She looked a little defensive, but I could barely contain myself. I forced myself to take a deep breath. "Trust me when I say that mixed relationships are not a problem for me."
She relaxed, then gave me a look that warmed me instantly, straight through. "If you invite me over for breakfast, I'll ditch the snowshoeing. But I have to leave by noon, because I promised Kelly I'd take her shift at the shelter so she can be with her family."
"Breakfast is at nine o'clock!" I could barely get the words out fast enough.
"Claudia won't mind?"
"Nah. I'll call her when I get home." Claudia had been pushing me to ask Annie out from the first time I'd mentioned her. "She's good people, not an evil bone in her body," Claudia'd said. And Claudia knows bones, good and evil.
"I'll be there." Annie smiled, so sexy I felt my knees go to jelly. "I made a batch of my famous chocolate-chip muffins; I'll bring them."
Into nature, civic-minded, and a cook? I realized I was grinning like an idiot, so I drank the rest of my beer, to keep from proposing to her right then and there, my head ringing with every Christmas carol ever written.
Chapter Six
The Werewolf Before Christmas
Kat Richardson
Kat Richardson is the author of the Greywalker paranormal detective novels. She is a former magazine editor from Los Angeles who now lives on a sailboat in the Seattle area with her husband and two ferrets. She rides a motorcycle and doesn't own a TV, so she's only seen one episode of Buffy in her life - poor Kat! On the other hand . . . she has more time for writing and World of Warcraft and working on the Northwest regional board of the Mystery Writers of America. This is her first werewolf story.
'Twas the night before Christmas - well, the late afternoon, in fact, but who could tell at the North Pole in the middle of winter - and Matthias the werewolf was knee-deep in reindeer guts. Really, it was the deer's own fault for having that glowing red nose that had made it ever so easy to pick him out in the gloom. There it had been, like a neon sign saying FAST FOOD and Matt being like Yellow Dog Dingo - always hungry - had taken the opportunity for a quick snack.
It hadn't been as easy as he had expected. Something about the moon magic was really messed up at the North Pole, and he couldn't manage to be quite wolf or man, but an uncomfortable, hairy hybrid of both - but at least he was warm. So he'd vaulted the fence of the reindeer stockade and chased the light-footed lunch to its doom. It was pretty tasty, too: corn-fed.
He'd chowed down with the alacrity you'd expect of a man or wolf who'd been lost in the tundra for most of a week following that stupid, stupid plane crash. That couldn't really be called Matt's fault, either, since the compass and GPS had both been on the fritz when the moon poked its beam through the window. He'd always embraced his wolf nature, and when the moon insisted, he threw himself into the frenzy of the change with the enthusiasm of a pig in a wallow. Well, maybe that had been a bad idea after all. . . .
What had definitely been a bad idea had been going to the North Pole in the first place. What had he been thinking? That people wouldn't mind a werewolf so much up there? That he could be free to be a wolf as much as he wanted and never have to worry about people? That hadn't worked out so well, and when he'd tried to go home by sneaking on the plane and ambushing the crew, things had gone straight to handbasketdom.
He'd been wandering around, half-man, half-wolf, and increasingly hungry since he'd dug himself out of the snow that had buried the plane on impact. The human part of him knew there were weather and satellite monitoring stations near the pole - faking the paperwork for a job at a monitoring station was what had got him to the North Pole in the first place - so he figured he'd find someone or something useful eventually so long as he didn't starve first. Luck or Fate had offered up the reindeer with the funky face and Matthias had grabbed the opportunity with all paws.
He was rooting for "good bits" when the man in red showed up. . . .
He was a medium-sized fellow with a neat, full beard as thick and white as the snow and he had a funny sort of hat that sat on his head in a floppy red peak, something like a small bishop's miter that had gone a bit soft. A black shadow clung to his back and stout black boots stuck out under his long red coat of thick wool trimmed in white fur and held closed by six fancy gold braid things down the front. He held a tall walking stick that looked like a gold shepherd's crook in one red-mittened hand as he stood in the gateway of the stockade and clucked his tongue in disappointment.
"Ahh . . . me. This does present a problem."
Matthias raised his head and growled his best menacing growl. He was stuck in the back corner of the stockade under a half-shed that kept the snow off the manger, and the easiest way out would mean running toward the man in red. His human brain was still a bit groggy and he wasn't thinking as well as he might have had he been a little less wolfy and a little less excited by the kill. He hoped the fellow would just back away so he could hop the fence and follow the man to whatever conveyance had brought him. Then Matt could steal it and get the hell out of the Frozen North. Or at least that was the first plan that suggested itself to his half-lupine brain and it sounded like a good one to him.
But the man held his ground and peered at the werewolf draped in reindeer innards. "Don't I know you . . . ?" the man queried. He held out his free hand and a black book extruded from the shadow behind him and slid into his grasp. He glanced at the pages. "Hmmm . . . Oh, yes. Matthias Vulfkind. Haven't seen you in quite a while, Mattie, and it appears you've been very, very naughty indeed. And now, poor Rudy, too. Ah, what will I do with you?"
Matt stared at the man in red and growled again, forming rough words in his half-human throat even as an entirely human idea began wriggling around in the back of his mind. "Who are you?"
The man in red gave a sad smile. "It has been a while, but you called me Rider and Sunnercla when you were very small and not so shaggy. Do you remember?"
Matthias shook his head. He thought it might be best to just rip the man's throat out and get on with his plans, but the man seemed to calm him in some eerie way and he just couldn't do it. It seemed . . . wrong, which was a concept the werewolf had not bothered with in a long time.
The man shook his head, too. "No? Well, then. I am Nicholas of Myrna. Most people call me Santa Claus now."
Matthias drew back in surprise as the idea in the back of his head popped to the front like a tiny lightbulb exploding. Oh no, it couldn't be. . . . "Father Christmas?"