A SEAL in Wolf's Clothing

Chapter 6

“So where are we going?” Meara asked, as Finn drove south along the Oregon coast. She glanced back at the ice chest, the aroma of the freshly baked chicken making her stomach rumble, and she wished they’d had the chicken before they left her place. “Couldn’t we at least have eaten at the house first?”

“Later. Or you can fish out the chicken and eat while I’m driving.”

Hating that he was so in charge of their every move, she frowned at him. “When are we going to stop for the evening?”

He glanced at her. “Don’t tell me you’re going to ask that all night long.”

“Don’t tell me we’re going to drive all night long.”

He concentrated on the road again. “We’ll drive until I say we stop.”

She ground her teeth. Hell, he was ten times more controlling than Hunter.

“Great. Then I’m not waiting to eat.” She reached back, pulled out napkins and a container of wet wipes, and opened the ice chest, digging around until she snagged a plastic bag filled with chicken thighs. “Want one?”

“Later. Thanks.”

With napkins on her lap, she began eating a piece of chicken. “I can drive later so you can eat then,” she said between bites.

He didn’t say anything, but about twenty minutes down the road, he pulled into a car dealership.

She cleaned her hands with a wet wipe, stared at the new and used car lot, and said, “What are we…”

He put his finger to her lips to silence her, wrapped his hand around her head, and pulled her close to whisper in her ear. “We need to inspect our stuff for anything that might have tracking devices or bugs.” He glanced at her clothes and then spoke in a hushed voice next to her ear again. “Either you can get a whole new set of duds and change, and I can look over what you’ve been wearing, or I can search them while you’re still in them.” His lips lifted in a small smile.

He was enjoying this espionage crap a little too much.

“I like what I’m wearing,” she whispered back.

“Fine. I’ll check you over,” he said quietly.

She raised her brows at that. “Do you tell all the women you’re protecting that you need to frisk them for electronic bugs?” she whispered. The feeling of his lips next to her ear and his hot, caressing breath made her burn up, and she imagined that her whispered breath on his ear was doing the same number on him.

“This is my first time.”

“I bet.” Her gaze swept over him. She asked in a hushed voice, “What about you? What if you have something hidden in your clothes?”

His eyes sparkled with a hint of mischievousness. “I do have something hidden in my clothes—although it won’t remain hidden for long if we don’t get this over with quickly. As far as bugs go, I’ve already swept my things. But if you want to give me a personal sweep of your own, just to be certain, I’m all yours.”

Her face flushed over the sexual innuendo. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

He tilted his head forward in agreement. “Hope you’re not too ticklish.” He gave her another of the boyish grins that she was beginning to recognize as his trademark. “I love what you do to me,” he said in a sexy, husky way that she was sure wasn’t all put on as he pulled something out of his pocket. Then he began to move the device down her thighs and her calves, and over her tennis shoes.

His gaze shifted to hers. “Spread your legs for me, Meara,” he said again in a lusty voice, somewhat hushed, but loud enough that if a lupus garou was listening in, he’d get an earful. And the lusty voice wasn’t in the least bit faked.

She raised her brows.

“It’s easier if you willingly open yourself up for me,” he said when she didn’t promptly comply.

She hoped she wasn’t wearing a bug, but for all the humiliation she was going through, she hoped he would find one and she wouldn’t have to clobber him.

She parted her legs for him, gave him a steely glower, and said in a sultry, sensuous way, “Is that wide enough for you?”

“Hmm, Meara, you sweet thing.”

He ran the device between her legs, nearly touching her denim-covered crotch, and she swore he was going to give her an orgasm just from the way he was sliding the device between her legs and breathing so close to her. His heartbeat had kicked up a couple of notches to match hers, and she knew her damned pheromones were spreading the word that she had the hots for him. They were making her feel as though she was about to be singed by the sun.

He positioned his free hand on the back of her head so he’d look like he was truly her lover if anyone happened to drive by and see, yet it was more to keep her in line if she balked and tried to slip out of his grasp. He brushed the detector over her crotch, and she wondered if he had to get it that close to detect a bug. Surely he didn’t need to. Besides, how could anyone have stuck one in her clothes down there that she wouldn’t have noticed?

She gave him an annoyed look, and he caught her expression and gave her a silkily satisfied smile.

He swept the device over her breasts next, grazing her nipples as it passed over them, and they tingled in traitorous response. She glanced at his face. His eyes darkened to midnight as he stared at her nipples, and she didn’t think his actions or reactions had anything to do with finding a bug.

“Hot, huh?” she murmured, attempting to get him to focus on his mission before she was so hot and wet and aching that she’d force him to do something about it.

His lusty gaze quickly shifted to hers as if she’d awakened him from his hazy trance. He gave her a wicked half smile and then continued the sweep, maneuvering the detector over her stomach, under her arms, and around her neck and head.

“Turn around,” he said, demanding, but his voice was already drenched with need.

“In the vehicle?” She couldn’t help the squeak in her voice.

“You can do it,” he whispered, his lips brushing her ear.

Now she knew he didn’t need to get that close.

In the confined space, she maneuvered around until she was on her knees.

“Hmm, Meara honey, bend over,” he prompted, sounding horny as hell, and she was certain it wasn’t an act as she bit back a hasty retort.

He slipped the device around the outside of her legs, and she shivered to think where it was going next. Then he slid it in between her legs, and if she wasn’t so damned turned on and wanting him to rub her crotch until she came, she’d wonder why he thought she could have a listening device there! Like with her breasts, she felt he was searching the area way too methodically and had gotten lost in his thoughts or something. She cleared her throat, and he finally brushed the device over her back pockets in a sensuous slide, again concentrating a little too long on that part of her anatomy for her liking.

He suddenly stopped at her left back pocket and rested the device there. She barely breathed. He maneuvered around so he could slide his hand inside, his fingers groping her ass as if he thought his hand could do a better job in the search. She was about to make a remark to that effect when he pulled his hand out.

He patted her on the bottom with way more than an innocent touch. “Ah, Meara,” he said, his voice as deep and rough as if he’d just climaxed. “We’ve got to get a room.”

“Now you say so,” she said, trying to sound as breathless and sexy as him, which wasn’t hard to do with her hormones raging out of control.

She turned around and saw him holding up the small listening device between his fingers. Her heart did a triple somersault. How and when did it get there? And who had put it there and had been listening to everything they’d said? Hell, what had she said?

For a second, she had the idiotic notion that Finn had planted it there so she wouldn’t think him a cad for feeling her up in the name of security. But despite her fleeting hope that it could be something so benign, she knew that wouldn’t be the case.

He set the bug carefully on the console between them, then leaned over the seat to sweep the ice chest and other bags.

He shook his head at her when she watched to see if he’d found any others. The notion that someone had been listening to them—well, hell, had stuck a bug inside the back pocket of her jeans—really irritated the hell out of her. And then the notion struck her—had it been done while she was wearing the jeans or before that? And if it was before that, how would the culprit have known she was going to wear these particular jeans? Her skin chilled at that thought.

Before she could recall who’d been around that might have done so, she worried that whoever was listening might think they were on to him. She said in a sultry voice, “Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

Finn turned to look at her, his expression briefly astonished until she pointed at the bug. He grinned. “You have to ask?”

Her face flooded with heat that spread throughout her body. He was just too damn good at playing the seducer’s role and making it sound genuine. She wondered how many women he had seduced in the name of keeping the nation secure. She quickly scolded herself for even going there.

He sat for some time, staring at the cars parked in the lot of the dealership. She wondered what he was waiting for, but she didn’t dare ask because of the bug sitting on the console between them.

After what seemed an eternity, he finally grabbed the handle and opened his door. “Stay here.”

Okay so she wasn’t Miss Super Spy. She didn’t have the training for covert military operations, or civilian ones either, and she didn’t have a top-secret or even run-of-the-mill secret security clearance, but he could at least take her with him or tell her what he was doing. She glanced down at the bug. She kept feeling like it was a minicamera and that whoever had stuck it in her pocket was watching her every move.

She thought back to Imposter Joe and tried to remember when he had been close enough to slip the listening device into her pocket. Master thieves could do things like that, but they often used a distraction.

And then she had it. When Finn had exited the bathroom towel-drying his head, the rest of him dripping wet and naked, that had distracted her. Imposter Joe had slipped closer to her, one hand on the rifle, the other briefly brushing her backside as if reassuring her he’d take care of her.

He was taking care of her all right. The bastard.

Finn caught her eye as he stalked across the parking lot, waved at her or maybe at his Hummer, and then brought out a checkbook.

She frowned. What was he up to?

He came back to the vehicle, opened her door for her, and said, “Come on.”

When she hesitated, he hauled her out of the car, shut the door, and whispered into her ear, “We’ve got some new wheels.”

“What?” She felt a chill cascade down her spine. Finn must know they were being followed.

He escorted her inside the dealership where his Hummer had been taken inside, she assumed for an inspection to give him a trade-in price.

“What? Why are you getting another car?”

“I like new cars.” He held her hand as if they were married or seriously engaged and pulled her into the finance office where they took seats in front of a desk. An hour later, after Finn paid for the vehicle and transferred his car insurance to the new one, they were back on the road.

“I don’t understand. The assassin knew what you were driving, right?”

“Yes.”

She stared out the window of the new Hummer as he sped further south. “But you got the same kind of vehicle. Same color and everything.”

“It doesn’t have any of the bugs. The other could very well have had a tracking device in a couple of hidden locations and a couple of listening bugs that would take too damned long to find. Plus the one he stuck in your pocket is now on the visor. This one is bug- and tracker-free.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You might have let on. I wanted him to think we didn’t know he had planted the devices on the Hummer. Besides, it was time I upgraded my vehicle.”

“You could have told me. I can act, you know. I thought I’d put on a pretty good show already.” She gave him an irritated look. She might not be one of them, a SEAL, but she could play games like these.

He wore a silly smirk. “Your acting is top-notch. In fact, I’d say it felt so real that it would have taken a miracle for anyone to know the difference.”

She stared at him for a minute and then sat back in her fresh leather seat. That’s why he had waited so long to leave the car after their “show.” He probably could hardly walk until the blood that had all run south had finally returned to his brain.

“Why didn’t you just remove the bugs?” she asked.

“He could’ve spotted me doing it. While they have my old Hummer inside the building, the man following us will think we had to have it repaired. At least that’s a possibility. He would have been hanging back, not wanting to get too close. He’d think he could track us without any difficulty. And he did for nearly a half hour. Most likely, he’ll suspect that if we got another car, it wouldn’t look anything like the one I already had.”

“You still could have told me. And you should have let me drive so you could get something to eat.”

“We’ll stop before long.”

“But I thought you planned to drive all night.”

“That’s what I wanted our listener to think. We’ll spend a few days at a furnished, unoccupied home just up the road. It has a garage and is off the main road. Hopefully, one of my friends had time to stock the refrigerator.”

She could just see them getting arrested. “So now we’re going to be house-sitting illegally?”

“I called in some favors once I arrived in this part of the country and before you came home. The house is ours for as long as we need it.” He drove for another twenty minutes and then slowed down as they came upon a group of homes overlooking the ocean. Minutes later, he was driving into a walled-in estate with a circular drive, although it had no security gates.

Knowing how expensive homes on the coast were, and as large and new as this one looked, she figured it had to have cost a fortune. Why would anyone allow perfect strangers to stay here? “Whose place is this?”

“You don’t need to know.” He drove into the driveway of the whitewashed Cape Cod house. What shocked her next was that he pulled a garage door opener out of his pocket and punched the button. The garage door opened and he drove inside, then quickly closed the door again.

“I made arrangements to use it when I located Hunter and thought I was rescuing the two of you. It’s a safe house of sorts. While no one knows where we are, it’s safe.”

“What if the guys were part of your secret society? Wouldn’t they know where your safe houses are?” She shoved the car door open.

“No. This place isn’t on the list of safe houses. It’s strictly a friend of a friend of a friend’s.”

She eyed the oversized two-car garage: neat and orderly, but obviously in use as evidenced by the tools hanging on a wall, all neatly organized on pegboard. She was certain the owners would be unhappy if she and Finn messed the place up. On the other hand, they probably had maid service and gardeners, if they could afford a place this fancy on the coast.

“Now that we found the bug, do you think Imposter Joe was the assassin?” she asked, as she followed Finn across the garage, carrying her bag while he carried his duffel bag and her rifle.

“No.”

She joined him at the door leading out of the garage to what she assumed was the house. “How can you be so sure?”

“He wanted you.”

Her lips parted, and then she laughed. “Right.”

“Yeah, he did.” Finn sounded a little more disgruntled than she would expect him to be. “If he’d been a real assassin, he would have attempted to kill the both of us. No. This guy was someone else. As soon as I can get one of our men to check out the other Joe, we’ll try to uncover just who this other guy really was.” He opened the door, which revealed a sparkling tiled kitchen.

Everything was sunny yellow, from the floor tiles to the walls. The table and cabinets were all in a honey-oak wood, and the countertop had gold and yellow streaks running through the faux marble. A bay window offered a panoramic view of the ocean, and she paused to take a look at the pines rising far above the house from way down below and the frothy waves hitting the sandy beach and striking boulders scattered along the shore. Her scenic view was different—the beach smaller, the trees framing the house even more, which she preferred because it gave more of a woodsy feel—but she liked the bay window.

“He did lie about who he was. Then the other Joe ended up dead. I just don’t see how the imposter could have been the good guy,” she continued, wanting to explore the beach, to look for seashells, to feel the sand between her toes.

She watched with fascination the way the water swirled in little eddies at the edge, pulling the sand out and tossing it back inland again, exposing precious seashell treasures in its wake.

Finn glanced over his shoulder at her. “What I want to know is how he got the bug into your pants without you knowing about it.”

She felt her face heat up all over again. “I was distracted.”

“Oh?”

She couldn’t believe Finn didn’t realize that he had been the perfect distraction.

“Yeah. Some naked guy had just taken a shower in my bathroom. And Imposter Joe, I believed, was my protection. He sort of swept his hand over my back pocket, and I thought it was a gesture aimed at reassuring me.”

Finn snorted. “The guy palmed your butt, and you don’t think he’s interested in you?”

“Right! He stuffs a bug in my pocket, and that shows how much he’s intrigued with me?”

“If he didn’t care for you, or if this was strictly a job, you would never have felt his hand on your ass.”

She took a deep breath, trying to settle the way her stomach had tightened over Finn’s irritation with her and what Imposter Joe had done. She would have argued with Finn further, but she suspected he would probably know better about matters like that. And that made her feel even more uncomfortable about Imposter Joe.

She glanced at the sunny living room off the kitchen, with its large picture windows letting in light and the walls covered in paintings of sunny daffodils, fields of sunflowers, drifts of daylilies, and the rising sun. The tile floor was yellow, too, continuing the yellow theme from the kitchen and dining area. She wondered if the bedrooms were all yellow also.

“Looks like someone didn’t like the gloom of Oregon weather and tried to preserve the sun indoors.”

“Probably someone from California.”

She raised her eyes to the ceiling as if asking for divine intervention, and then headed for the deck door. “I lived in California, and I wouldn’t decorate my place here in Oregon like it was one giant sunflower.”

He smiled a little and then disappeared.

She glanced back, wondering what had happened to him. When he reappeared, she realized what he was up to. Checking out the place. Making sure they were alone. Alone. She’d hoped to find a mate in the next two weeks, and what had happened instead? She had been swept into a dangerous situation that Hunter and his team had been involved in, and now she was stuck alone with one of his teammates. One who was not on her list as an acceptable mate for her or any other she-wolf. Not in the line of work he was in, and as far as she knew, he wasn’t on the mate mart.

“So where are you from originally?” she asked. She noted a very large doggy door for a wolf next to the regular door, and then she walked out onto the deck, leaving the door wide open.

The air was wet and heavy. She hadn’t thought she’d ever get used to living next to the ocean after having lived in the redwoods for so long. She wasn’t good at adapting to new locations, but she was beginning to really like coastal life.

She walked back into the kitchen as Finn hauled in the ice chest and set it on the floor next to the fridge. Her rifle was already lying on the kitchen counter, and she figured later she would put it under the bed where she would sleep.

She opened the fridge and peered inside. Empty. Except for a few condiments. “Great. No food. Guess they cleaned it out before we arrived.”

“My associate must not have had time to get here with the food,” Finn said, pulling out the remainder of the baked chicken, potato salad, bottled water, and milk she’d brought with them in the ice chest. “We should have picked up something at the market. But I didn’t want to get too much stuff in case we had to leave again. And I didn’t want to chance him picking up our trail.

“I had intended to stay at your cabin and just watch you there in the event someone turned up to bother you. But with the gunfire we’d heard, a dead body, and a man who claimed to be another…” Finn shrugged. “Time for a change of plans. As to your question, I’m from southern California. I used to belong to a gray wolf pack that still lives down there.”

“No siblings?”

He put a chicken thigh and leg in a microwave dish and heated them for a couple of minutes. When the microwave dinged, he offered her a piece of chicken.

“Thanks, but I had enough chicken to eat in the car.”

“No siblings,” he said, glancing out the window at the view and taking a bite of the chicken. “Hmm, good stuff.”

“Thanks. It’s all in the lemon and pepper spice I used.” She tucked a curl of hair behind her ear and asked, “Do you ever wish you had any siblings?”

He grabbed a bottle of water, twisted off the cap, and took a swig. “Nope. Look at the difficulty it causes.” He motioned to Meara with the bottled water. “With no family, I don’t have any worries about anyone targeting someone close to me.”

“Ah. So you’re a loner wolf.”

“Yep. It’s perfect for the kind of work I do.”

That was just the way she’d had him pegged. She wasn’t all that surprised. Hunter had never mentioned that Finn was looking for a mate, although her brother probably wouldn’t have said anything to her about it anyway. Even though she hadn’t meant to feel anything one way or another about it, a hint of disappointment formed at the edge of her awareness, until she watched Finn dish a huge amount of potato salad onto a plate.

He scarfed down the salad, then refilled the plate. She couldn’t help but smile. The only one she knew who had that much of an appetite and loved her potato salad as much was Hunter.

Finn looked up at her, saw her smiling at the way he was eating her cooking, and grinned. “I didn’t think you’d catch me getting seconds. Hunter didn’t tell me you were this good of a cook.”

“I doubt he would. He just eats second and third helpings, which clues me in.” She pointed at the potato salad. “That’s an old German family recipe passed down through the generations with a few minor changes.”

“I have some German roots, too, but no one ever cooked anything that tasted this good.” He finished his second plateful and eyed the container of potato salad. Looking reluctant, he finally replaced the lid and set the salad in the fridge.

“You could have more,” she said.

“I will,” he promised. “A little later.”

She glanced out the window. “So what do we do now? The place is furnished, but there’s no food. Are we just supposed to hole up here for a few days? What if the guy who died was the assassin? We wouldn’t need to hide any more.” She quickly backtracked. “But then the guy who killed him could be even worse trouble.”

Finn nodded. “If someone else is pulling the strings, he most likely will still want the job done right. When the word gets out that the assassin is dead and we’re alive, what do you think will happen?” He finished his chicken, washed his hands, and then punched in a number on his phone.

“Cheery thought. Aren’t you supposed to be reassuring me instead of trying to frighten me out of my wits? I’m a civilian, if you recall. And not trained for all this deep-cover work.”

He gave her a small smile and shook his head as if he didn’t think she scared that easily. She didn’t. But she was surprised he wasn’t trying to whitewash the trouble they could be in. Or maybe he was smiling about her comment concerning the deep-cover work.

“When Hunter and I hooked up for missions this past year, you always wanted to know what was going on,” Finn finally remarked. “In fact you insisted on it.”

“I did. I was speaking tongue-in-cheek about wanting reassurance. I want to know the truth.”

He frowned, undoubtedly not reaching his party, and then punched in another number.

She expected him to leave her alone, to take his call in private—for all this superspy stuff—but instead he remained in the kitchen with her. Watching her? Worried about her? She was ready to ask him more about what was going on when he lifted his head. The person he was calling must have answered the phone.

“Hi, it’s me. I’ve got a situation. A man named Joe Matheson was found dead near Hunter’s place,” Finn said into his phone.

“My place,” Meara cut in.

“Yeah,” Finn said to the person on the phone, as he glanced Meara’s way but didn’t comment on what she’d said. “So I’m sending you the picture in an email. ID says he’s a news reporter. Did you get anything on the other man I sent the picture of?”

The other Joe? When did Finn take a picture of him? Finn had been naked, wearing only a towel, for part of the time when Imposter Joe was in the room. She frowned at Finn.

His gaze locked onto hers, and he frowned back. “All right. Keep trying to track down anything you can on either of the men. We’re holed up in a safe house for now. Get back with me when you can.” He repocketed his phone.

“It’s not Hunter’s house. It’s mine,” Meara reiterated to Finn. Hunter might interfere in a lot of things in her life, but when he’d moved into Tessa’s home, he’d given up the rights to owning their uncle’s house. It was now all Meara’s. Initially, she hadn’t wanted to move to the Oregon coast, but she’d made the cabin her home, and she really enjoyed having her own place without any of Hunter’s bossiness.

“My contact doesn’t need to know that the house is now yours. Only that the dead body was in the vicinity of your brother’s home. It shows intent to follow through with some master plan to hit all of us.”

“Why? Why would anyone be doing this? What was going on with your last mission?”

“It’s classified. We should be safe here.”

She gave him a ladylike sound of annoyance. “Yeah but since I’m involved now, too—through no fault of my own, I might add—I should know what’s going on.”

He shook his head, and that was the end of the discussion.

But not quite. “When did you take a picture of Imposter Joe? I saw you take one of the dead man with your camera. But you were wearing only a towel and, for some time, not even that when you saw my pretend renter.”

Finn hesitated to say but acted as if he’d come to a turning point in their relationship, moving beyond him being the protector and her the protected. He finally said, “I bugged your place and had placed cameras in various locations in the cabin.”

Her mouth dropped open. Then she snapped it shut, glowered at him, and said, “In my bedroom and bathroom, too?”

“No. I hadn’t gotten that far when you arrived, and then Joe came calling.”

“When were you going to let me in on that secret?”

“I didn’t think I’d need to since we’d have to leave your place anyway. Besides, it was only for your protection.” He turned to open a cabinet and found food, canned and boxed. Tons of it. “Looks like we’re not going to starve.”

She was still thinking about what he’d seen on his camera while she had been talking to Imposter Joe—the way she had slipped him the note, all that she’d said to the guy and what he’d said back, and all the while Finn had been watching and listening—when Finn pulled out a package of marshmallows, a box of graham crackers, and chocolate bars.

“Want some s’mores?”

Her irritation instantly dissolving, she eyed the ingredients with a sudden wistful craving. “S’mores?”