Desert Wolf

WEREWOLVES OF THE WILD WEST

Grant Wade is a former Texas Ranger. He’s also a Lycan Alpha and, in the ghost town of Desperado, he’s found a perfect refuge for his desert pack and a place to shelter other werewolves in need of a safe place.

Determined to reclaim her full birthright, Paxton Hall goes home for the first time in decades. Her plan to strike a deal with Desperado’s new owner doesn’t work any better than her attempts to resist this sexy cowboy. Even as she falls for him, Paxton has no idea what he’s trying to protect her from—his animal desire, her own true nature and a rogue predator on the prowl...

“Whatever you might be thinking, I’m not the enemy.”

Another forward step brought him close to Paxton. After a second quick glance at the moon, he lowered his voice. “No one here is out to hurt you. Please remember that.”

Daring to touch her, Grant placed a finger against her lips, fighting an overwhelming urge to replace those fingers with his mouth. But that kind of unanticipated aggression would have ended any future dealings they might have. He got that.

Her lips were soft against his fingertips though. And Paxton didn’t back away from his touch.

Damn those haunted eyes of yours.

Damn those lips.

He almost said those things out loud.

Hiding a shudder similar to the one he saw pass through her, Grant spoke again. “Good night. Sleep well.”

It took all of his willpower—every last ounce of it—to leave her there...and keep walking.

LINDA THOMAS-SUNDSTROM writes contemporary and paranormal romance novels for Mills & Boon. A teacher by day and a writer by night, Linda lives in the West, juggling teaching, writing, family and caring for a big stretch of land. She swears she has a resident muse who sings so loudly, she often wears earplugs in order to get anything else done. But she has big plans to eventually get to all those ideas. Visit Linda at lindathomas-sundstrom.com or on Facebook.

Desert Wolf

Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my family, those here and those gone, who always believed I had a story to tell.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Extract

Copyright

Chapter 1

There was no man in the moon.

Every werewolf knew this.

The moon was female and a temptress. Her kiss was cool and her love ran hot. For Weres, Madame Moon was everything—lover, mistress, redeemer, betrayer. She bestowed power, strength, enhanced senses, lightning-fast reflexes and pain...terrible racking pain that long ago had turned former Texas Ranger Grant Wade inside out, but seemed normal to him now.

Tonight, the moon took up a good portion of the wide expanse of the star-filled Arizona sky and called to Grant with a seductive, silvery promise that made his shoulders twitch.

Only two other things Grant knew of felt anything remotely like this gut reaction: beautiful women and fine, aged whiskey...neither of which were present at the moment.

“Wait.” Holding back tremors that were bubbling up inside, he addressed the moon. “Not yet. Soon.”

The night was still warm after that day’s unforgiving desert sun. Shirtless, wearing only jeans and boots, Grant rolled his shoulders to ease the growing aches of his imminent shape-shift. As a pure-blooded Lycan version of the werewolf species, shifting was part of his heritage. He liked it.

But he needed a little more time before he could do so, and he needed to keep his voice for a while longer. Long enough to corral the trespasser he was hunting out here, a rogue who brought trouble too close to home and was slippery as hell.

“Where are you?” Grant whispered to his prey. “What are you?”

The interloper whose arrival he anticipated could be human, though Grant doubted it. As a rule, humans weren’t partial to acts as grisly as this crazy son of a bitch’s grotesque taste for the raw meat of neighboring cattle. Disappearing animals had garnered the attention of angry ranchers with rifles, and those ranchers would be on the prowl tonight to protect their herds.

No. He suspected it was a half-crazed werewolf doing the damage. And if that scenario turned out to be true, the rogue had to be removed from human radar as quickly as possible. Werewolves had kept their presence and identities safe for over a thousand years and couldn’t afford to blow it all now.

But damn...

The whole raw meat thing surrounding the freak he was after was a strange twist on abnormal. No werewolf Grant knew of went after cattle on the hoof. Most Weres, including him, preferred their burgers well done and on a bun.

These days, most Weres were as civilized as their human counterparts—at least 99 percent of the time. Humans just wouldn’t like the fact that some police officers, nurses and even ER techs could actually be more than they seemed each time a full moon rolled around.

This trespasser was messing with those secrets. Grant couldn’t afford to let angry ranchers get too close to his place of business. Keeping neighbors out of his hair and away from Desperado was imperative to protect the special beings harbored behind the old ghost town’s shuttered windows.

Grant raised his head, sniffed the air.

A bittersweet scent left a tang on his tongue. Moonlight ruled the desert tonight in an almost-full phase. His inner wolf was expanding, waiting in anticipation, as the moon rose above the trees.

Unlike most Weres, Grant didn’t have to give in to the moon’s mystical allure. He could refuse the call if he chose to. A special gift had been twisted into his heritage, giving him the ability to shift with or without the moon calling the shots, when resistance for many others of his kind was futile.

“Just a few minutes more,” he mused, almost ready for his transformation. Wolf blood made him faster and more flexible. It also made him lethal.

The first claw popped out as his fingers uncurled. The rest of them followed in rapid succession, long and razor sharp.

Pressure inside him was building. Ten seconds was all it would take to complete a full shape-shift. His unique abilities, combined with the purity of his bloodline, made him alpha of his own desert pack. Rattlesnakes and crazed lunatics aside, he was probably the most dangerous creature in the area.

“As for you,” he said, speaking to the interloper he waited for. “Are you an unlucky bastard who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Were you infected by a bite or scratch from a bad wolf and surprised when the next full moon came around? Because it seems no one has taught you how to behave.”

Even after a bad bite or scratch, Grant knew, if a human being had been a good human before, he or she would be a good Were now. And good guys weren’t cattle rustlers.

“You would have garnered sympathy if you had come knocking. Now look. The problems you’ve been causing have to be dealt with.” The secrets hidden inside the town called Desperado were at stake and Grant was uncomfortable with how close to Desperado’s gates he was standing. “So, come on. What are you waiting for?”

He searched the area for a hint of the trespasser and spoke again. “I am leader, watcher, gatekeeper, secret holder, guardian and reluctant ruler of a pack of like-bodied, like-minded Weres. Do you purposefully taunt me?”

His patience was wearing thin. Grant glanced once more at the moon then did a quick scan of the mountain range, sifting through the night smells in search of anomalies.

The air was loaded with unique fragrances only found in the West: a combination of sand, brush, overheated rock, animals, cactus and the trees that tenaciously clung to the hillside despite a general lack of water. All those smells fit neatly into his mental data banks.

Except for one.

That one stood out like a shout.

Wrapped in the breeze was the unmistakable odor of blood. There had been another fresh kill, the third in as many passing months. That pissed him off.

“Damn fool.” His voice rumbled. “Who the hell do you think you are to put all of us in jeopardy? It’s only a matter of time before we find you.”

The fact that the creature out there had so far eluded capture was also an anomaly with a wolf pack on the prowl. The only question to consider was whether this trespassing idiot would turn out to be adaptable if offered a choice.

Grant turned upwind. His shoulders twitched again. “If you’re a Were, and in the vicinity, you should be able to pick up my thoughts.” Grant silently sent the message over the telepathic channel most werewolves used to communicate. “Barring that, maybe you can hear my voice.”

He detected no response at all.

“Okay. All right.” Grant raised his face to let the moonlight soak in. “It’s time to up the ante.”

Waves of cold penetrated his bronzed skin and sifted downward, layer by layer, to take control of muscles and nerves. The pain the cold brought was immediate and terrible, but was quickly replaced by a searing heat that would fuel mounds of muscle.

Grant welcomed the discomfort. He welcomed the wolf. Vestiges of his human shape began to shred as he became one with the song that sang to him now. Wolf music. The call of the wild.

I am Lycan, alpha and a servant of the moon. Whatever the hell is going on around here needs to be set straight.

Muscles trembled as they began to expand. Grant’s jeans felt tight. His boots felt cramped and his face stung. With his last speaking breath, he warned, “Time to face the consequences of your actions, whoever you are,” knowing that any rogue wolf with half a brain would run the other way.

Cheekbones rearranged with a rub of ligaments. Vertebrae crackled with sounds no human would ever want to hear. Rabbits scurried. Coyotes whimpered and tucked their tails as Grant Wade, now half man and half wolf, straightened up in the light...his transition punctuated by gunshots in the distance.

Hell, had ranchers found that rogue?

Voiceless now, his body corded with tense, fine-tuned muscle, Grant issued a roar that echoed along the red-rock canyon walls behind him...and began the steep slide downhill.

Chapter 2

Paxton Hall wrinkled her nose as she stepped off the plane.

She pressed her blond fringe of bangs off her forehead and squinted at the scene in front of her. The jet had parked its little tin-covered ass in the middle of nowhere, it seemed to her. Unlike private airports in the East, this Arizona stopover would require a long-distance sprint across an acre of molten tarmac in the blazing sun to get to the terminal. And she was wearing heels.

“We’ll unload the luggage,” someone said from behind her. “You can pick up your bags at the gate.”

Swell. Her bags were going to get a ride. Maybe she could hitch a trip to the terminal along with them.

“Thanks,” she said, watching heat rise from the asphalt like a wavering mirage. She hadn’t forgotten the extremes of Arizona weather and the scorching wind that made everything look barren, but being born here wasn’t an automatic passport to feeling familiar with it now.

Paxton didn’t reach for the metal stair rail, which would have been a sure way to scald her fingers. She was seriously reconsidering the viability of this trip, not quite sure why she was in Arizona. She had her own gig in the East and a nice rented town house. Her income was steady, if not fabulous, and good enough to support her current lifestyle.

So, why did she really need this Arizona property her father had left her, other than for a trip down Nostalgia Lane and the small chunk of change a couple of hundred acres in the middle of nowhere might bring when it sold?

Except that she couldn’t actually sell it, as things were, since her father, God rest his soul, had left the old tourist attraction that sat smack in the center of all that land she had inherited to someone else. Someone unrelated to the family. An unfamiliar name in the will.

Who the hell was Grant Wade, anyway?

How was she supposed to sell a parcel of land that circled, but didn’t include, the central piece?

“Safe journey,” the attendant said politely, interrupting her thoughts. “Will you need anything else, Ms. Hall?”

“No. Thanks,” Paxton returned absently as she headed down the steps with a tight grip on her briefcase.

That man...Grant Wade...would either have to buy her out or turn the Desperado ghost town over to her so she could sell the place and be out of here—back to civilization, green grass and cool breezes. When she was in Maryland, coming here had seemed like the thing to do. Now that she was here, Paxton hoped she hadn’t been wrong about that.

She’d worn a skirt, which allowed hot air to flow up and over her thighs as she stepped onto asphalt so overheated her heels seemed to sink in. With that hot caress on her naked legs came flashbacks...memories of sweltering desert heat on her face when she was a kid and how much she had liked the soaring temperatures back then. A very long time ago.

She remembered the distinct smells of heat-scorched land and the way her young skin had first burned before becoming a sun-kissed gold as summers wore on. Here in Arizona is where her wildness had first blossomed and where she had learned to ride and run. It’s where her mother had died, right before little Paxton had been sent away to a distant relative on the East Coast, away from this place and far from her dad.

Those old memories were more reminiscent of bad dreams now. But the tingle at the base of her neck signified something more complex than just reminisces and the firing up of a few random nerve endings. It brought home the fact that she had never seen her dad again after leaving this place. Not even once. She hadn’t heard from him—no birthday cards, Christmas packages or calls—in all that time.

Twenty frigging years.

And now Andrew Hall was dead, and she was back where she started. The land of sand and sun. Because of that, Paxton was determined to be trouble incarnate if Mr. Grant Wade didn’t listen to reason. She was going to bury her fear of confrontations and make Grant Wade assume trouble was her middle name.

Got that, Wade?

Besides, the man had to be at least sixty-five years old if he had been her father’s friend. That land might be a burden for an old guy. She’d done some research, of course, but the only person the internet had turned up with that name in this part of the United States was a Texas Ranger nowhere near an advanced age. So her Grant Wade had to be an old guy who had inconveniently stayed off everyone’s front page.

Paxton squinted as she scanned the tarmac, where the damn heat waves were manifesting into the form of a man—one lone man in all that wide-open space, seemingly walking toward her.

Shielding her eyes with a hand, Paxton wondered whether to keep walking and meet this guy or stay in place and fry in black silk on the hot asphalt.

She kept walking.

Behind her, she heard the luggage cart pull away from the plane. From somewhere far off came the static sound of a speaker. Those things were inconsequential. Her eyes were trained on the man who walked with the casual, apparently single-minded intention of meeting up with her. Had to be her, because at the moment she was the only one out here and he wasn’t headed to a parked plane.

Who was this guy?

The stranger was tall, lean, and wore a wide-brimmed hat. Broad shoulders balanced a narrow waist. Long legs were clad in jeans, and his boots made soft thudding sounds on the pavement. A silver buckle on his belt flashed in the sun the way diamonds flared beneath jewelry store lighting.

Those things screamed the word cowboy.

A white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows showed off sun-bronzed skin. As he approached, Paxton saw that enough top buttons on the shirt were open to lay bare a triangle of skin that attracted her attention for a little too long. When she looked up, he was close enough for her to see his wide, engaging smile.

And his face...

Christ almighty. It was chiseled, angular, with taut skin that fell somewhere on the golden spectrum. This guy, whoever he was, seemed to have inherited a lucky combination of genes that made him both elegant and rugged. The whole package suggested a new classification of the term handsome. Even if he was a cowboy.

“Paxton Hall?” He stopped a few feet from her and removed his hat, showing off a mass of shaggy auburn hair.

He was fine to look at, sure, Paxton noted. But what could he possibly want?

“Ms. Hall?” he repeated, with a slight variation.

“Yes.” She continued to shield her eyes. “That’s me.”

The hunk’s smile was as brilliant as the rest of him, and that was saying something. Fine lines shot out from the corners of his eyes in honor of some years in the sun without detracting from the overall hunky look.

Paxton wished she could see the color of those eyes, hidden behind his sunglasses, and wondered if they’d be blue. Light blue eyes set in sun-darkened skin would have topped the whole thing off nicely.

“I’ve come to escort you to your hotel,” he said in a deep voice that ran ridiculous circles around Paxton’s impoverished libido. It was obvious to her that she hadn’t taken enough time lately to explore the ramifications of having been without a boyfriend for several months now.

Plus...didn’t every woman have cowboy fantasies?

“Your hotel,” he repeated, probably wondering if she had hearing problems.

There was just something about his voice and how suggestive it was of star-filled desert nights and the almost unearthly scent of night-blooming flowers. Two sentences from him and Paxton was thrown back in time to when she had first noticed things like those strong, sweet Arizona scents.

Or maybe it was all just a side effect of the stifling heat.

“I didn’t call for a taxi service,” she said.

He nodded. “I thought you might like a ride.”

“Because?”

“It’s hot.” He was still grinning, and that grin was contagious.

Paxton smiled back.

“I totally agree about the heat. But I’m pretty sure you didn’t answer my question about not calling a service,” she said.

“Your attorney mentioned that you might be headed this way today.”

Okay. That made sense. She felt better.

“In that case, yes. Thanks. I’d like a ride to...” Paxton paused, mid-speech. “I didn’t book a hotel, sure there are plenty of them.”

He nodded again. “No problem. I’ll take you to one. I think you’ll find most of the accommodations around here acceptable.”

He was staring at her, not exactly rudely, but with the kind of lingering appraisal that brought on a blush. He’d be taking in the black silk shirt, the high heels and the private plane her attorney had let her use because several well-off clients needed to hitch a ride back to Maryland. This guy would probably be thinking he’d have to book her a suite in a fancy boutique hotel.

Hell, she couldn’t afford a suite. Not that she wouldn’t like one. Cash wasn’t exactly tight, but it was on close watch. She didn’t get paid for extra time off from her gig as a nurse in the ER, and her return trip to Maryland was on a commercial flight, in coach.

“That would be great,” Paxton said. “Any hotel will do. I’m not fussy and I won’t be here long.”

She just needed to get out of this heat and into different clothes. Big thanks would be due to her lawyer for thinking about her enough to send a gorgeous chauffeur.

That smile he was still offering? Dazzling. Yet Paxton’s instincts warned her that the guy’s smile hid something. A trace of concern, maybe? Concern for what? That she’d be a prissy Easterner for whom the extremes of comfort were paramount, when that was miles from the truth?

If they spent any time together, he’d find out how unprepared she was for this trip into her past. Her black silk shirt hadn’t been the greatest idea for day wear in a sun-drenched state. Cowboy would note that, too. She had worn it in honor of her father’s recent passing, in spite of the fact that she hadn’t really known her dad.

Briefly, Paxton closed her eyes, thinking that anyone would have assumed she’d have gotten over that kind of loss, along with old abandonment issues. But being here in Arizona again was causing a sudden emotional upheaval. Just a few steps off the plane had been all it took to bring the old days back.

“This way,” the cowboy said, stepping aside, waving his hat at the terminal. “I hope you don’t mind riding in a truck.”

So, no real chauffeur then. Just a favor from someone her lawyer knew.

“That would be fine,” she returned. “Would you mind confirming my attorney’s name?”

“Daniel Dunn, Esquire.”

“Do you know Dan personally?”

“As well as anyone can know a lawyer by phone.”

“Great.” Paxton moved forward, eager to get to the terminal. If this guy knew her lawyer, he had to be legit.

“Do you think we could get something cold to drink on the way to the hotel?” she asked.

“It would be my pleasure to make that happen,” her escort congenially replied.

Though she didn’t glance sideways, Paxton was aware of every move the guy made. He purposefully shortened his strides to accommodate hers. Having him beside her was both a boon and another unsettling feature of this trip. Speed hampered by the height of her heels, Paxton felt doubly foolish and out of place. She no longer belonged here. She was trespassing on the past—both its ideals and its pain.

What the hell was I thinking?

As they entered the small terminal, her companion placed a hand on her elbow to guide her toward the bags. His touch was electric, empathetic. Paxton wanted to lean into him for the kind of support she needed to get through this ordeal, when giving in to the urge to fold up like an accordion would have been the end of her.