“Exactly.”
“Will he be stuck as the wolf for the rest of his life?”
“The doc doesn’t know. He gave him a fifty-fifty chance of returning at some point in the distant future. But at the moment, he isn’t even able to shift back into a man.”
Hunter watched his friend get up from his desk and walk across the trailer. Drake always was more sensitive about things like this than Hunter was. Hunter just wanted to take what he wanted. The consequences never bothered him. But Drake was different. Hunter was always telling him he had too big of a heart. Hunter thought that big heart would probably get his friend in trouble someday if he wasn’t careful.
“Doesn’t it bother you we’re thinking about taking advantage of another man’s misfortune?” Drake asked him. “McLaughlin is a shifter just like we are. If fate had fallen a different way, that could have been one of us stuck out there in those woods as a wolf.”
“Not me, man,” Hunter said. Hunter knew he was being callous about the whole situation, but the fire in him Morgan Richards had set was burning too hot for him to care. “If I had a woman who looked that good, I would never leave her alone.”
“From what you just told me, McLaughlin didn’t have any choice.”
Hunter gave a shrug. These were too many details for him. He just wanted to get into the action. “I’d find a way to stay with the pretty lady. I wouldn’t let a little thing like dying keep me out of her bed at night.”
“The more I think about this, I don’t really know if it helps us any,” Drake said. Hunter could see his friend’s excessively calculating brain working overtime, while all Hunter wanted to do was get out there to Morgan Richards and start the seduction.
“She’s out at McLaughlin’s house all alone, just waiting for a couple cowboys like us to come along and rescue her,” Hunter reminded Drake.
“McLaughlin’s wolf is also out there. He might not take kindly to us moving in on his woman.”
“That’d be a pretty badass wolf to tangle with,” Hunter admitted, but he still was not about to be deterred. “But if Nathan McLaughlin is any kind of self-respecting shifter, he won’t want his lady to be left all alone. He might even want us to take care of her while he’s away.”
“You could be right about that.” Drake’s mind was still working hard. “If we go out there and take care of her, she’ll still be around when he gets back—if he gets back.”
“That’s right. We’d be doing him a favor.” Hunter kicked back from the desk. He was ready to drive out to see Morgan Richards right then and there. “This might be the perfect relationship. We can take care of her, enjoy her, and let her enjoy us. Between the two of us, we certainly ought to be able to bring that little lady a whole heap of pleasure. But ultimately, there’re no strings attached. When McLaughlin comes back home in a few months or a few years, the two of us can move on to more challenges in the land of beautiful women, and we’ll have done a good deed in the process.”
Drake laughed at him. “You’re starting to think too much,” he told Hunter. “But this time I like the way you’re thinking.”
Drake went back around his desk and pulled up his monthly schedule on his computer screen. “I can move things around for the next few weeks and cancel what can’t be moved. What about you?”
“I’ve already cleared my schedule for the rest of the summer,” Hunter said, his lust driving all his actions now. “Let’s go out to the McLaughlin place tomorrow morning bright and early and get us Morgan Richards.”
Morgan was up before dawn the next morning. She had very little appetite for breakfast, and after her shower she headed straight down to the chicken pen. The chickens needed to be fed. They would be angry at her if she was late.
She had to step over mud puddles on her way. The rain had been heavy last night. The ground was soggy to walk over, and her sneakers were just about ruined by the time she made it to the chicken coop.
As time passed, she was growing more listless in her work. She had not seen Nathan’s wolf in several days and was worried about him. Maybe he had moved on. Perhaps she would never see him again.
Her dark thoughts would drive her crazy if she kept up like this. Somehow she had to get her mind on other things and distract herself from all that had gone wrong. But what she had to look forward to was another day of hard, lonely work.
She had only finished her shower less than twenty minutes before, and already she felt dirty from all the mud in the chicken yard. She kept telling herself to get a grip and just go with things. Something would come along. Something always did. Life never stayed the same for long.
She put the chicken feed away in the little barn and got out the two buckets that contained the hog’s morning meal. She carried one dangling from each hand as she made her way across the yard and tried to keep avoiding all the mud.
One wrong step and Morgan went flying to the ground. The buckets of hog food fell out of her hands, and she landed facedown in the biggest mud puddle of the yard. Her jeans and her shirt were devastated. Her hair would probably never be clean again. Mud cakes packed her cheeks, and wiping a hand across her eyes, she just barely got the mud cleared from her vision.
Sprawled on the ground in the middle of the puddle, she took her time in getting up. She’d had low points in her life before, but this moment right here took the cake. She decided instead of crying all she wanted to do was laugh. It certainly couldn’t get any worse than this. Lucky for her there was no one else around to see her in her moment of indignity.
“You’ll be fine…you’ll be fine…” she repeated as a mantra to herself. “Everything is just fine…”
At first she tried to brush off her jeans but quickly gave it up. They weren’t worth the struggle. They were old, and their day had passed. Morgan mused that she rather felt the same about herself.
Suddenly a shadow crept over her. Then there were two shadows. Morgan refocused her vision. Standing before her were two of the toughest men she’d ever seen in her life. Living around Wolf Creek, Morgan had seen her share of tough customers, but these two had to take the prize. They wore cowboy hats and boots. Both were staring down at her prone position on the ground with quizzical looks on their faces.
The younger of the two offered her his hand. He pulled her back up to her feet. The other cowboy put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. One was on each side of her.
“Looks like you could use a little help here, ma’am,” the younger one said. His voice was slow and so very sure. From out of his unwavering stare, he exuded a sexuality that burned Morgan to her core.
“Are you okay, miss?” the other one asked her. There was concern in his voice. This was the first time anyone had expressed any real concern about her well-being in months. It felt so nice and welcome it almost made Morgan want to break down and cry right there in front of them.
For a long moment she was speechless. Who were they? Why were they on her land? What did they want with her? She got an unnerving feeling that she had seen them somewhere before.
Right now none of that mattered. All she cared about was that they were there at her side for this one moment. Perhaps they were merely a hallucination. Maybe they would disappear just as fast as they had appeared if she blinked her eyes. She may have finally lost her marbles from the two months of isolation out here and her continued worry about Nathan. But she would enjoy these cowboys while she had them with her.
“Thank you,” she said as speech returned to her. “Actually, I could use a little help.”
She looked down at her body. It was covered in mud. This was embarrassing, considering that both these guys looked so fine. She felt like she didn’t belong with them, an ugly duckling with two swans. They might just take a second look at her and run from her land screaming.
But not these guys, though. They were tough. They could take anything, and she thought they probably could do just about anything, too.
By this time, each of them had picked up one of her buckets of hog feed. “Let us give you a hand with these,” the older one told her.
“Thank you again,” Morgan answered. She was in no mood to refuse any help these two might have to offer her.
“I’m afraid this all spilled,” the young stud said. “I’ll go on back to your barn and fill these up for you.”
“You’re kind,” Morgan responded. “I appreciate it. But can I ask who you are first?”
* * * *
Drake was in Morgan’s kitchen, making her a cup of hot coffee.
He found her house nice and homey. It was big without being overpowering. The rooms were large and airy, the furniture new and modern. In the kitchen there was an appliance for everything. Nathan McLaughlin had been a good provider for his sexy woman.
At present, the house looked in a little bit of disarray. Morgan had been living alone for a while and had obviously not taken the time to straighten up or clean things.
Drake smiled to himself. Morgan was missing her man. She was in need of a new one. Well, make that two new men, he thought with a devilish grin.
“She’s still in the shower,” Hunter said as Drake carried their coffee out to the living room and sat it in front of the fireplace.
It was almost all Drake could do to keep his young friend from going down the hall to join Morgan in her shower. Hunter had wanted to wash her and dry her and comfort her. Drake had nudged him and told him to cool it. They would get their chance, but they had to use their heads first.
Using his head was something Hunter was often not good at. Of course Drake knew both men had other organs in their bodies that served them even better than their brains did.
Morgan returned from the shower. She was wearing a new pair of jeans and a short red T-shirt. Left outside the waist of her jeans, her shirt barely covered her stomach. Her hair was still wet and flyaway from the water. Morgan looked better than the beautiful scenery of the mountains that surrounded them. Drake had to admit to himself that it would be hard not to move fast with her. All cleaned up like this, she was a real beauty.
“I found your kitchen,” Drake told her and handed her the cup of steaming hot brew. “I hope you won’t be mad, but I made us all some coffee. You looked like you could use a strong one.”
“Thank you.” Morgan took the cup and sat down across the room from them. Now that she had recovered from her spill in the yard and the initial shock of meeting them again, she had become more demure. Drake was already thinking of ways to get by that, and the coffee had only been the first step.
“We wanted to come by and apologize for our first meeting back at the rodeo,” Hunter said, using his best manners, ones he reserved only for the most delectable of their conquests.
“It was a shock seeing you guys again this morning.” Both men watched Morgan sip her coffee. Drake noticed her wince at the strong taste. She had no doubt never tasted coffee as strong as his. Well, she was about to experience a lot of firsts with them.
“I hope you’re not still mad at us?” Drake ventured to ask her.
“I was never really angry.” Morgan was unsure of where to proceed. Drake saw it written in her expression. She had become shy around them. Her shyness made her even more desirable, a greater prize to be won. “It was my boyfriend Nathan who was really angry with you that night. He can be pretty possessive of me sometimes.”
“We couldn’t help but notice he’s not here.” Hunter was still all flowers and sweetness as he spoke with her.
“He’s away.” Morgan seemed to retreat even further into herself now that the subject of her missing boyfriend had been broached.
“Do you know when he will be back?” Drake asked her. It wasn’t nearly as much of an act for him to be kind to a woman. He just normally was kind to every woman regardless of whether it was a woman he wanted to bed or not, and Morgan definitely looked like she could use a little kindness and warmth in her life along about now.
Morgan was hesitating with her answer. Drake saw the debate on her face. She wasn’t very good at keeping her feelings bottled up. She didn’t want to lie to them, but she didn’t want to tell them the truth about her boyfriend. He had put her on the spot.
“I’m sorry.” Drake came to her rescue so she would not have to answer. “That isn’t any of my business.”
“I don’t honestly know when he’s coming back.” Morgan had apparently decided to tell them the truth.
“Once again, I apologize if I brought up a sensitive subject.”
“It isn’t that.” Morgan seemed to become more comfortable as she spoke with them. This was another good sign. They were indeed making progress with her. “I mean we didn’t have an argument or anything like that. Nathan and I are still together, only he’s gone right now. He’s a shifter you know.”
“We heard you were in Wolf Creek by yourself a couple days ago,” Hunter commented in his deep, almost sleepy voice. But this was the voice that Drake knew drove women crazy. “I was just telling Drake yesterday that if I had myself a woman as fine as you at home, I sure wouldn’t ever leave her alone.”
“I’m pretty sure Nathan had good reasons,” Morgan replied, but Drake wondered if she was really as sure as she said she was. There may have been the slightest hint of bitterness under her words.
“There wouldn’t be any reason good enough to keep me away if I had a woman like you,” Hunter told her. Drake marveled at his friend. He was sprawled back on her couch, already as if he owned the place. “Didn’t I just yell at you on that last night, Drake?”