Desert Wolf. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

      The reason for her visit was a no-brainer. Paxton Hall wanted to sell the land her father left her and have nothing more to do with her early Arizona upbringing. But her father had left him part of that acreage in order to make sure a sale didn’t happen, so surely Andrew Hall must have foreseen that some sort of contact between his two heirs would take place.

      As an ex-Ranger with connections, Grant had been tracking Paxton since her father’s death a few weeks ago. And here she sat, in his truck, putting traitor and Grant Wade together in the same unspoken breath. She’d be thinking that the man she had been trusting to get her settled for the night had turned out to be more like the personification of sabotage.

      Grant climbed into the cab and rested both hands on the wheel. Without looking at his guest, he said, “Would you like to talk now or wait a while?”

      “Now,” she said breathlessly.

      Her attention on him was unforgiving. His Were senses told him Paxton’s heart rate had kicked up a notch and that Paxton Hall had expected someone else attached to the name Wade. Someone different. She was trying to reconcile his image with her former ideas about who might turn up to potentially oppose her.

      “If you’re uncomfortable, I can call you a taxi,” he said.

      “I’ve been uncomfortable since I read my father’s will, as you must already know.”

      Direct and to the point. Grant liked that, usually.

      She turned on the seat. “You are that same guy?”

      “One and the same, if you’re talking about Andrew’s legacy,” Grant replied. “If you’re talking about anything else, I probably didn’t do it.”

      Levity wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He didn’t have to look at Paxton to feel the animosity creeping into her tone.

      “Why?” she demanded.

      Pretending to misunderstand what she was asking would have been lame, so he said, “It was important to your father and to others that the property wasn’t sold.”

      “Why?” she repeated.

      “I can’t tell you about the specifics of that right now, other than to stress your father’s desire for me to hold on to the town.”

      “You’re talking about an old tourist attraction that’s been closed for twenty years. I fail to see why hanging on to a defunct ghost town wins out over selling the place,” she argued. “Surely you have better things to do than keep track of it.”

      “Not many people would understand my reasons for staying here,” Grant said. “Your father did.”

      She zeroed in on that. “You knew my father well, then?”

      “Truthfully, I didn’t know him much at all.”

      The way she drew back told him that Andrew Hall’s daughter hadn’t considered that kind of an answer. Had she imagined he had goaded Andrew into handing him the town? Finessed Desperado out of a tough man like Andrew Hall?

      “What you’re saying doesn’t make sense,” she eventually remarked. “Maybe you can explain things better?”

      Grant nodded. “We had a deal.”

      “You and my father?”

      He nodded again. “Our deal was that I would inherit the town when he passed, and that I’d take care of it and never sell the land Desperado sits on or allow anyone else to sell it.”

      That slice of the truth would sound absurd to the woman sitting beside him. The whole truth could never be spoken, of course, though Grant could see Paxton was firm in her resolve to get to the bottom of her father’s strange bequest. He just couldn’t let her find that reason. Paxton Hall, along with all the other humans on the planet, had to be kept from learning Desperado’s secrets—and his.

      That much, at least, was clear to Grant. What wasn’t immediately clear was how he was supposed to oppose her when Paxton was here, in his damn truck, with her pale face and her black clothes that reflected her consideration for a man she hadn’t really known.

      “Why didn’t he just leave the whole thing to you?” she asked.

      “I’m not sure, actually. That would have made more sense.”

      And it would have kept Paxton away, maybe, a fact that he had considered since meeting Andrew Hall. He had a glimmer of an idea that Paxton’s father might have sent her away in the first place so she didn’t learn about the werewolves in residence here, and that Andrew’s ongoing silence had furthered the cause of shielding his daughter from truths too difficult to explain.

      “Will you sell it to me?” she asked.

      And there they were, at a standstill. Checkmate. Paxton would assume her request was reasonable, and it would have been if things had been different.

      Grant started the engine. “Do you still want that drink?”

      “I’d rather you answered my question.”

      He looked at the white-faced woman who couldn’t have been more than two or three years younger than his twenty-eight. She looked even younger than that, though. Paxton truly was an eyeful, though that couldn’t matter in their negotiations.

      “Maybe you’ll want to turn right around and go home when I reiterate that I’m not going to sell,” he suggested. “Why waste money on a hotel when more time here won’t get you what you want?”

      “You might change your mind,” she countered stubbornly.

      “Not going to happen, Paxton. I made a deal.”

      The heat inside the car was harsh. Moisture had gathered at Paxton’s temples, dampening her hair. The black silk was starting to stick to her in ways Grant shouldn’t have noticed.

      In any other situation, he would have liked a close-up with Paxton Hall. As things stood, the best case scenario would be for her to go away mad and never look back. She might try to file a lawsuit in order to force him to sell, but her father’s attorney wasn’t going to condone a move like that.

      “Look,” he said. “I don’t want to make an enemy of the daughter of the man who left something valuable to me. So how can we resolve things before that happens?”

      “Too late,” she said, reaching for the door handle, “if you refuse to see my side of this argument and either buy me out or sell.”

      Grant reached to take hold of her briefcase, stopping Paxton from opening the door. “Stay,” he said, removing his sunglasses.

      She turned her head. Amber eyes lighted on him, connecting with his gaze. Earnest eyes. Wounded. Haunted. Wild.

      A stunning jolt of something extraordinary hit Grant in the chest and then melted downward as a second jolt, larger than the first, hit. He had seen eyes like those before and didn’t want to face what that meant. He didn’t want to face her with what that meant.

      What he saw in those eyes quite possibly changed everything—his future and hers.

      Paxton Hall was a Were.

      He had no doubt about it.

      Still, Grant could see that she was ignorant of that fact and therefore didn’t know what was in store. He believed this because he couldn’t feel the thing she kept hidden inside her, in the dark. Her scent had kindled his discovery. Those big eyes of hers said it all.

      Grant broke eye contact and dropped his hold on the briefcase, stung by the realization of who and what Paxton really was. Worse yet, the air in the cab suddenly seemed charged with wayward electricity that had nowhere to go due to the fact that his inner wolf had been awakened by the directness of Paxton’s gaze.

      “What I mean is that we can get to know each other better if you stay as planned,” he said, wondering if he could let her go at all now that he knew what