“Everything’s fine,” Darien said, “Everywhere. No pack problems at present, no problems with the mine. The town is running without any difficulties, and the factory’s doing well. Just as everything should be.”
Lelandi set her half-eaten slice of bread on her plate and rubbed her belly. She was due this fall; another month and she would have the triplets. That was making Jake antsy. And he felt guilty about it. A ll pack members revered the pack leaders’ offspring. They took care of them and provided for them, just as they did other pack members’ children. Yet, as much as he hated himself for it, he felt twinges of jealousy for his older brother when he’d never felt that way before.
Normally, Lelandi was beautiful and glowed with motherhood, her red hair spilling over her shoulders, her green eyes bright with laughter. But now, she seemed just as concerned as his brothers. They wouldn’t prod him too hard. But Lelandi? She was bound to ask him before long what was wrong. And he didn’t want to lie.
But he wasn’t telling her the truth, either.
He respected her for bringing Darien out of the deep pit of despair he’d been wallowing in. And with the impending birth of their children, she certainly didn’t need to be worrying about Jake.
But then she smiled a little as if she’d figured out what was bothering him. Maybe she’d been able to work out the mystery intuitively, or maybe he’d given himself away. Or maybe it was something altogether different.
He still couldn’t read her like he could his brothers and they, him. Although he was certain they couldn’t figure out his behavior right now.
Lelandi turned her attention to Tom and lifted her bread from her plate again. “Woman trouble?”
Tom immediately glanced at Jake. Hell, Jake didn’t have woman problems, except in the form of a damned beguiling woman who continued to appear to him in his dreams, and who in the worst-case scenario had gotten into trouble with the Mob. Lesser worst-case scenario, she’d just stood him up. Jake scowled further.
Tom gave a small smile. “Can’t have any woman trouble if there’s no one around to give me difficulty.”
Lelandi looked at Jake, but she didn’t repeat the question, although it lingered in the air as if it hung invisibly between them, begging to be answered. He imagined his expression said she’d better not pose the question.
But damned if both of his brothers didn’t look to him to answer her query as if she’d blatantly asked him. He finished his meal, not intending to be drawn into this, took the plate to the kitchen, rinsed it off, put it in the dishwasher, and then returned to the dining room.
A ll three watched him.
He paused, thinking to ask them about dream mating—
could it involve a human woman? But not wanting to get into a discussion about this when he was dog tired, he said instead, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
The looks they all gave him showed surprise. If they’d worn watches, which as lupus garous they didn’t, he figured they’d all be glancing at them now to determine just how late it was. And see that it was way too early for him to retire when he normally didn’t hit the sack until midnight. Unless he went for a midnight run as a wolf in the woods. Then it was even later.
Darien cleared his throat. “Do you want to talk to me privately about something?”
“No. And there’s no sense in putting this off any longer,” Jake remarked, not intending to mention it again, but it was time. He’d been renovating their grandfather’s home, which was situated farther from town than Darien’s house. The renovations were complete, and it was past time to settle in there.
Tom cast a glance at Lelandi. She’d been the one attempting all along to convince him to change his mind.
Darien and Tom knew better than to try.
“I told you and Tom, both, you don’t need to leave.
Just because the babies are coming, I don’t want you feeling like they’re pushing you out of your own home,” Lelandi said softly, her eyes welling up with tears, her throat choked with emotion.
Hell. She wasn’t often emotional, but with being pregnant, she’d had unnatural bouts of weepiness, which was another reason he couldn’t stay. He hated to see her cry—especially when he had anything to do with it.
Darien reached over and took her hand and squeezed.
“The cabin is so… isolated. It has electricity and running water, but no television or telephone service. It’s so primitive. What if you run into trouble out there?” she asked, quickly dabbing with a napkin at tears trailing down her cheeks.
He knew her well enough to realize she didn’t use the tears to make him feel guilty, even though they still had that effect. No matter how many times she cajoled him to stay, he couldn’t. He thought Tom was waffling, though.
That was fine with Jake. He didn’t mind living at the house alone since he’d only be there at night. He’d spend his days working with the family, with the pack, and still have dinner with them unless he just had to get away. He was a family kind of guy, and that wouldn’t ever change.
He’d told Lelandi that, and he wasn’t going to repeat himself.
But something deeper was bothering him. The need to have a mate. He was seeing Darien and Lelandi together with the babies coming, and now the damnable dreams of Alicia were making him crazy. He had to get away.
“You’ll need more room,” he said, and headed out of the dining room before anyone could say anything further to him.
He knew they’d all be giving each other looks, trying to figure out what was wrong with him, staying silent until he was well beyond earshot, and then discussing his actions in private.
He heard Darien’s phone ring and hoped there wasn’t trouble he had to take care of with the pack or town tonight, considering how much he wanted to sleep —dream, rather.
Why was he going to bed this early? Depression, Lelandi might surmise from her psychology classes.
Never in a millennium would she or anyone else guess that he couldn’t sleep because of his desire for a woman’s silken touch.
“You need to speak with Jake?” Darien said in the dining room to whoever was on the phone, his voice sounding surprised.
Jake paused in the great room before he reached the stairs.
“Yeah, he’s here. Let me let you talk to him.” Normally Darien would have hollered to him that the call was for him, although why anyone would be calling him on Darien’s line was a mystery. But instead, Darien left the dining room to join Jake in the great room, and that didn’t bode well.
Already he was thinking that something bad had happened to Alicia. Although how anyone knew their connection, he couldn’t be sure. Unless she’d been hurt and the gallery staff had made the correlation.
Darien held his hand over the mouthpiece on the phone. “Sheriff got a call from Breckenridge.”
Already apprehensive, Jake could feel his legs turning to rubber, and he was sure his face had drained of all color, as light-headed as he felt. As observant as he always was, Darien noticed and frowned. “Hell, what’s going on?”
“What’s happened?”
Darien raised his brows, then shook his head. “You’ve got some talking to do. A n Alicia Greiston passed out in the art gallery’s ladies’ restroom after she bought one of your photographs. Apparently, she’s pregnant. But they said you’d left your number for her to get in touch. Your cell phone must be off so they called our sheriff, trying to locate another number for you, and Peter gave them mine. What’s this all about?”