by Lauren Esker
He hadn't, so she took the one he offered and then trotted off down the hallway. There was something physically a bit koala-like about her, Avery thought as he watched her hurry away and tried not to stare at her ass too much. Which .... didn't really sound like a compliment. But she wasn't predatory, in the way of most of the shifters he hung out with on a regular basis. She was small and compact and round. Solid. Grounded.
And she had a really nice ass, he admitted to himself, as she went out the door and vanished from sight.
Chapter Six
After smiling her way through two meetings with parents and one particularly trying interview with a child and their lawyer about court-appointed guardianship, Nicole had to admit that looking forward to her date tonight was making her a little bit happy.
The only nights out she'd had lately were family nights with Tim and Erin and the kids. And those were pretty much like family dinners around the dining room table, except in a kid-friendly restaurant instead. When was the last time she'd been out on an actual date?
She kept having to talk herself out of going home early so she could change into something a little dressier than her tan pantsuit and put on a bit of makeup. You don't want him to take one look at you and walk out the door, do you?
On the other hand, if Avery wanted arm candy, he wouldn't have asked out a small, round, thirty-something woman with a habit of dressing like a brown tree stump.
She was racing through her emails, hoping to get out of the office a few minutes before five so she'd have time to change into a skirt (Hell, if I don't have time to go home, I can run into a store and buy one!) when Avery's number came up on her caller ID. Her heart flipped over. She wiped her damp palms on her thighs and picked up the phone, took a couple of breaths, and said, "Hello?" as casually as possible.
"Hey," he said, and then there was a short silence. Good Lord, she thought, we're acting like a couple of teenagers with a crush. This is ridiculous.
Avery was the one who spoke first, launching into a speech that she got the impression he'd been mentally rehearsing. "So, there's going to be a slight change of plans. Intern Veliz can't watch the kids tonight. She has a thing. And even if she could, she's basically spent her whole day babysitting and it's not fair to her. If you want to cancel, that's okay, but I was thinking maybe you could come over to my place instead. You know where it is, and you could bring takeout. I'll pay for it. Unless you found a foster home for them already?" His voice trailed off on a questioning note.
"No, not yet. Sorry."
"That's okay." He actually sounded relieved. "So, anyway, I know it's not much of a date to eat carry-out while puppies climb all over you—"
"It sounds wonderful," she said, and meant it. "And you don't have to pay for it; that's silly. It's not 1950. You can get the next one. What do you like? Foodwise, I mean!" she added hastily.
"I'll eat pretty much anything as long as it has meat in it. Uh, unless koalas are vegetarians. That might be a dealbreaker, you know." His tone was teasing, and then he said quickly, "Joke!"
"I know," she laughed. "And koalas are vegetarians, it's true, but I will eat just about anything too."
"Match made in heaven," Avery said. "Surprise me, then."
"Okay." She glanced at the clock crawling toward five, and made a quick decision. "I won't be there right away. I have a couple of things to take care of first." Such as running back to Erin and Tim's to class herself up a little bit.
"Just bring food when you come, and I don't care if it takes until midnight."
"Will do," she said. "See you in an hour or two."
She finished answering the email she had open, then closed it all. It could wait. Everything could wait.
"Kathryn," she said to her caseworker as she breezed through the outer office, "I'm leaving not just on the dot of five today, but a few minutes early, and nothing is dragging me back into this office short of an actual life-and-death emergency."
Kathryn grinned. "Who are you and what did you do with Nicole? Should I look around for your pod?"
"As if I wouldn't hide my pod very efficiently, Kathryn. You know me better than that."
Laughter followed her out of the office.
For once, she drove as fast and recklessly as the rest of Seattle's rush-hour traffic, making it to Tim and Erin's faster than she'd thought possible. The familiar, sharp scent of eucalyptus and the smell of baking bread met her when she came in.
"Tim?" Erin called from the kitchen.
"No, it's Nicole."
Erin came out, wiping her hands on a dish towel. "No way. What are you doing out of the office? Are you actually joining us poor beknighted souls for dinner this time?"
"Sorry, nope." Nicole ducked into her bedroom, which was adjacent to the front door; Tim and Erin had renovated a storage room into a proper bedroom so she could have as much privacy coming and going as possible. "I have a date!" she called.
Her sister pursued her. "What? You can't just drop a nugget like that and sit on the details!"
"I don't have any details. He's just somebody I met at work—not a client, before you make that aghast face I know you're making. He's a cop. And he's also one of us; well, not a koala, obviously—and why don't I have any skirts that don't make me look like a large floral tent?"
"The black and white one is nice."
"Sure, for a funeral." Nicole tossed items out of the closet onto the bed. "I have plenty of work clothes, a few pairs of jeans, and exactly nothing that is suitable for a date."
"If this guy likes you, he won't care if you show up in jeans, and neither will anyone else. You're in Seattle, remember? I bet there are a lot of people in this town who wouldn't recognize formal attire if it fell on their head."
"You're a lot of help, Erin, by which I mean none." She shook out a rumpled yellow skirt. "Why did I even buy this? Yellow makes me look like a big sunflower."
"Maybe he likes sunflowers."
"Who isn't helping? Oh right, you."
"Before you get your knickers in a knot, do you want to check my closet?" Erin asked. "We're about the same size. Maybe I have something you can borrow."
Ten minutes later she was in a skirt of Erin's, bright and cheerful without being garish, and was redoing her makeup in the bathroom while her sister, after running to check the status of the half-finished meal, lounged in the doorway.
"Where are the kids?" Nicole asked as she wiped off her lipstick. It was the fourth color she'd tried, and she was running out of her limited supply. Too garish ... too invisible ... too drab ... At this rate she was going to have to borrow her sister's makeup too.
"Tim is picking up Hannah from soccer practice on his way home, and Forrest is sleeping over with a friend. It's been just me all afternoon. I was actually able to get some work done." Both of the Leungs had flexible schedules, Tim as university faculty and Erin as a molecular biologist for a private research firm, who did much of her non-lab work from home.
"How does this look?" Nicole turned to display her latest attempt.
"Too dark. Makes you look washed out."
"Aargh." She blotted it off.
"Look, Nicky, if he's the right guy, he won't care."
"Yes, that's perfectly fine after ten years of marriage, but for a first date, guys want to know you put some effort in. What did you wear on your first date with Tim?"
"I don't remember," Erin said. "Lab coats, I think. We had sandwiches on the grass outside the science building."
"Of course you did." Grimly she picked up a tube of vivid purple lipstick and applied it. Why did she even own this color? Well, no matter. She was going to stick with this one if it killed her. She pursed her lips at herself in the mirror.
"How delightfully 1970s," Erin said. "All you need now are some disco pants."
"Go away!"
***
She finally settled on a conservative shade of dark pink, if only because arriving two hours late for her first date probably wouldn't set the mood she w
as hoping for. Erin waved her out the door with an admonition to "Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"
"Erin, you've been married to the same guy, with kids, for over a decade. I'm pretty sure nothing I'm doing tonight is something you'd do."
"In that case, we won't wait up," Erin called.
Sisters.
She picked up Thai takeout on her way uptown. By the time she made it to Avery's building, she'd second-guessed the skirt, the lipstick, the little dragonfly-shaped clip in her hair, and everything else about herself. Somewhere deep down, dark voices whispered that all he'd see was ugliness, that nothing about her was lovable.
At the suggestion of one of her therapists back in Australia, she'd learned to conceptualize the depressive and self-hating side of her personality as a nest of tiny lampreys, a kind of parasitic eel that latched onto its host and slowly drained it of blood and life. Now, sitting in her car with plastic containers of curry and pad thai on the seat beside her, she imagined gently detaching each ring of little suckers and then stomping the shit out of them on the pavement.
It helped about as much as it ever did, which was to say not a lot, and when she realized she was using it as a delaying tactic, she got out and marched upstairs. This shouldn't be undoing her as much as it was. She'd confronted child molesters, drug-addicted parents, and violent teenagers. The absolute worst thing Avery could or would do was throw her out, and then she'd have Thai food to console herself with.
She knocked.
"Coming!" There was some scuffling from inside and a small yap, and then Avery opened the door.
He was wearing a charcoal-gray sweater and black slacks, presumably in an attempt to dress up a bit, but his hair was mussed and there were wolf hairs all over him. When he opened the door, he was running a hand over his hair to smooth it down, but he stopped as soon as he saw her, leaving him with his fingers laced through his hair, lifting it up in even wilder disarray.
"Whoa," he said. "I mean, hi."
"Hi to you too. I hope you like Thai." She held up the bag.
"Right now, if it's food, I'll take it. Unfortunately this date might be a little less date-like than I'd hoped. The kids slept all afternoon while Yesenia had them, and now they're ... well ... No, get back here!" He leaned over to scoop up the ginger puppy, headed with unsinkable determination for the hallway, and stepped back to let Nicole in.
The monkishly tidy apartment she'd visited just that morning had been transformed, as if by magic, into as much of an unholy mess as a place with so little clutter could be. The couch cushions were down on the floor, one with half its stuffing pulled out. Bits of torn-up newspaper lay in drifts like autumn leaves. Two of the puppies were chasing each other around the room. The open door to the bathroom revealed a glimpse of the toilet and tub, and more newspapers on the floor, which presumably was where the litter came from. Another door, probably the bedroom, was pulled shut.
"Do you drink?" Avery set down the ginger puppy, then took the bag and limped into the kitchen. "I have cold beer and I think there's a bottle of wine in the cabinet somewhere."
"Beer is fine." She hung up her jacket and removed the tussling puppies from the couch so she could put the cushions back. "Do you want any help?"
"No, no. You're a guest, and you supplied the food. Just sit."
As soon as she sat down, the two puppies jumped back up to sniff her all over and chew on her hands. It was very easy to forget they were as human as she was.
Avery brought her an opened beer. She freed a hand from the puppies to take it.
"I'll warn you right off, it's been ages since I've been on a date, so I'm kind of rusty at it." He almost tripped over the ginger puppy, who was now chasing her brother around the room, and gave a soft laugh. "Not to mention none of my other dates took place in a day care."
"I don't date much either," Nicole admitted. "Tell you what, let's pretend this isn't a date at all. Then neither of us has to be nervous."
"What is it, then?" he asked from the kitchen, getting out plates.
"Two people who like each other, hanging out with Thai food and somebody else's kids."
"Sounds like a perfectly normal thing. That people do. So, tell me." He began spooning pad thai onto the plates. "What do people hanging out, people who like each other—what do they talk about?"
She now had four puppies crawling all over her lap, wrestling with each other while she tried to keep her beer away from them. "Mostly I'm wondering if you have something to distract these little guys so we can eat without having four little snouts in our plates. I don't think takeout Thai is a great idea for lupine digestive systems."
"Oh, that's on me. They're due for a feeding anyway." He opened the fridge, adding over his shoulder, "Dr. Lafitte said they should be eating solid food at this age as much as possible. And she suggested something—I know how this looks, okay? I wouldn't have done it if she hadn't said to, but they seem to like it."
He turned pink as he took out a couple of small cartons.
"Dog food?" Nicole guessed.
"Expensive organic dog food. Not just junk in a bag. Heck, I think it smells good even when I'm human-shaped. She said regular baby food is too vegetarian for puppies. They need meat."
The pups all ran into the kitchen at the sound of the carton opening. Avery spooned it into four small plastic bowls and set them, spaced out, on the kitchen floor. The puppies dug in, stubby tails wagging, and Avery brought the plates over to Nicole. He sat on the other end of the couch from her, and set their dinner on the coffee table.
"Note the lack of kitchen table. I don't have guests often."
"It's great," she reassured him. "I've been catching meals on the go for so long now that just sitting down for an evening feels decadent."
"I have to warn you," Avery said. "I'm not that great at this. Casual conversation, I mean."
Nicole spun pad thai noodles around her fork. "Me neither. Maybe we should start by introducing ourselves, dating-site style. Hi, I'm Nicole. I'm thirty-six years old, I'm Chinese-Australian, and I like gum trees—that's eucalyptus, to you—and long walks on the beach."
This made him laugh again. She loved his laugh; it was quiet and warm and filled her with delight all the way down to her toes.
"Well, in that case, I'm Avery Hollen, age twenty-nine. I read a lot and I also enjoy—okay, you're going to laugh at this one."
"Try me."
"Tabletop gaming," he said, blushing to the tips of his ears.
"You mean like, Dungeons and Dragons? That kind of thing?"
"Exactly that kind of thing. I got into it when I was in the military, believe it or not. That kind of cheap, portable entertainment is popular with soldiers. I've had a regular game running for years with Jack—he's a friend from work—and a couple other people I work with."
"I played a little bit in uni, actually," she admitted. "My flatmate was really into it. But I didn't keep up with it after I left."
"Hey, you're welcome to sit in on one of our weekly games, if you like. It's really just an excuse to hang out. There's beer and pizza, though I don't know if that's a plus or a minus. Do they have pizza in Australia?"
"Australia isn't the ends of the earth, no matter what you Americans think," she scolded, pointing at him with her fork. "Although America might as well be, considering the faces you people make when I ask for beetroot on a hamburger."
"That's a joke, right?"
"No, it isn't a joke. A proper hamburger has beetroot on it."
"Just to be sure I'm clear on this, beetroot is the same thing as beets, right?"
"Yes, pickled beetroot," she said. "You put pickled cucumbers on your hamburgers, don't you? Is it really that different?"
"Yes!"
"That's it, I'm going to have to make you a hamburger with the lot one of these days."
"I assume 'the lot' includes beets."
"Also pineapple, bacon and a fried egg."
"Good Lord," Avery said. "I'm trying to eat here, you know."
The puppies finished eating and came wandering over to whine and scrabble at the couch until Avery and Nicole lifted them up. A couple of firm shoves away from the Thai food gave them the message—they were more curious than hungry, anyway. They flopped in a little heap to nap, all except the ginger puppy, who went off to explore.
"That one's going to be a handful," Nicole said, keeping an eye on the puppy as she wandered around the room.
"Going to be?" Avery retorted.
Nicole grinned and started to answer, but she was interrupted by the buzzing sound of her phone vibrating in her purse. She clenched her jaw and tried to ignore it.
"You can get that, if you need to."
"Sorry. I should. Some of the messages I get are pretty urgent." She fished around for it. By the time she found it, the call had already gone to voicemail.
"Hey, I'm a federal agent. I understand."
"I guess you probably do." Fingers stealthily crossed, she checked the screen. One new message from Kathryn, her caseworker. She fought a fast, losing battle with herself, smiled apologetically at Avery and dialed back.
"Hey, sorry to call you off the clock, boss."
"Don't worry about it." Please, please don't screw up this evening, she silently pleaded, knowing even as she thought it that she would have to go if there was a child in danger. "What's up?"
"I wouldn't have called you, except it's good news. You know that placement you were trying to find, for the set of siblings? We had something open up, and it looks like she can take all of them. She can't take them tonight, but she'll have beds ready tomorrow evening, so I told her we'd bring them over then, around five-thirty or six. Good news?"
"Oh my God, that's amazing. Thank you, Kathryn! You did a fantastic job." She couldn't resist breaking into a grin. Keeping siblings together was always the hardest part of finding foster parents for groups of kids, and the puppies quadrupled the problem because they were all so young. She'd despaired of finding a foster home willing to take on four babies at once. There was a legal limit to how many foster children a single foster home could take in; in Washington, it was six, and most foster homes were right at their limit most of the time. It would have been possible to do a temporary end run around the rules by pretending they were regular dogs, but Nicole didn't want to risk one of their rare shifter foster families losing their license just to do her a favor. So breaking up the children into two or three foster homes had been her best-case scenario.
