a lone wolf."
"To all appearances, he seems as if he wants to keep it that way."
"How much of appearance is what you expect to see?" Carri kicked hard at a drift of snow, her stomach twisting with the anger she felt. "There’s more there."
"Ah well, you made it fairly obvious." Jenna nudged Carri with her shoulder. "You stated your preference loud and clear too."
Carri swallowed, staring down at her snow-covered boot. Ben and Jenna had been incredibly transparent in their preferred matches for her too. She shook her head, rubbing her forehead with cool fingertips. "The man barely tolerates me. Some of the guys have been very nice."
"Preference is preference." Jenna stated, matter-of-factly. "Your 'Grandpa' Ben might feel better if you chose one of the pack, but you’re an adult, and I think your heart sees more clearly than those of us who’ve gotten a little stagnant in the way of things. I, for one, have learned to trust your judgment and think maybe, in this case, you're seeing more clearly than the pack.”
"Ben wants a safe male for me." Which didn't exist either in, or outside of, shapeshifter societies. All shapeshifters had the potential to be dangerous. Leaning her weight to the opposite side and studying the top of her other boot, she amended the thought. "Well, as safe as a shapeshifter can be. One of his pack is at least in the scope of his control, to a certain extent."
"And we alphas are control freaks, admittedly." Jenna didn't sound the least bit apologetic. Instead, she smiled with cheerful acceptance, her eyebrows raised as she shrugged.
Encouraged, Carri squared her shoulders. "I don't know what might happen, or if anything is going to happen at all, but I want to find out." There it was, out in the open, not only for Jenna, but for herself as well.
Overjoyed was not the description she would have used to describe Jenna's rueful grin, but there was no disagreement either, and she would take what she could and run with it.
“Your choice, Carri."
She blew out a puff of breath in frustration. Choice belonged to two people when it came to these matters. "Let's hope his coincides, otherwise this could be a pointless conversation."
A slow smile spread across Jenna's face. "From what I could see, there shouldn’t be an issue. You, my dear, have definitely caught the eyes of the big bad wolf."
3
Carri didn’t know whether she’d caught his eye or not. What she did know—she couldn’t keep her eyes off Jason when they both showed up to work the next day, despite it being a rest day.
Neither of them said a word about the picnic or why they had each gone. They simply fell into the rhythm they’d developed over the past couple days, assembling the sensors and testing them before attaching them to their housing and testing the clusters.
"Ready to run the diagnostic on this sensor." His attitude toward her hadn't changed. If anything, he cooled ever so slightly, his mood quiet.
"It's running now." She kept one eye on the scan results as they flashed across her console and the other on his reflection in the surface of another console. His broad shoulders and powerful chest tapered to a neat waist and hips. He wore his jeans loose enough to give him freedom of movement, but allowed her a very nice view of his rear. Every move, every gesture, caused a rippling effect of muscles under his skin, barely hidden under the soft flannel shirt he wore.
"We should be ready to install this first cluster today and take test readings tomorrow." Even his voice wrapped around her, the timbre of it resonating at the center of her chest.
It took effort to keep her head in the conversation. If she wasn't careful, she’d say something completely out of context and sound like an idiot. "There's no reason to pull anyone else in to place it, the two of us can manage it on our own."
"You're not climbing up any of those trees, Red." He only seemed to call her that with no one else around, his own private nickname for her. He said it like a private joke between them. Every time he used it, a gentle heat rose up in her cheeks as she thought about the stolen thank you, or about the moment in the snow, or the taste of chocolate.
Yeah. Keeping her head in the conversation turned a tad difficult.
She rolled her eyes, wondering if she could be any more