Wolf Tracks - Bianca D'Arc Page 0,43
most of it.
Then again, they’d been really busy flitting from Virginia to Texas and then getting things settled here. When had they really had time, before this sumptuous dinner, to explore a little more flirtation?
They had ordered a peppery red wine with their meal, and the rich flavor of it had paired perfectly with her meal. Both the food and the wine had left her feeling mellow. She’d had a nice long shower, and all three things combined to finally relax her enough to enjoy the adventure.
Her healing power lay dormant, for the most part. Everybody seated around them were shifters, as were the waitstaff. They were all obscenely healthy and didn’t pull at her gift, which let her enjoy the night as she usually couldn’t enjoy a dinner out in public. She couldn’t remember when she’d had a better meal or environment in which to enjoy it. Or better company.
Jim proved to be both intelligent and witty—a combination that attracted her greatly. She hadn’t been sure what they would find to talk about, but he’d surprised her with a discussion of his travels and the various cultures he’d been exposed to while globe-trekking in the Navy. He’d proven knowledgeable on a wide variety of topics and had explained about how the Navy had offered classes in all kinds of things to him, from mechanics to languages, flight training to chemistry. He had an impressive array of knowledge, but he wasn’t conceited about it.
She’d had a bad experience with a university professor she’d dated for a while when she was in her twenties. He’d been an out-and-out snob and had made fun of those without the advanced degrees he had undertaken. Eventually, his attitude had poisoned their relationship because Helen was a farm girl at heart. The things she knew about were of the land and of magic. They weren’t learned in ivory towers or from hoity-toity profs with high opinions of their own intelligence.
He’d seen her more as arm candy than a living, breathing, thinking person. He’d liked the way she looked next to him at faculty events—a pretty blonde foil to his dark good looks—but he never really valued her as her own person. Once she realized that, she’d broken up with him. It had hurt, but she knew she’d been better off without him. After that, she found it easier to just stay on the farm and only mingle with people who knew farm life and could appreciate both her and her family’s background. Not that anybody like that really knew about their magic.
That was a whole other problem. Being one of the heirs of a long-standing family legacy of magic wasn’t exactly something she could explain to the average farmer in rural Pennsylvania. No, she had to keep that—and her healing ability—under wraps for the most part, though she did sometimes act as a midwife for the local Amish and Mennonite community when there was great need. For the most part, the groups handled births among themselves. Most babies were born at home, the way their great-grandparents had been born at home.
Only if there were bad complications did they call for Helen, and she was usually able to pull off a miracle by giving of her own energy. Not that they realized it. Or, if they did, they didn’t really speak of such things. They just blessed her for helping and sent her home in a buggy with payment in produce or dairy goods.
They were good, hardworking people, and she was glad to help save lives when that sort of thing happened, but sometimes, she despaired of the fact that they wouldn’t allow the advances of modern medicine to prevent some of the problems before they happened. Leaving everything up to the Divine was not always the best answer. Helen was more of the belief that the Divine—whether you called it God, Goddess, or whatever—had blessed people with the ability to help themselves. Denying the existence of science, and especially medicine, was just silly.
It was their religion. Helen tried not to be too judgmental. Live and let live was her philosophy. Only when religious belief endangered health and wellbeing did she really begin to question it.
But being here, in Big Wolf, was a blessed relief. She knew most shifters believed the way she did—in the Goddess, the Mother of All—and they were so rudely healthy, there was precious little tug on her gift. She felt almost…normal. For the first time since her gift had risen in