At least he wasn’t talking about Ryan and her. She raised a brow.

“Puss. Thanks so much for allowing him to stay with me. He’ll contentedly sleep until he wants to roam in the room, and then he’ll go back to sleep. He’ll be fine.” But that clinched the deal that Darien wasn’t fond of cats. Probably a canine thing.

“I won’t make Matthew and Charlotte put in longer shifts because I’ve failed to report to work. Besides, Doc Weber said another four patients have shown up with cases of the flu. Not the swine flu, thankfully, so no one needed overnight admittance, but the staff is getting swamped.”

“I’ll go with you,” Lelandi said. “Just to hang around for a while until you’re through.”

Carol buttered her bagel. “Absolutely not. I don’t want you coming down with anything.” She turned off the teakettle, figuring it was going to take too long to make a cup of tea if Darien was making an issue about her staying home. Headed for the doorway with bagel in hand, she brushed past Jake, who shook his head.

“What?” she asked him.

“When the boss—that’s Darien—” Jake said in a sarcastic way, jerking his thumb in Darien’s direction, “wants something, he gets it. If he says you’re to stay home, it’s not open for debate.” Jake picked up his plate and took it to the dishwasher.

Darien gave a hint of a smile.

Carol smiled broadly and grabbed Ryan’s hand, while he stood in anticipation of her departure for the hospital.

“I have my bodyguard. Unless you or Tom want the job.”

Ryan’s hand tightened on hers as if he wasn’t giving her up to anyone else’s protection. She glanced up to see his expression. He gave her lifted brows and a small smile in response. But the smile indicated something way more than anything to do with guarding her, as if he was thinking about what she was thinking about—and if she didn’t quit thinking about him and his slick moves in that way, he was going to do something about it.

“I want the job,” Mervin said, sounding peeved and pulling her attention away from Ryan.

“I’m paying for Ryan to serve in that capacity.” Darien cast a hard look at Mervin.

Mervin appeared to still be in the doghouse over his accosting her the night before at the gathering.

“So see? This way, Ryan will earn his pay. If he got to loaf around your house, it would be like paying him for vacation time,” Carol said, squeezing Ryan’s hand. She wasn’t letting him go. And his smile hinted at a darker secret and desire.

“You stay with her even when she’s seeing a patient,” Darien warned Ryan.

He gave Darien a mock salute. “Hadn’t planned on doing anything differently.”

Carol frowned, not believing Darien would suggest that. “Patient privacy issues come into play here. Policy dictates that Ryan can’t be in an exam room when I’m seeing a patient.”

“Make up your mind, Carol,” Darien said, not willing to be challenged in the matter. “Either he stays with you at all times, or you remain home. Your choice.”

She let out her breath hard.

“Doc can put you on werewolf cases only. There won’t be any privacy issues then,” Lelandi said, trying to smooth things over. “Darien’s right. You can’t be alone at any time.”

Carol didn’t intend to be. She planned to make up a syringe full of the same cocktail she figured the red had given her. And she’d give it right back if any of them tried to grab her again.

“That should work,” she said cheerfully, although if the workload was mostly human, she’d help out and Ryan could wait beyond the exam-room door, despite what everyone else said.

“Ready?” she asked Ryan, tugging on his hand.

He yanked out his keys. “Let’s take care of your patients.”

Jake pulled out his keys to his truck. “I’ll follow, just in case.”

“I’ll go with you.” Tom tucked his phone into its pocket at his belt.

Mervin hurried to join them.

At least she felt safe with her entourage of bodyguards, although she really didn’t think the reds would be bold enough to try and take her at the hospital anyway. She hurried to eat her bagel as Ryan walked her to his truck. She’d have a cup of green tea at work later because she was afraid Darien would change his mind and want her to stay if she remained at the house much longer.

Movement in her bedroom window caught her eye, and she looked up to see Puss watching her through the glass, his tail twitching and his ears perked. She had a twinge of regret that she couldn’t have cuddled with him longer.

“You were having nightmares last night. What about?” Ryan asked, pulling her from her thoughts.

She had thought he might talk about their nighttime moves. She sighed and climbed into Ryan’s truck and tilted her chin up slightly. “I have one better than that. A vision. At least I think it was. I was kind of doped up at the time. But I saw Jake become a wolf, and then he was unable to shift back.”

Ryan didn’t say anything as he climbed into his truck and then pulled onto the road toward town. “Did you have a vision of your kidnapping?”

He still didn’t believe that the men in the pack had turned into wolves and couldn’t return to their human forms. “No. I told you the visions can be irritatingly unpredictable. It would have been nice to see it happen beforehand…to at least prepare myself, but it doesn’t work that way.” She stared out the window, watching the firs whiz by. But then an uneasy feeling crept through her when she recalled something else. “Oh, no…”

“Oh, no… what?”

She rubbed her temple, trying to recall the exact details. “I…I had a vision before we went into the tavern yesterday.”

Ryan stared at her. “About?”

“A man with long, red hair. It dangled in my face when he bent over me. He wore a padded vest. And I felt so tired, so incredibly tired.”

“A vision?”

“How else do you explain it?” she asked quietly, studying his taut profile as he continued to watch the road as he drove toward town. “You pulled me out of it when you said something to me in the truck after we arrived at the tavern. I had no idea what the vision meant.”

His jaw clenched, and his eyes narrowed.

She looked back out the window.

“Why didn’t you tell me then?”

“We didn’t have a pact back then that I would tell you if I had any visions—and you wouldn’t have believed me anyway. Besides, it didn’t seem important. And I didn’t think about it when we were in the tavern.”

Ryan grunted. “You said you didn’t have them unless they were important to you. So it seems this would have been important. And you said that they were premonitions of something that would occur pretty soon. You should have said something to me. Did you recognize him? See a face?”

“My… my eyes burned. I remember how blurry my sight was when I tried to see him. I thought it was the vision, but I think now it was because my eyes were filled with soap.”

Ryan mulled that over, not saying anything for about a mile, and then shook his head. “Great.”

“Great, what?”

“How does this work, Carol? Do you conjure up the visions? Something trigger them? Or do they just happen?”

She studied his stern face. “They just happen.”

“You can’t force one?” He glanced at her, his eyes trying to read her like a wolf’s would.

She looked back out the window.

He didn’t say anything for some time, but then he pulled over to the side of the road. Startled, she glanced at Ryan, wondering what was up now.

Jake drove up behind them and parked. Ryan’s cell phone rang, and he jerked it off his belt and flipped it open. “Yeah, we’re okay, Tom. We just have to discuss a little matter.” He ended the call and pocketed his phone. “Can you force a vision?”

She frowned at Ryan. “Not exactly.”

“Define not exactly.”

“It’s not normal for me to be able to force a vision.”

“But?”

She took a deep breath. “Maybe it’s the changes in me. Being a werewolf. Or maybe as I grow older I have a little more control. I don’t know. Sometimes I can do so now. Not any particular one, but of something that is close to happening.”

“Like?”

“Darien not being able to shift back.”

“Wishful thinking?” Ryan asked.

She cast him her chilliest look, one that could have frozen the nearby lake despite it being spring. “The night before last, I envisioned someone in a red-and-white-striped jacket tackling me. The feeling I had wasn’t fear but annoyance, so I knew it couldn’t be too bad.”

Ryan swore under his breath, reached out and took Carol’s hand, and squeezed. “Mervin at the game.”

“Yeah. He’s the one that kept me awake half the night with the stupid visions of him.”

Ryan sighed. “All right.” He pulled back onto the road and headed the rest of the way into town.

All right? Now he believed her?

“How about a vision of anything else? Foresee any problems at work, perhaps?”

“No. I’ll let you know about any visions I have. I said I would.”

He drove in silence for a while and then said, “Why did you conjure up the vision of Darien?”

She sighed under her breath. What difference would it make if Ryan knew? She looked out the window and said softly, “To keep from shape-shifting.”

Ryan remained so quiet that she glanced back at him. He snapped his mouth shut. Then he said, “Hell, Carol. You’re a ticking time bomb.”

She smiled. “Really hot stuff you mean?”

“You’re hot, all right. And you’ll work with only werewolf patients, like Darien ordered.” Ryan glanced at Carol, his expression all business. She would obey him, or else.