The Shadows of Christmas Past

been an old one, and it hadn't been just the scent of a young were-fox. There'd also been a werecat of some sort, cougar, maybe. The scent had been faint, and carefully masked. The kids had used the animals on the ranch to cover their own trail, and he hadn't been able to follow it, even though he had the best nose in the business. He didn't like being thwarted. Surely, this woman had some information that could set him on the right trail.
    He felt Annette Fennick straining to ask about her boy, and he put a hand gently on her shoulder for a moment, letting the quick touch both reassure her and remind her that he was in charge.
    "A couple of months? What was he doing at your ranch?" he asked Marj.

    She gave him a suspicious look. "Did I say he was at my ranch?"
    Her challenging tone made him bristle, instinctive alpha behavior, but he didn't let it show.
    She felt it though. He could tell by the way her brown eyes dilated and her body chemistry shifted, that she was aware of him, as a female. Across the gym, he heard a faint growl from her protective dog.
    "I assumed," he said to Marj. "Perhaps I shouldn't have."
    "Phil did stop by back in October," she said, looking at Annette. "He showed me a photo of the baby. She looks a lot like Terry, doesn't she?"
    "A lot," Annette agreed.
    "Was his friend with him?" Harry asked.
    "Clark?" Marj nodded.
    So, it was the werecougar. He was the ringleader of the crazy, little runaway group.
    "What do you do for a living?" Patrick Muller spoke up.
    "I'm a private investigator," Harry answered. No reason not to be honest with these people, but lots of reasons to be very cautious.
    "That's a pretty macho profession," Marj said, not admiringly.
    "I was a police detective in San Diego." he said, looking at her sternly. "Now I work on my own, specializing in missing persons cases." He touched the arch of his nose. "I've got the nose for it."
    Annette gave him a worried look, as though he'd just given something away about his olfactory talents. She and her husband were werefoxes, and they had no sense of humor about the way weres and humans could interact.
    It's a silly joke , he thought at the werefox woman.
    Marj blinked and shook her head. Then gave him a very suspicious look.
    That she was picking up on his thoughts was very disturbing. And sexy. This touching on many levels was deeply sensuous, but it wasn't the time or place to explore it. Later, when minds as well as bodies could share, the experience would be explosive. He'd heard it could be addicting, too. He'd have to watch out for that.
    Before he could say anything else, a pretty blond woman came up to the table. She was smiling, but there was disappointment in her eyes as she looked from him and the Fennicks to Marjorie and Muller.
    "Hello, Alice," Marj said. "This is Harry. Alice organized all this," she told Harry. And you've spoiled her matchmaking, and she's probably really pissed .

    But there wasn't really anything to spoil, was there ? he thought back at her. She'd just pretend her imagination was being overactive, because humans always looked for sensible, logical explanations when weird stuff happened to them.
    "I'm sorry." Marj gestured around the sparsely populated gym. "I know you hoped more people would come."
    "But it was an almost spur-of-the-moment celebration," Pat added. "Next year we'll plan it better."
    Alice sighed and pulled up a chair. "This is not going too well," she conceded. "Maybe you should have brought the wolf, Marj. People would have shown up to see that."
    Angry, Harry had to look down sharply and make a conscious effort not to let his fangs grow.
    "I don't exhibit dangerous animals. They don't belong in cages," Marj said sternly.
    Her words went straight to his heart. He almost kissed her then and there. As it was, he was barely able not to give her a grateful look. He wasn't here to fall in love, but to find some missing teenagers.
    If those teenagers had been human, this wouldn't be such a hazardous assignment. But he had to be more than doubly on guard to protect the secret of all his kind. Involvement with a human could be a costly, dangerous distraction. Oh, he intended to have sex with her; he was too alpha to deny himself that pleasure. He just had to watch out for emotional involvement.
    But right now the most important question was, what was her emotional involvement with the wolf?
    "What are you going to do with this wolf?" he asked.
    "Where did the wolf come from?" Alice asked