Wolf under fire, p.8
Wolf Under Fire, page 8
She folded her arms and rested her shoulder against the wall. Maybe they had good reason to worry. She’d heard the mutterings around the STAT headquarters. There were a few people at HQ who didn’t seem comfortable with the idea of working with supernaturals as dangerous as werewolves. Okay, maybe more than a few people. And if she was being honest, she’d be forced to admit one of those people had been her.
A queasy feeling settled in the pit of her stomach as the way she’d been acting sunk in. Jes had never thought of herself as prejudice against anyone for any reason, but it was impossible not to recognize that’s exactly what she’d been. Simply because Jake and his friends were different.
She was so wrapped up in berating herself for being a crappy excuse for a person she missed most of what Caleb said in reply to Jake mentioning her backing him up at the manor.
“Yeah, but do you think Jes’ll be so quick to run to your rescue the next time, now that she’s seen you in werewolf mode and knows what you’re capable of?” Caleb asked.
“I don’t know,” Jake admitted with a sigh. Though she had no idea why, it hurt somewhere deep in her chest to hear him say that. “I’ve never been in a situation like this before. When I was in the SEALs, I never had to worry about whether my teammates were there for me or if they were committed to the team. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t know how to make us a team when it’s obvious Jes would rather walk away than be part of it.”
Jes stiffened. Part of her wanted to be offended Jake thought she’d walk away from the team. She’d never walked away from anything in her life. Had she subconsciously been giving him those signals?
“I wouldn’t hold the fact that she wants off the team against her,” Caleb said. “Hell, I’d walk away myself if I could.”
Jes would have liked to say she was surprised by Caleb’s abrupt confession, but despite meeting him a few days ago, it was obvious he wasn’t a team player. In fact, he struck her as a loner.
Jake didn’t seem stunned, either. At least that’s what it sounded like from the soft chuckle he let out.
“You don’t have to sugarcoat it, you know,” Jake said. “I know McKay pretty much blackmailed you into taking the job. I hadn’t thought about it much until now, though. I guess I owe you an apology.”
Caleb snorted again, and Jes imagined the big werewolf shrugging his shoulders. “There’s no reason for you to apologize. I was the one who made all the poor life choices, starting with the one that ended up with me becoming an omega instead of an alpha and ending with the one that landed me in that prison in Texas. I thought breaking out of the place was one of my better decisions, until I realized I’d be running for the rest of my life. When McKay made his offer, I figured spending the next three years risking my life for the feds would be worth it for a shot at a clean record and my freedom.”
Jes’s head spun. It was all she could do to keep from running down the steps and into the kitchen, demanding to know what Caleb was talking about. What did he mean about a poor choice resulting in him becoming an omega instead of an alpha werewolf? And what had he done to get tossed into prison? More importantly, if he’d escaped and been on the run, how had McKay found him?
“So, what you’re saying is that while you don’t really want to be here, you won’t do anything to screw up your chance at redemption,” Jake said.
“I’m not sure I’d call it redemption,” Caleb muttered. “But back to the point I was trying to make about Jes earlier. Just because she has some reservations about being on the team that doesn’t mean it can’t eventually work out. I have my reasons to be wary and I’m staying. Maybe she will, too.”
Jes almost fell off the step she was standing on, confused as to why Caleb was suddenly on her side.
In the kitchen, Jake let out another soft laugh. “Wait. Weren’t you the one who just said Jes didn’t trust us enough for this team to ever work out? Now you’re saying I should give her a chance?”
“I never said Jes didn’t trust us,” Caleb corrected. “I pointed out I didn’t think Forrest did, then asked what you thought Jes would do now that she’d seen what you can do as a werewolf. Wherever your mind went after that is completely on you. Look, all I’m saying is that you might want to talk to her before you decide you know what’s going on in her head.”
Jake didn’t answer, like he was thinking over what Caleb said. Before he could reply, a loud ping sounded from the kitchen, echoing in the silence.
“That must be the Skype call you’ve been waiting for,” Caleb said even as Jes heard the stool he’d obviously been sitting on scrape along the floor. “I’m gonna try and get some sleep.”
Jes pushed away from the wall, wondering if she could make it upstairs before Caleb caught her standing there, but she barely had time to form the thought before the big omega walked out of the kitchen and down the hall.
“I thought I heard someone on the stairs,” he said, his gaze level with hers even though she was a few steps higher than he was. “Couldn’t sleep?”
Jes’s heart thudded faster. Was that Caleb’s subtle way of letting her know he’d realized she’d been there the whole time he and Jake had been talking? But when he stood there regarding her curiously, she decided maybe that wasn’t it.
“Yeah,” she said. “I was sitting with Misty and thought I’d come down to get something to eat.”
She walked down the rest of the steps and started past him when he gently caught her arm.
“Is Misty okay?” he asked, the concerned expression seeming almost out of place on his rough features.
Jes nodded. “She woke up a little while ago. Outside of a major migraine and some concussion-like symptoms, she’s fine. Or at least she says she is. Forrest is going to sit with her for the rest of the night just to make sure.”
She thought she might have caught a quick smile slipping across Caleb’s face, but it disappeared before she could be sure. Turning, he headed up the steps but then stopped, his heavily muscled shoulders visibly tense. Jes stiffened, too, sure he was going to confront her about why she’d been eavesdropping before.
“I’m sorry about that crap I said the other night about the bags in my room,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know they belonged to your teammate. If I had, I wouldn’t have…”
“It’s okay,” Jes said, stunned at the apology, even if it was long overdue. “We were all tired and tense. I already forgot about it. You should, too.”
Caleb looked over his shoulder and gave her a nod, then continued up the stairs, his heavy boots silent on the steps.
That left Jes alone in the hallway. She hesitated, torn between going to her room or heading to the kitchen. Surely, Jake had heard her and Caleb talking. Not going into the kitchen now would seem weird.
Taking a deep breath, she made her way in that direction.
Jake was sitting at the island when she walked in. He was focused on his laptop, a big smile on his face. She tried to ignore him as she went over to the coffeepot, but that proved more difficult than she thought. For some reason, Jes couldn’t stop herself from looking his way. The urge to tell him he was all wrong about her bailing on the team and that he and the other werewolves could trust her was suddenly overwhelming, but then she caught sight of something on the laptop that completely fragmented her thought processes.
Two cute girls were wedged in tightly together on a Skype screen, soft features identical, long, straight hair so perfectly platinum Jes wanted to think it came out of a bottle but instinctively knew it didn’t. They couldn’t have been any more than eighteen years old at the most.
Jes concentrated on pouring coffee into a mug, then adding cream and sugar. She didn’t want to eavesdrop on their conversation—she’d done enough of that already—but it was hard not to when they were barely four feet away from where she was standing. The discussion seemed to revolve mostly around what Jake had been doing in London and whether he’d gone sightseeing yet. It was impossible to miss the way he kept steering the conversation away from him and the work he was doing and focused on the two girls and what they were up to. He kept asking if they’d had any guys over, and from his tone of voice, it was obvious the answer better be no.
That’s when it hit Jes.
The twins were Jake’s kids.
Her mind immediately rebelled at the realization. No way was Jake old enough to have two teenage daughters. He couldn’t be much older than she was, and at thirty-six, she couldn’t have handled two kids who looked ready to be filling out college applications.
Then another thought poked her in the stomach hard enough to make breathing next to impossible. Wait…holy crap…was Jake married?
Jes tried to ignore what sure felt like jealousy—even though she knew it couldn’t possibly be—forcing herself to breathe and replay every conversation she’d had with him. He’d never implied he had a wife waiting back in DC for him. If he was married, why wasn’t the woman on the Skype call with the kids?
Maybe he was a single dad?
Jes—and the little green-eyed monster lurking in the back of her consciousness—decided that was a much better scenario. Although she couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be raising two teen girls on your own while working for STAT.
Curiosity getting the better of her, Jes picked up her coffee and casually turned around, trying to be covert about sneaking another look as she sipped the hot beverage. Apparently, she wasn’t as stealthy as she thought because the twins looked over Jake’s shoulder and directly at her.
“Aren’t you going to introduce us, Jake?” one of the girls asked.
Jake spun around on the stool so quickly he almost lost his balance. Crap, he hadn’t even realized Jes was there. So much for those vaulted werewolf senses.
* * *
Jake was so stunned to see Jes standing there, it was all he could do to keep his jaw from dropping. Yeah, he’d heard her talking to Caleb on the stairs earlier, but then he’d gotten caught up in talking to Zoe and Chloe and assumed she’d gone back upstairs. Sneaking up on him shouldn’t even have been possible, not with his sense of smell and keen hearing. But for some reason, his nose had been worthless ever since what happened at Darby’s place. It had gotten so filled with her scent that she was the only thing he could smell in the whole house right now. His damn ears weren’t much better. The steady beat of her heart, which normally would have been nothing more than a background noise, now drowned out nearly everything, including the sound of her footsteps.
Hand shoved in the pocket of the long cardigan she wore—which she looked good as hell in—Jes’s gaze went back and forth between him and his laptop. He hadn’t seen her since they’d gotten back from Darby’s, when she’d headed straight upstairs to help with Misty. Now that he got a good look at her, he couldn’t miss how exhausted she must have been. It made him wonder why she was down here in the kitchen, getting coffee, and not up in bed trying to steal a few hours of sleep.
It was only when she arched a questioning brow at him that he realized he’d been staring at Jes like an idiot…and the twins were still waiting for introductions. What was it about his teammate that got him off balance so easily?
“Jestina Ridley, Zoe and Chloe Haynes,” he finally forced himself to say, pointing out each twin in turn as he said their names, knowing firsthand how difficult it was to tell the girls apart until you got to know them.
“And this is Sam,” Zoe said, holding up the silky black puppy with white on his chest and floppy ears that was sitting on her lap.
“And Dean.” Chloe held up Sam’s identical twin with a grin. Seriously, it was as hard to tell them apart as it was the girls. “We were supposed to adopt one puppy from the shelter, but they’re twins. There was no way we could separate them.”
Jake shook his head with a chuckle. He’d always been a dog person, so he didn’t mind. And the girls were clearly in love with them. “We couldn’t have that.”
“They are too adorable for words,” Jes said, giving the twins and their dogs a smile as she perched on the stool beside him.
Jake couldn’t help grinning as Jes, Zoe, and Chloe oohed and aahed over the puppies and talked about all the stuff the little furballs had gotten into already.
After a while, the twins steered the conversation away from Sam and Dean to Jes and how long she’d been in STAT—and whether she was special like Misty or an ordinary field agent like Forrest.
When Jes blinked at them over the rim of her mug, Jake could tell she’d been caught off guard by the question. She seemed to have no idea how to deal with the fact that Zoe and Chloe knew stuff the rest of their organization would have treated as classified. Thank God he’d gotten them out of the habit of saying the word werewolf over an unsecured Skype connection. Jes would probably have lost her mind over the release of classified information.
“As you have probably already figured out, Zoe and Chloe have a bad habit of speaking first and thinking later,” he said drily, throwing a pointed look at the twins he was sure they’d ignore. “Please feel free to ignore their rude questions. I usually do.”
Jes laughed, the sound soft and musical. “It’s okay. I remember what it was like to be young and say the first thing that popped into my head. I don’t mind admitting I’m more like Forrest than Misty.”
On the other side of the Skype connection, Zoe and Chloe tried to hide their disappointment as they munched on handfuls of Peanut M&M’s.
Beside him, Jes opened her mouth to say something to him, then closed it again. After a moment, she took a deep breath and charged on. “I hope this doesn’t come out the wrong way, but I never pictured you as a dad. Then again, maybe that’s because I don’t want to admit I’m old enough to have kids myself.”
Jake chuckled. He’d gotten used to people wondering about his relationship with the girls since he and the twins had become a pack. “I’m not Zoe and Chloe’s biological father, but I am their legal guardian and they’re a very important part of my life. Which is why I’m still awake at four o’clock in the morning Skyping with them before they go to bed.”
He expected the usual litany of questions that always followed an admission like this: How did you come to be the legal guardian to two teen girls? What happened to their parents? Don’t they have any other family? Wouldn’t it be better if they were raised by a woman? Why aren’t they out on their own already? Since he’d started taking care of the twins, he’d heard it all and had his responses ready.
So, he was a little thrown when Jes didn’t ask a single question. Instead, she looked at him like he was the greatest thing since free Wi-Fi, then turned to the girls and asked them whether they’d finished high school yet and what they were going to major in when they went to college.
Just like that, Jes and the twins were talking about stuff like they’d known each other for years. Jes didn’t ask about how Jake and the girls had met or ended up as a family. Instead, their conversation revolved around college classes, driving, shopping, and what London was like.
“Please tell me you have pictures of Big Ben and the London Eye,” Zoe said. “What about Buckingham Palace? And those double-decker buses—you’ve ridden in one of those, right?”
“And those black taxis,” Chloe added. “Did you ride in one of those?”
“What about those red phone booths?” Zoe interrupted, her blue eyes wide. “Do they still have those? And do they work?”
Jake shook his head with a laugh. Even after living with the twins, it still amazed him how fast they talked. When Jes looked at him with an overwhelmed expression, Jake decided it was time to step in and come to her rescue.
“You two do realize we’re over here to work, not sightsee, right?” he interrupted before either of them could pepper him and Jes with more questions.
“We know that,” Zoe said, rolling her eyes in the way only a teenager could. “But you’ve been over there for days. You haven’t had any time off at all?”
“No, we haven’t,” he said.
“You haven’t been doing anything dangerous, have you?” Chloe asked, her expression serious now, like she somehow knew how close his entire team had come to getting killed mere hours earlier. Then again, maybe she did know. Chloe was crazy intuitive like that.
Jake hesitated. He couldn’t be honest without freaking the twins out, but he didn’t want to sugarcoat the risk this job entailed, either. He never wanted to lie to the girls. But as he opened his mouth to try and find the right words, Jes nudged him in the ribs with her elbow.
“We definitely aren’t doing anything dangerous,” she told the twins, a bright smile lighting up her beautiful face. “In fact, we went to a big charity event tonight in a castle. The kind with a red carpet, fancy waiters carrying trays of champagne, and lots of those puff pastries everyone oohs and aahs over. I’m pretty sure I saw Zac Efron there.”
Jake had no idea who Zac Efron was, but the name grabbed the girls’ attention, not to mention put a smile right back on Chloe’s face. For no other reason than that, Jake was completely fine with his teammate stretching the truth a bit when it came to tonight’s adventures. After all, Jes hadn’t actually lied—except maybe about Zac Efron.
“Why didn’t you tell us you went on a date?” Chloe demanded, her expression a mix of surprise and excitement.
It wasn’t until a moment later when Chloe turned to share an all-too-knowing look with her sister that Jake realized where their minds were headed.
“It wasn’t a date,” he said quickly even as Jes shook her head. “It might have been a charity event in a castle, but we were there to work.”
