A Groom For Red Riding Hood

“Well, normally if a mother wolf dies, another female in the pack will take over. She’ll bond with the pups and start producing milk. Only there’s only one other female in the pack. She’s no spring chicken and that didn’t happen. So I’m feeding them formula five times a day. Unfortunately they’re just too young and weak to move right now. And the rest of the pack—they won’t leave. Not without their young. There isn’t a human alive who can understand a wolf’s loyalty. He’ll sacrifice his life to protect those he loves. They take care of each other. That instinct is as strong in wolves as their need to eat or breathe.”

Steve grabbed her arm when she stumbled on a slick ridge. She hadn’t been looking where she was going, but at him. His face was ruddy from the cold, yet the temperature didn’t seem to bother him. He released her arm quickly, but the gesture had protected her from a fall as automatically as the wolves he’d been talking about. His affinity for the animals was no accident, she mused. He was like them. A lone wolf. A man who valued loyalty, who willingly made personal sacrifices for something he cared about, who was instinctively protective of others around him. He’d obviously chosen his work and his life-style. That kind of strength—that kind of loneliness—was beyond anything she knew.

But being a loner...Mary Ellen knew a lot about that. She’d lived her whole life with the tag of misfit.

“So,” she said, “how long are you stuck with this problem?”

“It’ll be at least a month, maybe more, before the pups are strong enough to be relocated. And the whole thing is a gamble. Someone would say a stupid gamble, trying to keep them together. It’s not like I couldn’t ship the pups off to some zoo—there’s no problem finding people willing to take care of them. But they’d never make it outside of captivity if I separated them from the pack now. They imprint on the grown-ups. The older ones teach them how to survive in the wild, something no human could do. It’s real iffy whether I can keep them all safe for that long. There’s a town meeting this Thursday. I know damn well they have in mind voting an open season on my pals.”

She glanced at him again. His voice never fluctuated from that slow, lazy drawl. He made that town meeting sound like nothing more challenging than a Sunday stroll. Yet it had to be hard, being an unwanted stranger with an unwanted cause, and she couldn’t imagine the guts it would take to face down a townful of people who viewed him as an enemy.

She knew how it felt to be judged, so it was probably natural that she felt a compelling emotional tug for him. She was a loner, too, but a misfit not by choice. For an instant she wanted to reach out and touch him as if they shared a personal bond—when there was no bond. He had guts. She didn’t. He had strength to burn, volunteered for difficult situations. Her response to the difficult situation with Johnny had been to cringe, get an itchy case of hives and then duck and run lickety-split, like the coward she was. She looked away. “I guess you’ve had to deal with that kind of problem before?”

He never got around to answering her, although when he suddenly stopped walking, she wasn’t sure why. The craggy ridge looked no different than the landscape they’d just traveled—wild and woody. There were no footprints in the snow, no sign any human had ever discovered these primitive backwoods. The forest was dark, deep, endless, winding around hills and snow-swept, jutting crags of land. Then, though, she spotted an olive green box, like the kind of case people packed drinks and sandwiches for a picnic in.

Steve bent over and pushed the top off. The box definitely wasn’t being used for picnic supplies. Strange-looking baby bottles were packed around hot-water sacks. He unwrapped one and showed her. “I got the bottles from the hospital in Houghton. They’re meant for babies with cleft palates, but they work just as well for pups too young to suckle.”

She edged closer, her arms wrapped around her chest. A wisp of a smell hit her nostrils—strong enough to make her nose crinkle.

He chuckled. “I should have warned you. The formula isn’t exactly aromatic.”

“Good grief, what’s in it?”

“Piles of disgusting stuff, from raw egg yolks to vitamins. Trying to fool them that this is their mama’s milk has been an uphill trip, I’ll tell you. But never mind that. Are you ready to fall in love?”

Her eyes flew to his faster than a shooting comet. “I beg your pardon?”

Slowly, lazily, he studied her face as if the color in her cheeks was the most fascinating thing he’d seen in a blue moon. “You’re not all that sure what you think, are you? You don’t think you’re gonna be tempted into caring. A lot of people don’t. A wolf’s a wolf, and these little guys don’t come out of the womb looking like a Walt Disney cartoon. They’re born wild and wary, a real handful, no interest in being tamed. But I just have this strange feeling, Mary Ellen, that you’re gonna fall hopelessly in love.”

He was talking about the baby wolves, of course. Not him. Not them. Not for a moment—not even for a millisecond—had she thought he meant anything else. It was just the low timbre in his voice when he said her name...she didn’t realize he even knew her name...that made her suddenly shiver. She shifted her attention from his gaze at the speed of light, looking all over for some sign of the nest or a den or someplace where the pups might be. “So where are they?” she asked impatiently.

“Right here.” Stuffing two bottles under his sweater, he bent under the shadowed branches of a spruce, and then went belly flat in the snow.

More wary than curious, she crouched down, too.

“Can’t see them from that far. You have to get closer.”

Well, geesh. She’d come this far, so it seemed pretty ridiculous to back out now. Snow showered her head when she elbow crawled to his side, protected by ski pants and a double layer of coats, as he certainly wasn’t. She heard him sneeze, and automatically started to respond with a “Bless you” when she saw the silky gleam of tiny eyes.

The nest wasn’t exactly a cave, more like a long, low ledge of a rock that tunneled in several yards, the opening concealed entirely by the spruce and stark winter black brush. Once inside, the darkness was as sudden as night. Her pupils had to dilate to see anything after the blinding glare of sunlit snow. Yet she saw the tiny eyes, and then another pair and another. Milky blue. Baby blue. The fur balls were nestled in a heap, with tiny shiny noses and tiny floppy ears, and one had the same gorgeous white pelt of his father.

The snowball baby tried out a lonely, angry howl, echoing his daddy except that its volume was barely a mewl. He thought he was real tough, for a two-pound bit of fluff. Steve plugged its mouth with the strange-tipped bottle, and the baby instantly quieted. Steve sneezed again—the blasted man was positively going to catch pneumonia on this little venture—but sympathy for him wasn’t the reason for the velvet lump in her throat.

Damnation if he wasn’t right.

She fell hopelessly in love on the spot. Not for him. Good grief! She wasn’t crazy.

But definitely for the babies.

Three

Predictably, as soon as Mary Ellen doused the car lights, she dropped the keys. Bending over and squished, she groped in the no-man’s land of the dark car floor until she found them, then collected her gloves, shoulder bag, hot pads and Crockpot. Holding all of those, she naturally discovered she had no way to open the door. She rejuggled. Eventually she escaped the dratted car, and holding the heavy pot with both hands, gave the door a good swing with her fanny to close it.

It was a lot of trouble to go through, just to bring a man some plain old beef stew. Well, truthfully it was her best ragout, but that point was moot. The dinner was owed. She hadn’t met any Galahads in the nineties. Steve had not only given up his coat for her yesterday, but he’d also saved her from the wolves—both in the woods and the bar. She obviously had to find a way to thank him.

The offer to bring him dinner had been impulsive. Steve had pounced on it. No demurring. No gee-you-don’t-have-to’s. His fast agreement worried her—it was the first time she’d seen Steve Rawlings do anything fast—and she’d chewed a fingernail, fussing over whether he could misinterpret the gesture. Men had a habit of misinterpreting just about anything she’d ever done, no matter how innocent or well-intentioned.

Her arms ached from the weight of the Crockpot as she looked around. He was home, because she could see the edge of his black four-wheel-drive pickup, parked behind the trailer. Yellow light shined from the windows, making lonely patches of color in the snow. Even this early in the evening—six o’clock—the night was blacker than tar. He’d chosen to set the trailer in the middle of nowhere, isolated in a nest of black trees and sooty shadows. An icy, eerie wind shivered through the treetops, making her shiver uneasily, too.

If she were home in Georgia, it’d be warm by the first week in March. Not blizzard-mean-cold like here. In her Georgia hometown, too, no single woman would be visiting a single guy, in his lair, after dark, unless she was volunteering for big-time trouble.

Now that’s ridiculous, Mary Ellen told herself impatiently. She wasn’t staying. She was just going to drop off the Crockpot. Twice now, he’d gone out of his way to help her, and manners required a thankyou. The only danger she was risking was a frostbit tush from standing out here in the dark like a witless goose.

She took a breath, marched to his doorstep and used her elbow to knock. The knock only created a muffled sound, but the door promptly flew open. Warm air flooded out. She only had one quick, daunting glimpse of a giant whose shoulders were never meant to fit in a compact trailer-size door.

“Finally Red Riding Hood arrives. I was starting to get worried, afraid you’d get lost trying to find the place.”

“Red...?” The Riding Hood tag startled her. Could he possibly know how wary she felt about walking into a wolf’s lair? But then she caught the flash of an easy, teasing grin, and it clicked real quick where he’d picked up the fairy-tale association. She was wearing a hooded cherry red jacket and carrying goodies through the woods. Pretty hard to deny she was natural prey for a tease, and she had to smile back. “No, I had no trouble. Your directions were great.”

He reached down the steps to take the heavy pot from her hands. “This smells great. Come on in.”

She shook her head swiftly. “I can’t stay—”

“You have to work tonight?”

“No. I only work four nights a week. It’s just that I only meant to bring you dinner. To thank you. Not to take up any of your time—”

“You’re going to make me eat alone? When you’re already here? And I haven’t had anyone to talk to all day but wild animals?”

His mournful tone made her roll her eyes—he couldn’t pass that off as blarney in Ireland—but damn. He made her feel awkward about taking off without at least sharing some conversation. Gingerly she stepped inside. “I’ll just stay a couple of minutes,” she insisted.

He didn’t seem to hear her, and he hadn’t let go of the pot yet. He sniffed. “I haven’t had a homemade ragout in a hundred years. Is it okay if I admit my undying love for you?”

“It’s just stew,” she said dryly, but drat the man, he was downright forcing her to chuckle.

“Just stew is real food. You don’t understand. I’ve either been opening cans or eating Samson’s cooking for weeks now.” Once he set the pot down, he hustled her out of her red jacket and made it disappear, then gave her white tunic sweater and jeans a once-over. She’d been careful about her choice of clothes. The jeans were old, not tight, not fancy, and the bulky sweater concealed her figure more effectively than a nun’s habit. There was nothing in his view, absolutely nothing, to cause the sudden lazy, masculine gleam in his eyes. “Good thing you’re a shrimp. There’s not a lot of space around here for two of us to move around.”

She chuckled again, and this time felt the tension in her shoulders easing. Would a man call a woman a shrimp if he had seduction on his mind? He was being funny, natural, just plain nice. It was past time she kiboshed the electric nerves she felt around him. She never used to be so paranoid, not until Johnny burned her, and it was ridiculously egotistical to imagine that Steve represented any danger to her. He was positively nothing like Johnny.

“Your place isn’t so small. In fact, it’s a lot bigger than it looks on the outside,” she commented as she looked around.

“So sit and make yourself comfortable. You can have the seat of honor. You want wine, beer, soda?”

“Nothing, really, but thanks.” His “seat of honor” was the only chair, a tweedy recliner in gray hues. A long couch matched it. Both were his size—heck, she could have curled up and slept in the chair—and the small living area overlooked the kitchen ell. The bar-style table was ivory colored, the charcoal-shaded carpeting cushion-thick. A short hallway of closets led to a shadowed bedroom—where he’d tossed her jacket—and she saw the tucked end of a Hudson Bay blanket in the wedge of light.

The trailer wasn’t big enough for a party, but there was ample room for him to move around. It was hard for two to maneuver, though. She slipped off her boots and dropped in the chair when she saw she was going to be in his way. He opened and closed cupboards, taking out plates, silverware, napkins. His TV was on, tuned to the news, but without sound. He kept up an easy conversation.

“I have a place in Wyoming. A little house, on a spread of land by a creek. That’s where I grew up, out West, but I’ve had the trailer for years. Sometimes I’m gone months at a time with my work, and I’d go nuts trying to live in motels and finding rental places. This way I can have my own stuff with me.”

“So...you go wherever the wolves are?”

“Not always wolves. But they’re my love, and I seemed to have ended up specializing in them whether I planned it or not. I worked for the EPA for a while, then hooked up with the National Park Service. For this project I’ve been loaned out to the state of Michigan—their DNR, Department of Natural Resources. Never seems to matter who’s signing my paychecks, I end up doing the same thing. There just aren’t a lot of people who get real excited about tackling a wounded wolf, or moving a pack of ‘em. Maybe it’s like a doc who overspecialized. There’s nobody else who does the job—or really wants the job—so I’m the stuckee.”

“You’ve traveled all over?”

“From Mexico to Alaska,” he confirmed. “The red wolf, gray wolf, Mexican wolf—they’re all threatened. Only three places on the planet where they’re not, though lots of people are sympathetic to the cause. The UP here has really worked at it—set up a Michigan Wolf Recovery Team, and backed that up with good laws and stiff penalties for killing wolves. But the bottom line is that when a wolf’s causing trouble, the easiest solution is to shoot him—or trap and put him in captivity, out of harm’s way. Nobody’s to blame for that. A problem wolf, wild, part of his pack, in his own environment...he doesn’t make it real easy to help him. It’s just a lot easier for someone who knows the species to take the ball.”

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