The Mating Game (2 page)

“Yes? What about this email?”

“The email was from one of the four brothers who run the company. It was sent to the other brothers, and it was a section of one of their journals. It talked about the moon and its pull on him. About how they were all werewolves.”

There was a short pause on the other end.

“Are you sure it wasn’t creative writing? Sometimes when I’m trying to get into a character’s head I write stuff down as if I really were them, to set the mood and help me see things from their perspective better, you know?”

The fact that Chloe occasionally wrote came as no surprise to Mary. Chloe was a multitalented girl who had never settled in one area. She was smart—she just hadn’t found where her passion lay. Instead, she did whatever took her fancy, whenever the urge struck her. By no means was she selfish; she had a huge heart and was always there for those she loved. She just had a tendency to pick and discard working jobs with the ease some people chose hot dinners.

Mary shook herself and returned to the problem at hand.

“I don’t think so. Samuel sent the email out to his brothers with the object of teasing the youngest brother. He made a huge joke out of it, stating Dominic was keeping a journal, and then called him Wolf Boy. If it was make-believe, why would Samuel tease him like that? If it weren’t true, surely it wouldn’t be humorous?”

Mary chewed her lip thoughtfully. What she had told Chloe made perfect sense. The thought that the four of them really were werewolves made her nervous. Surely it was all just fairy tales to frighten children on stormy nights?

“You’re not going to be able to rest until you figure this out, are you?”

Mary smiled wryly. No one had ever accused Chloe of not being able to see through those she cared about. “Probably not.”

“Then go out there and see them for yourself. You mentioned this guy was complaining about the number of bed partners he slept with and then discarded, right?”

Mary furrowed her brow, not following Chloe’s train of thought. “Right.”

“Then go out there and seduce him.”

Mary’s eyes widened. “What?!”

She could practically see Chloe shrug her shoulders.

“You want some answers, and he sleeps with a different woman every night. Why not seduce him, sleep with him, and ask him those questions and get your answers? It’ll be a normal give and take. He gets extraordinary sex, you find out whether werewolves really exist. Seems like a fair trade to me.”

Mary blinked, totally stunned. Was this her little twenty-six-year-old cousin, giving
her
, a mature thirty-five,
sexual advice
?

“Chloe, you are
not
giving me sex tips are you?”

“Of course not!” Mary wondered how Chloe seemed to appear both laughing at her and offended simply by the tone of her voice. “I’m just pointing out your options here. You called to ask for my advice, and now I’m giving it to you.”

Mary wondered when her young cousin had become so wise; the kid was twenty-six, for heaven’s sake. Mary rubbed her forehead, a headache beginning to pound.

“So let me get this straight. You, my baby cousin, think I should drive for hours on end, to the other side of the state, to seduce a man and blow his mind with orgasmic sex, then casually turn over afterwards and instead of playing with the usual post-coital bliss and teasing, I should just ask him if he’s a werewolf?”

Chloe laughed.

“You know, when you put it like that, it sounds stupid. I’m saying go with the flow, cousin. Maybe he’ll be the sort of guy you
can
just look in the eye and say, ‘Hey, I heard you turn furry once a month. Any truth to that?’ or maybe you can kinda search his pockets or something for a Werewolves Anonymous card. I have no idea. All I know is you will sit out here and stew for months if you don’t go and do something. So go out and search for your answers.”

Mary smiled. Trust Chloe to make something as stupid as driving to the other side of the state seem simple and straightforward.

“You’d better keep an eye on that crazy brother of yours then. No telling what mess he’ll get into next time.”

“No problem. It’s about time someone other than me got itchy feet and decided to break out and try something new around here. Heaven knows Matthew will be glued to that computer of yours forever if we don’t pry him away, and it’s about time you went off and did something daring too.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “I do not need advice from a woman who refuses to hold a job for more than six months.”

Chloe laughed.

“At least I’m living my life. You just stay holed up in your office, doing your coding stuff and chatting to your online friends. I think it’s a good time for you to go on a personal road trip and explore what life has to offer. I was beginning to wonder if you had any life outside those IM rooms you stay in all night.”

Mary mulled it over. She wanted to go out there, so what was holding her back? Why
not
just go with the flow for once? Making up her mind, Mary decided to act on her thoughts before she could talk herself out of them again. With that thought she decided to pack straight away.

“Okay. See you, Chloe. Keep an eye on Matthew. I’ll probably call you tomorrow before I leave.”

“No problem, hon. See you around.”

Mary hung up the phone with a feeling of total unreality. Somehow her cousin made it sound as if sleeping with a man and then asking him if he was a werewolf would be a rational course of action.

Turning back to her lowly humming computer, she turned the screen back on, determined to dig up as much information about the brothers as she could. Dominic in particular.

As she sifted through their website, this time at a much slower and more careful pace, she found interesting little pieces of information scattered through the text. She found it amazing how much information could be left in such blasé comments one would usually overlook on a first, more casual read-through.

In their descriptions of themselves, Mary found with a bit of careful reading and piecing together, that the brothers all lived on the same piece of land on the edge of
Glacier
National Park
. Exactly where around the enormous parkland she had no idea, but even having the Park as a reference point would be helpful.

Mary wrinkled her nose. The park was truly huge, so sifting through it looking for the right house, or houses, was totally out of the question. She smiled at the mental picture of herself knocking on each and every door asking if the Rutledge studs lived here. The police would arrest her—or the men in white coats would come for her before she had covered even a tenth of the Park.

The time passed quickly, and while Mary gathered a fair amount of detail, she couldn’t find anything concrete until she came across a fuzzy digital photo of the four brothers playing in a band. It had the title “The Howlers—Our Local Bar”.

The Howlers?
Either she possessed a more active imagination than she realized, or these Rutledge men had a wicked sense of humor. Mary downloaded the picture, then zoomed in and out of the digital image, determined to find a clue on their location.

Finally she caught sight of a banner, declaring “The Three-Legged Stool Presents
The Howlers
”.

Local bar, hmm? Shouldn’t be too hard to find that place close to
Glacier
National Park
.

Tomorrow was Friday. She could easily take the weekend off; she could even be able to stretch it to Monday, if she needed. She had plenty of annual leave stored up. The chances of finding Dominic at his local bar might be slim, but four brothers as studly as these should be well-known.

It was possible a heap of people would know where they lived. It seemed like the next logical step into finding out about Dominic Rutledge.

Mary wrinkled her nose at her desperate thoughts. Maybe she was losing her mind. Calling out to Matthew that the computer was free, she left her study and climbed upstairs to her small bedroom.

Packing a light bag, making notes about groceries and last minute errands she didn’t want to forget, Mary felt strangely nervous and excited at the same time. Chloe was right, it
had
been far too long since she had struck out and done something for herself simply for the fun of it.

She decided it was stupid to worry, when the worst-case scenario was that she’d waste a weekend looking for a man she couldn’t find. Or even embarrass herself in front of a man she would never see again. So what if she asked Dominic Rutledge if he was a werewolf and he thought she was insane? More likely than not, she would never see the man again, so who cared if she made a fool of herself?

So other than possible humiliation, or wasting her time, she had absolutely nothing to lose—and a potential weekend of hot sex and traveling through the state to gain.

Seemed like a fair deal to her. Particularly when she thought back to the brooding, sexy man labeled Dominic Rutledge, with the scorching blue eyes and shoulder-length wavy dark brown hair. Even on a digital image, he fairly radiated sexual energy and allure. Jumping into bed with him would not be a problem, and she certainly wouldn’t have to fake anything.

Double-checking her packed bag, Mary determinedly left her room, intent on filling the rest of the day with cleaning until she could collapse in bed and sleep the hours away until she would leave. Even though she had made her decision, she didn’t want to lose her nerve by dwelling on what she was doing. Deep inside her something had clicked when she had seen the picture of Dominic.

Something about all the men had seemed feral yet restrained at the same time. As stupid as it seemed, she had no trouble at all believing these men could change into huge wolves once a month.

Her impulse might be bizarre and crazy, but something in Mary knew she would never rest until she had followed this, whatever it was, through. Sure, she might make a fool of herself, but at least she would get her answers and be able to let it rest.

A determined gleam in her eye, she grabbed the polish rag and headed into her living room to do some dusting.

* * * * *

Dominic madly typed at his keyboard, determined to catch the hacker who had been stupid enough to try and break his code. While there were no state or federal secrets inside their website, Rutledge Security
did
pride themselves on having the best, the most up-to-date security and systems on hand. While nothing was hacker-proof, their systems and encryptions were as close as one could get. It was a source of incredible pride to Dominic.

Dominic’s instincts warned him that the talented, but obviously gauche, kid who had started hacking into the Rutledge Security files had called in extra firepower. The initial hacker had certainly been talented, but untrained—they hadn’t realized the careful snare Dom had set up and they had fallen into it like a ripe plum.

He grinned hugely at the shock and surprise the kid must have felt. The kid was good enough to break in, but not trained enough to know how to get out. Dom felt a momentary spurt of ego to know his personally created system worked.

There had been almost no action after the initial squirming, and then suddenly he was trying to follow a flurry of activity. To his well-trained eye, the new person was obviously a veteran. Slowly and meticulously the new person unwound the kid from the highly tricky snare.

Dominic unwillingly felt a rush of respect for the new person. Not only were they well-trained and quite talented, but patient as well. The confidence mixed with the patience made him wonder if the kid had called in a woman to help him. Many men would have taken the few deeper traps he set, appearing as quick-fix exits. The woman didn’t rise to any of his baits.

Dominic had purposely set the trap such, in the hopes of further trapping any hackers. Also, he needed to buy himself as much time as possible to track them down. Somehow it hadn’t fully worked this time.

Too busy trying to trace their Internet source and point of connection, Dominic hadn’t been fazed by the new arrival trying to un-pry themselves. But the speed with which they were becoming untangling, coupled with the thought it was a woman beating his system, set his teeth on edge.

Dominic tapped his foot impatiently and resisted the urge to pace like a caged animal.

Something about this hacker, this
woman
, tugged at him. She pricked his pride, but more, she pricked his
interest
, as few women ever had.

All the details would be collected on Samuel’s main computer back at Artemais’ house, so he couldn’t even read the data as it was collected and begin to collate it. He gave up his resistance and began to pace—restlessly, anxiously, feeling as if his hands were tied. The lack of control he held over the entire situation grated on him. It was a completely alien, strange feeling to him.

All sorts of scenarios from a kid’s prank to a hardened criminal flashed through his mind. The original hacker was almost certainly a kid. The lack of experience was obvious and easy to pick out—even over the web.

It was the new person who worried him. This
woman
.

Dominic could feel himself getting closer and closer. The lady could evidently tell he was getting closer too. She now desperately struggled out of the code. Dominic felt thankful the hackers were far too busy untangling themselves to steal or read any private files. Everything was tightly locked down. Nothing had been tampered with.