prepared. And like an old bear he looked forward to the six foot snows and was ready to hibernate. Like an old bear in a tuxedo, he admitted ruefully when he thought of the generator, waiting and ready for when the electricity would inevitably fail; the sophisticated radio he would use only in the event of an emergency; and a state-of-the-art computer residing in the small, anterior room off the gallery that he called his lair.
“What the hell happens now when the snows cover the windows and seal the doors?” he asked the wolf as he regarded a sky that showed no sign of granting the very weather of which he spoke. “What will I do when the electricity stops and the generator dies, and the lonelies creep in?”
The lonelies.
His name for a very integral part of living as he did. That endless interval when Spring is nearly a dream realized, yet Winter lingers arrogantly, behaving its worst, its mood most capricious. A condition perfect for sending one plummeting into depression and the madness of cabin fever, or for strengthening one’s resolve and renewing one’s soul as it did for Ty.
“What will it do to Simon McKinzie’s walking wounded? What miracle does he expect of me?”
The wolf grinned, thumped his tail once on the bare floor, and kept his own counsel. Tilting his head, he presented the soft, vulnerable underside of his ebony throat to be scratched.
“No answer, huh?” Without interrupting his vigil, Ty stroked the wolf. “I guess you’re thinking it’s my own fault, that we wouldn’t be in this predicament if I’d only said no to Valentina. But could you say no to your sister? Wait!” In a forestalling motion he lifted his hand from the wolfs throat. “Don’t tell me, I know. But I promise you, sport, you’d be as big a sucker as I’ve always been if your sisters were like Val. Or Patience.”
The wolf turned an uncertain look at him.
“You don’t think so, I take it?” A nearly silent rumble drew taut the furry black throat as the wolf turned to stare again out the window. “Better think again. You’d understand if you knew their history with me. No,” he corrected. “You’d understand better if you knew my slavish history with them.”
With a self mocking shake of his head, Tynan O’Hara murmured, “I keep telling myself the day will come when I won’t be such an easy mark for either of my sisters. But, in my heart, I know that will also be the proverbial cold day in Hell.”
The rumble became a soft growl, as the wolf grew uncommonly impatient with his master’s uncommon monologue.
“I know, sport,” he soothed the wolf. “I’m not completely blinded, I see it, too.”
A flash of light where there should be only grass and rolling hills had caught human as well as canine attention. Setting the cup aside, with hands shoved abruptly into the hip pockets of his jeans, his mouth drawn into a stark line and eyes narrowed against the brilliant unsullied sky, Ty waited with the wolf for a second flash.
“There,” he muttered. A sound not unlike a growl itself.
As if needing only this cue, the wolf drew himself to attention. Ears perked and acutely tuned. Eyes, no less blue than any fourth generation Irishman’s, riveted. As the ridge of fur bristled the length of his spine, he stood like a shadowy sentinel by the side of the human he’d chosen as his own.
The light flashed, then again in another place, drawing ever closer to the cabin. “And there,” Ty confirmed grimly. “Coming too fast.”
The flash, light glinting off the windshield of a vehicle approaching as if it expressed the turbulent mood of its driver, became constant. In a matter of minutes, if it made the grade that dipped, then rose to the cabin, the Land Rover would be in his yard.
The vexing winter boarder would have arrived.
“Easy, easy,” Ty said as much to himself as the wolf. A plume of dust heralded the threatened advent. Sighing, he groused again under his breath, “It looks like there will be three of us for the winter after all.”
Curious at the strange mood of his human, or perhaps in commiseration, the wolf nipped gently at the corded seam of Ty’s jeans.
“Are you wondering why I don’t stop grumbling and live up to my word?” In a stroke of his finger under the animal’s throat, Ty lifted its gaze to his. “Are you thinking a promise is a promise, especially to Valentina? Is that it? Well, you’re right. So, I suppose we’d best go make like a welcoming committee.”
With the wolf at his heels, he stepped to the door and opened it. At the edge of the porch he paused, breathing in deeply, savoring what he feared might be his last comfortable breath for a while. “Just one more question, Shadow.” He addressed the wolf by its name for the first time. “What the hell are we going to do with a woman in our all male sanctum for eight long, cold months?”
The wolf gave him another slow, considering look.
Lifting a sardonic brow, Ty laughed, “Spare me the ‘if you don’t know, Buster, I’m not going to tell you’ looks. Believe me, that’s a complication I don’t need and don’t want.”
The wolf only looked at him, silent and still, hackles at half mast.
“If we’re lucky, maybe she’ll hate us on sight. Hopefully, in time to hightail it back to the train crossing tonight and the airport tomorrow.”
Descending the steps, man and wolf crossed the small lawn. At the edge of the drive they waited. With no appreciable sign of caution, the approaching vehicle disappeared into the declension that set Tynan O’Hara’s world apart. “There’s still hope, Shadow. Until the very last, there’s hope. Who knows?” Ty shrugged heavy shoulders clad in a dark woolen shirt. “Maybe two ugly guys won’t be her idea of winter companions.”
The Land Rover topped the rise, skidded to a halt, obscuring car and driver in a cloud of dust. A shower of loose stone pelted Ty’s shins and boots. The wolf took a discreet step back as if disassociating himself from the man as much as avoiding the flying debris, Ty coughed and blinked, observing the desertion wryly.
“Okay, have it your way, traitor,” he said softly, without rancor. “One ugly guy and a conceited mutt.”
“A good-looking guy and man’s best friend,” Merrill Santiago sputtered through clenched teeth as she glared through the sifting haze her protesting tires had created.
“A good-looking guy and a wolf,” she reassessed her opinion as the furor of her arrival settled, permitting a better view. “The first probably not an iota different from the latter, when one gets past the mustache of one and the fur coat of the other.
“Just what I need!” Gripping the steering wheel as if it were her lifeline with the world she’d left behind, she shivered in distaste. “A winter in exile, fending off mister wonderful, while his wild beast chews off my leg.” Fingertips tapping in a fast paced rhythm that matched her mounting dismay, she exhaled wearily, dispatching a tangle of gold streaked bangs from her eyes.
Instinct and trust in Simon McKinzie warned that she was judging wrongly and unfairly. That there was, no doubt, far more to the character of this man than a craggy and arresting face. Perhaps more than she would want.
Her bleak gaze strayed from man and beast to the land, the essence of wilderness. Depression and the first stirring
