Circle of Desire (23 page)

Ethan nodded. “I told him as much. He ordered me to wait.”

“And are you going to follow his orders?”

“Nope.” He took a sip of coffee, his gaze distant. “Janie’s time is running out. If we don’t find her today or tomorrow, we’re not going to find her at all.”

“I feel the same way, wolf.” Gwen sighed and rose stiffly from the stool. “I’ve got some packs ready with zombie deterrents and sleep potions in them. I’ll just add some stakes, then you’re ready to go.”

E
THAN WATCHED HER WALK AWAY
. H
ER HOBBLING WAS
worse this morning and pain pinched her mouth. “Why is your grandmother doing this?” he asked once Gwen had gone.

Kat’s glance was quizzical. “Doing what?”

“This. Chasing bad things. Why do it when she’s old enough to retire?”

“She’s also strong enough to turn you over her knee and paddle your butt for even suggesting such a thing.”

He couldn’t help smiling. “I reckon she’d enjoy it, too.”

Kat’s own smile was fleeting. “You’d better believe it.”

Ethan sipped his coffee and studied Kat. There was strain around her eyes and shadows beneath them. He’d thought they’d settled all their problems last night, but looking at her now, he had to wonder.

“So, why isn’t your mother here helping?”

Her expression tightened. “My mother is dead.”

He hesitated but didn’t apologize. He could never understand exactly why people did that, though as a cop, he’d certainly done enough of it himself.

“Did she die on the job?”

She snorted. “No. She overdosed.”

“Deliberately?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Does any addict overdose deliberately?”

“Yes.” And far too often for anyone’s liking.

Her gaze slid from his. “I have no idea whether it was deliberate or not. Gwen probably knows, but I’ve never asked.”

“Why not?”

“Because I barely knew her.”

“Were you young when she died?”

Her smile was bitter, and her hurt swam around him. “I was ten. But she never had much to do with me.”

“Why?”

“Because I was a hindrance to her social life. Gran raised me from the time I was born.”

And if that hurt was anything to go by, she resented the abandonment, if only on a subconscious level. “And she never tried to help your mother?”

She gave him a long look. “Addicts have to want to be helped before you can help them. You should know that.”

“I reckon your grandmother could convince a cat to shower if she wanted to.”

“I reckon she probably could. But Mom was her daughter and every bit as strong-minded.”

“What about your dad?”

She looked away again. “I never knew my dad.”

He hesitated. Her stance was still and straight, and the emotions that swam around him thick with pain. Yet he had to ask the question, if only because he sensed this could explain why she was the way she was—strong and independent, yet oddly vulnerable. “Why not?”

She looked at him. Tears touched her green eyes but were quickly blinked away. “Because my mother sold herself to feed her habit. My father could have been any one of the dozen men she’d had on the day of my conception.”

It was a familiar enough story—many addicts fed their habit that way. He took a sip of his coffee, then said, “It sounds as if you know who her clients were that day.”

She snorted softly. “I do. I stupidly asked her once. She gave me a very detailed account of the possibilities.”

A charming woman, from the sound of it. “And you never tried to track any of them down, just to see?”

She looked at him, her expression closed but her eyes filled with sudden anger. “Why should I? Mom was nothing more than a body on which they rutted to relieve themselves. What difference would it make knowing which one of them was my father?”

So they were back to
that
again. “Kat—”

She held out a hand. “I’ve heard all the bullshit, Ethan. I don’t want to hear it again.”

“I told you the truth last night.” His voice was amazingly calm, given the anger beginning to surge through his veins. “Don’t keep pushing for what we both know isn’t there.”

“You told me part of the truth,” she shot back. “As much as you thought I needed to know, nothing more.”

“Because there is nothing of importance left to say.” Nothing except the reason his world, his heart, had shattered so completely.

Pain rose like a tide, threatening to engulf him. Even now, all these years later, that night still haunted him. The image of Jacinta, deliberately throwing herself down those stairs … He shuddered and finished his coffee in one long gulp.

It didn’t drown the images of all the blood. On her head, between her legs …

“I’ll wait in the car.” He slammed the cup down on the railing and stalked toward the vehicle.

Kat joined him about ten minutes later. She threw a pack onto the backseat, then fastened her seat belt. He started the car and headed for the mountains.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a few minutes.

She didn’t sound sorry. “Forget it.”

His voice was still brusque, and she sighed. “Ethan, how old were you when you met Jacinta?”

He barely glanced at her. “I told you last night. Seventeen.”

“And she was your first?”

He smiled grimly. “Hardly. When puberty hits, so too does the power of the moon.”

“But she was the first woman you’d really fallen for, as opposed to just mating with?”

“Yes.” He hesitated. “Why?”

She regarded him for a second, her green eyes serious. “If she was the first woman you felt anything for, how do you really know she was
it
, rather than just a rather heated crush?”

“She wasn’t a crush.” His voice was tight with the anger that rolled through him. “Drop it, Kat.”

She sighed again. “You are really the most stubborn and irritating man.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Amusement swam around him. “I hardly think you can call me a man.”

He couldn’t help smiling, despite the anger. “Well, no.”

“Will you answer just one more question?”

His smile faded as he flexed his fingers against the steering wheel. “Maybe.”

“Why do you say you hate kids so much when you’re obviously close to your niece?”

He relaxed a little. At least this was a question he could answer with practiced ease. “I don’t hate kids. I just don’t want any of my own.”

“Why?”

Because he didn’t want any child of his going through what he’d been through. And the surest way to ensure that was simply not to have any. “That’s a second question.”

“Given you didn’t actually answer the first properly, I think it should be allowed.”

She was persistent, he had to give her that. But he also had to wonder why. Was she thinking about trying to trap him by becoming pregnant? He stared at her for a moment, trying to gauge whether she was capable of such deception. While he didn’t really think she’d stoop so low, the truth was, beyond the physical, they really didn’t know each other all that well.

God, he’d better keep his wits about him and make damn sure they kept using condoms!

“Because,” he lied, his voice a little sharper than necessary, “a werewolf’s sense of family is all tied up with his heart. I can’t physically love any offspring I might sire on any woman other than the one who captured my heart.”

“Yet you love Janie.”

“But she’s not my get, and I don’t love her in the same way.”

“So what would happen if one of your monthly mates were to get pregnant?”

Tension knotted his gut, and he shot her a glance. “Don’t even think about it, Kat. I like you—a lot—but that’s as far as it goes. I don’t love you, and I certainly couldn’t love any offspring you and I might produce.”

“I’m not
thinking
about it, believe me.” Her voice
was hard, almost bitter. “And that didn’t answer the question.”

He took a deep breath, then blew it out in exasperation. “If I answer this, will you promise to drop the subject for good?”

Her gaze searched his briefly. He wondered what the hell she was searching for.

“Yes,” she said after a moment.

“Good.” He hesitated, steering the car around a sharp bend. They were approaching the cabin where he’d found the zombies, and he slowed, needing to look for a place to park. “If one of my mates got pregnant, I would support them financially, but that’s it. I wouldn’t see them again. Wouldn’t see the kid.”

“But why? That’s what I can’t understand.”

He stopped the car in a stand of trees and turned to face her. “Because it’s never good for a child to see his father treating his mother with utter contempt. And that’s all I’d feel for someone who tried to trap me that way.”

She raised an eyebrow. “If the vehemence behind that statement is anything to go by, you’ve seen something like that happen.”

“Yeah,” he said tightly. “My parents.”

Because his mom
had
trapped his dad, even though she’d known what he was. What he was capable of. It was a small town and she’d been scared of ending up alone. Better a freak than nothing, she’d once told him.

But their often bitter relationship was another reason he’d been more than happy to leave that place as soon as he could.

For several seconds there was nothing to be seen in
Kat’s expression. Nothing beyond curiosity in the emotive swirl that swam between them. That in itself eased some of his tension, and when she smiled, it dissipated even more.

“I was only asking, Ethan, so relax. In a job like mine, I can hardly afford to be carting a kid around.”

Even so, he was going to keep carrying condoms in his jeans pocket. “Good. Because I’d hate to think you’d sink so low.”

“Never fear,” she said, thrusting open the door almost viciously. “I know you’re in it for nothing more than a good time, and I don’t intend to forget it. Or the condoms.”

“Good,” he muttered and climbed out of the car.

And wondered why the thought of her belly fat and round with his child filled him with such fierce and sudden longing.

K
AT SQUATTED BESIDE
E
THAN AND STUDIED THE OLD SHACK
below them. It was a small wooden structure that looked to have been at the mercy of the elements for a good five years. Not the warmest hideaway in the world, though it was doubtful the dead really cared.

She shifted the weight of the pack on her back, then said, “You wait here. Once I’m sure the sleep bombs have worked, I’ll call you over.”

He placed a hand on her arm, stopping her from rising. “I don’t think you should go down there alone.”

She bit down on her impatience and ignored the concern in his eyes. “We’ve been through this already. Gran only included one mask.” Truth was, she didn’t include
any
. They didn’t need them, because
these sleep bombs were designed to affect only the dead. But she needed to get away from him for a few minutes. Needed time alone to gather her thoughts. To contemplate the reality of bringing a kid into the world who, like her, might never know his father.

Pain rose. She pushed it away and stood. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I know what I’m doing when it comes to the dead.” It was the living she couldn’t understand.

She walked down the slope to the small cabin. The smell of death was so overwhelming she gagged. She took several deep breaths through her mouth to ease the churning in her stomach, then edged around the corner and headed for the nearest window. The glass was grimy, but even so, she could see the dead on the floor. Ten of them. God help her and Ethan if they woke before the sleeping potions had a chance to work.

She kinetically unlocked the window and eased it up. The zombie closest to her stirred. She froze, hoping the gentle breeze playing in her hair didn’t take her smell to it.

It turned, then began to snore. She swung the pack off and carefully dug out the four golf ball–sized bombs. They were warm against her palms, their feel almost jellylike. She tossed one into each corner of the cabin, listened for the gentle plop that indicated the outer skin had broken, and watched as pale fingers of red smoke began to ease across the floor. She closed the window and glanced at her watch. They’d have to wait five minutes for the mist to do its stuff, making it safe enough to enter.

She squatted on her heels and leaned back against
the cabin wall. Thunder rumbled overhead, a warning of the storm clearly gathering. The smell of rain sharpened the air but didn’t quite erase the smell of the dead. She hoped the storm didn’t break until after they’d explored whatever it was the zombies protected. If those clouds were anything to go by, the storm was going to be a doozy. Maybe enough to wake the sleep-spelled dead.

She let her gaze roam across the tree line until she found the shadows in which Ethan hid.

What in hell was she going to do with him?

He kept insisting he wasn’t capable of loving her, and yet his touch and his eyes and the emotions that sometimes surged between them suggested otherwise.

Could a wolf lose his heart more than once?

She’d ask him, except for the fact that she’d promised to drop the subject and didn’t want to risk alienating him completely. Maybe it was a question Gwen could answer.

She hoped so. Because she very much suspected she was falling in love with the man.

She hugged her arms around her belly. She’d find out tonight whether she was pregnant or not. And if she was, there was one thing she was suddenly certain of.

Her child would know its father.

She’d grown up without that knowledge and knew the pain it caused. If he didn’t want any part of his child’s life, then fair enough, but her child would know who he was, what he looked like, what he did, and where he lived. That child would have the sense of history, of belonging, that in many respects she
never had, no matter how much Gran had loved her. Four simple pieces of information could have made her childhood seem a whole lot less of a mistake.

And perhaps most important,
her
child would never be in doubt that her mother not only wanted her, but loved her. Or him, as the case may be.

She glanced at her watch again, then rose and looked inside. The red mist had almost dissipated. It should be safe enough now to enter without waking the zombies.