The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

"I don,t know," he admitted. "But I do know that I have to leave here now. I,m going back up there. The place is mine - the house in Mendocino where it happened. It belongs to me. And I want to go there. I can,t stay here any longer, not after last night. Will you come with me?"

There it was, and he fully expected her to shrink from him, to pull her hand out of his and draw it down away from his reach. Her Man of the Wild was not a Man of the Wild after all.

"Look, I know you have your work, your tours, your customers...."

"It,s the rainy season," she said in a weak small voice. "There are no tours right now. I don,t have any work." Her eyes were glassy, huge. She took another heaving breath. Her fingers wrapped around his.

"Oh ...," he said stupidly. He didn,t know what else to say. Then, "Will you come?"

It was unbearable to sit there quietly under her scrutiny, to wait until she spoke again.

"Yes," she said suddenly. She nodded. "I,ll come with you." She looked certain but dazed.

"You realize what you,re doing if you come with me."

"I,m coming," she said.

Now he really did have to fight the tears, and it took him a moment. He held tight to her hand but looked out the window, at rainy Throckmorton Street and the crowds hurrying to and fro under their umbrellas, in front of the many little shops.

"Reuben," she said. She pressed his hand now tightly. She,d recovered herself and she was very serious. "We should leave now."

As he steered the Porsche towards the Panoramic Highway, she began to laugh.

She laughed harder and harder. It was a great release, this laughter. And she obviously couldn,t hold it in.

He was baffled, uncomfortable. "What is it?" he asked.

"Well, you have to see the humor of this surely," she said. "Look at you. Look at who you are."

His heart sank.

She stopped laughing abruptly. "I,m sorry," she said in a small crestfallen voice. "It wasn,t right to laugh, was it? I shouldn,t have laughed. It,s not a time for laughing at all. It,s just, well, let me put it this way: you,ve got to be one of the handsomest men I,ve ever seen."

"Oh," he whispered. He couldn,t look at her. Well, at least she hadn,t called him a kid or a boy. "Is that good?" he asked. "Or is that bad?"

"You serious?"

He shrugged.

"Well, it,s just surprising," she confessed. "I,m sorry, Reuben. I shouldn,t have laughed."

"It,s all right. It,s not important, is it?"

They had reached her gravel driveway. He turned to her. She looked so genuinely concerned. He couldn,t help but smile to reassure her, and at once her face brightened.

"You know," she said with the utmost sincerity. "In the story of the prince and the frog, there,s always a frog. This story ... it has no frog."

"Hmmm. It,s a different story, Laura," he responded. "It,s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

"No, it,s not," she said reprovingly. "I don,t think it,s that story at all. It,s not ,Beauty and the Beast, either. Maybe it,s a new story."

"Yes, a new story," he agreed eagerly. "And I think the next line of the story is ,Get the hell out of Dodge now., "

She leaned forward and kissed him - him; not the big hairy wolf-beast, but him.

He took her face in both hands and kissed her slowly, lovingly. It was altogether different, the old rhythm, the old way of things, and oh, so indefinably sweet.

Chapter Eighteen

IT TOOK HER LESS than fifteen minutes to pack and call a neighbor who would pick up her car downtown and check on her house while she was gone.

The drive to Nideck Point took almost four hours, just as it had before, largely due to the rain.

On the way, they talked nonstop.

Reuben told her everything that had happened. He explained it all from the start, and in minute detail.

He told her who he,d been before it ever began - all about his family, about Celeste, about Jim, and a multitude of other things, the stories tumbling out effortlessly and sometimes without coherence, her questions always sensitive, and only slightly probing, her fascination obvious even with the things of which he,d always been a little embarrassed or downright ashamed.

"It was a fluke that I got hired by the Observer. Billie knows my mother and it started out as a favor. Then she actually liked what I wrote."

He explained how he was Sunshine Boy to Celeste, and Baby Boy to his mother, and Little Boy to Jim, and lately his editor, Billie, had been calling him Boy Wonder, and only his father called him Reuben. She broke into laughter again over that and had a bit of a time stopping herself.

But it was easy to talk to her, and agreeable to listen to her, too.

Laura had seen Dr. Grace Golding on the morning talk shows. She,d met Grace once at a black-tie benefit. The Goldings supported wildlife causes. "I,ve read all your articles in the Observer," she said. "Everybody likes what you write. I started reading you because somebody told me about your pieces."

He nodded. That might have meant something if all of this had not happened.

They talked about Laura,s years at Radcliffe, her late husband, and briefly the kids. She wasn,t going to linger on those things; Reuben picked up on that quickly. She spoke of her sister, Sandra, as if Sandra were still living. Sandra had been her best friend.

Her dad was the mentor of her life. She and Sandra had grown up in Muir Woods, gone off to eastern schools in their teens, to Europe during the summers, but the rich, near-fantastical paradise of Northern California had been their sustaining life.

Yes, she,d imagined Reuben a wild man come down out of the northern forests, some secret species at one with nature and caught off guard by the routine horrors of urban life.

The little house in the forest had belonged to her grandfather, and he,d still been alive when she was a little girl. There were four bedrooms on the second floor, all empty now. "My boys got to play in the woods for one summer," she said in a small voice.

Their stories poured out of them easily and completely.

He talked about his Berkeley days and the digs overseas, about his love of books, and she talked about her time in New York, and how her husband had swept her off her feet. As for her father, she,d been utterly devoted to him. And he,d never uttered a word of criticism of her for marrying Caulfield Hoffman against his candid but gentle advice.

She,d lived a life of parties, concerts, operas, receptions, and benefits in New York with Caulfield that now seemed like a dream. Their town house on Central Park East, the nannies, the frantic pace and richness of life, all of that was like something that had never happened. Hoffman had been ruined when he killed himself and the children. Everything they,d owned together had been lost. Every single thing.