Werewolf in the North Woods by Vicki Lewis Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

her humiliation when Roarke turned to stone at the touch of her mouth on his.
    Grandpa Earl might deserve some of the blame for that. His suggestion that Roarke take Abby camping had been a blatant attempt at matchmaking. Roarke probably had a girlfriend back home and he’d only shown interest yesterday out of courtesy or habit. When he realized her grandfather was ready to welcome him into the family, he’d slammed on the brakes. God, she wished she could take back that kiss!
    “Abby,” Grandpa Earl called from the back room. “Come look at this.”
    With a glance toward the parking lot to make sure nobody had driven up, she started toward the back room. Business had fallen off lately, which Earl attributed to the Gentrys’ smear campaign but Abby thought might be due to the convenience store that had opened about four miles down the road. It offered longer hours and served soft drinks from a dispenser. People liked that.
    She walked into the back room. A door to the right led to the living quarters, which must have been cramped for a family of four back in the day, but were about right for a widower and his occasional guest, Abby.
    Grandpa Earl sat at the desk in an armless swivel chair that he could get out of without struggling. He was hunched over his aging computer staring at the monitor. “Come look at what that watch of his sells for,” he said without looking up.
    She didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. Obviously he meant the nonkisser, Roarke Wallace.“Grandpa, I know he has money. His parents are friends with Cameron’s parents, so it stands to reason that he’d be wearing a pricey watch.”
    “I guess pricey describes a watch worth eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars. I assume that’s before they add tax.”
    Abby gasped. As a claims adjuster she’d dealt with some expensive items, but she couldn’t remember ever hearing about a watch in that price range. No wonder Roarke hadn’t wanted to get involved with her. She was from the wrong side of the tracks.
    Grandpa Earl punched a few more keys. “Here’s some information on his family.” He gestured toward the screen. “I gather that the Wallaces are to New York City what the Gentrys are to Portland.”
    “That explains a lot.” Abby flopped into an old easy chair beside her grandfather’s desk. Her Grandma Olive used to sit there with her knitting while her husband researched Bigfoot on the Internet. Olive’s knitting basket still sat beside the chair and no one had ever suggested moving it.
    “It does, but it makes me sad.” Earl sat back in his chair and glanced over at Abby. “He may be a rich boy, but he’s a professor at a prestigious university. As such, he should keep an open mind and not allow other considerations, like loyalty to the Gentrys, to interfere with scientific inquiry.”
    “You gave it a good try, Grandpa.”
    “Not good enough, obviously.”
    “I don’t think it helped that you practically threw me at him.”
    Her grandfather blinked. “Who was throwing? I just thought—”
    “That he should take me camping? That’s a very intimate thing to do.”
    “Not if you sleep in separate tents! Did I say you should share a tent? No, I did not. I said he should take you along. Men and women go on scientific explorations all the time without having sex, Abby.”
    Her cheeks warmed. He was right. She was the one who had jumped to the conclusion that if Roarke took her camping, they’d sleep together. Her mind had been on sex, but her grandfather’s mind had been on creating a team of two people for scientific exploration.
    Come to think of it, Roarke probably went on trips like that in his field work as an anthropologist. He might not have interpreted Grandpa Earl’s suggestion as matchmaking, after all. He simply hadn’t wanted to go.
    She understood that, in a way. He’d been flown here to take care of a problem—Grandpa Earl’s supposed sighting of Bigfoot and his mate. Going out to search for