Well, I’m sure you can think about her without being so irritating about it, the wolf said pointedly.For one thing, you could actually ask her.
You’re a wolf! What do you know about good communication?
Wolves communicate!it protested.Just because we don’t yammer on like humans do doesn’t mean we don’t talk to each other. We howl, we sniff, we use body language ....
Case was losing an argument inside his own head.
“The point is,” he said loudly enough to drown out his wolf, “I think we deserve a little splurge for our one-night honeymoon, don’t you?”
“But we’re going to get there so late ....”
Case could actuallyseethe moment Lydia told herself to stop worrying about it and have a little fun for once.
“Okay,” she conceded, cheerfulness creeping in now. “Go ahead and book it, Mr. Moneybags. You know, you never told me what your mystery pen name was.”
He hadn’t, had he? He was always a little embarrassed about it. Actually, he’d never told someone before who didn’t “have” to know, someone who didn’t work with his publisher or his agent. Before Lydia, it hadn’t occurred to him how much of himself he routinely kept boxed away. Mr. “I Like a Lot of People” was a hard man to get to know, and it was his own fault.
Lydia was the first person he had ever wanted to let in like this. He knew her well enough already to say that while she might find that flattering, she would urge him tokeepletting people in, when he met people worth trusting.
He also knew it was exactly the kind of thing he could say to her about the pack. They’d been keeping themselves closed off for different reasons, but the end result was the same. They could both use a little more experience opening up to people.
“All right,” Case said, pocketing the phone as his reservation confirmation came through. He motioned towards the truck, and they started back to it. From one milestone straight on to the next .... “It’s pretty basic as far as pen names go. You’ll probably laugh. Instead of being Casey Jackson, I’m Jack Casey.”
Lydia stopped dead in her tracks. “Jack Casey?”
“I told you it wasn’t much of a pen name.”
She shook her head so passionately that some of her thick black hair actually bounced.
“No, you don’t understand. IloveJack Casey.”
For a second, Case experienced the bizarre sensation of being passionately jealous of his own alter ego.
He wished she loved him instead.
And the instant he thought that, he knew that he couldn’t be any more in love with Lydia Vasquez if he tried. He’d been couching it in safer, easier-to-handle terms, thinking about liking her a lot, admiring her, and evenstartingto love her, but this was so much bigger, wilder, and realer than that. What he was feeling now took up his whole heart.
“You, uh.” He tried to act like he hadn’t just had a huge epiphany. “You love Jack Casey?”
It was like Lydia had some inkling of what he was thinking. A rose-colored flush spread across her face.
But surprisingly, she stuck to her guns. She even raised her chin, like she was defying her blush by insisting on this.
“Yeah, I do. I have all his—your—books. I started reading them for the mysteries—the first one I picked up was the locked room murder at the dude ranch—”
That one was still one of Case’s personal favorites. Working out the details of the whodunit plot had been a big challenge, but he’d loved the feeling of pulling it off.
“—but now I think I’m even more obsessed with the scenery. I love how much nature writing you fit in, and for so many different places! It makes me feel like I’ve been all over the west.”
It was a good thing he’d realized he was deeply in love with her because of his brief, totally nonsensical jealousy of his pen name, because if he’d waited another few seconds, he would have worried it was just because she was heaping praise on him with a trowel. (To be fair, who could resist Lydia Vasquez’s compliments?) Thankfully, now he could just bask in what she was saying while knowing that he’d loved herbeforeshe’d said it.
Our mate likes our work!his wolf said, pitching the words into a joyous howl.
He felt the same way, honestly. He could’ve howled too.
“I can’t believe you didn’t see your books in my room,” Lydia continued.
Case felt like he had to intervene here to defend your honor. “I wasn’t looking for them when I was checking out your bookcase, for what it’s worth. I always—”
