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“Maybe you just … haven’t found them?”
He obviously knew very little about wolves. “If there were wolves, we’d see spoor. Traces of kills. We’d lose a horse once in a while. They’re predators. There’s a reason the ranchers hate them.”
“Why haven’t I heard about this?”
Gina tilted her head. “Why would you?”
“No reason,” he said quickly. “It’s just odd. Isn’t it?”
Very. But she wasn’t going to admit that, for the same reason she hadn’t advertised the fact. The whole thing was a little creepy. Not the best PR. If you wanted to pay top dollar for a relaxing trip to a ranch, you didn’t want to go to one with spooky un–wolf howls that couldn’t be explained.
Isaac had even had some friend of his from the war—the Big One, WW 2—who supposedly knew everything there was to know about wolves of all kinds come and study the place. And then that guy had called in his granddaughter, some hotshot “ologist.” Zoologist? Biologist? Gina couldn’t remember. Neither one of them had any explanation for why the wolves gave Nahua Springs such a wide berth.
“The ranchers around here are thrilled,” Gina continued. “Haven’t lost a foal to a wolf in forever.”
Literally.
“Hmm,” Teo murmured, his gaze on the trees.
“You like wolves or something?” she asked.
People did. Usually city people. Those who lived in the West and dealt with wolves loathed them. Try to discuss the success of wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone with a rancher from the area and you’d be lucky to come away with only one black eye.
“Sure,” Teo said. “They’re pretty.”
Gina wouldn’t know. She’d only seen them in movies. Where they tended to be toothy, shape-shifting, monster-type wolves and not the noble beasts of a Robert Bateman painting.
“I’ll find you a bear.” She patted his hand. “You’ll love it.”
He tangled their fingers together before she could pull away, then rubbed his thumb over the base of hers, causing a now-familiar shimmy in her stomach. “I’m sure I will.”
She lifted her gaze from their joined hands to his face. His eyes, now the shade of corroded copper, captured hers. She could look into them for years and never have them appear the same shade twice. It was fascinating. He was fascinating.
“Love it,” he said.
She blinked, trying to remember what they were discussing.
Oh yeah. Bears.
Whoopee.
No wonder no man had ever asked her on a second date if bears were the extent of her conversation. Her mind groped for something clever to say, but she came up empty. She knew horses, the ranch. That was it. She couldn’t help it.
“Maybe—” Gina began, but she never finished the sentence, and later, after all that happened next, she wouldn’t want to.
“You smell like…” He lifted his free hand to her hair, not yet braided and still trailing down her back to her waist. “Trees.”
“That’s probably just the trees,” she murmured, captured forever by those eyes.
“Nah,” he said, and kissed her.
She’d been kissed before; she was certain she had. But the instant Teo’s mouth touched hers she couldn’t recall a single one because she knew in that instant that this was the one.
The kiss. The moment. The man. How could that be?
She only knew that it was.
He tasted of mint—toothpaste no doubt, yet exotic nevertheless. He was warmth amid the chill. Solid in a world that just wasn’t.
