Alanna (When Hearts Dare Series Book 2) (4 page)

Thompson pulled the stopper off the whiskey decanter. “Nothing you’d be interested in.”

Wolf’s back stiffened at the captain’s curt reply. “I took you for a broad-minded sort, but here you are judging me—or your other passengers, I’m not sure which. For your information, I recently discovered yet another reason why I’m not fit for life at sea, besides my definite dislike for whatever swims around down there.”

Thompson handed a whiskey to Wolf. “Oh, do tell.”

“Plain and simple. I enjoy the company of women—of all ages. They don’t irritate me like men can.”

“All ages? I thought you only went for young barmaids of loose persuasion. No attachments.”

“That, too, but given the choice while aboard ship, I’d definitely prefer the company of an elderly woman over a young one.”

“Why is that?”

Wolf shrugged. “An older woman would likely have some good conversation to offer, while a young one could turn into a powder keg if things turned sour.” He grinned and lifted his glass to a portrait of the captain and his wife, three daughters, and gray-haired mother. “Here’s to women. They manage to slip into old age a little softer than we men.”

Thompson took a swig of his drink and exhaled with a satisfied smile. “A little softer? What makes them any different from us besides the obvious?”

Wolf wiggled his glass, signaling a refill. “Women take their experiences into their hearts and never forget. But men? They take their experiences into their heads and can never remember. Turns them into grumpy old farts.”

Thompson shook his head and bit off a grin. “And here I thought you hadn’t a philosophical bone in—”

A knock sounded on the stateroom door.

“Our guests,” Thompson announced.

The galley boy tugged at the bottom of his formal white jacket and hurried to the door.

Alanna Malone stepped across the threshold.

Wolf sucked in a quick breath.
Goddamn!

Both of them froze for a brief moment and stared at one another in a tableau of utter astonishment.

Her recovery was so swift that, as she rebounded, her body’s movement continued outward in a fluid, graceful turn of a shoulder to the door. The jerk of her head became a regal pivot toward her mother. Her hand stopped its protective journey to her throat and swept forward to assist her mother through the entry.

Wolf fought a grin. Well, hadn’t life just gotten a helluva lot more interesting?

Alanna blinked in surprise.
Wolf.
She caught hold of her shock and remembered what she’d been taught:
Let your enemy see nothing but stoicism.

Enemy?

This man was no adversary. But oh, if things went her way, he could become something far more powerful and formidable.

Her mother huffed and puffed, propelling her wide girth through the door. With Father right behind them, mumbling as always, the distraction gave Alanna an opportunity to scrutinize Wolf.

She took in a slow, quiet breath and exhaled so softly a feather would not have fluttered. With the eye of a master, she took in every detail of the man who’d haunted the corners of her mind since that last night in the hotel. She snapped back to the present when she realized Wolf regarded her with a steady gaze. He’d paused for a brief moment when they’d caught sight of one another, and she’d swear a shock of recognition had washed over him. But then his countenance had shifted, and he’d stepped forward with graceful nonchalance, his features unreadable. Despite his aloofness, she was certain he remembered her.

She swallowed—discreetly. Lord, up close he was even more splendid. And those eyes. Thick, gilded lashes swept over magnetic blue eyes in a slow and lazy consideration of her. He could pass for a fallen god.

For a brief moment, something primal shimmered in all that blue. She didn’t flinch, nor did she look away. Getting caught staring at him wasn’t worth a second thought. One corner of her mouth begged to curl. She let it.

He lifted a brow.

And then his eyes danced.

Ah, good. The man had a humorous side. Nonetheless, rapier-sharp steel flashed beneath the amusement.

At the sight of Wolf, her mother stopped in her tracks and stared, slack-jawed. With a dip of his head, he turned to her. Her mouth clamped shut in a thin line. Her startled gaze flicked from the captain to Wolf and back again as she fought to recover her composure. Her spine stiffened and the air around her turned glacier cold.

Wolf’s mouth relaxed into something resembling the beginning of a smile, and with total calm, he appeared not to recognize her. Alanna bit her lip to keep from grinning like a miner who’d struck gold. This was rich, so very rich—and just what her belligerent mother deserved for the way she’d lit into Alanna back at the hotel.
Hurrah!

Her father nudged her mother, mumbled something unintelligible, and sidestepped both of them, his arm extended. “Captain Thompson, ah, there you are, there you are. So good to be here. So good to be here.” He pumped Thompson’s hand with a meaty paw, his booming voice laden with anticipation.

Not bothering to wait for Thompson’s reply, he bounded over to Wolf and forced Wolf’s arm up and down while he slapped him on the shoulder with gusto. “So this is the one. Yes, yes. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Mr. Wolf.”

Something subtle altered in Wolf’s demeanor. Wolf was
not
his last name, but rather his only name, she’d been told. So why hadn’t he corrected her father? Despite Wolf’s reputation as the best tracker in the Territory, she’d also heard he could be lethal if crossed. Perhaps her brusque parents would do well not to show him their arrogance.

Both men were tall, but Alanna’s father was wider of frame, robust, and fleshy, and appeared somewhat larger than Wolf—but only in girth. There was a curious vitality in Wolf, the source of which escaped her. But as she observed the two men together, the answer struck her—Wolf burned with a raw, feral power that sprang from beyond the physical—a quality her father did not possess.

The finesse her mother used to deter Wolf from touching Alanna’s hand when the two were introduced actually impressed her, the action was so deft. The way her mother leaned her large frame between them while she patronized the captain was exceptionally subtle, as if she were completely unaware that she blocked Wolf from her daughter.

A surge of mischief shot right through those magnificent eyes of his.

When he strolled over to the table and casually pulled out the chair next to the captain, where her father should have sat, Alanna wanted to laugh. Captain Thompson lowered his head and suppressed a grin. Wolf’s action forced her father to sit at the opposite end of the table from the captain, which left her mother in a dilemma—whether she placed Alanna across from Wolf, or next to him, he would have easy access to her. However, if her mother switched places with Alanna, she would refuse the place of honor to the left of the captain. The fusspot would never commit a social blunder of that magnitude.

With a small
humph,
her mother placed Alanna directly across from Wolf. Amusement tickled Alanna’s senses.

Wolf spoke first when they were seated. He turned to Mr. Malone. “So, was the fourth person in your party to take ill a servant?”

Malone’s grin split his face in two like a precise line carved straight across his features. “Very astute, Mr. Wolf. Very astute.” He heaped more mashed potatoes onto his plate.

Wolf made certain his manners were impeccable, his demeanor calm, but beneath his composed exterior snaked raw emotion. It took all his discipline to withhold the foremost question in his mind—since the Malones hailed from Boston, had they known his parents? Before the ship arrived at its destination, they’d tell him what he wanted to know.

Don’t reveal yourself,
Cameron had warned.
The elite of this young country is made up of a rather small group of families—one never knows who is related to whom. With no royalty in America, wealth replaces throne and scepter. There are those who took precarious risks to earn their lofty positions. Take note.
Wolf hadn’t required Cameron’s advice. He intended to remain anonymous as he located his mother’s killer.

Malone stretched his arm over Wolf’s plate until the sleeves of his coat and shirt inched back enough to reveal a stone still strapped to his wrist. “Just in case. Just in case.” His eyes were mere slits, caused by the width of his potato-flecked grin. His smile traveled nowhere near his eyes.

Mrs. Malone’s lips thinned. “Are you from Boston, Mr. Wolf?” She attempted nonchalance, but regarded her plate as if something far grander than a hunk of chicken and a blob of potatoes lay before her. She made tight stabs at her food before she deposited it into a mouth that grew more disapproving by the moment.

Wolf took his time to respond. “Yes and no. I was born in Boston, but my parents relocated to St. Joseph, Missouri, when I was an infant,” he lied.

Mrs. Malone’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “Why would anyone want to settle
there?”
She jerked at Malone’s sharp exhale.

As if he had all the time in the world, Wolf set his fork on his plate, and gave her his full attention. “I never got a chance to ask them, Mrs. Malone. They left me an orphan when I was six.”

Her cheeks pinkened and her mouth clamped so tight it was a wonder any utensil could be wedged past her lips.

He’d accomplished what he wanted—she was unnerved by the way he studied people as though he had all day. “Oh, well . . . ahem. Poor thing. Do you have any living relatives in Boston?”

“I never said my parents were deceased, Mrs. Malone. I only said I was an orphan. It happens to a great many nowadays, as you are likely aware. I don’t consider having been orphaned anything extraordinary.” He’d restrict his lies to his parents only—less chance he’d slip up. “And no, I have no one in Boston. I travel there on business.”

He sat with his eyes fixed on her and calmly answered questions she obviously didn’t care to ask in the first place. Judging by the set of her mouth, she was keenly aware he’d deliberately hung her out to dry. A nerve quivered up one side of her squat neck. She squared her shoulders. By the sudden shift in her demeanor, he figured she was about to join in his game.

“Well then, how did you manage to turn yourself out so
nicely,
Mr. Wolf?”

Touché
. The woman must have had a great deal of practice in the art of belittling.

A slow, easy grin broke loose. “I do all right for myself, Mrs. Malone. Nothing quite as dignified or grand as your husband here. They say one has a tendency to be attracted to whatever one knows. That’s why so many farmers beget farmers, lawyers produce lawyers, that kind of thing. And since I didn’t know what my father did, I suppose I was attracted to what I knew best.”

His focus remained steady on the crass woman. “I spent a lot of time trying to run my parents down, and found so many other things along the way that I got pretty good at tracking lost people and goods. At least that’s what my clients tell me about the same time they’re complaining about my fees. People like your husband are the sort who usually hire me.” He paused, savoring his next words. “Or women such as yourself.”

Confusion mapped dour lines on her face. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, whatever would a woman such as
myself
do with the services of the likes of
you
?”

“Why, Mrs. Malone.” The words rolled off his tongue as sweetly as hers had earlier. “To find, shall we say, the secondary lifestyles of wealthy husbands? You know—mistresses, second families, bastard children, and the like.”

A small gasp escaped her lips.

Wolf shrugged nonchalantly, and turned to Malone. “Does your work require much travel away from your family?”

Alanna laughed, a soft, throaty purr that shot right through Wolf. She lifted a slender eyebrow and glanced his way before turning back to her mother. Up ’til now he’d wondered if she possessed a voice at all.

Thompson jumped into the conversation, informed Wolf that Malone was a merchant who dealt in diverse business ventures—textiles, railroads, diamond mines in Africa, and Chinese imports. It wasn’t long before the subject drifted elsewhere. When the captain shot a scowl at Wolf, he only raised his brows in amusement.

As the patter of conversation continued, Wolf shifted his attention across the table, to a place he’d purposely avoided until now. Alanna sat before him, her bold gaze steady on him. Damn, but the woman was unreadable—like a book with blank pages. Well, he’d make certain that situation didn’t last long—he’d have the whole trip to fill each page—one by one.

The view across the table could not have been more pleasant. He drank her in while slow heat simmered his blood. A wealth of raven curls piled atop her pretty head revealed the slender column of her neck—one he wouldn’t mind settling his mouth on. A jolt ran through him and tugged at his groin. He regarded the silk rose at her low neckline. The delicate pink petals brushed against her skin with the rise and fall of each breath—a breath that, if he wasn’t mistaken, had quickened.

He’d observed back at the hotel, and again this evening, that although there was a deep, feminine curve to a waist that flared out to well-shaped hips, her shoulders seemed much stronger than those of other women, her posture more erect, arms slender but firm. Strangely, Wolf was reminded of the sleek ballet dancers in a troupe that had passed through St. Joe, and of the bodies of the young, fit braves out on the prairie. She sat before him like a goddess come to life.

He boldly etched her features in his mind, scrutinized her for clues to her nature. When he reached her blue eyes, they met and caught his, held him immobile. A tremor shot through him. Time stood still while he studied her. He leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs under the table, and imagined doing God-knew-what to her. One leg bumped into the captain’s dog. He brushed a foot back and forth against the hound’s fur.

With a start, he realized it was no longer fur he rubbed against, but smooth flesh covered in a silk stocking.

The twitch of Alanna’s mouth told him he had not been mistaken. He stilled his leg, realized she had dispensed with her slippers and that her feet ran through Julia’s thick coat as well. She continued what she was about with eyes gone wide in false innocence, a silent message that she did not intend to cease her actions.

Ah, the filling of a once-empty page.

He left his leg in place. Rather than being purely sexual, the effect of her foot brushing against him also soothed. An urge to drag her across the table and into his arms beset him. Christ, he had to diffuse the situation—the old lady had a bead on him.

He picked up a Saratoga chip and deliberately handed it under the table to Julia. “Lucky dog.” He grinned when he came up empty-handed.

“Did you say something, Mr. Wolf?” the girl’s mother snapped. Her high-pitched tone grated on him. He snuffed the urge to tell her to hush.

“I noticed your daughter has your lovely skin and hair and her father’s unique blue eyes.” And lips so full and lush, he could bury his mouth in hers for a week and never come up for air. He shifted his attention from daughter to mother, and was equally bold in how he observed the matriarch.