Between a Wolf and a Hard Place Read online

  Also by Terry Spear

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  Jaguar Fever

  Jaguar Hunt

  Jaguar Pride

  A Very Jaguar Christmas

  Billionaire Wolf

  Billionaire in Wolf’s Clothing

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  Copyright © 2017 by Terry Spear

  Cover and internal design © 2017 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover art by Kris Keller

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

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  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  A Sneak Peek of SEAL Wolf Undercover

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  To Jan Buker, a friend and fan with an orange-striped tabby named Merlin who loves my books as much as Jan does and honors me with the cutest pictures. In Savage Hunger, I mentioned Merritt Island where I attended high school, and Jan contacted me to learn why I had mentioned that location. We discovered our lives had paralleled each other’s—our families having moved from California to Merritt Island, our fathers working on the Apollo space program. It truly is a small world, and though I didn’t know Jan back then, I’m thrilled to know her now.

  Chapter 1

  “I think there’s something wrong with me,” Ellie MacTire told her triplet Laurel as she vacuumed the lobby of their Victorian inn one last time before Brett Silver and his brothers moved their great-aunt’s baby grand piano to the sisters’ inn as a gesture of friendship.

  The ghost maid, Chrissy, stayed in the old, recently renovated inn in Silver Town, but Ellie wasn’t having any luck with her. The ghostly woman often turned the attic room’s light on and off, and sometimes the sisters saw her peering out the window. Ellie hadn’t been able to connect with her. And not being able to connect with a ghost didn’t happen very often for her. She was eager to help the maid find closure so she could go on her way, and in order to do so, the sisters needed to learn what was keeping Chrissy there. Maybe fear of the unknown? The inn had been her home forever.

  Their triplet Meghan raced through the closed hotel and dashed into the nearby bathroom in her reddish-gray wolf coat, leaving a trail of red, black, and gray hairs on the floor in her wake.

  Ellie let out her breath in exasperation. “Meghan.”

  From the bathroom, Meghan called out, “The wolf door in the basement is working properly now.”

  Leaving the bathroom dressed in jeans, boots, and a soft blue sweater that complemented her straight flaming-red bob, Meghan grabbed the mop. “Sorry for the wolf hairs. I had to make sure that wolf door was working right and didn’t squeak when anyone used it.” She paused. “So…what could be wrong with you?” Meghan didn’t sound serious in the least as she mopped the floor right behind Ellie.

  “Great on the wolf door. Who needs a handyman when we’ve got you?” Laurel asked.

  Meghan gave her a thumbs-up.

  “I can’t reach Chrissy, the ghost.” As if they didn’t know who Ellie was talking about. “I’ve tried and tried to make a connection, but she isn’t responding to me.”

  Laurel was the oldest and had always been the one in charge. She usually gave Ellie sound advice when her ability took a powder. They didn’t tell just anyone about their abilities, though Laurel’s weren’t as clear-cut with respect to ghost sightings. Meghan had a heightened ability to locate spirits like Ellie did. Even though witch-hunting was a thing of the past, a lot of people didn’t believe in ghosts and frowned on anyone who did. Silver Town was wolf run, and nearly everybody living there was a lupus garou. Ellie always figured they should be open-minded about other supernatural beings since, as wolves, they were clearly part of the equation. But it didn’t work that way.

  “You’re trying too hard.” Laurel tucked her hair behind her ears. Both she and Meghan had the most beautiful, clear-green eyes. Ellie’s were blue like their Aunt Charity’s, though she often wished hers were also green. “You know you get blocked when you’re really trying too hard to reach a spirit instead of letting the spirit move you. Chrissy seems content enough. So she’s not really a problem.”

  “Yeah. Except we’re booked for the next several months, which means the attic room will be occupied. I’d rather that she didn’t mess with the light while someone is in the room.” Ellie always wanted to help spirits find their way to their resting place, but in this case, she was feeling pressured to make it happen sooner rather than later for the sake of their guests. And she felt guilty about it too. Ghosts couldn’t help being trapped between worlds, and Ellie never knew for sure if releasing one was the best thing for it. They never came back and let her know she’d screwed up o
r anything.

  Meghan agreed. “I’m having the same problem. None of the incense I’ve used has helped either.”

  “The same goes for you, Meghan,” Laurel said in her usual reasonable way. “You’re trying to force it to happen. You know it only works if you’re not trying to beat a deadline.”

  Checking on reservations, Laurel shook her head, her short, curly, red hair bobbing while she worked at the computer. “We are booked solid for the weeks before, during, and after the Victorian Days celebration. For the four months after that, most of our guests are booking rooms so they can go skiing. So we still have a week’s break before the place is filled to capacity and more time to decorate for the holidays. Good thing we renovated the basement so we’d have a few extra rooms.”

  “What about the Alaskan retreat guest room? Who’s renting it?” Ellie had suggested decorating one room in a winter wolf theme. She wasn’t sure if Arctic wolves would prefer a room like that, or if gray or red wolves would because it was so unusual for them. Or just plain humans even. Maybe the white wolves would want something different from what they were used to.

  Ellie and her sisters were excited because their first Arctic wolves were coming to stay at the beginning of the year. In fact, the whole town was excited. Most of their pack had never seen white wolves, shifter or otherwise.

  “Most popular room in the bunch,” Laurel said. “It was booked right away. The Arctic wolves want it when they come for New Year’s. Gray wolves have it the rest of the time. The tropical room we did up for jaguar shifters—can’t wait to see if any come to stay—and then the forest room are the next two most popular choices. The mural of the northern lights against a midnight-blue sky with a pack of wolves howling at the moon in the Alaskan retreat room is pure genius.”

  “I agree. It’s beautiful. What are we going to do about Halloween decorations?” Meghan asked.

  “We go all out like we usually do,” Ellie said cheerfully.

  “The inn is haunted! Do we want to make it look haunted too?” Meghan asked. “I say we don’t put up spiderwebs or creepy spiders. Or skeletons. Make it appear…sweeter.”

  Ellie had already hung black and orange lights around the porch and set their collection of ceramic jack-o’-lanterns on the check-in counter and bookcases in the common room. They’d even bought a carved jack-o’-lantern featuring a wolf’s head, visible especially when a battery-operated candle was set inside.

  “No tombstones in front of the inn or by the fountain out back?” Ellie said. “You’re no fun. We have to put our stout, white candles out with the black candleholders, and really, we should have the fake spiderwebs. I’m okay with not having spiders dangling from them. I keep thinking they’re real and need to be killed.”

  “Okay,” Laurel said. “We’ll do everything but the spiders. We’ll put out more light strings so the inn is awash in lights—orange for the lower half and along the walkway, and pink lights for the top—to give it that sweeter appeal. I agree with Ellie. We have to have spiderwebs. And the ‘cemetery plot’ can be set up out back. We can play Victorian music, which can be scary sounding enough, especially pieces with heavy organ sounds. Like Phantom of the Opera—hauntingly beautiful. We’ll have a ton of candles for light but also to give that Victorian look.”

  Ellie was thrilled. She loved Halloween. So did Meghan and Laurel, but Meghan was afraid of scaring off potential customers now that the sisters had decided to stay in Silver Town. They hadn’t participated in Halloween last year because they were so busy finishing the renovations. Ellie couldn’t wait to see how the child and adult trick-or-treaters were dressed this year.

  She was going to wear a blue Victorian ball gown embroidered with gold and green designs and a low-cut bodice. She hoped Brett would drop by, because that’s who she really wanted to wear it for. The sisters had each bought several Victorian gowns to wear when guests stayed at the inn, so Ellie wasn’t sure which her sisters would choose for Halloween. She had others to select from for Victorian Days. Picking out all the different gowns and dressing up had been a lot of fun this year.

  Laurel studied her and said, “Okay, is something else bothering you?”

  Yeah, not that Ellie wanted to discuss it. The only reason she had considered speaking with Laurel was that two of Laurel’s mate’s cousins had found their future mates by first having steamy dreams about them. Maybe fantasizing about the wolf she was dating was normal.

  She’d seen Brett naked, of course. Wolves shifted, and they had to get naked to shift. And yes, she’d fantasized about boyfriends before. What would it be like to go all the way? They couldn’t do it unless they were mating, since wolves mated for life. What if this was just like her previous dreams, and Brett Silver wasn’t meant to be her forever mate?

  Meghan was watching her now, and that made Ellie’s cheeks warm.

  Both her sisters were waiting to hear what had made her blush.

  “Well, spill,” Meghan said, putting up the mop.

  “Meghan says you haven’t been sleeping well. She hears you getting up in the middle of the night. And you’re off to bed earlier than normal. Maybe because you’re tired from getting up in the middle of the night. Is something worrying you other than Chrissy and the trouble she might cause with our guests?”

  “I’m having sex with Brett!”

  Her sisters’ eyes widened, and their mouths hung agape.

  Ellie hadn’t meant to say it quite like that and give her sisters heart attacks. “I mean, I keep fantasizing about it.”

  Both her sisters audibly sighed in relief.

  “As long as you’re not actually doing it with him, then we’re good. Before you get involved with him in an intimate way, you have to tell him about your ghost-whisperer abilities,” Laurel said. “What if he can’t live with the notion that you can see and speak to ghosts?”

  “I dream about guys I’ve been dating. I know you have too, Ellie.” Meghan shrugged. “No big deal.”

  What if it was a big deal? What if it was like what Jake and Darien Silver had experienced? Both of them had dreamed vividly about their future mates. Darien had even had the dreams before he met his prospective mate.

  What if the dreams were different for her? What if Brett had been having dream sex about her? Or what if he was fantasizing about her like she was about him and it had no darker, psychic meaning?

  She couldn’t really ask him. Yet how else would she know for certain? If he wasn’t dreaming about her, then she was fantasizing about him in a normal way. She frowned at the notion. If he wasn’t dreaming about her when she was about him, that wasn’t good either.

  Trying to get a handle on this, Ellie could see herself asking him over lunch, “Hey, by the way, have you been having dream sex with me? Oh, can you pass the ketchup, please?”

  He’d smile and she’d blush.

  Meghan might have sounded like she was brushing off the idea, but she and Laurel were still waiting with bated breath to hear more.

  “You’re thinking of Jake and Darien,” Laurel finally said, as if relieved that’s all the matter was.

  “Dreaming up steamy sex scenes with a hot wolf who could be your forever mate… Wow.” Meghan put her hands over her heart and looked heavenward. “That’s not happening to me either.”

  “Peter’s family isn’t the one who has the dream-mating talent. Only the Silvers,” Ellie said, since Meghan had been dating Sheriff Jorgenson fairly regularly. “I’ve dreamed about hot guys whether I’m dating or not. I just wondered if…” Ellie couldn’t say it. What if Brett was having the same kind of dreams about her? Then again, he probably was. But probably not like his cousins had. “Why were Jake’s dreams connected with mating? I could understand if he had never seen Alicia and then had these sexy dreams. But he had seen her, so why couldn’t he simply have been fantasizing about her?”

  “I don’t know. Really.
All I know is that he was dream mating with her, and I just assumed it was the same kind of thing. It just never came up in any conversation. Do you want me to ask CJ about Jake’s experience?” Laurel asked.

  Since CJ was Brett’s cousin and Laurel’s mate, that might work. “Wouldn’t CJ think you had a reason for asking?”

  Laurel raised a brow. “What you really want to know is if Brett is dreaming of you.”

  “Heavens, no.”

  Laurel gave her a big-sister annoyed look. “Yeah, you do. Do you want me to ask if any other family members had that ability? Just ask in a curious way, not like I’m trying to learn anything about any particular Silver brother.”

  “Don’t you think CJ will figure it out?” Ellie asked. “Brett’s the only one seeing anyone. And CJ’s closest to him.”

  “I’ll bring it up in such a way that CJ won’t guess I have ulterior motives.”

  Ellie sure hoped that wouldn’t backfire. What if CJ believed Laurel’s query was about Brett? And he asked Brett if he was having dream sex with anyone? If he thought Ellie was having dreams like that, CJ would probably look at her differently. Worse, Brett would too.

  Ellie felt her whole body warm in an instant, and she knew she had to be blushing all over.

  The more she saw of Brett, the more she knew she had to tell him about her gift. It wasn’t a situation where it didn’t matter whether he could accept what she could do or not. Having different opinions wouldn’t usually be a problem in a long-term relationship. All relationships had to have some give-and-take. But this was too important to her to dismiss.

  She could envision talking to a ghost, trying to discover why he or she was stuck here, and her mate thinking she’d flipped out. Or teasing. Or even being embarrassed by her behavior. Without full acceptance and understanding, she could see the relationship between them crumbling. She didn’t tell most people about her abilities, but her mate would have to know and accept what she could do.

  Laurel sighed, patted Ellie on the back, and headed for the front door. “If he truly cares for you, he’ll be fine with your gift. If he isn’t, then he’s not the right one for you. Dream sex or no.”