Wolver's Reward (6 page)

River was going to tell her she was wrong. It
wasn't about sex. Okay, the thought of those long legs and how they
would feel wrapped around him was distracting, so maybe it was, but
not the kind she was talking about. He'd never paid for sex in his
life. The old woman's next sentence had him snapping his mouth shut
on his denial.

"I'd go get him and end up taking the beating
he couldn't take out on the girl," she said as casually as if she'd
said she was taking in the mail.

"Why'd you stay with him?"

The question just popped out. He'd always
wondered why the females of his old pack stayed with the men who
used and abused them. Some of the women were as bad as the men, but
he'd seen others that just curled up and faded away without a
fight. He'd never seen it in Wolf's Head, but then again, his Alpha
made it pretty clear that beating on females was punishable by
death. Still, he had no right to ask the question. It was none of
his business.

"Sorry."

She shrugged. "Don't be. I was seventeen.
Back then, you made your bed, you slept in it. Men like Harry were
all I knew and I figured he was a step up from most. He, at least,
was happy when he'd had too much to drink and he was generous when
he won at cards or dice. My father wasn't either of those things
and I was just another mouth to feed at home. Harry yelled a lot
and called me names, but he didn't hit me much. He only got
physical when someone made him look stupid and that wasn't too
often. I figured he was the best a girl like me was going to get."
She was quiet for a few minutes and River could tell she was
thinking of the past.

"Thank God for World War II," she said when
she spoke again, and then she laughed. "Bet you don't hear that
very often, do you?"

Other than the name, River hadn't heard much
about World War II, period, so he shrugged. "Not really."

"Best thing that ever happened to me. Harry
got called up and with the shortage of men, I got a good job. I
found out I was smarter than I looked. Lucky for me, my boss
thought so too. My father managed to get himself run over, by a
beer truck of all things, one night on the way home from the bar. I
moved back in with my mother and sisters, got a promotion and then
another, and moved us out of the old neighborhood. We left our old
life behind right along with the shabby curtains. My sisters stayed
in school and went to things like football games and dances. My
mother started to smile again. Then Harry got himself killed in
Italy."

She sighed. "Don't get me wrong, I felt bad.
He wasn't a good guy, but he wasn't a bad one, either, and he was
my husband. I kept my vows and I sure didn't want him to die, but I
knew by then that things had changed. I'd changed, and I knew I
wasn't going back to the way I lived before. I was only waiting for
Harry to come home before I told him. The women I met at work and
in the new neighborhood showed me how things could be. Not for me,
maybe, but for my sisters. I used his death benefit to put them
through school. Margie became a nurse and Betty was a teacher," she
said proudly. "They married good men after the war was over. I
stayed with my mother until she died a few years later."

"So what did you get out of it?" he asked
since it didn't sound like she got much.

"Oh, son, I got the best of it. I met Paul.
That's who I was thinking of when I stopped for you. I picked him
up just like I did you only he'd just been discharged from the
Army. Things were different back then, but I didn't make a habit of
picking up hitchhikers. There was just something about that
man.

"I wasn't looking for another husband, but he
was a persistent son of a gun. I fell in love with him, but I
wouldn't marry him. He was a drinker, not a bad one, but he liked
to party now and then, and poker was his favorite game. I'd learned
my lessons the hard way and I swore I'd never take a chance on
learning another of those lessons. I never saw Paul so angry as
when I told him about why I wouldn't marry him. He wasn't mad at my
father and Harry. Oh no, he was mad at me for not telling him
sooner."

"Much as I thought I knew it all, I learned
another lesson. This one was about love. Paul stopped his wild ways
and never drank another drop. Two years later, I married him. On
our wedding night, he put a big jar by our bedside. It was half
filled with money already and he put what he called his poker and
drinking money in it every week. He filled that jar over and over
and said he was saving it for a big, blowout binge one day. It
became a joke. That jar got filled and emptied for thirty years and
then one day he drives up in this car. He said he'd give me the
world if he could, but it seemed his drinking money didn't go as
far as he thought. All he could manage was this Cadillac and he put
it in my name.

"I tried to tell him that he'd already given
me the world when he loved me enough to give up the beer in the
first place, but he had some silly notion that I deserved this big,
fancy car. When he passed away, it was already old. Our kids wanted
me to sell it. Buy something new and better." She laughed as if
that was some kind of joke. "As if there could be something
better." Her laughter fled as quickly as it came. "I'm on my way
home from the shop where I took it to see if it could be fixed.
They said the car's on its last legs. It probably is, but I can't
give it up." She glanced over at him and smiled. "You're probably
like my grandson and think I'm an old fool, too."

"No, ma'am. I get it. Totally. I feel like
that about my motorcycle," River told her. And then, because she
was a stranger and he would never see her again so it didn't really
matter, he told her a bit about his past.

As nice as she was, she was still human, so
he couldn't tell her about being a wolver or about pack, but he
told her about his early 'family' and the abuse he saw there and
how they earned their living. He didn't tell her everything, but he
told her enough for her to get the picture.

"I never heard about earning an honest dollar
until I came to live with the family that adopted the younger cu...
kids. I earned every honest dollar that paid for that bike. I get
that for you, it's about love. I understand that, but it's not for
me. Pride now, that's different. I get pride, and that bike is it.
That's what that girl stole from me, my pride, and I want it back.
I need it back. It's all I have left."

With the way she looked at him, River thought
the old woman was going to give him a lecture, but she swallowed
whatever she'd been going to say. Her hand left the wheel and
reached for his. "You be careful now, son. I want your promise on
that. You've learned hard lessons the same as I did, but you're
still young, just like I was when I met Paul. You've still got
lessons to learn. Your pride is worth a lot, but not as much as
your life. Or your heart," she added. "I have about a hundred
dollars in my wallet. You can have it if you need it."

He'd thought about stealing her money and
here she was offering it to him. He felt guilty as hell.

"Thanks, but I'm good. And ma'am? You need to
find another mechanic. If he says this engine can't be fixed, you
tell him you want a rebuilt one. He might argue, but you stand
firm. It won't be cheap, but it'll last as long as you need it to."
He gave her hand a squeeze. "I'll promise to be careful if you
promise not to pick up hitch hikers anymore."

She would have driven him all the way to the
preserve, but he wouldn't let her. The sun would be setting soon
and he didn't want her driving on unfamiliar roads in the dark.

He'd run another six or eight miles before he
sat down to rest.

~*~

The six wolvers were crowded into the pickup
truck's cab. Arnold was driving again and Reb shared the front
passenger seat with Celia. The other three, none of them small,
were crowded into the back.

"We should have brought him with us," Celia
said.

Arnold gave her a questioning frown.
"Why?"

"Why?" she asked back, her voice rising and
falling on the word. "Did you not see him?"

"He was pretty hot."

"Hot? What kind of word is that?" Arnold
caught his partner's eye in the rearview mirror. "What, exactly, do
you mean by that?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean."
Lawrence was enjoying Arnold's reaction. "No need to get your
knickers in a twist, dear heart. It was only an objective
opinion."

"Subjective. Opinions are not objective."

"Well then, I suppose you're right," Lawrence
agreed. He sank his hook of jealousy a little deeper. "In my
subjective opinion, the wolver was hot. Ladies? Am I wrong or
right?"

Darla didn't hesitate. "Darn right he's hot.
Makes me wish I was twenty years younger. Did you feel his abs?
Hard as a rock."

"Yes, I felt them. When I hit him, and I
think my knuckles are swollen because of it," Arnold sulked.

"I only meant if you're attracted to that
sort. Perhaps," he offered, giving Rosemary a hug and letting
Arnold off the hook, "he displayed a bit too much of the animal,
for my taste anyway."

Darla snorted. "In case you've forgotten,
Lawrence. We are animals and that cub was prime."

"He's not a cub," Reb objected, though
quietly.

She couldn't stop thinking about him, about
the way he'd looked at her, about how angry he became. He looked
like he thought she was the one who needed help instead of the
other way around. And when she hit him, he didn't look angry then.
He looked... Reb mentally shrugged, but she couldn't get that look
in his eyes out of her mind.

After she'd hit him with the bat and he'd
looked at her with those sad and beautiful eyes, she was sure the
pain in them didn't come from the blow. He looked at her as if
she'd betrayed him, which she had, she supposed. He'd stopped to
help and she'd whomped him with a bat. She'd whomped him again,
because she didn't want to hear him ask,

"What kind of wolver are you? How could you
do this to a perfect stranger who meant you no harm?"

"Needs must that the devil drives," she
consoled herself with the Shakespearian quote. She'd had no choice.
Necessity compelled her to do what had to be done.

"That devil could drive me
anytime." Celia squirmed in the seat beside her.
"My poor body, madam,
requires it: I am driven on by the flesh." She giggled
again.

Reb had forgotten the beginning of the quote.
It wasn't really relevant, or was it? No, it couldn't be. The
leather jacket, worn no doubt, to show off the breadth of his
shoulders; the heavy boots that drew attention to his muscular
legs; the chain hanging from his waist that directed the eye to his
hips, the high, rounded buttocks at the base of his tapered back,
and yes, fine, the fly of his jeans at the front; it was perfectly
normal to speculate, but those weren't things she would find
attractive. No, it had nothing to do with the way his tee shirt
clung to his chest, or the slight slouch to his shoulders as he
sauntered up to offer his help. No, she wasn't driven on by the
flesh.

Reb wasn't, but her wolf was. It yipped and
rolled and spun around inside her.

"I thought he was dreamy."

Reb was distracted from her thoughts by
Rosemary's whisper. "What?"

"I thought he was dreamy," Rosemary said, a
hair louder than the first time. "He had one of those looks you
read about in books, dark and menacing, but not, if..."

"Well, what would you expect?" Arnold
interrupted. "We attacked him. I'd look the same way if I was in
that position."

"No you wouldn't. You'd squeal like a
pup."

Darla's insult stung. "I thought I behaved
admirably."

"He didn't retaliate when I hit him,"
Rosemary offered.

"That's because he thought you were a
mosquito." Celia flicked her hand at Arnold's shoulder to
demonstrate.

"Ow. Be careful. I have a bruise there. And
I'm driving," he added lest anyone think he was squealing.

That was Reb's observation as well. When
Rosemary hit him, he'd looked at their little mouse with surprise.
She'd half thought he was going to laugh. He could have hit her. He
would have hurt her, but he didn't. He could have hurt Darla, too,
but Darla swore that wasn't his intent, and Darla knew about these
things.

He wasn't dark, though. His skin was
burnished copper and freckled. His hair, she thought, was brown,
but it was hard to tell as wet as it was from the rain. His eyes
were brown, though, so deep and dark they were almost black. Those
eyes would haunt her for days.

"I'm glad you thought he was dreamy."
Lawrence was saying. He patted Rosemary's knee. "And good for you,
too. It's about time you sat up and paid attention. Maybe by the
end of the festivities you'll find someone else to dream
about."

"Wouldn't that be wonderful," Celia said on a
sigh.

That was the dream, wasn't it? Reb stated it
aloud. "Maybe everyone will find what they're looking for." She
added the source of the quote that gave her the excuse for her
awful behavior and which also included her hopes for the Chase.
"All's Well That Ends Well," she said, but she knew in her heart it
was unlikely to end well for her.

She turned her head to the back seat to
include them in her smile, but the smile died when she saw Darla
staring at her with a look she'd never seen in her nursemaid's eyes
before. Darla blinked and the look was gone, but not before Reb
recognized it for what it was.

Her best friend in the whole world had looked
at her with pity.

Chapter 5

After dropping the others off to clean up the
evidence of their wrongdoing, Darla drove the truck to the
designated place of the Chase. It was an area in the wildlife
preserve that had been closed off to the public. A heavy chain
blocked the access road and on it hung a metal sign that read KEEP
OUT. When she stopped to remove the barrier, Reb got out, too.