Page 45 of What a Wolf Wants
“And no fighting between the two of you.”
“Tomorrow morning at eight then?”
Noah wasn’t promising he would be civil, she noted.
“Sure, you can have breakfast with us. I’m making pancakes. Do you have my address?”
“Yeah, Renault gave it to me. I can’t believe he thought he could date you.”
“Neither can you.”
Silence.
“I’ll see you tomorrow then.” She said goodbye and hoped this wasn’t a mistake. She knew Noah wasn’t going to let this go though. But she was glad that Leidolf and Cassie had spoken to him. Whereas they had been thrilled to meet her and welcome her to the pack, they were hard on him because he was an alpha male. She understood that they needed to set down the rules right away so they wouldn’t have trouble in the pack from an outside alpha wolf causing issues.
By the time she had finished washing and drying her sheets and remaking the bed, Ethan returned to her house. She loved his company.
“Okay, I have some…well, weird news,” Ethan said, putting the steaks in the fridge until he was ready to grill them.
She frowned at him. “Oh, me too.” She just hoped that the two men didn’t have a fight. But she wondered if Noah had called Ethan back about seeing her tomorrow.
“Do you want to share yours first or—” he asked.
“You go ahead.” She rubbed his good arm. “Does this call for a cocktail?”
“Uh, yeah, or a glass of wine. I brought a bottle of merlot.”
“Okay, that sounds good.”
He poured them each a glass of wine and then they went out on the back deck and sat down together on one of the rattan couches to drink it. It was so comfy out here with him.
“Okay, so my boss called me,” he said.
“Does he want you to start doing some surveillance early? I’m ready.” The sooner they caught the bad guys, the better.
“He wants to send an agent to work with me.”
“Oh.” She knew if that happened, she wasn’t going to be able to help Ethan with the mission. Except maybe behind the scenes, if Ethan needed her to. But another agent who would be armed with a gun and a badge would help to protect him better than she could.
“The weird news is that the agent will be Noah.”
“No way. My ex-boyfriend? There’s not another guy working in your department whose name is Noah, right?” She could have fallen off the couch she was so surprised.
“No, it’s your ex-boyfriend. Apparently, Renault had talked to Grainger about hiring Noah as soon as he knew I was going to retire months ago since they were best friends. So he’d already applied for the job.”
“Okay, so what was the deal with me then? I mean, Noah was planning to move to Portland and wasn’t going to tell me? Which was fine, but what I don’t understand is why he made a big deal of me leaving Destin without telling him!”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking. But maybe Noah was waiting to learn if he liked the job first before he talked to you about it and asked you to join him.”
“Possibly, but he could have handled that a lot differently when he knew he had the job and got mad at me for having already moved to Portland. He should have been thrilled to know I was going to be in the same place he would be, though of course I wouldn’t have been once I moved to Oyster Bay. I really never thought he would leave Destin,but I had told him how much I loved Oregon and wanted to return there and that might have influenced him. But then the other question is, once Renault learned I was here, why did he send me flowers and try to stir things up?”
“I suspect Renault thought the two of you had broken up for good because you had already moved here and hadn’t told Noah.” Ethan took a drink of his merlot. “So my boss thought since the place I’m staying at is a three-bedroom home, Noah could stay in one of the guest bedrooms.”
“Ohmigod, no.”
“Yeah. The more Grainger thought about it, the more he decided that he didn’t want me to work alone. He figured that the new guy, who had worked as a DEA special agent in Florida for years, would be perfect to fill my vacant position. Grainger knew there’s no way that Noah would have anything to do with the mole in the organization so he could back me up without any problem.”
“So that’s why Noah called me and said he wanted to see me in the morning.”
