Tangling with the Wolf Read online

  Also by Terry Spear

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2021 by Terry Spear

  Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Stephanie Gafron/Sourcebooks

  Photography by Brad McGinley Photography/Getty Images, Michael Cummings/Getty Images, Doodko/Shutterstock

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  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.

  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.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  If there was one thing that really annoyed Hanna Bridgeman—and as a red wolf, she could get really growly about it—it was when she asked a cute guy out to have a drink and he was late. She was all by herself, didn’t know anybody in Green Valley, Colorado, and she was nervous about going for a job interview there tomorrow, so she was hoping for some company, or at least a distraction, not to be stood up.

  Maybe he just hadn’t had the nerve to tell her no. She’d recently lost her job at the local paper in Loveland, Colorado, and had just arrived in Green Valley when she had met the guy at a service station, pumping gas for his truck, and asked him where a good place would be to go for a drink. She’d needed one, and her hotel didn’t have a restaurant, unfortunately.

  He was human and had told her about this pub, so she’d asked if he would like to join her there at six and here she was. But the guy wasn’t, and it was already six thirty. Traffic jams holding him up? Not likely in Green Valley. Hanna wasn’t even sure whether she wanted to live here, but she needed work, and being a news reporter was her job. Rather…had been her job. If she hadn’t asked the police chief in Loveland some embarrassing questions, she would still have her job.

  She sighed. She could be a bit of a rogue wolf when she wanted to do real investigative reporting instead of writing fluff stories all the time.

  At least the pub had some fun decorations: a stack of three jack-o’-lanterns on the bar, lighted pumpkins on each of the tables, orange and black lights hanging on the walls, and a sign that had a wood carving of Dracula with the words Dracula’s Pub beneath it. The bartender was dressed like a pirate with a patch over his eye, and the servers were wearing a variety of costumes ranging from a sexy cat to Superwoman.

  Hanna glanced out the window again. The colorful fall leaves were beautiful. Oranges, purples, reds, yellows, and a few evergreens and Colorado spruce trees really set things off. Crisp, cooler night temperatures were great for wolf fur coats and sweaters and jackets. She loved the fall. It was her favorite time of year.

  She eyed the parking lot. No blue pickup truck. Lots of motorcyclists were showing up, though.

  Then a guy caught her eye as he got out of a shiny, red Corvette. The car was cute. So was he. Or…sexy, rather. Except he had a military haircut. And she’d vowed to stay away from military guys. Two disastrous relationships had been enough for her. This guy was blond and green-eyed, tall and muscular with no fat, not a bodybuilder type but more the kind who could use his muscle when he needed to in a real combat situation.

  When he came inside the pub, he glanced in her direction, and she quickly looked away. She wasn’t here to pick up some other guy. Not that he acted like he was looking to hook up either. She motioned to the pirate waitress, who was busy visiting with some bikers sitting a few tables away. When the waitress came over, Hanna ordered a glass of chardonnay and a hamburger. She figured she might as well enjoy her dinner even if her “date” wasn’t going to show up. Then she would head back to her hotel.

  The military-looking guy sat at a table across the aisle and two tables away from hers. He ordered a soda and then pulled out his phone and read something. Maybe a text from a date or a friend he was supposed to meet. Maybe the person was late in arriving too. She couldn’t imagine anyone who looked that hot being there by himself. At least she wasn’t the only one sitting alone. She hadn’t exchanged cell numbers with Joe, the no-show, but at this rate, she was glad she hadn’t. She wasn’t actually very outgoing. She’d had to work at learning to step out and meet people to interview them. It was something she always forced herself to do so she wouldn’t backslide
into her shell.

  The motorcyclists were beginning to get unruly, catching her attention.

  She took a sip of her citrusy wine and glanced at them talking among themselves, ordering beers, and glowering at the bikers at the other tables. The groups were members of different biker gangs, and she didn’t think they would play well together. She frowned and eyed them more closely. They looked like some of the outlaw motorcycle gangs that were allegedly into all kinds of criminal activity. She checked her phone to see if she could identify them, and sure enough, there were members of the Bandidos, Hells Angels, Outlaws, and Pagans, all embracing the regalia of their motorcycle clubs.

  Corvette Man looked up from his phone and saw her gawking at him again as if she were trying to catch his eye and get up close and personal. What was the matter with her? No matter how much she chastised herself for showing interest in him, she couldn’t help it. She envisioned having asked him to have a drink with her. He would have shown up—on time even.

  She glanced down at the navy sweater she was wearing that was covered in fuzzy pills or balls and pulls. It was her favorite sweater for fall, though she had told herself she should only wear it when she was raking leaves or shoveling snow, not to meet and greet people. Her jeans were just as worn, and her hiking boots had seen better days. Even her hair, clipped back in a French twist, had been tugged and pulled by the chilly breeze, leaving strands dangling about her neck and shoulders. She should have gone into the ladies’ room and straightened it out. And why was she even thinking of that?

  Hot and dangerous, Corvette Man was the reason. He looked like he could handle any weapon known to man and then some. Her dad had always told her she needed to look her best when she went out because there was no telling who she might run into—relating his own experience when he had looked like the dregs, dropped into a pub, and met her mom. It hadn’t turned out badly for them, though her mom always talked about how he’d been dressed in a grass-stained sweatshirt, jeans, and scuffed work boots and was wearing a scruffy, three-day growth of red beard. But she said his green eyes and wolfish smile had won her over, and she had overlooked his disheveled appearance.

  Corvette Man left his table, and as he walked past Hanna’s, he dropped his paper napkin on her table. She glanced down at it and read the scribble on the napkin: Get out while you still can.

  Hanna raised a brow as he hurried past, and she smelled the napkin, finding the waitress’s scent and a male red wolf’s scent. She frowned as he left the pub. He was a red wolf too! Running into gray wolves was a rare enough occurrence, but running into a red wolf like her was unheard of. She looked out the window and saw him on his phone, talking to someone.

  A biker at one table shouted something derogatory to a biker at another. Her first instinct should have been for self-preservation and getting out of there like the male wolf had done. But then she thought of her job interview at the local paper tomorrow. Wouldn’t it be great if she could write this story and impress the editor? She had a front-row seat to a fight in a pub between biker gangs.

  She pulled her phone out of her purse and began to record the beginning of the fight between the gangs.

  Suddenly, the male wolf returned to the pub. She thought he was going to sit back at his table and finish his drink, despite the escalating fight between biker gangs and the fact that he’d warned her to leave, but he targeted her instead.

  “Come on. You’re bound to get yourself killed in here,” he said gruffly.

  Before she could object, which she fully intended to do, the wolf grabbed her arm and pulled her out of her seat.

  “Hey! What do you think—”

  “Saving your ass and keeping you out of jail.”

  Chairs started to fly. Two men unsheathed knives, and two others had their guns out.

  All Hanna could think about was the story she could have written that would secure her a job!

  “I’m an investigative reporter,” she said, angry at the wolf for forcing her toward the door.

  The guy looked skeptically down at her, which irritated her even more.

  “Let me go!” she said.

  Men were shouting above the piped-in mood music, making it sound surreal.

  A chair flew at them, and the blond-haired wolf pulling her toward the exit threw his arm up and blocked it. The chair hit his arm and fell to the floor with a clatter.

  “Are you okay?” Hanna asked. Even though he was a wolf and healed faster than a human, he could have broken his arm while trying to protect them.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be bruised, but no problem.”

  As soon as they were outside, the cops pulled up in squad cars. Several got out of their cars and pointed guns at Hanna and the wolf.

  “Get on the ground now!” one of the officers shouted.

  “Great, just great. Instead of writing a news report about the fight, someone will be writing about me getting arrested!” Hanna couldn’t believe what the guy had gotten her into. Though when she really thought about it, she knew the fight hadn’t been his fault and he had been trying to rescue her.

  * * *

  Bryan “Phoenix” Wildhaven glanced at the woman lying on the pavement next to him. She was a red wolf like him—feisty, stubborn, bullheaded like he could be. Instead of being grateful that he had gone back inside to save her ass, she was pissed off at him. She was a tall, long-legged strawberry blond, with beautiful green eyes that had been watching him with interest when he had walked into the pub, looking away coyly after he’d caught her ogling him. And she hadn’t even known he was a wolf like her at the time.

  If he had just left her at the pub, he could have been well on his way to Silver Town without further incident. He’d been driving for so many hours that he’d just needed a break so he wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel. But she’d been a single woman, wasn’t part of any of the groups of people causing trouble, and she was a wolf, so he had wanted to warn her to leave before she got hurt. When she had ignored him, he’d had to return and take matters into his own hands, which had irritated him. She didn’t have the good sense to stay out of harm’s way, and he couldn’t believe a wolf would be that naive.

  Now they were being handcuffed and put into a squad car until the police officers could sort things out, while the crisis inside the pub was escalating. Bikers were running out of the building. Police were taking them down. Except for rescuing the woman, Phoenix felt he should have just grabbed a soda from a convenience store and continued on his way to his sister’s house.

  “I’m Bryan Wildhaven, by the way, though everyone calls me Phoenix,” he told the woman as they sat in the back of a squad car together. This was certainly his first time to be arrested, though he knew they would be released once the police had time to check them out. Well, at least he would. What if the she-wolf had had trouble with the law? That wouldn’t be good.

  “The phoenix rises from the ashes. All right. If I weren’t tied up at the moment, I could shake your hand. Hanna Bridgeman, by the way.”

  Little Miss Hanna had tenacity; he would give her that. “So you knew the guys were going to have a fight in the pub, and you were there to report on it, if you didn’t get yourself accidentally killed? Just because a bullet is meant for one target doesn’t mean it won’t hit another.”

  “And you know this from experience because you’re military, or ex-military, right?” she asked, sounding a little sarcastic. So she didn’t like guys in the military?

  “Army Special Forces, Green Beret, retired.”

  “Figures. I wasn’t at the pub expecting trouble. I would have had to be an undercover cop or FBI or something to know that.” She gave him a sweet but fake smile. “When you dropped the note on my table, I thought it might have been your special way of trying to pick up a wolf.”

  “Hardly.”

  “I can’t believe we left the pub, didn’t cause any tro
uble, and aren’t carrying weapons, but we got arrested. You must look suspicious,” she said.

  He cast her an evil smile. “So what were you here for?”

  “A date, but he was a no-show.”

  “A wolf?” He couldn’t imagine a wolf standing her up without good reason.

  “Human. What were you doing here? And how did you know there was going to be trouble?”

  “I’d been driving for several hours, and I was getting sleepy. So I stopped to get a soda and take a break.”

  “You’re not from here?”

  “No. I’m going to Silver Town to visit my sister and her new mate. As to how I knew about the trouble, I realized those were bikers from different gangs and there was bound to be difficulty between them. I smelled your scent when I walked past your table the first time and had to warn you. But you wouldn’t heed the warning. So you’re from Green Valley and work at the local paper?”

  “Uh, no. Loveland, Colorado.”

  That didn’t add up. “And you came all the way down here to get a story? Wouldn’t the Green Valley news reporters do the story?”

  There was something she wasn’t saying.

  “I told you. I didn’t know the gang members were going to be in the pub.”

  A couple of gunshots went off inside the building. Both of them instinctively ducked.

  Hell, he wished they were out of here now. More shots were fired, and then police were hauling bikers out of the pub with wrists zip-tied. They began loading people in a police van. Ambulances arrived to take injured bikers to the hospital. Then an officer opened the door to the squad car and helped Hanna and Phoenix out.

  He questioned them about what had happened, removed their handcuffs, and inspected their IDs. Once he’d run a check on them, he said, “You’re cleared. If you think of anything else, let us know.”

  Hanna rubbed her wrists. “What happened after we left the pub?” she asked the officer.

  “Two of the gang members shot each other. Then others began shooting. Three were stabbed. We have to haul them all in for questioning to learn who was involved. Sorry about taking the two of you into custody. We didn’t have time to do anything but try to get a handle on things.”