Great, that was just vague enough to let Alan assume that we were having torrid monkey sex on my front porch when we were rudely interrupted by the bear.
Alan’s own teeth showed. “Well, it’s nice to hear that people are keeping a close eye on Mo for me.” He slid his hand across the counter and laced his fingers through mine.
I was not an expert in animal behavior, but even I recognized when territory was being marked. Alan might as well have been peeing a circle around my feet. He grinned up at me. Cooper scowled. I arched my eyebrows and pried my fingers gently out of Alan’s.
“I am choking on all the testosterone, so I’ll back away into the kitchen,” I muttered.
When I was at a safe distance, the tension seemed to ebb out of Alan’s face, while Cooper seemed to grow more agitated. He slid off his stool and slapped his baseball cap back onto his head.
“I’ve got to go,” he grumbled.
“What about your order?” Evie called as the front door jangled closed.
“Feed it to Alan,” he huffed.
“What was that about?” Evie asked me, putting aside the list of supplies we would need for our party menu of crab cakes, fancy ham biscuits, and “cheese pies.” (We couldn’t call them mini-quiches, or the male guests wouldn’t eat them.)
“I don’t pretend to understand the male mind, Evie, that one in particular.”
Evie shook her head. “The Amazons had the right idea. Keep men around for procreation only.”
I nodded. “And don’t let them speak.”
IN THE END, I wore the red dress to the Big Freeze party, just to get Evie off my back. And because I’d decided that I wanted to take Alan home with me that night. If anything would get that message across, it was the red dress.
Alan was the right choice, I told my reflection as I painted my mouth a bold poppy color. He was the only choice that made sense. And he couldn’t have communicated his interest any more clearly if he’d used a billboard. Why am I nervous? I wondered, smoothing my hair one last time before I slipped into my parka. Alan was a slow mover, but he was clearly interested. I wasn’t going to be rejected. I’d never been nervous about first-time sexual encounters. I didn’t get nervous about sex, period. I tried to shake off the weird aura of apprehension on the drive over, concentrating on the fun of the party, of flirting, of ending a particularly long sexual dry spell.
When I walked into the Glacier, I was apprehensive for a whole new reason. I felt both over- and underdressed. The men were in ties (with jeans) and the ladies in dresses that had probably been mail-ordered from the JCPenney Sunday Best collection. And then there was Abner, who was wearing an old suit made entirely of forest-green corduroy.
I shrugged out of my coat at the door of the saloon, and people stopped talking.
Awkward.
I gave a nervous little smile and ducked into the kitchen, where I found Evie warming the batches of appetizers I’d made that afternoon.
“I’m going to kill you,” I told her, pulling the little flared hem over my now-conspicuous knees.
“Why, because I insisted that you be pretty?” She smirked, handing me a tray of crab wontons. “You look gorgeous, and you know it. Pretending to be nervous about it is just annoying.”
“I’m the only one showing this much skin!” I hissed. My needle-thin heels clicked impatiently behind her as we put the food on a table set far away from the bustling dance floor that had been set up near an improvised stage.
“Well, I don’t think anybody minds.” She cast a deliberate glance out to the bar, where Cooper had walked in and was talking with Buzz.
Cooper was wearing a light blue button-up shirt that looked as if he threw it in the dryer for a few minutes rather than iron it. His shaggy hair was slicked back. He was staring intently at his beer and trying to ignore Lynette, who seemed to be pulling on his arm and asking him to dance. Buzz looked up at Evie and elbowed Cooper. Cooper looked at me and nearly lost his grip on his bottle.
That was the kind of reaction a girl is looking for when she straps herself into support garments. It was too bad it came from Cooper.
“Well, I see someone doesn’t mind that you dressed up,” Evie said.
“I’m putting my coat back on,” I told her.
“Now, that would be a shame.”
I turned to find Alan standing in front of me. He was wearing a black suit jacket over a pristine white Oxford shirt and jeans. Given the way he swaggered up to me, I think he might have had a couple of beers in him. I smiled, giving him the slightest of eyelash flutters as he held out his hand and pulled me to the dance floor.
Buzz had hired a band from Burnee to come in and play a mix of country-western and classic rock. The current selection, a gruffer version of “Brown Eyed Girl,” had Alan spinning me fast toward the center of the crowd.
“Have I mentioned that you’re the prettiest girl in the room?” he asked over the peppy guitar riff.
I blushed. I couldn’t help it. I was all girled up in my little red dress, and he complimented me. A blushing response was practically coded in my feminine chromosomes. “No.”
“Well, I will.”
I laughed, dipping my head and bumping it against Alan’s shoulder. He chuckled and ran a hand along the bare skin of my arms. I pursed my lips, waiting for a reaction, a shiver, a quiver. Hell, I would have settled for a twitch. But Alan’s touch didn’t give me any response besides a warm rush of affection. My brows creased. I deliberately splayed my fingers across the back of Alan’s neck, stroking the smooth skin there. Alan’s eyes warmed, and his head tipped toward mine. I felt nothing beyond that vague impression of approaching disaster. I gritted my teeth. Why weren’t my stupid hormones working right?
Over Alan’s shoulder, I saw Cooper scowl. Now, that I had a reaction to—a white-hot spear of awareness, of annoyance, that shot right through to my toes. I narrowed my eyes at him, ready to snarl. Fortunately, Alan spun us so that my back was turned to Cooper.
Alan was a good dancer, an excellent lead. He made it easy to fight off my sour mood, although I couldn’t seem to manufacture the lustful feelings I wanted for him. We coasted around the dance floor as he grinned and joked with the other couples, including Nate and Gertie. The Gogans moved smoothly in a box step with the ease of two people who’d learned to dance together. Nate was clearly thrilled with my choice of partner. I could see him drawing up the purchase contract for my house in his head.
I formally met a lot of my neighbors who didn’t bother coming into town unless it was a special occasion. There was the expected reticence on the part of a few, but the fact that I was dancing with Alan seemed to smooth it over. It was as if he was vouching for me somehow. I felt grateful for it.
“So how do you like the local night life?” he asked, the tip of his nose grazing my cheek.
I peered around the room, watching my boisterous friends trying to squeeze every last drop of fun from the evening before they faced long months of winter seclusion. I tilted my face at an inviting angle, then immediately straightened so that my mouth wasn’t quite so close to his. “It’s lively.”
If Alan was aware of my conflict, he certainly didn’t seem fazed by it. He pressed me closer, his mouth almost brushing my ear as he said, “You know, there are still a few days before the cold really sets in. Last chance to get out and see some of the backcountry. I know some really good trails, places nobody else around here could take you. And the weather is supposed to be stable this weekend.”
“Wouldn’t it be kind of dangerous? What with the attacks and all . . .”
“I’ll protect you. I can be your own personal wilderness bodyguard.”
I chuckled. He slipped his hand ever so subtly down the small of my back to curve around my left butt cheek. I stiffened, inadvertently pressing my breasts against his chest. He took this as a green light and clutched me even tighter against his waist. The rational part of my brain screamed at me to relax and see where this might go, that Alan was an attractive, uncomplicated specimen and possibly my only chance this winter at halfway decent sex that didn’t involve batteries. The more primal part of my brain had me arching back from him, wriggling my hips away from where he had me pinned against his body.
What the hell was wrong with me? This was what I wanted. Why did I feel so off center? Why did it feel so wrong? I willed myself to relax, to move closer, but some magnetic repulsion kept me at a respectable distance.
“Sorry,” he said, loosening his grip when he saw my distress. “I just don’t want you to slip away.”
Before I could cobble together some response, someone tapped on Alan’s shoulder. We turned to find Cooper standing behind us. “Mind if I cut in?”
My stupid, traitorous heart fluttered against my rib cage. I’d only seen people “cut in” on dancers in old movies. Alan didn’t seem too pleased by the interruption. His grip on my waist grew just a fraction tighter before Cooper blithely peeled Alan’s arms away and twirled me to a corner across the room, leaving Alan scowling in the middle of the dance floor. Lynette sidled up to him and offered him another beer.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I murmured as Cooper’s hands slid against the fabric over my back. My breath caught, and a warm, liquid wave of sensation spread from my chest to my belly. Gah! Stupid sexy werewolves! This was why I couldn’t take Alan home. Because as much as I cared for him, he had never made me, could never make me, feel the way Cooper did. I would know it. And considering my responses so far, if I went to bed with Alan, he would know it. And the last thing I wanted was to hurt him.
Fine. Alan wasn’t the right choice, but that didn’t mean sleeping with Cooper made any more sense. I had to think of nonsexy things. Baseball. Bill O’Reilly naked. The dead, fetid smell of Delta mud on an August day. Leonard Tremblay’s hot tub. Wet socks. Muddy, wet, naked Cooper in a hot tub. Dang it!
“Well, you are waving the red flag in front of an awful lot of bulls,” he said, glancing down at my crimson dress. He smirked, not bothering to hide the fact that he was looking straight into my cleavage. “And you know me, always coming to your rescue.”
I gave him a sweetly acidic smile. “Oh, really? Well, maybe if you’d spend less time lurking, you wouldn’t feel the need to come to my rescue all the time.”
“Lurking?”
“You heard me.”
Irritation crept into Cooper’s voice. “Well, maybe if you had the sense not to walk into dark alleyways alone or go wandering blind into the wilderness, I wouldn’t feel the need to stay so close.” He lowered his voice so our dance-floor companions wouldn’t hear us.
“You know, I know where to get more bear traps. I’ll bet if I told Alan I was having a problem with a wolf wandering outside my house at night, he would set up a minefield of them,” I hissed back.
“Well, hell, I’ll bet you he’d move right in.” Cooper scowled back. “Now that you two are—”
“What I may or may not be doing with Alan is none of your business,” I said, my cheeks flushing. “And why would you even care?”
He admitted, “I don’t like seeing you dancing with him.”
“So it’s a dog-in-the-manger thing?” I snorted, lowering my voice. “I’m sorry, is that culturally offensive to werewolves?”
His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared as he demanded, “What do you mean, dog in the manger?”
“You don’t want me, but you don’t want anybody else to have me.”
“I never said I didn’t want you,” he said, his husky voice so soft I was absolutely sure I was the only person in the room who heard it. He was looking down, his thick black lashes resting on his cheekbones. His hands pulled me closer, pressing me against his chest. My heart thudded erratically. Every face and every voice in the room faded away as I focused on Cooper’s mouth, the generous peach-soft curve of his lips. I surrendered to the gravitational pull that had me leaning closer, mingling my breath with the spicy warmth of his.
