Alaskan Sanctuary (2 page)

She’d expected to have to explain what exactly the NNC was and the types of monetary aid they provided for ecological programs that qualified, but it appeared Mr. Hale had already done his homework.

Good
, she told herself.
Maybe this means he understands how important this is. He gets it.

“Not yet.” She cleared her throat. “These things take time. I’m still putting together the necessary paperwork. But applying for certification is my immediate goal, because once we have NNC approval, we can provide care for animals on the endangered list.”

He crossed his arms. She’d just confessed her dearest wish, and he didn’t look the least bit impressed. “So you intend to bring more species into the area.”

“I hope so.”

He glanced out a frost-covered window toward the enclosures. “Will these additional animals be dangerous predators, as well?”

Dangerous predators?

Maybe he didn’t get it, after all.

“While wolves are indeed predators, I wouldn’t be so quick to call them dangerous. Particularly rescued wolves living in captivity.” Her hands were shaking. She forced a smile. “Unless you’re a bunny rabbit.”

“Or a child.” A muscle in his jaw twitched, and suddenly it seemed as though the most dangerous predator in Alaska was Ethan Hale himself.

How was this interview going so horribly wrong when he’d yet to set eyes on a single one of the animals?

Yes!
That was the answer. He simply needed to see the wolves for himself, then he would realize they weren’t the ravenous, bloodthirsty monsters that he was apparently imagining.

“Why don’t I give you a tour of the sanctuary? I think that will put to rest any worries you might have.” At least she hoped it would. At the rate things were going, she wasn’t quite sure.

He walked wordlessly out the door and into the snow. Piper took a deep breath and followed. The crisp morning air swirled with snowflakes as she led him down the path toward the wolf enclosures, their footsteps muffled by a blanket of pine needles. When she paused at the first metal gate and turned to look at Ethan Hale, snow had already begun to frost the tips of his dark eyelashes. He looked less angry out here, beneath the snow-covered blue boughs of the hemlock trees. As if he belonged here, in Alaska’s white, wild outdoors.

She wished he were less handsome. Disliking him would have been easier, and so far, he hadn’t given her much reason to like him.

She looked away and focused instead on the white wolf peering at them from behind the chipped gray bark of an aspen tree. “This is Tundra. She’s an Arctic wolf, and it looks as though she’s decided to play hard to get.”

He squinted into the wind. “I don’t see anything.”

“She’s behind the tree. Look for the pair of copper eyes blinking back at you.”

“There she is. Her white coat is quite striking in the snow.” A hint of a smile creased his rugged face and then vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

Those annoying butterflies began to dance again. Piper assured herself they’d reappeared only because she’d succeeded in drawing a smile from him, if just for a fleeting moment.

“She’s a beauty.” Piper reached into her pocket for a chunk of dried meat. “Here, toss this over the fence.”

He eyed her open palm for a second before reaching for the treat with fingertips that felt unexpectedly warm in the frosty air.

“Go ahead. Give it a good throw.”

He did, and Tundra charged out from behind the aspen tree in a flurry of kicked-up snow and powder-white fur. She leaped a foot off the ground, a flying snow angel, and caught the treat midair.

“Impressive,” he said.

“Would you believe that until three months ago, she’d never been outdoors? A pair of college kids in Canada got her as a pup from an illegal breeder and decided to keep her as a pet—” Piper paused “—in the bathtub of their dorm.”

Ethan Hale’s brows rose. “The bathtub?”

“The bathtub. They fed her mainly pizza and leftovers from the dorm cafeteria. They thought it was cute. Then she grew into an adolescent wolf.” Piper watched Tundra make a sweeping circle around the perimeter of her enclosure. Piper could have stood in the same spot all day, watching this wolf run. Free at last. “Tundra has no idea how to live in nature like a real wolf. She’d never survive on her own. But wolves are wild animals and aren’t meant to be pets, either. Wild is wild. This place is her last resort.”

“How’d she get here?” he asked.

“I drove to Edmonton and picked her up.”

The corner of Ethan’s lips quirked up. It was only a half smile this time, but she’d take what she could get. “You drove to the middle of Canada to rescue a wolf from a dorm bathroom?”

Piper shrugged. “How else was she going to get here?”

He looked at her with an expression she couldn’t quite decipher. “I suppose you have a point.”

“Come on, I’ll show you the others.”

As they walked from one enclosure to the next, she gave him a brief history of each wolf—its age, type, where it had come from and the circumstances that had led to its rescue. She explained that so far, the sanctuary was home to two wolf species—the Arctic and the Timber. Once the rescue center was accredited, she planned to provide sanctuary for the Mexican Gray wolf, as it was in serious danger of extinction. There were only seventy-five of them left in the wild.

If this sad fact tugged on Ethan Hale’s heartstrings in any way, he gave no indication. Piper was beginning to wonder if he even had a heart.

But she’d saved the best for last—Koko. He pranced right up to the fence to greet them, ears pricked forward, ebony coat dusted with snow. Beside her, the reporter tensed as Koko pushed his muzzle through the chain link.

“Are they always so...so...” Ethan frowned. Piper wouldn’t have thought it possible for a face so handsome to frown any harder. Yet somehow the tense set of his stony jaw made him appear even more mysterious. Impassioned. Alpha-esque.

Good grief. What was wrong with her? She’d been hanging around wolves too long. Clearly.

“I suppose the word I’m looking for is
agitated
.” Something flickered in the restless depths of his moody gray eyes. “They seem borderline aggressive. Are the wolves always this wound up?”

Are you?

“Actually, a more appropriate description would be playful. Not agitated.” Piper smiled as sweetly as she could manage, given the circumstances—the circumstances being that the future of her wolf sanctuary, her lifelong dream, now rested on whatever this...this arrogant jerk decided to write in his newspaper.

How had it come to this? She’d packed up and moved from Colorado to Alaska with little more than the clothes on her back and a trailerful of rescued wolves. She’d spent every penny she had on this place. She’d taken a leap of faith. Didn’t God normally like that sort of thing?

She hadn’t been running away, no matter how badly things had ended with Stephen. She’d been running toward something. Her future. And now a very large part of that future depended on this interview, this interview that was going so horribly wrong.

She lifted her chin and did her best to ignore the way Ethan Hale was looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. “And the answer to your question is no. They’re not always this active. It’s the weather. Wolves love a pretty snowfall. Doesn’t everyone?”

Ethan scribbled something in his notebook, again without cracking a smile.

Not everyone. Obviously.

Piper couldn’t let the tour end this way. She just couldn’t. This man needed to meet a wolf, one on one. He needed to look into Koko’s eyes and see him the way that she did.

“Let’s go.” She unfastened the lock on the first gate, held the door open and waited for Ethan to follow.

“What?”
He stood rooted to the spot. “Where is it that you think you’re going?”

“Inside, of course.” She motioned toward Koko, watching the two of them with keen interest. “And you’re coming with me.”

* * *

Ethan stared at Piper. Standing in the snow with her blond hair whipping in the wind, framed by evergreens and wolves moving among the shadows, she looked like Red Riding Hood come to life. Then again, maybe her crimson parka was messing with his head.

“Come on.” She beckoned to him, as if he’d been waiting his whole life to follow her into a wolf den.

“Right.” He rolled his eyes. She couldn’t possibly be serious.

By all appearances, she was. She stood staring at him, holding the first of two metal barred gates open. Waiting.

“I don’t think so,” he said grimly, and turned to leave, to go back to his cubicle in the newsroom where he couldn’t feel the kiss of snow on his face or smell the perfume of alder wood and forest that had once clung to his skin, his hair and every piece of clothing he’d ever worn. Back to a place where he wouldn’t be forced to remember things best left forgotten.

“Suit yourself,” she called out from behind him.

He heard the gate clang closed. Good, she’d come to her senses and was back on this side of the fence, where any reasonable person belonged.

He kept walking. He’d already been here too long. Where had the day gone? He’d unwittingly spent more than three hours listening to Piper wax poetic about her wolves. How on earth had he let that happen?

Without turning around, he held up his hand in a parting wave. “Goodbye, Ms. Quinn.”

“I asked you to call me Piper, remember?” She sounded farther away than she should have.

Then Ethan heard the jingle of keys.

Gut clenching, he turned around. Sure enough, she was unlocking the second gate, about to step right inside the enclosure. With the wolf. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I told you.” She shrugged. “I’m going inside.”

“No, you’re not.” Ethan had no intention of watching her walk in there by herself. Alone. Behind two locked gates where he couldn’t get to her if something went wrong.

Leave it. She’s a grown woman.

Clearly she’d done this before, and she’d lived to tell about it. But wolves weren’t pets. They weren’t dogs, cats or harmless little hamsters. They were wild animals.
Wild is wild.
She’d said so herself.

“I know what I’m doing, Mr. Hale. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” An unspoken challenge glimmered in her eyes. Eyes the color of glaciers in springtime.

Afraid?
What did she think he was afraid of? Death?

Death would have been easy. Survival, on the other hand, had been far more difficult. Even now, five years later, he still wished it had been him. It
should
have been him.

He crossed his arms. “Do I look scared?”

The only thing he was afraid of was watching her put her life on the line. He’d seen this sort of thing go badly before. Once. And once had been more than enough.

“Actually, no. You look angry.” She turned the key. Even from where he stood, Ethan could hear the padlock release. “You know, the company of an animal is scientifically proven to lower blood pressure.”

“I highly doubt that applies to wild animals. Kittens, yes. Wolves, not so much.” Nor pretty blonde animal rescuers. In fact, right now, it was a toss-up as to which one of them was a bigger pain in his neck—the wolf or Piper.

“You’ll never know unless you give it a try.” She glanced at the dark wolf standing just on the other side of the unlocked gate.

Ethan stared at Koko.

The wolf looked back at him with the same cool detachment Ethan had seen in the eyes of other wild animals. Wolves. Mountain lions. Bears. One bear in particular.

Bile rose to the back of Ethan’s throat.

“I’m going in. It’s now or never.” Piper raised an expectant brow.

As much as Ethan wanted to leave, to climb in his car and head back down the mountain, he couldn’t. Not if it meant leaving her locked in a pen with a wolf.

“Fine.” He stomped back toward the enclosure.

Piper beamed at him, entirely too pleased with herself. Ethan just shook his head and tried to slow the adrenaline pumping through his system. Every nerve in his body was on high alert, prepared to deal with the worst.

She locked the first gate behind him, and suddenly it was just the two of them in the small fenced-in space between the double entrances. She stood close enough for him to see tiny flecks of green in her blue eyes. Nature looking back at him. Her hair whipped in the wind, a halo of spun gold.

Ethan nearly forgot about the wolf standing behind her.

“There are a few rules before we go inside.” Her voice went soft, as if she felt it, too—the unexpected intimacy of the moment.

The wolf moved behind her, a shifting shadow in the violet Alaskan light, catching Ethan’s eye. “I’d imagine there are.”

“When we walk inside, just ignore him. Let Koko come to you on his own terms.”

In other words, don’t go chasing the wolf. “Got it.”

“He may get up on his hind legs and put his front paws on your shoulder. This means he’s curious, not aggressive. Whatever you do, don’t push him away.”

Ethan didn’t have a problem with this particular rule, either. If the wolf wanted to slow dance with him, so be it. At least it meant he would be the only one in harm’s way. Not her.

“And he will definitely lick your mouth.”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “Oh, joy.”

“It’s how wolves greet each other. Just keep your mouth closed, and you’ll be fine. Don’t turn your face away under any circumstances.”

Now the rules were getting a little strange. “You’re telling me to stand there and let a one-hundred-and-twenty-pound wolf kiss me on the mouth?”

“One hundred and forty,” she corrected.

“Even better.”

She ignored his sarcasm. “And yes, let him lick your face. It’s customary wolf behavior. Koko’s an alpha. If you turn away, he’ll be highly offended.”

And would that really be such a tragedy?
“Got it.”

“Good.” She shot him a dazzling smile. “Then we’re ready.”

She turned around to slide the padlock off the interior gate. Without even realizing what he was doing, Ethan reached for her elbow. His touch said what his lips wouldn’t.