Howl at the Moon Read online

  Retracing her steps, she returned to her desk and powered up her PC, storing her bag in her bottom drawer while the operating system loaded. The message light on her phone blinked frantically, and a stack of pink message slips sat in the middle of her blotter, evidence of an average weekend at the club. Other than her trip to the safe, everything appeared to be on a normal Monday schedule. It was just Sam who felt like the world had gone off-kilter.

  She had the phone to her ear and a pen in her hand when the office door opened. As she looked up, an automatic smile for her boss curved her lips but froze when her gaze landed on the figure in the doorway. His crisp olive dress uniform made his skin look golden and emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the firm cut of his jaw. Sam felt her mouth go dry, then begin to water as if Pavlov had just rung his bell.

  "Good morning," he rumbled.

  Had his voice always sounded like that? All rough and gravelly and warm? Had it always made her thighs clench together?

  She blinked up at him stupidly.

  His grin widened. "I brought some breakfast." He waved a box of doughnuts under her nose. "And I asked the kitchen to send over a pot of coffee. I'd have brought that with me, too, but I wasn't sure how you take it."

  "Light," she muttered, still dazed and wondering if she could make herself look like a bigger idiot. Maybe if she really put her back into it…

  "Good. I told him to put cream and sugar on the tray." Setting the doughnut box on the edge of her desk, he hitched his hip on the wood beside it and folded his arms over his chest. One eyebrow arched curiously. "Do you find the disconnected-line tone oddly soothing?"

  Jerking back to reality, Sam discovered herself holding the phone receiver to her ear while it blared the strident beeps that indicated she'd finished her call to the voice-mail system and forgotten to hang up.

  Oh yeah. She obviously had unplumbed depths of idiocy still to strive for.

  Flushing, she hung up and struggled for some scraps of dignity. "Good morning. I'm sure Richards took care of stocking your desk over the weekend, but if you discover there's anything you still need, feel free to let him know." Okay, that just sounded rude. "Or me." She forced a smile. "I'd be happy to help."

  His lips twitched. "Oh, I'm sure you would. You made that clear on Friday."

  She felt her cheeks growing even redder, but she couldn't think of a reasonable answer, so she clenched her teeth against the urge to babble.

  He stood for a second, just grinning at her, then reached down and pushed the doughnuts closer to her. "Not hungry?"

  She wasn't, but since she hadn't eaten breakfast, she didn't really have much of an excuse not to be, and she sure as hell wasn't going to tell him she couldn't eat while his presence had her stomach doing the rumba through her abdominal cavity. There was such a thing as oversharing.

  "I'm not much of a breakfast eater," she said, hoping she wouldn't choke on the lie. Normally, she started her day with a nice hunk of meat and maybe a piece of toast, for the fiber. The fact that she hadn't done so today would catch up with her sooner or later. She tried to be polite and give herself an out at the same time. "Thanks for bringing them, though. I'm sure Graham will enjoy them. He's got a heck of a sweet tooth. And I'll have one later, once I'm more awake."

  "If you're not into breakfast, you must be a big fan of dinner."

  She nodded before she stopped to think.

  "Great," Noah said, looking the slightest bit smug. "Then you can have it with me. How's tomorrow night sound?"

  How did it sound! Like she was supposed to be able to hear anything over the buzzing in her ears. "Um, what?"

  "Have dinner with me tomorrow night," Noah repeated patiently. "I even promise to spring for something better than doughnuts."

  His crooked smile turned her knees to jelly filling, so at the moment she had doughnuts on the brain. She was also really glad she was sitting down.

  "I can't."

  Noah raised an eyebrow. "Why not? If you don't like breakfast, you have to eat sometime and a woman can't live by lunch alone. Why not dinner?"

  Frantically Sam searched her mind for an excuse. There had to be one in there somewhere. One that didn't involve the phrase "because I'm afraid I'd attack you over the table and get us both arrested for public indecency."

  "I—uh," She swallowed. "Tomorrow's Tuesday."

  "Yeah, that's what usually happens after Monday. So what?"

  "So, I can't go out to dinner. I'll have to work in the morning."

  "I wasn't planning to take you to Greece, Samantha. We can sit down to dinner before ten. I can even have you home before ten, if you want."

  She ignored the amusement in his voice and shook her head. "I don't go out on weeknights."

  He sighed. "Okay, then how about Friday night? You don't work on Saturdays, do you?"

  "No, but I have plans early on Saturday."

  Noah gave her a level look. "If you're trying to brush me off, you're going to have to be blunter than that. I'm a soldier. We don't take hints; we take orders."

  A little surprised to actually hear him giving her an out, Sam opened her mouth to tell him she wasn't interested in going out with him and found the words catching in her throat. Because she did want to go out with him. She also wanted to stay in with him. Hell, she just plain wanted him, and there really was no good reason why she couldn't go on a date with him, was there?

  She thought about it for a second. True, he wasn't Lupine, but that didn't matter as much these days as it had in the past, especially not since the Alpha had taken a human to mate. There weren't any laws against dating outside the pack, and it wasn't like Sam was contemplating marrying Noah anyway. It was just dinner.

  And, if she was really lucky, maybe some hot, sweaty sex.

  Pursing her lips, she felt some of her tension drain away to be replaced by a quick buzz of awareness of the attraction between them. Her lips curved into a smile.

  "I'm not brushing you off," she said, finally sounding more like herself. "I really do have plans on Saturday morning. It's one of my cousins' birthdays, and I promised my aunt I'd help rodeo the kids during the party. But I'm free Saturday night."

  She didn't even have a chance to hold her breath; his smile turned warm and sexy again and took it away before she could even inhale.

  "Good. How about I pick you up at your apartment at seven?"

  She nodded. She opened her mouth to say more, but the office door swung open and Graham walked in, sniffing avidly.

  "I smell doughnuts," he said, eyes sparkling with avarice. "Gimme."

  Snorting, Noah pushed away from her desk and nodded to the still-closed box. "Right there, but I brought them for everyone. You'll have to share."

  Graham scowled over the Boston cream that already filled his mouth. "Share?" he mumbled.

  "Share," Noah confirmed, reaching around him to snag a jelly filled. "Sam hasn't had any breakfast. She needs them more than we do."

  Chewing and swallowing, Graham turned his frown on her. "Why didn't you eat? You're not getting sick, are you?"

  "Would you relax? I'm fine." Sam grabbed a chocolate glazed and leaned back in her chair, trying to appear casual to Graham and to put some head-clearing distance between herself and Noah. "I just overslept. I didn't have time for anything before I left home. Unless you wanted to answer your own phone until ten."

  Graham's horror at that thought showed clearly on his face.

  "I didn't think so." Smirking, she set her doughnut down on a napkin and turned to her computer screen. "Now if you boys will excuse me, someone around here has to keep things running. I have work to do."

  Graham snagged a second doughnut from the box and beckoned to Noah. "We've been dismissed, soldier. Come on into my office for a few minutes and I can give you some names you might want to put on the top of your interview list. I've been thinking about this all weekend. How do you think the army would feel about taking on a couple of… creative thinkers?"

  The two me
n disappeared into Graham's sanctuary, but not before Noah left her with another one of those sexy smiles and an even more devastating wink. It took Sam three full minutes before she remembered her computer log-in.

  It was going to be a very long week.

  To her surprise, Sam actually managed to get a good amount of work done that morning. Graham and Noah stayed closeted in the inner office for nearly an hour, which gave her hormones time to chill out and stop driving her quite so out of her ever-loving mind. By the time Noah emerged to take his place at the desk across the room, she was elbows deep in the month's expense reports and barely had time to smile at him between keystrokes.

  He didn't bother to interrupt her, just took a seat and got down to business. At 11:00 A.M., the first of his candidates walked in, and from that point on neither one of them had the time or the energy to so much as throw the other smoldering glances. They were too busy doing their jobs.

  He did five interviews that day, and Sam knew each and every one of his candidates. All were Silverback, and though most of them were a good five or even—gagk—ten years younger than her, pack was pack. One of them was a cousin, and Sam had babysat for two of the others. All of them said hello to her on their way to their appointments, and she had to stifle the urge to ask them what they thought they were doing. She hadn't yet decided whether or not she approved of the idea of Lupine soldiers serving in a human military establishment. The idea gave her an instinctive pause or two. After all, there were certain members of the government who still hadn't embraced the idea that Lupines were people, not animals to be used as lab rats or weapons. She could only hope Noah's superiors counted among the enlightened.

  Plus, all these guys were adults. They had the right to make up their own minds, and if some or all of them wanted to join the military, it wasn't any of Sam's business.

  Besides, she had bigger things to worry about. As she left for lunch, she cast a glance at Graham's office and thought about the paper and notebook she'd locked in his safe. Those were her business. She just hoped she proved to have a head for it.

  Working undercover and probing the interests and skills of the Lupines he interviewed turned out to be less of a challenge for Noah than working in the same room with Samantha Carstairs. The woman played hell with his libido, not to mention his concentration. Hearing her low voice when she answered the phone, seeing the sway of her hips every time she walked into Graham's office, even smelling the sweet, spicy scent of her whenever the air stirred in Noah's direction had altered the fit of his uniform trousers in ways he felt certain the army had never intended.

  He was also pretty sure the army had never intended for him to be thinking about whether or not he'd be able to taste that scent on her skin while he was asking potential recruits about their interest in exploring advanced degrees in science on the government's dime. Oh, well. That's why it paid to be adaptable. By the time he ushered the last of his interviews out the office door just after six, his battle with frustration had spread to two fronts. The first sat across the room at her desk, calmly clicking away on her keyboard, but the second had developed over the course of the last seven hours. None of his carefully chosen subjects had responded to any of his carefully worded questions. He'd spent all day doing a job he was beginning to hate, and he didn't even have anything to show for it.

  Unless you counted the zipper marks on an extremely sensitive part of his anatomy.

  Concealing his frustration behind a blank expression, he finished making notes in the folder in front of him, then flipped it shut and rose from his chair to indulge in a long stretch. He hadn't spent this long at a desk since high school. It reminded him exactly how much he preferred the action of field duty.

  He saw Sam's head turn quickly away from him and felt his mouth curve in satisfaction. She must have been watching him stretch, but she didn't want him to know she'd been watching. That was a good sign, and it reminded him that his day hadn't been a total loss. She'd agreed to a date. He stifled the impatient growl of hunger that reminded him it was still five days away. He could wait that long. Just.

  Strolling casually across the room, he shot a quick glance toward Graham's closed door and saw that no light seeped from underneath. He must have left for the day while Noah was conducting his last interview. That meant he and Sam were the only ones left in the office. His hunger changed from a growl to a purr as he leaned one hip against the edge of her desk.

  "So I don't suppose I can convince you to take a walk on the wild side and move our dinner to tonight, can I?"

  Samantha fiddled with her mouse and shook her head, but she kept her eyes on her open e-mail program, not on him. "Sorry. It will have to be Saturday. It turns out there's some stuff I need to do tonight anyway."

  "I didn't realize Graham was such a slave driver."

  "He's not." Evidently, she had run out of e-mails to distract herself with, because she finally turned to face Noah. "It's personal stuff, around my apartment. Nothing major, but I'd like to get it done and over with." Her fingers fiddled with a pen, rolling it back and forth across her blotter, but her expression was blandly curious as she changed the subject. "How did your interviews go? Did anyone volunteer to be an army of one?"

  "Not yet, but I think things went pretty well." He accepted her change of subject, along with his unwelcome waiting period. "I answered a heck of a lot of questions, though. You Silverbacks aren't the most trusting bunch I've ever run across."

  "Can you blame us? Even you wouldn't be all that excited to find yourself looking into a silver bullet, would you?"

  Noah frowned. "Does that really happen?"

  He knew there was a lot of prejudice in the world against the Others. He wasn't naive enough to believe otherwise, but he found himself less than enamored of the idea of any yahoo bigot threatening Samantha. The thought made his fists clench.

  Sam shook her head. "Not much. Before the Unveiling, the few humans who caught us in the act tended to be less than friendly, but these days most of them are too afraid of a lawsuit if they go vigilante." Her mouth curved in a wry smile. "One of the many advantages of public recognition, I guess."

  "I guess." Noah let his fists relax and tried for a casual smile. "But I promise I'm not working with the black hats. I think enlisting could be an important opportunity for some of your pack mates. And in the current economy, you can't fault it as a career move."

  "That's what Graham said. Not the career move part, but the opportunity part. I'm not so sure I agree. Although I suppose it's good that at least we're not at war at the moment."

  "It is a good opportunity," he insisted, his tone serious. He meant it, too. He might not have learned very much about biological research from the Lupines he'd interviewed today, but he had learned that he'd be happy to have one or two of them under his command. "They'd get training, education, and a rewarding career; They'd have a greater purpose and the opportunity for advancement that's only limited by their own ambition. They could become leaders. The army would let them use the skills they were born with in a positive, controlled way. We wouldn't be looking to put a muzzle on their instincts; we would be fostering them."

  "Using them, you mean. For your own ends."

  "That's one way of looking at it. The other is to consider the alternative."

  Sam frowned. "What alternative?"

  "Staying in the pack and living their whole lives knowing they'd always be followers."

  "Well, that's a little harsh." Sam glared up at him, but Noah could see his bluntness had struck home. She knew he was right, but he was sure she didn't intend to let him get away with insulting her people. "You make it sound like we're all Graham and Missy's lackeys. That's not how it works. We're not masters and slaves; we're family."

  Noah nodded. "I can see that. Getting to know you and Graham and Missy and Tobias and the others had made that pretty evident. It's a nice thing to see. But the service can become a family, too. If there's anyone in this world I trust as much as Abby, it's my
unit. We're brothers." His grin flashed then, white and wicked. "And the best part is, when we're on duty, Dad is never around."

  She watched him for a minute, then nodded. "It's not my decision anyway. If they have to be eighteen to join up, then they're old enough to make their own decisions. I have to say I was a little surprised to see who you interviewed, though."

  "Why's that?" He fought not to tense, to sound unconcerned, only vaguely curious.

  "Somehow I was picturing you rounding up all the big bruisers and rushing them off to boot camp. I didn't think you'd have much use for guys like Adam Forrester and Tim Youngblood. They're geeks."

  He chuckled. "You thought I was looking for jar-heads? Those are marines. We like soldiers who already have a thing or two between their ears. You'd be surprised at how technical and scientific the armed forces are becoming. We like geeks almost as much as the tech industry."

  "I guess so. If those two enlist, you'll be getting two of the biggest. From what I hear, school can't keep up with Tim. They had to ship him to science classes at NYU. And Aunt Ruby tells me that if he weren't so bone-deep honest, the things Adam can do with a computer would have gotten him arrested years ago."

  Sam smiled, and he felt himself relax a fraction. Not completely, because he hadn't expected her to catch on to the pattern of his interviews so quickly, but enough. He'd have to be careful around Sam. More so than he had expected.

  "I've got to get moving," she said, pulling a tiny leather backpack out of one of her desk drawers and leaning down to shut off her PC. "I've got stuff to take care of at home."

  Noah stood with her and began fastening the buttons on his uniform jacket. "I'll walk you home."

  She shot him a disbelieving look that melted into one of frank amusement. "I live in Gramercy, Noah. I wasn't planning on walking. I'll catch the subway."