Of Wings and Wolves (6 page)

Oh, she was intimidated all right. But a combination of raging hormones and temporary insanity had seized her, and there was no stopping the train wreck now that it had started.

Nash loomed over her, and it occurred to her that all of those muscles she had glimpsed in the garden were lurking under the perfectly-tailored suit. She had the mental image of peeling open his jacket, pushing it off his shoulders, and biting his pectoral. It wasn’t a wolfish thought. No, that desire belonged completely to her human side.

“Tell me why you came here tonight,” Nash said, interrupting her increasingly naked thoughts.

She fully intended to lie, but that wasn’t what came out. “I was spying on you. I wanted to know who was trying to hire me.”

That was
definitely
amusement on his face now. “And what did you determine?”

“I don’t think you want to hurt me,” Summer said. “I also think you’re probably a good guy, creepiness aside.”

“A ‘good guy’,” Nash echoed. “Good, but creepy.”

Summer just couldn’t imagine that the man who gazed at the sky with such longing was a bad person. But she managed to prevent herself from saying that part out loud. She didn’t want him to connect her with the wolf in the garden.

He stepped away from her, breaking the tense moment. “You appear fatigued. I’ll have Margaret make up the guest bedroom.”

“Wait, what? I’m not staying here.”

“Our work begins at eight. It’s already well after midnight. You may as well get comfortable.”

“Uh, no,” she said. “I don’t think so. My family would notice I was gone.”

“Your family,” he said, as though mulling over the concept. “What do they think of your visit here tonight?” Summer bit her bottom lip and didn’t respond. The silence was probably answer enough.

“I’ll make sure to give the dress back to you,” she finally said, smoothing her hands down her hips.

“No.” His fingers traced the edge of the cap sleeve. “You’ll keep this. At least I can be confident that you won’t be naked when you return in the morning.”

Summer could have just crawled under the floor and died.

What must he have thought she was doing in his bushes like that? There was just no way to spin it in a way that didn’t make her sound insane or weird.

She realized that she was staring at his lips again and made herself focus on her feet.

“Margaret will take you to the car,” Nash said. “I’ll see you at eight o’clock.”

He turned toward his window in a clear dismissal. From their position perched on the cliff, there was nothing to obstruct his view of the endless, starry sky.

Before she left the room with Margaret, Summer had two very distinct thoughts: first, that Nash was impossibly, dangerously attractive; and second, that there was no chance she would make the mistake of returning to his house again.

Nash sat on his balcony
to welcome the dawn. It was a ritual he performed every morning—his way of acknowledging the passage of another peaceful night and the return of the sun. Even after so many identical nights, he tried to feel every sunrise as though it was his first. He was mindful of the wind in his hair, the sun on his skin, the stone beneath his hands.

But mindfulness would not come that morning. His mind was already occupied with something else.

Summer Gresham.
She was not like any other woman he had encountered during the many long years that he had been known as Mr. Adamson. Where other people seemed dull and lifeless to him—merely mirages flitting through his periphery—she was as brilliant and blazing. Summer was a blow to the gut, a force of nature. Someone who could not be ignored.

How long had it been since he met a human that dared challenge him the way she had? Had he
ever
met a human like that?

The instant that he had seen her, he had known that she was the one he had been looking for. But he hadn’t expected her to be so beautiful.

He closed his eyes to receive the sun’s warmth on his face.

Twenty years.
Twenty years
since he last witnessed that flash of gray light that signaled someone crossing over to this world. It had been brilliant enough to illuminate the entire sky. Nash still didn’t know
where
the gray light came from, but he knew it could only mean that liberation was close.

For the last two decades, he had scoured the world for whomever had crossed over. Yet his search yielded no results, and he had assumed that the visitor had left as quickly as they arrived. But considering Summer’s cluelessness as to the true history of her origins, she must have simply passed through as a child and grown up like the others that lived here.

He could still see her earnest eyes as clearly as though she stood before him now. Her irises reminded him of a moon that Nash hadn’t seen in centuries. He had wished for her to look at him with those moonlit eyes and never turn away.

But did she know the truth?

It didn’t matter. Summer didn’t need to know anything to be of use to him; she just needed to be cooperative. In fact, it would be much simpler to manipulate her as long as she truly believed that he was some billionaire—as if money mattered—offering an internship to a college student—of all the stupid things.

And now he had her in his grip, whether she realized it or not.

Nash would have Summer Gresham, and he would at last be free.

five

“Morning,” Gran said, greeting Summer
at the kitchen door with a mug of hot coffee. “Have a nice run?”

Summer dropped onto one of the barstools, careful not to spill. “What? What run?”

“The cat came looking for love in the middle of the night. He only does that when you leave and don’t let him follow, so I assume you must have been running. I’m going to have to wash my bedspread. It looks like a furry black rug now.”

As if summoned by his name, Sir Lumpy leaped into Summer’s lap, circled twice, and flopped onto her thighs. He purred hard enough that she could feel it all the way into her teeth. “Were you shedding on Gran’s bed, handsome? Were you lonely?” He kneaded his paws into her stomach, letting his claws press harder than usual.

The breeze drifting through the open kitchen windows smelled wetter than the day before, and hazy light filtered through the stained glass pentacle. Their break from unseasonably warm weather had passed. Summer could smell rain waiting in the clouds. It was sure to hit by the afternoon.

The smell of an impending storm was quickly replaced by the smell of gas as Gran lit the stove and grabbed a skillet. “I found the dress on the couch, by the way. Very nice.”

Summer’s ministrations paused, and Sir Lumpy registered his annoyance by jamming his face into her palm.

“Sorry. I was going to pick it up this morning,” she said.

Gran pulled a package of bacon out of the refrigerator. “You know I don’t care where you leave your dirty laundry. Pretty dress, though. If you weren’t running, were you on a date?”

“I was investigating the guy I told you about. The one that didn’t smell human.” Another head-butt from Sir Lumpy. She obediently rubbed her fingers over his wrinkled nose.

“And what did you learn in your investigations, Nancy Drew?” Gran asked as she dropped the entire rasher of bacon on the frying pan. She knew Summer’s appetite all too well.

I learned that Nash Adamson looks great shirtless and has a wardrobe filled with dresses in my size
. Yeah, that was a little too freaky to admit out loud. “I don’t think he’s dangerous, but…I don’t know, Gran. Maybe my nose was confused.”

“So is he human?”

Summer watched the steam swirling off the surface of her coffee as she pondered the question.

Was
he human? She had never met another man like him.

“I don’t know, but I don’t want anything to do with him,” Summer said.

A slow smile spread over Gran’s lips. “Oh, really.”

She focused hard on her coffee. There was no point in trying to lie. Gran knew everything. “I said it wasn’t a date. I didn’t say that he’s not stupefyingly sexy.”

“Sexy just means he’s likely to be twice as dangerous. I wish you would have told me that you planned on digging around. I would have come with you.”

“You would have brought the shotgun,” Summer said.

“Right. My shotgun and I would have come with you. That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”

“It’s hard to investigate from a jail cell.”

Gran laughed. “I’d like to see the army of police officers it would take to arrest you, babe. Anyway, I’m not saying I’d shoot anyone. I just worry about you.”

“No need to worry,” Summer said. “I’m officially done with this guy.”

Or, at least, she would be “officially done” as soon as the rooster-shaped clock over the stove ticked to eight. Failing to show up for the first day of her internship should send a pretty clear message to Nash.

Gran transferred the bacon to a plate and set it on the table. The edges were barely browned, just the way Summer liked it, and she inhaled three pieces immediately. She could feel the fat heading straight for her ass.
Worth it
.

Abram entered, sweaty and shirtless. Gran had already whipped up a vegetarian omelet for him. “Thanks,” he said, planting a kiss on her wrinkled cheek as he took the plate.

He flopped into the other chair at the table. He was followed by the scent of dirt, tree bark, and oil paint, just like every morning. Abram always woke up before Summer to paint for an hour, then exercise for an hour. The guy was obsessed with fitness, and she had no idea why. He wasn’t a shapeshifter, but he wasn’t a lightweight, either—even as a kid, he had been ridiculously ripped, and there wasn’t a broken bone he couldn’t heal in a matter of days. A little laziness once in a while couldn’t hurt him.

Summer leaned across the table and jabbed her fork into his omelet. The motion made Sir Lumpy drop to the floor with an offended chirp.

“I finished it,” Abram said, stabbing her fork with his to fend off the attack. “The painting.”

Summer blinked. “Really?
The
painting? Can I see it?”

“Not yet. It’s ready, but I’m not.”

She rolled her eyes. “Very dramatic, Abram.”

He shrugged, but she could tell that the taunt bothered him. “I want to show everyone, but the lighting in the art school’s gallery isn’t right for it.” Left unspoken was that he had been hoping to talk Adamson Industries into building the new gallery he needed.

A fresh wave of guilt washed over Summer as she thought about the way that Nash had looked at her the night before. More and more, she was convinced the internship had been a ploy the whole time. “Sorry,” she said. Abram inclined his head in acceptance of her apology. “Are you still volunteering at the seminar this morning? Do you think you could give me a ride to MU, too?”

Abram’s eyes widened a fraction. Summer always ran to the university—always. But he nodded again.

Summer glanced at the rooster clock on the wall.

It was five after eight.

A misty drizzle was falling
over the fairytale cottage as Summer hurried out to Abram’s car, book bag shielding her hair from the rain. Her feet slurped in and out of the mud as she stepped around to the passenger’s seat.

Abram was already waiting for her. He turned on the engine, the batteries hummed to life, and they headed down the road.

He was playing classical music on the stereo again. That would have normally instigated a slap fight over the controls—he
knew
how much she hated that boring crap—but she wasn’t up for a fight this morning.

She breathed on the window to fog it, and then poked dots in the shape of the archer constellation. “So when did you finish the painting?”

“This morning. I’ve been mostly done for a week, but something wasn’t right. I realized what that was last night in a dream.”

Summer barely even heard her brother speak. The archer constellation on the window looked like Nash Adamson. Not a warrior, but a lonely man sitting on his balcony. “That’s nice,” she said.

“You didn’t want a ride so we could discuss my painting. What’s bothering you?”

“Do you remember our fort in the ravine?” Summer asked.

He nodded. “The bear.”

She bit her bottom lip. Picked at her thumbnail. Finally, it exploded out of her in a rush. “I was offered the position with Adamson Industries last week.”

Her brother’s hands tightened on the wheel, and his brow creased.

He didn’t speak, but she could practically see the thoughts rolling through her twin’s skull. He was thinking about the way the interviews had been canceled, and what it must have meant to have the internship offered to someone who hadn’t even planned on interviewing. And she saw the moment that he came to the same conclusion that she did.

“You going to take it?” he asked.

“Not a chance. I’m not taking
any
jobs around here. You know I’m out of Hazel Cove as soon as we graduate.”

“Good.” He turned on the windshield wipers, and they beat out a rhythm against the glass. “If you see any of those men from Adamson Industries around again, you need to tell me about it.”

“I don’t think they’ll be a problem.”

“You’re right,” Abram said darkly. “They won’t be.”

Summer didn’t have any weekend
classes, but her midterm was due the following Wednesday. The project was a lot bigger than the little proof of concept programs she usually did as homework, so that meant a lot of time compiling. She didn’t really need to be on-site for that, but it was better than sitting at home freaking out about Nash Adamson.

While the compiler’s progress bar inched across her terminal, Summer wandered through the server room in search of error lights. The fans pumping dehumidified air in from the outside world smelled sweetly of wet trees and petrichor, and standing on a vent behind one of the racks was like being in a wind tunnel. It blasted her hair over her shoulders.

She grabbed a magazine that had been left on one of the racks. The pages fluttered in her hands as she flipped through it. The entire travel magazine talked about distant cities, mountains, deserts, islands—places that she had never been before.