Chapter 1

In a rush to pack before her ex-fiancé discovered her home alone, Calla Stewart felt jittery, on edge. She knew that breaking up with Baird McKinley had been the best thing for her to do—though she wished she’d taken her good friend Cearnach MacNeill’s advice way before she reached the altar. Wedding and mating Baird was the worst thing she could have done. She should be relieved and happy now, moving forward with her life. Except for one thing. The wolf wasn’t giving her up easily.

The Celtic Christmas harp music playing and the Christmas lights sparkling on her tabletop tree did little to lighten her mood as she hurried to pack the rest of her things for her stay at the MacNeills’ Argent Castle.

Normally, her home—the carriage house behind her parents’ manor house—was a place of joy where she could recharge her batteries, relax, and enjoy some peace and solitude after the often hectic days and nights she spent operating her party-planning business.

But her parents were on their way to Ireland to visit family, so they wouldn’t be around to help her out if she had trouble. Their trip was so sudden—unusual, given the way they always planned things far in advance—that she had asked if they were taking it because of the upset over the wedding. But they’d assured her they just needed a vacation. They hadn’t taken one in years because they’d been busy managing their own chain of hotels. They had looked frazzled and worn out. Calla hated that she’d upset them with the wedding fiasco, but they’d been relieved that she hadn’t gone through with it.

She still couldn’t believe her dad had gotten his flight times so wrong. She’d thought she was going to have all day to pack. Had she known their flight was so early, she would have already been packed, taken her parents to the airport, and then driven straight from there to Argent Castle. Instead, she’d had to take them to the airport, then come home to finish packing, and finally set out for the castle. Her mother had assured her that next time she was taking charge of the itinerary.

With a snowstorm on the way, Calla tucked an extra pair of winter gloves in the pocket of her field pack and felt something. She pulled out a picture of Baird and her that a photographer had taken for their Save the Date cards. She’d thought she’d gotten rid of any reminder of that photo shoot. She tossed the picture in the trash.

God, she regretted having been such a fool. How could she have allowed herself to be taken in so completely by Baird’s charm?

Calla shook her head, glad the MacNeills had extended the invitation to stay with them while she planned their Christmas celebration—it gave her a place to regroup after the disastrous end to her almost-marriage.

She turned off her Christmas-tree lights and was about to haul her bags out to the car when she heard car doors slam out front. Four of them.

Her heart skittered. It could be nothing, she told herself. Maybe the MacNeills had sent someone to take her to the castle, concerned about the weather, or worried about Baird and his kin. She peeked out the curtains and saw Baird stalking toward her front door, two of his brothers and a cousin leaning against his car and waiting for him.

Her skin prickled with goose bumps.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to get her wildly beating heart under control. She desperately wanted to ignore Baird’s knock on the door. But her car was sitting near the front door, not hidden in the garage, and he would guess she was here. Besides, their car was blocking her path, and she couldn’t leave until they moved it.

She wasn’t afraid of Baird, as long as he was simply trying to cajole her into coming back to him, but she wanted his constant harassment to end. She worried that he might take this further if he finally realized he couldn’t convince her to return to him.

“Come on, Calla. I know you’re home,” he said, sounding a little annoyed, though he was trying hard to sound more like someone who was attempting to appeal to her.

He wouldn’t want to appear as though he was pleading when his brothers and his cousin were watching him and listening to him. Not when he had been their pack leader, in charge and making the rules, for only the last two years. How would that look to the rest of the pack? If he couldn’t sway one stubborn she-wolf to come back to him.

If she ignored him, she was afraid they’d delay her so long that she’d be stuck here until the roads were cleared. Worse, what if he and his kin were stuck here too? She’d be sorely tempted to let them sit out in the freezing weather in their wolf coats.

Resolved to deal with him one last time, she went to the door and unlocked and opened it. “It’s over—”

He brushed past her, slamming the door behind him. Damn him.

“I didn’t want to talk in front of my kin,” he said, sounding exasperated.

“Then don’t bring them next time. Rather—don’t come here again. It’s over between us.”

He moved toward her as if to give her a hug, but she held her hand out to keep him from drawing closer. “Nay, Baird. We’re not there any longer.”

Big mistake. He seized her hand and pulled her into his arms, but she quickly jerked away from him.

“Baird, you listen to me. We are done. Through. Finished. We’re not getting back together—today, tomorrow, or ever,” she said, as pissed off as she could be. Partly because he’d scared her by getting physical, trying to force an intimacy between them that she no longer wanted.

He wore a stupid smile as if he knew better. Which irked her completely. Then he noticed her packed bags and his face darkened. “Where are you going? To join your parents in Ireland?”