Then something occurred to him, and he arched an eyebrow at her. “I told Doc Hughes not to tell you what was wrong with me. I only allowed him to inform my parents. How did you find out about my sickness?”
Again she hesitated. She broke contact with his fingers and turned to look out the window, not meeting his gaze. “Some friends of mine talked to Doc Hughes. They were very persuasive and got the truth out of him.”
He smiled and nodded. He would accept her answer without question. His gaze swept around the house briefly and then returned to her beautiful but sad face. “Everything looks in good shape around here. You’ve done a great job with things.” Then their eyes met, and he realized she was the most spectacular sight of all. “You look beautiful.”
She wiped some tears out of her eyes, but this time she held his gaze. There was even a hint of a smile. “I was so worried about you,” he continued. “I cursed myself for not leaving you better provided for and for running away so abruptly. Every day I was out there I imagined the struggles you were having back here. All I could think about was coming back home to you.”
Now more tears were streaming down her face, and she reached out to touch him again. This time he didn’t allow any distance between them. He got up and moved to her on the couch, sitting next to her and throwing an arm around her shoulder.
“When I found out you were sick, I thought you were going to die.” She buried her face in his chest and gave vent to her bitter sobs. “A part of me never gave up hope that someday you would come back to me, but there was another part of me that had already moved on. I’m so sorry, Nathan.”
“Look at me.” He raised her face up to his level. “I love you, Morgan. I’m the one who is sorry. I left you and couldn’t even tell you why. You waited for me so we could get our old life back. I don’t think most women would have done that. Believe me. I am so grateful that I’ve got you.”
He kissed her, and their lips met for the first time. She tasted fresh and pure and like the new fallen snow outside, except better. She was vibrant and alive beneath his caress. Though she was still afraid and tentative, he could feel her start to respond to him again the way she had the first time he had kissed her when they first met in Chicago.
“You and me—we have a future again.” He pulled away from their kiss long enough to brush back her hair and whisper in her ear. “You and me, baby. We’re going to get to know each other all over again, and the two of us will be better than ever. Tell me you want that, too?”
Now she did not hesitate. “Oh, Nathan, I love you, too. If I didn’t love you, how else could I have waited for you all this time? Each day I waited, I feared I’d find out you’d died. I was so scared sometimes I didn’t know what to do. Of course I want you back in my life again.”
Nathan suddenly didn’t feel weak at all. Her warm and wonderful body held up against his was giving him strength.
He was about to take her back in for another greedy kiss when the sound of a car door slamming outside stalled him. He looked out the window. A truck had pulled up in front of the house, and two men had gotten out.
These were the same two men he had wanted to kill last year at the rodeo.
Hunter and Drake were discussing business at the lumberyard as they walked up to the front porch. Hunter had the key to the door. He opened it up and let them inside.
“We’re home early just like we promised!” Hunter called into the house, full of enthusiasm for the day ahead with Morgan.
When they stepped around the corner to the living room, they both froze. Another man was in the house with Morgan. From the looks of things, he and Morgan had been very close.
Hunter’s first thought was to move forward with aggression and protect Morgan. But Drake stilled him with an arm on his shoulder.
“It’s Nathan.”
Then it all made sense, and Hunter felt all the fight go out of him. Nathan looked as if he had been through hell and back. But he was still alive, and he was with their woman.
Morgan came forward and stood between Hunter and Drake and Nathan. “These are my two friends.” Morgan made a halfhearted attempt at an introduction. “They’re shape-shifters, too.”
For a long moment there was tension. Hunter wasn’t sure which way it was going to go down. But he knew this must have been difficult for Morgan, and he was not about to do or say anything that would make it more difficult for her.
When Nathan finally stepped forward to them, he held out his hand. It was not a gesture of outright friendship, but more like one of weary acceptance. Hunter was the first to accept the other man’s grip, and Drake followed after him.
“They helped me a lot when you were gone, Nathan.” Morgan attempted to explain to him with a small hand on the other man’s large shoulder. “They took care of me.”
“Thank you.” Nathan had honest appreciation in his voice when he spoke to them. “Sometimes in this day and age we’re living in, I wonder if there are any decent shifters left anymore. I’m pleased to see Morgan found two of them.”
“It was our pleasure to look after her.” Hunter was looking between Morgan and Nathan. He didn’t like the way she stood next to the other man. A lump came into his throat.
“I hope you realize how hard this last year has been on Morgan.” Drake was direct when he spoke to Nathan.
“I know it has been very hard for her.”
“Morgan is a wonderful woman.” Hunter felt lame saying this. Of course, she had belonged to Nathan for three years before they’d met her. He would already know just how terrific of a lady he had here.
“Thank you for what you’ve done,” Nathan reiterated to them. “I can never begin to repay you for how you’ve helped. Morgan and I haven’t had a chance to talk much yet. But I know you two must be a big reason why the place looks so well cared for and also why Morgan was able to survive.”
“Morgan’s a strong woman. She could have made it without us. We just gave her a little help.” Drake looked over at Hunter. Things were moving too fast. Hunter didn’t know what to make of this.
Nathan was by the open front door. It was a clear indication that although he had been very polite and thankful, he now wanted them to leave.
“Morgan and I need some time together alone. After things get settled down around here, I’ll drop by Wolf Creek and pay you fellows a visit.”
Hunter didn’t know what else to do. He felt like someone had punched him in the gut. After all, this was Nathan McLaughlin’s house, and Morgan was his woman. He and Drake had no choice but to walk out the front door, although it was against every instinct he had in his body to do so.
“Thank you for being brother shifters.” Nathan shook hands with them again before they stepped off the front porch. “Thank you for looking after my home and Morgan while I was away. But don’t worry. I’m back now and regaining my strength. I can handle things from here.”
Hunter tried looking back inside the house to get a glimpse of Morgan. This was the house they had all loved in and been happy in, happier than he had ever been in his life, happier than he ever thought was possible. Now he could not even see her and was being asked to leave by the rightful owner.
Hunter’s heart clenched in his chest, and he had a hard time catching his breath. One look over at Drake as they climbed inside their truck told him his friend was feeling the same way.
Hunter started the engine of the truck and put it in gear for the long trip back into town. When he looked up, Morgan had run out of the house. She was standing next to his window.
“Wait!” Morgan called, and Hunter rolled down the automatic window. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault. Good lord in heaven, what was I thinking about having three men in my life? I was just asking for something like this to happen, and now that it has, you guys have been hurt and I’m the one to blame.”
Hunter reached through the window and touched her face with the back of his hand. She was reddened from emotion and tear stained. “You never lied to us, baby.”
“We were the naïve ones, Morgan,” Drake told her. “When it comes to you, I guess we’re both pretty vulnerable to our softer feelings. Somehow I think we thought Nathan wouldn’t be back and it would always be the three of us. But now he is back.”
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it? You love him, don’t you?” Hunter just had to ask her.
Morgan nodded. Her expression was grim. “I love Nathan. I have to be with him now.” But then she took Hunter’s hand in hers and reached in to take Drake’s. “I promise you both that I’m going to make this right for all of us. Don’t give up on us yet. Please just give Nathan and me a little time to get to know each other again.”
Hunter gave her a smile. “We’ll give you as much time as you need.”
He put the truck in gear and drove away. But it was painful when he looked back in the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of Morgan. They were leaving her behind.
* * * *
Morgan set a table for two.
When Nathan came out of the shower, he had shaved and put on a pair of jeans with a button-down shirt untucked from the waist. He smelled of soap and shampoo, and when he leaned in for a kiss, she tasted mint mouthwash. She was gratified to see he looked very much like the man she remembered.
“Sit down,” she told him. “I made your favorite steak for dinner.”
He reluctantly let her out of his hold and took his place at the table, regarding what she had made. “This looks and smells incredible.” Then he looked up at her. “You look amazing also, Morgan.”
Morgan was wearing a plaid skirt that came to her knees. This was one he had always liked her to wear in the past. She also wore a silk blouse. She had wanted to dress up for his first night back. This was a special night, and she wanted to show him it was by her choice of clothes.
They had hardly talked that afternoon. Nathan had been tired and took a nap. He had assured her he was recovered from the disease. As the wolf out in the forest, he had been impatiently waiting for the disease to run its course so he could shift back into a man and return to her. Now he felt tired and weak from the ordeal, but otherwise fully recovered and healthy.
Morgan was grateful to have him back.
At first their talk was awkward at the dinner table. He devoured everything she set before him with a ravenous appetite and gave her compliments on it all. When he looked into her eyes, she knew he had missed her. She got a melancholy feel in the pit of her stomach to be seated with him here again. It truly felt good to have him home with her.
They talked about finances. “I apologize. I know money was tight for you when I was gone,” he told her.
Morgan explained to him how she had tried selling the crops growing on their land and how she had sold off their barnyard animals.
“But then I started selling my work.” She tried to bring the conversation around to something brighter, something she hoped would make him happy. “I sold six paintings at the art fair in Wolf Creek last fall and now have an agent handling my work back in Chicago.”
He looked at her over his fork. “You were tempted to return home to Chicago, weren’t you?”
“I almost did at first,” she admitted. “That was before I knew you were sick and couldn’t help leaving me. I was pretty mad at you for a little while, but then I got mad at myself for not understanding.”
He reached over to cover her hand with his. Their fingers linked, and Morgan closed her eyes. This was the moment she had been waiting a year for. A moment she had almost given up on ever arriving.
“But you made it through the bad times. It’s over now.”
“I had help.” She held her breath. She had to talk about Hunter and Drake, though she had no idea if this would be a good time or if she should wait. But to wait would not have been fair to her other two men.
“Those two men?”
She nodded that it was true.
“They were the two characters who tried to make a pass at you at the rodeo last year.”
Morgan gave a small smile. That had been a million years ago. So much had happened since that rodeo. “Yes. They can be characters, all right. But they’re good men, Nathan.”
She couldn’t read the expression that came over his face. Fear surged through her. For a terrible instant she thought he might reject her because of what she had done.
“You got close to them?” She imagined his face darkened a shade as he said this.
Morgan let out a long repressed sigh. “For God’s sake, Nathan! I was just doing what you asked me to do. Quite frankly, if it had not been for those two men, I would have left and I wouldn’t be here with you tonight.”
Nathan wiped his mouth with his napkin and discarded it on top of the table. He got up from his seat and went to her. For a moment he stood above her and stared down at her.
Then he dropped to his knees beside her. He scooped her into his arms and kissed her passionately.
“You don’t have anything to explain to me, my darling,” he whispered into her ear, his voice husky and masculine. “What happened is over, and I’m with you now. I’m a shifter. Those two men are shifters. We do things differently from the outside world. They took care of you while I was away, and I’m thankful. But it’s over now and I won’t ever leave you again. This I swear to you.”