Dawn's Innocence

"I really am a shit, aren't I?" Tristen pounded his head against a closed cabinet door in frustration. "It's just that when it comes to her, I don't have the slightest bit of common sense. I go all nuts whenever she's around."

"Son, welcome to the club. Love is never an easy thing. Especially when two people are as much in love and as stubborn as you two are." Nash patted his grandson consolingly on the back. "You'll figure it out, eventually."

"How long did it take for you and Eloise to figure it out?"

Nash scoffed, "Who says we have?"

Kacie sat on the edge of her bed pouting and fingering her empty coffee mug. Tristen was an ass. He didn't care about her. Wistfully, she licked the sticky remains of the cinnamon roll off her fingers. Damn, was that cinnamon and sugar combo good. Would have been better if he'd cut her some slack. From downstairs she heard Nash getting busy in the kitchen and smelled the unmistakable scent of dough beginning to rise. The batch wouldn't be done for hours. It was a small consolation to the bigger picture. Cinnamon rolls weren't the issue. Tristen was.

She heard his heavy footsteps on the tread of the stairs. What? Was he making a special trip up here to rub her nose in it? He hadn't bothered to ask her anything and she hadn't offered. Her neck was still a little sore from Carter's bite and the overwhelming fatigue she felt was going to hang heavily over her shoulders all day. He'd assumed she was a slut and she'd found a brother to scratch her itch. Bastard. He'd probably spent the night jerking off with his video games. Whatever. It was obvious though he hadn't given her a second thought.

The smacking of the tread of his boots got louder and then was suddenly silent as he stopped outside of her open door. There was the clank of ceramic against hardwood as he set down a mug of fresh coffee and a plate of cinnamon-sugar toast cut into little squares with the crusts removed and dusted across the top with raisins. That he hadn't come in and actually spoken or bothered with apologizing and had set the food and the coffee mug on the floor outside of her door irritated her worse than ever. Nash had probably made him bring something up here for her to eat. Or maybe, Tristen was afraid of her mother's wrath and thought this piss poor excuse of a peace offering would smooth things over.

Kacie didn't have the energy to get up and slam the door in his face. After a few minutes, Tristen huffed and left. The coffee and the toast sat where he'd left them. And the mug in her hand, ended up on the nightstand. Hungry and so empty on the inside, she gave up on any thoughts of food and curled into a ball on the bed.

Tristen retreated the way he'd come. Taking the stairs slowly one at a time and listening for the shuffle of Kacie's footsteps as she accepted what he'd offered. The bedsprings groaned, but Kacie stayed put and the coffee and the toast he'd put so much thought into sat untouched on the plates just inside her door. He battled with the overwhelming sense of wrongness between the two of them. A man had to have his pride. And while he should apologize to her for thinking what he had been thinking before his grandpa set him straight, he simply couldn't do it.

The two cold showers he'd taken last night and the one, earlier this morning did nothing to quell the urgency inside of him. There was only one thing he could do to make things right between them and that was the wrong thing to do. The only thing that could happen between them had happened and that was nothing absolutely nothing.

Chapter 66

The wolf lowered his leathery black nose to the dirt and sniffed. Edging closer to the quiet ranch style home nestled in between rolling flat lands of pasture, he locked in on the scent he'd been searching for. The smells his human associated with morning drifted out from the cracked window in the kitchen. Familiar smells of coffee brewing and food cooking had the wolf eagerly licking his chops in anticipation.

"Morning, sunshine." Alexander patted Fallon on the top of her disheveled curls and kicked out the chair beside him with his foot. My God, was that little girl a precious sight, rubbing her eyes and yawning big enough to swallow a golf ball. Sleepily, she plopped down in the chair and wrapped her toes around the bottom rung. Toenails, polished with glittery purple polish poked out from the hem of her ruffled pink nightgown. And damn, was she a vision of kinder days gone by. "How'd you sleep last night?"

"Good, Uncle Alexander." Fallon loosed a big jaw-breaking yawn and slurped on the milk Aunt Leigh had sat in front of her. Uncle Alexander was something of a sight. His hair stood up on end and he had a rough dusting of grayish-red whiskers over his jaw. He wore a thick, bulky, faded robe with birds on it and an undershirt and boxers underneath. His knobby knees poked out from beneath the ratty hem of the robe and the toenail of his big toe stuck out from a hole in his black socks. He frowned at the coffee in his mug and forced down a swallow as if the stuff was pond scum. Obviously, her mom wasn't up yet or he wouldn't be frowning at the coffee. She wasn't allowed to drink coffee, yet. Her grandmamma and mom had spent hours drinking the stuff. It had to be good. But, Uncle Alexander certainly didn't think so.

Her aunt puttered around the kitchen, alternating between tending what was on the stove and washing the few dishes piled up in the sink. Aunt Leigh was the opposite of Uncle Alexander and while he resembled an unmade bed, she was fresh as a daisy. Her hair had been neatly combed and styled up into a bun at the nape of her neck without a strand daring to fall out of place. She wore a pair of crisp kaki pants, brown leather house shoes, and a freshly ironed blouse made of a soft looking lavender fabric.

Fallon rested her chin on the heel of her palm and sighed into her milk. Aunt Leigh reminded her of grandma. Fallon tried her hardest to be brave, for her mom's sake. She vowed she would not get homesick and she would not cry. Grandma had been gone for over a year. And while her mom said grandma had slipped away, Fallon had a simpler explanation. Grandma hadn't slipped away from them. She'd been torn from their lives, like a band-aid ripped from an open sore that wouldn't heal.

It was funny, almost weird really. There had never been a man of the house before. Her mother and her grandma were very much their own brand of woman. From what she'd been told, her grandpa died way before she was born, when her mom was just a baby. The details on her own father were sketchy. Nothing but a bunch of mumbling, slurred, intelligible words, blushes, and wispy explanations, that didn't make much sense to her. Other kids had fathers and grandpas, and she'd never given it a whole lot of thought as to why she didn't.

Uncle Alexander was the man of this house. Or at least he thought he was. Fallon snickered as he snuck over to the counter to snatch a piece of bacon off a platter and promptly got his hand swatted with a spatula for all his trouble. She watched him buzz around the cooling food like a hungry fly as he made another pass and, with Aunt Leigh busy and her back turned, triumphantly stuffed the piece of bacon he'd managed to score into his mouth. He hustled for the coffee pot and poured a second cup, acting as if nothing had happened, and returned to his chair before she caught on.

"And did you wake your mom up yet this morning?" Alexander hoped not. Erica looked beat down and positively frazzled by the time she got back to the ranch last night. Job hunting in a small town wasn't an easy thing to do. He planned to sneak into town today and call in a few favors to help her out. As far as he was concerned, the sound of tiny feet trotting up and down the wooden floors accompanied by the musical sound of Fallon's laughter filled the old house with life again. Hell, he felt twenty years younger.

"Nope. She was really tired last night. She needs her sleep."

"I couldn't agree more." Alexander swallowed down the bacon with a quick chaser from his coffee mug. Ahhhh, the caffeine hit the spot. He grinned in silent victory. Last night, after Leigh had finally fallen asleep, he'd snuck into the barn and pulled out his secret stash of the good stuff. That crap she called coffee, decaf in the green canister, had been emptied into the garden and he'd poured a can of good old Folger's dark roast into the canister instead. She wouldn't know any different. Mix dark roast with the slice of real bacon instead of that dried out turkey shit she usually served for breakfast and he was one hell of a happy man.

Leigh was always on him about his cholesterol. And Doc Sterling harped and harped on him about his blood pressure. Alex was constantly shoving some kind of a pill at him. They'd have a coronary if they knew he snuck an occasional Marlboro red behind the barn when nobody was around. Once in a while, God forbid, he actually tossed back a shot of Black Jack and had a cold one with the boys at the bar. Everyone was so busy trying to prolong his life. They didn't realize they were killing him. Sometimes, a man needed his coffee, a smoke, real bacon, and fried eggs with runny, yellow yolks to make him remember he was still alive. The only other vice he had was a good romp in the sack with his wife. And nobody, especially not her, had tried to take that away from him yet.

Fallon drained her milk and carefully set the glass down in the sink. Uncle Alexander sat with his elbows resting on the table and a crooked grin on his face. Aunt Leigh was flipping pancakes and cracking eggs over a skillet. Usually, she ate a pop tart or frosted flakes for breakfast. And she couldn't understand what all the fuss over the morning meal was all about. Breakfast was taking forever and she wasn't hungry anyway. "Is it ok if I go out and say good morning to Jack?"

"Sure." Alexander grinned as Fallon slid her jacket over the pink nightgown and jammed her bare feet into her tennis shoes. The kid was so much like her mother had been at that same age and it made him feel old...just fucking old.

"You come back the minute you hear me call you for breakfast, ok?" Leigh said. She ran an orderly kitchen and could not stand the thought of serving cold food. Not on her table, oh hell no. This morning she planned a feast of epic proportions, pancakes, eggs, bacon, and of course, plenty of hot coffee. The stack of bacon on the platter had diminished considerably. Alexander masked his chewing about as well as he hid the caffeinated coffee in the decaf canister. This was her kitchen...her rules and she knew what went down in her domain.

"I will." Fallon pulled open the back door and trotted down the steps. The screen door slammed hard behind her with a loud clap of wood. "Sorry!" She trotted toward the barn at full speed eager to say 'hi' to Jack. Her tennis shoes clad skidded to a stop as she spotted a big dog out of the corner of her eye. She loved dogs! Her mom said an apartment was no place for a dog and no amount of begging had ever gotten her to change her mind on that subject. The closest she'd ever gotten to actually owning a dog of her own was visiting them through the glass windows at the pet shop. "Hello doggie." She took a cautious step toward the dog and held out her hand for the dog to sniff.

The wolf dipped his head and sniffed the little girl's fingers. Crouching so low his belly dragged the ground. He inched forward and nervously wagged his tail. It was not in his nature to be petted and fawned over. Her little fingers slicked over his nose and traveled up to stroke his muzzle. Her touch was timid and hesitant, as if she hadn't quite decided if he were friend or foe. She smelled of eagerness and anticipation. To the wolf, she was pack and the word his human shouted into their collective consciousness meant nothing in terms of definition. Fallon was what his human called her. But, to the wolf she was daughter.

The dog was the biggest dog Fallon had ever seen. The top of his back struck her at about shoulder height and his paws were almost as big as her feet. His teeth definitely were bigger. She shouldn't be petting a strange dog. Her mom had warned her over and over again about how dangerous stray animals were. But, the dog hadn't growled or flashed his huge teeth at her. He sniffed her curiously and his tail thumped like the rapid beat of a drum against the cool, dewy grass. The dog wanted to be friends and she needed a friend to play with.

The dog had deep, brown colored eyes with flecks of amber gold. The brown of his eyes was almost the same rich color as his fur. His leathery, black tipped nose wiggled furiously against her fingers as he sniffed her. His breath was hot against her palm and blew out in white puffs of air in the chilly morning. Braver, she ran her hand down the dogs powerful neck. He didn't have collar on, but the dog was too well fed to be an ordinary stray like the scraggly mutts she'd seen in the city.

His fur was soft and tickled her fingers. His ruff was thick and lush. The fur colored in varying shades of brown from pale fawn to deepest walnut so dark it was almost black. He had a cream colored tummy, socks on all of his paws and forelegs, and the same beige shade on the tips of his ears. The dog was very tolerant of her exploration down his back and over his haunches, flipping that massive tail of his up and down in the grass. He had pointy ears that flickered every which way picking up the sounds from the house and the surrounding woods. And Fallon could almost swear his black lips were curled into a toothy smile. She didn't know if dogs could really smile or not, but this one seemed to be doing it well enough.

She giggled as the dog skated his long pink tongue over her cheek and nuzzled her with the tip of his cold, wet nose. Enthusiastic to have found a new friend to play with Fallon hugged him tightly around the neck. If he was friendly enough and didn't belong to anybody, maybe she could beg her mom to let her keep him. They weren't living in the city anymore. Her mom couldn't use that old excuse on her anymore. It wouldn't stop her though. When it came up to excuses or reasons why not, her mom had a million of them just waiting to be fired like a machine gun from the tip of her tongue.

Fallon wasn't about to tell anybody about her new friend. Her uncle was a soft touch...he'd let her keep the dog. Her aunt, maybe...but her mom...never. If her mom found out the dog would be packed up and on his way to the Humane Society faster than Fallon could blink an eye. If he'd slipped his collar and run away, the owner might come looking for him and she'd have to give him up. It was better until she could figure out something better to keep him a secret.

The wolf tasted the salty-sweet taste of little girl and dreams on his tongue. If he could have, he would have smiled at her joyful laugh. If he tried, all he would do would be to scare her half to death with his big fangs. He stiffened and leapt to his feet as he heard the backdoor slam shut and the sound of footsteps approach.

"Fallon! Breakfast!"

"Oh, that's my mom! She won't like you. No offence, you see, but she doesn't like dogs...not even hotdogs. But, don't worry, I won't tell her about you. We'll keep this a secret, just between us. If I can, I'll sneak out something for you to eat later on. Ok," Fallon whispered. The dog cocked his head and seemed to understand what she was saying. She grinned as he gave a light yip in agreement. "Coming, mom!" She trotted to the sound of her mom's voice while the dog loped away into the woods to hide.

"Fallon, what are you doing on this side of the house? Uncle Alexander said you were in the barn with Jack." Erica pulled her fuzzy robe tighter around her shoulders. It was too cold and too wet to let Fallon outside to play so early in the morning. Fallon's cheeks were reddened and her canvas tennis shoes damp with dew. The ruffled hem of her pink nightgown flapped around her spindly legs. Her uncle had always been a pushover. All it took was a little batting of the lashes and he was putty in Fallon's hands.

"I saw a bunny. I wanted to see if I could catch it."

"Don't try. The bunnies move much faster than you do. Besides, they carry disease. These are wild bunnies, honey. They bite. They're not like the ones at the pet store. You can't pet them."

"Mom, the ones at the pet store bite and scratch too."

"Ok, you win that one. C'mon lets get you fed and dressed. I've got to go back into town today and find a gainful means of employment." Erica steered Fallon toward the backdoor with a hand on her narrow shoulder. A sudden gust of breezy April air had her hurrying Fallon across the backyard. The last thing she needed was a sick kid.

"You will, mom. I have a feeling that today is your lucky day."

"I hope so." Erica held the door open wide and ushered Fallon to the kitchen table. If her aunt didn't stop feeing her so much, she was going to have to buy a new wardrobe. Unlike her cousin Alex, she wasn't going to be permanently thin. She felt her hips widening as Uncle Alexander piled a stack of pancakes on her plate and passed the syrup.

"Eat up, girl. You need your strength if you're going job hunting today." Alexander shoved the platter of bacon at Erica. If she ate it, he wouldn't have to and the good doctor wouldn't yell at him come his next check-up. But, it wasn't really Doc Sterling he worried about doing the yelling. It was the lecture he was going to get from Alex if his cholesterol suddenly shot up.

"That's the plan. Maybe tonight when I come home, I'll have good news."

"I bet you will." Leigh gave her husband a meaningful look. He had connections. Hell they both did, and it was time to use them to help Erica out.

"I'm going to stop by the school and get Fallon enrolled today. Come Monday, you're back in class, missy," she said, pointing her fork at Fallon. "I'll have a job and we'll both be out of Aunt Leigh and Uncle Alexander's hair all day."

"Oh having you here is no trouble at all," Leigh said. And she meant it. Having someone to cook for again made her feel useful. Alex didn't eat, obviously. And there were only so many low fat, low sugar, low calorie recipes she could fix before they all started tasting like cardboard. Since Alex had moved back into the compound, Leigh had crocheted at least a dozen blankets and scarves for the Ladies Auxiliary. Truth of it was, with just Alexander around, she got bored. And she sure as hell was not going to turn into one of those blue haired old biddies that spent every waking hour at the beauty parlor gossiping about their neighbors.

"I bet you don't cook like this when you don't have houseguests." Erica said as she sopped up the ocean of syrup with a pancake. Damn, the food was good. Aunt Leigh was like June Cleaver, Carol Brady, and Aunt Bea all rolled up into one.

"That's why you've got to stay. Your aunt starves me." Alexander chuckled and dug into his short stack. His wife made the best damn pancakes in the whole county. He didn't know how she did it. Milk, eggs, flour, and shortening could only make so many variations on a theme. He'd tried to make them once...once and had gotten promptly exiled to the barn for his trouble.

"I do not. I make sure you eat healthy." Leigh playfully reached out and pinched the layer of pudge around Alexander's middle between her thumb and index finger.

"Yeah, if you consider rabbit food and skim milk to be healthy. I say, bring on the bacon, woman." And speaking of bacon, there were still a few stragglers left on the platter. He stretched across the table, reaching for the bacon and quickly withdrew his hand as Leigh pinned him with a hard glare of disapproval.

"Actually, Uncle Alexander, salads are very healthy," Fallon said. She tucked another piece of the bacon Aunt Leigh had piled onto her plate into the napkin on her lap. Her mother had warned her that her aunt and uncle were country folk...whatever that meant. They did things differently in their family than she and her mom did in theirs. And that included meat with every meal. Fallon thought the bacon was sort of disgusting, all wiggly and wrinkly on the platter. Plus she'd met Penelope last night and bacon came from pigs. But, she didn't want to think about that too deeply. In silent and polite protest, she refused to eat the bacon. Somehow though, she didn't think the dog...her dog would give the bacon or the pig much thought at all.