Beloved Wolf by Kasey Michaels Page A

suppose.”
    â€œOkay. But, no, that’s not what I meant. How long, Soph, before you can tell?”
    Sophie lowered her eyelids, bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know. Two weeks or so, I guess. We did a commercial for one of the new tests, and they’re supposedly ninety-five percent accurate very early on.” She lifted her head and stared at him. “But that’s not going to happen, so you don’t have to worry about it, okay?”
    He nodded, his eyes shaded by the ever-present cowboy hat, and she escaped from the car, heading toward the rehabilitation center.
    It wasn’t going to happen? Had she sounded convincing? Was he informed enough to realize that she’d said she’d know in about two weeks—and that her admission meant she had been smack in the middle of her cycle, most probably ovulating, when they’d made love?
    She should have been going to bed with Chet. If she had been, she’d be on the Pill. Safe. But her sexual encounters had been limited to a one night rite of passage her senior year of college, and a week-long affair three years ago with a guy whose smile reminded her of River. So she hadn’t ever stocked up on contraceptives.
    Chet really should have pushed her more, tried to take her beyond kisses, a little experimental petting. But he hadn’t, and she hadn’t considered that a bad thing. To be honest, she still didn’t consider that a bad thing.
    More of a lucky escape, actually.
    However, now she had done the most irresponsible thing imaginable. She’d had unprotected sex, in the middle of her cycle, with the one man who would hunt her down, force her to the altar, even if he hated the ground she walked on.
    She stopped at the double glass doors and turned around to watch as River drove out of the parking lot, off to do some errands for Inez before picking her up again and returning her to the ranch.
    Sighing, wishing her life less complicated, Sophie pulled open the door and walked inside…then walked outside an hour later, loaded down with papers explaining her home exercises, sore as hell, but minus her cane. Her knee was healed, they’d assured her ofthat in San Francisco before the J-brace came off for good, but her muscles had all gone soft, her calf muscle just about gone, and now she had entered the strengthening portion of her physical therapy.
    Walking on the treadmill, five minutes on the stepper, time on the mat with John, her therapist, pushing and pulling on her leg, lifting it high, bending it toward her chest until she’d been drenched in perspiration.
    She was tired, exhausted, and her leg throbbed like a toothache. She wanted the car, she wanted home, she wanted a long soak in a hot tub—but the SUV was not in sight.
    â€œDamn it, Riv. I told you an hour. How hard could that be?” she muttered, looking around her, watching the traffic come and go at the shopping mall, as the rehabilitation center was attached to the outside of the mall as a convenience to those patients who had to use public transportation.
    It was a shame there was no public transportation, running to the ranch, but that would be ridiculous. What was more ridiculous was that Sophie suddenly realized that she was standing with her back touching the brick wall, watching each passerby as if Jack or Jill the Ripper was in the mall crowd somewhere, looking for her.
    â€œThis is stupid,” she told herself bracingly, then flinched as three long, lanky and faintly scruffy teenage boys strolled past, clad in shirts and jeans obviously designed for a circus clown on stilts but that had somehow ended up on these fashion dropouts.
    The boy closest to her, old enough to try out apatchy, rather pathetic goatee, turned and winked at her, saying, “Looking good, babe.”
    Sophie had to bite her lip to hold back her scream, fight down the urge to run back inside the rehab center and beg for help. Her skin had gone cold and