Darkness Bound (5 page)

Coffee arrived for the men, delivered by Gabriel
himself. “I need a word with both of you later,” he told the men. “I’ll give you a call.”

From the artificially neutral tone of his voice and the intense look he gave Niles and Sean, Leigh figured he had something important and private to discuss. She also sensed that Gabriel was tense.

“Later,” Niles said, breaking his gaze with Gabriel and turning his attention to Leigh again.

She looked at her plate and gamely ate several mouthfuls of eggs, then drank some coffee.

Gabriel walked away.

“I burned the first of that wood last night,” Leigh said. Trying to read these people was senseless and not her affair. “Why don’t you let me pay for it? I thought I’d bake you something but that doesn’t seem enough.”

“I’d rather you didn’t do anything,” Niles said, letting the front legs of his chair smack down on the floor. “It was Sean here who told me that tree needed to come down—and about your woodshed being empty. Gabriel thought you’d be glad to have the logs.”

Sean kept his face half turned away and his weight on one leg. “Worked out well all the way around,” he said.

“Well, thank you both, then.” Leigh wished he would look at her but she could feel how eager he was to get away.

Sean gave her a sudden, piercing stare, excused himself, and went outside.

“He’s always quiet,” Niles said. He frowned a little. “Interesting guy, huh?”

“I don’t know enough about him to have an opinion.”

“I think most women would like to know Sean. I have it on good authority that he’s a
hunk.
Or so Gabriel’s girlfriend, Molly, tells me.”

Leigh raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t sure why she said, “I don’t tend to be impressed by the silent type.”

“Really?” His frown disappeared.

“I don’t suppose I could get you to eat some of this food?” Leigh said. Talking about her taste in men suddenly felt uncomfortable and she was eager to change the subject. “I don’t want to upset Cliff and Sally.”

“You aren’t hungry?”

She grimaced. “Not hungry enough to eat all this.”

Niles actually grinned, and Leigh thought he ought to try it a lot more often. He demolished the bacon. Leigh rolled one of the sausages in a paper napkin. “For my dog,” she explained and inched the plate closer to Niles.

He watched her with a little too much concentration for Leigh’s comfort.

She couldn’t ask him about anything. He was a stranger.

“What?” he said, his blue eyes never leaving her face. “Tell me.”

Leigh sat straighter. Goosebumps shot out on her arms. “How do you know I wanted to say something?”

He shrugged. “Just a hunch.”

A hunch that made him seem as if he had read her mind.

“Are there a lot of stray animals around here? A really big… ” She hesitated. In a low voice she went on, “dog, a really big dog came to my door last night. He was big enough to be scary.”

Niles looked at her and said, “Almost black. Shaggy guy with big feet?”

“Huge. Bigfoot with a dye job.”

“Blue,” Niles said, finishing the last sausage. “That’s
the name on his collar. He’s mostly Irish wolfhound, I think.”

“The rest must be horse,” she said. “He really freaked me out.”

Niles wiped his hands on a napkin. “Don’t be scared of him.” He put a hand over hers on the table but quickly took it away again. “He’s a pussycat. Hangs around with me when I’m working. If you’re worried about anything at all, just give me a shout on the phone.”

The door opened again and three men came in, heading for a table in one corner but talking loudly enough about their plans for the day to be heard all over the room. “Amateur hunters,” Niles said as if that explained everything. “Looks like they starched their duds. Any wildlife should have a good laugh at that bunch.”

Leigh nodded and sipped her coffee, but she was too distracted by thoughts of Blue to concentrate on what Niles was saying. “That dog was massive—biggest dog I’ve ever seen. But he was gentle enough. I hope he’s got someone taking care of him.”

“Sure he does. He wouldn’t keep all that muscle and meat on him if he wasn’t being fed.”

Niles’s tone was light, but when Leigh looked at him she saw his gaze was locked on the hunters, his eyes slightly narrowed. Leigh decided he looked Slavic, all angles and upward-slashing brows. Handsome—whatever that meant—and she had long ago decided that a positive reaction to male looks was more about the vibes you got from them than anything else.

Gabriel stood behind the bar while Cliff went to take the hunters’ orders. Obviously the staff was lean and everyone doubled up.

Niles touched her hand. “Hey, don’t talk about Blue to anyone else, okay? I’m always afraid some yahoo will get pie-eyed and pick him off when it’s getting dark one evening. They’d probably say they thought he was a bear or something. I keep an eye out for him.”

“Pick him off?” Leigh’s tummy made a sickening roll. “Shoot him, you mean?”

“Keep your voice down,” Niles said. “It’s not a big deal. I just wouldn’t want to see something happen to him is all.”

“Um,” Leigh looked for the right words. “He is safe to have around, isn’t he? He wouldn’t do something… to my dog or anything?”

Niles laughed and tipped his head back. “No! Geez, no. If I thought otherwise I’d tell you right off, but, no. So forget that. If anything, Blue would look after your guy.” Taking a drink of his coffee, Niles stared at Leigh, all humor in his expression gone. “What time did you get in this morning?” he asked.

“Around seven or so.” She hadn’t forgotten Gabriel’s anxiousness about her driving around alone when things were really quiet.

“Dark then,” Niles commented.

“My car does have headlights,” she said with a smile. But his frown was back and she had the feeling he was stopping himself from saying more.

“It’s a good idea to lock your doors as soon as you’re in the car,” Niles finally said. “And make sure they’re locked when it’s parked.”

“Right.” There was no mistaking the menace in all these warnings, or her own queasy reaction.

They fell silent. Leigh looked at Gabriel and saw how closely he watched the three men at their corner table.

“Gabriel told us you worked for Microsoft,” Niles said, his voice returning to a lighter note. “What did you do?”

“Games,” Leigh told him, her attention still on Gabriel’s watchfulness over some of his customers. “Developer.”

“But you just gave it up?”

“I felt like a new challenge.” And if she didn’t push herself to change, she could spend her forever between an office and an apartment in Seattle where she didn’t know or speak to a soul.

“You’ll settle here,” he commented. “You’ll make friends.”

Leigh began to wonder if her thoughts were written on her forehead. “I’m sure I will.”

“If you organize Gabriel, you’ll be doing me a service.”

“You?”

“I worry about him. He gives the farm away. Never learned how to haggle over prices with his suppliers so he pays top dollar. And he’s got a long list of people who come in here every day to drink his booze and run a tab that rarely gets paid. Change some of that and you’ll be making a bunch of us real happy.”

Before she could mask her reaction, Leigh realized she’d set her jaw and was giving one of the glares she was told turned people off.

This time Niles’s smile was soft. “I take it that look means you aren’t pleased?”

“My trouble is I want to cure everything yesterday. I’ve got to go a bit slowly on this but I’ll sort it out. I may look like a wimp but I can be tough.”

“I’ll remember that,” he said, with a mock salute.

“Have you always been a handyman?” she asked, looking straight at him. “If that’s what you are.”

“Nope. Not always. But I’m Mr. Fixit now. Learned everything I know at my grandpa’s knee on the ranch in Wyoming.”

“And you just decided to move from Wyoming to Washington State?”

His steady stare let her know she was being too nosy. “It’s not my business,” she told him, squirming. “Sorry.”

“I went a lot of places in between Wyoming and Washington, Leigh. I got back from the Middle East eighteen months ago.”

She could imagine him in fatigues, even maybe marching in the sand, or climbing over huge obstacles as if they were nothing; it was the leaping to attention that didn’t come easily to mind. “What did you do there?” Maybe he was in one of those groups that built buildings or something.

“I killed people,” he said.

N
ILES ALMOST GOT UP
and left but he couldn’t do that to her. What had got into him to make him go off like that? And why at her of all people? He had thought his control was better now.

It was that last disastrous overseas assignment, he guessed. The guilt he still felt at losing one of their own. The night sweats didn’t happen often anymore. But dammit, he had to get past the guilt and past the outbursts.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he told her. “I don’t know why I did.” Impulsively, he caught her hand in his. “Forget it, please.”

She coughed. Her brown eyes seemed even bigger and darker in a pretty but thin, freckled face, but her thoughts were sympathetic, not frightened, and her fingers tightened around his for a moment before she let go.

Damn, he should not risk making her afraid of him, not when he hoped to build her trust.

Touching her hand only made him want to touch more
of her, to hold her. How hard would this get if he couldn’t keep his mind on the goal, to mate for the good of his kind?

“I expect you were fighting,” she said with a faint little smile. “That must have been… hard… ” Her voice got weaker and trailed away.

He couldn’t believe what had happened. “It’s over,” he told her.

“War has to be terrifying.”

Leaving this dangling wasn’t wise. “It’s more disappointing than terrifying, although it’s that, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“People are still killing people because everyone thinks they’re right, that they have the only right way.” He considered how much more he should say. “When you see humans with all their defenses stripped down to just the will to live, it changes you. I’m not completely over that yet, I guess. I thought I was, but I’m not. Sometimes the anger comes back. It flashes, then it’s gone. It doesn’t accomplish a thing.”

“If it were me,” she said, “I don’t think I could ever put it behind me.”

He had to and mostly he did a good job. “I’ve come a long way. I’ll try not to snap out statements like that again. Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be.” She smiled and he had to stop himself from touching her again. “I’ll let you know if you’re snapping. Sometimes things just line up wrong and we want to close it all down. It seems kind of like grieving to me.”

Niles almost grinned. Though he’d only just found Leigh, something told him she really was the right one
for him; that they really could offer each other what they would both need—unconditional understanding. The question was, would he be able to put his duty to the future of the werehounds first if this attraction kept growing? Just looking at her heated him and he was enjoying the burn.

Before Niles could get himself into deeper trouble, one of the men from the corner got up and headed toward Leigh. Pretty slick-looking guy for a woodsy type, Niles thought.

“Hey,” the man said. “I just realized who you are. The waiter mentioned your name. You’re the Kelly woman from Two Chimneys Cottage, right? Chimney Rock Cove?”

Niles bridled at the pushy tone. “We’re having breakfast,” he said coolly.

“Just saying hi,” the man said without looking at Niles. “I’m John Valley. I’ve got that information you people wanted.”

Leigh looked at him blankly. She pushed her strawberry blond hair behind both ears. Niles liked her straight, shiny hair but he didn’t like it that she was considering excusing herself and leaving the table. Her strong thoughts were easy to read. When she became pensive or distant he had to probe harder. He had not listened in much so far and wouldn’t in the future, he decided. Some unfair advantages were a bad idea—and dishonest.

He could often hear snippets of human thought, but only those who were sensitives of some kind came through as clearly as Leigh. He figured that could be because they were starting to share a connection that proved they were meant to be mates—or was that only wishful thinking?

“I did a rough assessment on your holdings here on the island,” Valley said.

Her mouth moved but she took a while to say, “Who are you?”

“I’m the real estate go-to on this end of the island.” The guy’s mouth turned down and a nerve twitched in his cheek.

“I don’t understand this,” Leigh said.

“Hell, maybe I shouldn’t have approached you but I wasn’t warned to keep quiet. I thought you’d be interested in the valuation. Very nice, too. Who knew the acreage was that big? But I’ll talk to your husband.”