Page 12 of Wrong Number, Right Gray Wolf

She didn’t want to mail it. She wanted to bring it to him, but I gave her the option to send it with a stamp in case it was more about getting it to him. He was a virtual stranger, after all.

“I can mail it for you.”

“Nope. Presents given from the heart shouldn’t be sent by somebody else. And besides, I wanna see his button collection. He says he has all kinds. He likes pancakes. Maybe he’d come here, bring his buttons, and eat pancakes with us.”

Little stinker had the whole thing planned out in her head. It was a pretty good plan too.

“I don’t know if he’s going to want to bring his collection here.”

My wolf was all about feeding our mate.

“How about this? We’ll go inside. You can get your homework done, and I will figure out a way for you to get the card to him and for us to thank him properly.”

“Will he come for dinner?”

“That’s up to him.”

I’d already gotten his phone number off the call record of the phone the night it happened. I hadn’t wanted to risk losing it. As Posy sat there doing her color-by-math answer paper, I played scripts over and over again in my head about what to say when I called. Eventually I realized it was pull-off-the-Band-Aid time. I just had to call and get it over with.

“I’m going to call him now, sweetie. So I need you to be quiet.”

She covered her mouth with both hands, nodding up and down.

The call went directly to voicemail, one for business. I was too disappointed by the bot answering that I didn’t even catch which one. That explained why a man under ninety was answering a landline. It was his work, and I couldn’t really leave a message there. It was a generic company voicemail, not his direct line. Odds were good there were multiple Stephens.

Instead, I hung up.

“It wasn’t his phone, sweetie. He was borrowing someone else’s,” which wasn’t a lie. It was work. “We’ll figure out another way.”

I looked up the phone number online. Sure enough, it was the same business as the bumper sticker, and it had an office address. Would it be too much for Posy and me to go there and bring it to him? It could be seen as intrusive, but I could just leave it there like a random delivery person would. That wasn’t intrusive. It wasn’t like I had to say, “We need to see Stephen. Go get him now” or anything like that.

“I think maybe Daddy will need to drop it off for you.”

She seemed okay with that. I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote an apology for all that had happened. Wrinkled it up and threw it away. I wanted to tell him I was mean and how I messed everything up and that I’d been scared and how I did not scent him at first and that I wasn’t rejecting him.

But even if it was a good idea to put that all out there, it very much was not when I was bringing it to his job. For all I knew, the company had people who opened all the mail.

Instead, I kept it simple. Posy would like to see you again. Can we meet up? And then I wrote my number. I didn’t sign my name. It didn’t occur to me that I forgot that key piece of information until after it was sealed. Oh, well. He could call me Posy’s dad, and that would be good enough for now.

The next day, I went to his office after car line. Posy wanted to come, but understood why she couldn’t. Dropping off thank-you cards was far from an excused absence.

I didn’t see his car outside, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. I carried the card inside and gave it to the man who greeted me. He was carrying a cup of coffee and didn’t look like it was normally his job, but as soon as I mentioned Stephen, he was more than willing to help. I let him know it was from my daughter, whom Stephen had helped. I also let it slip out that I saw his bumper sticker and that was how I knew where to go.

The man agreed to give it to him.

I was disappointed not to see my mate, but grateful to be able to scent him briefly. His scent had been faintly present. He hadn’t been there in at least a couple of days. Maybe he didn’t work in the office every day. That could mean he wouldn’t get the card for a while. I needed to remember that so I wasn’t disappointed if I didn’t get a response immediately.

I gave him my number.

Now it was up to him.

All day, I kept my phone where I could see it, made sure the volume was up, and all notifications on. I barely managed to get my job done, I was so distracted, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t risking missing a call from my mate. It was a call I’d already felt like I’d waited forever for.

7

STEPHEN

“I have a little something for you.”