Doctor Wolf (The Collegium Book 4) (5 page)

“Carson Erving?”

As if there were multiple Carsons running around London and familiar to Liz. “Yes.”

“That’s a pity.”

Liz hammered on the door of Carson’s Brentford villa. The fashion show had not been fun. She’d been caught between Brandon and her aunt Natalie making big eyes at her, amused by his presence—something he’d noticed. Liz had been forced to whisper in his ear, “My family don’t know about my relationship with Carson”, adding to herself,
for the simple reason that it doesn’t exist
.

“They won’t hear about it from me,” Brandon had replied.

And somehow, a cold shiver had snaked down her spine.

There was a relentlessness about Brandon that was all wolf. It had made his fortune on the stock market, but directed at her…Liz didn’t like it.

Damage control! This was her problem, and she’d panicked and handled it badly. Dragging Carson into it was unconscionable. He had his own problems with the Elixir Gentian and the people after it, and he’d made it plain that he couldn’t, and wouldn’t, take on her problems.

Okay. I can handle this.
She ran the plan over in her head. First, she had to confess to Carson what she’d done. She winced. He wouldn’t like being claimed as her boyfriend. But then, she’d make everything better. She knew what they needed to do. They’d pretend to break up. She’d find one of her chatty cousins, “confess” the relationship breakdown, and Carson would be out of the picture.

Then, Liz would think about a better strategy for dealing with Brandon. Maybe something simple and direct. She tried it out loud. “No, Brandon, I don’t want to date you.”

“My name’s Carson.”

“Oh damn.” Liz whirled around.

Carson hadn’t answered the door. Instead, he’d walked around the corner of the house and now looked quizzically up at her. Evening sunlight haloed him in gold.

“Hi,” she said weakly.

“Hello.”

“I guess you didn’t expect to see me back, here.” She walked slowly down the four front steps to join him on the miniscule front lawn.

“Nope.”

“About that…”

A car slowed on the street and crawled past. Carson raised a hand in greeting. “A neighbor. Come around to the back.” Out of sight.

“I won’t be here long,” she said to his back. A very lean and well-muscled back covered by a thin white t-shirt. At the fashion show she’d seen gorgeous clothes on beautiful people, but for her money, give her a man who could fill out a white t-shirt and faded blue jeans the way Carson did.
Mmmhmm
.

He stopped to open a narrow side gate and caught her checking out his butt.

She refused to blush. “I told Brandon we were dating.”

The gate clicked open and Carson pushed it wide, gesturing her through. “I told you not to involve me.”

“I know!” She hurried through the gate. “And now that you’ve explained about the gentians—wow! It looks bigger in daylight.” She marveled at the huge glasshouse hidden behind the street front Victorian villa and high brick walls. “Are those the plants?” She squinted to see through the glass panes.

A security guard looked at them from the kitchen doorway, received a nod from Carson, and stayed in the house.

Carson led Liz into the glasshouse.

“It’s not as hot as I thought it would be.” She looked around at the orderly rows of plants growing in individual pots on raised stands. The leaves were dark green, luxuriant and healthy. The scent was more overwhelming, of damp earth, minerals and chlorophyll.

“Sub-alpine conditions.” Hands in his back pockets, he stared at her.

She remembered that they weren’t here for a tour of the greenhouse. “Brandon turned up at my house unexpectedly to escort me to Cobar’s fashion show. He indicated fairly strongly that he was interested in a relationship with me, a serious one.”

“You knew that last night.”

“Yes, but…he was at my house!”

A keen look, searching out her secrets. “And that matters to you?” His hands came out of his pockets and he took a step closer to her. “Is he stalking you?”

Starting to
was her gut instinct. But if she said that, Carson would tell her grandfather, John would tell the family, and her life and house would be invaded by a protective pack. Brandon didn’t deserve to have his chance at being alpha of the Beo Pack derailed on the basis of her unverified instinct of trouble ahead.

She shook her head. “Brandon hasn’t done anything wrong. I don’t like confrontation and I didn’t expect him at my house, and he waited till he was driving me to the fashion show to make his interest in a serious relationship with me plain. I panicked. I tried to let him down gently. You know, a hint.”

“A hint?”

She’d heard that tone from her brother, Steve. “What is it with men and scorning hints? Hints work! And they spare people’s feelings and dignity.”

“They’re useless when a guy’s on a hunt. Then you need to hit us over the head.”

“Well, I did. When Brandon wasn’t put off by me saying I don’t want a mate—”

“You don’t?” Carson blinked.

“Not right now. Don’t distract me. I was trying to tell you how, when Brandon wouldn’t listen, I didn’t know what to say, so I said I was dating you.”

Silence. She couldn’t even hear the traffic on the road out front or planes flying overhead. The city noises had been shut out. She and Carson were in a world alone in the glasshouse.

“But it’s okay,” she added hurriedly. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll tell one of my cousins that you and I are broken up. Shelley is a complete blabbermouth. She’ll tell the whole pack. Brandon will hear that you and I aren’t together before the sun goes down. You’ll be out of this.”

“This.”

Liz grimaced and wriggled her shoulders. “I really wish you’d stop repeating what I say.” Especially because he seemed to be repeating the truly pertinent points. She’d hoped to be able to gloss over things. She’d hoped he’d just let things go. After all, he and she weren’t anything to one another. They weren’t even pack mates. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know, so that you weren’t surprised by someone commenting on our ex-relationship.”

She tried to edge towards the door, but he caught her arm. His hold was gentle, but determined. She sighed.

He hauled her closer. “Brandon really rattled you. Did he touch you? Threaten you?”

“No!”

“But you still tried to hide behind me.”

“I panicked.”

“That’s what interests me.” Carson released her arm, but only to slide his hand down to clasp hers. His fingers were calloused. A gardener’s hands. “You’re an A&E doctor. You’re trained to stay calm in a crisis.”

“In my professional life.”

“You wouldn’t have chosen that specialty if you weren’t suited to it.” He refused to be deflected. “Yet Brandon arriving at your house and declaring his interest in you has you rattled.”

“I told you. I don’t like conflict.”

“I’m aware. You’re an omega wolf. You don’t like conflict, but you can handle it, so he must have done something…” His jaw squared as she shook her head. “Let him keep thinking we’re dating.”

“What?”

“Then I’ll tell him to back off.”

She was tempted to bang her head against the nearest hard surface, but that would be Carson’s chest. “I can tell him.”

“What happened at the fashion show, after you’d told him you were with me?”

“I told him we were seeing each other.” And she was stalling.

A fact Carson apparently noticed, since he put a hand under her chin and tilted her face up so she met his eyes.

She sighed, capitulating. “He did those little things. Helped me off with my jacket, seated me, sat beside me.” His cologne had been expensive and discreet, yet nowhere near as nice as Carson’s garden-rich scent. “Aunt Natalie thought he was courting me.”

“
After
you’d told him you and I were dating.”

“Now, don’t go alpha-male on me.”

“He dissed my reputation.”

“Is that some American slang? Dissed?” And when he didn’t respond, just scowled at his rows of plants, she rubbed his chest. “Carson?”

A sub-vocal growl rumbled in his chest.

She snatched her hand away. “Oh, good grief! You’re a closet alpha.”

“Reputation is important.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard this spiel from Steve, my brother, too many times. You do not have to be constantly proving yourself.”

“I’ve already proven myself. Maybe some people need a reminder.”

Curiosity would be her downfall. “How did you prove yourself? I only heard you were a botanist, adventurous, but not…alpha-tough.”

“You should ask Steve.”

“Pardon? You know my brother?”

“Who do you think introduced me to your grandfather? Steve and I were in a jungle along the Congo River. He was after one of the minor warlords. Nothing magical, just all around revolting behavior. There was an ambush. Steve lost two of his men. He was part of a mundane security force, a covert operation. Off the record. Essential.”

Carson covered her hand, and she realized she’d been stroking his chest. Steve got like this when he discussed the worst of his work. Terse. Locked into himself.

“We shifted to our animal forms.”

“A jungle isn’t the easiest environment for a wolf.” She inched closer, wanting to give him a hug and offer comfort.

“Night hides a lot of things. We survived. We shifted back to human to kill the warlord. We needed to take a photo.” A terrible, unamused smile. “Turned out the warlord was a lion-were. He got a lucky strike at Steve, knocked him…not out, but dazed.”

“You fought the lion-were alone.” They were larger than wolf-weres, and this one would have been in his own territory.

“His mate was with him.” The words barely emerged. Carson was back in the memories. “She was in charge of the child soldiers. Recruiting them. Training them. An excuse for brutality. I killed her.”

And despite the woman’s evil, that didn’t sit right with him.

Liz stopped fighting her instincts and hugged him. “Thank you. For saving the children and Steve.”

“I didn’t save them. We left the children there.” Guilt, irrational but fervent showed in his anguished eyes. Eyes that flickered to the smoke-gray of his wolf. “I was torn up. Steve was concussed. I killed the warlord, and then, we had to run. A chopper came for us in the morning. We survived the night.”

He put his arms around her, hands restless along her spine. “Troops went in later, but the children were gone.”

“The lost children, taught to kill.”

“Yes. There are charities working to offer them new lives, normal lives, but…”

She pressed her lips to his throat where he swallowed his emotion, Adam’s apple bobbing. “How do you heal souls?”

He pressed his face against her hair.

They stood like that for minutes. So much was clear to Liz, now. Not only her grandfather’s backing of Carson’s research—the family owed him Steve’s life—but Carson’s non-swaggering, independence. He knew his strength. He’d fought and killed a lion-were pair. For most wolves, that would have required a full pack fighting with them. And none of that mattered to him. Carson mourned the children.

She heard his breathing deepen and knew he’d conquered his emotion. She drew back. “You don’t have to protect me. Brandon is a nuisance. I’ll deal with him.”

“Omega wolf. Do you know what that means?”

“That I detest conflict.”

He touched her face. A caress. “That you heal, which you do. That you take others’ pain on yourself, which you shouldn’t. And that you have fantastically sensitive instincts. If Brandon has rattled you, then you need to let me deal with him, alpha to wannabe alpha.”

Her smiled was wry. “He’s not an alpha, is he?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t powerful. What he lacks is an alpha’s protectiveness.”

The simple statement struck a chord with her. Her grandfather was protective, so was her brother, the new Suzerain, and so was Carson. Brandon might love his children, but she received no sense that his concern extended further. Perhaps that was why, despite all his surface appeal, she was so wary of him.

She touched a leaf of the nearest gentian, feeling its slight roughness and sensing its vitality. “I didn’t come here for you to take on my problems.” She let the leaf go and watched it spring back, heard the faint rustle of it. “I’ll tell Brandon the truth. That I panicked, not wanting to hurt his feelings, but that you and I aren’t involved, and I won’t be wooed into a relationship with him. The truth is safest.”

Carson tipped his head fractionally, as if he’d heard something curious in her words.

She replayed them in her head, and couldn’t detect anything. “I’ll phone him.”

“No,” he said slowly. “John didn’t seem to think that associating with me put you in danger.”

A faint flush rose in her face and she ducked her head, turning aside, to hide it. On the contrary, her grandfather had implicitly encouraged her involvement with Carson. Had she, mortifying thought, mentioned Carson to Brandon precisely because she did want a relationship with him despite the necessity of putting protecting Kylie first? Was that why the excuse had risen so easily to her tongue?