The Pretend Marriage: A Werewolf Romance (8 page)

“Wait,” he says, “I need to get my clothes.”

“I’ll get them for you,” Terry says. “You don’t want to put your pants on with that gash right there. The fabric might graze it even more.”

“Yes, ma
’am.” He grins at her. “You wouldn’t happen to want to keep me naked for a while longer, would you?”

The moment he said it, he regret
s it, because her color suddenly turns red and she quickly takes her arm off his waist.

Damn! Why do I do these things?

“I didn’t mean that,” he quickly says. He pretends to stumble a bit, and she quickly supports his shoulder and arm again. She is still blushing.

Uh, better get back to the house before the moment vanishes.

11

Terry is still feeling the heat in her cheeks when she tends to Jake’s wound in the privacy of their bedroom. So far, this is the most intimate thing she has ever done with him so far other than that kiss, of course, which was in full view of everyone.

He has put on a pair of shorts, but he still has his shirt off and
is looking extremely hot – as in the weak knee-inducing , getting her all lusty kind of hot. She particularly likes the way his abdominal muscles flex as he breathes. She wonders how they would feel under her fingers.

He doesn’t seem to be noticing what’s going on with her, however.
He is seated upon their bed, looking on as she dabs his wound with iodine.

“
Does it hurt?” she keeps asking him. The wound actually looks pretty deep, but she can see the granulation tissue starting to form already. Like most shifters, he heals fast.

He g
rins. “I’d like to say the pain is excruciating, but it’s an ant bite, really.”

She glances at his face to see if he is kidding her, but he isn’t.

“You should get a rabies shot,” she murmurs. “Wolf bites can carry all sorts of diseases.”

“Only if you aren’t a wolf yourself, which I am. Don’t worry. My immune system is strong enough to withstand most
viruses. Haven’t had a sick day since I was sixteen.”

“It’s terrible
what he did to you.” Her righteous sense of indignation rears again. “You should
tell
Peter Skaarsgard!”

“I’m not a snitch.
I don’t tell on my peers to the boss, and that includes my corporate rivals.”

“But it isn’t fair.”

“Office politics rarely are fair. If you don’t want to play them, then at least you can’t allow them to get to you.”

“How can you stay so cool?” she storms.

“Because it’s the wiser course of action in a situation like this.”

She puts
down the bottle of iodine and takes up a piece of gauze. She carefully puts this over his wound – now brown and filled with antiseptic – and tapes a wide piece of surgical plaster over it.

“So what is Peter trying to
do?” she says. “Set you three against each other?”

“I think he’s trying to gauge which of us is the worthiest candidate to take up the post.”

“By making you kill each other?” She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t think much of his interview process.”

He laughs.
“Maybe that’s in his grand design.” He gets up. “Come on. I’m starving. Let’s go for lunch.”

“If I go down for lunch, I might end up throwing my
plate at Jeff’s mug.”

“That mightn’t be a bad thing, except that you’d
probably induce Cassie into premature labor.” He grabs a shirt and dons it, much to her chagrin.

Still, she can’t help admiring the way he won the hare contest and the grace in which he accepted his challenges. A lesser man
would not have displayed the teamwork with Ethel that he did. A warm, fuzzy feeling smooshes through her tummy when she thinks of this. She studies his profile as he gingerly puts his pants on, taking care not to dislodge her bandage.
There’s so much more to you than meets the eye, Jake,
she thinks, and a pang fleets through her chest.

Lunch is a
tense, brittle affair. Jeff avoids sitting next to and talking to Jake, who similarly ignores him. Cassie’s face is pinched and drawn. Mariko makes conversation with everyone, but her exchange with Jake is guarded and wary.

After lunch, Peter
ushers everyone to the lounge.

“And now for those better halves who didn’t participate in this morning’s challenge,
we have a very exciting time planned for you.”

Terry is apprehensive but
gratified when Jake takes hold of her hand for moral support.
I can get used to this
. She warns herself that he is only doing it for show, of course. They have to put up a semblance of a loving husband and wife for the audience.

But it’s nice to feel his warm palm against hers. Every time he has physical contact with her, she experiences a thrill – the way she used to as a teenager whenever a cute boy glanced in her direction. Only the feeling now is deeper, more intense.
It is quite possibly something she has never experienced before. Certainly not with Burt, which was a much more physical reaction. But what she is feeling now is more connected. More in tune with her inner spirit.

It is not only physical attraction, she is sure of it.

Peter says, “From the pulse pounding rush of this morning’s adrenalin filled event, we now have something more cerebral. Martha, will you do the honors since this is your idea?”

Martha takes center stage – or rather, center lounge
in the midst of all the sofas and two seaters and mismatched armchairs, all upon whom are draped the contestants. She beams like the very moon herself.

Uh oh, Terry thinks. Cerebral doesn’t sound good. She can’t remember the last time she could actually answer any Jeopardy question without
Googling the answer.

“You can do it,” Jake murmurs beside her.

Uh, I wasn’t exactly valedictorian in class, she wants to tell him. Her heart sinks. She’s going to let him down so bad.

Martha says, “
Now let’s go by this morning’s lines. Whoever has already competed today to my left and the others to my right. Come along now.”

There are lots of good-natured groans as everyone takes their places. Jake gives Terry’s hand a squeeze before they part.

“Peter will now hand all of you a set of questions.”

Peter passes a sheaf of papers
and a box of pencils to both lines. “Take one each and pass them down. Write your name above each sheet and fill all the answers up, please. The line on the left gets to write your preferences, and the line on the right gets to guess what they are. The object of this game is to see how well you know your partner.”

“Whoever gets the most number of correct answers wins,” Martha adds.

“What if there is a tie?” Jeff asks.

“Then we’ll have a tiebreaker.”

Terry takes hers. She eyes the list of questions in amazement.

1.
       
What is your partner’s favorite color?

2.
      
What is your partner’s favorite movie?

3.
      
What does your partner like to eat for breakfast?

4.
     
Does your partner drink coffee in the morning?

5.
      
When is your partner’s birthday?

6.
      
What did the two of you do during last Christmas?

7.
      
How often does your partner like to shift in a week?

“Grandma!” yells Mika. “How the hell would I know what Aunt Ethel did last Christmas?”

“Silly girl, of course you do. This is a little
quiz to gauge just how much you know about each other. And that goes for you too, Mika. Ethel’s family after all.”

“What is this? The Green Card interview?” Mika grumbles.

This is
not, not
good, Terry thinks as she starts to scribble furiously beside the first question. She catches sight of Jake, who is trying to frantically meet her eyes.

“No cheating now,” Martha admonishes gaily as she strides in between the lines like a principal.
“No texting each other on the phone to check your answers.”

Damn.

Terry doesn’t know Jake’s favorite color from Methuselah’s. She casts her mind to what he usually likes to wear but can’t pinpoint any particular preference. But he looks good in black, and so she desperately scribbles:

BLACK.

2. Favorite movie:

Hell, she doesn’t even know if he likes to watch movies. He has certainly never mentioned any, and what does she know about him anyway? Does he even watch movies at all? Does he ever find the time to?

This i
s going downhill all the way.

“You have two minutes,” Martha warns, making an about turn to go up the lines instead.

Terry settles for ‘THE MATRIX’, because she knows a lot of guys who like the movie.

3.
      
Favorite breakfast food:

Uh, uh, uh. Duh.

CEREAL.

4.
     
Coffee?

YES.

Who the hell doesn’t drink coffee?

5.
      
Birthday?

Oh shit and double shit. There are three hundred and sixty five days to choose from. She has never seen Jake’s ID before, nor remembered any birthday celebration he could possibly have. They have certainly never mentioned birthdays to each other because they were barely speaking before this, and she isn’t even his Friend on Facebook.

She raises her eyes. Jake is busy scribbling something down. Now she wishes she has ESP so she can connect with him.
Give me a sign, Jake!
He finally looks up and furrows his brow. It would not do to mouth anything to him like ‘Birthday?’ because Martha is on the prowl. Honestly, that woman would make a good Mother Superior.

6.
      
Last Xmas?

She frowns as she tries to think of what she did last Christmas. Oh yeah, she hadn’t even moved into Jake’s apartment block yet. How the hell would she know what he did last Christmas? Visited his mother’s? Most people do.

She writes down:

VISITED HOME.

Ah, vague and ambiguous. Whose home? His parents or her parents?

7.
      
Shifting Frequency

She is stumped. How often does Jake shift? She has never seen him shift before up till today. They live in an apartment block which hosts both humans and shifters, and there are rules about not shifting in the corridors and stairs – which is standard city ordinance for shifters as part of them living amid the general public.

Duh.

She has never seen him shift before this. Honestly.

So she puts down:

ONCE A MONTH.

Her palms are sweaty. This is worse than the SATs.

“Time’s up,” Martha says crisply as though it is the end of an examination. “Don’t forget to write your names down now so we can compare notes.”

Terry passes up her sheet of paper with nail-biting apprehension. She glimpses Jeff eyeing her smugly, as if he knows what she
doesn’t
know.

I’ll catch you both out yet
, he seems to be saying.

When Peter and Martha have collected all the papers, the two groups merge once again.

“Oh my God,” Terry whispers.

“Ssssh,” Jake murmurs.
“Hug me.”

“Huh?”

He embraces her. “You can whisper in my ear,” he says into her hair.

“I think I got everything wrong.”

“It’s OK. You tried your best.”

They part, leaving her with a lingering regret. She is going to miss his touch when this weekend is over. It is just so nice to be held by a
great-looking, alpha man who will take care of her – and Jake seems to qualify for every aspect of that.

If only . . .

Ah, well.

“OK,” Martha says gaily. The woman seems to be on a permane
ntly buoyant mood, as if she regularly ingests helium for breakfast. Terry wouldn’t be surprised if there is a tank of it in Martha’s bedroom. “Let’s tally up the answers now.”

Terry’s stomach sinks with dread.

“First up – Jeff and Cassie Hirsch. Favorite color. Cassie puts ‘blue’. Peter, what was Jeff’s answer?”

“Blue.”

Jeff grins like the second coming. Cassie seems relieved she got it right.

“Favorite movie . . .
‘Grownups’. Is that right, Peter?”

“Absolutely right.”

Terry raises an eyebrow to Jake.

“‘Grownups’?” she mutters.

“Hey, different strokes for different folks. Maybe he digs Adam Sandler on a personal level.”

Martha says, “
Breakfast . . . bagels with cream cheese.”

“Third one in the pan,” Peter says.

Cassie got the coffee and birthday questions right, naturally. For Christmas, they “had a family outing with Jeff’s father at Adirondacks”.