A Wolf In Wolf's Clothing Read Online Free PDF Page B

up—you’re spooked, waiting for your wolf to come.”
    “Bah, humbug,” Raven pretended to scoff. But she hugged herself as her skin turned to gooseflesh. “Teach me to wear a strapless gown,” she added. Still, she knew her choice of attire had nothing to do with the shiver; she recalled the tarot cards with the warning on the back, and that strange feeling of premonition hadn’t left her all evening.
    Pleased with the decorations, she admitted they harmonized to achieve her envisioned design. Netting beaded with delicate amber lights hung overhead, creating a fairyland effect. The placement of antique rocking horses, several carousel ponies and carousel benches “borrowed” from LynneAnne’s last shipment from Europe, along with the pièce de résistance clockwork fortune-teller, lent a whimsical, romantic flair. Not that she’d actually set out to conjure this dreamy, sensual tone; that the decor proclaimed the night for lovers made Raven’s restiveness surge, made her lonely in the midst of hundreds of people.
    Her mind again summoned images of the cards she’d drawn from the fortune-teller box. Butterflies fluttered within her, half scared by the warning, half wanting to embrace that ripple of danger carried on the rising storm. All her life she had played it safe. Now that she’d recently celebrated her thirtieth birthday, an itchy restlessness crawled just under her skin. It drove her to skate on the edge of the razor, to do something dark and dangerous.
    Unsettled and not wanting to reflect upon her urges, she said with a fake smile, “This evening is interminable. And there are still several hours to go. Excuse me while I groan.”
    Sharp of hearing, Brishen grinned. “True, but you come from a race of warrior women—so Paganne keeps telling me. You shall endure. Speaking of your luscious sister, I think I’ll go torture myself by slow dancing with her. It’ll be fun to see if the maddening woman lets me put my hands on her arse or keeps shifting them back to her waist.”
    Raven chuckled as he winked, then watched her friend chase her youngest sister around the room, trying to catch up with her. A real smile came to her lips when he immediately placed a hand on Paganne’s curvaceous rump and then her sister exaggeratedly moved it. Being a “Meddling Montgomerie” who felt entitled to interfere with her siblings’ love lives, she wished Paganne would wake up and see Brishen right before her nose. The handsome Gypsy would be good for her.
    “You’re someone to dispense advice, Miss Busybody,” she admonished herself.
    There was no man in her life, and most of the time she didn’t feel any yearning to change that. Her solitary lifestyle permitted her to concentrate on painting. With that one-woman show scheduled for next spring, she needed every spare moment for work. And she had her cats, a midget pony and a one-legged seagull for chitchat. Withthat menagerie, who really needed a man? What good were they? Well, outside of backrubs, having someone to take out the trash and chase prowlers away. Who needed a man to hold her late at night while rain pattered on the windows of her bedroom, or to cuddle before the fireplace as it snowed outside…?
    A knot of emptiness twisted within Raven, and with a sigh she glanced around the ballroom. Again, her fey intuition brushed her mind—predicting that her life might soon change? What a silly notion.
    “I’m too old to believe in knights in shining armor,” she reminded herself.
    Yet, each of her sisters had been touched with witch’s blood, knew things, felt things. She did, too. “Only, my blood must come from a dyslexic witch.” Wrong-way Raven, her siblings called her. “Always bobbing when I should weave.”
    So, why the thrum in her soul that promised tonight would be different?
    The gala was beautiful. The theme of Autumn Magic was mysterious and quixotic, and the mood reflected a hint of Halloween, which was only weeks away. She