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“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say and Griffin nods, heading toward the bookstore where his mate works.
I head home, trying to get my heart and my wolf under control before we see our mate again.
Think of the curse. If you want to protect her, you need to stay away from her,I remind myself.
Still, as I round the last bend in the road and see my curvy mate bent over the front porch, I have a feeling that keeping my hands to myself is going to be harder than I anticipated.
CHAPTER THREE
EDEN
It turns out that home improvement projects are actually harder than I anticipated.
So far, I’ve watched a half dozen videos on fixing porch steps, but they go so fast and make it look so easy. They also have access to proper tools. Who knew there were so many different kinds of screws? Or screwdrivers, for that matter. The more you know.
I’ve managed to pry up the old board so now I should just have to replace it. The problem is that the railing was attached to this step as well and I managed to break that board, too.
“I’ll worry about the railing later,” I mumble to myself as I grab my new drill and find some screws from the bag by my feet.
I test the drill, yelping and almost dropping the thing when it starts up with awhirrrr. It’s a lot louder than I was expecting, and the vibrations run all the way up my arm.
"Give me that," a deep voice says behind me. Before I can blink, the drill is being plucked from my fingers.
“Hey!” I protest, turning to see Ryker standing there, frowning at me.
"I'll trade you," he says, passing me a bunch of leather-bound notebooks.
“What’s this?”
I can barely keep up with this man. One minute he’s acting cold, and the next he’s bringing me something.
“I heard you’re good with numbers,” he says, grabbing a screw and easily securing it to the board.
“Um, I guess. Wait, heard from who?”
“Griffin, who heard it from Phoenix.”
“Oh, I haven’t met him yet. I’m supposed to be joining them for dinner tomorrow,” I tell him as I open the first book and start to flip through it.
Phoenix is right. Iamgood with numbers. They’re constant. I like patterns and puzzles, and I love that feeling of knowing you’re right on the brink of solving something. As I flip through the second book, I realize that’s exactly what this seems to be. A puzzle in need of solving.
“This book is fake, right?” I ask Ryker and he blinks, looking surprised.
“Is it? Well, shit.”
He pauses, taking a moment to stare off into the distance as if watching all the pieces of the last few months fit together. Despite his hot and cold nature toward me, I can’t deny my attraction to him. Six and a half feet of toned muscle all wrapped up in a mysteriously gruff package that’s full of surprises. Oh, and he’s also my neighbor. I may be in trouble here.
I clear my throat, trying to focus back on the numbers and not think about what it felt like to have Ryker’s hands wrapped around me earlier today when I fell into him.
“We’ve been trying to figure it out for months now,” Ryker finally says. “There are bank statements and other papers, but it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s forged.”
“Sure, but whoever was keeping the books would have to know, right?”
“Right,” he says slowly, looking down at the books in my hands. Something else is going on here, but now isn’t the time to discuss it. Like any good puzzle-solver, I know when to finish the task at hand.
“Well, this book has a dot in the corner, right here,” I say, showing him the back cover. “And this one doesn’t.”
“So how do you know that the one with the dot is the real ledger?”
