“I was packing just in case, all right? You don’t know how the fuck long we’re gonna be out here in the Hundred Acre Wood. I wanted to be prepared,” she gasped.
“Hah! You could feed a small country with what’s in that backpack and it has nothing to do with anyone but you and your bottomless pit of a stomach!” Marty chirped.”
“One more crack about my fat keister and I’ll haul your ass up that mountain and drop you from the tippy-top!”
As Cormac listened to them argue, following behind them, hopping from tree to tree, snowdrift to snowdrift, he caught the scent again, distracting him from formulating a plan about what to do with these women.
Sweet and soft, it grazed his nostrils before it slipped away.
He’d purposely covered his scent the moment he’d spotted the three of them from across the river. It seemed ridiculously cautionary at the time, but he’d learned the hard way never to expose himself. Now that he knew at least one of them was a werewolf, he was glad he’d taken the time to roll in some mud and leftover fish guts.
Just as the women peaked the top of the hill and Wanda yelled out, “Oh my God, I think I found it!” he smelled that perfume again.
That was probably five seconds before something sharp and pointy jabbed him in the side of his neck and he howled his outrage, before falling to the frozen ground and passing out cold.
Chapter 2
As the great Sheldon would say, bazinga!
Theodora “Teddy” Gribanov smiled in satisfaction as she eyed her prey from more than a hundred yards away.
Hah. Her older twin brothers, Vadim and Viktor, could essentially suck it. She still had it and she had it hard. Grabbing her phone from her backpack, she zoomed in and snapped a picture of Cormac Vitali’s still body, lying in the snow as though he were merely napping, and sent it off to her brother with the subject, “Neener-Neener-Neener!”
Jamming the phone back into her pack, she hauled it over her shoulder and pushed her way up the small incline to stand over this enormous man she’d just taken down with a dart gun.
He was worth a lot of money.
A lot. Money she’d gladly collect and stuff away in her bank account until the time came to figure out how to save the part of her life that was her heart and soul.
For right now, all she wanted to do was teach her mouthy brothers a lesson about patience and perseverance, and the fact that, despite their ribbing her about being a candy-ass, she wasn’t such a rainbow Skittle after all.
For a moment, she wondered who those women Cormac had been following were and if they were here for the same reason she was.
That would piss her off. A deal was a deal, comrade. Vitali was hers—which meant she needed to move quickly in case they’d heard his yelp through all that squealing they were doing up over the rise of the hill.
Kneeling, she was relieved to hear the voices of the three bickering women were still distant, but she couldn’t quite catch what they were saying.
Not that it mattered. She was going to haul Cormac Vitali out of this forest, lob him into her battered truck and bring him in—then do a drive-by at the bank, where she’d withdraw her hefty paycheck.
Jamming her hands under his torso, she ignored how muscly he was, how thick his thighs were, and the fact that he had silky chestnut-brown hair sprouting from beneath his knit cap.
She also managed to ignore his stench. Why he’d covered himself in mud, fish guts, and whatever that salty hint of schmeg was, she had no clue.
Don’t worry about who he is or what his predicament is, Teddy. It’s what makes you too soft for this shit. Toughen up and imagine dollar signs on his forehead instead of trying to peer into his soul to see if his heart beats true. Bad guys are bad guys.
Viktor’s taunting but stern words just before she’d left Denver came back to haunt her.
Okay, so she liked to look further than the paycheck. But looking at Cormac, his eyelashes fluttering against his ruddy cheeks, lean and chiseled, wasn’t hard to do.
If one of her brothers had just tranq’d a hot babe, she’d entirely expect them to wonder what had brought their prey the misfortune of meeting the stealthy tip of a dart gun.
But they were slobbering Neanderthals, and they cared about one thing and one thing alone. Cash.
Well, to be fair, they cared about her, too. Which was why they’d taken her out of the game for so long.
But she was better now.
You’re nothing, Teddy. Nothing.
Fuck you, she silently spat.
Teddy bit the inside of her cheek to fight the nausea. She damn well was better, and it was time to stop being the biggest sissy this side of the Mountain time zone and get ’er done. She needed this money.
Her hands only shook a little as she pulled Cormac’s limp form to her chest, and she was proud to say she flung his body over her shoulder fireman style, her knees only buckling a little before she wobbled and righted herself, her teeth tightly clamped.