Page 44 of Wild

Her eyes lit up. “I’d own a cute little small-town bakery and make people happy with my chocolate chip banana bread or my Tiramisu roll cake.” She gave a sad laugh. “My dad would consider that a huge failure.”

Small town. She said small town. That boded well. As for a huge failure, Marina couldneverbe one. I doubted she’d believe the words, so I’d have to show her. Get her to believe in other ways.

“I want to be made happy with your banana bread, little girl.”

She turned up the dial on those dimples. “I will make you some, then.” She lowered her lashes. “I could make you happy in other ways, too.”

She was fishing, trying to get me to say something like I wanted to drag her to the grass and fuck her here and now. Or lean toward her and kiss her. Something.

But I couldn’t, and I watched her face as the realization that I wasn’t going to do anything sank in.

“Come on, I’ll show you the waterfall. I don’t think we have time to go for a dip today, though. I promised to get you back for the wedding preparations, and I’m not going to be the asshole who breaks a promise to you.”

“Wow,” she murmured, rubbing her lips together.

“Wow, what?”

“The things you say.”

I cocked my head. “What about them?”

She blushed. “Nothing. Nevermind.”

“Come on. I’ll, uh, show you the falls.”

She looked away. Fuck. Were those tears in her eyes? Great. I was trying to do the right thing here, and it came across as being a total dick.

I kicked Cinnamon into a canter. I was not out here to fuck my mate. I was not out here to fuck my mate. I was not...

I took her up to the top of the ridge where the hot spring originated, and we could look down on the swimming hole.

“Wow, this is amazing,” she murmured. Hopefully this place would distract her from her disappointment. Our horses side-stepped next to each other, and Lucy lowered her head to eat the tender shoots of grass.

“Can we come back? Maybe tomorrow?”

“Um… sure.”

The idea of skinny dipping with her, getting her naked and wet and beneath me was going to fill my head all day. Like my wolf wasn’t already in enough of a frenzy.

We headed back down the ridge, and that’s when I saw it—a herd of cattle grazing on Sheffield’s lower forty.

They didn’t look like our cattle, these were a different shade of brown, but I urged Cinnamon forward to take a look. When we reached them, I held up my hand. “Stay here for a minute. I want to check the brand on these cows.”

She reined in Lucy, and I got close enough to one.

“JM” was the brand on its hide. Jett Markle. He was the flashy New Yorker who’d bought up the property on the other side of Sheffield’s place, Rob had told me. Boyd had had a run in or two with him. Hated his guts. I could see why now. Who the fuck let their cattle roam on someone else’s land? A total dick, that’s who.

Rob had told me he’d shot one of our pack members last month—a teenager running in wolf form for an illicit visit to his girlfriend. Markle hadn’t seen the kid shift, and I heard Boyd had given him a black eye and told him he’d shot our dog.

Not only that, Markle wanted to buy the Shefield land, perhaps double the size of his property, which meant we’d be next door neighbors to the asshole. It didn’t bode well for our need to run in wolf form. The man was a fucking problem.

And now, apparently, he was moving his cows onto Sheffield’s place as if he owned the place.

“What is it?” Marina asked, when I returned.

I shook my head. “They belong to the next ranch over. I don’t know what they’re doing on this land.”

“Probably the same thing we are.” She smiled impishly. “Maybe they want to go skinny-dipping, too.”