Being an alpha, Elizabeth told him how things would be right away. “I’m so sorry, but I need to leave. Could anyone drive me to the airport, or could I get a cab out here?”
She had three more days to be here, Darien remembered. Something was compelling her to leave this soon.
“Peter can take you. He’s on his way here now anyway.” Darien wasn’t about to wake Tom and ask him. He suspected something was wrong between the two of them or Elizabeth would have asked Tom herself. “How are you feeling?”
“Great. All better. Thanks.”
That was the way she’d spoken since she joined them. Brief. To the point. She wasn’t sharing how she was feeling. The fact she was downstairs so early after having been up half the night made Darien believe she was desperate to leave before Tom woke. He wondered if she’d slept at all.
“You’re not afraid the men will come after you, are you?”
“No,” she said so emphatically that he wasn’t sure he believed her.
Lelandi was so good at psychoanalyzing patients and pack members, including himself and his brothers, that Darien wished she would speak up and get to the bottom of the trouble. She wouldn’t. She just poured herself another cup of coffee while Elizabeth downed a glass of orange juice in a hurry, even though Peter was still on his way to the house.
“You spoke to Jake this morning.”
“Yes.” She looked out the window.
“He was pleased you did an interview of him,” Darien said, trying to draw her out.
“Yeah.”
“Did he manage to fix your camera?”
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
He glanced at Lelandi. She raised her brows at him as if to say that the situation was in his court.
When Peter pulled into the driveway, Elizabeth hopped up from her chair—another indication she was physically fine—and hurried to slip into her parka. “Thanks for everything. You’ve all been… wonderful.”
Darien heard the hitch in her voice and saw the way she turned away and wouldn’t look at them.
She grabbed her suitcase handles and laptop, then hurried for the door, but Darien quickly snatched the bags from her hands and hauled them for her.
“I left a note for Tom on his computer,” she said, trying to sound businesslike and not entirely succeeding.
Tom would be upset that she had left without saying good-bye face-to-face or allowing him to take her to the airport. Unless they had fought. But what he had smelled on his brother last night wasn’t anger or upset. Worry and sex. That’s what he had smelled.
“You always have a home here with us anytime you want to return,” Darien said.
She offered him a faint smile. “Thanks.”
When she looked away, he got the feeling she wasn’t planning to return. He was disappointed, because he knew how much Tom liked her, and he’d seen the way she’d reacted to his brother in a positive, caring way. For that matter, everyone who had chanced to meet her had liked her. That video capturing Tom and Elizabeth kissing on the slope had totally surprised both Lelandi and him, and he knew more was going on between the two of them than they admitted.
He’d wanted to call Carol and ask if her talk with Elizabeth had revealed anything of her past, but Lelandi said what the two women discussed had been private. If Elizabeth wanted to share, it was her business to do so. It didn’t matter that Darien had mentioned that this could have an impact on the pack. Lelandi had only shaken her head—an emphatic, nonverbal “No, butt out.” He loved his mate, but sometimes, like now, she totally exasperated him.
He opened the door to find Peter standing on the porch, ready to knock. He smiled brightly at Elizabeth.
She hurried past him and headed for his vehicle.
“She’s in a hurry to get to the airport,” Darien said in explanation. “Could you take her?”
“Oh, sure.” Peter took her bags, hurried out to the truck, and stuck them in the backseat of the cab. “See you in a little while.”
Her eyes shiny with tears, Elizabeth waved at Darien and Lelandi. Then Peter got into the driver’s seat, and they were off.
Darien knew that no matter what had happened between Elizabeth and Tom, this was not a good way to say—or not say—good-bye. Darien, for one, didn’t want the job of having to deal with the mood he knew Tom would be in when he woke.
That morning, Tom felt something wasn’t right as soon as he got up. The sun was too high in the sky. He never slept this late, and he wondered why no one had bothered to wake him. He hurried to dress, then headed for Elizabeth’s room. Her door was shut. He knocked. No answer. He opened the door a crack.
She was gone. The bed stripped. Her suitcases nowhere in sight.
With a sickening knot in his stomach, he ran down the stairs, expecting to see her eating breakfast with Darien.
The toddlers played in the den, squealing in delight, then arguing—the way he and his brothers had done when they were that age—while a couple of wolf nannies watched over them. He thought Lelandi would be plying her psychology on a human client in the office they had built next to the house. The home was off in the woods, but this was the only way she wanted to work when the babies were still little. Bonding and pack dynamics were all too important, from the youngest lupus garou to the oldest.
To his surprise, Lelandi was sipping coffee with Darien. Jake and his mate were there, too, which was odder still. They normally ate breakfast at their own home.
Elizabeth wasn’t there. Everyone looked at him as though they didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to act.
“Where is she?” he asked, sounding much more growly than he intended.
“Peter took her to the airport,” Darien said.
Tom turned and began to stalk out of the dining room.
“Tom!” Darien called out. “She’s gone. She left two hours ago.”
Tom scowled at Darien. “Why didn’t anyone wake me? Tell me she was leaving?”
Why didn’t she tell him herself?
“She didn’t want it that way,” Darien said.
Tom was the most even-tempered of his brothers, but right now he was so angry that he could have put his fist through the wall.
“What happened between the two of you?” Darien asked in a voice that was meant to calm him, but Tom didn’t want his brothers’ or their mates’ sympathy or interference.
“Nothing,” Tom said.
“Was she scared of the men? Afraid to stay?”
“Hell, no. She would have gone into the hotel after them if I hadn’t stopped her.”
Darien took Lelandi’s hand in his. “Anything else that you can think of that happened, Tom? She asked if someone could take her to the airport, then had a glass of orange juice but no real breakfast. She was in a rush to leave. She barely said a word or two to us in response to anything I asked.”
“She was supposed to be here three more days.”
“You said yourself she had a job to do,” Darien reminded him.
Lelandi said, “She was running away from something. She might not be afraid of the men, but maybe something else is going on that we don’t know about.”
Tom ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know about that, but… I asked her to join our pack. She didn’t act interested in the idea.”
Everyone stared at him as if he’d suddenly grown vampire fangs.
He folded his arms across his chest. “She’s a damn good tracker. We could use someone with her expertise in the pack. And we don’t have a newspaper. Maybe she could have started one.”
“Is that what you told her?” Lelandi asked, her voice a little edgy.