A SEAL Wolf Christmas (14 page)

He didn’t say anything about what was being said, but she was certain he was trying to think of anything that might help them with piecing the puzzle together.

“Wentworth might have tried to set Everton up if the two don’t care for each other,” Bjornolf said.

“What if Everton is in on this?”

Nathan was in the process of moving an ornament already on the tree to another spot when he paused to look at Anna, but he didn’t offer anything.

Anna sighed and folded her arms across her chest. “We have to look at every possible reason why Wentworth would tell his brother, Jeff, that we shouldn’t have killed their kidnappers in the Amazon, and why DEA agents were murdered at the Christmas tree farm. It’s possible that Everton is involved up to his eyeballs. He may know about his half brothers’ involvement and have blackmailed them even, wanting a share of the money. Maybe he got rid of the DEA agents for Wentworth.” She paused. “Remember when William and Jeff were talking, and the one said they had led trouble to someone’s doorstep, but they weren’t there to take care of the mess this time?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“I wonder if the agents disappeared around the same time.” Anna shook her head. “Without more to go on, it’s a guessing game.”

Nathan went to the sack to get one last ornament out. “Are you ready?” Nathan pulled out the angel. “See it’s gold, copper, and silver with a gray wolf standing beside her long skirt.”

Warmed to the marrow of her bones, Anna smiled. “It’s beautiful, Nathan. The prettiest angel I’ve ever seen.” It had been killing her not to take a peek before the guys came in from outside.

“I was afraid you might want something else. That you envisioned a different kind of angel. Something softer, maybe.”

“She’s perfect.” Anna went to hug him, and he quickly looked at Bjornolf, as if seeking his approval.

Bjornolf gave him a nod and a smile, but Anna had already moved to embrace Nathan. “You’re so sweet, Nathan. I’ve never celebrated the holiday. You’ve helped to make this one so special to me, and I’ll never forget it.”

He hugged her back, then he said to Bjornolf, “My dad always put the star on the tree. Did you want to do the honors?”

Nathan was fighting back tears, just like she was. Bjornolf gave her a small smile and squeezed her hand, and she noted his eyes were misty, too. “I’d love to.”

She realized then she’d never think of the holidays again as one of those hassles in life, involving crowded shopping centers and annoying Christmas jingles played over and over again. She put her arm around Nathan’s shoulders and watched as Bjornolf put the angel and wolf ornament on top of the Colorado blue spruce tree.

“We’ll have the most beautiful tree of any of the open houses, guaranteed,” she said proudly.

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool, isn’t it?”

Bjornolf cleared his throat. They both looked over at him. “Anna, you said you knew how to cook?”

In short order, they had baked chicken thighs, asparagus, and baked potatoes on a big serving dish sitting in the center of the cherrywood dining table.

Bjornolf and Nathan looked at the table, then at Anna. “We need holiday decorations for the table for the open house,” Bjornolf said.

“Yeah,” Nathan said.

They both studied Anna, waiting for her response. She wanted to say she didn’t “do” shopping. But after all that Nathan had done, she couldn’t say no. She sighed. “After lunch, all right?”

Nathan gave Bjornolf a high five.

She was doomed.

After lunch, Bjornolf and Nathan put away the dishes. She could really get used to this, but she figured when…

She paused as she wiped down the table. She hadn’t even considered what might happen beyond the mission—what would become of Nathan, or where she and Bjornolf would end up.

“I need to make a quick call. Be right back.” She headed into the bedroom and shut the door, then fished out her phone and called Hunter. “I need you to look into something for me.”

“About the murders?” Hunter asked.

“No. About a Jessica Everton, adopted daughter of the owners of the Christmas tree farm. She was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico.”

“What are we looking for?” he asked.

“To learn if her real parents were wolves.”

Shortly thereafter, Anna got a call from Hunter letting her know that Rourke, their investigative reporter, had just called to tell Hunter that once he’d interviewed Helen Wentworth and after investigating some leads, he suspected Jessica Everton might be a wolf. First, according to Mrs. Wentworth, there was the case of a mysterious adoption—no evidence of papers, the Evertons’ own loss of a baby daughter, Jessica’s behavioral problems, no birth record for her that he could locate—and the scent of wolf when he’d dropped by to see the girl at the tree farm.

Anna shared the news with Bjornolf and Nathan. “We’ll finish decorating for the open house after we go shopping. Then Nathan, you arrange for Jessica to come over for dinner tonight.”

They couldn’t put this off any longer than that.

He looked skeptical.

Anna sighed and took his hand. “Nathan, if she’s truly a wolf, and if you two had sex, then you’ve mated with her. If you’ve mated with her, you could very well have gotten her pregnant. We
have
to learn the truth and deal with it.”

He frowned. “
You
shouldn’t have to do anything. Hunter took care of his mistakes all on his own.”

Anna nodded. “True. But he’s the pack leader. He had to. You’re not even legally an adult yet. We’ll help you in any way we can. Okay? Hunter and the rest of the pack will, too. That’s what a wolf pack is all about, Nathan. We take care of each other through the good stuff and the bad. You don’t have to do this alone.”

He bit his lip, then said, “She thinks she’s pregnant.”

Anna quickly closed her mouth, not wanting to look so astonished.

“I got angry with her because I knew I couldn’t have made her that way. That was one of the reasons I left to see Sarah.” Nathan glanced at Bjornolf. “Until he mentioned that in rare cases our kind could get a human pregnant.” He took a deep breath. “Jessica’s too afraid to get a pregnancy test and see what it shows. She swore I was the only one she’d been seeing.”

Anna didn’t say anything for a moment, shocked at the newest revelation, then nodded. “Call her, Nathan. Tell her you’ll pick her up for dinner tonight. That your aunt and uncle want to meet her. Then we’ll go shopping.”

Now, if only Jessica’s parents were all right with it, and Jessica was, too.

Anna suspected nothing would go as planned. When did it ever?

***

Bjornolf hoped they could learn the truth about Jessica tonight at dinner and then work on how they would handle it after that. For now, they were at a shopping mall for last-minute decorations to finish off the house for the pack parade of homes.

Anna had changed into a pair of cobalt blue jeans, the back pockets decorated with sequined hearts to catch the eye. She wore high-heeled boots and a white crocheted sweater that dipped low in front, showing off a hint of cleavage. She looked like a million bucks, and he couldn’t help staring at the ensemble, nearly running into a number of different customers in the crowded department store.

Casting Bjornolf a small smile, she said, “You like it?”

He and Nathan both were looking at her lacy sweater and they said in unison, “Yeah.”

She pointed to the decorations sitting on a table. They switched their gazes to the table set up with holiday trimmings, place mats, plates featuring reindeer, shiny gold silverware, and linen napkins bound in crystal and gold ties.

“Oh yeah,” Nathan said.

Bjornolf’s gaze drifted to the hint of the swell of her breasts. “Oh yeah.”

Nathan chuckled when he saw what Bjornolf was talking about.

Christmas music played overhead as shoppers seemed to fill every aisle of the department store. Some shoppers were in a rush, while others were carefully considering merchandise, poking at clothes, lifting china to examine it, and sifting through bath towels. Where Anna was concerned, Bjornolf had never seen a woman shop so quickly in his life.

Once she saw the Christmas settings displayed on the table, she said to Bjornolf and Nathan, “How about that? Isn’t it perfect?”

She didn’t really ask for their opinion, he wryly thought. Before they could answer, she gathered the eight placemats she had been eyeing on a shelf, and they helped her find matching linen napkins, and crystal and gold napkin holders. She took the whole centerpiece and shoved it into Bjornolf’s hands, grabbed the runner off the display table, and said, “Done.”

Bjornolf looked at Nathan to see his take on it. He raised his brows and smiled.

As if considering her choices, she folded her arms and looked at the table again. “Maybe we’re not done. We could use a set of red Christmas plates. They’d be perfect for Valentine’s Day, too. We can add blue and white decorations when it comes to Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Fourth of July celebrations.”

Bjornolf suspected Anna had never celebrated any of those holidays. Her enthusiasm was contagious and he was doubly glad she was a quick shopper. He looked forward to sharing every one of those holidays with her next year, and making up some of their own.

They were out of there in no time.

“Can we stop at a drugstore on the way back to the cottage?” Anna asked.

“Sure,” Bjornolf said.

When they pulled into the strip mall, both Bjornolf and Nathan were going to join her, but she said she’d be just a minute. Nathan sank against the car seat, looking relieved.

They parked in front of the drugstore situated at the end of a small strip mall of four shops: a card shop, a dress store, and a bookstore, in addition to the drugstore. In silence, Bjornolf and Nathan studied the drugstore display windows filled with Christmas decorations and a clutter of advertisements as the door closed behind Anna, and she disappeared from view.

Nathan cleared his throat. “She’s getting a pregnancy test for Jessica. Isn’t she?”

“I suspect so. Jessica needs to know if she is pregnant as soon as possible. She has to realize she’s got us for backup. She has to have a support system
now
.”

“I really screwed up, didn’t I?”

Bjornolf had been there. His own messes had seemed insurmountable at the time, but somehow he’d managed to muddle through.

“Some lessons are harder to learn than others. You really do care for her, don’t you?” Bjornolf didn’t mean to sound so judgmental, but he hoped Nathan truly loved her because they’d be together for a very long time, and there was no undoing what they had done.

Nathan nodded. “Yeah. I do. Ever lie awake at night thinking of the day you spent with someone special, and you want to repeat the day over and over again?”

Yeah, he did. Anna had stolen his thoughts more times than he wanted to admit.

Nathan glanced at Bjornolf. “Like with you and Anna?”

Bjornolf fought a smile. No one ever questioned him about his relationships with women. He assumed Nathan needed confirmation more than anything. “Hell, yeah. You know you have it bad when you’re thinking about nothing at all, doing something, and suddenly out of the blue you’re thinking of her. Like driving the car, then there she is taking up space in my brain again. Bright as day.”

Nathan shook his head. “That’s just like me. I’ll be cutting a tree for a customer, and all of a sudden, I’ll think of the way she smiled at me earlier in the day and offered me a cup of hot chocolate. I mean, it’s more than that. I can’t wait to see her, to be with her again.”

“So you ran because…?”

“I was confused. She was raised by humans. I thought she was human. What Anna said was right. We can’t turn people just because we want to. I was using Hunter’s situation as a crutch to fall back on. He did it and it turned out okay, so I could, too. Except he’s not a teen. And he’s the pack leader. I thought… I thought if I saw Sarah, I would change my mind about wanting Jessica.”

Concerned, Bjornolf frowned. “With Sarah, you didn’t…”

“No.” Nathan gave him a get-real look. “I knew
she
was a wolf.”

Bjornolf breathed in a sigh of relief. Sarah’s father would have killed Nathan. Bjornolf tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel.

Nathan sat morosely staring out the windshield. Soft, white snowflakes began to flutter down from the heavens.

“If she’s a wolf
and
pregnant
and
your mate, she should come to our open house tomorrow. It’s a pack gathering. Everyone should get to know her. It would be the perfect time to make her feel welcome. Give her a network of wolf families to fall back on,” Bjornolf said.

“If she wants. She might be too overwhelmed with the whole thing.” Nathan paused. “What are we going to do when you and Anna leave?”

Bjornolf took a deep breath. “Anna and I haven’t even decided where we’re going to be living beyond this mission.”

Nathan studied him carefully, then quietly said, “I hope you both decide to stay here.”

Bjornolf smiled at him. “I don’t think anyone has ever told me that before.”

Nathan looked skeptical for a moment, then seeing Bjornolf was serious, he grinned. “Well, I have.”

“I’ll have to talk with Anna. But we’ll see.” Bjornolf looked back at the drugstore.

“You’re worried about her.” Nathan looked from the windshield to Bjornolf.

“Yeah,” he said. “She’s taking too long. Not her style. Let’s go.”

The two of them headed for the drugstore as an elderly lady and man using walkers tried to get through the door. Barely able to suppress the urgent need to dash into the store and ignore the older couple’s troubles, Bjornolf held the door open for them.

Once the elderly couple had made it outside, Bjornolf and Nathan rushed inside, following Anna’s scent. They found she’d lingered in front of a display of boxes of dark chocolate thin mints. Not what he’d expected. They headed for the aisle where the pregnancy tests were shelved.

“She was here,” Nathan said, anxious. “But then she moved right on past as if she didn’t linger.”

“It’s okay. We would have seen her leave the store. She must have thought of something else we needed for dinner tonight or decorations or something.”

“I’ll go that way,” Nathan said, motioning to the right, “and you take the other half of the store.”

Bjornolf didn’t argue about who was in charge, just nodded, seeing something of himself in the kid and approving. With his long stride, Bjornolf ate up the drugstore’s linoleum tiles, avoiding the aisles she hadn’t walked down. He soon spied Nathan headed in the same direction he was. The employees’ back-door entrance.

Shit.
Not only must she have left the building this way, but she’d been with one hulking brute of a man named Everton. From the scent she’d left behind, Bjornolf could tell she had been angry, and so was Everton. Bjornolf’s heart was pounding furiously. He and Nathan burst outside, letting the door slam behind them. They quickly surveyed the parking lot for any sign of movement.

“What would Roger Everton want with Anna?” Nathan said, hurrying with Bjornolf to search the employee parking lot to the strip mall.

There was no sign of Anna or any vehicle that Nathan recognized as belonging to the Everton family or any of their staff work trucks. No movement at all.

“He thought she discovered something at the tree farm?” Bjornolf said, racing with Nathan around the strip mall because the employee door was locked and they couldn’t get back in without a key. How had Everton gotten the upper hand with Anna? Bjornolf knew she’d be armed. She had tons of tricks to use on a man who tried to take her hostage.

His blood cold with worry, Bjornolf was already on his cell phone to Hunter before they reached the Land Rover. “Roger Everton abducted Anna at Riley’s Drugstore. We’re not sure where they’ve gone, but we’re heading to the Christmas tree farm. He’s the same man that said he was Everton when he caught us investigating the farm.”

“I’ll send the troops, Bjornolf. We’ll get her back.”

Yeah, but alive and in one piece? Or dead like the wolf DEA agents? Bjornolf floored the Land Rover.

When Bjornolf got off the phone with Hunter, he heard what he assumed was Nathan talking to Jessica on his phone.

“I don’t know what’s going on with your dad, but he just abducted my aunt.” Nathan sounded both worried and hot with anger.

Bjornolf had nearly forgotten their cover in all of this madness.

“Let me know if you see your dad return home. My uncle and I are headed for the tree farm. Some friends of his are also. Okay, Jessica?”

There was silence for a moment, then Nathan said, “I love you, too.” He sounded almost embarrassed to declare such a thing in front of Bjornolf, and when he ended the conversation, he quickly looked at Bjornolf to see if he’d been listening.

Nathan laid the phone on his lap and stared out the windshield.

“Is everything all right with Jessica?” Bjornolf asked. He was full of worry for Anna, but he was also concerned about Jessica, should Everton turn on her.

“It’s all my fault,” Nathan said.

“No. It isn’t,” Bjornolf said sternly. “We’re here because we’re trying to uncover a couple of murders. It appears Everton is involved in this murder business, and it doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

Nathan shook his head. “Not about that. Jessica texted me when we were shopping earlier. She’d spoken to her father about coming to our place for dinner. He wanted to know where we were so he could talk to you. She said she could tell he was angry, but he was trying to hide how he was feeling from her. She asked which store we were at, hoping that you and Anna would convince him it was fine that she had dinner with us. He must have gone to the store, saw us leave in the Land Rover, and followed us to the drugstore.”

What the hell was going on with Everton? Bjornolf wondered if he suspected they were not Nathan’s relatives, that they were there to investigate the murders.
Hell.

“Where’s Jessica and her mom?” Bjornolf asked, attempting to sound in control of his emotions when he was about to have a meltdown. He thought it best that both of the women be away from the farm, immediately.

Nathan studied him. “Her mom was in Portland for the day. Jessica’s by herself.”

“Is Jessica’s home near the Christmas tree farm?”