How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf (Naked Werewolf #1)

I was contemplating how weird it was to think of my baby in animal terms when Eli cleared his throat. “We’re becoming concerned, Mo.”

“Regarding?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

“Cooper. It’s unnatural for any wolf to be away from his home for so long. Most of the time, it means the wolf is hurt or dead. But since he abandoned the packlands years ago, we’re not sure how strong his tie is to the area anymore. Hell, he may not be able to have strong ties to anything anymore,” he said, sipping his tea. “We all thought he was attached to you, and look—” The expression on my face made Eli look instantly aghast. “I’m sorry. I’m not good at this sort of thing, Mo. Especially with women outside our pack. It’s different. I don’t mean to hurt you. I feel responsible for what’s happened. I put an unfair amount of pressure on you to push Cooper back home, and he ran.”

“That’s not what happened, Eli.” I ran my thumb over the mug handle, trying to concentrate on the warmth of the ceramic against my fingertips. “It had nothing to do with you. Susie, the hikers, Abner—Cooper thinks he might have hurt them while he was in wolf form.”

“Well, that’s not possible,” Eli said, his brow creasing. “Cooper doesn’t have that in him.”

“I know that. But he’s convinced. He’s staying away from me because he’s afraid he’s going to hurt me.”

Eli squeezed my shoulder and gave me a pitying look. “One thing I know about Cooper, once his mind’s made up, that’s it. As much as I would hate to see you leave, I wouldn’t wait for him. If you have somewhere you’d rather be, someone else you’d rather be with . . . I’m sorry, Mo.”

Eli handed me a slip of paper with his cell-phone number on it and told me to call if I ever needed help from him or the pack. He moved back toward the door, leaving me there, absently rubbing a hand over my aching breastbone.

AS I DROVE home, the odd conflict between Eli’s and Gracie’s advice played out in my head. Gracie knew Cooper better, but Eli saw the problem from a male point of view. Wouldn’t another man be able to see the signs of a wolf gone for good? Maybe Cooper could come back to Grundy if he knew I was gone. Maybe by staying I was keeping Cooper from the only home he’d really known. But what if Gracie was right? What if Cooper finally came home and found that I’d left, that another person who was supposed to love him had abandoned him?

More confused than when I’d set off that morning, I saw my cell phone flashing, indicating a voice mail. “Hi, sweetheart, it’s your mother. We haven’t talked in a while, and your father and I would like to see how you’re doing. If you have time, could you call us?”

I arched my eyebrow. That sounded almost . . . normal. It was neither passive nor aggressive. The sort of message that Kara’s mother left her on a regular basis. And the paranoid part of my brain wondered if it was a trick, if the past few months of peace were a trap. When I needed help or advice, my instinctual reaction was to turn away from my parents, to head off the inevitable lecture on personal responsibility, global awareness, or vital importance of ear-candling. Now some combination of morbid curiosity and desperation had me dialing my parents’ number. It actually rang a few times, and I found myself worried that I’d missed them. That was a new sensation.

“Spirit Wind Bed-and-Breakfast. How can I help you?”

I pulled the phone from my ear and checked the display to make sure I’d dialed home. “I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number.”

“Mo?” I heard my mom’s familiar squeal.

“Mom?”

“Baby!” she cried. “Oh, my baby, how are you? I’m so glad you called. Ash, she’s on the phone!”

I heard the clatter of the extension as my father did his usual juggling of the phone before actually putting it to his ear.

“Oh, honey, we miss you,” Ash said. “How are you doing?”

“I—what was with that bed-and-breakfast thing?”

“Oh, honey, you’ll never believe it,” Mom said. “We’ve turned the commune into a spiritual retreat. It was your father’s idea. We’ve been booked solid for two months.”

“People sleep there? And they pay you?”

“Well, not necessarily. We accept in-kind payments or ‘sweat equity’ on the farm, but sometimes, yeah, we take cash.”

Dad interjected, “We’re the only totally organic, vegan ecotourism destination in southwestern Mississippi.”

“But—but where did this come from? You’ve never even talked about wanting to run an ecotourism project before. And you hate it when outsiders come tromping around in your garden.”

Dad chuckled. ”Well, when you left, I thought about my little girl being out in the world, in a strange place, and I wondered how much of what we’ve taught you was going to stay with you as you traveled down that road. And how many people out there don’t have the benefit of growing up the way you did, being taught the values that we gave you.”

I tried to contain the snort, I really did. Dad did a masterful job of ignoring it, continuing, “I realized that as much as we love our little community, it would benefit so many more if we opened it up to travelers, people who need to have their eyes opened up to what’s really happening in their minds, their bodies. It didn’t take much time to convert the place. A little paint, a little elbow grease. We had a couple of cabins that were empty anyway. We all work. Sven prepares all the meals and teaches cooking classes. Sundrop teaches yoga. Your mother leads meditation seminars and nature walks. We’ve had great reviews in a couple of the trade magazines, and now we’re practically turning guests away.”

“Oh, we would never turn anyone away,” Mom corrected him. “When we have overflow, we just put the guests in your old room.”

“You turned my room into a guest suite?” I was shocked to find I was a little hurt by the idea of complete strangers sleeping in my childhood nook. I’d practically expected my parents to enclose it as a shrine. As much as I griped about home, I’d always known I could go back if I needed to. And now it seemed that space was filled. With neo-hippies who craved an uncomfortable twin bed, sunrise yoga sessions, and organic carrot lasagna. I didn’t have a fallback position.

Automatically, I reached for the Tums, determined to forestall the worst of the heartburn. But the acidic ache in my throat never came. I took a deep breath and kept my tone pleasant. “Are the guests bothered by the fact that there aren’t any walls?”

“Oh, everyone has loved it; they say it’s very cozy. They feel just like part of the family.” Something was different in my mom’s voice. There was a temperance of mood, a restraint she’d never shown before. I realized that this was the most time my parents had ever spent telling me about what they’d been doing. Normally, they were either preaching at me or peppering me with questions about my life, my work, my dates, my recycling habits. And it occurred to me that I usually didn’t ask what they were up to. I was too focused on getting off the phone as soon as possible. The ache I’d expected came in the form of twisting guilt, genuine and deserved.

“It sounds great,” I told them. “I’m glad it’s working out for you. Can you send me some pictures?”

“Sure, sure.” Dad chuckled. “Or you can just look up our Web site.”

“You guys have a Web site?” I cried. “Who are you people, and what have you done with my parents?”

They laughed on the other end of the line. Dad cleared his throat, which was apparently a cue to Mom. She took a deep breath and said, “You know, Mo, sweetheart, we’ve been talking, and we realized that you were right.”

I waited for the punchline, but nothing came. “I’m sorry?”

Mom sighed. “Your moving away was the right thing to do. We did need a break from each other. And we did put a lot of pressure on you.”

I demanded, “Are you trying to be funny?”

“We were scared, honey,” she said. “We spent so much time fighting against becoming some boring old married couple. When you came along, it was like we’d created this miracle. And how could we be boring if we were tending to a miracle? So we were unwilling to let that feeling go.”

“What your mother’s trying to say is that we were scared to death that when you left, we were going to be staring at each other, wondering what the hell to say.” Dad snorted.

“And now we don’t have to worry. You’ve been gone for almost a year, do you realize that? A year. And we’re just fine—better than ever, really, because we can focus on each other,” Mom said. “We’ve rediscovered our passion, our primal urges—”

“Mom, you’re on the verge of ruining a beautiful moment with too much information,” I warned her.

“Sorry, baby.”

“So, what you’re saying is that I was right,” I said tentatively. “That when I said I needed my own space and my own life, I was right. And that I was right to leave and move all the way across the country for it.”

“Yes,” they chorused.

“And you were wrong,” I said. “Wrong, wrong, totally wrong.”

“Yes,” they chorused again.

“OK, seriously, are you two about to jump out from behind my couch and yell ‘Surprise’?”

Dad chuckled again. “We haven’t heard anything about the Great North Woods. What’s it like up there? Do you have friends? How’s the job?”

“It’s good.” I sighed. “I love my little house. I have a lot of friends, and I love my job. I’m making some changes with the owner, Evie, to the menu, and they’ve gone over really well. My chocolate chess squares are a big hit.”

I waited a beat for my mother to lecture me on pushing poisonous sugars to the masses, but she was simply listening.

“Are you happy, baby?” Mom asked.

Well, until recently, I’d been peachy-freaking-keen. I murmured a noncommittal “Mm-hmm.”

“That’s what’s important,” Dad told me. “That’s all we want for you. We can work out the rest.”

How many times had I wanted him to say that? How much anger and anxiety could have been prevented if we’d had this conversation when I was a teenager, instead of a thirty-year-old? I sighed, feeling a little weight wiggle loose from my chest. There was still pressure there, from Cooper, from past hurts, but it was eased enough to let me breathe.

“I’ve got to go,” I told them, my voice thick. “I love you guys, I really do. I’ll try to come home for a visit soon, OK? Iloveyoubye.”

A few minutes after I hung up, the cell phone rang again. It was such a relief to see the caller ID and not feel that dread. I smiled. “Did you forget something, Mom?”

“What’s bothering you, baby?”

I opened my mouth to protest. “Nothing’s bothering—”

“I know this is probably a strain on the delicate peace we’ve just built, but honey, I know when something’s wrong with you. Is it a man?”

I hung my head. “How did you know?”

“Well, I’ve never heard that kind of hurt in your voice before. And you’ve never been in the kind of relationship where you could be hurt like that,” she said. “So it stands to reason that this is something new for you.”

“It sucks, Mom. It really, really sucks.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

This was new, too—Mom asking for information instead of demanding answers, which was good, because I was going to have to edit heavily anything I told her. I was not ready to tell my parents about the baby yet. For one thing, they might insist on coming up to visit, and I couldn’t have them traipsing through the complicated werewolf soap opera that had become my life. And second—well, really, the possibility that they might come to visit was reason enough. One good phone call isn’t going to make me that optimistic.