Ghost Wolf

“Yes, yes, I recall. So you’re playing with the mortals?”

“Exclusivity to one’s breed is not wise in this small town.” He swept a hand toward the players who had continued the game without him. “They’re a great bunch of guys. I love hockey. There you go.”

“I like hockey, too, but I don’t think the boys would like a woman joining them.”

“Probably not. All the girls are over at the food booths making cocoa and serving us men.”

Daisy’s jaw tightened. “I don’t serve any man.”

Beck swerved his gaze toward her. “Huh? Oh. Right. Sorry, that was—”

“An asshole thing to say.”

“Whoa. This is fast going down an icy slope I don’t want to slip on. Let’s start over.” Tugging off a leather glove, he then bent to pick up her book and handed it to her. “Sorry. The pages got snow on them. Don’t you have one of those fancy e-readers like I see everyone carrying nowadays?”

“I have a few of them,” Daisy said proudly. “Sometimes I prefer the touch, feel and smell of a real book.”

She pressed the closed book to her nose and inhaled. Snow had dampened a few of the pages, but she couldn’t be upset because she also owned the digital copy of this book.

“It’s so personal to hold a book in my hand. I can open it to any place I like with a few flutters of the page. I can trace my fingers down the words, rereading phrases that speak to me. The stories make my heart race and my skin flush. My toes curl when I’ve read a well-crafted sentence. Mmm...”

“Uh...”

She glanced at Beck, whose mouth hung open. Oh, those eyes could attract wise men on a clear winter night beneath a velvet star-filled sky.

He scratched his head. “You just made reading sound sexual.”

So she had. “Books turn me on.” Daisy resumed her stroll along the snowbank shoveled up around the rink.

The wolf in hockey skates followed, blades sinking into the packed snow. “Really? They turn you on?”

She nodded. She wasn’t sure she’d ever find a man equal to the heroes she read about in her stories, but she held out hope. Of course, the stories were fiction. She knew that. But it was okay to dream. And besides, when she finally did find a hero of her own, she felt sure she’d recognize him immediately for his gleaming honor and smoldering sensuality.

“So it’s one of those sex books?” he asked.

Daisy stopped and toed her boot into a chunk of snow. Oh, she pitied the poorly read. “Just what implies a sex book in your mind?” She waved her book between the two of them. “Anything with a pink cover?”

“Anything with sex in it, I guess.”

He was out of his league, and he knew it. Daisy smiled triumphantly. Points to the women’s team.

“Says the wolf who’s probably never read more than fast-food menus and car manuals.”

“Don’t forget The Iliad. I may have been home-schooled, but I don’t think there’s a way for any breathing teenager to avoid that snorefest.”

Daisy rolled her eyes. She wasn’t much for mythology, but wouldn’t admit to him that she agreed with his assessment of the classic tome. That would be too much like flirting. Of which she did not partake.

“I have read a lot of car manuals,” he added. “I own a shop at the edge of Burnham.”

“Hockey, cars and tromping through the forest without a shirt on. Such a guy you are.”

He stabbed the hockey stick into the snow and propped both wrists on the end of it. “I can’t tell if you’re admonishing me or trying to flirt awkwardly.”

“I—” Stymied, Daisy turned her gaze away. She did not flirt. Because if she did, it would be exactly as he’d implied—awkward.

One of the men guiding the puck across the ice with the mortal crowd called to Beck to return. He waved and said he’d be right there.

Shoving up the sleeve of his jersey to reveal the long thermal sleeve beneath, he winked at her. “If you’re in the mood to test your flirtation skills later, come find me.”

“I, er—”

Without waiting for what would surely be the awkward reply of the century, Beck tromped off, blades cutting hashed tracks toward the ice.

Daisy couldn’t help but notice the flex of his quadriceps with each stride. Clad in jeans and a fitted long shirt, over which he wore a big loose hockey jersey, the attire highlighted his awesome physique.

“Nothing new,” she said to herself. All the wolves in the local packs were ripped. It was the very nature of a werewolf to be so muscular.

Unless of course he was Kelyn, her youngest brother. Who wasn’t actually a werewolf at all, but rather, had inherited their mother’s faery DNA. He was lean and lithe, yet her father deemed him the most deadly of all his boys. Faeries were swift and malicious, Malakai would often say.

Daisy hated to think of Kelyn as malicious. And he was not. She hoped he wouldn’t develop a complex because of her father’s words.

No longer interested in the book, she stuffed it in her coat pocket and wandered under a massive willow tree where a half dozen tween girls were sipping hot chocolate and cider from thermoses and texting on their cell phones, fingertips bared by half gloves.

“Why is your hair pink?” one of them asked as Daisy walked by.

“Because my mom dropped a can of paint on it when I was born,” she offered, smirking. “Why is yours red?”

The befreckled girl shrugged. “Yours is pretty. I wish mine wasn’t so ugly.”

“Yours is gorgeous,” Daisy offered. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently. It’s good to be unique, not like everyone else.”

The girl sat up a little straighter. The friend beside her, sporting a hot-chocolate mustache, nodded in agreement.

“What’s the best food to get today?” Daisy asked the group. “I’m in the mood for something sweet.”

“Try my grandma’s chocolate peanut butter brownies. Over there.” One of them pointed toward a table draped in red, around which dozens loomed. “She’s selling them cheap.”

“Thanks.” Daisy waved them off and wandered toward the food tables, her boots crunching across the snowpack.

Unique, eh? She smirked at her encouraging words. But not so unique that a woman’s body couldn’t make up its mind whether or not to be werewolf or faery. That wasn’t unique; that was just pitiful. She had to get it figured out. But she had no clue how to do so.

When she reached the table, she had to wait in line, and when only halfway to the front, a tall, blond man approached her and offered her a treat. “These are awesome. I figured you’d like to try one.”

“Are you following me?” she asked as she accepted a brownie as heavy as a small kitten. She got out of line. “You were just on the ice.”

“And then I was not. I always answer the call of my stomach. Even if it sets me back a cool ten bucks for two brownies.”

“What? These cost five dollars apiece?” The girl had said they were cheap. Shady sales tactics at that.