Smiling, Elizabeth shook her head. “I wish I would have told you. Or that you felt like you could tell me.”
Sheri sighed. “I kept worrying I would give myself away and was so afraid you wouldn’t take me with you, or I would have talked to you about it all along.”
Elizabeth frowned. “Did my grandmother ever hint to you that I was leaving?” She couldn’t imagine that she would have, though her grandmother did really care about Elizabeth and Sheri’s friendship.
“She didn’t need to. I knew you would never give David up, and I knew he wouldn’t give you up either. I figured you were keeping in touch somehow. I was really worried you would slip out on me before I could catch you at it. When I went to your house, I fully expected to see a couple of suitcases packed and ready to go. Or find suitcases in the trunk of your car or something.
“Since you said Bentley was following you all over the place, I knew you couldn’t just race to the airport or head out of town to the south. When you said a friend was meeting you for dinner, I figured this was it. I told my parents I was having dinner out with you and you needed the company and needed to get away from the house. They didn’t question it. Why would they? They know I know you the best, after all. And since they were leaving for Cancun around the time we would be having dinner, there was no better time. So I packed my bags and threw them in the trunk of my car and…here we are.”
“Well, you know, if you ever change your mind, we’ll get you on a flight back home. You never have to worry about that.” David wanted Sheri to know they weren’t anything like her pack. That she could come and go freely as much as she wanted to visit with her family and friends or whatever. Though if she returned to Yellowknife, he suspected she wouldn’t be allowed to leave ever again.
“There’s no going back for me. You’re stuck with me. And Elizabeth too. If things don’t work out between the two of you, then… Well, I don’t know what we’ll do, but we’re not returning to Yellowknife. Are we, Elizabeth?”
“No. I’ll never go back there.” Elizabeth sounded adamant about that.
David squeezed her shoulder. She could leave whenever she wanted, too, even though the thought of that all but brought him to his knees. But he would do everything in his power to show her he was the only wolf for her.
“Okay, so what’s the deal with your new ‘mate’?” Sheri asked.
David laughed. “One of our pack members. That’s Candice, Owen Nottingham’s mate. She was delighted to help. Owen is—”
“The other one Elizabeth freed. I know all about the two of you. Kintail won’t let us forget that Elizabeth freed you both and caused all kinds of trouble for the pack. So Candice is new?”
“Fairly. She’s a romance author, and when I asked her if she would help me by pretending to be my mate, she was all for it. Owen took all the pictures while she and I were pretending to be the happy newly mated couple,” David said. They had all been laughing so hard, they’d had a difficult time trying to be serious about it. But everyone in the pack had been willing to do anything they could to help bring Elizabeth safely home to the pack.
David got on his cell and texted Cameron and Faith, letting them know he and Elizabeth had successfully made it out and were flying to their first destination—Calgary. And he told them about the additional passenger, Sheri Whitmore, Elizabeth’s best friend.
Cameron called David, and he answered the phone. “Yeah, Cameron?”
“Any strings attached that could cause the pack trouble?”
He glanced at Sheri, who looked at him curiously. “Parents and a brother. An ex-boyfriend might be an issue. Of course Kintail could be a bigger one, depending on how he takes this. You know how Kintail is.”
“Yeah, he had a fit that he’d lost you and Owen, didn’t get Faith, and had me as such a thorn in his side. I’m glad you got out of there without a hitch,” Cameron said. “And tell both ladies welcome to the pack. We’ll have a celebration tomorrow for them, when everyone’s had a bit of a rest.”
“I’ll tell them.” David ended the call. He could tell Sheri was nervous, so he said, “Ladies, Cameron officially welcomes you to the pack, and we’ll have a pack celebration after we get some well-deserved sleep.”
Sleep. Or maybe not sleep. He glanced at Elizabeth, hoping she would join him in his master bedroom suite and not stay in one of the guest rooms. He’d stayed with her in hotel rooms before, but she might want to take it slower with him at the very first. He would go as slowly as she needed.
“I have a couple of guest rooms,” David said, “that you can choose from.” He left it open-ended, meaning that Sheri could choose from one while he hoped Elizabeth could stay with him.
“Okay, thanks, David,” Sheri said. “You can’t know how much I appreciate this.”
“You’re welcome.”
Elizabeth was quiet, just snuggling with him, looking drained.
“I’m going to rest for a while,” Amelia said. “Slade, can you take over?”
“Yeah, no problem,” Slade said.
Sheri’s phone chimed with a text. David and Elizabeth looked back at her. “It’s Bentley, asking where we all went. I’ll tell him we went to the park to hike and camp, and we’ll be back in a few days. Elizabeth needed a break after giving her grandmother around-the-clock care. We used to go for hikes like that, just Elizabeth and me. It definitely sounds like something we would do.”
“Go ahead and tell him that,” David said. “The only problem I see is that your car won’t be at the trailhead.”
“I’ll tell him we went in ‘Amy’s’ car. But I won’t say the make or model. He wouldn’t expect me to anyway,” Sheri said.
“Okay, that sounds good. And if they happen to find your car behind the restaurant?” David asked, hoping they didn’t find it for a while.
“We’ll have to take that chance. I would tell my brother to move it, but I’m afraid he would tell Kintail.”
“The restaurant employees are bound to notice it at some point,” David said.
“It’s kind of off to the side where others park to visit another couple of businesses,” Elizabeth said. “One is a service station. So it might not be noticed for a while. Besides, they think we’re going to Seattle, right, Sheri?”
Sheri’s eyes widened. “We’re not going to Seattle?”
“Nope.” Elizabeth rested her head on David’s shoulder again.
David glanced out at the sliver of moon hanging among the boundless stars. “When I would look out at the moon at night, or in the morning, watching it grow in size from the new moon to the full moon in Ely, I wondered if you were ever watching the night sky and seeing the moon and stars way up north in Yellowknife, thinking of me.”