me. I even made that little eep sound that only women seem to make. My pulse thudded in the side of my throat like a trapped thing. I couldn’t swallow past it to say anything to Edward in the doorway.
His voice was Ted’s drawl. “Y’all going to join us in here, pardners?” The expression on his face went from Ted’s warm smile to Edward’s cold one in seconds, so his affect didn’t match his words at all.
Olaf spoke in a low, growling whisper. “You ran to him the way a woman runs to a man she thinks will protect her. Only prey runs to others for protection.”
And just like that, I saw the danger. If I’d changed lists in his head from fellow predator to prey, then we were in deep trouble—the kind that meant that at least one of the three of us would not leave this town alive, and if things went really badly, it would be two out of three.
40
I LOOKED AT Olaf and all I could think was This is it. We will have to kill him. My lioness crouched inside me as if readying herself for a real leap, as if she could help me fight him. My hand touched my gun, but Edward came up with a better idea. He called back to the others in the office and said, “Give us a minute, pardners,” and closed the door so we had some privacy.
“Anita trusted you to keep her safe in Florida when that car almost ran into us,” Edward said, the Ted slipping out of his voice the way it had slipped from his face.
Olaf actually startled, his whole body reacting to it. My pulse slowed down, the fear of the moment replaced with the memory of older fear. We’d piled too many of us in a car on a hunt in Florida. Long story short, I’d ended up sitting in Olaf’s lap because I didn’t fit anywhere else. It sounded stupid and careless now, but it had made sense at the time. A car had nearly crashed into us and only the driver’s car-handling skills had kept us from either being T-boned or flipping over. The fact that I had broken my solid rule about seat belts in that moment . . . I thought I was going to die, but Olaf had folded his arms around me. He’d kept me safe with the strength of his hands, his arms, his body wrapped around mine. His legs and body braced to keep us both in place. In that moment I had curled myself against him, burying my face against his neck, and held on to him, and weirdest of all, I had known that he would keep me safe even if it meant putting his body in harm’s way. In that moment all the strength that I normally feared had been my shield.
“I did,” I said, my voice a little breathy.
My lioness relaxed against the path inside me; she rolled herself on that dark ground, remembering the surety of Olaf’s strength. She’d made no secret of the facts that she liked his lion and that she wanted a mate. I’d told her she couldn’t have Olaf, but I hadn’t found anyone else to put in his place. Of all my unmatched beasts, she was the “loudest” about missing her other half.
“You didn’t see Anita as prey after you saved her in the car.” Edward made his words a statement.
“No,” Olaf said, like he wasn’t sure he was happy with the answer, but it was still the truth.
“Being able to protect someone you care for doesn’t make them weaker, Olaf. It makes you stronger,” Edward said.
Olaf frowned, and even though he had sunglasses on, you could see him fight to understand the concept. “That Anita trusted me to keep her safe did feel . . . good.”
“That’s what it feels like to protect a woman that you care about.”
Olaf stared at him, frowning so hard that his handsome face gained lines I’d never noticed before, like a preview of what he might look like in a few decades. “She did help me torture the waitress in the restaurant later, after that.” His voice was hesitant, almost thinking out loud. He’d now lost me on his logic train, but apparently Edward was still on board, because he explained Olaf’s thinking.
“Would you have played your part in threatening the suspect if you hadn’t had that moment of trust with Olaf in the car?”
I thought about