“Great. Thanks.” She moved to all fours and took one of the cups of stew before crawling backward and placing it at the far end of the tent in the same spot where she’d put the soup. “Can you stay awhile?”
“Not long.”
She reached for the other cup of stew, but he set it down by the entrance. Instead of taking off his boots, he sat with his feet outside the tent.
She was disappointed that he’d be leaving soon, but he knew best how to handle things with Donald. She sat cross-legged and picked up her stew. “I guess our friend’s still suspicious.”
“Actually, he’s not. I took care of that.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And how did you do that, pray tell?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Roarke Wallace, if you—”
“It was the logical answer, and I want to thank you for suggesting it.”
“I did not!”
“Keep your voice down. You’re supposed to be getting sicker and feverish as the infection sets in. In fact, I’m taking back one helping of stew so I can tell him you weren’t hungry.”
“But what about your dinner?”
“I have some jerky in my pack. I’ll be fine.”
“I want you to eat mine, then.” She shoved it toward him. “I’m just lying here. You’re the one who needs energy.”
“Abby, you might as well eat the stew, because I’m not going to. And I need to get out of here soon with at least one empty cup.”
She glared at him mutinously.
“Don’t be stubborn, Red Riding Hood. Eat your stew. If you don’t, you’ll just be causing more problems for the operation.”
Abby didn’t like the way this was turning out, but she ate the stew. “So what did you do that convinced Donald this was legit?”
“Just used a razor blade on my calf where he wouldn’t be able to see what I’d done. Honestly, it was no big deal. I didn’t need much blood because I wiped my hands in it and then made sure I washed them in his line of sight. He assumed I’d just come from your tent. I didn’t have to say a word.”
She blew out a breath. “I am really, really mad at you.”
“I hope you’ll forgive me quick, then.”
“Why?”
“The Sasquatch pair is traveling faster than I expected. It’s time for me to intercept them before they get too close.”
She began to tremble and put down the tin cup in hopes he wouldn’t notice her shaking. Suddenly the plan seemed filled with danger. He might be a werewolf, but he’d be facing two really huge creatures. “Is it safe for you to confront them alone?”
“Perfectly safe. Weres and Sasquatch get along fine.”
“So this is it.”
“Yes, this is it. You might want to give me your bottle of ibuprofen now.”
“Okay.” She reached for the pack she’d been using as a pillow and unzipped one of the pockets. “If you have to show these to Donald when you get back, just hold them so you’re covering up the label.” She handed him the container.
“I will.” He slipped the container into his jacket pocket. “I’m going to tell Donald that you’d rather be left alone, but I can’t guarantee he won’t come over here and bore you to death.”
She managed a smile. “I can handle him.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I possibly can. I don’t know if it’s logical for me to put in an appearance before morning, but just know that I’ll be around long before that, watching over you.”
“As a wolf?”
“Yes.”
She crawled over toward him. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I don’t want to, either.” He cupped her cheek in one large hand and leaned forward to kiss her gently. He lifted his mouth from hers. “When I come back, we’ll have to concentrate on getting out of here, so I can arrange for the Sasquatch transfer.”
“So no more nooky.”
“No.” He kissed her again. Then, with a groan, he kissed her harder, thrusting his tongue in deep. Then he pulled back and gazed into her eyes as his filled with sorrow. “Thanks for everything, Miss Riding Hood.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Wolf.”
Grabbing the tin cups, he edged out of the tent and zipped it closed.
She sat back on her heels and closed her eyes so she could savor the taste of him that lingered on her mouth. Her lips still tingled from his last forceful kiss, but the rest of her was blissfully numb. She would love to keep it that way, but she knew any minute her brain would send a message to her heart, and then all hell would break loose.
Chapter 18
Roarke didn’t have any trouble sounding worried when he hurried over to where Donald sat just inside his tent eating his stew. Leaving Abby to the care of this doofus, even if she wasn’t actually injured, went against Roarke’s every instinct. But he had no choice if he expected to solve the Bigfoot problem.
“Bad news, Donald.” He held the two cups of stew, the one Abby had eaten and the one he hadn’t touched. “Her wound’s infected and she’s running a fever.” He held up the full cup of stew. “She couldn’t eat.”
Behind his thick lenses, Donald’s eyes looked huge. “Good God. What are we going to do? The Sasquatch could be here by morning!”
“They could, but they’ll probably stop for the night, so it could be midday before they arrive.” Roarke was counting on the pair stopping to rest. “I hope to be back before they get here.”
Donald’s eyes got even bigger and he scrambled to his feet, spilling some stew on his orange sweatshirt. “You’re leaving?”
“I want you to stay with Abby while I head back to get some antibiotics for her.”
“No reputable doctor will give you a prescription without seeing her.”
Roarke mentally thanked Abby for giving him the answer to that one. “I have a friend who will, once I describe the situation. Look, I’ll travel as fast as I can. Believe me, adrenaline is pumping through my system and I’ll make good progress.”
“Yes, but—”
“I hope to get back here before the Sasquatch pair arrives, but in case I don’t, I’ll feel good knowing you’re here, getting the evidence and watching over Abby.”
“But what should I do about her? Does she need me to sponge her down?”
“No!”
Donald shrank back in alarm.
Roarke toned down his response. “I mean, she would hate that, being so modest and all.”
“Well, yeah, but if she has a fever, I’ve always heard you’re supposed to sponge people down.”
Roarke hated that idea on so many levels. “You might cause her to start bleeding again if you did that.”
“Oh.” Donald paled. “Well, then, better not chance it.”
“She’s not going to die, so don’t panic. But I can’t expect her to hike back out of here when she has a fever and she needs something to counteract that infection.”
“No, no, of course she can’t hike out when she’s like this.”
“Once she has the antibiotics, she’ll start to recover. But I need to get them for her now.”
“Right, right. It’s just that I thought you’d be here when Samson and Delilah showed up.”
“Who?”
“The Sasquatch pair.”
“They don’t have names.”
Donald brightened. “They do now! I named them today, while you were taking care of Abby. It’ll play better with the media if we give them each a name, like everyone uses Nessie for the Loch Ness Monster. Personalizes the creatures, you know. It would be good if you started referring to them that way, too.”
Roarke started to deny that he’d ever refer to the Sasquatch pair by the names Samson and Delilah, but decided not to waste his breath. It wouldn’t matter, because Donald would never make contact with them.
“We should name the baby, too.”
Roarke patted Donald on the shoulder. “You think about that while I’m gone. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll throw a few things into my pack and be off.” He turned toward his tent.
“I sure wish we got cell reception out here,” Donald called after him.
“But we don’t,” Roarke said over his shoulder. And now he was thrilled about that. “I’m afraid hiking back is my only option.” He made a dash for his tent before Donald could hold him up any longer. The Sasquatch odor grew stronger with every passing minute.
Fortunately the rain seemed to be letting up, which would make the forest floor a little less slippery as he loped along. Anticipating this change into wolf form, he’d brought a plastic bag for his backpack and his clothes. He stuffed that in the empty pack along with Abby’s ibuprofen. He decided to leave his watch in the tent. Donald wouldn’t notice he wasn’t wearing it and it was one less thing to leave out in the forest after he shifted.
As a human, he would have needed to take more on this trip. As a wolf, he needed nothing, but he had to leave camp as if he were a man going for a long hike, so he tucked some other clothes in the pack. In the process he came across the handkerchief he’d made into a headband. He allowed himself one long inhale before shoving that into his pack, too.
He was ready. Ducking out of the tent, he zipped it closed and stood. “See you, Donald.”
Donald stood watching him, anxiety etched on his round face. “Hurry.”
“Don’t worry. I will.” Then he walked quickly over to Abby’s tent. “Bye, Abby,” he said softly.
“Bye, Roarke.” She sounded a little bit nasal, as if she’d been crying.
“It’ll be okay.”
“I know.”
Shit, she had been crying. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about that. Anything he said would only make it worse. “Bye,” he said again, and walked away before he could hear her response.
In order to fool Donald, he had to walk back the way they’d come, at least until he had enough cover. As the light faded from the sky, he plowed quickly through the trees and underbrush, following the trampled leaves and broken branches from their passage through here earlier.
He walked nearly a mile before he considered it safe to strip down. As he took off his clothes and stuffed everything in the plastic bag he’d brought, he thought of Abby’s pictures and wondered what she planned to do with them. If she cared about him the way he cared about her, she’d destroy the flash drive and the prints when she returned to her grandfather’s place.
She was in control of that decision, because she hadn’t told him where she’d hidden the flash drive, only that her grandfather would look there if for some reason she turned up missing. But she wouldn’t turn up missing. She’d be fine in camp until he could go back for her.
Telling himself that and believing it were two different things. As he lay on the cold ground and willed his shift, he realized that being separated from Abby was a condition he didn’t care for at all. It felt unnatural, as if he’d left part of himself back at camp.
But he wouldn’t want her here, either, to witness his transformation into a wolf. She might have pictures of it, but that was one step removed. Aidan claimed that Emma was used to seeing her husband shift, but Roarke questioned that.
He still believed in the separation of humans and werewolves. It defied the natural order to throw them together. What a cruel joke, that fate had placed Abby in his path.
As he rose from the ground and shook himself from head to tail, he glanced down at his large forepaws. A few hours ago, they’d been human hands capable of caressing Abby. How could he expect her to accept that he could become . . . this? He couldn’t.
Nudging the plastic bag under a bush with his nose, he turned, caught the scent of the Sasquatch, and headed back the way he’d come. When he sighted the camp through the trees, he paused, head up. A light was on in Abby’s tent, and . . . damn it to hell, that traffic cone of a man was sitting in front of the open flap, probably droning on about his accomplishments at Sony.
Roarke fought the urge to charge in, take him by the throat, and shake him like a rag doll. But that would be stupid. Although Donald wouldn’t know the wolf shaking him was Roarke, he’d certainly tell everyone who would listen about his life-threatening encounter with a giant beast, and Weres didn’t need stories like that floating around.
Skirting the camp, Roarke picked up the pace. He had a job to do.
Abby pretended to fall asleep during Donald’s description of a conference he’d attended as, of course, a featured speaker. Donald didn’t seem to care whether she was conscious or not. Abby wondered if he talked to the wall at home. She couldn’t imagine Donald not talking. For all she knew, he held some sort of world record.
“So then, you’ll never guess who came up to me after my speech,” Donald said.
Abby faked a soft snore.
“The Terminator himself! Arnie! I pointed a finger at him and said, in his accent, Hasta la vista, baby, and he just cracked up. He said I should’ve been an actor. Which I thought about back in college, but I—” Donald paused. “Did you hear something?”
Abby’s eyes snapped open. She couldn’t possibly have heard something with Donald droning on, but now that he’d stopped, she did hear a rustling noise. Were those footsteps?
Propping herself on her elbows, she rose so she could see Donald. She’d no sooner done that than he scrambled into the tent with her and zipped the flap. Like that would protect him.
Outside a stick cracked as if someone, or something, had stepped on it. All the possibilities ran through Abby’s head—Bigfoot had given Roarke the slip, a bear had smelled their food and wanted some, a herd of deer had shown up now that the werewolf had left the area. Or it could be a human, although why a human wouldn’t call out a greeting made her think whatever was out there wasn’t human.