Page 14 of What a Wolf Wants
“Yeah, I still have to make it up to you. Would you like to have dinner out when I arrive there this evening?”
She smiled. “Okay, I’ll bite.”
He laughed. “You sure did.”
She laughed and then she saw Renault on the other side of the breakfast bar getting food. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“My favorite spot to eat.” Renault smiled at her and then glanced speculatively at Ethan. “I didn’t expect you to be out and about after getting shot last night.”
“It’s barely a scratch. See you at the retirement ceremony.”
“Yeah, sure,” Renault said and then he continued to fill his plate with food.
Charlene and Ethan headed to the table with their plates of food. He had taken seconds of practically everything.
“So when are you actually moving to Oyster Bay?”
Renault sat at a table close to them. Charlene smiled athim and then Ethan said, “Right after the retirement party. If you would like to come to it, we would love to have you there. I mean, especially me. But some of my, um, friends will be there—Leidolf and Cassie, Sierra and Adam, Tori, and Josh Wilding and his mate, Brooke. Josh is retired from the Portland Police Bureau, but we worked a lot of cases together. So it won’t be just a lot of people you don’t know, but some of the people you’ve met. And then we could caravan out to Oyster Bay together. After that, we could have dinner tonight there.”
“Then I could see the guys at the retirement party that you were working with who raided my house too?” No way.
“Yeah, I guess that’s a no-go.”
“I’ll take you up on dinner. Just let me know when you get in. Not too late though. Around six would be a good time for me.” She mentioned that only in case he got hung up with his friends for hours and didn’t arrive until eight or nine. She wasn’t waiting that late for dinner because he was enjoying being with his friends longer and couldn’t part company. Which she totally understood. But they could have dinner another night.
“Of course. I totally understand.”
They finished their breakfast, and he walked her out to her car. “Until tonight then,” he said.
“Tonight.” She slipped into her car and waved goodbye and left for her next new adventure. Maybe she would even have a wolf to date on occasion, but she would see how that all panned out. The last DEA special agent wolf she had dated hadn’t worked out well at all.
Chapter 4
Ethan couldn’t have been more thrilled that Charlene seemed to have forgiven him for wrecking her house and was willing to have dinner with him tonight. As soon as he arrived at the office for his faux retirement ceremony, everyone cheered him on, and he was especially glad to see his red wolf friends there. Of course he was glad to celebrate with the men he worked with all the time too. Once he was gone, he would still be seeing his wolf friends. And they had helped him out with situations more times than he could count.
He wished Charlene could have been here too, but he totally understood why she hadn’t wanted to be.
“So”—Tori clinked her glass of apple cider against Ethan’s—“it appeared things were working out okay between you and Charlene. I had thought of inviting her to your retirement ceremony but—”
“She had to get on her way. She wasn’t too fond of the other men on the team who did all the damage to her place.”
“Sure.”
“I had invited her because I knew you were going to ask that question next. You make a great detective, you know,” Ethan said.
Tori smiled. “Yep, that was my next question. I overheard the two of you exchanging phone numbers and addresses. That’s a good start. And you stayed and visited with eachother for a while longer. That’s a good sign. You’re leaving for Oyster Bay after the party, right?”
“Yes, and as long as I don’t celebrate here for too long, I can have dinner with her tonight.”
The place was so noisy he was glad that with the wolves’ enhanced hearing, he could make out what Tori was saying without humans overhearing their conversation.
“Wow, that’s great. I was going to suggest that you get on the ball with that. You never know when some wolf might run into her on a visit to the area and you would lose out.” Tori smiled and sipped her apple cider.
“A date with Charlene?” Adam asked, emphasizing that it was a singular event. “Good show.”
“One date,” Ethan said. “We’ll see how it goes. We might not be compatible in the least.”
“After she bit you and you’re both still speaking to each other,” Cassie said, joining them, “I would say you’re doing all right.”
