Werewolf in the North Woods Read online

  Guilt stabbed him as he thought of how arrogant, and how hypocritical, his talks had been. He had no doubt that Earl had seen that mated pair, and regardless of Earl’s evidence, he’d made a terrific scientific discovery. As a reward, his name had been dragged through the mud.

  “Hell, I know the evidence is bad. My camera’s old and my arthritic fingers don’t work as well as they used to. But can I give you anecdotal evidence, instead?”

  “Sure.” Roarke leaned forward and cradled the warm mug in both hands. “I’d love to hear about what you saw.”

  Earl launched into his tale, and Abby hadn’t been kidding about the Irish gift for storytelling. Roarke sat spellbound, his coffee forgotten, as Earl described the early morning, the ape-like roar of the creatures, the gag-inducing smell, and the camera that refused to cooperate. When Earl finished, Roarke had absolutely no doubt that this was a Bigfoot sighting of massive importance to cryptozoology.

  “I think they’re still out there.” Behind his glasses, Earl’s blue eyes shone with excitement. “I couldn’t say for sure, but I thought one had a belly on her, as if she might be pregnant. I think they’re looking for a place to have that baby.”

  Roarke did his best to look unaffected by that news, but he was struggling.

  “I want to throw out a challenge to you, Dr. Wallace.”

  “Hey, call me Roarke.”

  “Roarke is an Irish name. Are your folks Irish?”

  Roarke shook his head. “Russian, if you go back far enough. My mom just likes Celtic names, I guess. My brother is Aidan.”

  “I like your mother’s taste in names. At any rate, I challenge you to spend some time in the wilderness area beyond my property looking for that Sasquatch pair. I want to make a believer of you.”

  Roarke would be spending time in that area, all right, but he’d do it as a wolf. He could travel more efficiently, and the pair would be less likely to run if they saw him. Besides that, when he found them he’d be able to communicate telepathically, one mythical creature to another.

  “You’re hesitating,” Earl said. “Are you afraid that you’ll find something that blows your pet theories out of the water?”

  “No.” Roarke searched for a way to reject the challenge without sounding like a pompous jerk. “But I have…a paper that I need to be writing, so I’m afraid I don’t have time to spare.”

  Earl looked as if he didn’t believe a word of that excuse. “You could take Abby with you.”

  Abby made a soft exclamation of protest.

  Earl turned to her. “What’s wrong with that idea?”

  “You can’t just spring something like that on people, Grandpa. Even if Roarke wanted to look around, he might not want to take me, and now he’s in the awkward position of having to say so.”

  “At my age you don’t worry about etiquette, sweetheart. He should go and you should go with him because your knowledge of the woods could save him some time.”

  Roarke imagined sharing a tent with Abby and almost reconsidered. But then he’d never find his quarry because he’d be too busy enjoying the charms of Abby Winchell. “It’s a thought,” he said, “and I appreciate the motivation behind it. But I really can’t afford the time.”

  “I would go myself, but my arthritis is driving me nuts lately. Still, I may have to ignore that and head on out.”

  “That’s a bad idea, Grandpa,” Abby said.

  “Probably, but it really frosts me that no one believes what I saw. Even Roarke doesn’t believe me. Am I right?”

  Roarke fell back on his canned response. “It’s highly improbable that a large, bipedal humanoid could survive in this climate.”

  “Bullshit. If bears can, then Bigfoot could. I sure wish you could see that. I must be losing my storytelling skills, because if you believed what I told you, you’d be out combing those woods. A brilliant scientist like you wouldn’t be able to resist.” Earl’s shoulders slumped.

  “It’s a great story,” Roarke said. “But my scientific training tells me—”

  “You can’t rely solely on your training. ‘To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.’ Einstein.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Roarke said.

  “But…I can’t force you to go out there and look.” Earl stood and held out his hand. “Thanks for coming, Roarke. It was worth a shot trying to convince you.”

  Roarke stood and gripped Earl’s hand. “I wish I could say you changed my mind.” He wished he could say a lot of things, including that.

  “I wish you could, too.”

  Glancing at his watch, Roarke grimaced. “Sorry to cut this short, but I need to take off.”

  “That’s some watch you have there.” Earl peered at it. “Doesn’t look like a Rolex. Judging from that fancy car outside I’d expect you to wear a Rolex. What is it?”

  “A Louis Moinet Magistalis.”

  “Huh. Never heard of that before.”

  Abby got up. “I’ll walk you to the door, Roarke.”

  “Which is my cue to let you two young people have a private conversation,” Earl said. “Thanks for listening to an old coot.”

  “It was a pleasure.”

  “And tell Cameron Gentry I will see him in hell before I’ll let him have this land.”

  Roarke couldn’t help smiling. The guy had spunk. “I’ll tell him. Take care, Dr. Dooley.”

  “You, too, Dr. Wallace.”

  Still smiling, Roarke walked with Abby to the front door. He wouldn’t mind continuing a friendship with Earl, but that would be impossible given the situation.

  “I watched your face during Grandpa Earl’s story,” Abby said when they reached the door. “You were digging it.”

  Roarke glanced down at her. “Of course I was. You were absolutely right. Nobody can tell a story like an Irishman.”

  “Yes, but I think it was more than that. I can’t shake the feeling that a part of you believes in Bigfoot.”

  Gazing at her, Roarke longed to give her the satisfaction of knowing he’d changed his mind. But because he’d never doubted her grandfather in the first place, he couldn’t claim an about-face. “Let it go, Abby.”

  “I can’t. He’s so frustrated.”

  “Then tell him this.” Roarke pictured Gentry’s fury at this decision, but he didn’t much care. “I haven’t changed my mind, but I’ll cancel the rest of my talks. He can spin that information any way he wants to.”

  Abby’s eyes glowed. “Thank you, Roarke.” Placing both hands lightly on his shoulders, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

  Her kiss was quick but potent. Her lips tasted like warm coffee and the imprint of her velvet touch lingered long after she’d pulled away. It took all of Roarke’s willpower not to kiss her back. Somehow he managed to get out the door and into his car, but he had no memory of the drive back to the Gentry estate.

  No doubt about it, Abby was big medicine. He remembered the way his brother Aidan had behaved after meeting Emma, and Roarke had a really bad feeling he was heading down that same path. He needed to find the mated pair and get the hell out of Portland before he did something really stupid.

  Chapter Four

  After Roarke left, a customer came in for some crackers and a couple of packs of gum. Abby gave them too much change for their twenty and didn’t realize it until they’d driven away. That’s what she got for kissing Roarke Wallace. Now her brain was mush.

  Worse yet, he hadn’t kissed her back. Instead he’d stood there like a bump on a log. Then he’d left in a hurry, as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her. How demoralizing.

  Yesterday he’d seemed interested, but yesterday she’d been wearing a killer outfit. Maybe he was just that shallow. Now she was embarrassed for choosing to wear her Kiss me, I’m Irish sweatshirt. She’d thought doing that would be flirty and fun, when in fact it had only added to her humiliation when Roarke turned to stone at the touch of her mouth on his.

  Grandpa Earl might deserve some of the blame for that. His
suggestion that Roarke take Abby camping had been a blatant attempt to matchmake. Roarke probably had a girlfriend back home and he’d only shown interest yesterday out of courtesy or habit. When he realized her grandfather was ready to welcome him into the family, he’d slammed on the brakes. God, she wished she could take back that kiss!

  “Abby,” Grandpa Earl called from the back room. “Come look at this.”

  With a glance toward the parking lot to make sure nobody had driven up, she started toward the back room. Business had fallen off lately, which Earl attributed to the Gentrys’ smear campaign but Abby thought might be due to the convenience store that had opened about four miles down the road. It offered longer hours and served soft drinks from a dispenser. People liked that.

  She walked into the back room. A door to the right led to the living quarters, which must have been cramped for a family of four back in the day, but were about right for a widower and his occasional guest Abby.

  Grandpa Earl sat at the desk in an armless swivel chair he could get out of without struggling. He was hunched over his aging computer staring at the monitor. “Come look at what that watch of his sells for,” he said without looking up.

  She didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. Obviously he meant the non-kisser, Roarke Wallace. “Grandpa, I know he has money. His parents are friends with Cameron’s parents, so it stands to reason that he’d be wearing a pricey watch.”

  “I guess pricey describes a watch worth eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars. I assume that’s before they add tax.”

  Abby gasped. As a claims adjuster she’d dealt with some expensive items, but she couldn’t remember ever hearing about a watch in that price range. No wonder Roarke hadn’t wanted to get involved with her. She was from the wrong side of the tracks.

  Grandpa Earl punched a few more keys. “Here’s some information on his family.” He gestured toward the screen. “I gather that the Wallaces are to New York City what the Gentrys are to Portland.”

  “That explains a lot.” Abby flopped into an old easy chair beside her grandfather’s desk. Her Grandma Olive used to sit there with her knitting while her husband researched Bigfoot on the Internet. Olive’s knitting basket still sat beside the chair and no one had ever suggested moving it.

  “It does, but it makes me sad.” Earl sat back in his chair and glanced over at Abby. “He may be a rich boy, but he’s a professor at a prestigious university. As such, he should keep an open mind and not allow other considerations, like loyalty to the Gentrys, to interfere with scientific inquiry.”

  “You gave it a good try, Grandpa.”

  “Not good enough, obviously.”

  “I don’t think it helped that you practically threw me at him.”

  Her grandfather blinked. “Who was throwing? I just thought—”

  “That he should take me camping? That’s a very intimate thing to do.”

  “Not if you sleep in separate tents! Did I say you should share a tent? No, I did not. I said he should take you along. Men and women go on scientific explorations all the time without having sex, Abby.”

  Her cheeks warmed. He was right. She was the one who had jumped to the conclusion that if Roarke took her camping, they’d sleep together. Her mind had been on sex, but her grandfather’s mind had been on creating a team of two people for scientific exploration.

  Come to think of it, Roarke probably went on trips like that in his field work as an anthropologist. He might not have interpreted Grandpa Earl’s suggestion as matchmaking, after all. He simply hadn’t wanted to go.

  She understood that, in a way. He’d been flown here to take care of a problem—Grandpa Earl’s supposed sighting of Bigfoot and his mate. Going out to search for the very thing he was supposed to discredit wasn’t in his job description. He took the chance of alienating the Gentrys, who were friends of his family.

  Viewed that way, Roarke’s decision not to tramp through the woods with her became less personal. Still, she would have liked to see some sort of reaction when she’d kissed him. But she hadn’t, and that was that. End of story for her and the gorgeous Dr. Wallace.

  “Abby, I need to ask a favor.”

  “That’s why I’m here. To help.”

  “I want you to watch the store so I can go back out and find Bigfoot and his mate.”

  Abby thought carefully about her answer. She didn’t want her grandfather to think she considered him incapable of that, but she couldn’t let him go out by himself and wander around in the woods. He didn’t move very well, and he could trip.

  Maybe if he’d been willing to carry a cell phone, she’d feel better about him hiking alone, but he wasn’t. The computer he’d bought ten years ago was as far into the electronic world as he wanted to go. Besides, cell phone reception wasn’t very reliable in the woods.

  “You don’t think I’m up to it,” her grandfather said quietly.

  “You’d probably be fine, but I would spend the whole time you were gone worrying about you. At some point I’d probably close up the store and come after you, which wouldn’t be a good thing for business. If you want more evidence, and I don’t blame you for that, then I’ll go.”

  “I wish we’d been able to talk Roarke into searching. It’s better if two people go. Then even if the camera malfunctions, you have a witness to what you’ve seen.”

  “But Roarke doesn’t want to go, Grandpa. So you’ll have to make do with me.”

  His expression was adorably serious. “I couldn’t ask for a better person than you, Abby.”

  “So do we have a deal?”

  “How would you feel about camping out by yourself?”

  Abby hesitated. She’d never actually done that. Pitching a tent in the backyard wasn’t quite the same as hiking into an unspoiled forest and setting up camp all alone. A person would be pretty damned isolated out there.

  “You don’t have to stay overnight,” he said gently. “It was only an idea. Hiking in a different area every day will probably accomplish the same thing.”

  Abby nodded enthusiastically. “I’m sure it will. In fact, I’ll take a short one this afternoon. I’ll do a grid search over the next few days and chart where I’ve been. This’ll be great. I’ll take my camera, and…damn. I probably need a better camera than my little digital.”

  “Take mine.”

  “I hate to tell you, but I don’t like yours. With the zoom attached, it’s awkward and heavy.”

  “But it’s far better than that little toy of yours, Abby. Maybe I should go, after all. I know that camera, and if I keep the zoom attached instead of carrying it separately, then I won’t have the same problem that—”

  “Let me try it this afternoon.” She dreaded hauling that monster zoom around, but her grandfather was right about the quality of the pictures it took. She’d have to spend a bundle to get a small camera that would come anywhere close.

  He brightened. “Good. I’ll bet once you’ve worked with it a while, you’ll come to appreciate what a great camera it is.”

  She doubted it, but now that she’d volunteered herself to go on a Bigfoot search, she was determined to do it to Grandpa Earl’s satisfaction. Hearing him repeat his story to Roarke had impressed her all over again. He might not have convinced Roarke, but he’d convinced her. Bigfoot was out there. Although her chances of spotting the creature were slim considering she only had limited time to look, she had to give it her best shot.

  Many hours later, as she trudged through the forest with her grandfather’s camera looking like an AK-47 concealed under her jacket, she began to doubt again. Maybe she’d secretly thought that agreeing to carry the big-ass camera would give her the reward of an immediate sighting today. Instead, she was sick to death of hauling the damn thing with nothing to show for it.

  Out of sheer boredom she’d taken some outstanding close-ups of a squirrel. While zooming in on the squirrel, she’d realized that Photoshop might be able to transform a squirrel into a Sasquatch. Who was to say that an
y of the photos used to prove Bigfoot existed were legitimate? Even if she stumbled upon an actual creature, what kind of proof would that be without a witness swearing she hadn’t doctored the shot?

  Although the rain had stopped earlier in the afternoon, the drizzle had returned and the light was fading. She pictured herself wrapped in a quilt, sitting in front of the potbellied stove and drinking hot coffee laced with Bailey’s. Maybe it was time to give up for the day.

  She was so intent on her image of a warm fire and a hot drink that she almost missed seeing movement about a hundred yards away. There. Somebody…or something was walking through the trees.

  Heart pounding, she raised the camera and zoomed in. What she saw made her blink in surprise. Had Roarke changed his mind about looking for Sasquatch on her grandfather’s land? She couldn’t imagine any other reason he’d be here.

  Gradually surprise turned to anger. Obviously Earl’s story had put some doubts in Roarke’s mind and he’d decided to investigate, after all, but damn it, why couldn’t he have said so this morning? An admission that he was rethinking his position on Bigfoot would have meant the world to Grandpa Earl. Apparently Roarke was too proud to make it, and the sexy professor instantly dropped several notches in her estimation.

  Focusing on him again, she took a couple of pictures. Maybe she’d print them up and present them to him over another drink at Flannigan’s. So, Dr. Arrogant Bastard, if you don’t believe a word my grandfather said, what were you doing prowling around in his woods, hmmm? Is this or is this not you, Dr. Pompous Hypocrite?

  She would do exactly that. He deserved to be found out, and she was just the woman to do it. She snapped off a couple more pictures for good measure. What a prince. And she’d thought he might be worth pursuing. Ha. He was…he was taking off his clothes?

  That made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Abby stopped clicking the shutter. Roarke was quickly going from hot prospect to strange weirdo. He could be a nudist, but he’d have to be one totally dedicated nudist to strip down in a cold drizzle.