Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,30

hunted the sheep in groups like that, the wolf was their main … deity, or whatever. The protector, and the creator. Brave and strong and loyal, that’s the idea. He was also the one who brought Death to the world, though, because without Death, there’s no room for new life. A realistic kind of god, not a miraculous one, I guess. And their legend says that in the beginning, Wolf walked and talked like Man.”

“Like a shifter,” she said.

“Yeah. The original shifter. So who knows? Maybe that wolf staring at you like that? Maybe it was the protector-spirit telling you to go back, keeping you safe. Maybe it wasn’t a threat at all. Maybe it was the opposite.”

He felt stupid saying it. And yet it felt true.

“Of course,” she said, “because of that, we skied straight into the bison and the snowmobiles.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but you also skied straight into me. Just in time for me to tackle you out of the way of a snowmobile and bruise your butt.”

“You telling me you’re a wolf shifter after all?” She had her head tilted to one side now, a little smile on her face, a little tease in those wild eyes, and she wasn’t looking nearly as much like a PTA mom. “You’re my white wolf, and you’re here to take care of me?”

Whoa.

“Maybe I am,” he said. “Life is strange and wonderful.” He swallowed another mouthful of liquid fire and let himself feel all of it.

The buzz. The high. The risk.

The thrill.

10

That’s a No, Then

This was why you didn’t drink Tennessee whiskey.

How had she made it through that dinner? By the time she was walking down the corridor again with Dyma, letting her daughter open the door this time, she wasn’t sure what had just happened, and she definitely wasn’t sure she’d responded in the right way to any of it.

Although what was the right way? The way she’d been doing things hadn’t worked so great, that was for sure.

At least she hadn’t risked humiliation before.

She hadn’t risked anything else either, though.

Face it. She had no idea what the right way was.

So, no. She normally didn’t drink too much, and definitely not where anybody could see her. She didn’t flirt, either. Mark had sure been right about that. She didn’t dress like this, or let a man touch her hand and smile into her eyes, a man she’d never even met before. A stranger. She didn’t let herself imagine heading down the corridor and right through a bedroom door with that stranger, hands and mouths all over the place and clothes hitting the floor, because that wouldn’t lead anywhere but the Heartbreak Hotel. And she sure didn’t do all that in front of her daughter.

She’d spent the whole dinner swinging between two completely different emotions. Sensations. Whatever. One of them being the look in Kris’s eyes, the brush of his hand against hers, the feel of his hard-muscled calf against her toe when she crossed her legs.

Who crossed their legs at the dinner table? That wasn’t her, either. Or maybe it was, because if you got those kinds of tingles? You ended up crossing your legs.

She was her daughter’s role model. That was the other emotion, because she was watching Dyma react in exactly that same way to Owen, seeing his eyes light up in appreciation, hearing his easy laugh. Dyma had teased him about being a rancher, then asked him about baby calves, and then, of course, had said, “Although I’m planning on becoming a vegetarian.”

“Oh, yeah?” Owen had answered. With a smile, considering that Dyma was eating a hamburger at the time.

“Just taking my chance while I’ve still got it,” she said. “Also, this is grass-fed, even though that’s totally not enough. How can you see what happens in feedlots and raise cattle? And, OK, even with grass-fed—what about slaughterhouses? And how they’re transported in those horrible trucks, and all the hormones and antibiotics? How can you let them suffer like that?” She looked at her hamburger and made a face. “And I’m such a hypocrite. I can’t believe I’m eating this. Seriously, I can’t. We watched Food, Inc. in my AP Bio class last month, and I got sick. How can I pretend to care about animals and still be part of letting that happen to them?” She set her hamburger down, put a hand on Owen’s huge forearm, and said, “How can we do this? Seriously. How can we?”

“I can’t, I guess,” he said. “Must be