by H. E. Trent
Marco ground his teeth some more and then figured there wasn’t a better time to get on with the program. If he waited, he’d lose his courage, what little he had. “You’ll be back here with Ara and Brenna soon?”
Sera arched a brow.
“Heading toward the truck now. The thing wasn’t made with invalids in mind. Bumpy ride back, but I’ll endure. Dinner happening soon?”
“Soon enough.”
“Then I’ll tell Brenna to drive fast. I’ve got a one-week record for not missing meals, and I’d like to keep it going.”
“Thank you for letting me know about the wager pool,” Sera said.
“No worries. Your sister demanded I tell you. She sat right in front of Kent and made him destroy every record. If there ever is another secret pool, I’m sure there’s no way anyone in his right mind would try to include Ara.”
“I believe that’s a safe bet.”
“See you soon.”
“Yes.” Sera double-tapped the band and turned her gaze slowly toward Marco. Her smile was weak, and so was her chuckle. “I… Well…” She passed her tongue over her lips and drew in a breath.
No need to say it.
He held her face between his hands and leaned in, bussing her mouth gently with his lips. “We’ll pick this up later.”
“Do you promise?”
“You think I’d forget?”
“I’m easy enough to forget.”
“Quit that. We can’t both be pitiful at the same time. Precious wouldn’t allow it.” He kissed her again. “And there is nothing forgettable about you. You’re distinct and memorable and desirable, and I’m still pinching myself over the fact that you paid any attention to me at all. Out of everyone you could have pursued, you came to me.”
“Because I’m smart and I make good bets. That’s why Trigrian lets me pick all the new crops.”
Chuckling, he helped her down into the water she was struggling to squirm into, and handed her the soap. “I’m a good bet?”
“On Jekh, you’re the best kind of bet. You’re the ideal partner.” She turned her back to him while she lathered, and that was probably for the best. He didn’t think he could bear to watch her working the lather over her breasts and down her belly. Physically strong, he may have been, but mentally at the moment, he was weak as a kitten.
“A courageous man,” she continued, “who’ll protect another’s children like his own.”
“Elken deserves a big tribe to look after her.”
“Yes.” Sera handed back the soap and grinned before dunking her body beneath the water.
“And so do you.”
He didn’t think he’d ever seen Sera blush before. Her coloring may have made the flush of her skin less obvious, but perhaps the lighting in the bathing room was just right or maybe the fact she was so close helped.
Charming.
God, how he loved the woman. He wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss and caress until she squirmed with laughter and told him to stop, but that would have to be later.
Taking her hand, he led her to the steps and helped her out of the water.
He sighed as she wrapped a towel around her body and then held her clothes against her belly.
She wiped dripping water from her hair out of her eyes and beamed at him. “Save me a seat at dinner? I may need some extra time to dress my hair.”
He nodded.
She left.
And he remembered his clothes were still in the laundry, and those towels didn’t cover a hell of a lot of real estate on a man his size.
“Fuck.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Come on, you don’t have to push me,” Jasper said with a laugh as Ara rushed him around the side of the main house. He’d never seen her drive anything larger than a wheelbarrow before, but he got a hunch that if she were ever allowed behind the steering wheel of a flyer or a truck, she’d be hell on wheels.
Hell on hover fans, rather.
“I’m starving,” she said, over the sound of Brenna’s tittering giggles behind him. “Appetite super big now.”
Brenna jogged ahead and opened the door. “Why is that?”
Ara grunted and turned the chair into the doorway. “Dorro says the increase is normal. Something about…metab…something.”
“Metabolism?” Jasper asked.
Ara snapped her fingers. “Yes! Metab-o-lizzm. Reset, he say.”
“You and the rest of the ladies were in starvation mode for so long. Your body is telling you to eat in case there’s another famine.”
“You know medicine?” Ara pushed him into the kitchen where Courtney, Erin, Trigrian, and Headron fussed over food. Being so busy, they gave him the smallest nods of acknowledgement.
“No, I don’t know medicine. I know a lot of random tidbits about a lot of things. Occupational hazard, I guess.”
“I know the feeling. I’m chock full of useless trivia,” Brenna muttered. She went to the sink and washed her hands. “Is Luke and the rest back?” she asked Erin.
“They’re close. There was some bad weather they needed to navigate around, but they should be here by the time the food is out of the oven.”
“Can I do anything to help?” Jasper asked. “Smells good.”
“Nope, we’ve got a system,” Courtney said, pivoting around her sister and grabbing a potholder from a hook. “What you’re looking at right now is organized chaos.”
“I should make ‘Organized Chaos’ the bakery’s new name,” Headron muttered.
Erin gave him a playful swat to the ass. “You and your uncle will catch up with the orders in time. I thought you liked having money.”
“The money is fine, but I need staff.”
“Why can’t you hire someone?” Jasper asked.
Headron piled rolls from a baking sheet into a basket and scoffed. “I can hire someone to assist in the production of the Terran breads, but for the Jekhan styles, I’d actually need an apprentice. I worked under my uncle for years before I was ever allowed to have any sort of autonomy with those. The formulas require an extraordinary amount of precision.”
“And you don’t know anyone willing to put in the time?”
“No one of the right age. Apprentice pay is notoriously low, and for good reason. The work is tedious, but doesn’t require independent thinking. Ideally, I’d find someone with a strong body and no immediate desire for upward advancement.”
“Someone who doesn’t have a wife and a bunch of kids to support.”
“Exactly.”
“And who’d eventually want to pursue baking as a professional.”
“Ideally.”
“Do you know anyone like that?” Trigrian asked Jasper.
Jasper grimaced. “Maybe. One of my buddies from the service had a son who was dying to relocate from Earth to be with his dad, but his pop didn’t want to bring him here because he worried the kid would get in trouble.”
“Uh-oh. What happened?” Court wiped her hands on a towel and gave him a querying look. He’d missed that—being a part of conversations and having folks want to know a little about him. He didn’t have to explain all the backstory, because they already knew.
“I guess the kid got in all kinds of trouble on Earth. A bunch of school expulsions, that kind of thing. Acting out because his dad wasn’t around, and his mom didn’t know what to do with him.”
“I guess the mom doesn’t envisage life on Jekh as one of her immediate goals?”
“Dunno. She was waiting around for her husband to finish the bureaucratic cleanup work he was doing here and to go home, but I think she’d relocate if she honestly thought the kid would benefit.”
“How old is the boy?” Headron asked.
“Nineteen, I think.”
Headron rolled his gaze to the ceiling and gnawed the inside of his cheek. “Hmm.”
“Want me to put you in touch? I’d be happy to. I’m not sure if you’re mean enough to be his supervisor, though. Not sure if you’ve got the
evil streak.”
Erin snorted.
Headron cut her a look.
“What?” she asked sweetly. “I’m just saying, don’t underestimate the steel of your backbone.” To Jasper, she said, “Him being polite doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to get his way when he wants to. Ask Esteben.”
Jasper would pass on that. Esteben doted on his lovers. Jasper didn’t need the explicit details on the wiles they used to manipulate him, masterful though they must have been. The guy was usually a rock.
The rock entered the kitchen at that precise moment carrying a baby in each arm and with Marco at his heels. “Starving,” he muttered, somehow managing to inch fingers toward a bread basket without disturbing the child in his right arm.
Headron slapped his hand away.
“Pardon you,” Esteben murmured.
“That’s wheat bread.”
Esteben narrowed his eyes as if in contemplation. “I’ll take the risk.”
“And you’ll be up all night complaining gut cramps. Consider this an act of self-preservation.”
“You’re denying me?”
“Yes.”
“Does that ever make you feel good?”
“Rarely, but I’ll refuse you when I need to.” Headron propped one hand onto his hip and with the other, smoothed a wisp of hair out of one of the children’s eyes.
“Give me something, dum.”
“You can wait for dinner like everyone else.”
Esteben walked to the table grumbling and plopped into his usual seat. He gave Jasper a cool look. “What?”
“Nothing.” Jasper pressed his lips together tight, but they twitched. He couldn’t help himself.
“You’re laughing at me. Is my hunger so amusing?”
Ara said something in Jekhan that made Esteben roll his eyes.
“What’d she say?” Jasper asked.
“My sweet somewhat-sister suggested that I should ‘suck it up’. I believe that’s the closest English idiom to what she said.”
“She’s hungry, too,” Marco said from behind Jasper, and suddenly Jasper was rolling forward. He put his good arm down to catch the wheel, but stopped when Marco clucked his tongue.
“Nuh-uh,” Marco said. “You’re gonna jam your hand. All I’m doing is moving you to the table.”
“Am I in the way?” Foot traffic tended to be unpredictable in the Beshni house with all the kids and the general logistical nightmare of having to manage a farm.
“Nah. Getting you a good place at the table before folks start crowding in.”
“I would think that any place where there’s food is a good place.”
“And that’s where you’d be mistaken.” Marco moved a chair out from the side of the table closest to the door. He pushed the adjacent ones farther apart before wedging Jasper’s chair into the space. “I wouldn’t want to dine next to Precious, but that’s just me. Maybe I know her too well. Want some water?”
“Uh. Sure, but listen, I can get it. I have to—”
“Nah. Takes me ten seconds. You’d take all night.”
Jasper flapped his jaw, searching for some rebuttal that wasn’t completely pathetic and came up short.
He fixed his gaze on Esteben, who stared across the table at him with one eyebrow raised. Then he cleared his throat. The Beshni brothers had a way of looking at people like they knew every one of their secrets, and for all Jasper knew, maybe the guy did. He was certainly well-networked enough to know all the gossip.
Jasper didn’t like thinking that the folks on the farm were itemizing every move he made with Sera. They were probably going behind his back and telling Marco all the details. They were Marco’s friends, not Jasper’s. Forgetting that could get him into a hell of a lot of trouble.
“Here.” Marco set a cup down in front of Jasper and left the room before Jasper’s brain suggested that the appropriate response should have been “Thank you.”
Courtney moved down the side of the table putting a plate at each setting, and muttering about having enough.
“Enough plates?” he asked.
“Yeah.” She set one in front of Esteben, who furrowed his brow as he looked at it.
The plate had a chip. A big one.
“I mean, we have enough plates. The issue is whether or not we have enough plates that match. I’m going to have Precious see what she can find for me during her next Earth trip. Might need to visit a catering supplier. I don’t need fancy dishes. I need dishes that match. I guess I have the tiniest bit of OCD regarding table settings.”
“Courtney, there’s a chip on mine,” Esteben said.
“Yes, and you’re family, so your job is to either pretend the plate is perfect, or pretend the flaw is part of the design. You’ll note there are imperfections on mine and Erin’s, too.”
“You should have an intact plate. Use the blues.”
“I keep telling her to,” Trigrian said. “She doesn’t want to use my mother’s dishes. She obviously thinks they’re more precious than they are.”
“Valen thinks they are,” Courtney said quietly. “And that’s what matters.”
If anyone had responses to that, no one spoke them aloud.
Jasper knew what Valen felt. He wouldn’t have wanted to use his abuela’s stuff, either. He stared down at his plate and wrapped his hand around his glass.
Esteben cooed in whispers to his boys.
Courtney, Erin, Trigrian, and Headron moved silently at the counters, finding their groove and not needing to speak.
Marco returned carrying Elken and with Sera right behind him.
They already had the right look of a perfect family. Ignoring the rightness of them when Marco had been away had been easy. Jasper had been glad he was away, because he finally got somewhere with Sera. He could make her smile, and she sought him out for conversation. She was an extraordinary woman, brave and forgiving. He didn’t have a shot in hell.
“I hope you’re ready,” Marco said to the Beshnis. “People saw us heading this way, and they all started standing and walking. I think there’s about to be a stampede.”
“As if that’s new,” Erin muttered.
Marco pulled out the chair to Jasper’s left and stood back. Sera sat and took a moment to adjust her sling before smiling at him.
“How is your hip?” she asked.
“Cranky, but I should be able to start exercising soon.”
“A bath might soothe the joint. I’d offer to help, but I’ve already had one today.”
Confused, he furrowed his forehead. “Help me?”
“Mmm.” She leaned back and let Marco drape a napkin over her lap.
“You can do your own,” Marco said to Jasper.
Jasper snorted. “Thanks a lot, pal.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I don’t wanna sit at the kids’ table,” Elken said, arching backward and nearly out of Marco’s arm.
“There’s a kids’ table?” Jasper asked.
“Indeed. There is now.” Trigrian carried a collapsible table out of the former oven room and set it up near the door. He retrieved three low stools from within and set them on the sides. “Come, niece. You get to sit at the head.”
Elken pouted and looked to her mother for support.
“Well, darling, you must mind Kerry.”
“Yeah,” Jasper said, smoothing his own damn napkin onto his lap. “You gotta show her how to hold her fork and stuff. And Mrona will come as well. She should be here soon, in fact.”
Elken’s eyes went wide. “Mrona’s coming?”
“Yes,” Sera said. “Did I forget to tell you? Her mother said she could spend the night.”
Elken nearly launched herself off Marco’s arm, which was a pretty impressive feat in Jasper’s opinion. If he’d been her size, he wouldn’t have wanted to risk a fall from that height. She made her way to the floor safely, however, with his insistence and ran for the smaller table, taking the seat closest to the oven room’s door and sitting priml
y with her hands folded onto her lap.
“Thank you,” Sera whispered to Jasper.
“Don’t worry about it. I just hope I didn’t overstep my boundaries.”
“No, you’re wonderful.”
“Oh?”
She rolled her eyes. “You know you are. You don’t need me to pay you compliments.”
“You’d be surprised at what a guy would need.”
“Perhaps you should tell me what those things are. I imagine they’re different from one man to the next.”
“Oh?” He picked up his fork and, studying her face for context clues, tapped the end of the utensil against the table.
She didn’t give anything away. She wore the gentle smile he’d seen so much of in the past week, and that he didn’t want to go another day without seeing. That smile made him feel like he was worth something.
Ara strode in at the head of the horde, leading a strange child by the hand who, upon spotting Elken, pulled free of Ara’s grip and took off for the low table at a sprint.
Ara sighed and muttered something in Jekhani.
He leaned toward Sera. “What’d she say? Or do I even want to know?”
She laughed and adjusted the twist of his collar behind his neck. Then she let her hand linger, smoothing down the back of his hair and touching his old scars. Her fingers were warm, the tips lightly calloused. They felt nice against that spot he incessantly rubbed. Better her than him for a change. “Nothing hostile.”
“Salehi’s thinking about putting together a class for folks who want to learn Jekhani,” Marco said, interrupting right on time as Jasper’s body had started its “Well, hello” sequence. “Wants to begin the session at the end of the crop season.”
“With what time?” Jasper asked flatly.
Marco shrugged and took a seat to Sera’s left. He leaned his left forearm onto the table edge and looked down the side at Jasper. “I guess he thinks he’ll be done with tinkering with The Tin Can by then.”
“I trust that my friend knows what he’s talking about, but even being the savant he is, I’m not so sure that hunk of junk has much life left. I’ll have to take a closer look once my hip isn’t being held together by mesh.”
