“You can’t stay here. You can’t get involved with her.”

“I am involved.” He wondered if other pack leaders had this much trouble. “No more running after men I don’t approve of.” He tilted her chin up with the tip of his finger and looked directly into her eyes, warning her to mind him this time.

She nodded, her look angry, but then it softened a hair with a hint of a smile. “Can’t afford to. You’ll change half the population of Oregon if I leave you alone again.”

He grunted and moved her toward the house. “You’re staying with me until I take care of the gray.”

She growled, and he knew the fight had only just begun.

“Family feud,” Cara said, motioning to Hunter and Meara outside, then turned her attention to Ashton. “Went hunting, I see. I like duck, too.”

Rourke rolled his eyes. “I’m getting a shower before supper.” He looked at the clean kitchen. “You are fixing it soon, aren’t you?”

“We just ate a little over three hours ago!” Tessa declared.

“That’s long enough. I’m starving. So is Ashton.” Rourke waved at the dead duck.

“Hunter, too, after all the exercise we had.” He stalked down the hall.

“I didn’t have a chance to have lunch,” Cara said.

Well, Tessa wasn’t hungry. She glanced out the kitchen window. “Looks like we’re going to get snowed in. You might want to leave before that happens,” she said to Cara. Tessa had no idea why she would want to save Ashton’s butt. Although he cast her a grateful look.

“I’ll hang around. I haven’t been with… a lot of people… on a more social basis for a number of years. This is the most fun I’ve had in eons,” Cara said.

Tessa couldn’t understand what the woman was talking about. No one seemed enthusiastic about seeing her even. Why would she think anyone wanted to be around her?

“Did you lose your bandages, Ashton?” Cara asked, her voice sultry and sexy as she took hold of his injured hand. “Tessa, do you have some new ones? I’ll fix him right up.”

“Sure, I’ll get them and the antibiotics.” Tessa glanced at Ashton’s hand, but Cara was holding it so that she couldn’t see the bite wound.

When Tessa returned to the kitchen, Hunter and Meara had come back inside. For being reunited after losing her brother, and considering the ordeal he had been through, they scowled at each other and didn’t appear grateful in the least. But worse, gone was Hunter’s lustful interest in Tessa. At once she felt she was the center of the controversy and wasn’t good enough for the family.

Well, he had said he couldn’t promise her anything. Just that he would help her find Bethany’s murderer and set her brother free. Tessa should have known when his memory came back, she would be history. But no matter how she tried to reconcile herself with the notion, she couldn’t squash the dismal feeling he would soon abandon her.

“Here, Cara.” Tessa handed her the bandages. “I guess everyone’s staying for dinner?” She cast Hunter a questioning glance. She halfway expected him to say he was leaving with his sister for good now.

His brows still furrowed, his lips grim, he nodded. He gave Meara a hard look. She folded her arms and looked doubly cross at Tessa. So much for a lovely dinner when she wasn’t even hungry. Cara was the only one who seemed to be pleased to be here, and the one Tessa really wanted to see leave.

Tessa pulled out a package of hot links. “Can everyone manage spaghetti with hot sausage, bell peppers, and onions?”

“Hmm, sounds good to me,” Cara said, licking her lips while she bandaged Ashton’s hand with tender loving care. He tried to jerk his hand away, but she held on tight and tsked.

“Anything you fix is fine with us.” Hunter’s tone of voice was terse.

Meara didn’t have a choice?

Wearing a towel, Rourke came out of the bathroom and hollered from the hallway, “Fine with me.”

How had he heard what she’d asked? She stared after him as he slipped into Michael’s room to grab some clothes. What had gotten into him? She’d never thought he’d dress so scantily in front of a bunch of women.

“The snow’s bound to make the road impassable again. Is anyone leaving soon?” She directed the question at Cara and Meara. “The food won’t take long to fix so we can eat and let you get on your way.”

“No work for me tonight,” Cara said cheerfully.

Hunter grunted. “Meara’s staying here with me for as long as I need to be here.”

For as long as he needed to be here. Well, that said it all. Once he was done helping her, Hunter was out of here.

Fine with Tessa. “I guess you’ll want to sleep with your sister then, and—”

Cara laughed. “A macho male like Hunter sleeping with his sister? That would be the day.”

Tessa sure wasn’t sleeping with Hunter under the current circumstances. “Okay, well, you and Meara can sleep together and—”

“I’ll stay with Ashton,” Cara announced, her eyes flashing with humor. “He might need medical attention during the night. Look at how pale the poor man is.”

He had been, but now his face flushed crimson. Tessa had never seen him blush. She expected some objection from Lord Hunter, but he didn’t say anything. She was really surprised Ashton wouldn’t have nixed Cara’s suggestion himself.

Tessa threw the fajita bell pepper and onion mix into the saucepan, added the sausage links, and then the tomato sauce. “Okay, then Hunter and Rourke can take the spare bedroom and Meara and I—”

“I sleep alone,” Meara said, fire burning in her eyes.

Wearing a clean pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, Rourke walked into the room. More casual than she had ever seen him. In fact, the sweatshirt belonged to her brother.

“I don’t mind sleeping by the fire. I can watch the rest of the house that way in the event anyone plans to break in,” he said.

Tessa considered Hunter’s expression, but it was still dark as ever. About the sleeping arrangements? Or something else?

She coyly smiled. “Hunter, you can sleep with Rourke by the fire and keep him company.”

Meara laughed, a catty, annoyed kind of laugh. She stalked into the kitchen and began opening drawers. When she found the silverware, she set it on the table.

Guess she could be a little bit of help. Maybe Meara was mad at Hunter and not at her. Still, Tessa had every intention of cooling her relationship with Hunter because when he left, she didn’t want to be upset over it for days, weeks, months afterward. Best to end this insane infatuation now.

Life had been so simple for Hunter after Tessa had found him on the beach: discover his identity, learn what had happened to him, deal with Tessa’s stalker, and find Bethany’s murderer so Michael could be released from prison.

Now he had to deal with two freshly turned lupus garous. And Meara. Unfortunately, she had been right concerning everything they had fought about.. All that mattered was the lupus garous’ safety and secrecy. He knew that. As pack leader, he sure as hell didn’t want his sister reminding him of the fact. He should have taken Meara, Rourke, and Ashton back to his cabin resort up north once he learned that’s where he lived and pretended Tessa and her problems didn’t exist.

Any other alpha leader would not have allow himself to be dragged into human affairs.

But he couldn’t and wouldn’t abandon her. Not yet. Tessa had taken him in and cared for him when she didn’t have a clue as to who he was. If he left her alone, the stalker would change her against her will. Hunter wouldn’t let him. Another alpha leader, given the same scenario, would take the gray to task also, if he had been in his territory, but beyond that, she would be on her own. For now, Tessa’s property was in Hunter’s territory—newly franchised.

He couldn’t let her brother stay in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. No other wolf would feel obligated to help out in a case like this—except in the event one of their kind did the killing. Dealing with the lupus garou would be the end of it though. No lupus garou would try to release an innocent human. In fact, he would serve to keep the lupus garous out of the limelight. But Hunter couldn’t allow it, although how he was going to get Michael out of his incarceration eluded him. First of course, he had to prove the grays had committed the crime.

To complicate matters, Hunter had to force Meara to stay with him and keep her out of trouble. Her first wolf heat was making her crotchety and difficult to handle. Thank heavens he didn’t have any more sisters and that none of the three wolves she had taken off with had forced a mating. She needed an alpha to spar with and keep her in line.

Tessa placed the spaghetti in the pan of boiling water, her back rigid. He took a ragged breath. His shoulder was killing him after running in the woods for so many miles as a wolf today, and all he could think about was making love to the woman who heated his blood as hot as the raging fires they’d left behind in California.

Sleep with his sister? That would be the day. And have Rourke sleep with Meara? She would bite him for sure and not in a playful way. Hunter was glad Cara was targeting Ashton as her love interest. He needed to remind him, though, if he mated her, it was a onetime deal. No fooling around a few nights, and then parting ways, although if she did mate him, that might be the solution to one of his problems. She would teach Ashton the ways of being a lupus garou and take him off Hunter’s hands.

If Tessa thought Hunter was sleeping with Rourke in the living room, she could think again. For one, he didn’t trust that the gray might not attempt to break her window and get in while she was alone. All he would do was bite her, and then come back to claim her later once she was a lupus garou. Hunter assumed the gray had intended to kill Ashton, and then bite Tessa, but when she brought out the rifle and started shooting, he gave that notion up in a hurry.

“Hunter,” Meara said. “Gathering wool? We’re all sitting down to eat.”