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bit slowly on this but I’ll sort it out. I may look like a wimp but I can be tough.”
    “I’ll remember that,” he said, with a mock salute.
    “Have you always been a handyman?” she asked, looking straight at him. “If that’s what you are.”
    “Nope. Not always. But I’m Mr. Fixit now. Learned everything I know at my grandpa’s knee on the ranch in Wyoming.”
    “And you just decided to move from Wyoming to Washington State?”
    His steady stare let her know she was being too nosy. “It’s not my business,” she told him, squirming. “Sorry.”
    “I went a lot of places in between Wyoming and Washington, Leigh. I got back from the Middle East eighteen months ago.”
    She could imagine him in fatigues, even maybe marching in the sand, or climbing over huge obstacles as if they were nothing; it was the leaping to attention that didn’t come easily to mind. “What did you do there?” Maybe he was in one of those groups that built buildings or something.
    “I killed people,” he said.

chapter
FOUR
     
    N ILES ALMOST GOT UP and left but he couldn’t do that to her. What had got into him to make him go off like that? And why at her of all people? He had thought his control was better now.
    It was that last disastrous overseas assignment, he guessed. The guilt he still felt at losing one of their own. The night sweats didn’t happen often anymore. But dammit, he had to get past the guilt and past the outbursts.
    “I shouldn’t have said that,” he told her. “I don’t know why I did.” Impulsively, he caught her hand in his. “Forget it, please.”
    She coughed. Her brown eyes seemed even bigger and darker in a pretty but thin, freckled face, but her thoughts were sympathetic, not frightened, and her fingers tightened around his for a moment before she let go.
    Damn, he should not risk making her afraid of him, not when he hoped to build her trust.
    Touching her hand only made him want to touch moreof her, to hold her. How hard would this get if he couldn’t keep his mind on the goal, to mate for the good of his kind?
    “I expect you were fighting,” she said with a faint little smile. “That must have been… hard… ” Her voice got weaker and trailed away.
    He couldn’t believe what had happened. “It’s over,” he told her.
    “War has to be terrifying.”
    Leaving this dangling wasn’t wise. “It’s more disappointing than terrifying, although it’s that, too.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “People are still killing people because everyone thinks they’re right, that they have the only right way.” He considered how much more he should say. “When you see humans with all their defenses stripped down to just the will to live, it changes you. I’m not completely over that yet, I guess. I thought I was, but I’m not. Sometimes the anger comes back. It flashes, then it’s gone. It doesn’t accomplish a thing.”
    “If it were me,” she said, “I don’t think I could ever put it behind me.”
    He had to and mostly he did a good job. “I’ve come a long way. I’ll try not to snap out statements like that again. Sorry.”
    “You don’t have to be.” She smiled and he had to stop himself from touching her again. “I’ll let you know if you’re snapping. Sometimes things just line up wrong and we want to close it all down. It seems kind of like grieving to me.”
    Niles almost grinned. Though he’d only just found Leigh, something told him she really was the right onefor him; that they really could offer each other what they would both need—unconditional understanding. The question was, would he be able to put his duty to the future of the werehounds first if this attraction kept growing? Just looking at her heated him and he was enjoying the burn.
    Before Niles could get himself into deeper trouble, one of the men from the corner got up and headed toward Leigh. Pretty slick-looking guy for a woodsy type, Niles thought.
    “Hey,” the man said. “I just realized