CHAPTER NINE

Piper dropped the coffee mess in the trash and hung her parka on one of the hooks lining the wall in the entryway of the dance studio. Ethan hung his coat on the neighboring hook. No doubt on purpose. Their parkas hung side by side, arms touching, and for some silly reason a lump formed in Piper’s throat.

Ridiculous. She swiveled to face Ethan. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish. We’re not even discussing Koko this morning. We’re working on props.”

“So you say.” He gave her a playful tap on the nose. The fact that his placement on the recital committee had clearly annoyed her seemed to take the edge off his anger.

Piper wondered if it was indeed too late to get him fired. Not that she actually would, tempting as it might be. “We’ll see how smug you are once you’re elbow-deep in papier-mâché.”

He pushed up the sleeves of his sweater, exposing those gorgeous nonwriterly forearms of his. Probably because they were actually park ranger forearms. “Bring it on, lovely.”

She really wished he would stop calling her that. “I can’t deal with you right now. I just can’t. I’m going to walk to the other side of the room, and it would be lovely if you would stay here.”

She turned on her heel and headed for Posy’s coffeemaker, since she’d dumped her morning caffeine fix, plus everyone else’s, on his feet. What a phenomenal waste of good coffee.

As she filled the coffeepot with water, the remaining members of the committee arrived—first Anya and her mother, followed by Clementine, then Zoey. Posy made sure everyone knew Ethan, and he was given an exceptionally warm welcome. Piper assured herself this was because they were nice people, not because anyone was particularly thrilled to see him there. At least she hoped so.

She gave the can of coffee an unnecessarily hard shake before opening it. Her attitude was appalling, and she knew it. Posy really did need the help. The recital was in a little more than a week.

Forgive me, Lord.

Since she’d befriended Posy and Liam and had been stopping by the church pretty regularly, Piper had begun talking to God a little bit. She wasn’t sure when she’d started, exactly, but in spite of all that had gone wrong since she’d moved to Alaska, she somehow had the feeling that many things had fallen into place. And all those things were in some way related to the church. Like Caleb and the other kids from the youth group. And becoming involved with Posy’s recital. And friends. Actual friends. Piper had begun to wonder if maybe God was looking out for her. Maybe He’d been looking out for her all along.

It was a strange thing to consider, given her childhood. But she had the wolves. Saving them had, in turn, saved her. Maybe the wolves were a gift from Him.

She didn’t know. Sometimes she liked to think so, though.

“Thank you for bringing Ethan along this morning,” Zoey said, moving beside her and reaching in the cabinet overhead for coffee mugs.

“Don’t thank me. I had nothing to do with it.”

“I’m quite sure you did.” She tore open a packet of sweetener and sprinkled it in one of the cups. “If not for you, he wouldn’t be here.”

That was technically true, but the actual situation wasn’t quite so flattering. “He’s stalking me as part of his job. Trust me, he doesn’t want anything to do with the recital. He’s one hundred percent against Koko and me taking part. He’s probably got some sort of sabotage plan up his sleeve.”

Zoey rolled her eyes. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you sound a tad paranoid.”

“Not paranoid.” Piper shook her head. “Realistic. Ethan and I are archenemies.”

“Like Batman and Catwoman?” Zoey said.

Piper laughed. “Yes, although I’m a bit surprised to hear you use that analogy.”

Zoey shrugged. “I dropped off some comic books for Caleb yesterday. He’s still stick, but he’s on the mend. He can’t wait to go back to work at the sanctuary. It’s all he talked about. He’s been saving Ethan’s articles. Every last one.”

“He should stick to comic books. They’re better reading than Ethan’s libelous column.” The brew cycle of the coffeemaker finally switched off. Piper filled Zoey’s cup and then poured a generous portion for herself. “Sticking to the comic book analogy, he and I are exactly like Batman and Catwoman, except he’s the evil villain. I’m the superhero. Obviously.”

Zoey snorted a laugh. “Obviously.”

Now that Piper thought about it, Ethan had an awful lot in common with Bruce Wayne. They were both obscenely wealthy and prone to secrets. Although if memory served, Bruce Wayne hadn’t walked away from the family fortune to become a forest ranger. And Ethan had shared his most important secret with her the night before.

Right before he’d rejected her.

Piper stirred her coffee with such vigor that it sloshed over the rim.

“If you say so, Catwoman. But I always got the impression that the caped crusader and his kittenish nemesis were secretly in love with each other.” Zoey glanced at Ethan’s image reflected back at them from all directions in the mirrored dance studio walls, and smirked. “Just saying.”

* * *

Ethan had never set foot in a dance studio before. He’d also never had the misfortune to work with papier-mâché. Thus he was in no way prepared for how messy it was. Or fragrant. What difference did it make, though? The wet-paper smell should complement his stale-coffee-scented feet rather nicely.

“How’s it going over here?” Piper asked, plopping down beside him with a stack of newspapers in her arms.

“Spectacular. I’ve made an entire tree.” It looked more like a lopsided candy cane, but Posy had assured him that once it dried and they’d added paint and crepe paper leaves, it would be a masterpiece. He estimated the odds that she was merely patronizing him as fifty-fifty. “I’m running low on supplies, though.”

“I noticed. I’m here to help.” Piper grabbed a few sheets of newspaper from her stack. “Why don’t I tear the paper into strips and hand them to you? We can be our own little assembly line.”

“Sounds good.” And suspiciously helpful.

He held out his hand and waited as she tore in half a page that he recognized from the Yukon Reporter. Two more rips and he saw his own likeness split right down the middle.

She smiled and handed him the piece with his dismembered forehead. “Here you go.”

He took it from her and coated it with the gooey papier-mâché mixture. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“A little.” Rip. Rip. Rip.

There went his latest column—shredded into ribbons. “Would I be remiss in assuming that every newspaper in that pile of yours is a section with my writing in it?”

“No, you wouldn’t.” She smiled from ear to ear and tore this morning’s front page—the one that had nearly gotten him fired—into ten thin strips.

He shook his head and muttered, “Nice.”

Then the room swelled with scratchy vinyl piano music. Ethan looked up in time to see half a dozen little girls in black leotards and pale pink tights tiptoe inside and line up at the bar on the far side of the room. The floor-to-ceiling mirrors on every wall multiplied them fourfold. Everywhere Ethan looked he saw smiling, happy little girls.

Posy took her place in front of them. She’d changed into a long-sleeved black leotard and a wispy skirt the exact shade of pink cotton candy. “Good morning, girls. Let’s start with pliés.”

The students moved into a series of deep knee bends, and as Ethan watched them wobble on delicate candy-hued legs, his chest grew tight.

“Cute, aren’t they?” Piper whispered.

“Yes.” Ethan cleared his throat. He glanced from Posy to her, and only then did he notice Piper’s wistful expression. He found it intriguing. She was so rarely unguarded. “Did you ever do this sort of thing?”

Piper blinked, and for a moment Ethan saw a sadness in her eyes so profound that it grabbed him by the throat. She shook her head. “Ballet? Me? No.”

“Never? No dance lessons when you were a kid?” At some point, she’d obviously devoted her life to animal rescue, but Piper was no tomboy. She was more of an enigma, and there was an undeniable grace in her movements. He could see her as a dancer. In another life, perhaps.

She grew quiet, and her systematic destruction of his newspaper column lost a little of its intensity. “No. Never.”

“Let me guess. You grew up in a wolf den.” It honestly wouldn’t have surprised him.

Her next words, however, did. “Foster care, actually.”

Foster care?

All the while he’d been bemoaning his silver spoon existence, Piper had been in a foster home? He’d actually complained about his upbringing to her. In detail.

What must she have thought when he’d been spouting off all the extravagant particulars about his father’s five-star hotel? Six hundred and sixty-eight rooms. Thirty-one floors.

He’d never felt like a bigger jerk in his life. And the chandeliers. Thank goodness he hadn’t mentioned the ridiculous chandeliers. Still, he’d spoken about the rest of it with such contempt.

What had he been thinking? “You spent your childhood in a foster home?”

“Homes, actually. Plural.” Her voice went hollow. Detached. It was almost as though she were talking about someone else, rather than herself. A perfect stranger. “I was almost four when my mom turned me over to the state. Not many people want to adopt kids that old, so I bounced around a bit.”

Her mother had abandoned her? His heart hurt thinking about it, and yet it explained so much. No wonder she’d devoted her life to rescuing animals that were unwanted. No wonder...

He still had papier-mâché mess all over his hands, but he didn’t care. He reached for her, and wove his fingers through hers. “I’m sorry, Piper.”

“It’s fine. Honest. It was a long time ago.” She lifted a slender shoulder, but he could see the pain behind her emerald eyes. The distant look there had shifted and changed, as if she’d come back to herself. She was wholly present again. Beautiful, broken Piper Quinn.

The shift had occurred the moment he’d touched her, an observation that wasn’t lost on Ethan.

“It might have been a long time ago, but I’m still sorry it happened.” He gave her hand a squeeze, and the thing between them—attraction, affection, whatever it was—became harder to ignore. It pulsed there, demanding attention. The air in the studio shimmered with awareness.

The wolves made more sense now. He wasn’t sure how or when it began, but she’d built a pack of her own. A family unshakable in its devotion.

Ethan almost understood it, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. “I want you to know why I find the idea of this recital so upsetting.”

“Okay.” Piper’s eyes grew as big as saucers. A line from Little Red Riding Hood snagged in his consciousness.

All the better to see you with, my dear.

He swallowed and averted his gaze. But everywhere he looked, all those tiny ballerinas were reflected back at him in the mirrored walls. It was like gazing into a dream of what could have been. If only he’d been able to do something. If only.

“The victim of the bear attack was a little girl. Six years old. She’d been picking blueberries and wandered from her campsite. I found her just as she surprised a grizzly in some brush.” Ethan still remembered it with picture-perfect clarity. The color of her dress. The ring of purple around her mouth from the berries she’d been eating. Her smile.

And then the sounds. Sounds more horrific than he could have imagined. He still heard them sometimes in his nightmares.

He swallowed. “I can’t see something like that again, Piper.” If he did, he’d never survive it. “I can’t.”

“You won’t.” Her grip on his hand tightened so much that his knuckles turned white.

But he didn’t let go. Couldn’t. Something was happening. In this room, this dancing hall of mirrors, they’d reached a critical moment. He knew with complete and utter certainty that they would either find a way to make peace with one another, or their impasse would become permanent. He’d shared his truth, and she’d shared hers. Where would they go from here?

The blood roared in his ears, distorting the balletic piano music. He wanted to believe her. He really did. But how could he? “You can’t make that promise, Piper. Koko is a wolf.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

Her grip on his hand loosened. “Yes, I can make that promise. It’s not the same. You have to believe me.”

Her pleading tone just about tore him in two. She was slipping through his fingers. He was slipping through hers. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

“I wish I could.” Maybe he’d waited too long to talk about what he’d seen. Maybe holding the words inside for so long made the memory cling that much harder. So hard that he couldn’t seem to let it go, even though now he realized he almost wanted to. Maybe that’s what he’d wanted all along.

“Koko isn’t even going to be onstage with the girls. I’m bringing him out, on a lead, after they’ve done their part,” she said.

“You do know the actual story of Little Red Riding Hood, don’t you? Because it doesn’t end well.”

“We don’t want to scare the kids, so we’re changing the ending.”

“Of course you are.” Real life couldn’t be so easily altered, though, could it? Real endings were permanent.

“Maybe you should spend some more one-on-one time with Koko,” Piper was saying. “He’s really a sweetheart. He was born and bred on a photo farm. Do you know what that is?”

Ethan did. “One of those places that breeds puppies and kittens and uses them as models for cute, fuzzy calendars. Yes, I’m familiar.”

“When he grew out of the cute-and-fuzzy stage, they didn’t know what to do with him. I guess they hadn’t thought about what would happen once they had an actual wolf on their hands. They left him to starve in a Dumpster. He was barely alive when he was found. He spent over a month in a veterinary hospital before I volunteered to take him in.”

Ethan sighed. “This is all very touching, Piper, but it still doesn’t change my mind.”

“I’m not telling you about Koko’s history to get you to feel sorry for him. I’m telling you about it to let you know that he’s different. He’s spent his entire life with people. He knows humans better than he knows wolves. He’s been handled and touched and socialized to be around us since the day he was born. He won’t cause any trouble at the recital, even if one of the children accidentally got close to him.” Piper swallowed. “Which won’t happen. I won’t let it. Please trust me.”

Ethan held up a hand to stop her. It wasn’t fair to let her go on thinking that she could convince him that having a wild animal anywhere near a group of children was a good idea.

Koko could have had the saddest sob story in the history of rescue animals and it wouldn’t have made a lick of difference to Ethan. He was on the side of the children. Always. Forever. “Don’t. I’m not going to change my mind about this. Nothing you can say will convince me.”

“I see.” She let go of his hand and stood. Shreds of his newspaper column fell from her lap and littered the floor. “We should go. I need to get back to the wolves.”

His throat grew tight. “I know.”

The wolves. It had come back around to the wolves. It always did. It always did and it always would.

Ethan just couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t stand watching her put herself in harm’s way day in, day out any more than he could stomach the thought of a wolf at a children’s dance recital. He’d tried not to care. He’d given it his best effort. No job was worth this. Not even a column on the front page of the newspaper.

He was finished.

* * *

* * *

Piper couldn’t get out of the dance studio quickly enough. Something about all those little girls, coupled with Ethan holding her hand, was just too much to take.

She’d said too much. Obviously.

What had she been thinking, giving him all those details about her childhood? She rarely talked about being bounced around between foster homes. And she never talked about her mother. Ever.

Piper climbed into her car, took a deep breath and tried to wrap her mind about what had just happened. Ethan wasn’t supposed to react the way he had. He wasn’t supposed to be so...so compassionate. So sweet.

It might have been a long time ago, but I’m still sorry it happened.

She believed him. Everything about the way he’d looked at her, touched her, said that he cared. Very much.

And yet it still hadn’t made a bit of difference.

She’d thought if he somehow knew how important the wolves were to her, if he understood why, that he would stop trying to undermine her at every turn. But he wasn’t backing down. He never would. And now he was taking aim at Posy’s dance recital.

Piper couldn’t let him ruin things for Posy. Not after she’d been the one to suggest the Little Red Riding Hood theme to begin with. It was bad enough that her own wolf sanctuary was struggling to survive. She refused to take Posy down with her. If Ethan wrote something awful about the ballet recital, it would affect the dance studio just as much as the wolves.

And he would do it. She knew he would.

He could papier-mâché enough trees to cover the entire state of Alaska, but he’d volunteered for the recital committee for one reason and one reason only—to keep an eye on her. He was just waiting for the right moment to ruin everything.

But what really made the situation impossible to bear was the fact that she now knew why. Why he’d left the park service. Why he’d taken it upon himself to ruin every chance her wolves had for survival. She had her reasons, and he had his. Neither one of them was about to back down.

She wished she could despise him. She couldn’t. Not anymore. He’d seen a child die. He’d tried to save her, and in his own way, he still was. How could Piper despise a man like that?

Her empty driveway was a sight for sore eyes once she’d made her way back to the sanctuary. She hadn’t seen Ethan’s SUV on the road, so she’d half assumed he’d be there waiting for her, seeing as he’d committed to following her every move.

She got out of the car and perched on her rock for a few minutes, reveling in her solitude, the silence of the snowfall and the beauty of her wolves moving among the pines. She tried not to notice when Ethan failed to show up after ten minutes had passed, and then again when he still wasn’t there after half an hour.

He was an abysmal failure as a stalker.

That was his problem, not hers, wasn’t it? She pushed herself off the rock and headed to the cabin. Today was enrichment day on the wolves’ schedule, so she had a little something special planned for them.

Wolves in the wild faced constant physical and mental challenges. From foraging for food, seeking out prey and avoiding hunters, to finding a mate and caring for a litter of pups, a wolf in its natural environment encountered stimulation at every turn. These beautiful animals were shaped by the world around them. Those that thrived survived.

Obviously, life for a rescue wolf living in captivity was vastly different from the daily struggle of surviving in the wild. Without the constant stimulation of their natural environment, wolves could become stressed. And stress could lead to harmful behaviors, such as pacing, illness, self-mutilation and even aggression. Piper was constantly coming up with new, innovative ways to keep her pack challenged, happy and smart. And today that particular task involved over one hundred fifty chicken broth ice cubes.

She opened her freezer and an ice tray came flying out. She caught it before it fell on her foot. A broken toe was all she needed to make this day complete.

Maybe she’d gotten a little overzealous with the wolf Popsicles. She’d gone through almost five gallons of chicken broth the night before. Enrichment was one of her favorite parts of her job, and every one of her wolves loved ice cubes. Even more so if they tasted like chicken.

She dumped a few trays’ worth of ice cubes in a bucket and headed back outside. Much to her irritation, her heart gave a little pang when she still failed to spot Ethan’s truck in the drive. Or anywhere in the vicinity.

She didn’t miss him or anything. That would have been pathetic. He should be here for enrichment, though. It would give him something new and different to write in his column. Piper would have loved to read an article about her wolves playing with ice cubes rather than what dangerous, bloodthirsty predators they were.

She tossed a few chicken cubes over the fence of Tundra’s enclosure. The white wolf leaped for them, twisting midair with the grace and elegance of a dancer. Tundra’s teeth snapped shut with an audible bite. Then she landed on all fours, shook her woolly head and tossed the cube she’d caught back in the air. Piper smiled, watching her play, until she finally settled down in a white ball of fur on the snow with an ice cube between her front paws.

“Enjoy it, girl,” Piper whispered as Tundra licked the cube with delicate swipes of her pink tongue.

By the time Piper got to the next pen, Shasta was prancing back and forth at the fence line with his ears pricked forward and his mouth open in a wide, wolfish grin. Shasta was never as polite as Tundra with his enrichment activities. He slammed against the fence on his back legs, gaze fixed on Piper’s bucket. She pitched six chicken-broth ice cubes over the fence in rapid succession, all of which he somehow managed to catch. Shasta liked to swallow things whole. Ice cubes. Meat. Stray mittens on occasion.

“Goofball.” Piper shook her head, grin fading. “Ethan doesn’t know what he’s missing, does he?”

Where was he, anyway? At least an hour had passed since she’d left Posy’s ballet school. As pleasant as it was to be able to go about her business without him watching her every move, his absence was troublesome. It bothered her far more than it should have.

I’m just concerned for his safety. That’s all. His car could have broken down.

Concerned for his safety. Right.

Ethan didn’t want, or need, her concern. He had a cell phone. If that SUV where he liked to sleep so much had broken down, he could have called for help.

Unless he’s been injured.

Piper hugged her empty bucket closer to her chest as she marched through the snowdrifts back toward the cabin. The snow was really coming down now, much thicker than earlier in the day. The curvy mountain road leading to the sanctuary had surely iced over, and it was typically one of the last streets in the city that road crews reached with salt and deicing chemicals. A car could slide clear off the mountain and no one would ever know.

She paused in front of her freezer again. What if something had happened? What if Ethan had indeed slid clear off the mountain?

Surely not.

She flung the freezer door open, even angrier with Ethan than usual. Which was pretty angry. How dare he make her worry like this? Didn’t he know it was rude to announce his intention to stalk someone and then vanish off the face of the planet?

She reached for her cell phone and dialed Ethan’s number while the air from the freezer cooled her face. She’d explain to him just how inconsiderate he was acting as soon as he answered.

But he didn’t answer. The phone rang and rang, then went to voice mail. Piper didn’t leave a message because, really, what could she say? Where are you? Right. And sound like a worried girlfriend, when that couldn’t be further from the truth? No, thank you.

She pocketed her phone and went back to work, emptying ice trays into the bucket. She didn’t have time to worry about Ethan’s whereabouts. Didn’t he know she had wolves to entertain?

She couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that something was wrong, though. So when she’d filled the bucket, she tried his cell phone one more time.

Again, no answer.

Maybe it was time to call his editor. No, she couldn’t. Ethan had already gotten in trouble with Lou for not knowing about her involvement with Posy’s dance recital. Piper would not be directly responsible for Ethan losing his job. As much as she wanted him to stop insulting her life’s work in the newspaper, getting him fired wasn’t how she wanted things to end.

She slammed the freezer door, and her gaze landed on Tate Hudson’s business card anchored to the brushed chrome with a magnet. Ethan had given it to her after the graffiti incident, with strict instructions to call if anything seemed amiss. Something seemed amiss, all right. Besides, Ethan and Tate were friends. They were probably living it up at the Northern Lights Inn coffee bar right that very minute.

Before she could change her mind, she dialed the number on the card.

“Tate Hudson.”

This had seemed like a much better idea before he’d answered the phone. Maybe she should just hang up. But wait. He was a state trooper. Wouldn’t he know exactly who’d hung up on him?

It was too late to back out now. She took a deep breath. “Hello, Tate. This is Piper from the wolf sanctuary.”

“I hope everything is okay out there,” he said, his professional tone laced with concern.

“I’m fine. The wolves are fine. No problem at all, except...” Gosh, this was humiliating. “Ethan.”

“Ethan?” Tate laughed. “What’s he done to upset you this time? It must be something really bad for you to call law enforcement.”

“Funny.” She rolled her eyes. The feud between her and Ethan was destined to go down in history, at least in the state of Alaska. “It’s not like that. Listen, I’m not trying to alarm anyone unnecessarily. I know you and Ethan are friends, and it seems he’s gone missing.”

“Missing?”

“Yes.” She gave him a rundown of the morning’s events, assured him that, yes, she’d tried Ethan’s cell phone and, no, he hadn’t answered.

Tate promised to look into things. She hung up and reassured herself that she’d done the right thing. At least now she could continue enrichment with the wolves with a modicum of peace of mind.

Bucket in hand, she headed toward the cabin door. But just as she reached for the knob, a loud thump from outside shook the door in its frame.

Heart pounding, Piper took a giant backward step. She blew out a breath. “Ethan, you just about frightened me to death.”

She knew he hadn’t driven off the side of the mountain. He was too annoying to disappear entirely. She swung the door open, fully prepared to chastise him for worrying her enough that she’d called Tate and then for beating on her door like a caveman.

But Ethan wasn’t the one standing on her front porch. Not even close.