How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf (Naked Werewolf 1)

“I’ll pull my truck around,” Eli told them.

“Now, that’s settled. Let an old man rest,” Noah muttered, closing his eyes. He snapped them back open and smirked at Cooper. “How many nurses will there be, do you think?”

Cooper snorted and patted Noah’s hand. “Get some rest, you old hound.”

I returned to Cooper’s side. He wrapped his arm protectively around me as the relatives converged on us. Cooper’s cheeks were kissed, pinched, patted, and thoroughly lipsticked. I was generally ignored, which was fine. I think they were waiting for some sort of signal. At this point, surrounded by the crush of bodies, I was just grateful that everyone seemed to be fully clothed.

“Yeah, we need to talk about that Maureen thing,” I whispered as we made it out the other side of the gauntlet, into the waiting room. “You were out of town when my real name got spread around by Susie Q. And, uh, it isn’t Maureen.”

He stopped in his tracks, a mixture of guilt and apology flashing across his features. “It’s not? I just assumed . . .”

“We’ll talk later.”

“How bad could it be?” he asked as we approached a round, smiling woman with an unlined face.

“Later,” I whispered.

“That bad?”

I stopped and murmured in his ear, “Moonflower Freedom Refreshing Breeze Joplin Duvall-Wenstein. OK?”

Cooper stared at me. “Wow.”

“Do you have any idea how long it takes me to fill out income-tax forms?”

Cooper’s response was cut short when the clinic door burst open. A slim, short woman stomped through the door, followed by an older woman with a worried expression. The younger one scanned the crowd until her obsidian eyes landed on Cooper. Her lip curled up in disgust.

Wait a minute, I recognized that scowl. That was Cooper’s scowl.

That was Cooper’s sister.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” she demanded.

Maggie Graham was hard, lean, and built for speed. Her black hair was cut in sharp layers around her face. She was beautiful in a fierce, alien way, like the old Greek mythical monsters that consumed heroes the minute their backs were turned.

Eli stepped through the door, an apologetic grimace wreathing his face. “Sorry, Coop, she saw your truck. I couldn’t stop her.”

“Maggie,” Cooper said, carefully examining her face. “You went and grew up on me.’

“That happens when you leave and don’t look back,” she snapped.

“Just for one day, let’s not have any trouble.”

“I don’t have to listen to you, Cooper. You made sure of that a long time ago. Leave the valley now. You’re not welcome here anymore. You don’t have a home here.”

“Maggie, please don’t,” the older woman pleaded.

Cooper’s voice grew harder, more authoritative. “Maggie, just calm down.”

But Maggie was already crouched, springing toward an attack. My human eyes couldn’t track her movements as she shifted into a wolf and lunged. A dark shape blurred past me, barreling into Cooper. As a wolf, Maggie was smaller than Cooper but no less intimidating. She was compact, but you could see the strength in her limbs, the barely controlled power as she leaped at him.

Cooper barely had enough time to phase before hitting the ground with Maggie’s teeth clamped around his neck. He shook off the tatters of his clothes as he struggled to throw his little sister off his back. Samson started to jump into the fray as family members scattered out of the way, leaving toppled chairs and spilled coffee in their wake.

“No, the fewer involved, the better,” Noah said wearily. “Try to corral them outside if you could. Dr. Moder shouldn’t have to clean up after them.”

Samson and Eli shooed—for lack of a better word—the grappling wolves out the clinic door, and the rest of the pack poured out into the parking lot after them. Cooper was definitely on the defensive, feinting when Maggie snapped at him and rolling when she pounced. But he didn’t fight back. There were plenty of opportunities for him to take advantage of his size, his strength. He could have pinned her a dozen times. Instead, he just tried to keep her from doing any permanent damage, like a resigned parent handling a toddler’s temper tantrum.

I searched the crowd for some sign of reason, someone who would step in and stop this. But most of Cooper’s relatives seemed proud, happy, as if a sibling death match was some sort of cherished holiday tradition. Half were cheering for Cooper, the other half for Maggie. And if I wasn’t mistaken, a couple of them were placing bets.