Guardian in Disguise. Rachel Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ of the other faculty members started yammering in her ear about the renewed effort to build a resort on Thunder Mountain and she reluctantly tore her gaze away.

      Max wasn’t handsome, she told herself as she listened politely to the man talk about the threat a resort would raise to the mountain’s wolf pack.

      She cared about wolves, she really did, and didn’t want to see them driven away or killed.

      But she couldn’t forget Max McKenny. Even as she talked about wolves, he was the image burned in the forefront of her brain.

      There was something there, a story of some kind. And she wanted to know what it was.

      But when she looked around again, he had vanished from the room.

      A deflector who was good at disappearing? Her instincts revved into high gear. Before she was done, she was going to know everything about Max McKenny.

      She might have laughed at herself, but she knew exactly why she was reacting this way: training and instinct. It had been over six months since she’d had a story to follow. Max might be the most normal ex-cop on the planet, but that wasn’t the point. The hunt for information was. She could hardly wait to get to her home computer.

      “So will you help us?” Dexter Croft asked her. “With the petition drive?”

      “I’ll see what I can do,” she agreed almost automatically. “But the ranchers aren’t happy about those wolves, which means many of the other locals aren’t, either.”

      “Those wolves don’t get anywhere near the herds,” he said irritably. “In fifteen years we’ve only had one confirmed wolf kill.”

      “I know, Dex,” she said soothingly. “I know. But it’s the idea we’re fighting. That and the news from Montana and Idaho.”

      “Which is not all that bad.”

      “I guess that depends.”

      Dex drew himself up. “On what?”

      “Whether you’re a rancher who’s running on a margin so slim one kill could cost you nearly everything.”

      “They get reimbursed for wolf kills.”

      She smothered a sigh. She wanted to save the wolves, yes, but you had to consider the other side of the story. Without cooperation from the ranchers one way or another, the wolves weren’t going to make it. “I said I’d help, Dex. But maybe we need a better way to talk to the ranchers.”

      “We’ve been talking to them for years.”

      “Maybe the problem is we’ve been talking at them. I don’t know. But I said I’d help.”

      She turned to scan the room again, but still no Max McKenny. She wished she knew what excuse he had used because she’d sure like to try it out herself. She hated this blasted tea.

      Then she turned back to Dexter and fixed him with her inquisitorial look. “So, Dex, why are you devoted to saving the wolves?”

      The question seemed to startle him and he blinked rapidly. “Because they’re an important part of the ecology.”

      She nodded. “Very true. I know a lot of people who just like them because they look like puppies.”

      “That’s absurd. They’re not domestic dogs. You couldn’t bring one home with you. But they improve the ecology.”

      “I know. I’ve read about it. I just wondered if there was some special reason you took up the cause.”

      “It’s what’s good for the environment, that’s all.”

      Which told her she was now going to be badgered by Dex on every possible environmental issue. Inwardly she sighed. Ten years of training as a reporter had hardened her against taking sides. She could have been fired for taking sides even on her personal time.

      Well, she wasn’t ready to take up any causes yet. She was still feeling too bruised by the loss of her beloved career. Too bruised by the failing newspaper industry that had made it impossible for her to find another job and necessary for her to teach when she’d rather do.

      She was lucky, she told herself. A lot of her friends who had been laid off had had to leave journalism behind.

      Just keep that in mind, she told herself as she eased away from Dex and made her way to the door. You’re lucky. Even if you don’t feel like you are.

      Summer warmth lingered, even with the earlier twilight and Liza chose to walk. Her apartment was only a few blocks away from the relatively new campus, and not too far from the semiconductor plant that had brought brief prosperity to the town before falling prey to an economic downswing and laying off about half its work force.

      Most of those people had been forced to leave town, which meant the apartments were no longer full and rents had fallen. Given her salary as an adjunct, she supposed she should be grateful for that. But she really would have preferred living in the older part of town, seedy as some of it was, to living in the new sprawl that had been added over that past ten or so years.

      Something had sure put her in a morose mood, she realized as she strode down sidewalks fronted by young trees. And here she thought she’d been getting over herself.

      Maybe it wasn’t so easy to lose a job you loved and then have to move halfway across the country for a new one, even if it was a matter of coming home. Except home had changed since she had left to go to college fourteen years ago. Some things looked the same, but they didn’t feel the same.

      You can never come home again. The old saying wafted through her mind and she decided it was true. The town had changed a bit, but so had she. And maybe the changes in her were the most momentous ones.

      She sighed, the sound lost as the evening breeze ruffled the leaves of the scrawny little trees.

      Well, at least there was now Max McKenny to stretch her underworked brain muscles again. Her mind immediately served up another mental image of him, and she had to smother a smile lest she be seen walking all alone down the street, grinning like an idiot.

      But she wanted to grin, for a variety of reasons. She’d seen how the girls went after an attractive teacher, and he was more attractive than most. Heck, she’d done a bit of it herself in college. All you had to do was stare intently, longingly, and you could fluster an inexperienced teacher. You didn’t even have to follow them into their offices to rattle them and make them nervous. She wondered if Max had any idea what he might be in for being a new and interesting man in an area that didn’t often see new guys.

      She bit back a giggle.

      Yup, he was in for it. And since she wasn’t entirely immune herself, she would willingly bet he was going to have a lot to contend with.

      Oh, he was yummy all right. She couldn’t exactly put her finger on the reason. He was good-looking enough, but not star quality. No, it was more that he projected some kind of aura, the way he stood, a man supremely confident in his manhood, she guessed. No apologies there. Yet he hadn’t struck her as cocky, which made him all the better.

      She СКАЧАТЬ