To Catch a Wolf (19 page)

constant and indisputable as a heartbeat. I am not alone.

It was not that Morgan had welcomed her with open arms as a fellow werewolf. But she

had seen his eyes widen and his guard drop for just an instant when she had told him

what she was.

The man she had glimpsed behind the mask

oh, that unveiling was fully as powerful

as learning his secret. He had claimed she could not be of his blood because she lived

in a city and enjoyed a comfortable life. Yet when she had spoken of her mother, there

was such understanding in his eyes, such compassion, that she could have wept.

That unexpected sympathy was the reason that she let self-pity slip its tight rein. She

had said little of the accident, but it was so much more than she had ever told to anyone

except Papa, just before he died. She had even admitted that her mother and father had

not been married.

Thank heaven she had recovered before she could wallow in events long past and

irreversible. She had been able to accept Morgan's final rebuff—and his touch on her

body—without flinching. And she had seen that all the tough ferocity he exhibited

covered a great vulnerability and the sorrow of profound loss.

Loss so similar to her own. And he was loyal to his fellow troupers, protective of them as

any elder brother might be. Yet his last words to her held a cryptic warning: "Do not

mistake enemies for allies.”

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What had he meant? Surely Morgan was not her enemy. She would have liked—even

been grateful for—his friendship.

Friendship? Did you hope that he could share some great mystery that you never

discovered? What kind of relationship can exist when you will likely never see him again

once the circus has gone?

Had she not restored the boundaries between them—the high walls of money,

temperament, and belief? Did those walls not reach far higher than even the strongest

wolf, whole of limb, could leap?

And why should she think he would ever wish to scale such barriers? He wanted no part

of them.

Yet

You are not alone, her heart insisted. And neither is he.

She rapped her hand on the arm of her chair and turned hard away from the window.

Sleep was what she required.

A good night's rest cured so many ills, purged a multitude of unproductive thoughts.

Most especially thoughts of what she should not want and could never have.

She bit her lip and frowned at the bed. Ordinarily she would call for Fran to assist her in

moving from chair to bedstead, but it was pure selfishness to drag Fran out of her own

cot at such an hour. Was it such an insurmountable gap, those few inches between her

chair and the bed? Her arms were strong enough. The tiny ember of rebellion that had

disturbed her of late, nursed along by the day's events, sparked into a flame.

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Setting her jaw, she wheeled the chair as close to the bed as she could, aligning them

side by side. She took a firm grip on the iron railing that ran the length of the bed,

designed to keep her from falling out.

Perspiration broke out on her forehead, though the room was cool. The muscles in her

arms already ached with the effort to come.

You can do this. You are strong enough. Alternately pushing and pulling, she began to

transfer her weight from the chair to the bed rails. Her arms screamed in protest. She

clenched her teeth and dragged herself up and over to the gap in the rail.

The chair rolled a few inches away. The space between it and the bed grew

accordingly, widening into a chasm. The hem of her dressing gown caught on the arm

of her chair. A stab of very real pain shot down her spine and lodged at its root.

She did not cry out. She would win, or they could find her on the floor in the morning.

She made another laborious effort, and her dressing grown ripped and then slid from

her shoulders.

For a moment she hung suspended between bed and chair, her upper half almost

almost

flat on the coverlet. Then some movement of her body shoved the chair

another precious inch away. The dead weight of her lower half pulled her down, down,

like grasping hands reaching from perdition.

She tumbled. Her elbow struck the bed railing as she fell, shooting pain into arm and

shoulder. Far, far worse was the slow, ignominious slide to the floor.

She lay on the carpet, her nightdress bunched up about her useless knees and her

elbow numb from the blow. Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes. She let them

fall. No one would see them tonight. But in the morning

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Rolling onto her stomach, she pushed up on her arms. It might take hours, but she

could make it back to the chair or the bed. If one was not possible, the other must be.

God forbid that Niall should find her like this.

A faint noise came from the direction of the stairs: footsteps ascending, so soft that she

had to strain to hear them.

Morgan Holt had made her more aware of the keen senses she had always taken for

granted. She knew the step of every member of the household, from Fran's light patter

to Niall's purposeful thump. But this was not a tread she recognized.

Her skin began to prickle. Instinctively she reached for the hem of her nightdress and

tried to tug it down over her knees. The movement set her off balance, and she fell back

on her sore elbow just as the footsteps came to a halt outside her door.

It swung open. A familiar, disturbingly fascinating scent blew in with biting October air.

The doorway filled with a lean and powerful figure.

Morgan Holt had come to return her call.

Morgan knew, when he opened the door, that Athena Munroe's alluring scent had led

him to the right room. But she was not where he expected her to be.

She lay on the floor beside the fancy four-poster, her awkwardly bent legs half-covered

by her nightdress, her face pinched with a mighty effort to conceal shock and pain. He

knew at once what she had been trying to do.

He closed the door behind him and knelt beside her. Her shudder did not make him

hesitate; he set his arms under her shoulders and knees and lifted her onto the bed.

She brushed frantically at her gown, intent upon hiding her legs from his sight.

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With an effort at detachment that should have come easily, he pulled the hem down to

her ankles and drew the crumpled blankets to her waist. His fingertips brushed her calf;

he snatched his hands away, but not before he felt the warmth of her damp skin and

suffered a jolt of breathtaking arousal.

She flushed. "What are you doing here?”

His physical response to her left him so shaken that he could find no answer. Her

emotions cascaded over him like a flash flood in the desert, and not a single one of his

most impregnable defenses could hold them back.

Chagrin. Anger. Shame. All her self-contained pride was lost, for he had witnessed her

failure. She recoiled from him, but it was not only because a man of her kind did not

touch a woman so intimately unless he was her mate. She was ashamed because she

was vulnerable, exposed—a wingless bird to be ridiculed, a rabbit to be devoured. She,

who should have been strong and free.

His mind formed a picture of her rising stiffly from her chair, grimly bent on reaching her

bed—her brave efforts to persevere even when her body betrayed her—her humiliating

tumble to the floor. He knew what it was to regard a simple movement from chair to bed

as if it were a leap across a hundred-foot chasm.

And how much courage it took to live with that insurmountable obstacle every day of her

life.

Her gaze met his. He was the one, now, who recoiled at the assault upon his senses

and his heart. It was as raw as an open wound, this terrible sharing. His skin seemed to

take heat from hers, though they did not touch; he looked away only to discover the

gentle swell of her breasts beneath the fine lawn of her nightdress, and the teasing

disarray of her loose brown hair.

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He crouched beside the bed, as much to protect himself as to become less threatening

in her eyes. He was the invader here. This was her place, her territory; she could order

him to leave. He would be smart to obey and run before

before

"How did you get in?" she demanded. Her voice had grown more sure, though it

cracked in midsentence. "The servants—”

"Did not hear me. But you did.”

"Yes." She sat up against a bolster of pillows, drawing the blanket with her. "That does

not explain why you come in the middle of the night, break into our house, and walk

right into my

my room as if you had a right

”

"No right, but a reason," he said quietly, balancing his arms across his knees. "I came to

bring you a message. Your brother—”

"If my brother were here—”

"But he is not.”

"Do you make a habit of trespassing like a thief, Mr. Holt, when there is no man to stop

you?”

He could not help but admire the increasing steadiness of her voice and the directness

of her gaze. Nor could he be angry with her after what he had witnessed. Here was not

the nice, formally polite, and benevolent lady who had descended from on high to view

her brother's surprise gift. This was the woman he had glimpsed briefly in the tent after

the near-accident—the she-wolf reawakened—and he liked her the better for her honest

annoyance.

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Yes, he liked her. Even the word felt strange as he rolled it around in his mind, tasting

and exploring it as if he were a cub with an intriguing bit of bone.

"I come and go where I wish," he said, "but not to do you harm.”

"I do not suppose that your upbringing, whatever it was, taught you that it does

considerable harm to enter a lady's room uninvited and unchaperoned. It is not only

impolite—" She swallowed and gripped the edge of her blanket. "Among

townies,

reputation is something of value. If anyone were to see you here, mine would be

compromised.”

"I know about your rules." He shifted, and her eyes flew to track his motion. "You and

your friends waste too much time worrying about what isn't important.”

"What do you mean by that?" She scooted higher on the pillows, forgetting to adjust her

blanket upward. "What do you know of my friends, or any of the niceties of life?”

He dropped his chin onto his folded arms. Now was as good a time as any. He could tell

her what he had overheard in the Windsor's restaurant. It might be a kindness to set her

free from her illusions.

But he looked at her face and knew that the truth would destroy her. She was not strong

enough. Perhaps she would never be. And when the circus left Denver—tomorrow, in a

week, in a month—none of it would matter to him.

It shouldn't matter now. It shouldn't matter that her brother had her on a short leash and

she chose not to see, or that she'd given up half of herself out of fear of losing what little

she had.

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What little she had. She would laugh at him if he said that, surrounded as she was with

luxury and everything money could buy. All the things his family had done without, that

his father had been so hungry for.

"You were right about my upbringing, Miss Munroe," he said. "We didn't have much. We

lived in a small cabin in the mountains. One bed and a cot. Only the fire and candles for

light. My parents—my ma hunted, and we fished and sold furs in town. We had books,

but no schooling." Memories thick with the dust of years emerged from then-hidden

places, raising a fog in his mind. "We didn't need anything else, until Pa—”

Stop. He drove the memories back into oblivion and got to his feet. Where in hell had

that come from? Why here, with her? She was no part of his past, or his future. And his

future stretched no further than the next moment.

"Your parents," Athena said, her voice suddenly gentle. "You said that you hadn't seen

your family since you were a boy. To lose them at so young an age

I am sorry that I

spoke as I did.”

He forced himself to look at her. Her face had resumed that gracious, almost saintly

expression, raising in him a desire to snap and snarl until she lost it again. Deliberately

he raked his gaze from her eyes to her chin and lower, where the high collar of her

nightdress hugged the graceful arc of her neck.