Jingle Bell Wolf, page 19
They chuckled.
Rosco greeted them all, and even the kittens ran out to see them, getting as many pets and hugs as Rosco. Then everyone began getting ready to make dinner, set the table, and Nicole even set out candles and lit them. She was glad Ambrosia was now at home with Doc Mitchell.
Instead of the rest of the family having wine, Nicole and Gabrielle made wassail and the whole family toasted to their new pack member and future veterinarian.
“We are so thrilled you’re joining us,” Roxie said. “Once a month, Nicole and Kayla and I take a shopping trip to Denver. We would love to have you come with us.”
“If I can arrange it, I sure will.” Gabrielle was thrilled that not only had she found a pack to be with, but she had also found some real girlfriends. And girlfriends were always important.
After dinner, Landon and Gabrielle returned to the lodge. They grabbed their skis and headed out, the night sky filled with stars but no moon. Gabrielle was having a wonderful time, not caring if she could run as a wolf with her friends or not, the brisk wind blowing around them as she rode the chairlift with Landon. The clothes she had bought at the Silver Town Boutique felt nice and warm—much warmer than what she had been wearing—and Landon’s body pressed against hers helped too. She loved seeing the lights all along the slopes, lighting the skiers’ way.
One man took a bad spill on the slope below the chairlift and Gabrielle cringed, thinking that could have been her. Luckily, he got up fine. She and Landon reached the top, and she managed to get off the chair without mishap. They skied down the slope in the dark of night, and when they reached the bottom, she was eager to get on the chairlift again.
“You are doing great,” Landon said.
“Oh, to think I will be able to do this lots—after work, of course—and someday even make it to the expert slopes. This is so much fun skiing at night. But”—she paused dramatically—“we still have to swim at night.”
“Guaranteed.”
They went down the intermediate slope again and again. But when they were on their fourth run down, they saw someone had taken a spill down below them and hadn’t gotten up yet. A lone skier.
“Are you hurt?” Landon called out to the skier before he reached him.
“Yeah, and I’m fighting the shift.”
Gabrielle made her way down slowly so she wouldn’t race past the injured skier or run into him and Landon, who was already checking him out. She heard that the skier was a wolf and was fighting the change because of the injury. He had to be a royal if he could shift while the new moon was out.
Landon called the ski patrol. “We need a sled for an injured skier, one of ours. He appears to have—”
“Broken his left femur,” Gabrielle said, crouching down to check on the skier.
The man was trying to pull off his gloves. She held his hand. “Can you hold on? Just for a few minutes? We’ll get you down to the first aid hut as soon as we can.”
He smiled up at her while Landon was setting the injured skier’s skis up in an X to warn others to stay clear. A couple of people slowed down to offer help.
“We’ve got it. A sled is on its way,” Landon said, and as they skied on past, she smelled they were human.
Did Landon know the injured man? He was probably one of the pack members. Then again maybe not, just like she wasn’t. Then she smiled a little. That would soon change.
She held the man’s hand and smiled down at him. “The sled is coming. Do you hear it?”
“Yes,” the injured skier gritted out.
“Do you have a ski partner, someone with you at the resort we can notify?” Landon asked.
“My friend, but he was ahead of me. So he has to be down at the bottom by now.”
“All right. Give me his number, and I’ll let you talk to him.” Landon had his phone out.
The man gave Landon the number and he called it for him. “Hi, I’m Landon Wolff, and it appears your friend broke his leg up on the slope. We have a sled coming for him, but he wants to talk to you.” Landon handed his phone to the injured skier.
The skier said, “I’m trying to hold on.” He glanced at Landon. “Yeah, the man and woman with me are wolves.”
“You can do it,” Gabrielle assured him.
The skier nodded at Gabrielle and said to his friend, “Yeah, dude, I’m trying not to shift.” He handed the phone back to Landon. “He wants to keep you on the line, and you can keep him posted as to my progress.”
Then two members of the ski patrol tore up the hill on their snowmobiles. They soon lifted the injured man onto the sled while Landon loaded the man’s skis.
Landon was still talking on the phone to the skier’s friend. “He’s on his way down now.”
Then the ski patrol sped off with the injured man. Gabrielle and Landon headed down the slope. She didn’t ski to the ski lift, but to the first aid hut instead. No one but the ski patrol members were there, both wolves, and the injured skier and his friend who met up with him there. Everyone was a wolf.
Even though they had called for an ambulance, Gabrielle planned to check him out.
Instead of lying still, the injured skier was trying desperately to remove his clothes. No wolf liked to be wearing human clothes when they shifted.
Everyone was helping the injured man to strip out of his clothes but Gabrielle, who was trying to keep the skier from injuring himself further. As soon as he was naked, he shifted, howled in pain, and passed out.
She stabilized his leg. Even though she wasn’t licensed as a vet here, no one would fault her for taking care of an injured wolf. Besides, no one would dare tell anyone she’d practiced veterinary medicine on a wolf in a ski hut.
Once she was done, they took him to the vet clinic so Doc Mitchell could set his leg.
“Was he a pack member?” she asked Landon as they left the first aid hut.
“No. He must be a guest. Thanks for taking care of him. Being a wolf, he should be good in half the time it takes humans to heal.” He frowned at Gabrielle. “Do you want to ski some more?”
“Absolutely. Let’s go.” They hurried off to the chairlift. She just hoped she wouldn’t ever do that—fall and have to shift because she was injured.
Landon appeared glad she wasn’t afraid to ski further. “He’ll be okay.”
“I agree. I just didn’t think he would shift like that at the ski resort.” Having never dealt with an injured lupus garou, she really hadn’t expected to see anything like that. “Have you had trouble with anyone like that who has been injured before?”
“Every once in a while. We have to put up the privacy screen when that happens and hope if anyone else—an injured human—is in the hut at the time, our injured wolf doesn’t howl in pain.”
Gabrielle laughed. “At least no one else was in the hut this time.”
Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Brando and his friends starting to follow them again. Great. She’d thought he’d given up on her. But then two members of the ski patrol skied up to talk to Brando and his friends.
“Let us give you some advice. Gabrielle’s part of our pack. Landon is too. I don’t know how they work things where you’re from, but pack members stick up for each other, and if you didn’t realize it, the town is entirely run by the pack.”
“Gabrielle and I have a history,” Brando said as if that said it all.
“Yeah, well, apparently you are history,” one of the ski patrol members said. “So keep your distance from them or leave Silver Town.”
After that, Gabrielle couldn’t hear what was being said, but she loved the pack already.
Landon smiled down at her. “Do you see what I mean? You’ll have all the protection you can get anytime you need it.”
“Yeah, that’s really nice.”
She and Landon rode the chairlift up the mountain and headed down the intermediate slopes several more times. Brando and his friends steered clear of them the rest of the night too. Thankfully.
When the ski lifts closed for the night, they headed inside the lodge and she said, “Swimming, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll meet you—”
“Your swimsuit is in my room.”
The night manager waved to Landon that she had an issue with a customer. “I’ll be up in a few minutes, after I take care of the problem.”
“Okay, see you in a few minutes then,” she said.
* * *
That night, Zelda said to her sister, “Odette, listen, we’re not going to find the woman. We’ve lost her for good this time. We need to call the boss and have some other agents take care of it, or we’ll miss out on our whole vacation with Gabrielle.”
“Do you think Gabrielle’s had enough time with Landon and the others to convince her to move to Silver Town and take care of their vet clinic?” Odette asked, wishing they could have at least found the woman and arrested her so they had finished their mission, and the fact they hadn’t met up with Gabrielle at the beginning of their vacation would seem more legitimate. Besides, she hated not finishing a mission.
“That’s another reason for us going to Silver Town. If Landon and the others haven’t done enough to convince Gabrielle she needs to be with a wolf pack, we’ll have to help.”
Odette smiled at her sister. “As long as we don’t make a muddle of it. I mean, if we go there and Landon’s busy taking Gabrielle out all the time, and then here we are taking her away from him, that would be at cross-purposes to what we’re trying to accomplish.”
“Right. Though he probably has work to do. We will have to make sure they can still spend plenty of time together. Like, we can visit the diamond slopes, and since Gabrielle’s a new skier, she won’t be able to join us. You remember what she told us. She would sip hot toddies in the ski lodge so we could get in some expert-slope runs.”
In her heart, Odette knew they had to join Gabrielle, but she really hoped their she-wolf friend wouldn’t feel obligated to be with them all the time. Odette also wanted to meet the Wolff family that had taken Gabrielle in and see that they had her best interests at heart.
“I’ll call her,” Zelda said. “She’ll be expecting us to join her tomorrow.”
“All right.”
Zelda got on the phone, and when Gabrielle answered, Zelda put it on speakerphone. “Hey, good news. We’re flying in by late afternoon tomorrow. We will probably get to the resort about three or four.”
“Okay, great, and we can have dinner together and night ski, if you want to,” Gabrielle said.
“Wow, you’re getting adventurous,” Zelda said.
“I’m impressed,” Odette said. “What are you planning to do now?” She hoped Gabrielle wouldn’t be calling it a night at nine already.
“Landon and I just finished skiing and we’re going to swim next.”
“Oh, we don’t want to hold you up.” Zelda winked at Odette.
“Wait, I have to tell you something. I hope you are okay with it. I’m going to move to Silver Town to take over the vet practice here as soon as I can leave Daytona Beach. It might take a little while to get my state license before I can practice here, but… Well, what do you think?”
Zelda and Odette’s mouths gaped. “Ohmigod, yes!” Zelda said.
“Oh, yes!” Odette said. “We’d so hoped you would feel that way.”
“What?” Gabrielle asked.
“Well, you know. When we came out here before, we learned it was a wolf-run pack,” Zelda said.
“You knew all along and you didn’t tell me? You…you set me up? You’ve been trying so hard to get me to come skiing with you this year. Now it all fits.” Gabrielle laughed.
Odette smiled at Zelda. She was so glad Gabrielle wasn’t angry with them.
“Yeah, the other places were just regular ski resorts. But when we came here, we knew we had to get you here at all costs just so you would see it for yourself and maybe want to make this your home.”
“You…you didn’t make up this business about the person you were supposed to take into custody, did you?” Gabrielle asked.
“No,” Zelda said. “It was as we explained, but when we learned you were having a good time there, we sure didn’t want to give up our business and mess things up for you.”
“But how did you know Silver Town needed a vet?”
The sisters exchanged looks. “I’m sorry,” Odette said. “We looked into it when we were here the last time to see if they might have an opening at the vet clinic. We heard rumors their vet, Dr. Mitchell, wanted to retire.”
“Wait, you did not talk to Lelandi, the pack leader, about this, did you?”
Zelda chuckled. “I told you, Odette, it would come out before long. Gabrielle would make a good JAG agent.”
“So that’s why she offered me the job. You told her I was a vet,” Gabrielle said.
“Yeah,” Zelda said.
“And Landon?” Gabrielle sounded concerned.
“Oh, he was a mistake,” Zelda said.
Odette punched her sister lightly on the arm. “What she means to say is that Lelandi was supposed to ensure you had some nice bachelor ski instructors all lined up to teach you how to ski and to show you around town until we could get there. And maybe you would fall head over heels for one of them. Then everything would have worked out beautifully. But you took care of that on your own when you hooked up with Landon.”
Gabrielle laughed. “That’s why you were so surprised when I said the owner of the lodge was giving me ski lessons.”
“Yeah, no one thought of that.” Zelda held her hands over her heart. “It was fate.”
“With a big push from you two,” Gabrielle said.
“Well, it worked, didn’t it? If we hadn’t convinced you to come this year to the ski resort, you might not have ever learned about the wolf-run town, found a hot guy to hook up with, and decided to take the job offer.” Odette just couldn’t believe it had all worked out.
“I’m sure you would have finally come right out and told me about the town, if I hadn’t checked it out anyway.”
“Yeah, but you might have been even more reluctant to meet a whole pack of wolves if we’d told you that part. We’ve never seen you around other wolves much,” Odette said.
“That’s true. What about the two of you?” Gabrielle sounded worried that they would miss her.
“Are you kidding?” Odette asked. “You know we’re constantly out of town on missions, so we don’t get to see you all the time anyway. But now? Every vacation we get, we’re coming out there to see you, okay? Free room and board, right?”
Gabrielle chuckled. “Yeah, sure. And you can come in the summer too. Doc Mitchell has a lake you can go swimming in, no problem with humans seeing you. The property’s all surrounded by woods—125 acres of it.”
“Oh, wow, now you’re talking about a jaguar paradise.” Zelda smiled.
“Well, it’s two hours later here than there and we still need to pack. We’ll see you tomorrow,” Odette said. “Lelandi’s having someone pick us up at the airport—I love your pack already—and they’ll drop us off at the lodge.”
“All right. I can’t wait to see you!”
Odette just had to make sure that she and her sister didn’t stand in the way of a wolf romance when they arrived in Silver Town after all the work they had put into this. Convincing Gabrielle to go to Silver Town to ski had been a job and a half as it was, though they understood why.
Chapter 15
“You would not believe what my girlfriends did,” Gabrielle told Landon as he joined her in her room to change into his board shorts. “They just called me while you were resolving the issue with the guest.”
“Are they finally getting in or did they cancel on you again?” Landon looked almost hopeful that they weren’t coming.
She smiled. “They’re coming in around three or four tomorrow afternoon. You and I will have the whole day together, and I want to help you and your family finish building the snowman. I’ll have dinner with my girlfriends when they come in and catch up with them. Maybe we’ll night ski.”
Landon looked a little bummed as he stripped out of his clothes, baring his hard, sexy body to her, and then slipped on his board shorts, T-shirt, and sandals. She would so miss seeing him like that when she left for home.
“Hey, we will have a blast, and believe me, my friends will want to be on the expert slopes for most of the time, if you’re free to ski with me on the intermediates.”
He smiled. “You bet.”
They left the room and walked downstairs and across the lobby to the swimming pool area.
“But I couldn’t believe what they had pulled. They set this whole thing up.”
“What do you mean that they set this all up?”
“When they came here last year to ski, they learned Silver Town was wolf-run. And they decided it was the perfect place for me to visit—to be with other wolves.”
“To find a pack to join?”
“Yeah.” She pulled off her cover-up and laid it on the chaise lounge. “Talk about being surprised. They’re good at keeping secrets.”
“I don’t remember any jaguars staying at the lodge last year.” Landon removed his shirt and set it next to her cover-up.
“I think they stayed at the Silver Town Inn, but they wanted to be on the slopes this year and stay at your lodge. Anyway, they talked to Lelandi and had been trying to get me out here to ski ever since.”
Landon laughed. “So that’s how Lelandi knew you were a veterinarian. She is a bit of a matchmaker.”
Gabrielle heeled off her flip-flops. “Yeah, but she didn’t get it right this time.”
“Lelandi?” Landon removed his sandals.
“Right. She was supposed to set me up with a bachelor ski instructor.”
Landon’s eyes sparkled with good humor as he pulled Gabrielle into his arms. “It’s a good thing fate would have it that I caught you swimming in the pool after hours—not one of my sisters or my brother.”
