Book 1 - Page 27 (2/2)

”Mercy, look, I'm sorry. If you didn't know first aid, and you couldn't trust his pack, there's nothing else you could have done.”

His voice was soft and sweet as mola.s.ses; but my mother once told me that you had to trust that the first thing out of a person's mouth was truth. After they have a chance to think about it, they'll change what they say to be more socially acceptable, something they think you'll be happier with, something that will get the results they want. I knew what he wanted, what he had always wanted from me, even if-while he had been working on Adam's injuries-Samuel, himself, had forgotten.

”Adam tore a strip off me for being so hard on you,” he said, his voice coaxing. ”He was right. I was mad because I don't like hurting someone unnecessarily, and I took it out on you. Can I come in and talk to you instead of the door?”

I rubbed my face tiredly. I wasn't sixteen anymore, to run away from difficult things, no matter how attractive that option was. There were, I thought reluctantly, things I needed to say to him as well.

”All right,” he said. ”All right, Mercy. I'll see you in the morning.”

He had turned around and was already walking away when I opened the door.

”Come in,” I said and s.h.i.+vered when the wind blew through my s.h.i.+rt. ”But you'd better hurry. It's colder than a witch's britches out there.”

He came back and stomped his feet hard on the mat, leaving behind clumps of snow before stepping inside my room. He took off his coat and set it on the table near the door, and I saw he'd found a s.h.i.+rt somewhere. They kept stashes of clothes around town, in case someone needed to dress quickly; unis.e.x things mostly, like jeans, T-s.h.i.+rts, and sweats. The T-s.h.i.+rt he wore was a little small and clung to him like a second skin. If he'd had an extra ounce of fat or a little less muscle, it would have looked stupid, but he was built like a Chippendales' dancer.

His body was lovely, but I don't know if anyone else would have called him handsome. He certainly didn't have Adam's strikingly beautiful features. Sam's eyes were deeply set, his nose was too long, his mouth too wide. His coloring in human form was much less striking than his wolf: light blue-gray eyes and brown hair, streaked just a bit from the sun.

Looking at his face, I wasn't objective enough to decide how attractive he was: he was just Sam who had been my friend, my defender, and my sweetheart.

I glanced away from his face, dropping my own so that he couldn't read my anger-and whatever other emotion was hammering at me-until I'd gotten it under control. If he read the wrong thing into it, that wasn't my fault. I hadn't let him in to argue with him.

”I didn't think you were going to talk to me,” he said, with a shadow of his usual warm smile in his voice.

”Me either,” I agreed grimly to my shoes-I wasn't going to get through this if I had to look at him. ”But I owe you an apology, too.”