Growl (Winter Pass Wolves Book 2) by Vivian Wood, Amelie Hunt Read Free Book Online

family secrets, which makes zero sense.”
    After a moment, Pax nodded. Chase gave his shoulder one final pat, then took off toward his cabin, leaving Pax to mull over all that had happened.

    “ A re you seriously doing the crossword right now?”
    Paxton looked up from the paper in his lap, using his foot to sway his rocking chair. Brooke walked up to the front porch of his cabin, eyeing him with a little more caution that he liked. Still, she was here… that had to be a good sign.
    “Yeah. Habit I picked up overseas,” Pax said, setting the paper aside and casting a glance over her curvy figure. “Wasn’t expecting you to come to me, to be honest. I thought I’d have to come roust you after a couple days of moping.”
    “Nope,” Brooke said, sitting on a wooden stool beside Pax’s rocking chair. “Just one day of moping.”
    “Very mature of you,” Pax said, watching her closely.
    “Yeah, well. We’ve both changed a lot in the last six years, I bet.” Brooke twined her hands in her lap, glancing away into the woods.
    “I guess you have to make mistakes and then learn from your experiences. That’s part of growing up,” Pax said, curious where Brooke was going with this.
    “Yeah,” she said, shoulders slumping. She seemed like she wanted to say more, but she remained silent. Maybe she felt like Pax did, that she didn’t know where to start. Their history was long and tangled, a thick layer of dust covering the half-healed scars she’d left behind.
    If Pax was ever going to understand, he’d have to help her find a way to start talking. What better way than to start at the beginning of the end?
    “That day you Skyped me when I was overseas,” Pax said gently. “When you apologized, and then you were just… gone.”
    Brooke glanced at him, tears already forming in her eyes.
    “That was one of the worst days of my life,” she said, shaking her head.
    “I don’t understand what happened,” Pax said. “I visited you, things were great… then a couple months later, you were getting engaged to someone else. It just…”
    He couldn’t quite finish the thought aloud.
    “I know. There was a lot happening here that you didn’t know about,” Brooke said. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she brushed it away with a fingertip. “On top of all that, I knew you thought I betrayed you. That was devastating.”
    “I guess you can understand why I didn’t rush to tell you about being turned into a werewolf,” Pax said.
    “Of course I can. I hate that you guys feel like you can’t trust me, but maybe…” Brooke stopped, sucked in a big breath, then blurted out, “My parents did some really bad stuff. I didn’t know about it at the time, didn’t wonder where the money was coming from…”
    “Whoa, whoa,” Pax said. “Slow down. What money?”
    Brooke gave a humorless chuckle.
    “There’s a lot of money. Like millions and millions, all in offshore accounts. Winter Pass is basically the only thing they ever acquired legally. My dad got into some real estate dealings with shady people, and I guess my mom condoned it… It paid for all their vacations and flashy cars and stuff. I was just a teenager when it started, and Chase was already in the military. The real estate group, they did a lot of bad things. Like foreclosed homes, took advantage of people who desperately needed loans… I guess the term is predatory lending .”
    Pax didn’t know how to respond. He’d met Brooke and Chase’s parents a couple of times. They were your typical multimillionaire jet setting couple, well dressed and smiling, but they were nice . You’d never look at them and suspect that they’d do anything like what Brooke was accusing them of.
    “Brooke, are you sure? How did you even find this out?”
    “Lynne,” Brooke sighed. “Travis had been sniffing around, asking me out on dates. I guess he told Lynne that I turned him down, and she decided to dig up some dirt on me, prove that I wasn’t as great as