A Groom For Red Riding Hood

She owed that giant big time.

He’d get his thanks—if she ever saw him again—but right now she had other things on her mind. Her skis hissed through the new-fallen snow. She was still new to the sport, still prone to an occasional clumsy tumble, but getting better. As she worked up a rhythm, the crisp air pinkened her cheeks and stung her eyes.

Every day she trekked farther and explored new directions. She’d been so crushed when she first moved here. Occasionally she still thought about Johnny. Occasionally she still woke up in a cold sweat, reliving the nightmare of a bride in a white dress, standing in the church for a Christmas Eve wedding, the guests all there, the whole town waiting for a groom who never showed.

That humiliating memory still made her cringe, but she’d slowly realized that that singular rejection wasn’t the real source of her hurt. It was being wrong, one too many times. It was feeling, once too often, the stone weight of being unloved and unlovable. Johnny had turned out to be a turkey, but Johnny wasn’t the real problem. Her self-respect was in more crumpled pieces than a broken cookie.

That cookie refused to instantly glue back together—but she was working on it.

When she brushed against a pine branch, snow shivered down in a shower of fluffy crystals, making her chuckle. It wasn’t so hard, being happy. It wasn’t so impossible, to laugh again. Being alive was riches enough, and she was discovering more riches every day.

She poled to the crest of a hill, and then, bending her knees, sailed down to the belly of a small valley. At the bottom she stopped, breathless and exhilarated, and yanked off a glove to check the compass in her pocket. Northeast. If she kept going in that direction, eventually she’d hit Lake Superior. Even if the landscape was totally unfamiliar, she had her bearings, wasn’t afraid of being lost. She zipped the compass back into her jacket pocket again, and was just refitting her glove when she saw the animal.

Fear never occurred to her in that first instant. He looked like a dog. A Siberian-husky type. He had a long snout and pointy ears, and mesmerizingly liquid black eyes staring right at her. His luxuriously thick pelt was almost as stark white as the snow. Her eyes softened. Lord, he was gorgeous, and standing motionless from a knoll thirty feet from her, as regal and silent as a statue.

“Hey, boy,” she said softly. “Are you lost?”

Her tone was as gentle as a whisper—she’d fallen in love on sight—but his response to her was distinctly different. At the first sound of her voice, he bared huge pointed teeth and snarled, his growl so ferocious that her throat closed.

It wasn’t a dog. She knew it in a pulsebeat. No husky was that big; no tame animal made wild, feral sounds like that. It had to be a wolf.

Every muscle in her body clenched up and locked. She couldn’t swallow. Adrenaline shot through her veins in an ice-cold rush.

The wolf paced another five feet closer, snapping threatening growls the whole time. It wasn’t hard to get the message. He didn’t like her. She’d have been thrilled to turn tail and run, only damned if she wasn’t too scared to move. She heard another snarl and whipped her head around.

Another one. Lord. Another two—no, three. At least three of them. The others were multicolored, their pelts ranging from dark charcoal to streaky gray. None of them were as huge as the white wolf, but the few pounds difference was hardly reassuring. She sensed as well as saw that she was being circled. They were moving. Pacing slowly in the snow, ducking in and behind trees, but keeping her in sight.

She’d have wet her pants if she had time.

There was no time. Panic sealed her throat. She had a flash memory of the afternoon she’d idiotically considered suicide. She’d never meant it. She’d just been so angry with herself—being stood up at her wedding had been a last straw in a long history of humiliating, embarrassing screwups. But geesh. At her most stupid, she’d never really wanted to die. And for sure she didn’t want to die all alone, torn to shreds in the middle of the north woods by a pack of wolves.

It was positively an uphill, difficult and darn near insurmountable job to earn her own self-respect. But she wanted a chance. Come on, God. I’m trying so hard, but I need a little time. How about a bargain. You get me out of this, and I’ll never mess up again as long as I live. I’ll be so good you’ll be astounded. I’ll be so good that I’ll be astounded....

The white wolf lifted his head and howled.

The sound echoed in the lonely woods like a cry from her own heart. She swallowed on a shattered breath. Tears welled, unwanted nuisance tears, blurring her vision when she desperately needed to see.

The wolves circled closer. The word run screamed through her mind, but it was easier to think than act. She could hardly run hellbent-for-leather wearing cross-country skis. There were trees all over the place, hardwoods as well as heavily branched pines, but her skis made climbing any of them just as impossible. There had to be a way out of this. She just had to think.

“Stand still. Don’t run. Don’t move—just stand real still.”

She heard the human voice. A masculine voice, but just then she wasn’t picky. One chord of that low masculine baritone and relief sang through her pulse like an opera aria. She whirled around. Nothing—not death, bombs or taxes—could have stopped her from aiming for that voice. “Oh, God, I’m so glad you’re here—”

“For cripe’s sakes, listen to me! Don’t move!”

Two

Mary Ellen obediently froze. Her heart even started beating again. She recognized the giant from the restaurant, although she barely looked at him. Her eyes glued straight on the gun he was carrying. The nice, long, big gun. She wasn’t going to die. The wolves weren’t going to get her. He had a gun. “Shoot ‘em, for pete’s sake!”

“Now, just take it easy. I’m pretty sure we don’t need to go that far.”

His slow, lazy baritone took her back. “In case you haven’t noticed—” personally, she thought he’d have to be myopic and deaf not to notice “—I think those wolves are planning to have me for lunch.”

“Yeah, I can see they’re not too happy with you.” He glanced at the wolves, then back at her. “Try to see it from their viewpoint. A human is their worst enemy. And you didn’t just barge into their territory. You wandered within twenty-five yards from a nest of their pups. They’re just trying to protect their young.”

Conceivably he thought she needed this information. She waved her hand in front of his face. One of them seemed to be under the illusion they had time for a casual chitchat. It wasn’t her. “I’m sorry I upset them. You’d never believe how sorry. If I could disappear into thin air, trust me, I’d be glad to. But that not being an option, I’d sure appreciate it if you’d at least aim that gun—”

“I’m afraid it isn’t the kind of weapon you think it is. It’s just a tranquilizing gun. No bullets. And yeah, I can shoot them if I have to, but it’s a lousy choice. The sedative would put them out for several hours. They’d be prey to the elements, other animals, and they’d be affected by the drug for a couple of days. Just relax, okay? They aren’t doing anything but growling at you. They’re entitled to give you a lecture. You screwed up.”

“Nothing new about that. It’s the story of my life,” she muttered.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. I can’t think. Geezle beezle, they’re still circling!”

“I know. And I know you’re scared, but you’re staying real cool. I’m proud of you. Most men would have lost it by now, but not you. You’re holding it together just fine. We’re gonna keep talking, okay? And while we’re talking, I want you to toe the catch on your skis. Real slow, real careful, see if you can get them off. Just forget the wolves. Look at me, straight at me.”

He had everything wrong. She wasn’t staying cool; she was a pinch away from totally losing it, and positively she’d done nothing to make the stranger—or anyone else—proud of her. Yet she looked straight at him, because he’d asked her. And she managed to awkwardly, clumsily toe off her skis, because he’d asked her to do that, too. The man had a Pied Piper voice—throaty and husky and hypnotizingly seductive. He could probably coax a nun to strip with that wickedly sexy voice, but that hardly explained why she obeyed him. There was only one possible reason why she did what he asked.

She’d lost her mind.

Circumstantial evidence wasn’t a fair way to judge a man, but she could hardly fail to notice clues that he wasn’t necessarily operating with a full deck. The wolves were snarling and circling and charging around. He was as calm as a spring breeze. Mary Ellen took that as a teensy hint that he needed a reality check. For reasons she couldn’t imagine, the front of his parka and jeans were hard-packed with snow. The hood was thrown back, revealing a shaggy, disheveled pelt of jet black hair. It looked as if his hair was decorated with dry leaves, which made no sense. Making even less sense, he was unzipping his parka as he slowly walked toward her.

She’d instinctively trusted him in the restaurant, instinctively sensed that he wasn’t the kind of man to prey on a vulnerable woman. Then and now, she should have remembered that her judgment about men wasn’t worth a Las Vegas dollar. Obviously she’d been mistaken about the intelligence in his shrewd blue eyes. No way he could be too bright when it seemed to have missed his notice entirely that her life was in imminent danger. Hells bells, so was his. The wolves sounded restless and hungry and mean and ferocious. And her damn fool of a giant was peeling off his jacket in freezing-lung temperatures as if he had nothing better to do.

“What I want you to do,” he said gently, “is put on my coat.”

“You want me to wear your coat?”

“And my muffler and gloves.”

“And your muffler and gloves,” she echoed. Vaguely she wondered if she’d landed in the twilight zone. She had experience, extensive experience, in embarrassing messes. Coping with situations that no sane woman would normally land herself in was really her forte. Somehow, though, nothing had prepared her for holding a witless conversation with a madman while surrounded by wolves.

“They know my scent.”

“Swell.”

Her deadpan comment was hardly intended to arouse his sense of humor, yet his mouth curved in the crack of a grin. “I’m getting the definite feeling we’d better backtrack a few yards. My name is Steve. Steve Rawlings. And I guess I just assumed you knew who I was. My being around has raised a lot of talk in town.”

“I’m new in Eagle Falls. And not exactly on the chitchat gossip circuit.”

He nodded. “So you didn’t know.... These wolves are my problem. My job. By profession I’m an ethologist. I study and work with animals like wolves, and specifically I’m working with this pack. It’d be my responsibility if anyone was hurt because of them, and I’m for sure not going to let anything happen to you, okay?” He gave her a moment to take in that information, then calmly went on. “The reason I want you to wear my coat is that it has my scent. They know me. In fact I’ve known White Wolf, the alpha male, since he was a pup. I don’t want to kid you—we’re in dicey waters. Wolves aren’t dogs—they’re wild animals. It’s dangerous to trust any wild animal. But I think we’ve got a great chance of this working.”

He’d reached her by then. The blasted man was so tall that she had to tilt her face to meet his eyes. “If you’re trying to be reassuring, I hate to tell you, but you’re failing big time. I’m real close to throwing up.”

“Nah. You’re staying real cool, real calm. I knew you would. When I saw you in the restaurant, I thought to myself, now there’s a lady who wouldn’t lose it in a crisis—no, no, quit looking at them. Look at me. Take it easy. You’re doing just fine. Although—”

“Although?” Momentarily she couldn’t help feeling distracted. She wasn’t the stay-cool type. She reliably fell apart in any crisis. Now was no different—she was scared enough to lose her cookies. How he could have formed such a mistakenly inaccurate impression of her was downright confounding.