Chapter 1
Gray wolf physician Aidan Denali stared at the blood sample under the microscope and the notes scribbled on paper nearby. He wasn’t going to get anywhere with this. Not without new wolves to test. As much as it killed him to do so, he was delaying his search for a cure for the lupus garous’s reduced longevity until after the Christmas holiday. Maybe his twin brother, Rafe, was right, though Aidan hated to admit it. Perhaps joining Rafe and his family early would give Aidan the break he needed, and he might gain new insight into what was happening with their kind. He could even bounce ideas off his brother and Rafe’s mate, Jade. Normally, Aidan wouldn’t have considered leaving his research behind for that long. Not until Jade and her son, Toby, had come into their lives. They had given him and his brother even more of a family, and Aidan enjoyed the change in dynamics.
Still, he couldn’t help but worry he was going to fail in his mission when so many people were counting on him. The concern among the wolf shifters was that if something in their environment or genetics had caused them to live shorter lives, their longevity might continue to shorten and they would eventually age even more quickly than humans. He just wished all the time he’d spent on his work had resulted in some headway.
As to the matter of his brother having found the perfect she-wolf… Well, Aidan had to get out of his lab to pursue female interests if he was ever going to be successful at having a family of his own. And when he did go out with a she-wolf? His date invariably would ask about his work and if he was getting anywhere with it. He’d say no and explain the reasons, and then he’d be back to thinking about the issue and forget all about the she-wolf!
Frustrated with his lack of progress, Aidan put away his notes and locked up the lab. When he made his way to the living room of his home in the Klamath Mountains of northwestern California, he saw Ted Gallagher, one of his bodyguards, raising his brows in question. Ted was an even-tempered, muscular redhead who could take down the meanest of wolves.
Yeah, Aidan normally never left his lab at this hour. He was known to be a bit obsessed and a workaholic. “I’m going to the chalet earlier than planned.”
“Hell, Doc, that’s good news. I mean, I guess if you’re not bursting at the seams with news of a cure.”
Aidan understood what Ted meant. “I can work on it at the chalet, if I’m not too busy playing with Toby and visiting with my brother and Jade.”
As soon as Aidan spoke the words, Ted got a call. “Uh, yeah, this is Ted Gallagher, Dr. Denali’s personal assistant.” Ted eyed Aidan, waiting to see if he wanted to take the call.
Aidan had told both of his bodyguards to call themselves personal assistants if they had to explain who they were. They took his calls while he was in the lab and wouldn’t interrupt him unless it was important.
His other bodyguard, Mike Stallings, joined them.
“Yeah, just a minute.” Ted covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “Everett Johnston is calling from the gray wolf pack in Bigfork, Montana. He was originally with the Seattle pack led by Ronald Grayson.”
Aidan perked up at hearing from the wolf. Anything to do with the Seattle pack interested him, since it was the only pack he’d located that hadn’t allowed him to test members’ blood. “Let me speak with him.”
Ted handed the phone over, and Aidan said, “This is Aidan Denali. How may I help you?”
“Hey, Doc, this is Everett Johnston. You checked my blood when you came out to Montana. You tested my mom’s and sister’s too. But Dr. Holly Gray, who is with the Seattle pack, called my sister, Tara, and told her she was worried about a pack member who has been banished. He’s currently living in the Glacier Peak Wilderness. Holly and my sister are friends. They were just talking about him and how Holly keeps searching for him when she can, but she hasn’t been able to locate him.
“I thought since you have a cabin in the Wilderness, if you could find him, maybe he’d give you a sample of his blood.” Everett cleared his throat. “What I’m really hoping is that if you can find him, you’ll bring him here to live with the Montana pack. I’ve talked with our pack leaders, and they said they’d be willing to take him in. He’s a good guy, and he needs a home with a pack.”
Aidan opened his mouth to say he’d be glad to, but Everett continued to talk, sounding worried he might not be able to convince Aidan to look for the lone wolf.
“We know the Seattle pack has refused to allow you to sample their blood. Who knows? Nick Cornwall’s blood might give you the break you need, if you haven’t had any success yet. I suspect that all you’d
have to do is tell him the Seattle pack refuses to allow you to gather samples of their blood and he’d be agreeable.”
Thrilled with the prospect, Aidan had only needed the call to action: offer Nick the opportunity to find a home among the wolf packs Aidan knew and take him there, and possibly get a blood sample from him too.
“Why did the pack leader banish him?” Making sure the wolf was in good health would be Aidan’s first priority. Getting a sample of his blood could be a boon. But if Nick was a problem wolf, foisting him off on a pack could prove troublesome. Aidan wasn’t about to do that. He’d take him in and deal with him the best he could instead.
“He wasn’t banished for any good reason! It really was a shame Ronald kicked him out. Poor guy lost his mate and was having a difficult time coping. Ronald said Nick was causing trouble for the pack. I can’t imagine anything being further from the truth. If you search for Nick, just be careful. Holly Gray said several members of the Seattle pack are staying at a group of cabins south of the peak and running in the area this week. She’ll be looking for him again. Alone. There are grizzlies and wild wolves out there. She shouldn’t be by herself. Then again, maybe it would be best to avoid running into their pack and, if possible, go to Glacier Peak Wilderness after they’re gone. At one time, Ronald had declared the Wilderness a free zone for other wolves to visit, but he could have changed his mind. He’s like that.”
“Thanks. I’m free at the moment, but I have a family gathering in a couple of weeks. I need to get this done now if I’m going to do it before the holidays. I’ll try to locate Nick.” Aidan couldn’t believe what a rotten ass Ronald was.
“Good luck, Doc. I sure hope you find him. If you do, tell him he’s more than welcome to join our pack in Montana. Also, we have
several widows that we took into the pack.”
“Okay, sounds good. One other thing. Why is he living in the wilderness? Why not just move out of Seattle and find a home someplace else?”
“He had to sell his home and sold off everything else. At least he’s retired and has an income, but he’s been so distraught over everything that he just left and is living out there for now. He probably doesn’t know where other packs are located. Even if he does, he might feel that with the stigma of being banished, no one would take him in anyway. Not to mention he’s lived all his life in the Seattle area. He’s older and more set in his ways. Oh, I asked Holly if there was a chance you could get the pack leader to change his mind and agree for the pack to give blood, but she said no.”
That would have been the best Christmas present ever. “Okay, thanks. I’ll let you know if I locate Nick and can convince him to allow me to fly him out to Montana.” They ended the call, and Aidan felt he had some direction in his research again. And hope.
Ted was frowning. “Must be a combination of good and bad news.”
Mike folded his arms across his chest. “Yeah, his intermittent frowns and an elusive smile say so.”
“Scratch my last comment about going to the chalet. We’re packing for a cold-weather camping trip. We’re going to the cabin near the Glacier Peak Wilderness. A lot of equipment is always there: snowshoes, climbing gear, cross-country skis, and snow bikes, and I have a lab there. Though I suspect we’ll be running as wolves. The Seattle pack is staying at cabins south of there, but we need to locate a wolf they banished from the pack. And possibly convince him to fly with us to meet the Montana pack.”
“I’ll arrange for transportation.” Ted pulled out his phone.
“Actually, you don’t have to go with me,” Aidan said, heading for his bedroom to pack and thinking maybe if he ran into Dr. Holly Gray, her pack wouldn’t object as much to a lone wolf.
“Like hell we don’t.” Mike pulled out his phone. “You might just need us this time… Hey, Chet, we need a car dropped off at the private airport near Glacier Peak Wilderness… Just be on standby. If Doc says we need you for additional guard detail, we’ll let you know. Thanks.” Mike turned to Aidan. “You sure we don’t need Holloway on this mission?”
“No, Hugh’s sister is due to have triplets anytime, and he told his twin he’d be there for her. We don’t need three bodyguards.” He didn’t need even one.
The Wilderness area was vast, and locating the wolf probably would take much longer than the two weeks they had to search for him unless Nick wanted them to find him. Aidan couldn’t envision why Ronald had kicked the widowed wolf out of the pack. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than losing the comfort of other wolves during a time of deep sorrow.
If Nick didn’t want to join the Montana pack, Aidan was certain one of the others would be eager to take him in. Though the one in Montana could be a good start for him. Like Everett had said, they had taken in several females who had lost their mates. Who knew where that could lead? In any case, Aidan would fly Nick to every pack location he knew until he found the pack Nick felt comfortable with.
This might be just the break Aidan needed to find a solution for his research and a way to reach out to an emotionally wounded wolf.
As soon as the men all had their bags packed and had joined one another in the living room, Ted asked, “Do you think the guy will
even want to talk with you?” He began hauling the bags out to the SUV.
“If we’re lucky and can even locate him.” Aidan gathered anything else he might need from the lab. Every getaway place Rafe and Aidan had purchased for their use had a room dedicated to Aidan’s research. Aidan loved his brother for knowing how important this was to him.
“What about shopping for your nephew for Christmas presents? You said you were going to do that before you left, and there might not be much in the line of shopping out there,” Ted said as they loaded into the vehicle.
“Yeah. Right.” Aidan got on his cell phone and looked for the shopping mall closest to where they’d be staying. “We can drop by the mall, pick up what we need, buy groceries at a store nearby, and then drive to the cabin and settle in. Once we’ve done that, we can start doing a grid search of the area surrounding the volcanic mountain and learn if Nick’s still there.”
“What about the Seattle pack?” Mike asked.
“Everett said his former pack considered the area a free zone for wolves. We’ve never had any issues when we’ve stayed at the cabin before.”
“Were they in the vicinity at the time?” Ted asked, because he and Mike had never been to the cabin.
“Maybe not.”
Mike snorted. “That pack hates outsider wolves. I bet you if we run into them in the Wilderness, there will be trouble.”
“Don’t give Doc any ideas. He’s liable to scrap with them just to get them to bleed on him so he can test it,” Ted joked.
Mike and Aidan laughed.
“Why haven’t I thought of that?” Aidan smiled, but he was serious. It could work.
They drove to the private airport nearby and loaded the plane with their gear. As soon as they arrived at the private airport in Washington, a car was waiting for them. Because of Rafe’s and Aidan’s wealth, all they had to do was call ahead to make arrangements for anything they needed and it was done. Rafe’s billions had been made in real estate deals. Aidan’s billions had mostly come from the pharmaceutical research he did for years before he became so caught up in the longevity issue.
At the mall, the trees in the parking lot were decorated with white Christmas lights, and every parking spot was filled. They drove around and around and around, looking for a free parking spot, while other cars were doing the same. Then Aidan saw a sign for valet parking. “There. Valet parking. Go for it.”
Christmas lights sparkled all around the mall too. Aidan had never bothered to decorate his place. There was no need, since he never planned to be there for the holiday. Rafe had always gone all out because he held a charity ball at his place every year right after Thanksgiving weekend. That was all the Christmas decorating Aidan ever needed. A quiet gift-giving on Christmas morning and the brothers and their bachelor friends doing whatever they wanted made for the perfect Christmas: flying off to another location, running in the woods as wolves, fishing, hiking, exercising in Rafe’s gym, partying whatever they were in the mood for.
This was the first year Rafe had a mate and son. It wouldn’t be quite the same. And Aidan was looking forward to that. He could envision the tyke’s wide-eyed expression when he saw all the wrapped packages under the tree. Many years ago, Christmases had been homespun affairs for him and his brother, with everyone
making something special for everyone else. He’d always thought fondly of his mother for making such a big deal of loving a tea towel he’d created for her after her favorite one caught fire. She’d used that towel until she died. Rafe had made her a bread box, teasing Aidan that sewing was for girls.
But when Aidan had to stitch him up after a wolf fight, Rafe didn’t tease him anymore.
When they entered the store, Aidan remembered how much he disliked shopping in stores, instead purchasing what he needed online. He and his bodyguards made their way shoulder to shoulder through the crowds. He hadn’t expected to see so many people at the mall, but he reminded himself it was Saturday and getting close to Christmas. Normally, he wouldn’t go shopping at a mall for anything this time of year.
The trio made their way through the noise and confusion, noticing all the shops adorned with Christmas decor. Aidan had ordered everything else for the family for Christmas, but he’d wanted to pick up some special things for his nephew and had waited too long to do it online.
The mall in Lynnwood was only seventeen miles from Seattle. It was entirely possible they might run into some of the Seattle pack members.
“Hope we don’t have any trouble.” Ted was eyeing everyone in the mall as if they could be potentially dangerous gray wolves.
Aidan was ready to deal with them if he and his bodyguards had to. He suspected the Seattle wolves wouldn’t make much of a scene at the mall though too many shoppers, too many witnesses. And none of them would want to be hauled off to jail.
“You’re sure the info about the banished wolf living up here is still valid?” Mike asked, poking around at some Christmas sweaters on a
table. “I guess I should have asked this earlier. Everett Johnston left the Seattle pack a while ago.”
“The pack’s doctor told Everett’s sister that she’s looking for him, but she hadn’t found him. We can’t know for certain, not until we investigate a bit, but I have to check on any leads I get.”
When it came to solving puzzles, Aidan quickly became obsessed.
If humans had known about it, they might have thought it was a boon for the wolf shifters to age so slowly, one human year for every thirty, and although that had changed to one year for every five, the wolves were still just as fortunate. But the wolves’ lengthy longevity had been their normal life span. How would humans see it if they suddenly aged more rapidly to such a degree? They’d feel the same pressure to do something about it.
Mike ran his hand over a suede jacket on a rack. “Are you still getting tons of emails and phone calls from pack leaders, asking what you’ve learned because older family members are dying much younger?”
“Yeah, more of late.”
“You know, even if we find Nick, he might not want to give a blood sample or care anything about our longevity issues,” Mike warned as they headed into one of the larger department stores. “Especially since he’s lost his mate.”
“Yes, I agree, Mike. There’s no guarantee that we’ll find him or that he’ll want to help. But if I can offer him help, I’m going to. If he wants to help us, I’m all for it.”
As wolves, their sense of smell was better than humans’. Everything was bombarding Aidan all at once, from the smell of humans—colognes, perfumes, body odor—to the stacks of Christmas spice candles sitting on a tall shelf nearby. Their wolf hearing was better too, and the Christmas music playing overhead and the
constant chatter all around Aidan made him long for the quiet of the Wilderness.
Looking around for the toy section, he saw Santa and a long line of kids waiting to give him their Christmas lists. Aidan paused for a moment and watched as a boy about the age of his three-year-old nephew, Toby, sat on Santa’s lap, looking up at the white-bearded man. Aidan wondered if Rafe and Jade would take Toby to see a Santa too. His brother’s life had changed so much recently—going from billionaire bachelor to mated wolf with a kid but in a good way.
Aidan glanced around and saw the toy department nearby. “I’m going over there to look for gifts,” he told his bodyguards.
Mike was eyeing the cute Santa’s helpers in their green-and-whitestriped tights, red tutus, and striped elf hats.
“Yeah, we’ll be right here.” Ted turned to watch the elves too, especially a cute redhead.
Aidan chuckled under his breath.
He and his brother didn’t have a pack, per se, but since Jade and his brother had mated and were raising Toby, all of them Rafe’s bodyguards, his administrative assistant, and Aidan—had started seeing themselves as a pack. Rafe and Jade had become their de facto leaders.
Everyone watched out for the boy, who, unlike the rest of the wolves, was newly turned, though he had some wolf roots. That meant Toby kept them on their toes, especially when the full moon was out. With other young wolves, the mother’s shifting compelled the child to shift, but it didn’t work like that with Toby. He didn’t have a lot of control over his shifting.
Aidan looked through the toys, wanting to get Toby a kid’s microscope or other scientific equipment. That’s what he would have
liked as a kid that age, though they didn’t even have toy stores where he and Rafe grew up. And nothing like science toys for kids either. A large stuffed wolf caught his eye. He didn’t think Toby would have space in his bed to sleep if Aidan bought him any more stuffed animals.
He reached for a hundredth-anniversary tin of Lincoln Logs and spied a kit for preschoolers that claimed to be a first science kit. He also saw a junior microscope, a 3-D solar system, and a puzzle of the phases of the moon. Wishing department stores like this one had shopping carts, he was grabbing the tin of Lincoln Logs when he heard a woman and teenage girl frantically yelling, “Joey! Joey!”
From the sound of panic in the women’s voices, Aidan was certain the boy had gotten away from them, and they couldn’t locate him in the crush of shoppers. Instantly, his thoughts were transported to a much earlier time when he’d become separated from his parents and brother on a visit to the Gold Rush town of Placerville when they went in for supplies. Fortunately, one of the grizzled old miners had taken him in hand, bought him a root beer, and helped him look for his family. Because of that, Aidan knew how it felt to be separated from loved ones in a crowd of unfamiliar people.
Worse, fearing someone might take off with the boy and disappear for good, Aidan began looking for one who appeared lost, wishing he knew how old the boy was. Then he spied a woman hurrying a boy about Toby’s age out of the store. He was pulling at her to let him go, his head riveted toward the sound of the two women calling out Joey’s name.
Although suspecting the boy was Joey, Aidan hoped he didn’t accost the wrong woman, a mother leaving the store with her own kid. On the other hand, he didn’t want them to disappear into the
mall if she wasn’t the boy’s mother and was attempting to abscond with him.
“Joey!” Aidan called out, his voice much deeper, more commanding, more easily heard above the din of conversations and Christmas music than the women’s, figuring the boy would respond to his name being called, if he was indeed the right boy.
The boy turned and looked straight at him. Aidan was running toward him, but of course the preschooler didn’t recognize him. He did seem to recognize the name. Aidan quickly reached the woman and the boy, catching his bodyguards’ attention, and they both raced to help Aidan.
With the tin of Lincoln Logs still in one hand, Aidan grabbed the woman’s arm with his other hand and stopped her from leaving the store. He quickly asked the boy, “Do you know this woman?”
Eyes wide, the boy shook his head. At the same time, Aidan could smell the boy’s scent—a gray wolf. The woman was human. The boy took a deep breath, his lips parting, and he seemed to realize Aidan was a gray wolf too.
“Are you Joey?” Aidan asked the boy.
He nodded.
Struggling to free herself from Aidan, the woman kept trying to yank her arm out of his firm grasp. She suddenly released the boy and, at the same time, swung her purse at Aidan, striking him on the side of the head. The purse had to be filled with something hard and heavy because the impact knocked him to the side. He lost the tin of Lincoln Logs but continued to hold tight to the woman’s arm, wrenching the purse from her grasp and dropping it on the floor.
Aidan’s head was throbbing where the woman had struck him, his vision blurring a bit. Damn it.
Ted and Mike reached him, and Mike quickly grabbed the woman’s arm. Aidan took the boy in hand. Ted had his phone out, ready to call 911. The dark-haired woman’s tan face turned pasty white, and her dark-brown eyes narrowed. “His mother told me to take him to see Santa Claus.”
“Santa Claus is back that way.” Aidan didn’t believe the woman for a second, but he had to be sure. He took Joey by the waist and settled him on his hip, holding him close and in a reassuring manner. “What’s his mother’s name?” he asked the woman, hoping the boy wouldn’t blurt it out, but the boy remained quiet.
“Beth,” the thirtyish woman said.
Aidan asked Joey, “Is that your mother’s name?”
Joey shook his head. Then the boy saw someone coming and smiled. Aidan turned to see two blonds, both blue-eyed and wearing jeans and sweaters, frowning at him, most likely because he was holding on to Joey. Were they wolves too? He suspected they had to be.
The woman appeared to be around thirty, the other an older teen around seventeen or eighteen. Both had the same oval-shaped face, the same full pink lips and narrowed eyes. As much as they looked alike, Aidan assumed they were related. But not to the dark-haired, brown-eyed boy.
Both looked at Aidan’s sweatshirt and frowned even more. Real MenHowlwas embroidered across the front of it. Only another wolf would get the humor.
Chapter 2
“Ohmigod, Joey. I’m so glad you’re safe,” the woman said, drawing close to Aidan, her eyes filled with concern. She was maybe five four or five five, her snow boots adding another inch to her height.
Aidan smelled her feminine floral scent and that she was a gray wolf too, both of which had him pulling in a deeper breath and taking a closer look. She was wearing a blue parka and a glittery white sweater. Her cheeks were a little flushed from trying to chase down the boy. Her blond hair was pulled into a bun, and soft straggles of blond curls framed her pretty face. Her clear blue eyes sparkled under the bright store lights, captivating him.
For a minute, he just stared at her, and then he snapped out of his uncharacteristic fascination with a woman. He was glad she was a wolf, which helped convince him the boy belonged to her or her pack.
She reached for Joey, and though the boy raised his hands out to her, Aidan still didn’t hand him over right away. He had just rescued the boy and wasn’t about to give him to anyone else until he was assured Joey would be safe. “Are you his mother?”
“His mother’s friend.” The woman gave him an annoyed look when he didn’t release Joey to her right away. “My sister was babysitting him, but he got away from us.” Then her eyes widened. She must have smelled that he was also a wolf.
She reached for the boy again.
Aidan still didn’t hand him over. Now it was more a case of learning where these three were from. The Seattle pack? Or another?
Ted was already calling the police about the woman who had tried to leave the store with the little wolf boy. Thank God, she hadn’t managed to leave before Aidan found her and stopped her.
“I’m Dr. Aidan—”
“Denali,” the older blond practically whispered, her eyes wide. His mouth gaped a little. He would have remembered her if he’d met her before. The way she reacted to knowing who he was… Did that mean it was good news, or bad? “Uh, right.”
“I’m Holly Gray. And this is Marianne, my seventeen-year-old sister.” Now Holly seemed eager to meet him, and Aidan was relieved.
“Dr. Holly Gray,” Marianne said as if she didn’t want Aidan to think her older sister was any less important than him.
She was the doctor Everett had told him about, and a friend of Everett’s sister. “Dr. Holly Gray.” Aidan smiled at both ladies. He handed Joey over to Holly, but Marianne wanted to hold him.
“Everett Johnston mentioned you to me.” Aidan frowned at Holly. “Have we met?”
“You would have remembered my sister if you had met her, you know,” Marianne said, a brow raised, her lips unsmiling as she rested Joey on her hip.
Aidan curbed the urge to laugh at Marianne’s words, though he smiled. “I’m sure I would have.”
Mike was still holding on to the attempted kidnapper. The store security officer was with them now, asking them and the woman questions.
“Have I met you before?” Aidan directed the question to Marianne this time. He was certain he hadn’t met the girl either. He was eager
to speak to them further in private, and maybe he could have the doctor’s blood tested if she approved, and Marianne shook her head. “We’re from Seattle, you know. Ronald didn’t want us to meet you.”
Aidan’s enthusiasm faltered. He’d hoped they might be more agreeable after he’d saved one of their own.
Holly kept looking at the side of Aidan’s head, and he finally felt blood dribbling down it. The attempted kidnapper must have broken the skin when she bashed him in the head with her purse. The wound was just beginning to throb.
“You…look like you could use a couple of stitches.” Holly pulled some tissues out of her purse and applied pressure to the wound. “Head wounds bleed a lot though.”
Mike and Ted were smiling at him. Yeah, way to get the girl, except she was with the Seattle pack, and that pack had nothing to do with any wolf outsiders. Still, she was taking care of him, maybe because he’d rescued the boy and taken a beating for it. She was so gentle that he really liked her bedside manner.
“Do you live near here?” Holly asked, frowning.
“Not here. In the Klamath Mountains region of California, but we’re visiting here for a couple of weeks.” If it took that long to find Nick. “This is the closest mall we could find to do some Christmas shopping. We have a cabin near Glacier Peak.” Realizing she was still holding the tissues against his wound when she didn’t have to, Aidan reached for them. “I can do that.”
She shook her head. “I’ve got it.”
Doctor to the rescue? Aidan was amused, impressed, and even… attracted to her.
“We’re staying at cabins near there too. Just hold still so I can stop the bleeding. It’s the least I can do after you rescued Joey. I”—she
glanced down at his sweatshirt—“like your…sweatshirt, by the way.” She paused. “Are you still doing your research?”
She acted interested, and Aidan thought maybe the pack members had changed their minds. Or maybe, as a doctor, she was a little more curious about the situation than the rest of the pack.
“Yeah, I’m looking for someone who was with your—”
“Holly!” some guy yelled.
Aidan turned to see the man who sounded so hostile.
A dark-haired guy strode toward them, looking from Aidan to her as if he could kill them both for being too physically close to each other. The boyfriend? Her mate?
That’s also how Aidan would expect someone from the Seattle pack to act.
Then again, the situation did look rather intimate as she continued to press the tissues against Aidan’s head and stood resting her body close to his. He couldn’t help but breathe in her fascinating scent and enjoy her sweet Ivory soap, wolf, and womanly fragrance. Embarrassingly, his own body was beginning to react to her closeness. Despite the approaching male and his obvious anger, she didn’t budge from where she stood. He admired her for standing her ground.
The guy who had yelled was still trying to get through the crowd of shoppers, and Aidan asked her, “Your mate?” He’d be disappointed if the guy was, because from the looks of it, he wouldn’t want her to have anything to do with Aidan and his research, while he’d begun to hope she might help him out.
“No. He wanted to be, but we’ve had some major issues of late.” She didn’t seem to regret that.
Aidan was glad, though he told himself that was only because the guy was being such a jerk. Getting involved with a woman who was
with that pack could be a problem, since the pack leader wasn’t allowing anyone in.
As soon as the guy moved into their space and started acting like he was going to pull Holly away, Aidan stiffened, but Holly quickly said, “Cool it, Jared. This nice man rescued Joey from an attempted kidnapper, and the woman gave him a head wound.”
Jared cast a dark smile in Aidan’s direction, as if he was amused the human woman had gotten the best of the wolf who wasn’t in their pack. Jared turned his attention to Holly. “Let’s go.”
“We have to speak with the police. You can go, and I’ll see you later,” Holly said, dismissing him.
Now it was Aidan’s turn to cast Jared a dark smile. He liked a woman who had a mind of her own. He noticed she didn’t offer introductions, and he didn’t bother with them either.
“Like hell you will.” Jared folded his arms, and Aidan figured that was the end of getting to know Holly, even though she didn’t release her hold on the tissues she was still pressing against his head. “Why don’t you let him hold on to that, or is he about to faint?” Jared asked with a snarl.
“He needs to be stitched up,” she said.
Aidan wondered if it was all that bad or she was just making excuses to tick off Jared.
“He can go to the emergency room. He won’t have to worry about it in a couple of days anyway.”
Just then, several police officers burst into the store, while all kinds of shoppers were watching the spectacle.
Aidan explained to the police how he’d heard the women calling for Joey and had seen this dark-haired woman hurrying for the exit, dragging the little boy with her.
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F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1926
TO RING AND ELLIS LARDNER
CONTENTS
THE RICH BOY WINTER DREAMS
THE BABY PARTY ABSOLUTION
RAGS MARTIN-JONES AND THE PR-NCE OF W-LES
THE ADJUSTER HOT AND COLD BLOOD
"THE SENSIBLE THING"
GRETCHEN'S FORTY WINKS
THE RICH BOY
Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created—nothing. That is because we are all queer fish, queerer behind our faces and voices than we want any one to know or than we know ourselves. When I hear a man proclaiming himself an "average, honest, open fellow," I feel pretty sure that he has some definite and perhaps terrible abnormality which he has agreed to conceal—and his protestation of being average and honest and open is his way of reminding himself of his misprision.
There are no types, no plurals. There is a rich boy, and this is his and not his brothers' story. All my life I have lived among his brothers but this one has been my friend. Besides, if I wrote about his brothers I should have to begin by attacking all the lies that the poor have told about the rich and the rich have told about themselves— such a wild structure they have erected that when we pick up a book about the rich, some instinct prepares us for unreality. Even the intelligent and impassioned reporters of life have made the country of the rich as unreal as fairy-land.
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different. The only way I can describe young Anson Hunter is to
approach him as if he were a foreigner and cling stubbornly to my point of view. If I accept his for a moment I am lost—I have nothing to show but a preposterous movie.
II
Anson was the eldest of six children who would some day divide a fortune of fifteen million dollars, and he reached the age of reason— is it seven?—at the beginning of the century when daring young women were already gliding along Fifth Avenue in electric "mobiles." In those days he and his brother had an English governess who spoke the language very clearly and crisply and well, so that the two boys grew to speak as she did—their words and sentences were all crisp and clear and not run together as ours are. They didn't talk exactly like English children but acquired an accent that is peculiar to fashionable people in the city of New York.
In the summer the six children were moved from the house on 71st Street to a big estate in northern Connecticut. It was not a fashionable locality—Anson's father wanted to delay as long as possible his children's knowledge of that side of life. He was a man somewhat superior to his class, which composed New York society, and to his period, which was the snobbish and formalized vulgarity of the Gilded Age, and he wanted his sons to learn habits of concentration and have sound constitutions and grow up into rightliving and successful men. He and his wife kept an eye on them as well as they were able until the two older boys went away to school, but in huge establishments this is difficult—it was much simpler in the series of small and medium-sized houses in which my own youth was spent—I was never far out of the reach of my mother's voice, of the sense of her presence, her approval or disapproval.
Anson's first sense of his superiority came to him when he realized the half-grudging American deference that was paid to him
in the Connecticut village. The parents of the boys he played with always inquired after his father and mother, and were vaguely excited when their own children were asked to the Hunters' house. He accepted this as the natural state of things, and a sort of impatience with all groups of which he was not the centre—in money, in position, in authority—remained with him for the rest of his life. He disdained to struggle with other boys for precedence—he expected it to be given him freely, and when it wasn't he withdrew into his family. His family was sufficient, for in the East money is still a I somewhat feudal thing, a clan-forming thing. In the snobbish West, money separates families to form "sets."
At eighteen, when he went to New Haven, Anson was tall and thick-set, with a clear complexion and a healthy color from the ordered life he had led in school. His hair was yellow and grew in a funny way on his head, his nose was beaked—these two things kept him from being handsome—but he had a confident charm and a certain brusque style, and the upper-class men who passed him on the street knew without being told that he was a rich boy and had gone to one of the best schools. Nevertheless, his very superiority kept him from being a success in college—the independence was mistaken for egotism, and the refusal to accept Yale standards with the proper awe seemed to belittle all those who had. So, long before he graduated, he began to shift the centre of his life to New York.
He was at home in New York—there was his own house with "the kind of servants you can't get any more"—and his own family, of which, because of his good humor and a certain ability to make things go, he was rapidly becoming the centre, and the débutante parties, and the correct manly world of the men's clubs, and the occasional wild spree with the gallant girls whom New Haven only knew from the fifth row. His aspirations were conventional enough— they included even the irreproachable shadow he would some day marry, but they differed from the aspirations of the majority of young men in that there was no mist over them, none of that quality which is variously known as "idealism" or "illusion." Anson accepted without reservation the world of high finance and high extravagance, of divorce and dissipation, of snobbery and of privilege. Most of our
lives end as a compromise—it was as a compromise that his life began.
He and I first met in the late summer of 1917 when he was just out of Yale, and, like the rest of us, was swept up into the systematized hysteria of the war. In the blue-green uniform of the naval aviation he came down to Pensacola, where the hotel orchestras played "I'm sorry, dear," and we young officers danced with the girls. Every one liked him, and though he ran with the drinkers and wasn't an especially good pilot, even the instructors treated him with a certain respect. He was always having long talks with them in his confident, logical voice—talks which ended by his getting himself, or, more frequently, another officer, out of some impending trouble. He was convivial, bawdy, robustly avid for pleasure, and we were all surprised when he fell in love with a conservative and rather proper girl.
Her name was Paula Legendre, a dark, serious beauty from somewhere in California. Her family kept a winter residence just outside of town, and in spite of her primness she was enormously popular; there is a large class of men whose egotism can't endure humor in a woman. But Anson wasn't that sort, and I couldn't understand the attraction of her "sincerity"—that was the thing to say about her—for his keen and somewhat sardonic mind.
Nevertheless, they fell in love—and on her terms. He no longer joined the twilight gathering at the De Sota bar, and whenever they were seen together they were engaged in a long, serious dialogue, which must have gone on several weeks. Long afterward he told me that it was not about anything in particular but was composed on both sides of immature and even meaningless statements—the emotional content that gradually came to fill it grew up not out of the words but out of its enormous seriousness. It was a sort of hypnosis. Often it was interrupted, giving way to that emasculated humor we call fun; when they were alone it was resumed again, solemn, lowkeyed, and pitched so as to give each other a sense of unity in feeling and thought. They came to resent any interruptions of it, to be unresponsive to facetiousness about life, even to the mild cynicism of their contemporaries. They were only happy when the dialogue
was going on, and its seriousness bathed them like the amber glow of an open fire. Toward the end there came an interruption they did not resent—it began to be interrupted by passion.
Oddly enough, Anson was as engrossed in the dialogue as she was and as profoundly affected by it, yet at the same time aware that on his side much was insincere, and on hers much was merely simple. At first, too, he despised her emotional simplicity as well, but with his love her nature deepened and blossomed, and he could despise it no longer. He felt that if he could enter into Paula's warm safe life he would be happy. The long preparation of the dialogue removed any constraint—he taught her some of what he had learned from more adventurous women, and she responded with a rapt holy intensity. One evening after a dance they agreed to marry, and he wrote a long letter about her to his mother. The next day Paula told him that she was rich, that she had a personal fortune of nearly a million dollars.
III
It was exactly as if they could say "Neither of us has anything: we shall be poor together"—just as delightful that they should be rich instead. It gave them the same communion of adventure. Yet when Anson got leave in April, and Paula and her mother accompanied him North, she was impressed with the standing of his family in New York and with the scale on which they lived. Alone with Anson for the first time in the rooms where he had played as a boy, she was filled with a comfortable emotion, as though she were pre-eminently safe and taken care of. The pictures of Anson in a skull cap at his first school, of Anson on horseback with the sweetheart of a mysterious forgotten summer, of Anson in a gay group of ushers and bridesmaid at a wedding, made her jealous of his life apart from her in the past, and so completely did his authoritative person seem to sum up and
typify these possessions of his that she was inspired with the idea of being married immediately and returning to Pensacola as his wife.
But an immediate marriage wasn't discussed—even the engagement was to be secret until after the war. When she realized that only two days of his leave remained, her dissatisfaction crystallized in the intention of making him as unwilling to wait as she was. They were driving to the country for dinner, and she determined to force the issue that night.
Now a cousin of Paula's was staying with them at the Ritz, a severe, bitter girl who loved Paula but was somewhat jealous of her impressive engagement, and as Paula was late in dressing, the cousin, who wasn't going to the party, received Anson in the parlor of the suite.
Anson had met friends at five o'clock and drunk freely and indiscreetly with them for an hour. He left the Yale Club at a proper time, and his mother's chauffeur drove him to the Ritz, but his usual capacity was not in evidence, and the impact of the steam-heated sitting-room made him suddenly dizzy. He knew it, and he was both amused and sorry.
Paula's cousin was twenty-five, but she was exceptionally naïve; and at first failed to realize what was up. She had never met Anson before, and she was surprised when he mumbled strange information and nearly fell off his chair, but until Paula appeared it didn't occur to her that what she had taken for the odor of a drycleaned uniform was really whiskey. But Paula understood as soon as she appeared; her only thought was to get Anson away before her mother saw him, and at the look in her eyes the cousin understood too.
When Paula and Anson descended to the limousine they found two men inside, both asleep; they were the men with whom he had been drinking at the Yale Club, and they were also going to the party. He had entirely forgotten their presence in the car. On the way to Hempstead they awoke and sang. Some of the songs were rough, and though Paula tried to reconcile herself to the fact that Anson had few verbal inhibitions, her lips tightened with shame and distaste.
Back at the hotel the cousin, confused and agitated, considered the incident, and then walked into Mrs. Legendre's bedroom, saying: "Isn't he funny?"
"Who is funny?"
"Why—Mr. Hunter. He seemed so funny."
Mrs. Legendre looked at her sharply.
"How is he funny?"
"Why, he said he was French. I didn't know he was French."
"That's absurd. You must have misunderstood." She smiled: "It was a joke."
The cousin shook her head stubbornly
"No. He said he was brought up in France. He said he couldn't speak any English, and that's why he couldn't talk to me. And he couldn't!"
Mrs. Legendre looked away with impatience just as the cousin added thoughtfully, "Perhaps it was because he was so drunk," and walked out of the room.
This curious report was true. Anson, finding his voice thick and uncontrollable, had taken the unusual refuge of announcing that he spoke no English. Years afterward he used to tell that part of the story; and he invariably communicated the uproarious laughter which the memory aroused in him.
Five times in the next hour Mrs. Legendre tried to get Hempstead on the phone. When she succeeded, there was a ten-minute delay before she heard Paula's voice on the wire.
"Cousin Jo told me Anson was intoxicated."
"Oh, no...."
"Oh, yes. Cousin Jo says he was intoxicated. He told her he was French, and fell off his chair and behaved as if he was very intoxicated. I don't want you to come home with him."
"Mother, he's all right! Please don't worry about——"
"But I do worry. I think it's dreadful. I want you to promise me not to come home with him."
"I'll take care of it, mother...."
"I don't want you to come home with him."
"All right, mother. Good-by."
"Be sure now, Paula. Ask some one to bring you."
Deliberately Paula took the receiver from her ear and hung it up. Her face was flushed with helpless annoyance. Anson was stretched asleep out in a bedroom up-stairs, while the dinner-party below was proceeding lamely toward conclusion.
The hour's drive had sobered him somewhat—his arrival was merely hilarious—and Paula hoped that the evening was not spoiled, after all, but two imprudent cocktails before dinner completed the disaster. He talked boisterously and somewhat offensively to the party at large for fifteen minutes, and then slid silently under the table; like a man in an old print—but, unlike an old print, it was rather horrible without being at all quaint. None of the young girls present remarked upon the incident—it seemed to merit only silence. His uncle and two other men carried him up-stairs, and it was just after this that Paula was called to the phone.
An hour later Anson awoke in a fog of nervous agony, through which he perceived after a moment the figure of his uncle Robert standing by the door.
"... I said are you better?"
"What?"
"Do you feel better, old man?"
"Terrible," said Anson.
"I'm going to try you on another bromo-seltzer. If you can hold it down, it'll do you good to sleep."
With an effort Anson slid his legs from the bed and stood up.
"I'm all right," he said dully
"Take it easy."
"I thin' if you gave me a glassbrandy I could go down-stairs."
"Oh, no——"
"Yes, that's the only thin'. I'm all right now.... I suppose I'm in Dutch dow' there."
"They know you're a little under the weather," said his uncle deprecatingly. "But don't worry about it. Schuyler didn't even get here. He passed away in the locker-room over at the Links."
Indifferent to any opinion, except Paula's, Anson was nevertheless determined to save the débris of the evening, but when after a cold bath he made his appearance most of the party had already left. Paula got up immediately to go home.
In the limousine the old serious dialogue began. She had known that he drank, she admitted, but she had never expected anything like this—it seemed to her that perhaps they were not suited to each other, after all. Their ideas about life were too different, and so forth. When she finished speaking, Anson spoke in turn, very soberly. Then Paula said she'd have to think it over; she wouldn't decide tonight; she was not angry but she was terribly sorry. Nor would she let him come into the hotel with her, but just before she got out of the car she leaned and kissed him unhappily on the cheek.
The next afternoon Anson had a long talk with Mrs. Legendre while Paula sat listening in silence. It was agreed that Paula was to brood over the incident for a proper period and then, if mother and daughter thought it best, they would follow Anson to Pensacola. On his part he apologized with sincerity and dignity—that was all; with every card in her hand Mrs. Legendre was unable to establish any advantage over him. He made no promises, showed no humility, only delivered a few serious comments on life which brought him off with rather a moral superiority at the end. When they came South three weeks later, neither Anson in his satisfaction nor Paula in her relief at the reunion realized that the psychological moment had passed forever.
He dominated and attracted her, and at the same time filled her with anxiety. Confused by his mixture of solidity and self-indulgence, of sentiment and cynicism—incongruities which her gentle mind was unable to resolve—Paula grew to think of him as two alternating personalities. When she saw him alone, or at a formal party, or with his casual inferiors, she felt a tremendous pride in his strong, attractive presence, the paternal, understanding stature of his mind. In other company she became uneasy when what had been a fine imperviousness to mere gentility showed its other face. The other face was gross, humorous, reckless of everything but pleasure. It startled her mind temporarily away from him, even led her into a short covert experiment with an old beau, but it was no use—after four months of Anson's enveloping vitality there was an anæmic pallor in all other men.
In July he was ordered abroad, and their tenderness and desire reached a crescendo. Paula considered a last-minute marriage— decided against it only because there were always cocktails on his breath now, but the parting itself made her physically ill with grief. After his departure she wrote him long letters of regret for the days of love they had missed by waiting. In August Anson's plane slipped down into the North Sea. He was pulled onto a destroyer after a night in the water and sent to hospital with pneumonia; the armistice was signed before he was finally sent home.
Then, with every opportunity given back to them, with no material obstacle to overcome, the secret weavings of their temperaments came between them, drying up their kisses and their tears, making their voices less loud to one another, muffling the intimate chatter of their hearts until the old communication was only possible by letters, from far away. One afternoon a society reporter waited for two hours in the Hunters' house for a confirmation of their engagement. Anson
denied it; nevertheless an early issue carried the report as a leading paragraph—they were "constantly seen together at Southampton, Hot Springs, and Tuxedo Park." But the serious dialogue had turned a corner into a long-sustained quarrel, and the affair was almost played out. Anson got drunk flagrantly and missed an engagement with her, whereupon Paula made certain behavioristic demands. His despair was helpless before his pride and his knowledge of himself: the engagement was definitely broken.
"Dearest," said their letters now, "Dearest, Dearest, when I wake up in the middle of the night and realize that after all it was not to be, I feel that I want to die. I can't go on living any more. Perhaps when we meet this summer we may talk things over and decide differently —we were so excited and sad that day, and I don't feel that I can live all my life without you. You speak of other people. Don't you know there are no other people for me, but only you...."
But as Paula drifted here and there around the East she would sometimes mention her gaieties to make him wonder. Anson was too acute to wonder. When he saw a man's name in her letters he felt more sure of her and a little disdainful—he was always superior to such things. But he still hoped that they would some day marry.
Meanwhile he plunged vigorously into all the movement and glitter of post-bellum New York, entering a brokerage house, joining half a dozen clubs, dancing late, and moving in three worlds—his own world, the world of young Yale graduates, and that section of the half-world which rests one end on Broadway. But there was always a thorough and infractible eight hours devoted to his work in Wall Street, where the combination of his influential family connection, his sharp intelligence, and his abundance of sheer physical energy brought him almost immediately forward. He had one of those invaluable minds with partitions in it; sometimes he appeared at his office refreshed by less than an hour's sleep, but such occurrences were rare. So early as 1920 his income in salary and commissions exceeded twelve thousand dollars.
As the Yale tradition slipped into the past he became more and more of a popular figure among his classmates in New York, more
popular than he had ever been in college. He lived in a great house, and had the means of introducing young men into other great houses. Moreover, his life already seemed secure, while theirs, for the most part, had arrived again at precarious beginnings. They commenced to turn to him for amusement and escape, and Anson responded readily, taking pleasure in helping people and arranging their affairs.
There were no men in Paula's letters now, but a note of tenderness ran through them that had not been there before. From several sources he heard that she had "a heavy beau," Lowell Thayer, a Bostonian of wealth and position, and though he was sure she still loved him, it made him uneasy to think that he might lose her, after all. Save for one unsatisfactory day she had not been in New York for almost five months, and as the rumors multiplied he became increasingly anxious to see her. In February he took his vacation and went down to Florida.
Palm Beach sprawled plump and opulent between the sparkling sapphire of Lake Worth, flawed here and there by house-boats at anchor, and the great turquoise bar of the Atlantic Ocean The huge bulks of the Breakers and the Royal Poinciana rose as twin paunches from the bright level of the sand, and around them clustered the Dancing Glade, Bradley's House of Chance, and a dozen modistes and milliners with goods at triple prices from New York. Upon the trellissed veranda of the Breakers two hundred women stepped right, stepped left, wheeled, and slid in that then celebrated calisthenic known as the double-shuffle, while in half-time to the music two thousand bracelets clicked up and down on two hundred arms.
At the Everglades Club after dark Paula and Lowell Thayer and Anson and a casual fourth played bridge with hot cards. It seemed to Anson that her kind, serious face was wan and tired—she had been around now for four, five, years. He had known her for three.
"Two spades."
"Cigarette? ... Oh, I beg your pardon. By me."
"By."
"I'll double three spades."
There were a dozen tables of bridge in the room, which was filling up with smoke. Anson's eyes met Paula's, held them persistently even when Thayer's glance fell between them....
"What was bid?" he asked abstractedly.
"Rose of Washington Square"
sang the young people in the corners:
"I'm withering there
In basement air——"
The smoke banked like fog, and the opening of a door filled the room with blown swirls of ectoplasm. Little Bright Eyes streaked past the tables seeking Mr. Conan Doyle among the Englishmen who were posing as Englishmen about the lobby.
"You could cut it with a knife."
"... cut it with a knife."
"... a knife."
At the end of the rubber Paula suddenly got up and spoke to Anson in a tense, low voice. With scarcely a glance at Lowell Thayer, they walked out the door and descended a long flight of stone steps —in a moment they were walking hand in hand along the moonlit beach.
"Darling, darling...." They embraced recklessly, passionately, in a shadow.... Then Paula drew back her face to let his lips say what she wanted to hear—she could feel the words forming as they kissed again.... Again she broke away, listening, but as he pulled her close once more she realized that he had said nothing—only "Darling! Darling!" in that deep, sad whisper that always made her cry.
Humbly, obediently, her emotions yielded to him and the tears streamed down her face, but her heart kept on crying: "Ask me—oh, Anson, dearest, ask me!"
"Paula.... Paula!"
The words wrung her heart like hands, and Anson, feeling her tremble, knew that emotion was enough. He need say no more, commit their destinies to no practical enigma. Why should he, when he might hold her so, biding his own time, for another year—forever? He was considering them both, her more than himself. For a moment, when she said suddenly that she must go back to her hotel, he hesitated, thinking, first, "This is the moment, after all," and then: "No, let it wait—she is mine...."
He had forgotten that Paula too was worn away inside with the strain of three years. Her mood passed forever in the night.
He went back to New York next morning filled with a certain restless dissatisfaction. Late in April, without warning, he received a telegram from Bar Harbor in which Paula told him that she was engaged to Lowell Thayer, and that they would be married immediately in Boston. What he never really believed could happen had happened at last.
Anson filled himself with whiskey that morning, and going to the office, carried on his work without a break—rather with a fear of what would happen if he stopped. In the evening he went out as usual, saying nothing of what had occurred; he was cordial, humorous, unabstracted. But one thing he could not help—for three days, in any place, in any company, he would suddenly bend his head into his hands and cry like a child.
