PRINCE OF WOLVES Read online

  "What about those? Were those friends, too?"

  "Not friends, but respected adversaries. In nature, predators seldom hunt for any reason but necessity. There is never any certainty about the outcome." He spread his hand through the pelt and gripped it tightly. "Sometimes the predator loses. It's only human beings who cheat on the rules of nature."

  Looking at Luke, Joey knew there was far more behind his tightly deliberate words than she could guess. "But you never cheat on the rules?" she asked softly.

  "Not if I can help it." His words were equally soft as his eyes met hers.

  Joey could easily have found herself lost in them again, but she chose not to give herself the opportunity. Moving away with unhurried casualness, she stopped at one of the tables where one of the lamps cast its light, almost superfluous in the glow of the fire.

  "These are beautiful, too." She touched one of the several wooden sculptures on the table: a bear rearing up on its hind legs, front paws displayed in aggressive threat. Even at this small size the power of the animal was evident in the lines of carved wood.

  "Thank you." Luke had come up silently behind her, but this time she expected it. Even so, his words surprised her.

  "You did this?" She picked up the sculpture carefully, turning it in her hands to examine the exquisite detail. Each tiny claw had been carved to a delicate point, and even the teeth looked sharp enough to bite.

  "Yes." There was a long silence. Joey set down the bear and picked up a second carving that she guessed to be a cougar, graceful and sleek. "The winters are long here, and it's useful to have something to do." She heard him shift behind her, a restless whisper of bare feet on wood paneling.

  "I've never seen carving like this." Joey picked up the third sculpture; like those on the table against the far wall, this was a wolf. Its head was flung back in a howl, ears laid flat and bushy tail straight. She could keenly remember the mournful cries she'd heard at the lodge. "They're wonderful. Did you ever consider selling them? You'd probably get an excellent price."

  His chuckle was little more than a bark, but for once there was no grimness in it. "I don't need the money." He moved to stand beside her, his shoulder almost touching hers. "I do it because the winters are long and cold, and I have all the supplies I need. But if you like it... " He paused, and his hand brushed hers over the carving. "It's yours."

  His touch was brief and fleeting, but it struck Joey with the force of a blow. Her fingers tightened on the carving until the sharp edges bit into her palm. "Thank you." She swallowed back a sudden painful constriction in her throat. "I'll treasure it."

  He said nothing more, and she looked up to see him stalk away, circling in front of the fire. His muscles were taut, and the usual grace of his movements was lost as he paced, looking everywhere but at her.

  Joey set the sculpture down among the others. It still wasn't time, too soon to demand explanations or press matters that needed to be resolved. She steadied her shaking hands, pressing them together as she moved to the next set of bookshelves. Like the others, it was filled with volumes of every description, and she sought among them for some harmless topic that would take them away from dangerous ground.

  She found what she was looking for in a slim volume of European folk and fairy tales. The illustrations were quaint but lavish, and she paused at one depicting the story Beauty and the Beast. The Beast in this case was a creature with a head that resembled a cross between a bear and a boar, dressed in the finery of a past century.

  "Your collection of books is impressive," she said into the silence. Luke paused in his pacing to glance up, though he stayed by the fire. "With the winters so long and cold and no electricity, I imagine books could go a long way toward keeping a person sane."

  "When there are no other distractions," Luke responded. His voice was even, and his silhouette against the firelight seemed less rigid. Joey turned the pages carefully.

  "I used to love these stories. My mother used to read them to me when I was young." She broke off before memories could trap her and continued, "You have quite an interest in mythology. I've always found that to be a fascinating subject."

  Luke had moved halfway across the room, stopping at the sofa as if it were an unbreachable barrier. "It can be Myth is powerful because it has roots in reality."

  Joey cocked her head with a wry smile. "Yes. But it can also give us a nice, safe distance from reality." She closed the book and set it back in place, wondering why every subject of conversation seemed to carry an unexpected complication. "And reality has an unfortunate way of sneaking up on us anyway, no matter how we try to ignore it." She stared at rows of titles without really seeing them.

  Luke's voice was so soft she almost didn't hear it. " 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio...' "

  "Shakespeare, too?" She focused again and found a row of that author's works on one of the top shelves, out of her reach. "But Hamlet is a tragedy, isn't it? I never much cared for tragedy."

  A sense of fragility came over Joey that sprang from equal parts unwanted memories, unrelieved tension, and a sudden and overwhelming sense of aloneness. She wanted desperately to recover her equilibrium, but it seemed lost and far beyond her reach. She turned her back so that Luke wouldn't see what she was sure her face revealed and circled the far end of the room, passing the darkened kitchen and stopping in the most distant corner.

  It was something of a shrine—that was her first thought as she looked down at the tiny corner table. Beautifully carved shelves rose above it to form niches, each containing some small item. Two candles, unlit, completed the image of a place set off as a sanctuary. For memories? Joey wondered.

  She stopped the thought by focusing on the objects. There was a hairbrush—the handle made, like the table itself, of intricately carved and painted wood. She picked it up carefully. There were still a few soft midnight-black hairs caught in the bristles. A woman's hair.

  For an instant Joey wondered if it could have belonged to one of Luke's earlier lovers—one of those Maggie had warned her about. Surely not even the most arrogant of men would keep a shrine to his former conquests? The mere idea seemed ludicrous, but as her eyes traced over the items on display, there could be no doubt that they had belonged to a woman.

  There was a mirror, a silver one finely made though simple, and a gold ring set with a single flawless ruby. Joey was almost afraid to touch them. The other shelves contained similar articles, but it was the table itself that displayed the most compelling object.

  The music box that held the place of honor was exquisite. It had a classic design that suggested age but was in perfect condition polished and, like the rest of the shrine, free of dust. Joey could not resist running her fingers over the silver and gold molding; the tiny picture carved on the lid that depicted canoes on a river surrounded by forest and mountains. Without thinking, she lifted the lid.

  It was a lovely, sprightly melody the box played an air with the sound of a folk song, unfamiliar but oddly captivating. Joey cocked her head and closed her eyes to listen. It was the kind of tune that called for joy, dancing, and happiness, and Joey felt the delicate strains begin to dispel her melancholy. The melody had begun its second repetition when it cut off with a sudden snap of the lid.

  Luke's body pressed against her back, the lean hardness of him shocking her back to awareness. His hand clamped down on the music box as if to physically hold it in place there, and his breath came fast against the crown of her head.

  Her first thought was to free herself and escape his almost suffocating presence, but he held her there as surely as he did the music box.

  "I would prefer," he said very softly, "that you don't touch the things on this table."

  There was a definite warning in his voice, but it was his closeness and not the subtle hint of anger that made her heart leap into her throat. She wavered between pushing him back so that she could turn to confront him or holding absolutely still in hopes that he would go away on his own, e
very inch of her was aware of him from the firm pressure of his thighs against her buttocks to the strong jaw alongside her own temple.

  His voice vibrated above her ear, echoing through her body as he released the music box. "Don't touch this again." For a long, tense moment it seemed as though he would not release her, either, and then he stepped back "Please."

  The last word had the nature of an afterthought, but it served to take the heat from Joey's indignation. She turned quickly to face him, the edge of the table pressing into the small of her back as he had pressed a moment before.

  "I'm sorry I touched something I shouldn't have, but I didn't mean any harm by it, and I certainly didn't do any damage." She lifted her chin and met his gaze squarely. "There's no need to fly off the handle."

  Luke's face had been rigid with something approaching hostility, but now his features relaxed into the usual cool remoteness. Joey was almost grateful for the safe distance it put between them again. It might have worked if it hadn't been for the seesawing of her own emotions.

  "Did I fly off the handle?" Luke's words were even and as distant as his expression, but Joey almost sensed amusement in their tone. She took a moment to slide away from him and the table to a more neutral location. She watched his face as he moved to stand where she had been, his fingers touched lightly a final time on the music box and caught at one of the long black tresses on the hairbrush.

  The subtle shifts in his features were small, but Joey knew she did not imagine the change. Luke lifted the hair and wound it around his fingers, caressing it as his eyes grew unfocused. The harsh lines of his face softened, there was almost the faintest whisper of a smile on his narrow lips.

  "Who did it belong to?" Joey found herself asking, needing to learn what could bring such an expression of—tenderness, yes, even that—to his face. She half-braced herself for a return of his cold anger, but it didn't come.

  Instead, he seemed to find his way back from some faraway place to hear her words, and his response was slow and remote.

  "It was my mother's." He offered no more, unwinding the dark hair from his fingers and pressing it almost reverently back into the bristles of the brush.

  With an inward sigh that seemed to release a year's worth of accumulated tension, Joey felt her muscles relax. She leaned against the bookshelves behind her. Question upon question rose up, demanding release, but she pushed them back. The strange gentleness of Luke's demeanor now was worth patience, for once he might expose something no amount of questioning could ever force from him.

  As if sensing the intensity of her concentration, Luke turned back to her. There was still a hint of the unguardedness he had briefly revealed, but it was now tempered by wariness.

  "My mother died a long time ago. When I was still a boy. This"—he gestured with a short, restrained motion at the corner table—"is what she left." His absolute stillness except for the one brief movement forced Joey to shift in compensation. The smell of leather-bound books and woodsmoke mingled in her nostrils.

  "I'm sorry." They were inadequate words, but Joey felt them keenly. She felt them with all the pain of her own loss, when she herself had been hardly more than a girl. In the brief time she'd known him, Luke had never mentioned family. He had never mentioned his parents, and the subject had never seemed important. Now it had a powerful significance. It made him, in this small way, like her. And she knew now that the momentary softening in his expression had been very real.

  The painful lump that rose in her throat was as much sympathy for his loss as memory of her own. It frightened her because it made her vulnerable when she could least afford to be, and yet it gave her a small advantage. Even Luke was not without the ties of emotion, and his past.

  With a motion as abrupt as it was noiseless, Luke pushed away from the table and strode back to the fireside. Joey continued her circuit of the room as she reined in her emotions, coming at last to the place where she had begun earlier that evening. Her eyes scanned the titles a second time without really seeing them.

  "I lost my parents, too," she murmured, stroking the embossed cover of a volume of Donne's poetry. It was only a reminder to herself, to conquer feelings by trapping them with words. She had done that many times in the past when she felt close to being overwhelmed.

  "Yes. We have that in common." Even in the quiet, Joey had not expected him to hear her whisper. She looked up where he stood by the fire, staring once again into the blazing light.

  She found herself pulled by some irrational compulsion across the safe distance that separated them, stopping at the sofa, her fingers twisting into the blanket that lay tossed over the back. There was a shower of sparks in the hearth as Luke tossed a branch among the flames.

  "Do you miss them?" she asked suddenly.

  At first she thought Luke did not intend to answer, so long was the interval of silence. She clenched a fistful of blanket.

  "I've been alone a long time," he said at last. "It was a long time ago." There was such an evenness to his tone that Joey knew it was not natural, any more than hers had been. But when she risked a glance at him, he was still staring, unmoved and unmoving, at the ever-shifting and indifferent face of the fire.

  Joey found herself walking again, around the barrier of the sofa. She hesitated there, struggling with compulsions she did not understand. Her instinct was to comfort and be comforted—but her mind told her to be safe, to take no further risks. With a sigh she dropped onto the sofa and half-pulled the blanket around her, though it was almost too warm.

  Her next words, when she broke the intervening silence, seemed to come from some other person. "My parents died in the crash when I was sixteen. Twelve years ago " The lump in her throat seemed intent on impeding any further conversation. With a deliberate act of will she forced it back. "I've been waiting—all this time—to find them. I never got to say good-bye."

  She was horrified by the sudden break in her voice. The rush of words that wanted to emerge, that cried out to be said to someone who might understand, were stopped before they could betray her into tears. With rigid self-control, Joey composed her face into blankness and tried to pretend she had never spoken at all.

  Like a flickering shadow, Luke was suddenly before her. He hovered there, blocking off the heat and light of the fire, balancing as if he had acted on an impulse he did not know how to carry through. Joey blinked and stared at his hands, wondering bleakly if he would try to touch her, and what she would feel if he did. Part of her wanted it desperately, to have even a man she hardly knew, a man as much opponent as friend or potential lover, make her feel less alone. But it would come out of weakness, not on her terms. She would lose the last threads of control.

  Luke's hands clenched into fists at his side. For an instant he remained poised, and then he retreated as suddenly as he had come.

  Joey was not certain how long he was gone. She concentrated on the moments free of him, to gather her balance and remind herself, as many times as necessary, why she was here. When he returned to thrust a hot mug of coffee into her hands, she was able to take it with perfect composure and smile up at him again.

  "Thanks. Just what I needed." The coffee was at that perfect temperature somewhere between scalding and warm, she sipped at it and inhaled the steam. It cleared the last of the fuzziness from her mind.

  She found Luke in the carved rocking chair, legs stretched out toward the hearth, his strong chin resting on folded hands. "You didn't have any?" she said, setting her own mug carefully on the floor beside the sofa.

  Raising his head to regard her, Luke shifted his feet and almost smiled. "I only keep it for guests."

  Whatever his intention, his words had the effect of making Joey content to keep silence between them. The quiet stretched for a long while, Joey could hear sounds outside the cabin she could not identify that made her glad to be indoors, even under these circumstances.

  Once she was sure she heard the howling of wolves, and her eyes sought the pelts on the wall and the
carvings on the two side tables.

  Her eyes strayed again and again to Luke after that. For a while he sat as she did, almost unmoving, lost in thoughts she could not begin to guess at. Then he got up to pace—a restless series of turns about the room, seemingly without any purpose but to overcome some internal conflict. His expression tightened and relaxed, and had he been the sort to do so, Joey might have expected him to talk to himself. But he maintained the silence and returned at last to his chair with a half-carved piece of wood.

  His deft, expert movements with the small knife fascinated Joey and relieved any threatening boredom. She watched him carve a long, narrow body, shaping short legs and a wisp of a tail, a foxlike head. She played a game of guessing what sort of animal he pulled out of the unremarkable block, and she realized how much time had passed only when Luke got up to throw more wood on the dying fire. In spite of herself, she yawned broadly.

  Luke's keen gaze met hers for the first time in what seemed like an age. "Are you tired?" The sound of his voice after long silence was welcome. Joey shook her head. She could not yet afford to be tired, not while matters stood as they did.

  "No, not quite yet. What time is it?" She realized belatedly that her watch had been lost sometime in the struggle with the men at the lake, and Luke did not seem to possess a clock in any visible location.

  He cocked his head, looking off into space as if consulting some internal timepiece. "Close to midnight. Perhaps a little later." At once his eyes came back to hers, dark except for the glitter of firelight. "Is there anything you need?"

  Joey considered the question and examined it for double meanings. His look was so intent and focused, so like the ones he had turned on her when he'd first begun his pursuit, that she suspected more than one layer in the casual remark.

  For a long moment she wondered if she should put things off a little longer, try to draw him out. But even she had limits, and this had not been an easy day. She drew in a deep breath and met his gaze.