“I was afraid you might want something else. That you envisioned a different kind of angel. Something softer, maybe.”

“She’s perfect.” Anna went to hug him, and he quickly looked at Bjornolf, as if seeking his approval.

Bjornolf gave him a nod and a smile, but Anna had already moved to embrace Nathan. “You’re so sweet, Nathan. I’ve never celebrated the holiday. You’ve helped to make this one so special to me, and I’ll never forget it.”

He hugged her back, then he said to Bjornolf, “My dad always put the star on the tree. Did you want to do the honors?”

Nathan was fighting back tears, just like she was. Bjornolf gave her a small smile and squeezed her hand, and she noted his eyes were misty, too. “I’d love to.”

She realized then she’d never think of the holidays again as one of those hassles in life, involving crowded shopping centers and annoying Christmas jingles played over and over again. She put her arm around Nathan’s shoulders and watched as Bjornolf put the angel and wolf ornament on top of the Colorado blue spruce tree.

“We’ll have the most beautiful tree of any of the open houses, guaranteed,” she said proudly.

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool, isn’t it?”

Bjornolf cleared his throat. They both looked over at him. “Anna, you said you knew how to cook?”

In short order, they had baked chicken thighs, asparagus, and baked potatoes on a big serving dish sitting in the center of the cherrywood dining table.

Bjornolf and Nathan looked at the table, then at Anna. “We need holiday decorations for the table for the open house,” Bjornolf said.

“Yeah,” Nathan said.

They both studied Anna, waiting for her response. She wanted to say she didn’t “do” shopping. But after all that Nathan had done, she couldn’t say no. She sighed. “After lunch, all right?”

Nathan gave Bjornolf a high five.

She was doomed.

After lunch, Bjornolf and Nathan put away the dishes. She could really get used to this, but she figured when…

She paused as she wiped down the table. She hadn’t even considered what might happen beyond the mission—what would become of Nathan, or where she and Bjornolf would end up.

“I need to make a quick call. Be right back.” She headed into the bedroom and shut the door, then fished out her phone and called Hunter. “I need you to look into something for me.”

“About the murders?” Hunter asked.

“No. About a Jessica Everton, adopted daughter of the owners of the Christmas tree farm. She was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico.”

“What are we looking for?” he asked.

“To learn if her real parents were wolves.”

Chapter 16

Shortly thereafter, Anna got a call from Hunter letting her know that Rourke, their investigative reporter, had just called to tell Hunter that once he’d interviewed Helen Wentworth and after investigating some leads, he suspected Jessica Everton might be a wolf. First, according to Mrs. Wentworth, there was the case of a mysterious adoption—no evidence of papers, the Evertons’ own loss of a baby daughter, Jessica’s behavioral problems, no birth record for her that he could locate—and the scent of wolf when he’d dropped by to see the girl at the tree farm.

Anna shared the news with Bjornolf and Nathan. “We’ll finish decorating for the open house after we go shopping. Then Nathan, you arrange for Jessica to come over for dinner tonight.”

They couldn’t put this off any longer than that.

He looked skeptical.

Anna sighed and took his hand. “Nathan, if she’s truly a wolf, and if you two had sex, then you’ve mated with her. If you’ve mated with her, you could very well have gotten her pregnant. We have to learn the truth and deal with it.”

He frowned. “You shouldn’t have to do anything. Hunter took care of his mistakes all on his own.”

Anna nodded. “True. But he’s the pack leader. He had to. You’re not even legally an adult yet. We’ll help you in any way we can. Okay? Hunter and the rest of the pack will, too. That’s what a wolf pack is all about, Nathan. We take care of each other through the good stuff and the bad. You don’t have to do this alone.”

He bit his lip, then said, “She thinks she’s pregnant.”

Anna quickly closed her mouth, not wanting to look so astonished.

“I got angry with her because I knew I couldn’t have made her that way. That was one of the reasons I left to see Sarah.” Nathan glanced at Bjornolf. “Until he mentioned that in rare cases our kind could get a human pregnant.” He took a deep breath. “Jessica’s too afraid to get a pregnancy test and see what it shows. She swore I was the only one she’d been seeing.”

Anna didn’t say anything for a moment, shocked at the newest revelation, then nodded. “Call her, Nathan. Tell her you’ll pick her up for dinner tonight. That your aunt and uncle want to meet her. Then we’ll go shopping.”

Now, if only Jessica’s parents were all right with it, and Jessica was, too.

Anna suspected nothing would go as planned. When did it ever?

***

Bjornolf hoped they could learn the truth about Jessica tonight at dinner and then work on how they would handle it after that. For now, they were at a shopping mall for last-minute decorations to finish off the house for the pack parade of homes.

Anna had changed into a pair of cobalt blue jeans, the back pockets decorated with sequined hearts to catch the eye. She wore high-heeled boots and a white crocheted sweater that dipped low in front, showing off a hint of cleavage. She looked like a million bucks, and he couldn’t help staring at the ensemble, nearly running into a number of different customers in the crowded department store.

Casting Bjornolf a small smile, she said, “You like it?”

He and Nathan both were looking at her lacy sweater and they said in unison, “Yeah.”

She pointed to the decorations sitting on a table. They switched their gazes to the table set up with holiday trimmings, place mats, plates featuring reindeer, shiny gold silverware, and linen napkins bound in crystal and gold ties.

“Oh yeah,” Nathan said.

Bjornolf’s gaze drifted to the hint of the swell of her breasts. “Oh yeah.”

Nathan chuckled when he saw what Bjornolf was talking about.

Christmas music played overhead as shoppers seemed to fill every aisle of the department store. Some shoppers were in a rush, while others were carefully considering merchandise, poking at clothes, lifting china to examine it, and sifting through bath towels. Where Anna was concerned, Bjornolf had never seen a woman shop so quickly in his life.

Once she saw the Christmas settings displayed on the table, she said to Bjornolf and Nathan, “How about that? Isn’t it perfect?”

She didn’t really ask for their opinion, he wryly thought. Before they could answer, she gathered the eight placemats she had been eyeing on a shelf, and they helped her find matching linen napkins, and crystal and gold napkin holders. She took the whole centerpiece and shoved it into Bjornolf’s hands, grabbed the runner off the display table, and said, “Done.”

Bjornolf looked at Nathan to see his take on it. He raised his brows and smiled.

As if considering her choices, she folded her arms and looked at the table again. “Maybe we’re not done. We could use a set of red Christmas plates. They’d be perfect for Valentine’s Day, too. We can add blue and white decorations when it comes to Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Fourth of July celebrations.”

Bjornolf suspected Anna had never celebrated any of those holidays. Her enthusiasm was contagious and he was doubly glad she was a quick shopper. He looked forward to sharing every one of those holidays with her next year, and making up some of their own.

They were out of there in no time.

“Can we stop at a drugstore on the way back to the cottage?” Anna asked.

“Sure,” Bjornolf said.

When they pulled into the strip mall, both Bjornolf and Nathan were going to join her, but she said she’d be just a minute. Nathan sank against the car seat, looking relieved.

They parked in front of the drugstore situated at the end of a small strip mall of four shops: a card shop, a dress store, and a bookstore, in addition to the drugstore. In silence, Bjornolf and Nathan studied the drugstore display windows filled with Christmas decorations and a clutter of advertisements as the door closed behind Anna, and she disappeared from view.

Nathan cleared his throat. “She’s getting a pregnancy test for Jessica. Isn’t she?”

“I suspect so. Jessica needs to know if she is pregnant as soon as possible. She has to realize she’s got us for backup. She has to have a support system now.”

“I really screwed up, didn’t I?”

Bjornolf had been there. His own messes had seemed insurmountable at the time, but somehow he’d managed to muddle through.

“Some lessons are harder to learn than others. You really do care for her, don’t you?” Bjornolf didn’t mean to sound so judgmental, but he hoped Nathan truly loved her because they’d be together for a very long time, and there was no undoing what they had done.

Nathan nodded. “Yeah. I do. Ever lie awake at night thinking of the day you spent with someone special, and you want to repeat the day over and over again?”

Yeah, he did. Anna had stolen his thoughts more times than he wanted to admit.

Nathan glanced at Bjornolf. “Like with you and Anna?”

Bjornolf fought a smile. No one ever questioned him about his relationships with women. He assumed Nathan needed confirmation more than anything. “Hell, yeah. You know you have it bad when you’re thinking about nothing at all, doing something, and suddenly out of the blue you’re thinking of her. Like driving the car, then there she is taking up space in my brain again. Bright as day.”

Nathan shook his head. “That’s just like me. I’ll be cutting a tree for a customer, and all of a sudden, I’ll think of the way she smiled at me earlier in the day and offered me a cup of hot chocolate. I mean, it’s more than that. I can’t wait to see her, to be with her again.”