Page 40 of What a Wolf Wants
Charlene and Ethan headed out of the house and began walking along a path in the woods, talking to each other and making noise so that if they came upon any black bears, they would scare them off. “Did you see the weather report? We’re supposed to have fog tonight,” she said.
“Yeah, I figure it will be perfect for running as wolves.”
“Oh sure, that would be great,” she said.
Right now, the sky was clear and sunny, and the temperature was sixty-five degrees. Perfect for hiking and berry picking. In the fall and through the winter and spring, it could be really rainy, so summer was ideal for doing this.
They found some purple Oregon grapes, but they weren’t ripe yet. “These are really tart, but add some sugar, and it makes it perfect for jelly. I used to pick them with my grandfather. We can do that when they ripen in the fall.”
“Yeah. I would like to do that. Why was your grandfather living out here when your parents were in Florida?” Ethan asked.
“Mom and her family were from the Oregon coast. She was on spring break in Florida when she met my dad. He had taken over his parents’ rental properties and she wanted to stay with him there. My grandfather didn’t want to leave his native Oregon. So my sister and I visited him every summer and he came out to Florida for Christmases. We had a feast with him in Oregon during the weeks of Thanksgiving and Easter. We loved going to both areas, though I wished that Granddad could have been with us all the time while my sister and I were growing up. My grandmother died when we were six months old so we never knew her. What about you? Were your parents from Oregon?”
“Yes, from the Portland area. They both wanted to be in law enforcement from the time they were young and actually met at the police academy. And that was all she wrote. They fell in love, the only wolves in law enforcement at the time.Like us, they were good at what they did. They both eventually became DEA special agents. My grandparents were from there too. I’ve traveled all over, but I always came home.”
“Is that going to be a problem for you in the future? I mean, being away from Portland? Your friends?” she asked.
They found some blackberries and began picking them before they moved on. “No. Not when I have someone in my life who makes my days and nights so special,” he said.
“Hmm, I feel the same way about you.”
“I…hope you’re not having nightmares about me raiding your house.” He’d thought about it earlier and meant to ask her if she’d had any issues from his terrorizing her.
“Ooh, more blackberries,” she said and hurried over to get some. “Yes, on the nightmares. I was listening to the music too loudly with the shower water running on high and I thought I heard a bang, but I figured it was a car that had gone by the house and had backfired or something. And then everything was quiet after that so I didn’t think anything further about it. You guys didn’t holler out that you were DEA or anything.”
“No, as dangerous as these guys often are, we go in without announcing ourselves. You would have heard us for sure and figured out that we were in your home if we had been yelling.”
“I would have. Boy, I would have been mad.”
He laughed. “I figured when you bit me, you had been angry.”
“Yeah, well, if I’d been really mad, I would have bitten you a lot harder. That was more like a love bite.”
He smiled while they continued to pick blackberries.
“Anyway, so yeah, I’ve been having nightmares about you pointing a rifle at me. What about you having nightmares about me?”
He chuckled. “I did actually have one about being attacked by a wild red wolf—female type.”
She chuckled. Then she glanced in the direction where she heard a noise. “Oh, oh, a bear is coming.” Charlene yelled, “Go, ha!” and fumbled to pull her bear noisemaker out of her backpack. She backed away and was too close to the edge of the cliff. It crumbled and she screamed out as she fell.
Chapter 11
Ethan’s heart practically leapt out of his throat as he dove to catch Charlene, but she’d already fallen and caught herself on some rocks below the edge of the cliff before slipping all the way to the beach’s rocky bottom sixty feet below. Around two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of muscle, and six feet in length, the male black bear was still coming, and Ethan didn’t have a choice. He scrambled over the cliff, though he was more prepared for it than Charlene had been. At least there were lots of foot and fingerholds on the rocks. The bear could climb the cliff and trees too, but he just peered over the edge and watched them down below. Then he ambled off.
“Are you okay, Charlene?” Ethan asked, hoping to hell she hadn’t been hurt when she slipped off the cliff.
“Yeah. What about you?”
“I’m good. I made more of a calculated climb. Are you able to climb back up here?”
“I can. Is the bear still up there?”
“Yeah, I hear him sniffing around.”
“Well, he better not be eating all our blackberries.”
Ethan smiled, thinking the berries weren’t half as important as climbing back up into the woods away from the cliff and the bear. The tide was coming in, the waves crashing against the rocks below them. The rocks they were clingingto were slippery and about fifty feet above the water. They couldn’t hold on forever where they were either.
