And Sal. It smelled like he’d been there, too. Not that they left calling cards, but she smelled their scent just the same.

“I want you to get back in the car,” Duncan said slowly.

She understood his concern as a smattering of chills beset her, but she wasn’t sitting in the car and acting like some cowardly beta while he could be putting his life on the line. “Why don’t we go around back? I’ll shift, you open the door, then you shift. We can check the place out together.”

“I’d prefer you’d return to the car,” he said gruffly.

She wasn’t about to let him go by himself. “I’m not going to leave you to face two wolves alone.”

He took a deep breath and exhaled it in an annoyed fashion. “Are all American she-wolves this stubborn?”

“Only when we have to deal with equally stubborn males of any country.”

He shook his head. “Okay, you open the back door while I shift. I’ll go in first, and you can shift, then follow me in.”

“Sounds like a great idea,” she said, since it sounded very much like her idea, except that he would shift first. She didn’t care as long as she got to go with him.

“The greater idea would be that you stay in the car.” He moved around to the sheltered back patio with her. Once there, he quickly ditched his clothes and then shifted.

For his information, the greater idea was that she’d stick by her mate.

She stripped out of her clothes, unlocked the door, and pulled it open. Before she could shift, he bolted inside, tail held straight like a warning flag, ears perked, and hackles raised. He paused in the living room, sniffing the air. He could have waited for her, but she knew he hadn’t wanted to. That he wanted to protect her from anyone who might be waiting just inside the door. She loved that protective alpha male quality in him.

The adrenaline raced through her blood as she shifted and followed him inside, expecting to be in a fight—most likely against two wolves. She smelled both Sal and the other wolf’s scents that indicated anger and fright mixed together. She wondered who would have been the more terrified? Sal or the other wolf? Had the wolf been in Sal’s employ after all? If so, why would either be afraid?

Maybe of the notion of actually tackling Duncan. They did have something to fear when it came to him.

She didn’t hear any sounds of a couple of wolves or men searching for anything, if they were doing that upstairs or in the master bedroom. Then again, Sal and the other man would have heard Duncan’s rental car and might be waiting to jump them at just the right moment. The men’s presence in the villa probably had more to do with an ambush than a search mission.

The men had to know that both she and Duncan would have smelled them and be warned they were here. She and Duncan would be prepared for an attack.

In his menacing wolf form, Duncan turned to look at her, his expression telling her to stay. Which was ridiculous. He needed her to watch his back. She wasn’t staying.

She let him take a slight lead to appease him somewhat, then followed behind.

Apparently sensing her close proximity more than hearing her, as soundlessly as she was walking, he turned his head to look at her, again giving her a silent warning to stay put. She stood still, matching his narrow-eyed expression.

He shook his head at her, figuring his order would be ignored, and then turned and headed for the master bedroom. She followed him and stood in the doorway, watching his back like a good mate would. The men had both been here. They didn’t appear to be here now unless they were hiding in the bathroom or the narrow closet. Nothing looked out of place.

The bedcovers were disheveled, but that’s the way she’d left the bed this morning. She felt guilty that she hadn’t straightened them. Not because it would have mattered otherwise—she was on vacation, and she and Duncan were going to make a mess of them again anyway—but she hated that anyone else might have seen the way she’d left the bed. Even if they shouldn’t have been here in the first place.

After checking the bathroom, Duncan headed back to the bedroom door, waited for her to get out of his way, and then took off for the stairs. Again, he looked at her, willing her to stay downstairs. She did this time, figuring there wasn’t a whole lot of room to maneuver upstairs. If the bad guys were up there, she’d hear their growling. She’d race up the stairs and help Duncan then.

In reality, she figured neither of them were up there. Most likely, they had come, looked around—maybe trying to find something out about her and Duncan—and left. Maybe Sal wanted to show them he could come and go as he pleased, especially once he discovered Duncan’s scent markings around his estate. It was a testosterone contest between alpha males.

But then she smelled the faint odor of blood. She sniffed the air again, then the rug, and found it. Drops of fresh blood, a wolf’s blood, on the riser of the carpeted bottom stair. Her breathing suspended, she looked back up the stairs.

Duncan appeared in the upstairs bedroom doorway, glanced at her briefly, and then loped down the stairs, looking ready to kill somebody. She moved out of his path, and he headed for the back porch. She glanced up at the guest bedroom, wanting to explore upstairs to see if it was like the rest of the house—nothing touched and only a scent reminder that the men had come and gone. She hoped that one of them had simply cut his paw on something outside the villa and left the blood on the carpet by mistake.

Her gut instinct—along with Duncan’s angry expression and the fact she hadn’t seen or smelled any other signs of blood—warned her it was much worse than that.

Before she could go upstairs to look, Duncan stalked back into the house in his human form, wearing his damp swim trunks. The rest of the clothes they’d discarded when they’d hurried to shift were crumpled in his arms. “The other man’s dead up there. Looks like Sal killed him.”

Her heart skipped a beat. Since she wouldn’t have to use her teeth to fight a battle, she knew it was safe to shift. She quickly summoned her human form and, naked, rubbed the chill bumps on her arms as she realized she should have turned off the air conditioning before they went to swim. She knew that was an odd thing to think of, considering that a dead man was lying upstairs. The chill bumps weren’t just because of the air conditioner, either.

With a look of concern, Duncan handed her clothes to her and ran his hand over her bare arm in a consoling caress. “Are you okay, lass?”

She nodded, hurrying to slip on the pair of shorts and T-shirt that she’d worn over her swimsuit on the stingray cruise. “Yeah, I’m all right.”

He let out his breath in exasperation, sounding as though he didn’t think she was and he was worried about her. Then he stalked into the kitchen and returned with wet paper towels in hand. Surprised at what he was planning to do and before she could even help him, she watched as he washed the spots of blood off the carpet at the foot of the stairs.

She eyed the stairs above it, looking for more spots. “What happened?” she asked, her voice hushed, having to know but not wanting to, either.

“They had both shifted before fighting. Patches of wolf fur are all over the place. Nothing broken… thankfully. A little blood.”

She shuddered, partly from the chill in the air and partly because one of the men had died in the upstairs bedroom. She was glad she was sleeping downstairs now. If she hadn’t been before, she would be now. Not that she was afraid of ghosts or anything. Although the idea that the man had met a violent death did make her wonder if she and Duncan would be in for a little haunting.

She ground her teeth. “So Sal killed the other man and carried him away, leaving us with the mess to clean up,” she said under her breath.

“No.” Duncan leaned over to kiss her cheek, then went back to the kitchen to dispose of the bloody paper towels.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“The dead man’s still up there.”

That meant the man had been a wolf while fighting, but once he died, he would have reverted back to his human form. Naked. Dead.

Barely breathing, she looked up at the landing at the top of the stairs. She wasn’t sure why she should have been so shocked. Sal was a real bastard, anyway you cut it. “Sal left the body for us to dispose of?”

“Aye. He was ticked off because I left one of the men dead in his swimming pool, not to mention that I wouldn’t agree to be his bodyguard. Plus, this is a way to show me he’s not a sniveling beta wolf. He can take care of himself.”

“Can he? Take care of himself?” she asked.

“He did this time.” Duncan ran up the stairs.

“What are you going to do?”

“Give Sal another swimming buddy.”

***

As angry as Duncan was about having to carry yet another body to Sal’s estate in the dark of night—figuring that was safer than transporting the body in the car and chancing getting blood on anything—he was more worried about leaving Shelley by herself.

He thought one reason why Sal had left the second man’s body was that he couldn’t have carried it all the way back to where he could readily dispose of it. That meant Sal might have followed this man to the villa and didn’t have any other choice but to kill him. Then he’d left the body for Duncan to take care of. Or Sal had arrived, wanting to meet with Duncan face-to-face to try and secure his agreement to be his bodyguard, and caught the man here. If that was the case, the man probably had come here to lie in wait for Shelley and Duncan’s return, figuring they’d be in human form and more vulnerable.

The hired assassin couldn’t face Carlotta or any of her wolf assassins—if she had any more on retainer—without worrying he’d be next on her list, so maybe he figured he might as well try for a sneakier confrontation.

They’d fought as wolves, Sal and this man; that much was evident. Scraps of wolf fur clung to the floral cover at the foot of one of the twin beds. A chunk was on the carpet, and scattered remnants lay all over, as if they’d both had a sudden shedding frenzy.