable of, if Miller was alive, I would avenge you. I would kill him, and then I’d leave his body for the ravens to pick clean. I wouldn’t have any regrets taking his life. If that scares you, tell me to leave.”

“You do scare me.”

Dalton took a step back, acceptance slashing through his inhuman eyes.

“But not because of what you are. I’m scared because I don’t want you to hurt me.”

“I won’t.”

“You will if you run. If you leave. If you realized I’m not enough, like everyone else does.”

“You aren’t scared of the animal?” he asked.

“Should I be?”

Dalton shook his head slowly back and forth. “He’s yours.”