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WES

I might have been a dick back there to my new neighbor, but I didn’t really care. Hell, I didn’t even want to think about flashing myself. What kind of man does that? She must think I’m a perv. And a dick.

I knew I came off as an asshole, not just to Joy, but to everyone. Even before Remy, I’d never been much for socializing. I wasn’t the kind of guy to make small talk or gab around with the neighbors. The last four years of single parenting had made me downright prickly.

If I had a daily allotment of words to say, I sure as shit used them all up with Remy. She was a chatterbox. It seemed the only time she stopped talking was when she was asleep. For the rest of the world, I didn’t have much left in me for chitchat or pleasantries or any of that shit. My well of patience was completely dried up.

Getting saddled—no, not saddled , that was the wrong word—I fucking adored Remy, but I didn’t expect to raise a pup from infancy all by myself. I didn’t even know I had a pup until I returned to my home pack after a six-month rodeo circuit and saw her mom in town, pregnant.

Soraya hadn’t been my girlfriend. She hadn’t even been a friend. We’d hooked up one time on a full moon run. ONE TIME! She was a couple years younger than I was and had always been a wild one. Since she was eighteen, she’d run off and pop back in town when she was in trouble or needed money from her rich father. She’d just returned once again when we hooked up.

Yeah, the pull-out method obviously hadn’t been enough. So Remy was an oopsie baby.

I’d found a place to live and moved Soraya in with me to do right by her and the pup. But as soon as she had Remy, Soraya left town. Popped out the baby, took one look at her, and was gone. While she may have returned to the pack again, I’d moved here to Cooper Valley to steer clear. I hadn’t seen her since.

I had no regrets. Remy was everything to me.

It was just that I’d known fuck-all about raising a newborn pup, and it had been a journey to say the least. Especially when I had to take her on the road with me from competition to competition to ride bulls because that was the only way I could save enough money to buy us this place and provide for her.

I was good at it, too. Prize money came in. Sponsorships. Now we were set with a good house in a good town with a good pack.

I went inside and found Remy back in her booster coloring, where she was supposed to have been while I was showering.

I stomped over and kissed the top of her messy redhead. “You scared me, baby.”

My daughter looked up at me with wide, surprised eyes. They were green, like Soraya’s. Like every time I peered into her miniature, innocent face, my chest squeezed up tight.

I loved her so much it physically hurt. The pain of fucking this up–parenting her the wrong way, or fate forbid, ever losing her–had a strangle-hold on my love.

“ You were scared?” she asked in wonderment.

I set my hand on my bare chest. “You don’t think daddies can be scared?”

“I didn’t think you were scared of anything.”

I pulled back a chair beside her and plunked into it. I was still wearing nothing but Remy’s undersized towel. “I don’t get scared for me, Remy baby. But you know what scares me a lot?”

Her little forehead crinkled. She had a red ring from the popsicle around her mouth. “What?”

I leaned in and looked into her innocent little eyes. “Thinking something might happen to you.”

“But I’m okay, Daddy.” She reached out and patted my hand. As if she was the one offering comfort. “Joy is my friend.”

Joy. That was the neighbor.

I considered Remy, biting back my automatic response, which would be to tell her not to trust strangers or whatever bullshit parents were supposed to say these days. I’d picked this town, this house, because of how safe it was. How she could go and visit neighbors and play with other kids on the block.

I cocked my head. “How do you know she’s a friend?”

Remy returned to coloring, dragging an orange crayon up and down over a stick figure like she was giving it clothes. “She smells good.”

For some reason, that made goosebumps rise on my arms.

She smells good.

“You were trusting your wolf instincts.” I gave her a nod. Parenting was a little at a time kind of guidance.

Wolf pups didn’t shift until puberty, and some packs–especially those in cities or more integrated with humans–didn’t teach their pups what they were until they were old enough to honor the pack secret.

But I’d had to explain to Remy when we were on the rodeo circuit that I couldn’t be hurt by the bulls because I was a wolf. The animals had scared her, and that helped her watch me without crying every time I let myself get thrown to make it seem realistic. More than that, though, I believed it was important to teach her to listen to her wolf instincts. To differentiate between her animal side and her little girl side. I didn’t know anything about being female, so I was trying my best.

It was true that I had to be careful Remy didn’t say the wrong thing to a human, but I wanted my daughter to know what she was. I was proud of her. Proud of what she was and what she’d become. I’d taught her to distinguish the scent of a human from a wolf. She already knew she could talk freely about what she was in front of wolves, but had to keep our secret from humans.

“Yeah, I know she’s a human, but she’s the good kind.” Remy kept coloring, trading out the orange crayon for a yellow one, which she used to scratch a ball of color over the stick figure’s head.

I scrubbed a hand over my beard. “What’s the good kind?”

“The kind like Joy.”

Kids said the damnedest things. In my mind, I returned to the neighbor’s back stoop. I’d been wrapped up in the relief of finding Remy and the agitation of unused adrenaline, so I hadn’t paid enough attention to the woman. Specifically, since Remy mentioned it, the way she smelled.

But Remy was right. It had been pleasant.

Sweet and warm, like fresh-baked donuts. Like honey vanilla caramels, too gooey to eat.

But now that I recalled it, her scent had only further agitated me. Like, it irritated me that my wolf had found her scent pleasing. It made me cranky. Or crankier.

I remembered the way her gaze had gone to my dick when I squatted down. That had been a dumb move, but I wasn’t modest. Not that I’d planned to flash my neighbor wearing only my four-year-old’s tiny fucking towel.

A flush had spread across her chest, but she hadn’t looked embarrassed.

No, there had been a boldness in the way she looked at me. Like she’d been drinking me in.

Like she was interested. Like she wanted me.

I scrubbed a hand over the back of my neck, which seemed to heat with the thought. Because for some reason, I was glad she’d been interested. That she found my body appealing.

Joy. The neighbor. Pretty blonde hair all messy on top of her head. Blue eyes, full lips that seemed to be in a perpetual smile.

I wasn’t interested, but I should have shaken her hand instead of showing her my dick. Then I’d have her scent on my palm to review now. I could have introduced myself.

I’d just bought the house next to her and had a preschooler who I apparently couldn’t trust to stay in the house when I told her to.

She might be someone I could ask to babysit now and again. Like, if I had to run to the grocery store after bedtime. Hell, I’d been worried about what I was going to do with Remy after her morning preschool during the summer calving season, which would be starting up any day now.

This was my first season as foreman. I’d missed the spring calving. So while I was in charge, I was winging it a bit based on what this ranch did with their cattle. I figured if I had to go to the ranch at night, I’d pull her out of bed and make a little nest of blankets for her to sleep in my pickup while I worked.

Once she was asleep, she didn’t wake up for anything.

But if I had a neighbor who didn’t mind coming over…

My thoughts had nothing to do with the fact that Joy was young and pretty. She wasn’t my type. The last thing I needed was a sweet, dimpled, blue-eyed human in my life, except as a babysitter.

Nope.

My heart was closed to females–she-wolves and humans alike. It couldn’t contain the pressure of loving a four-year-old pup. Plus, I didn’t have enough time to manage one tiny female and myself. There was no way I was going to complicate things by getting involved with a woman. Especially a human.

Not even one that smelled like pralines and sunshine.

“Is that Joy?” I tapped the paper Remy was drawing on.

She nodded her head, her red curls bobbing. “Uh huh. You can tell by the bun on top.” She pointed to the yellow ball above the stick figure’s head. “How do you write her name?”

“Let’s sound it out,” I said, taking a cue from Remy’s preschool teacher, Riley. “J-J-J.”

She stuck her tongue into the corner of her mouth, just like she always did when concentrating. “G?”

“J. But you’re right, G makes that sound, too.”

Remy’s face scrunched up as she drew a giant letter J at the top of the paper in yellow. She traded out the yellow crayon for a blue one. “And then what?”

“Oh-oh-oh.” I made the sound with my mouth.

She glanced at me for confirmation as she drew an O beside the J.

I nodded.

“Is that all?”

“Y. Like in Remy.” I hoped she wouldn’t ask why it wasn’t pronounced Joey , then, because I sure as hell didn’t know. I didn’t think they taught exceptions to sounding things out quite yet.

When she’d added her crooked Y, she held it up. “Can I bring it to her?”

My dick twitched under the towel at the thought of returning next door. Which was exactly why I had to say no.

“Not now.” I stood and ruffled Remy’s hair. “Daddy has to get dressed and figure out something for you to eat for dinner.”

“Can we buy popsicles?” Remy asked.

An image of Joy licking her raspberry popsicle flashed through my mind. That tongue dragging up the side as she perused my body with her leisurely gaze.

Suddenly, my mouth watered, and it wasn’t for popsicles.

Maybe I should be neighborly. I could bring Remy over to deliver the drawing. I could introduce myself properly and get off on a better foot with my new neighbor. After I got dressed.

More importantly, I could get another good whiff of her scent.

That would be the only reason for going over there. Not because I was interested.

I definitely didn’t want Joy to lick my popsicle. Or to open those thighs for me to get my face between them.

I wasn’t wondering whether the scent of her arousal smelled as sweet as the rest of her.

Nor what sounds she’d made when she got excited.

Nope. Not going there. You didn’t screw your neighbor. That had to be a fucking rule, right?

Especially not when she was a human, and I was a single parent and a wolf.