“Needed clothes too, I see. You have strange friends, Miss Alex.” He smirked. “Well, that’s—” He stopped as the blanket twitched aside and Kieran stepped through. Olsen’s toothpick dropped from his mouth.
Alex turned to look. It wasn’t that Kieran’s appearance had radically changed. It was more subtle than that. In form-fitting jeans and plaid shirt, he looked… Alex swallowed. The faint ridiculousness of her Granddad’s too-small sweats had vanished. Now Kieran seemed the pinnacle of masculinity—human masculinity—with a compelling edge of wildness.
He had brushed his hair back from his forehead and neatened it with his fingers. The shirt fit him, but did little to conceal the fine, long musculature of his body. Neither did the jeans. His bare feet made Alex’s mouth go dry.
It was very hard to think of him as Shadow now.
Olsen cleared his throat. “Seems to fit, all right. But you’ll need boots. Lost those too, did he?” Olsen studied Alex, but she ignored his comment. “I’ve got some good ones that ought to fit.” He walked away and returned with a box. Alex noted that they were his most expensive boots, but she was in no mood to quibble now.
“Fine. We’ll be up at the counter in a moment.”
Qlsen lingered, obviously eager for gossip. But Alex conspicuously ignored him, and at last he retreated.
“Is this enough?” Kieran said, plucking at his shirt. He seemed as unselfconscious of the impression he made now as he’d been in Granddad’s sweats. Or naked, before she’d pointed out his indiscretion.
Alex quickly gathered up a second pair of jeans and two more shirts, socks, a jacket, and as an afterthought, flannel pajamas. Tonight, at least, he would not be sleeping in her bed, or anywhere near it.
She took Kieran into the adjoining small grocery. After a pause, he walked ahead and led her straight to the meat section. He examined the packages doubtfully, picked one up and made an expression of disgust.
“Old meat,” he said. “You eat this?”
Shadow was back. Alex quelled an unexpected smile. “Sometimes. Not raw, though.” She hesitated. “Will you eat it?”
He set down the wrapped beef. “I am a man,” he said. “I’ll eat what you eat.”
She avoided his gaze and tossed several hefty cuts of beef into the cart, following up with a quick trip down the other aisles for vegetables, soup, bread, and the food she usually bought, in considerably larger quantities. Only time would tell if he could or would eat what a normal human did, and in what volumes. Kieran paused frequently to examine various items, perusing the wrappers and frowning as if the words describing ingredients and calorie content were somehow profound.
To him, bereft of memory, perhaps they were.
Kieran followed her to the counter and she paid for the items with her credit card, mentally totaling the bill. Her simple lifestyle had left her with substantial savings, and helping Kieran wasn’t likely to cost her an arm and a leg—moneywise, in any case.
Other costs she refused to contemplate.
Olsen seemed about to comment again, but satisfied himself with long, narrow looks at Kieran. It wasn’t until they turned to leave that he called after them.
“Hope you enjoy your stay here, mister,” he said. Alex was well aware that Kieran’s presence would be known all over town within the hour. At least he hadn’t done anything strange; in fact, he’d been downright quiet.
But everyone in Merritt would be wondering why the hunk was with the scarred, bitchy wolf-woman.
“You don’t like that man, Alexandra,” Kieran said.
Surprise made her unwary. “Not much.”
“Why? Did he hurt you?”
She stopped at the tone of his voice. There was an edge to it, an alertness that caught her full attention. He looked like nothing so much as a wolf on the hunt.
“I’m not stupid,” he’d told her at the cabin. No. He was far from that. Somehow he’d sensed her hostility toward Olsen, veiled as it was, and reached a conclusion that startled her.
Don’t be ridiculous. He has no reason to be protective of you.
No one ever defended her, hadn’t since she was ten years old. She didn’t need defending. “It’s a long story,” she said. “I’ll explain later.”