Jake hugged her tight. “No matter what happens, I love you, Alicia. If you’re pregnant, the child will be ours.”

She sniffled but wouldn’t look at him. He tilted her chin up and looked into her red eyes. “It doesn’t matter. Do you hear me? I’ll love our child as much as I love you. All right?”

She nodded, but she didn’t look like she believed him. He sighed and kissed her lips, then gently caressed her face with his thumbs to brush away the tears trailing down her cheeks. “Do you want to get breakfast?

She hesitated.

“I can bring something up here to you.” He hated to suggest it, feeling that she needed to be with the family, but he realized how difficult this might be for her.

“I don’t want to say anything about this to anyone,” she said. “Not until I know for sure one way or another.”

“About the baby?” he questioned. He wasn’t hiding the fact they were mated.

Her lips parted, then she nodded.

“Certainly.” But that didn’t mean he wasn’t checking into Massaro’s background. And deep down, Jake was disturbed about this whole matter. Not only about the fact she might be carrying Massaro’s child, although he’d love the child as his own, but because of the way Massaro would have gotten her with child. But also because she was reticent about being mated to Jake. He felt bad that he hadn’t given her a choice about that. Although ultimately, there would have been only one choice to make.

“You might want to dress before we go downstairs.” She gave his nude body an assessing look, then gave him a small smile.

He laughed. “Sure you don’t want to stay up here, and I’ll make us a special breakfast after everyone’s left for the day?” He waggled his brows.

“It’s tempting,” she said with a sigh.

He took a deep breath. “You’re really not upset about our mating?”

She gave him a watery smile. “When all I’ve wanted is to be with you, night after night? I could think of hardly anything else, and now I’m with you for real.”

“You’re worrying about being pregnant then?”

She gave a shallow nod.

He took her hand and kissed it. “Everything will be all right, Alicia. You’ve got me, and you have a whole pack to be your family now. You’re not alone in this. You’ll never be again. I’ll grab a quick shower, and we can head downstairs. I’ll show you my grandfather’s home where we’ll live once we resolve some other issues. We’ll have lunch and an afternoon nap after that. How’s that sound?”

“You don’t have to work?” She sounded as though she was afraid he’d leave her alone.

“Not anytime soon. Darien won’t need me for a few days, time enough for you to get acclimated to the pack and to our ways. Besides, until we know that Mario and his men aren’t coming after you, I’m staying with you.”

She shook her head, a small smile appearing that cheered him, and gave a breathy little laugh. “You must have thought it was funny when I said I’d protect us both because I had a gun.”

He chuckled and ran his hand through her thick curls, then held a handful with reverence. “I was thinking, ‘If you only knew.’”

Chapter 14

When Jake and Alicia finally went down to breakfast, Tom and Darien both looked up at them as Jake steeled his expression and guided Alicia into the dining room, the large picture window facing out onto the woods, Jake’s photos of woodland flowers hanging on the walls, and the long oval table covered in golden sunflower place mats. Alicia’s attention was riveted on his floral photographs, and he saw real admiration in her eyes. But his brothers exchanged looks, and Jake knew that despite trying to keep his expression neutral, he’d conveyed strife in paradise.

Both observed Alicia, and he imagined they could tell she’d been crying.

“Good morning,” Darien said to Alicia, and Tom echoed his words, although Darien gave Jake a harsh look as if he’d been to blame for Alicia’s upset.

“Good morning,” Alicia said quietly, avoiding looking at them, while Jake only nodded.

Lelandi came out of the kitchen appearing tired. Jake imagined that the babies kicking in her belly were keeping her awake, although her expression brightened when she saw Alicia. A flicker of concern fluttered across Lelandi’s face when she noticed Alicia’s red eyes, but she quickly smiled and motioned to the table—where the yellow ceramic serving dishes were filled with eggs and ham, biscuits, and cantaloupe, watermelon, and honeydew melon.

“Have your pick,” Lelandi said cheerfully.

After Jake pulled out a chair for Alicia, she took her seat, and he sat beside her.

“I’m dying to hear about your chosen profession as a bounty hunter,” Lelandi said, her enthusiasm contagious as she took her seat next to Darien.

Jake thought Lelandi was the perfect person to help get Alicia’s mind off her troubles. Maybe the psychology courses were part of Lelandi’s need to analyze and try to help anyone in need, although he suspected those traits had more to do with her nurturing personality.

“You would not believe the kinds of cases I’ve been involved in.” Alicia forked some fruit onto her plate, and for the first time she seemed at ease.

“Coffee? Tea?” Jake asked her.

“No, neither.”

That surprised Jake because she’d had tea when she’d eaten breakfast before.

“Juice? Milk?” Lelandi asked.

“Milk.”

Lelandi returned to the kitchen and soon popped back into the dining room with a glass of milk. She handed it to Alicia, then sat across the table from her. “Okay, tell us about this bounty-hunting business of yours. It sounds like it could be fascinating.”

Alicia’s choice of beverages made Jake wonder if maybe there was something more to her being pregnant. He again glanced down at her waist, but she wasn’t showing yet. Too soon, he suspected. He wondered how he could get her in to see Doc Weber. Surely Doc could tell whether she was or not. Especially since seven weeks had passed since Ferdinand Massaro had turned her.

Alicia held up a finger as she finished chewing a sausage link.

Jake’s brothers had finished their breakfast, and it was past time for them to be on their way. Although as efficient as the pack was at running the town and the Silver businesses, they didn’t need the pack leader and his sub-leaders micromanaging any of it. Still, Jake had hoped they’d leave so he’d have more alone time with Alicia.

But they didn’t appear to be in any hurry to depart. He suspected that since Alicia was newly a member of the family, they wanted to know everything about her.

“Once,” Alicia said, “I was supposed to arrest a woman who’d stolen a good deal of money from the department store where she clerked. She would give a refund to a customer, then pocket a refund herself. It was a one-for-you, one-for-me kind of affair. She was addicted to gambling and was a habitual lottery-ticket purchaser. But besides the obvious shortages in her register at the close of her shifts and the camera’s catching her pocketing the money, she skipped her trial. I had the job of serving the warrant, but her family was hiding her. So I put out the word that she had won a lottery ticket.” Alicia smiled. “That did it. I delivered the search warrant in place of the winner’s fees and escorted her to jail.”

“Goes to show gambling doesn’t pay,” Lelandi said, smiling.

“Yeah. Most of the cases I’ve dealt with were petty criminal cases. One was a car thief who failed to see his parole officer and was ordered back to jail. I found him hiding underneath a mattress. Really brilliant since the one side of the mattress was elevated so high that any fool could have seen someone was wedged in between the mattress and the box springs even though he was fairly scrawny.

“Another time, I found a woman hiding underneath a flipped-over swimming pool in the backyard, while the dog stood wagging its tail at me right beside the plastic blue pool. Another time a guy hid in the attic. In his panic, he stepped through the ceiling. By the time I had him in plastic ties, he was a mess and covered in itchy insulation. I was lucky that I never had to arrest anyone really dangerous, though.”

Jake raised his brows at her. Her gaze shifted to him, knowing he would have something to say about that.

Looking a little flushed, she buttered a biscuit. “Until now. The bondsman I work with liked to give me cases where he needed a woman rearrested, so that there could be no threat of someone screaming about sexual misconduct. Or cases where the perp was not a member of a gang or anything. One of the other bounty hunters I knew had gotten into a real bind trying to take down an individual who was a drug dealer and had ended up in a house full of methamphetamines, money, drugged-out wackos, and guns.”

“But this time?” Lelandi probed.

Jake bit his tongue to keep from saying anything about this time being personal. But he was having a damn hard time not voicing his opinion. He sighed. He and his brothers would have reacted the same way as Alicia did, truth be told. Even Lelandi had responded the same way concerning her own sister, which had gotten her into a world of danger. So he couldn’t really blame Alicia. Although in their case, they were wolves and the thought of a female human going it alone didn’t sit well with him.

“The man I worked for did me a favor. He let me go after Danny Massaro and Mario Constantino on my own,” Alicia said.

Lelandi rubbed her lower back. Evidently the babies were giving her spine trouble again, which prompted Darien to move his chair closer to hers and to begin rubbing the area she was attempting to soothe. She smiled at him. “Thanks, honey.” Then she frowned at Alicia. “It seems to me that these men are awfully dangerous sorts. I would think the man you worked for would have worried about your safety as well as your success.”

“I…” Alicia wouldn’t look at Jake, her head slightly bowed. Then she raised her chin in defiance. “I had inside knowledge. My informant wouldn’t deal with anyone else. So the bondsman had to let me do it if he wanted any assurances that the men would be taken into custody.”