How to Run with a Naked Werewolf (32 page)

“Dick,” he said. “I’m this lucky lady’s husband.”

Andrea rolled her eyes. “Husband, yes. Lucky? Debatable.”

Maggie stepped forward. “Red-burn? You sent Eli the e-mails? You’re the one who helped An—Tina get a job here?”

Andrea nodded, clasping my arms in her hands and giving them a friendly squeeze. “When I heard that you’d ‘come out’ and filed for divorce, I had to come by and see you for myself.”

“I’m so happy to meet you!” I said, sniffing a little. “I owe you so much!”

“No more than I owed the person who helped me find
my
way out of a bad relationship,” Andrea said. She turned to Maggie and explained, “Before Dick, I dated a man who, let’s say, wasn’t so nice to me. It took a clean break and a rushed move to another state to get clear of him. And now I have a lot of spare time at night, and the Network helps me feel like I’m doing something constructive. Tina’s was the first case I handled on my own.” She turned back to me. “Did you know that?” I shook my head.

“She talked about you all the time,” Dick said. “In a completely undetailed and anonymous fashion.” He cleared his throat. “She worried a lot.”

“Oh, my gosh, you drove all the way from Kentucky!” I cried. “Come in, come in, you must be exhausted! Can I get you anything to eat or drink?”

Dick shook his head, reaching into the SUV to pull an insulated cooler bag from the seat. “That’s OK. We’re on a special diet.”

Maggie frowned but said nothing. “Can you tell Caleb to come home?” I asked her, leading the couple toward our house.

Dick made a big show of stomping the slush from his boots, but I could tell there was no small amount of glee at coming into contact with actual snow. Andrea told me quietly that their hometown didn’t see much beyond sleet, and Dick had been acting like a big, goofy kid ever since they reached the state line. I got the impression that Dick acted like a big, goofy kid regardless of location. I made a mental note to keep him away from Samson.

“What an adorable house.” Andrea sighed as she surveyed the small, steady modifications we’d been making to the living room and kitchen. I’d painted the walls a warm, creamy yellow to bring a little sunlight into the rooms. Caleb had cleared out some of his mom’s knickknacks to make room for our own mementos, a carved wooden wolf from his cousin Cooper and a framed picture of us smiling into the camera with Suds.

“I’ll bet her fella didn’t make her install a man cave.” She sent a fake pout toward Dick. I wasn’t sure what
was going on there, and I didn’t have the heart to tell Andrea that the whole valley was basically one big man cave.

“A bet is a bet, woman,” Dick grumbled.

I giggled, closing the door, mentally estimating how long it would take Caleb to run here to meet our new friends.
Friends. Family. Home.
Three words I hadn’t thought I would ever be able to attach to my life again, before I’d come here, to this valley full of werewolves. And now I had all three.

Life, for the moment, was very, very good.

Turn the page to read the next sexy, spooky, laugh-out-loud paranormal romance from Molly Harper . . .

Better Homes and Hauntings

Coming in summer 2014 from Pocket Books

Nina had been
through much worse than seasickness in the past year. Near-bankruptcy. Identity theft. Stolen garden tools. This was going to be an adventure, she promised herself. Nina knew she should walk over and say hello to the others. They were going to be working and living together on the Crane’s Nest property for the next few months, until the renovations were over. But at the moment, she could only concentrate on keeping her breakfast down.

The boat hit a particularly rough wave, pitching Nina back against the cabin. She moaned, bending at the knees and propping her arms against her thighs.

A smooth, tanned hand appeared at the corner of Nina’s vision, bearing brightly wrapped candies. She startled, drawing up to her full height, and swayed. The other hand steadied her at the elbow. “Whoa, there,” a male voice said, a laughing lilt to his soothing tone.

“Sorry about that,” Nina groaned, squinting up at the owner of the outstretched hand.

“Seasick, huh?” he said, eyeing her sympathetically over the rims of his mirrored aviators.

“Ever since I was a kid,” she said, and glared at the water glittering in the distance. “I ruined every family fishing trip. My brother always told me it would help to keep my eye on the horizon. But I think my brother is a dirty liar.”

“Try these,” he said, pressing a few foiled candies into her clammy palm. “Ginger drops. They’ll help your stomach. And as far as the horizon goes, I think it’s better to concentrate on more immediate surroundings.

“Jake Rumson,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m the architect who’s supposed to be undoing the mess we’re getting into.”

“Nina,” she said. “Linden.”

“Like the tree,” he said, smiling. “You’re with Demeter Designs.”

“Like the tree, exactly,” she said, a genuine grin breaking through her uneasy expression. She tamped it down quickly. “Not everybody catches that.”

“I cheated,” Jake whispered, the smooth façade melting a bit to reveal a naughty schoolboy smile. “I got a look at the staff list ahead of time. You’re the landscape architect and you’re named after a tree and bam—instant mnemonic device.”

“Do you use little tricks like that often?” she asked, sipping the water.

“Well, those two made it easy,” Jake said, nodding
toward Ben and Cindy, the blond bombshell sunning on the deck. “I didn’t need a device to remember Ben Grandy. I was a big fan of his when he played at UConn. Damn shame what happened to his knee—his scholarship, future career, and all that.”

Nina nodded. “But he’s done well. Even without a degree, he’s built a good business for himself. He has a really solid reputation around town. You hired the right person.”

“Well, what do you know about Cindy Ellis over there?” Jake asked. “She owns the Cinderella Cleaning Service.”

“Never heard of her.” Nina lifted her brow. “She’s a maid?”

Deacon Whitney, the insanely rich twenty-eight-year-old who’d hired all of them, had never mentioned anything about a maid.

“Not exactly. Ms. Ellis—as she insists I call her—runs a sort of maid-slash-organizational guru service. She cleans and installs these crazy storage systems in some of the swankiest family-owned estates in Rhode Island. Ms. Ellis can organize, store, and reset those furnishings on a seasonal system that even the dumbest millionaire could figure out.”

“Are you saying we’re working for a dumb millionaire?” Nina asked, the corners of her lush mouth tilting up.

Jake snorted, grinning at her over the rims of his aviators. “First of all, Whit’s a billionaire. And second, it wasn’t his idea to hire her. The Crane’s Nest has been virtually looted by various generations of Whitneys over
the years, but there are bound to be a few valuables tucked away where the relatives’ enterprising little paws couldn’t reach. The family is demanding that Whit catalogue every item of historical or monetary value and save it so that they can do battle over them later.”

“So is that why Mr. Whitney wants us to stay on the island full-time? So his relatives can’t interfere or influence us?”

Jake carefully considered his response to the question. There were a lot of factors in Deacon Whitney’s decision, many of which he had discussed at length with Jake. Whit wanted to be each contractor’s first priority until the job was completed. He wanted to prevent the contractors from being distracted by other clients’ demands. But his chief concern was the fact that there had already been several false starts to the renovations: he’d lost several contractors and workmen to “frayed nerves,” to put it politely. Deacon’s theory was that if he could keep the contractors from returning home from the island every night, he wouldn’t have to worry about whether they’d lose the nerve to come back in the morning.

A lifelong friend of Deacon’s family, Jake had spent the occasional afternoon on Whitney Island over the years and could have listed the strange occurrences, even without the paper-pale vendors stuttering out their tales of terror: Angry thumping footsteps on the stairway between the second and third floors, strange shifting shadows that darted around at the corners of one’s eyes. The overwhelming sense that someone was watching you. The smell of rosewater in upstairs bedrooms
where no one had sprayed perfume in decades. And of course, the sound of a woman’s weeping coming from the widow’s walk. He’d experienced all of this and more as Deacon’s guest on Whitney Island. And he hated every minute he spent there. But if his best friend in the world wanted him to lie through his teeth so he could resurrect that beautiful, cursed shell of a house, Jake would do it with a smile on his face.

“No, but that’s just one more pro for the list,” he said, offering her his most charming grin. “Whit wants to finish the project as quickly as possible, and the best way to do that is have your full attention and have the team stay within shouting distance in case there are problems.”

Nina chanced a look out at the waves and caught a glimpse of the house they’d come to restore. The Crane’s Nest rose out of the water like a drowned debutante, her fine lines eroded and obscured, tangling into the overgrown green expanse of Whitney Island. Nina could see evidence of what had once been an exacting geometric landscaping plan leading up to the rounded porte cochere that hid the massive front doors in a dark cavernous maw. The gardens were long past feral, dry withered grass strangling the remains of statuary and rosebushes. The façade of the house consisted of three levels, a loggia flanked by two-story wings leading into the main structure. The stories were marked by rows of windows, their dark surfaces reminding Nina of the blank stare of dolls’ eyes. A ring of tall chimneys crowned a flat slate roof, echoing the pattern of blunt cornices extending from the porte cochere.

Squinting in the glaring afternoon light, Nina traced the line of the roof with her eyes, admiring the wrought iron railing that enclosed the widow’s walk. There was potential for a terrace garden there, from what she’d seen of the pictures. She was trying to estimate the roof’s square footage when a feminine figure stepped to the wrought iron boundary. Nina gasped. A cold wave of nausea washed through her as the dark shape stared down at the approaching boat. For a moment, Nina thought she could make out the lines of an old-fashioned gown, a slim waist, long, dark twists of hair blowing in the wind. But there was no detail to the face or form, only shadow. Nina shivered and braced herself against the bow, taking deep breaths. When she looked up at the roof again, the figure was gone.

Everybody knew the story of the Crane’s Nest and the tragic death of its mistress. It was an urban legend among the local kids who grew up on the outskirts of Newport. Townies like Nina, who spent her time on the less picturesque stretches of beach trying to avoid the summer people, grew up hearing tales of the wailing ghost of Catherine Whitney who wandered the halls of the Crane’s Nest, searching for her killer, her lost treasure, a hidden illegitimate baby . . . The details varied depending on who was telling the story. It was a common dare among the high schoolers to go to the island and spend the night at the house. Very few kids managed to make it as far as Whitney Island without getting spooked and speeding back to the mainland. This led to a belief that the island was cursed, and no boat would moor on it.

Nina had lived in Newport for most of her life and this was the first time she’d ever laid eyes on the place. So it was only natural that her fertile imagination would bring the tortured ghost of Catherine Whitney to life after growing up on those stories. Right?

Nina sighed. She had to get a grip. The Crane’s Nest job would be the crown jewel of her portfolio. This job would gain her entrée into the Eastern Seaboard’s most exclusive circles and the rich potential clients that made up those circles. She would build her business. She would rebuild her life and her credit rating from the ground up. She would stop imagining scary shadow people on the roof. That could lead nowhere good.

“Feeling better now
that you’re on solid ground?” Jake asked, pressing a cold soda can into her hand. She accepted it gratefully and guzzled the better part of the bubbly elixir before answering.

“Much, thanks,” she said glancing over shoulder again toward the still-uninhabited roof. “I swear I’m not this high-maintenance on dry land.”

“Hey, you’re the first girl to throw up on that boat for reasons unrelated to alcohol. That sets you in a class all your own,” Jake assured her.

“That’s . . . not particularly flattering,” she mused. “Jake, are we the only people on the island? Surely Mr. Whitney sent a prep team ahead of us to clean the staff quarters or stock the kitchen?”

Jake shrugged. “Cindy’s crew came out to clean up the dorms for us. And the catering staff from Whit’s
office stocked the kitchen. But they left days ago. Why do you ask?”

Nina chuckled weakly, sorry now that she’d said anything. “It’s just silly. I thought I saw someone on the roof, right before I got sick.”

Jake smiled at her, but there was a hitch to the expression, a hesitation that made Nina curious. “We’re the only ones here, I promise. There’s nobody else. What you saw? It was probably just a trick of the light.”

Nina thought better of commenting that tricks of light rarely wore hoop skirts. But before she could come up with a more suitable response, a chopping noise in the distance caught their attention. A tiny black dot in the sky grew closer and closer, the sound of its blades beating a regular rhythm against the wind. The unmarked helicopter landed about forty yards to their left, the displaced air beating a patch of perfectly nice purple gypsy flowers into the dirt. Nina winced at the sight. She doubted the delicate stems would recover from that.

Oblivious to Nina’s botanical distress, Jake helped her to her feet. “That’s Whit!” he shouted over the noise, that happy grin brightening his face again.

The helicopter landed nimbly on the shaggy but level patch of grass. A slim, long-legged man in jeans and an open blue Oxford shirt emerged from the helicopter. He slapped the helicopter door twice, prompting the pilot to take off. As the wind whipped his Oxford aside, Nina caught a glimpse of Captain America’s shield underneath.