the near-empty refrigerator and pantry, he waved away her offering. “Thanks. But no.”
Times were tough and he didn’t want to take advantage of her kindness.
Her nostrils flared slightly and her full, luscious lips flattened.
“I meant no offense,” he said, pulling on a black sweatshirt. Wolfans took food seriously. Refusing food insulted the one offering it. “But I don’t need your supper.”
His stomach protested. Loudly.
“I’m not the one whose stomach is about to eat itself.” She jabbed the box toward him. “Take them, they’re yours.”
“I saw the fridge.” He gently pushed back the tempting container. “You need to eat those more than I do. I have rations that will hold me over. And I’ll pay you for the beer.” He dug a wallet from the duffel and held out a fifty-dollar bill.
Mouth open and shock rippling through her gaze, she stared at his hand. Suddenly, full-bellied feminine laughter shook her body.
Before the explosion, Lincoln had found a woman’s laugh sexy. In his current circumstance, scarred and crippled, he felt belittled and hurt. He’d built up a fantasy about this woman. One where her kindness and gentleness had soothed and safe-guarded him. In reality, Angeline mocked him the same way the Program’s bureaucrats had when Lincoln had insisted that he could still perform his sworn duties.
The money slipped through his fingers and drifted to the floor. Whether she used it or not, Lincoln didn’t care.
He stood, steady and effortlessly. After a month of endless practice, he could stand, walk, run, jump and climb stairs with ease. Kneeling could be a bit tricky, but he managed. Shifting into his wolf form had proven to be the most challenging. No longer could he simply strip down and crouch before turning into his wolf. Now he had to carefully remove the artificial leg, otherwise it would turn to ash during the transformation.
As life changing as the loss had been, he was grateful to be alive. If he’d died instead of Lila, no one would go to the lengths Lincoln would to find his missing wolfling.
He slung the strap of the duffel bag over his shoulder then trudged toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To sleep in my truck until I can straighten this out with Tristan,” he snapped, too exhausted to keep the frustration and anger from his voice.
“I wasn’t laughing at you, Lincoln.”
His hand froze on the doorknob.
“It’s sweet of you to overpay for the beer to help me out with groceries, but I don’t need it. The fridge is empty because I don’t like to cook, not because I can’t afford to buy food. That’s why I laughed.”
She eased behind him. “You see, I can take care of myself. And if I ever needed anything, my family and my pack would step up. That’s how the Walker’s Run Co-operative works.”
A few years ago, while in Romania and assigned to a protective detail for the Woelfesenat’s negotiator, Brice Walker, Lincoln had learned of the Walker’s Run pack’s co-operative. Consisting of wolfans and a handful of humans aware of the existence of Wahyas, the Co-op gave the Walker’s Run pack a public, human face and a clever way to hide in plain sight among the unsuspecting townsfolk in Maico, a small Appalachian community in northeast Georgia where the pack resided.
Pivoting toward Angeline, Lincoln noticed the genuine concern etched on her face. Clearly, she hadn’t meant to upset him and he felt like an idiot to have allowed a trivial misunderstanding to bruise his pride.
Nine weeks in the infirmary at Headquarters had turned him soft. Lincoln had hoped time away from HQ might help him regain his bearings. Now, he might need to reassess that decision.
How could he stay focused on increasing his stamina and sharpening his combat skills so he could return to Somalia and find Dayax when his guardian angel had escaped his dreams and lived only a few door down from where he would be staying?
“You can have this back.” Slowly, her long, tapered fingers slid into his hip pocket to deposit the fifty. The ensuing jolt to his system rendered his entire body flaccid, except for his shaft, which instantly hardened.
“As I said before, bon appétit!” Moving her other hand from behind her back, Angeline presented him with the box of chicken wings. “And no there’s no need to sleep in your truck. I have a key to Tristan’s apartment.”
“Why?” Lincoln wondered about the relationship between the two and why Tristan had failed to mention that tidbit during their brief call earlier.
“Neighbors look out for each other.” She picked up a keyring from the kitchen counter, worked off a key and handed it to Lincoln. “Welcome to the neighborhood, Lincoln.”
A key in one hand and food in the other, he should be happy to finally be getting into his temporary apartment. “I wouldn’t mind some company for a while.”
Her gaze slid down his torso to the erection his pants couldn’t hide. Food and sex. A wolfan male’s priorities.
“I gave you food. Now you need to take care of the rest on your own.” She reached past him and opened the door. The biting February air gusted into the apartment and nipped his skin beneath the sweatshirt.
“Good night, Lincoln.” Angeline patted his chest, urging him to leave.
He’d barely stepped outside when the door closed behind him and locked.
“Whew! That was close.” Angeline’s voice reached his ears despite the barrier.
Turning, he strolled down the open corridor to the corner apartment, a smile budding on his face even as a weight settled in his heart. He had a mission to complete. Until he found Dayax, Lincoln would do well to resist the devilish diversion of his angelic neighbor.
Heart thumping and holding her breath, Angeline leaned against the door. The jumble of feelings knotting inside her were a fluke. Lincoln was a Dogman. Period. She could be neighborly but absolutely nothing else.
She squinched her eyes to banish the vision of him watching her beneath long, dark lashes as his silvery-green gaze caressed her face with reverence and awe. The effort merely branded the image into her brain.
Inheriting her mother’s model looks, Angeline had grown numb to people’s ogles, waggles and even jealousy-filled glares.
But the way Lincoln looked at her when she’d laughed and he’d misunderstood had felt like an iron fist slamming into her stomach, hard and painful.
Pushing away from the door, she trudged to the couch, slouched against the leather cushions and pulled off her boots. Next she peeled out of the thick sweater she wore over the long-sleeved T-shirt and tossed it in the chair. Picking up the afghan Lincoln had carefully folded, she inhaled his earthy male musk. Instead of trotting outside to hang the afghan on the balcony in the cold night air to remove his scent, she shook it out and laid it across her lap. After all, she couldn’t leave her favorite blanket out in the elements.
Too keyed up to sleep, Angeline visually searched for the television remote and didn’t see it on either end table or the
