If it had any more deep insights to share with her, she decided that she didn’t want to hear them right now. It was only going to poke and prod her to reconsider her stance on Case, and that was because it was, at heart, selfish. Most animals were, and not in a bad way. They just didn’t do the more abstract thinking you had to do to put someone else’s psychological needs first. Mostly they didn’t do psychology at all.
So she tuned her wolf out for the time being and concentrated on Case. She gave herself permission to nuzzle her cheek against his shoulder as they waited.
“The sooner we sign this, the sooner I can see you in that dress again,” Case said. “I’m going to write like the wind.”
Lydia laughed. “You liked it that much?”
“Words can’t even describe how much I like it. And I shouldn’t tell my publisher that.”
Lydia’s head jerked up off his shoulder. “Wait. Your publisher?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Anyone else would have said it slyly, because this would have been an intentional surprise they were springing on her. Case seemed like he genuinely wasn’t sure. “I do some writing. It’s a good hobby for when you’re on the road a lot, and it’s a nice little bit of extra money.”
“You do some writing,” Lydia repeated. With as much reading as she did, this was like he’d casually thrown in that he was the crown prince of an idyllic Hallmark Christmas movie country. “That’s incredible, Case. What do you write?”
Given the kinds of things she knew he was interested in, she was sort of expecting something along the lines of travel writing or how-to guides.
Hereallyknocked her for a loop when he said, “Mysteries.”
That was her all-time favorite genre. She tried to broaden her tastes every now and then, but she always came back to curious deaths, grizzled detectives, and everything in between. When the problems in her life seemed messy and unsurmountable, or when it felt like they would drag out forever, nothing was more comforting than curling up with someoneelse’sproblem and seeing it get solved. She read everything from white-knuckle thrillers to knitters who solved crimes in between churning out lavishly described sweaters. She loved it all.
She was subjecting Case to her enthusiasm about all this when they were called up to the desk.
“But wait, I don’t think I’ve read anything of yours,” she said, as they stepped up.
“Probably not, but I use a pen name—we can tackle that in a second.”
Right. First the all-important marriage,thenthe prying into the life of the man she was falling—
Falling in love with.
Lydia swallowed.
She knew it was true. Talk about something more serious than a fling.
She could feel her wolf trying to reassert itself, and she knew it would have plenty of opinions to offer. She shoved it aside. She couldn’t deal with all this right now. She couldn’t.
Luckily, the marriage license itself was a pretty good distraction. She knew Wendy, the desk clerk overseeing it, and since Wendy was a member of the pack, she understood exactly what this marriage meant.
Wendy was also already pretty clued in for someone who’d been at the courthouse all day. Polly might have been surprised by their engagement, but Wendy sure wasn’t.
“I know I didn’t see the fight with Reeve,” she said to Case in a low voice, leaning over the counter, “but everyone’s been texting me about it. Is it true that you used to be human?”
It was dangerous to have that kind of conversation this openly, even in an undertone and even in a town like Mountainview, where eight out of every ten people were either in Lydia’s pack or—at the very least—aware of it. But considering how Reeve had been hovering over all of them like a specter of doom, Lydia could understand how relief would make Wendy take a couple of chances. After all, wasn’t she sort of doing the same thing?
“I was this morning,” Case said. “I’m not now.”
“Wow.” Wendy shot Lydia an impressed glance, like she was congratulating her on making the right choice. “That’s incredible. I didn’t know anyone could be so strong right after they were turned.”
“I didn’t either,” Lydia said.
Case twitched his shoulders in a kind of shrug and said, “I just wanted to be there for you.”
It made Lydia’s heart thump, and she couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across her face.
Wendy looked back and forth between Case and Lydia, and the tentative hope in her eyes seemed to get even stronger.
“Okay!” she said chirpily. “Of course you wanted to be there for her, and it’s good that you could be. Let’s get this paperwork filled out so it’s all official.”
