Page 4 of The Protector’s Heart

He lifted his gaze and she realized he was looking at her lunch sack. “My sister, Mia, loves Star Wars. I was just wondering where you got that lunch bag, because it would make a great Christmas gift.”

Nila’s hand had involuntarily gripped the bag when he’d turned and focused on her. She wasn’t afraid of him, not really. She just didn’t trust him, and she didn’t trust herself around him.

“A friend gave it to me for Jack, but he doesn’t need a packed lunch at daycare, so I decided to take it. I think she got it from a catalog.”

“So you’re not a Star Wars fan?” He smiled and it felt like her whole body twitched in response. Damn him and his sexy smile.

“I am.”

“Let me guess, you had a crush on Luke Skywalker.”

“No way,” she said, grinning. “I was all about Han Solo, are you kidding?”

His smile turned into a full-on grin, and she realized that she was letting her guard down around him. This was how mistakes happened, how things had started with Damien. One minute he was charming and funny, and then his true colors came out and he was an asshole of the highest order. Malachi might be kind to Brynn because his alpha said so, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t an awful person behind closed doors.

She frowned and looked down at her lunch bag. Her voice came out more cold than she’d planned, but it was effective. “I need to eat lunch now, if you don’t mind.”

His smile died instantly as confusion lit his features. “Nila,” he said, and she put up her hand.

“If you don’t mind.”

His teeth clicked together audibly as he closed his mouth and turned, stalking out of the lunchroom. She sagged against the counter, a sigh of relief parting her lips. That male was dangerous to her sanity, and to her and Jack’s safety. He made her forget he was a wolf, because something inside her responded to him no matter what her brain tried to tell her body to do. She’d taken a chance on a wolf once before, and it had gotten her nothing but heartache.

* * *

Promptly at five, Nila said goodbye to Dr. Kimmi and her husband, Dr. Frank, and grabbed her purse and coat from the locker. The wool coat had seen better days, but it had been a gift from her favorite aunt, who’d passed away two years earlier, and she didn’t want to replace it. She said goodbye to Brynn, unable to keep herself from glancing at Malachi, who had his back turned away from her. She almost said his name, but clenched her teeth together and gave herself a mental slap. Pushing open the doors, she walked out into the bitter cold, burrowing into her coat to keep her cheeks from freezing off.

She walked swiftly to her car, cursing the thought of spending a few minutes outside scraping off the snow, when she stopped in front of her vehicle and stared at the clean windshield. Someone had been out here and cleaned off all her windows, scraping the ice and snow away. She looked around the parking lot and saw that her car was the only one that had been cleaned. Turning her gaze to the front door of the office, she didn’t see anyone watching her, but she was almost positive that Malachi was the one who had cleaned her windows. Her treacherous heart thought that was fantastic, but her brain reminded her that it was just a trick. He was a wolf; they were tricky bastards, and she wasn’t going to fall for it.

Tossing her bag onto the seat, she slammed the door shut and turned on the car. It took a few minutes for the heat to kick in, and she watched Malachi come out of the building, get into his big SUV, and turn it on. Then he got out, extracted a long-handled ice scraper from the back, and scraped the windows. After putting the scraper back, he walked to the office and escorted Brynn out, helping her into the vehicle.

It made Nila’s heart hurt. She’d never had anyone treat her like that, ever. She pushed away the jealous ache and put the car into gear. She’d wasted enough time waiting for the car to warm up; she didn’t need to spend more time sitting around wishing for things that would never be. She wouldn’t get involved with a wolf again, no matter how sexy he was or how much of a knight in shining armor he appeared to be.

The drive to Little Tots took only a few minutes. As she waited to be buzzed in through the front door of the daycare, she looked over her shoulder. Ever since Damien had beaten up the teacher, Nila hadn’t felt safe. She was afraid she couldn’t keep Jack safe, either, and that one day Damien would take him like he swore he would. He seemed to leave her alone for a while, and then he would randomly show up demanding she return to his home with his son.

The daycare director buzzed Nila in and greeted her. “He had a good day once he settled down,” Dana said.

Nila was glad to hear that. She stopped in the open door of the room where he spent most of his day. Jack was playing with foam blocks. He seemed to instinctively know that she was watching him, and he looked up and then smiled broadly.

“Mama!” he squealed happily as he pushed himself to his feet and toddled over to her.

She lifted him over the gate and he squeezed his arms and legs around her, giving her a loud kiss. “Hi, Jack!”

He babbled at her, fisting a lock of her hair with his chubby hand and pressing his nose against hers.

With one hand, Nila signed Jack out, accepted the diaper bag from the teacher, and waved goodbye. She paused at the front door, looking out into the winter darkness that lay beyond the lights of the parking lot. Steeling her spine, she fisted her keys and opened the door. Jack ducked his head into her neck, his fuzzy cap brushing her cheek, and she stepped out and let the door shut behind her.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. She wished she had super hearing or super sight like wolves did, so she could tell. Fear had made Nila its bitch, and she wasn’t happy about it.

Quickly walking to her car, which she parked as close to the entrance as she could, she unlocked the back door of her old sedan and set Jack in the car seat, buckling him in swiftly before shutting the door. She turned and scanned the parking lot. Not seeing anything—although she couldn’t see much of anything past the snow that was swiftly falling—she opened the driver’s door and sat down behind the wheel. Pushing the door lock and then starting the engine, she rubbed her hands together and pressed the button for the window defroster.

“Did you have a good day, kiddo?” she asked, looking at Jack in the rear view.

“Carrot.”

She smiled at one of his favorite words, which he said somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred times a day, backed out of the parking space, and headed for home.

She lived in a small house in Wilde Creek, at the end of a cul-de-sac. When she first came to Wilde Creek after leaving Damien, she had been desperate for a place to live. She’d just left Damien for good, taking Jack away in the middle of the night, and for a few days she had stayed with Diane, one of her aunt’s best friends, who happened to live in Wilde Creek. Within a week, Nila had moved into the rental and accepted a job at the clinic, and she’d been there for the last nine months.