Then Elizabeth shifted and dressed, and David ran into the bedroom to shift and pick out something appropriate for work.
He came back in, his hair damp from a quick cleanup, his smile sexy and sweet. “Thanks for coming to run with me, Elizabeth.” He poured himself a cup of coffee. “And thanks for fixing us breakfast, Sheri.”
“Oh, you are so welcome. I’m running to the office to try to figure out what the heck you guys did to your poor filing system. Though I use the term ‘system’”—she tossed up a couple of exaggerated hand quotes—“lightly. If there’s a system to that madness, I haven’t figured it out yet.” Sheri smiled and headed off to the office.
Elizabeth and David ate in silence for a bit, the sound of the silverware tinging against their plates unnaturally loud. Elizabeth cleared her throat. “You shouldn’t have run off without me, unless you really didn’t want to run with me.” She tried not to sound too hurt, but wasn’t sure she managed to pull it off.
“I’m sorry. I just thought—”
“That I wouldn’t be sympathetic to your cause?”
“I don’t want your—”
She set her fork down with a clang. “David, if we’re going to do this—mate, I mean—you have to trust that I can live with it. I don’t want you to feel that you have to sneak out without me so that when you return you will have your wolf under control. I love you. You love me. This shouldn’t be an issue.”
He let out his breath. “You don’t know how I feel about this. The rest of us are used to it, but—”
“Amelia? How does she treat Gavin? Like he has a plague when he can’t control his shifting? Or can’t shift during the new moon?”
David shook his head, looking so lost that her annoyance began to melt away.
She took a deep breath and let it out. “Well, I wouldn’t treat you like that either. We all have our frailties, our vulnerabilities. You can’t know how often I worried that you would find another she-wolf to mate. It was eating me up inside from week to week, us being apart, me not knowing how long it would be for. What if some cute she-wolf came prancing up to your door and professed her undying love to you? A bird in the hand came to mind.”
David chuckled.
“I’m serious. I worried about it all the time. Grandma would tell me I shouldn’t borrow trouble. That I should just continue to enjoy the time I did have with you and not worry about the time I couldn’t spend with you. And so I made the most of our visits—until it was time to flee Kintail’s tyranny to be with you. Just you. And the pack, of course.” She reached across the table and grabbed his hand, holding it tight in hers. “We can work this out, get used to the way things can be that will be the best for both of us. But we have to be honest with each other and talk about it.”
“I agree. I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I was thinking I could just get this under control and join you, have breakfast, and get to work and let you sleep a little longer.”
“And not take me for a wolf run too? That’s just plain mean.” But she was no longer upset with him, glad they had cleared the air.
David smiled and flipped his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together. “I promise to never let you sleep in again.”
She loved that about him. The intimacy he always shared with her. The little things. “Okay, good.”
“Good,” he said. They shared a smile, then finished breakfast, cleaning everything up, and rewarding each other with a hug and kiss that left Elizabeth a little breathless. She smiled up at him. “Now this is what I wanted first thing this morning. Not an empty bed to wake to.”
“I agree, by the way. About the empty bed. I would have felt the same way about you if you had done that to me.” He leaned down, molding his lips to hers, sharing a maple-flavored kiss that Elizabeth never wanted to end. Her body tightened, growing warm. She slid her leg up his, wrapping it around and pulling him closer, her hips grinding into his as he walked her backward, only stopping when she bumped up against the cool steel of the refrigerator door. “And yeah,” he said, pulling away and resting his forehead against hers, “this is definitely the better way to get my day going.”
Unfortunately, it was also a little too late to finish what they started.
She pulled away with a rueful grin and straightened her clothes, her eyes promising to come back to this later. “Okay,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to brush his hair out of his eyes. “Are you ready to go?”
“No.” He smiled. “But I think we’ll be missed if we don’t.”
***
When they arrived at the office, Sheri was on the phone and no one else was in their offices. She put her hand over the receiver and said, “This one’s for you. A callback on the Mel Warner case. Gavin had a call out, Cameron’s not here yet, and Owen is running down a lead.”
“Okay, I’ve got it.” David took the call in his office.
“How did things go between the two of you? You looked happy enough when you returned from the run,” Sheri said, back to filing. Elizabeth pulled up a chair beside her and started to help.
“Good. He’s not going to slip out to run without me anymore.”
“That’s good, or I would have had to give him a talking-to.”
Elizabeth smiled. Sheri would have, too. “How have things been?” Elizabeth pulled out a stack of papers piled up in Owen’s to-be-filed box. “Geez. We really need to get these guys to start filing stuff online. This is ridiculous.”
“Agreed,” Sheri said. “Though so much of this is handwritten notes, papers they’ve accumulated for receipts, and other important documents on cases. Aside from this paper disaster, things are good. I was answering phone calls, Owen and Gavin took the cases and were off, leaving me to run the whole place. And then you and David showed up. That’s been it.”
“We’ll need some protocols now that we’re working here on how to handle walk-ins and phone calls if the guys are out on jobs or can’t handle them because of shifting issues.” Elizabeth went into Gavin’s office to get his to-be-filed papers.
“Hey, I’m just getting Owen’s papers-to-be-filed nearly caught up. Don’t bring me any more,” Sheri teased.
Elizabeth smiled. She was going to love working with Sheri in the office.
A couple of minutes later, David popped his head out of his office. “Faith said everyone’s swimming tonight at the lake if we want to join them. That’s the joy of living right on the lake. It’s light out late in the summer, and we can play to our hearts’ content after work.”