Page 10 of What a Wolf Wants
“Yes, but I wanted to check on you. How are you doing?” Tori asked.
Ethan did love that about his fellow red-wolf pack members. They were sincerely concerned about each other’s well-being. “I’ve been better. But I’ll heal up soon enough. At least I don’t have to work when I wake up.”
“Yeah, but even if you hadn’t retired, you would have been off from work, recuperating from your injuries.” Tori was one of his close friends, being a fellow law-enforcement officer, but she, like many of his red wolf friends, also knewabout his new undercover mission.
Ethan knew Tori was concerned about him because of his injury, but he suspected she had an ulterior motive for calling him this early when she could have checked on him later in the morning. He realized she had mentioned hisinjuries. Aww, hell, she must know about Charlene biting him.
“Okay, so I wanted to give you a bit of news. When you move to Oyster Bay, you’ll know someone there already,” she said.
“Who?” Ethan was going to miss his friends in the Portland area, but hopefully this additional assignment wouldn’t take too long.
“Charlene Cheswick will be in Oyster Bay,” Tori said.
“Who?” He couldn’t believe he had heard Tori right. The she-wolf whose house he had just raided?
“She didn’t tell you her name? The she-wolf who bit you tonight after you invaded her home.”
He groaned.
Tori laughed. “She’s moving there tomorrow. Maybe when you get moved in, you can apologize to her for breaking into her place and tearing it up, or maybe she’ll even apologize to you for biting you.”
He doubted that would ever happen! Though he was all for apologizing to her again. Worse, he wasn’t moving to Oyster Bay to retire, but moving there as part of a deep undercover operation. If he did meet up with her, he would be lying to her about his reason for being there. Not a great start to trying to make amends to her, but he had a job to do.
“Well, I’ll let you ponder that. Get better quick, and I’llsee you at your retirement ceremony in the afternoon, Ethan.”
“See you there, Tori.” He couldn’t believe it when he learned that Charlene was going to be living in Oyster Bay too. He hoped they could bury their differences because they were both red wolves and would be living in a small community…together. He hoped his undercover job didn’t impact her in any way, shape, or form.
Then he got a call from Adam. “Hell, doesn’t anyone sleep at this hour?” Ethan asked Adam. It was only four thirty in the morning!
Adam laughed. “I had to check in with you. I wasn’t going to because I knew you needed to recuperate from your injuries, but Sierra wouldn’t letmego back to sleep this morning until after I had called you.”
“I’ll be fine. You know how we are. I’ll be perfectly fit soon.”
“Good, we’re both glad to hear it. Um, so the she-wolf bit you, eh?” Adam laughed again.
“Hell, that’s why you really called me.” Ethan couldn’t help but be amused.
“Yeah, Sierra had to know what had happened.”
When Ethan explained about the shower and how Charlene had already been naked so she could easily shift, Adam chuckled. “No wonder she bit you.”
“Yeah, I had it coming. She could smell I was a red wolf by then so she knew she couldn’t turn me. And she didn’t do as much damage as she could have if she’d been defending herself against me.”
“Well, now we can go back to sleep knowing the wholestory and that you’re going to be all right. We’ll see you at your retirement party. Oh, just a heads-up. Charlene is moving to Oyster Bay, if you didn’t know it already.”
“Tori told me.”
Adam laughed again. “I knew she would beat us to tell you the news. Get some rest. We’ll see you in the afternoon.”
Ethan smiled, feeling a little better that his friends knew what had happened between him and Charlene and could have a good laugh. He couldn’t quit thinking of the beautiful redhead and her heated green eyes though.Charlene.A pretty name for a pretty she-wolf. He hoped if she gave him a chance to get to know her, he could put a smile on her face the next time he saw her because he had every intention of purposefully running into her when he moved to Oyster Bay.
Though he had no intention of breaking into her home like he did in Portland.
***
In the morning, Charlene was anxiously waiting for the manager to show up at the rental home to check out the new door. She had breakfast scheduled with the she-wolves of the wolf pack and she hated being late for anything.
“It looks good, Charlene,” the manager told her as soon as he arrived and inspected the door.
