Page 22 of Shame the Devil

They’d have been alone out there otherwise, in the dark. Even if they’d had lights with them, skiing after dark here would be more than dangerous.

It wasn’t so much the animals, or even the geysers with their near-boiling water. It was the disorientation, the impossible burden of being outdoors, in an unfamiliar place, amidst swirling snow, darkness, and cold. He was from North Dakota. He knew about snowstorms, and he knew about cold.

They wouldn’t have come back from that.

“Boy, do I feel dumb,” she said, and now, she did pull her hand away. “I didn’t know how slowly we’d ski, and I’m from a different time zone. But that’s no excuse.”

She was looking upset, like she was imagining the same scenario he was. She and Dyma huddled in the snow in the freezing dark with no idea where the lodge was, Jennifer holding her daughter close, trying desperately to keep her warm, knowing that morning wouldn’t come soon enough.

He said, “You know that thing I was reading?”

“About the Indians?” He could practically see her yanking her mind away from disaster.

“Yeah. The Mountain Shoshone, who hunted bighorn sheep out here. They didn’t use horses. Too steep for horses. They figured out ways to trap the sheep instead up on those slopes. And maybe because they were agile over high ground, good athletes, and they hunted the sheep in groups like that, the wolf was their main … deity, or whatever. The protector, and the creator. Brave and strong and loyal, that’s the idea. He was also the one who brought Death to the world, though, because without Death, there’s no room for new life. A realistic kind of god, not a miraculous one, I guess. And their legend says that in the beginning, Wolf walked and talked like Man.”

“Like a shifter,” she said.

“Yeah. The original shifter. So who knows? Maybe that wolf staring at you like that? Maybe it was the protector-spirit telling you to go back, keeping you safe. Maybe it wasn’t a threat at all. Maybe it was the opposite.”

He felt stupid saying it. And yet it felt true.

“Of course,” she said, “because of that, we skied straight into the bison and the snowmobiles.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but you also skied straight into me. Just in time for me to tackle you out of the way of a snowmobile and bruise your butt.”

“You telling me you’re a wolf shifter after all?” She had her head tilted to one side now, a little smile on her face, a little tease in those wild eyes, and she wasn’t looking nearly as much like a PTA mom. “You’re my white wolf, and you’re here to take care of me?”

Whoa.

“Maybe I am,” he said. “Life is strange and wonderful.” He swallowed another mouthful of liquid fire and let himself feel all of it.

The buzz. The high. The risk.

The thrill.

10

That’s a No, Then

This waswhy you didn’t drink Tennessee whiskey.

How had she made it through that dinner? By the time she was walking down the corridor again with Dyma, letting her daughter open the door this time, she wasn’t sure what had just happened, and shedefinitelywasn’t sure she’d responded in the right way to any of it.

Although whatwasthe right way? The way she’d been doing things hadn’t worked so great, that was for sure.

At least she hadn’t risked humiliation before.

She hadn’t risked anything else either, though.

Face it. She had no idea what the right way was.

So, no. She normally didn’t drink too much, and definitely not where anybody could see her. She didn’t flirt, either. Mark had sure been right about that. She didn’t dress like this, or let a man touch her hand and smile into her eyes, a man she’d never even met before. Astranger.She didn’t let herself imagine heading down the corridor and right through a bedroom door with that stranger, hands and mouths all over the place and clothes hitting the floor, because that wouldn’t lead anywhere but the Heartbreak Hotel. And shesuredidn’t do all that in front of her daughter.

She’d spent the whole dinner swinging between two completely different emotions. Sensations. Whatever. One of them being the look in Kris’s eyes, the brush of his hand against hers, the feel of his hard-muscled calf against her toe when she crossed her legs.

Who crossed their legs at the dinner table? That wasn’t her, either. Or maybe it was, because if you got those kinds of tingles? You ended up crossing your legs.

She was her daughter’srole model.That was the other emotion, because she was watching Dyma react in exactly that same way to Owen, seeing his eyes light up in appreciation, hearing his easy laugh. Dyma had teased him about being a rancher, then asked him about baby calves, and then, of course, had said, “Although I’m planning on becoming a vegetarian.”