Page 42 of What a Wolf Wants

“He is. So are you going to call him back?” She sounded amused.

“No. We’re busy on our berry-picking date. When we get back to your house, we’ll be in the business of making jelly.” He got a call before he put his phone back in his backpack and he glanced at the caller ID. “He’s persistent.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I could have told you that. He doesn’t know that you’re an alpha like he is. He probably thinks he can intimidate you and you’ll leave me alone.”

“It’s not happening.”

“That’s what I like about you. Someone who will stand up to him. Even if Renault was a wolf, he wouldn’t have stood up to Noah.”

“You’re worth it.” Ethan tucked his phone into his backpack.

“Thanks. Besides, Noah would never have gone out to pick blackberries with me and then make them into jam or jelly. This was really fun.”

“That’s part of life, experiencing stuff like that. And the blackberries are so much wilder and tastier than the store-bought brands,” he said.

“Exactly. Plus, having the encounter with the bear made it all the more…exciting.”

He laughed.

They finally reached her home, dropped off their backpacks near the door, and he began cleaning the frying pans from breakfast. Charlene brought out lemon juice, pectin, and sugar, and then washed the berries. Then she soaked the berries in salt water. She dried them after that.

“These are perfect. Some are perfectly ripe, others a little underripe, which makes a great combination. Overripe blackberries lose their pectin and sharpness. So we did great,” she said.

“That’s good to know. Do you want me to mash the blackberries in the pan?” he asked.

“Sure.” She added some lemon juice to it.

He simmered them over the stovetop for a few minutes to break the berries down, and then she strained them through a jelly bag. She added some of the seeds back in so it was more of a jam than just all jelly.

He began mashing the berries with a potato masher. “Boy, they smell good.”

“They do. It makes me think of still being out there picking them.”

Then they cooked the mixture with sugar and pectin, and he began stirring it constantly to dissolve the sugar. They boiled it for five minutes and then after they finished cooking it, they sterilized the jars for the jelly.

“Should we have lunch now?” she asked.

“Yeah, that was fun.” He was cleaning everything up so they could make lunch. “Unless you want to order pizza instead of making lunch.”

“That sounds fabulous.” She sighed. “Oh, you shouldn’t have been doing all that work with your arm. I keep forgetting that you’re injured because you keep acting like there’s nothing wrong with it. But after cliff hanging, it has to be sore.”

“I was mixing and mashing with my good arm. My injured arm only hurt when I was hanging onto the cliff.”

She shook her head. “And when you were running as a wolf? Why don’t we just grill steaks tonight and enjoy the sunset instead of running as wolves? Especially after the trauma I’m sure your injured arm has experienced today.”

“Sure, that would be fine.” Ethan wouldn’t have let on it was bothering him, but it was probably a good idea to give his arm a rest.

They ordered a supreme pizza with all the toppings that would be there in half an hour. Then they settled on the back deck with glasses of water.

“Now this is the life,” she said, watching the seagulls flying over the ocean.

“Yeah. I couldn’t have found a better place to retire, even if I hadn’t thought that’s what I would be doing here.” Then he got a call on his phone and looked at the caller ID. “It’s Noah again.”

“You might as well get it over with.”

“That’s just what I was thinking.” Ethan answered his phone. “Hello?” He put it on speakerphone so Charlene could listen in or jump into the conversation if she wanted to.

“This is Noah Westmoreland and I’m—”