The guys came inside through the back door. It was open. They let themselves in.
“That sure does look good,” Drake commented on her breakfast.
“You sure look good, too,” Hunter commented on her appearance.
They sat down at her table and made themselves at home.
“Dig in, guys,” Morgan told them as she began to pour their coffee. “I’m glad you like it. You were the ones to pay for it yesterday at the store.”
“I told you not to mention that,” Drake admonished her. “In a small town like this, we all band together in hard times.”
Hunter gave her a smile that was all gorgeous teeth, and she watched as his eyes roamed the curves of her body revealed by the designer jeans.
“Right.” Morgan wanted to laugh at the two of them. Their motives were clear to her, and banding together in small-town brotherhood had nothing to do with them. Getting her between the sheets in her bedroom had everything to do with it.
“Can I ask what you’re laughing at?” Hunter still had the big, gorgeous bad-boy smile.
Morgan hadn’t realized she was laughing out loud. “It’s obvious what the two of you want out here. The same thing you wanted the first night we met at the rodeo.”
Drake started to get up to explain. The cocky smile had vanished from Hunter’s face.
“Sit back down and finish your breakfast.” Morgan motioned Drake back into his chair. “I just want to make sure we understand each other. I’m not some little helpless woman out here waiting for my heroes to save me. I might have lost my boyfriend, but I haven’t lost my sense of humor. As long as you two understand that, we’ll get along okay.”
The men exchanged a silent glance. Morgan had one up on them this morning. She felt good about where things stood now that she had cleared the air. Actually she wished she could have said more, wished she could have told them there would be no sex. But she couldn’t take herself there because she wasn’t sure of her own feelings yet. For the moment she had said enough.
“I’m sorry if we’ve offended you any,” Drake said. He seemed to be honestly contrite.
“You haven’t offended me in the least.” Morgan put her hands on her hips. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I just didn’t want you all to get the wrong signals.”
“Understood,” Drake acknowledged her position. She thought perhaps he really did understand.
Morgan sat down at the table with them and began to eat her own breakfast. To have the presence of a man in the house again—two men, she corrected herself—was something to be enjoyed.
“Hunter’s going to build a new pen for your chickens today.” Drake was ready to get down to business and move on.
“Does it really need one?”
“Sure does,” Hunter answered. He had been noticeably quiet since she had given them her speech. Morgan almost regretted it. She liked Hunter’s wit and veiled threats of sexual danger behind every word he uttered.
“I brought a tractor over. I’m going to spray your crops with pesticide this morning.” Drake was already taking charge of the place for her.
Morgan smiled at them and relaxed for the first time. “You guys have been great.”
* * * *
Drake was on top of his tractor. Morgan rode it with him. She was nestled in the same seat in front of him. His arms snaked around her sides to guide the tractor.
He could smell her feminine scent and the shampoo in her hair, the perfume of the soap she had washed with that morning. Her body felt so small and delicate next to his. He wanted to take a hand off the wheel and secure it around her waist, but that wouldn’t be appropriate yet. They had a lot of time. He resolved to take it slow.
“Why are you doing this?” It had hung in the air with him ever since he first heard about her plight. He needed to know the reason why she stayed here and had worked so hard. The answer would go a long way to tell him about the woman he wanted to seduce.
“I don’t know.” She answered him honestly and brushed back her hair as she looked over her shoulder at him.
“You know, your crops aren’t on very good soil here, and the elevation is really too high to grow very much.”
“I know. Nathan and I didn’t plant this to make money or with an idea of becoming full-time farmers.”
“Then why waste your time?”
“Last summer it was our first year of living out here after we built the house and moved out from Chicago. It was a lot of fun then. Nathan and I shared the work. We each worked for a couple hours a day and took turns feeding the animals.”
“Somehow I get the impression you weren’t having much fun this year when Hunter and I found you.”
“Last year it was fun because Nathan and I were doing it together. This year I was all alone.” She sighed. “Nathan owns his own business. In Chicago when I met him, he was an executive for a software development company. A couple years ago, he left the company and started his own. He is incredibly smart and has a lot of energy. He was making a fortune.”
“Sounds like the two of you had a real good thing going.”
“I trusted Nathan. That’s why I quit my job in the city and agreed to move all the way out here with him. I was a graphic designer who dreamed of drawing more than just ad campaign logos. When we came out here, it was going to be my big chance to finally work as an artist for a while.”
“Is Nathan rich?”
“He’s very well off. I didn’t need to work when I was with him.”
“When he left you, didn’t he set you up with any money?”
“He left so suddenly. He left me the house and the land. That’s all paid for. I’m sure he has a really large bank account at the Wolf Creek First National. But that’s his money. My savings account has about run out.”
“So you thought you would make money as a farmer?”
“I guess that sounds pretty stupid to you, huh?”
“Sounds to me like a woman with a broken heart who is searching for something to take the pain away.”
“Should my heart be broken?” Again she cocked her head over her shoulder and looked back into his eyes. She had beautiful blue eyes that were deep enough to get lost in. Drake loved a woman who was vulnerable, one that he could help out. But somehow there was something more with Morgan when he looked into her eyes. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was. He couldn’t ever remember being this affected by the charms of a beautiful woman before.
“I can’t honestly tell you if Nathan will ever be back or not, Morgan.”
“I’ve been thinking about leaving for Chicago,” she confided in him.
“I hope you won’t do that.”
“I promised Nathan I’d wait for him for a year. Now that I have you two as my friends, maybe I can stay.”
Drake felt at a loss for words, something he rarely felt with a woman. “You know if you need anything…anything at all…”
She silenced him with a hand on his arm. “Don’t offer me money, Drake.” There was a warning in her voice to be taken seriously. “I mean it. I will burn your money and throw away the ashes before I’ll ever accept any of it.”
He let his hand stray a little way closer into her body. He was close enough to her to smell the mint in her breath. “I wasn’t offering you any money.”
“Good.” She turned away from him. But she hadn’t objected or even tensed up at his hand, which was now resting gently against her side. Her shirt had ridden up her tummy, and he felt soft skin.
“I didn’t know Nathan,” Drake told her. “But I can tell you one thing—if it was me, I would come back to you. I wouldn’t care what the odds were. I’d find a way to make it home to you.”
She gave him a quick glance over her shoulder. It was impossible to know what she was feeling, the expression on her face unreadable. She never answered him, and only turned away, but he thought maybe there was a blush suffusing her beautiful face.
Drake had some nice lines to use on her. He had them all prepared, as he did for each woman he and Hunter seduced. But he realized with Morgan they weren’t lines anymore. When he spoke to her, he was speaking from a place of honesty somewhere deep inside. This was a new experience with a woman, but he rather liked it.
He decided to come clean. If he was going to get a deeper relationship with Morgan, he’d have to start with the truth. “Hunter and I haven’t exactly been honest with you,” he started.
Morgan let Drake help her down off the tractor. They walked along the fence, and neither spoke. It was a comfortable silence. The scenery was beautiful and the weather nice.
“I don’t think men like you and Hunter are capable of being honest when you first meet a woman,” she finally told him. She wasn’t angry. It was no more than a fact she was stating. But she wasn’t running away from him or kicking him out, nor was she inclined to do so. She was just being honest.
“That hurts.” Drake kicked some brush out of their way with his boot. He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were on the ground. Morgan felt like she had gotten the better of him but really didn’t know how this had happened so fast. She had to admit Drake looked cute all sheepish and apologetic as he was now.
“Well, it’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“Okay,” he relented. “I suppose it is.”
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way, tell me what you’ve been dishonest about?”
“Hunter got the information out of old Doc Hughes in a card game. You were right about Nathan being sick. When we learned about it, that’s when we came out here.”
Morgan stopped him and put a hand on his arm. She didn’t care about a childish half-truth the guys had told her to try and get in her pants. Suddenly all her interest was on what the doctor had said about Nathan. This was the same doctor who had refused to talk to her.
“Tell me what’s wrong with Nathan?” she pleaded with him.
“Shifters get conditions regular folks have never heard of. Nathan’s got something wrong with him. I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know what it is exactly. But what I do know is that he was going to die as a man…”
“Oh my God!”
Drake grabbed her in his arms to try and calm her down. “But his wolf isn’t sick. He shifted to be the wolf so he could keep living.”
Tears stabbed at her eyes and burned. “So he is lost to me?”
“No. The doctor didn’t say that. He might get better. If he does, I know he’ll come back here to his home and to his woman the very first chance he gets.”
She watched him. She wanted to believe him. Were they past the point of having to lie to each other? She didn’t think Drake was a bad man, and she hoped he wouldn’t lie about something so important to her.
“So it’s true.” Morgan pulled away from his grasp and kept walking down the line of the fence, picking up her pace as she went. Drake followed at her side. “Why wouldn’t Nathan tell me that before he left me?” She didn’t expect Drake to have an answer. Her question was merely shouted to the big blue sky above where no answer could be found.
“I think Nathan didn’t want to worry you. I’m not even sure I should have told you this much. We may be in for a long, hard haul before he comes back, and now you’re going to have to wonder every day if he’s dead or not.”
Morgan stopped and leaned back against the fence. She ran her hand through her hair and tried to think. Her mind was spinning. “I can’t leave this place now. I could never do that to Nathan.”
Drake stepped up close to her, but he didn’t touch her. That was good because she didn’t feel like being touched at the moment.
“You really do love him, don’t you?”
“I always said he was my only weakness.” Morgan smiled at the memory and sniffed back her tears. “Nathan’s the only guy I ever allowed myself to fall in love with.” She gave a half laugh, half sob as she wiped at her eyes. “I never really had a choice. He swept me off my feet in Chicago. I had never met a shape-shifter before. Nor had I ever met anyone with his brilliance and zest for living. The two of us had made a million plans, and we were just crazy enough to think we could make each one come true.”
Morgan was impressed that Drake was sensitive enough not to say any more. This was difficult for her, to discuss her boyfriend with him. It was made all the more difficult because she found him sexually attractive. If Drake had tried to say anything, it would have ruined the moment. But he kept his silence and backed off from her a few feet down the fence. He merely leaned back and looked up at the sky while he waited for her to recover her fragile composure.
She finally felt confident enough to face him again and change the subject. “When you guys leave, I’d really appreciate it if you’d leave the tractor behind.” She thought maybe to bargain with him. “I could rent it from you or even buy it from you.”
He gave her a stern look. She almost thought he looked angry with her. “You expect men to leave you now?”
“No.” She shook her head. “You guys are good. You don’t owe me anything. I’m just asking if I could use your tractor.”
Drake reached out and wiped a tear out of the corner of her eye. He was very gentle. Then he brushed back the hair across her forehead. Morgan let him. His touch calmed her, and she felt he cared about her.
“I’m not leaving.” There was conviction in this sentence. “Hunter’s not leaving. The tractor’s not going anywhere. We’re going to stay out here with you, Morgan.”