As I watched, the combination of wind and rain tugged the announcement free. It fluttered to the ground and landed upon something small and suspiciously orange, about the size of a softball. I wiggled to get a better look.
Oh, dear Lord, I thought, staring at the orange perpetrator of my once and future doom with dismay. I am never going to live this down.
As far as I could see, all the pack members who weren’t actively hunting in the maze had spread out across the maze exit to avoid getting too close to Adam. They saw where I looked, and several of them flinched or ducked their heads.
“Tell me,” I said, in a voice that was not whiny, or at least not very whiny, “that I didn’t just get hit in the head by a pumpkin.”
“You might not have gotten hit in the head by a pumpkin,” said Honey, with added sweetness in her voice. She knew what kind of trouble I was in. “It was orange, but also small and hard, so we’re pretty sure it’s actually some kind of ornamental gourd rather than a variety of pumpkin. We were discussing the matter right before—”
“We were playing baseball, waiting for the last group to make it through the maze,” said Carlos, one of the other wolves, apologetically. “If we’d been using softballs, we wouldn’t have hit anywhere near you, but these things aren’t round. No predicting where it might go.”
“Makes it more interesting,” said Mary Jo soberly, with a wicked glint in her eye.
Mary Jo was nearly as muddy as I was, her short blondish hair plastered tightly to her head. She was the smallest in the group of werewolves. Not many of them could have taken her in a fight, though—as she’d proven.
She held a three-foot-long piece of two-by-four in her hand. Presumably it was a makeshift bat. I wondered if that bat had been the one that sent the pumpkin . . . the gourd bulleting my way. If so, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t have been on purpose. She and I weren’t buddies, but she didn’t hate my guts anymore.
I was pretty sure.
“Most of the gourds just smoosh when we hit them,” said George, tough and confident. He’d been a police officer a couple of different times in a couple of different places. He was currently working at the Pasco Police Department and had been with them for as long as the pack had been in the Tri-Cities. He was one of the wolves who had traveled with Adam when he’d moved his pack from New Mexico.
George had just a hint of apologetic laughter in his voice as he bent to pick up the assault projectile and give it a little toss, for all the world as though it were actually a baseball. “But the hard ones are almost as good as the real thing.”
I sighed and patted Adam. I’d been hit in the head with a gourd, knocked out, and dumped in a mud puddle. As a boost for my ego, it was pretty awful. As a boost for the pack’s team spirit, it might be the best thing that could have happened, as long as Adam didn’t decide to defend me.
A dollop of mud slid out of my hair and over my cheekbone. The story of how I’d been taken out by accident was going to be told and retold until it was a pack legend. At least it hadn’t been a proper pumpkin.
I bet it is going to be a pumpkin in retellings, I thought dismally. Stories like to grow as they are passed around, becoming more exciting and less likely. I could see it now, some distant future in which a pack sat around a campfire and told stories about the stupid coyote shapeshifter who thought she was a werewolf until someone bashed her head in with a pumpkin. Or something like that, anyway.
I might have writhed in humiliation for a few more minutes, but Adam’s thigh muscles flexing under mine reminded me that he, at least, was not amused by the Pumpkin Incident. The minute I got up, Adam was going to go after the baseball team, and the whole point of this production would be lost. But if I didn’t get up soon, he was going to think I was really hurt, and that wouldn’t make things better, either.
But he was really warm. And, I have to admit, I’m a little perverse. Adam is flat-out gorgeous. It’s not my favorite thing about him—and it was one of the reasons I’d held off dating him for such a long time. He is absolutely out of my league. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy his looks. What woman wouldn’t? But when he is angry . . . yum. Just yum.
He was very angry right now. It was distracting.
I pushed my face against his neck, tipping my lips until they touched his ear, and breathed, “You and I have a hot shower in our future. Could be fun.”
I could feel him go still. I realized, even if I hadn’t meant it, I’d done the best thing I could possibly have done to change his focus.