Cry of the Wolf (13 page)

The phone beeped again.

You are so fucking NOT FUNNY. I mean it Sarah: TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR HUSBAND. Don’t make me catch the next plane out.

Holls xxx

P.S. Your date means nothing to me until I know the above.

P.P.S. Have fun. X

What was she
on
? Husband? Did she have marriage fever now she was finally getting hitched?

The doorbell rang. She threw the phone into her bag and almost tripped over herself getting to the door. Fucking heels.

Amil stood on the other side of it looking every bit the debonair, a dozen pink roses in his hand.

“Oh, Amil, they’re gorgeous!”

He grinned. “I hope you don’t mind that they’re pink – their colour reminded me of your gentleness and kindness, although…” he let his eyes travel the length of her… “I can see that red is the order of the night.”

Shit! I knew the harlot-dress was too much.
“You know what, I can go change—”

“Don’t you dare.” He swooped in through the doorway and caught her firmly in a kiss before she could blink. He placed a second kiss by her ear, whispering, “This dress is only coming off with my teeth.”

Oh, lord. She’d just drenched her new underwear and she hadn’t packed any spares.

“I’m so sorry I’m late; the meeting ran over. But I’m a demon behind the wheel, so I’m certain we’ll still make it for the start of the show.”

Yeah, but she needed spare underwear. She squeezed his arm and stroked the roses. “These are perfect,” she smiled. “Could you pop them in the kitchen sink with some water for me? I forgot something.”

“Of course.”

“Great.”

She raced upstairs into her bedroom as he strode into the kitchen, yanked her underwear drawer open, pulled out the other two pairs of lacy briefs she’d bought earlier today and stuffed them into the zipped compartment of her handbag.

The afternoon sun caught the horn of her new unicorn that now sat on her dresser, refracting light in her direction. She froze in place, the oddest feeling coming over her, then before she could think about it in logical terms, she grabbed that too and placed it in her bag with her underwear.

“All done, darling!”

“I’ll be right down!” she called back.

She took one last look at her phone before shutting her bag.

Another email from Holly.

Honey, I went back into the attic. Is Taylor’s number still 07645231167? Will you hate me if I call him?

Holls xxx

Sarah glanced at the heavens – maybe they’d have answers. “Stark-raving mad…” Who the heck was she confusing her with? Holly had always been a little scatty, but seriously, this was completely bizarre. She sent a silent apology to whoever owned that number then replied:

Do what you want.

S x

She switched her phone to silent, shoved it back in her bag and went downstairs.

Amil’s smile lit up her hallway. “Ready?”

By god, he was gorgeous, both inside and out.

Gorgeous and a little scary
, reminded her inner-voice.

She shrugged it away. A little scary was nothing. She found broken down cars a ‘little scary’ nowadays – her issue. She wasn’t going to let her strange fixations ruin what could potentially be the best thing that had ever happened to her.

She laced her fingers through his and nodded. “Ready.”

Chapter Eight

Taylor’s phone rang the same moment he managed to hack into Ireland City Court’s database. With a little grin of triumph, he temporarily abandoned shuffling through the mail that had arrived this morning from the General Register Office in Dublin. It turned out Lydia’s mother had been born in Ireland even though her parents were from a pack in Somerset. It seems they had returned to Somerset shortly after her birth. Locating her death certificate had been far more difficult than it should have been, although not quite as difficult as locating her birth certificate. It all pointed towards her mother being a storm-wielder herself, although Lydia knew nothing of her family history, and whenever he asked her if she wanted to know what he found out, she brushed him off. She wasn’t ready.

But he
had
let her know the steps they were taking in their research. He didn’t want to keep her in the dark. The most useful thing to everyone would be if she called her father and arranged a meeting, but she had stated she needed more time adjusting to her new life first, and Taylor had defended her to both Ryan and Lawrence, pressing for her to have the time she needed, after all, he related to that need.

They hadn’t been happy about it with so much at stake, but in the end, had conceded that they could wait two weeks only. Well, two weeks was up since that conversation took place. Taylor had been trying to find out whatever he could to spare Lydia from facing her father blind, but he’d have to talk to her now and insist that she call him.

He looked at his ringing phone and frowned at the ‘Caller ID Withheld’ message that greeted him.

Making sure his firewall was secure, he connected the phone to his tracer, connected the tracer to his PC, pressed the signal button on it, then answered it. “Hello?”

“Taylor?”

He didn’t recognise the woman’s voice straight away.

The red dot on the screen zeroed in on the map and then flashed at him. Location: New York.

Oh, fuck. “Holly?” He shouldn’t have answered. He should really have had this number disconnected ages ago, but no one from his old life had ever phoned him on it since he’d turned, so it had been added to his to-do pile and never actually done.

She didn’t waste any time mincing her words. “Taylor Harper, you’d better have one, amazing explanation for why your wife is pretending you don’t exist, and no stammering, mister. Don’t you lie to me. I want to know what’s going on and I want to know
now
. Did you hurt her?
Did you
?”

He heard her curse his name under her breath. How the hell was he supposed to respond? “Er…”

“I said, no stammering,” she snapped. “Out with it.”

He finally decided on the dry response. “Nice to hear from you too, Holly. What’s it been? Over two years?” His brain raced all over the place trying to weave together a believable story he could relay to her.

“Taylor…” Her tone was a warning. He had no doubt she’d be on the next plane out here. The woman was incredibly annoying – at least she had been to him – but where Sarah was concerned she was as protective as Beth, even if she didn’t always show it the way Beth did. Sarah brought that out in people.

Because she’s nice
, thought Taylor.
And the only way I’m going to get out of this is to be an arse.

“Why is my best friend pretending you don’t exist?”

His chest tightened at what he was about to say next. Tightened so much he had to fight to get the lie out. “I had an affair.”

The line went silent except for Holly’s little gasp.
Time to hit the last nail into the coffin.
“I had an affair with Beth.”

Another gasp … some kind of hyperventilating noise …
“What
?
Beth? Her best friend,
Beth
? Bethany Michaels?”

“Yes. It was a mistake; it ended and Beth was mortified at what we’d done. She and Sarah made up because nothing could ever keep those two apart anyway, and now they both pretend I don’t exist.” He pulled a face. That sounded so fake, but Holly seemed to be taking it in.

“You
shit!
”

Yeah. Great.

“You dumb, two-timing, cheating … argh! … MAN. How could you do that to Sarah?”

He bristled at her tone … and at the way his heart twisted. He’d never cheat on Sarah in a million years. Well, not until Lydia.

Fuck.

Guilt engulfed him. He totally deserved this.

Hot tears pricked his eyes. “I wasn’t thinking,” he whispered.

“Or you were thinking with your dick! Right, I’m on the next plane out.”

“What? No! There’s no need. This happened almost a year ago. They won’t talk to you about it. When I said they pretend I don’t exist, I really mean that. It’s like this role play to them – I think it was part of a therapy that was suggested to Sarah or something…” What the fuck?
Taylor, shut up.
“Er—”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!”

Yeah, it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard too. “Well, ridiculous or not, it seems to be helping Sarah, and I heard on the grapevine she’s started seeing someone else.” He had to tamper down the growl that wove itself around those last four words. “So, really, she’s fine.”

“Fine? She didn’t sound fine to me in her emails, Taylor. She sounded like a basket case with her complete denial of you. That’s not ‘fine’. That’s not ‘moving on’. So what if the guy she’s seeing is super-hot—”

He’s super-hot?

“—you two were inseparable. There’s no way she’s over you – she needs a friend, and one who’s
not
the woman you
cheated
on her with. Jesus Christ! No wonder she never contacted me over the past two years—”

Actually, if I recall, it was you that stopped contacting her
.

“—she’s been in mourning!”

That final point she slammed home affected him more than he’d like to admit.
He’d
certainly been in mourning and it had been hellish. Maybe it was a blessing Sarah couldn’t remember him, or she’d have to witness him mated to another … the way he had to bear thinking about her with another man. Shit. He thought he’d said goodbye. The clarity he’d felt this morning seemed a long way away now.

“There. Booked.”

“What?”

“I’m online right now. I’ve just booked my plane ticket.”

“Holly—”

“No. You’re a dick. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Fine,” he bit out. Lawrence was going to kill him. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. She
won’t
talk about me. She won’t acknowledge my existence.”

“She will when I’m through with her, and so will Beth. She’s got a lot to answer for.”

“You’re dredging up the past.” But he sighed in defeat, because once Holly made her mind up about something you couldn’t pull her off course if you threw a hurricane in her path. “Some things are best left buried.”

“Spoken like a true dog,” she said, sarcastically.

If only you knew.

The line went dead, and he assumed that was her hanging up on him.

He leaned back in the office chair and ran his hands over his face in exasperation. How was he going to break this to Lawrence? Speaking of whom, the man’s scent wafted towards him through the door. Wonderful.

He swivelled the chair to face him, and reeled back in surprise to find Lydia standing there.

“Hi,” she smiled, although she looked uncertain, her eyes fixed on his phone.

He suddenly felt nauseous. She must have heard some of that conversation if not all of it.

“Lydia.”

With Lawrence’s scent all over her.

Bonded.

The nausea threatened to empty his stomach. He gripped the sides of his chair. “You’ve been with Lawrence?” And damn it, he couldn’t keep the hurt out of his voice or the ache out of his heart, even though deep down he knew this wasn’t really about anything to do with jealousy or possession … or betrayal.

You betrayed Sarah. This is how she would feel if she knew…

Abruptly, everything jumbled up in his mind in a tangled mess: his feelings, Sarah’s feelings, her new boyfriend all over her, Lawrence on Lydia –
sensory overload
– and to top it all off, the scent of Lawrence and Lydia merged, combined with Ryan’s which was also always on her anyway, was intoxicating, pulling him forward by that spot in his navel that responded to his mate … and he all at once realised he was
painfully
erect.

Damn the wolf! Was control something that just didn’t exist any more?

“I have to get out of here.” He leaped up from his chair, curtailed Lydia as he ran through the door, but barged straight into Lawrence who appeared behind her.

God, the scent of their union!
“I can’t—”

Taylor flung himself backwards, slammed into the wall, then ricocheted into the banister of the stairs. Flashbacks of his relationship with Sarah raced through his mind as if he were about to die any second now … gasping for breath … but it was Lydia he was thirsting for … Lydia he wanted to bury himself in…