“A security system? My dad will never pay for it.”
That was true. Her father was the original penny-pincher, though not for the usual reasons. He just never wanted the hassle of people invading his space for any reason. Pave the driveway? Why bother? Watch for intruders? He didn’t have anything anybody would steal. Except, of course, he did. He had no idea how valuable his research was to a feral like him.
He heard her shift uncomfortably behind him, and he cursed himself for getting lost in his senses again. It was yet another sign that the animal was too close to the surface. He routinely forgot the ebbs and flows of human interactions.
“Look, it’s no trouble,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of money. And if I can keep you and your father safe, then it’s well worth it.”
“Safe from what?” she huffed, thereby taking the conversation full circle. She thought he was nuts. He was nuts, but not that way.
“I’m not abandoning you again,” he finally admitted. “Not when it costs me so little to keep you safe.”
“Again?”
Oh, hell. Had he said that out loud? That’s what came from trying to manage human interactions. He forgot himself and said the wrong things.
“So you do remember me,” she said.
Her words startled him enough that he turned to face her, no matter what it did to his night vision. Did she seriously think he’d forgotten the best night of his life? The one time when animal and human had been so perfectly in accord that everything aligned in absolute synchronicity? And that she had been the center of that miracle of perfection? Until it had unbalanced. Until he’d lost control and tipped into beast, then run in terror.
“Yes, Julie,” he said dully. “I remember you.”
“And you’re not going to abandon me again. Not going to run off howling into the night and never speak to me again for eight years.”
He stiffened. “I did not howl.”
She pursed her lips, apparently thinking back. “I really think you did.”
Well, he might have made a loud animal kind of noise. But grizzlies did not howl. “Maybe it was more of a roar.”
“It was…” She chuckled. “It was perfect. Until you didn’t come back.”
“And I’ve been waiting eight years to apologize for that.”
She arched her brows, her expression disbelieving. “You haven’t thought twice about me since that night until I showed up at your door today.”
“Not true.” So incredibly not true, she had no concept of how large a misconception that was. “But by the time I got my act together, you’d already gone back to Chicago. And you didn’t come back the next summer.”
“And Gladwin is so backwards there aren’t phones. Or even the postal service.”
He sighed, knowing she was right. “I was a teenage boy. We don’t communicate well.”
“I have news for you, Mark. You don’t communicate well now.”
Well, that was certainly true. “Look, I was a dick. I knew it wouldn’t work between us, so I just…let it go.”
She took a breath. “Why wouldn’t it work between us?”
Hell, she was like a dog with a bone digging at him. But he couldn’t give her the truth. He couldn’t tell her that he was shifter and she was human. Normally, that was just the ticket for someone like him. A strong shifter had to mate with a pure human or risk a child who was too animal. But even back then he’d known he was on the path to feral insanity. There was no saving him, and that night showed him how far gone he already was. After all, it had taken him more than a month to return to human. Even his father had given him up for dead.
So he landed on a lesser truth and hoped she’d leave it at that. “You lived in Chicago with your mother. I lived here.”
“That’s your excuse? Long distance?”
He groaned. “To a kid that’s a big deal. Plus, you’re rich, and your dad’s a professor. My dad didn’t graduate from high school, and I ate stuff I killed, skinned, and cooked myself.”
She arched her cocky, impertinent, damn sexy eyebrow. “That espresso machine looked pretty expensive. Not to mention whatever security system you’re?—”
“That’s now,” he said, hating that his face had flushed hot. “Back then we had nothing.”
