by Holley Trent
He shrugged and held out a palm full of seed pods. Easy to find with vision as good as his.
Gaping, she held open one of the brown bags.
“Got a bunch of side hustles. Beekeeper is one.”
“I want bees.”
“And seeds?” He held out some more and stood. Looked like there was another of those vervain things a couple of yards away.
“Well, you’re just a regular renaissance Wolf, aren’t you?”
“No, sugar, I’m a Wolf who’s not wearing drawers and who’s about to freeze his balls off.”
One more seedpod. Hopefully, she’d be able to get them to sprout. He knew what it was like starting from nothing. Guys in his family were always looking for new hustles. Bootlegging was a family business—he hadn’t had to waste too many brain cells devising his own system for that, but running the auto shop? Starting those hives? Selling off all that extra firewood every winter? He’d had to figure out those things on his own. Diversification kept him out of the poorhouse. He’d been dirt poor before. He didn’t like that shit, and it was a state he did all he could to keep his immediate family free of. Working for Clarissa bound his hands somewhat on being able to start new ventures, but he wouldn’t have changed a thing. He couldn’t imagine ever being prouder about his work—or prouder of himself. Every sacrifice he’d made had been worth it.
“There’s another daisy plant over there.” Alex pointed to the mound and moved away.
He got to work picking, squatting low and putting his back to the wind, looking up occasionally when one of her bags crinkled.
“I think that’s enough for today,” she said when he dropped about thirty more heads into the bags. “Ground’s getting wet and we’re going to leave footprints. I don’t want to leave tracks for that doofus to find.”
“Plus, it’s cold.”
“Mmm. That, too.” She was already heading back toward the truck, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to second-guess that decision.
“Wish we could stay longer and go in deeper,” she murmured. “If I could take my time and come out with a magnifying glass and my specimen book, I might find some I don’t already have. I know they’re out here.”
“Another day, then.”
“Maybe. I’m not used to having anyone to tag along and watch my back.”
“Really? You shouldn’t be out here in the desert alone at any time of day. You need to get you a partner in crime.”
“I used to have two. One got married, and the other decided to become a cowgirl.”
He grunted. He understood. “That’ll happen to you, too. Either gonna get married to a man or to your work, and your friends’ll whine and whine they never see you. Mine sure do, especially since Calvin sent me to Clarissa.”
“I guess you’re right,” she said quietly. “Hard to imagine when I’m the one on the outside.”
“Not always gonna be on the outside. And being at the end of the line don’t mean you won’t get what’s due to you. Be patient. You’ll get what you deserve, sugar.”
She seemed to be pondering that. The crease between her eyes deepened as she got the truck started and heat cranked up.
There was an odd smell emanating from something under the hood, but he wasn’t going to knock it. He was going to cross his fingers and pray to the wolf goddess that they made their way back to Maria in one piece. He could give Alex another lecture the moment she parked.
Ben’s inner wolf gave him a little psychic nudge.
What the hell is she thinking, driving around in a hunk of junk like this?
Not only was it a waste of money, but the truck wasn’t safe for her. She could get hurt. She could freeze to death or something if the thing gave out on a back road somewhere.
That wasn’t right.
She didn’t want to hear another man telling her “I told you so,” so he wasn’t going to say that.
Tugging his seatbelt across his body, he decided he didn’t have to say it.
He’d loan her his vintage Chevy if he had to. It didn’t have air conditioning, but it ran like a dream and didn’t smell like a lemon-scented promise of disaster.
Chapter Five
The moment Alex parked in front of Noelle and Tamatsu’s house, Ben jumped out without a word.
“Well, bye-bye, Wolf,” she muttered as she pulled up the parking brake.
But Ben was around to her side to open the door before her seatbelt had finished retracting.
“Oh,” she said, furrowing her brow. “Thank you.”
“Swear to God, woman, this truck is a ticking time bomb.”
“Huh? Why do you think that?”
He didn’t give her an answer. He pulled her out of the cab as though she had all the heft of a rag doll, set her on the ground, and gave her a scoot by the bottom away from the truck.
He let out a long breath, flicked his hair out of his eyes, and closed the door. “Lord have mercy, go get your cake, woman. I’ll find you another ride home.”
She plopped her hands on her hips. “I’m driving my truck home. It can’t be that bad. You’re only overreacting because you have sensitive hearing.”
“And a sensitive nose.” He stabbed his index finger in the general direction of the offending vehicle and growled quietly. “Trucks are not supposed to smell like that.”
Alex drew in a long breath through her nose. She didn’t smell anything.
There was something hot as hell about the way his dark eyes blazed and nostrils flared as he ranted under his breath, pointing at her and the truck, yelling at her in what must have been Appalachianese. She wasn’t quite catching everything he said, but she got the gist. She was a kook. Someone needed to save her from herself. Yada yada yada.
It was hard not to be flattered that someone she hardly knew was so concerned about her, but she wasn’t going to worry about the truck until her human senses caught the warning alarm. She still needed to get $5,000 worth of miles out of that truck.
Clarissa was in the doorway, waving what must have been the fruitcake parcel at her, so Alex took off toward her like a bolt.
“If I shake a fruitcake at you,” Ben yelled at her back, “would you listen about this dang truck?”
Probably.
“Eee!” Alex hugged the foil-wrapped cake as though it were her doll that had gone suspiciously missing during the summer between fifth and sixth grades. She suspected Chet-flavored shenanigans had been in play, but she’d never been able to prove anything.
“Gonna slice this sucka thin and make it last until Girl Scout cookie season,” she told Clarissa.
“With all the uncooked booze I poured over it, thin’s your best bet,” Jenny said from somewhere inside the house, immediately before giggling, and hiccupping.
Clarissa cringed. “I didn’t know until an hour ago, but Jenny made fruitcake cordials out of the moonshine.”
Ben, joining them on the porch, narrowed his eyes at his employer. “So . . . she’s getting wasted on hooch that’s flavored with hooch-flavored cake.”
“Which happens to have candied fruit hydrated with hooch.” Clarissa sighed again. “Congratulations. You managed to inebriate an elf.”
“Holy hell, I didn’t think that was possible. Do I get a medal?”
The elf queen made a moue and tapped her chin. “Given the rareness of the event, I might be able to arrange for that.”
“Hot damn.” Apparently distracted from his criticism of Alex’s truck, Ben squeezed past Clarissa and murmured something about “Hallelujah” and “heat.”
Guess that’s all?
The afternoon hadn’t shaped up the way she’d expected, not that she’d known what she’d been bargaining for when Scott had accosted her at the diner. Perhaps she’d had some expectation of having to fight off constant groping or tamping down constant offense over lecherous comments.
She hadn’t gotten that. The Wolf had, surprisingly, been a gentleman.
That shouldn’t have been a surprise. She’d si
mply grown to expect the alternative.
The last little bit of amusement she’d been clinging to floated away.
People kept telling her that she was young, and one bad breakup wasn’t going to kill her, but every time she thought of what had transpired, she experienced the exact same rip of betrayal in her heart. No one wanted to feel like a means to an end, and that’s what she’d been.
“Alex,” Clarissa said softly, smoothing down the collar of Alex’s coat. Such a matronly act, but that was typical Clarissa. She may have appeared to be a young woman, but she wasn’t. She had grandchildren and great-grandchildren back in North Carolina. “You want to come in? More tends to be merrier.”
Yes.
There was noise and laughter in Noelle’s house, and Alex’s house didn’t have that anymore.
But she shook her head and put on a smile. “Nah, I’ve gotta get home and process the seeds we found.”
Clarissa’s head slanted in query. “Seeds?”
“Long story, but . . . Ben helped.”
Ben, who was suddenly standing behind Clarissa in the foyer, shifted his weight like earlier.
“Ben did?” The elf’s voice dripped with incredulity.
“I can do stuff, Clarissa,” he muttered.
He could do lots of stuff. Make booze and tend bees and predict vehicular demise. A freaking renaissance Wolf, just like Alex had said.
“I suppose it’d be impolite to talk about your inconsistency as of late, then?” Clarissa asked softly.
“No. Not impolite coming from you, but I hope you’ll change the subject, anyway. A man doesn’t particularly want to bask in his shame in front of folks he’s trying to impress.”
Who?
His gaze fell to Alex, who was still holding her fruitcake in an embrace most normal people would have found off-putting.
Clearing her throat, she lowered the parcel.
He wants to impress me?
That was new. In general, people didn’t try to impress her. She wasn’t anything special. Had no position or clout, only a harebrained scheme to work for herself one day and a truck that evidently smelled bad to werewolves.
Scott ambled by, looked from Ben to the doorway, and fished his notebook out of his shirt pocket.
“Don’t start that,” Ben snarled.
Scott made a note. “You were gone for a while.”
“Long drive.”
“Have fun?”
“Not really.”
“Is he grunting less?” Scott asked Clarissa. “Or is my grunt count off?”
Ben rolled his eyes.
“I wasn’t paying attention,” Clarissa said, twining her fingers over her belly, “but now that I think of it, he does seem to have reverted to his former articulateness.”
“A-yep.” Scott made another note.
“For fuck’s sake.” Ben snatched the pad and shoved it deep into a pocket of his pants.
“Hey! I was writing on that.”
“Why don’t you give your hand a break? I can arrange for a permanent one, if you’d like, Cousin.”
“Hallelujah.” Scott raised his arms toward the heavens. “Benny’s got his head back. Alex, you must be the magic cure. What’d you do to him?” He waggled his eyebrows.
Ben slugged his arm so hard that Alex could almost hear the breaking of capillaries.
“Ow!” Scott gave his cousin a speaking glare.
“I didn’t . . . do anything,” Alex said, confused.
“Uh-huh.”
Ben rolled his eyes and muttered some more mountain curses under his breath, and then he turned to Clarissa. “You leaving the house again tonight?”
With her mouth twitching at the corners, and her shoulders shaking with barely suppressed laughter, she gave her head a slow shake. “If you’re feeling antsy, don’t feel obligated to stay in on my account. Tamatsu’s here. I’m certain he’s more than capable of looking after a few elves.”
“What’s with the extra security, anyway?” Alex asked her. “The first couple of times you were here, you had fewer eyeballs on you.”
“Back then, I was the only elf in town and only a handful of people knew what I was. As far as most elves know, I’m either missing or dead. I’d like to keep them in the dark and to not actually become missing or dead for real.” She smiled.
“Ooh. Mysterious.” Alex leaned into the doorway, smiling in spite of herself at the staring contest the Wolf cousins were giving each other. If there was going to be flying fur, she didn’t really want to see it, but now she was invested in the conversation. She missed getting good gossip. “I’m starting to wonder if everyone in Maria except me has a cool origins story.”
“The last I heard, the paranormal element was in the minority here,” Clarissa said.
“I guess with the company I keep, I’m always going to be the odd lady out.” She rolled her eyes at herself and started down the porch steps. “Maybe I should make new friends.”
But even with more human friends, she’d still be an outsider. She knew things she’d never be able to tell them. She’d never be able to bring her two groups of friends together. Not really, anyway.
She was in the driver’s seat with the key in the ignition and fruitcake safely nestled atop the armrest when Ben tugged the passenger door open and heaved himself into the cab.
“Ben, what are you doing?”
“Making sure you get home in this thing. One of us might have to get out and push or somethin’.”
“Ha ha.”
He turned up the heat. “Heater’s nearly busted. Weak metal somewhere. Probably corrosion. Can’t tell without looking under the hood.”
Because her brain was calibrated for snark, she had a number of quips locked and loaded, and any one of them could have been the one that made Ben say, “Know what? Never mind.”
She didn’t want to spend another night in a quiet house. Her last roommate had moved out a month ago, and she’d been deliberating over whether or not she wanted to bother getting another. Saving money was nice, but she’d never really had a chance to live on her own before. She was quickly deciding it wasn’t for her. Long-term solitude kind of sucked.
“My house is a mess,” she said as she steered around one of Maria’s fearless road bunnies. As far as she knew, not a single one had ever been squished. “I mean, the place is sanitary, but not picked up right now.”
“Sounds like my place. Ain’t been tidy since this Wolf mess started. Focus is shot. Plus, I’m not home all that much.”
“I guess not, what with all your side hustles.”
“Used to be that if I sat still for too long, I’d think up another one.”
“Do you really think my truck is going to explode?”
“Maybe, but maybe not in the way you’re thinking. At least not at first.”
Oh God.
“So, there’s another way to explode?” She coasted to the red light and fiddled with the turn signal stick.
“What’ll probably happen is you’ll hear what you think is backfiring. Then you’re gonna get slower. And slower. And then it’ll die right there.”
“The kind of die that can be resuscitated with jumper cables, right?”
“You know better than that.”
“Ugh.” She pounded the steering wheel and threw up a hand in response to the dillweed flashing his lights behind her. The light was still red, and unlike some people in Maria, she respected the laws of the road more than the bunnies did. “You’ve been giving me loads of bad news since I got off work. Tell me something good.”
“Something good, hmm?” He rubbed his right hand down the scruff on his chin, and the corner of his sensuous mouth curved upward.
She suspected she should have been wary of that smirk, but it was growing on her, for better or for worse.
Everything about him was growing on her.
The lights behind her flashed again.
“Still red, dude. If you want to die so bad, go around me and take your chances
with cross traffic.”
“Damn, that’s a slow light,” Ben murmured.
“Yeah, that’s because most traffic this time of day is going that way. In about an hour, there’ll be a flashing yield light in both directions until morning.”
“Efficient.”
“Yeah, for the folks going east or west.”
The person behind her leaned on his horn.
Groaning, Alex adjusted her stiff rearview mirror to get a look at the goober, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
“No. Seriously?”
“What’s wrong?” Ben asked, turning in his seat.
She sighed. Deputy Dipshit was back there in his personal vehicle, leaning on the horn as though he were having some kind of seizure. She tightened her grip around the top of the steering wheel until the faux-leather wrap squeaked.
“What’s wrong?” Ben repeated. “Someone you know?”
Alex didn’t respond.
Of course she knew him. Maria was a small town. The problem was that Alex knew him too well.
She didn’t say a word until she’d parked the truck in her carport, grabbed her cake, and ensured her seed bags were still in her pockets. “Home sweet home. See?” She opened her door and dropped to the ground. “You didn’t even have to get out and push.”
“I sure am tickled,” he said with a chuckle, leaning onto his seat. One moment, the ruggedly handsome face she wondered how she’d ever gotten confused with Scott’s was half shrouded in shadow. The next, his entire body was backlit in blinding white, and the base of an aftermarket car stereo vibrated her bone marrow.
She hated that damn radio.
“Check this out, Alex,” Kyle used to always say before fidgeting the stereo knobs in such a way that the vehicle vibrated like a hummingbird, and she’d smile and nod with as much enthusiasm as she could muster because she didn’t want to seem disinterested.
She wished she’d been truthful. Wished she hadn’t contorted her personality to fit with him when he’d known from the start that it didn’t matter if they did fit.
Ben turned to look at the visitor, his knavish smile falling away as Kyle approached.
God, go away.
