Carolina Wolf

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  Carolina Wolf

  Copyright © 2009 by Sela Carsen

  ISBN: 978-1-60504-374-6

  Edited by Laurie Rauch

  Cover by Natalie Winters

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: February 2009

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  Carolina Wolf

  Sela Carsen

  Dedication

  As always, to my wonderful, patient husband and children.

  To Yukon, who is waiting at the Rainbow Bridge and who could clear a room without lifting her head. To Oliver, who gets plain yogurt in his dinner.

  To my Romance Divas, without whose whip-cracking chats this story would never have been finished.

  And if you’re ever in Columbia, SC, be sure to visit the Congaree Swamp National Forest, then have dinner in North Columbia at the real Solstice restaurant.

  Prologue

  The soft Carolina night cushioned Debra Henry’s footsteps as she wandered down the lane. Just in front of her lay the Congaree Swamp National Forest. To prove it, a mosquito the size of a kitten landed on her arm and prepared to drill. She swatted it, and then grimaced at the squishy bug mess on her hand.

  “Yech.”

  A cypress tree provided a comfortable resting spot as the sun’s last rays bled a red death over the canopy of dark leaves. The silence surrounding her was the loudest thing she had ever heard, even blunted by the haze of humidity. The buzz of mosquitoes, the cicadas’ trill, the howling of a lone wolf.

  Her head jerked up. The wail piercing the dusk was not a good sound. Not a comforting sound. The echo died sharply in the dense air. There are no wolves in South Carolina. There are no wolves in South Carolina. Debra made a smart about-face and, with a swinging speed-walk, headed back to the visitors’ center. Though darkness closed in behind her, she refused to break into an actual trot. At least not yet.

  Great. The center was closed. No park rangers. No people with big freakin’ guns. Not that park rangers carried guns, she reasoned as she dug in her pocket for the keys to her dust-covered station wagon. Maybe they had tranquilizer darts, though.

  The skin on the back of her neck crawled. Instinct from deep within crackled to life and she turned. There it was. A huge black wolf, its eyes glowing gold in the reflection of the single light outside the visitors’ center. A waft of the swamp sifted into her brain, breathing and growing, clean, dark water andthe essence of primitive life. The fragrance that lived deep in her soul. He brought it all back to her.

  Debra held her breath, spellbound for an eternal moment. Then it ended. The wolf faded back into the underbrush and left her standing, oddly bereft without its presence.

  This was going to be an interesting place to live.

  He watched her get into her car and drive away. He raised his head and breathed deeply, sifting her unique scent from the noxious exhaust fumes, as well as the other, more familiar smells of the night forest.

  He knew that scent. He had known it all his life, although he had never before encountered it. It was the scent that sealed his fate and wrote his destiny. His mate.

  The wolf loped back into the swamp and down a path he knew would lead him home. She might not yet know it, but her future was certain.

  Chapter One

  “Don’t you worry about a thing, Debra. They’re gonna love your proposal and give you all the funding you’ve ever wanted. We’ll have the best small-town library in the entire state by the time you’re done with this council meeting.”

  Charlene King reached out a manicured hand and fluffed Debra’s hair. “With this new haircut, any man would be a fool to say no to anything you asked.” She spun the chair around so Debra could look in the mirror. “There you go. What do you think?”

  Debra stared at her reflection. Hair that she had always considered plain old brown seemed to shine with copper and amber highlights. The frizzy ends were gone, cut off to tickle the back of her neck. Her head felt strange and light, as if a weight had literally been lifted off her shoulders.

  “Charlene, I don’t know what to say. It’s beautiful.”

  The other woman smiled, and then snorted. “It’s about time is what it is. I can’t believe you’ve had that same boring old hairstyle since you were in high school.”

  “It was practical.” Debra shrugged. “But this, this is wonderful.” She got out of the chair and twirled around the empty salon. “I can’t tell you how great this feels. They’d never recognize me now.”

  Charlene wasn’t Culford’s top stylist just because she knew how to wield a can of AquaNet. Information flowed within the walls of her beauty shop faster than she could say high-speed Internet connection. She never passed up an opportunity for good gossip.

  “Who’s they?”

  “I’d say my family, but since mama’s passed on… I guess it would be just my ex-fiancé, who shall henceforth be referred to as Weasel Bastard.”

  “Weasel Bastard. I like it,” said Charlene. “Is he why you’re here?”

  “No,” she said hastily, then curled in on herself a little. “Well, maybe. In a roundabout way.” Debra bent down to retrieve her new, completely adorable purse. Big, square, shiny turquoise vinyl with big white polka dots and long white handles. It cut into her shoulder a bit when it was heavy, but it had been too cute to pass up the last time she’d been in Charleston.

  “Let’s just say that when I found out about Weasel Bastard’s kink for college coeds, he plucked a few strings and I was out of a job. This position opened at exactly the right moment.”

  It hadn’t bothered her as much as she thought it might. Well, she missed the job, but not the man. He was too…mundane. It would be easy enough to settle for him if she were normal, but her life was a lot more complicated than it looked from the outside. The few abilities she possessed, she guarded jealously. Her magic was small enough already without diluting it further with the wrong man. There had to be something left of her power to pass down to a daughter.

  Not to mention, it made him mad that she could quote anything she’d ever read from memory. He was a small-minded man.

  Charlene picked up a broom and started sweeping up the long strands of Debra’s hair.

  “You know what they say, sugar. When God closes a door…”

  “He opens a window,” they finished together.

  “If I don’t get to this council meeting, He might slam that shut before I’ve even started.” Debra chewed on her lip and slid her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. Dumping a fairly significant budget proposal into the city council’s lap always made her nervous.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing,” said Charlene. “You’ll do fine.”

  “I hope so. Myrtle said the mayor was back from his vacation.”

  Charlene gasped. “Gary’s back? And Myrtle got the scoop?” She and the other acknowledged town gossip, Myrtle Painter, who had her own column in the local paper, had been tense rivals for years.

  “I must be getting old. I didn’t know.” Charlene fixed a
steady eye on Debra. “Just because that man has money, he doesn’t need to be so obvious about it. I wonder how long it’ll be before we all see photos of his trip in the newspaper.”

  Debra paid her bill and Charlene shooed her out the door. “You don’t want to be late.” Debra waved back distractedly.

  The council room is too small, she thought as she squeezed into the last seat at the front table. The Presenters sign crowded her area, so she tried to keep her papers and handouts in a tiny pile. There was just enough space next to her for someone else to slide through. Unless it was the rotund Mrs. Abbott, who ran the Ladies Auxiliary with an iron fist in a pudgy glove. She wouldn’t fit.

  Nerves. She was rambling inside her own head. Debra shook herself and leaned down to rummage in her shiny new handbag for a pen when the last person arrived in the council meeting room. Shoes appeared in her line of sight and stopped. Big shoes. Chunky brown oxfords under plain khaki trousers, neatly pressed.

  Debra took a breath and suddenly it seemed her body was in a vise. Unbearable pressure weighed down on her. Her ears stopped up so all she heard was the rushing of her own blood through her head. Her throat thickened and she struggled to exhale.

  What she smelled stunned her. Turned her inside out. The fine hair on her arms stood up, the muscles of her thighs quivered and vibrated. Her nipples peaked in response and her breasts tingled. That scent shot straight to her womb, clenching and releasing in primal hunger. It was the scent of green, growing things, of fresh water, of moss and damp and earth. Over it all, like a fine mist of perfumed oil, was a spicy wild musk.

  It was him. The man with the oxfords.

  She shook her head, desperate to escape from the pressure. Was she having a heart attack or something? She’d never heard of angina triggered by fancy cologne.

  Debra waited until her breathing settled before she sat back up, certain that her face was bright red. She pressed a hand to her chest, but everything seemed back to normal.

  The man hadn’t moved and now she was at eye level with his zipper. It twitched. Good heavens. She had to do something. Look somewhere else. They were in a public meeting, for pity’s sake. Debra glanced around the room, but no one else seemed to be paying attention to her pheromone-induced meltdown. At least she wasn’t staring at his…particulars…anymore.

  She tossed her hair over her shoulder and stood to greet him. He didn’t step back, so her nose ended up practically buried in his chest, inches away from that wild aroma.

  And the god-awful ugliest tie she’d ever seen in her life. She didn’t mind the random swirl pattern, but combined with the clashing colors, it looked like the designer had either been higher than a kite or needed serious psychological help. If she so much as took a deep lungful of air, her nipples would brush up against that hideous tie. She beat a strategic retreat, but only by a little. She was trapped between her chair and the table.

  There was no way he could have missed her humiliating reaction to him. What a way to meet another council member. But none of the others had given her these problems. Even the mayor, the gorgeous, almost impossibly beautiful mayor, was easy enough to greet normally.

  But this guy… She couldn’t make herself look him in the eye, but staring at the tie was making her nauseous. Instead, she watched his soft white shirt rise and fall with each heartbeat. Watched as he took one long inhalation…of her.

  “Maddox, honey. We haven’t seen you in ages.” Myrtle Painter’s voice trilled up and down like a chain-smoking songbird. She turned her wrinkled eyes to him and struck a pose that might have looked provocative on her thirty years ago. Now, it kind of made her look like a wax figure left out in the sun too long.

  “Maddox, honey,” she repeated. “I want to introduce you to our new head librarian. Debra Henry, this is Maddox Moreau. He works with the park service at the Congaree National Forest and he’s here to address some concerns about wild animal sightings.”

  Debra stared at his chest for another moment, then resolutely raised her eyes to his, looking over the tops of her glasses. She was cheating, but he’d never know. The glasses had slipped down her nose again and looking over the frames meant that she saw nothing but a flesh-colored blur and a flash of bright white teeth.

  That teasing aroma was driving her nuts. And was starting to tick her off. She was mortified by her first visceral reaction to him, but he just stood there, smiling and smelling like sex in the moonlight. The unfairness of it irked her and goaded some snap back into her spine.

  She faked a smile and nodded. “Mr. Moreau.” Damned if she’d hold out her hand for a greeting, either.

  “Miss Henry.” A deep velvet voice rolled out of that chest and she fought to hold down a shiver.

  Debra dragged her gaze from the blur of his face to Myrtle with her bleeding red lipstick and smiled again, trying harder to force more feeling into it. Myrtle might be old, but she was sharp.

  “Ladies.” His voice licked at her senses and Debra clasped her hands together to keep from clamping them over her ears, blocking out the sound that got into her brain and made itself far too comfortable. “Looks like the meeting’s about to start. I’ll see y’all afterwards.”

  And then it was over. As he walked away from her, the scent went with him and she was herself again. She exhaled. Wow. She never wanted to deal with that again. On the bright side, at least she hadn’t lit up in sparks.

  The public portion of the meeting came first, with citizen reports of unusual sightings at the edges of the woods. The people who spoke sounded frightened, and Mr. Moreau took their concerns seriously. He explained that though there may be large dogs or even coyotes in the area, there couldn’t be wolves. Especially a wolf the shape and size they described. A huge, hulking creature that scared even the most vicious dogs. They made it sound like a monster. Not at all like the big black wolf she’d seen. It had to be a hallucination. A trick of the evening sun.

  And he confirmed she was right. There were no wolves in South Carolina. At least not in the Midlands. Endangered red wolves were part of a Fish and Wildlife breeding program and had been released in northeastern North Carolina and in Tennessee, as well as in smaller numbers on coastal island habitats, but not around here.

  After those issues were dealt with, the council took a quick break. Most of the public left, but the hunky park ranger stuck around. After they reconvened, she managed to set out her proposal and petition for a budget increase without ever actually seeing him sitting in the corner. It was easy. Every time she had to glance in his direction, she simply peered over the top of her lenses and everyone turned into a fuzzy, featureless blob. She’d never been grateful for her rotten vision before.

  She finished her proposal and waited for questions. She couldn’t blame the council for grilling her. The library needed new funds and a lot of them. The reference collection was woefully out of date—Ronald Reagan was in office the last time they got a new set of encyclopedias. And they were still using a card catalogue, for goodness sake. She also wanted a small portion for a PR campaign to get more people into the library.

  It seemed the previous librarian hadn’t troubled the council for new monies in nearly twenty years, which explained a lot about the state of the library, but Debra was determined to make it a vibrant part of the town. Knowledge was life.

  After more than an hour’s discussion, they tabled the issue until the next meeting and adjourned. Debra sat down, relieved that it had gone so well. Very few council members were outright opposed and she had a month to sway them. The mayor was on the fence and his vote would influence others, but she didn’t want to approach him directly if she didn’t have to.

  She glanced over to the corner. The ranger was gone and the surge of disappointment surprised her. What nonsense. It wasn’t as if she needed a man to be happy.

  Her wants were simple. Do her job, read some books, walk the dog. She nodded decisively. That’s exactly what she would do. Just because her body went haywire around a man didn’t mea
n she had to do anything about it.

  She stood up and began to walk around the room, sliding chairs under tables and picking up stray pens. Slightly compulsive, but it was habit. She’d been cleaning up after students in college libraries since she was a little girl, helping her mom at work. She didn’t want to leave the council room untidy, even though she was exhausted after the pressure of the meeting.

  Debra surveyed her handiwork with a small, satisfied smile, and then went to gather her own things. The door behind her opened and closed on heavy hinges and she sighed. No way her luck was good enough for that to be Mrs. Abbott, coming to discuss her membership in the Ladies Auxiliary. Debra turned. Nope. Not Mrs. Abbott.

  “Miss Henry?” Gary Corvell, the mayor, stood beside the doors. “I wonder if I could ask you a question.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Mayor.” Debra dredged up a polite smile. “How can I help you?”

  “I was hoping to ask you out to dinner tomorrow evening. Perhaps the Mill, out in Boykin. Have you been there before?”

  God had a twisted sense of humor. The Mill was a very nice restaurant, a special-occasion place in a picturesque location, but the idea of being stuck in a car with Gary Corvell from Culford all the way to Kershaw County inspired nothing other than faint boredom.

  Elegant and charming, the silver in his hair added to his air of sophisticated savoir-faire. His beauty was almost disturbing, as if his uncanny perfection served to make everyone around him seem smaller and homelier than they actually were. He certainly played up the difference, flashing designer clothes and expensive accessories wherever he went.

  Since she’d arrived in Culford, the mayor had been very welcoming, almost excessively so. He frequently happened to be walking through town in the morning when she arrived at the library. After the first couple of times he also happened to be eating lunch at Robin’s Café and insinuated himself at her table, she started brown-bagging it. He had never asked her out before tonight, though, and she wasn’t sure what prompted him to finally act. Not that she would accept. Something about him seemed…off. That little prickle of energy she had picked up in the swamp pinched her.