Werewolf Wedding(59)

“Good,” Dane said, grinning mockingly again. “And now, what I want from you is for you to sit your pretty ass down, and finish my statue. I’m so damn glad I had this idea. It’s absolutely perfect. Can you imagine the look on Jake’s face? Ha! His own statue, fixed up and looking a thousand times better.”

I couldn’t believe that he’d gone from threatening my life to joking in the space of about three breaths. And I wasn’t sure whether or not he actually believed that he had come up with the statue idea or not, but... hey, I wasn’t going to argue. If he believed it, then everyone else would too.

And really? That’s all we needed. We just needed enough belief to convince the pack that maybe – just maybe – having this psychopath as the voice of their next generation? Not the best idea.

The motorcycle’s engine throbbed outside my studio, thumping so loudly that the glass in my fancy new shower was rattling against the hinges.

“Oh, shower!” I remembered, immediately washing my mind of Dane Somerset. I fished the envelope out of my pocket and smelled it.

It was him, all right. Whatever it was about him that smelled like fresh cut wood and earth and... well, and just the smell of man. It sent a trill through my soul that left my body aching for him, begging in all those places, all those tingling ladyparts going right along with the choir.

Opening the letter, the scent of him filled my nose. It was brief, as I figured he wasn’t much of a poet, but just the look of his handwriting, the knowledge that he’d done this, that made me feel a little more at peace.

“Dear Delilah,” the letter read, “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I feel like an idiot.”

“That’s one way to start a love letter,” I said to my empty office, laughing.

“I’m so wrapped up in you that I can’t think about anything else. I went running through the woods last night to try and keep my mind at something approaching rest, and I tripped over a root. I know that doesn’t sound very exciting, but for a wolf whose been running the woods for the last thirty years? That’s not normal.”

The thought of Jake in his huge, silver, lupine form dashing through the woods and then catching a root with his toe and face-planting square in the dirt was more amusing than I’d like to admit. That brought a smile to my face.

“You can make me grin just by writing things. I can see you, Jake,” I said his name like speaking it would make him appear. “You make me feel things I’ve never felt. Without you, I don’t know where I’d be.”

“Without you, I don’t know where I’d be,” the letter read. The heartbeat quickened in my chest. “I have to go. I hope you enjoy the new toys. Use them to make the most absurd, preposterous statue of a man you’ve ever made. The more ridiculous, the better. And if he hurts you, or scares you, or you feel alone, just look outside. Look at the moon. I’m doing the same thing.

“I love you, Delilah. Those words feel almost as good to write as they do to say. It won’t be long. See you Saturday.”

I held the paper to my chest, imagining that his voice spoke the words that his pen had formed. My skin burned hot for him, my lips trembling as tears welled up in the corners of my eyes. I hurried to cram the letter into the space between the two middle drawers.

“It’s going to work,” I said. “It’s going to work because it has to work. The bad guys never win. Not really. They can get ahead now and then, but when it comes down to it, the bad guys never, ever win.”

I have never in my life worked so hard, or for so long on a statue.

Wednesday night faded into Thursday morning. The amount of caffeine in my bloodstream was probably approaching critical mass by the time I finally cratered, more for the sake of my aching hands than because I needed to sleep.

The nap – if you can consider sleeping for five and a half hours a nap – was restless. I tossed and turned, aware that I was moaning in my sleep. My dreams were vivid and complex, which is how they always are when my mind is trying to sort something out.

When I finally forced myself to get off the couch and take a shower, it was wonderful. The overhead rain showerhead pelted my exhausted body with all sorts of streams of water. It had about fourteen different configurations. I was in that shower for about an hour and a half, I think, before the water finally went cold.

“Solar power doesn’t last that long.” That lovable son of a bitch had put in a hot water heater. Just as I was getting over that, the bell on my office door rang – a sound that I had heard just often enough to remember I had one, but not to remember what it sounded like.

“That beautiful son of a bitch sent me lunch,” I accidentally announced to the guy who delivered my Thai food. He smiled at me in a kind of crooked way and said, “Hot and sour soup, an order of chicken Pad Thai – you must like heat! This thing is so hot that smelling it makes my eyes water.”

I just smiled and nodded, taking the food. I was too stunned for anything else, although I’m sure the guy thought I was about the weirdest thing he’d seen that day. Bristly, puffy and confused from lack of sleep and then when I answer the door I just start cursing?

Actually, that’s not much different than normal, I thought with a laugh.

I’m laughing again. I’m laughing at nothing. For most people, that’s the sign of an impending nervous breakdown. But for me? I do it so often that not laughing at nothing, while alone with myself in an empty office, is the sign that something is gravely wrong.