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Hannah stared at them for a moment, and then her face broke into a smile. “You want to have a snowball fight?”
Hudson bounced on all four paws and lumbered to a spot behind a tree, grabbed a ball of his own, and threw it as well as a bear could throw.
Back and forth, up and down, each ball flew and landed with a splat on the little girl and her furry white foe. Hudson howled with delight as Hannah giggled. By the end, the bear and girl were happily covered in the fluffy white globs.
Hudson plodded up to Hannah’s sash and laid his nose on the sill so the little girl could pet him. Outward gestures of affection were difficult for Hudson, but for his adopted daughter, he tried. It seemed easier as a bear than as a man.
“Gosh, Hudson, I wish I could shift like you. Or at least play outside.”
Hudson raised his nose and nuzzled her cheek. He would remind her later that the doctors said if she kept up with her medicine and physical therapy, she’d be walking and running in no time.
Hudson nuzzled the girl in his care once more, then lumbered off toward the woodshed to shift back into a man form again and get dressed in his clothes.
Sitting by the fire, the flickering light creating amber shapes upon the darkened space, Hudson thought back to what happened to spin his life into a 180-degree change.
A father to Hannah, and who knows, a family of my own one day.
His thoughts meandered to Nora, her easy mothering instincts, and how well Hannah took to her and her care.
No. Seal those thoughts away. A mixed marriage, shifter to human? It never works out in the end. Look at Frank. All the ridicule and scorn. So much so that he felt he had to leave the clan. And then what becomes of little Hannah? You can’t jeopardize her future over silly, flirty games.
The firelight reflected in his glistening eyes, and one last thought sprang to mind.
Besides, I have more things to worry about than mating. There’s a plane down, a shifter dead, and a mystery to solve. Accident or cold-blooded murder?
SEVEN
NORA
Nora watched as Hannah pushed herself along quickly down the hall. “Slow down, Hannah. I’m sure breakfast will still be there.”
She couldn’t help smiling at the girl’s eagerness. Hannah might have been in a wheelchair, but she was still six years old and full of energy like any other kid her age.
The girl giggled and looked back to grin at Nora, not slowing down. “Yeah, but we’re supposed to have chocolate chip pancakes today. We can’t be late for that.”
Nora opened her mouth to respond when she noticed a large shoe in Hannah’s path.
“Watch out!” she called out a second too late to realize that she shouldn’t have given such a vague, frantic command.
Panicked, Hannah tried to slow down and swerve all at once to try and avoid the obstruction. In doing so, though, she slid into a rug that bunched up on the end. The wheels caught the edge of the rug, and the wheelchair tipped over, and Hannah flew forward with a cry.
In a flash, Nora was racing toward the girl and caught her just before she could hit the floor.
A frantic sob escaped the young girl, and she gripped Nora for dear life. The nurse tucked the girl tightly against her and rocked her back and forth in her arms slowly. She smoothed her hair and whispered that she was going to be all right.
There was a bang of a door, and suddenly, Hudson was storming toward them. He took one look at his sobbing child and her tipped-over chair and growled. “What happened?”
An unexpected fury rose in Nora, and she glared at the man.
“What happened?” she snapped back. “What happened was that there are shoes lying everywhere that should have been picked up. And you shouldn’t have this type of loose rug everywhere with someone in a wheelchair in the house.”
She knew the mature thing to do would be to take Hannah to breakfast and then continue this conversation elsewhere. But it was as if a dam had broken open, and she couldn’t stop the tirade coming out. He needed to hear this. More importantly, he needed tounderstandthis.
“In fact, your whole house isn’t exactly childproof. And as far as I can tell, you seem to have no intention of making it any better. You knew her condition when she was coming to live with you, and yet you made no attempt to try to accommodate her.”
Hudson opened his mouth to speak, but Nora kept going. “You’re not just some bachelor living alone anymore. You have a child. A responsibility. If you don’t do something about it, it could even be considered negligence.”
The man flinched, and pain and regret filled his face. And most of all, fear. Nora immediately felt her anger subside.
