by Holley Trent
“Naturally,” Lola said, “but that’s not all. Certainly, you haven’t forgotten what I do for a living.”
“You mean when you’re not masquerading as a hunched-over old lady with a chili sauce fetish and a car with a trunk large enough to hide six or seven bodies? You’re a professional meddler who needs to have her license yanked for questionable ethics.”
Lola had once been Hannah’s therapist. Of course, Hannah hadn’t known it was Lola at the time. It was before Hannah went on that ill-fated camping trip. Lola was the reason she and the girls had taken it in the first place. She wanted them for her Cougars.
“I’m trying to give you resources, mijo.”
“Why?”
“So that you’re functional.”
“Why? What concern is it of yours?”
“Shall I speak frankly?”
Belle stepped into the room carrying two plates and a pile of napkins. She set them atop the coffee table and then knocked Steven’s feet off of it.
He sat up to make room for the food she was dumping out of the bag, and then he waited for her to leave the room again.
She didn’t. She leaned her forearms onto it and stared at him.
He pressed his thumb to the phone’s mic. “So, you’re just gonna listen, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Should I put it on speaker to save you the strain?”
“No. Continue as you are so you’ll at least have the pretense of discreetness.” She cleared the food bag away and started pulling lids from containers. Slaw. Beans. Barbecue.
That barbecue he’d wanted for lunch and hadn’t been able to get. His stomach gave an insistent lurch, and he remembered then that he hadn’t had much besides coffee since breakfast. He’d been keeping his belly full of fear and anxiety all day long. There hadn’t been much room for solid food.
He dropped his hand from the phone. “Go on and say what you have to say so I can eat.”
“You’re not eating until she’s done,” Belle said. She tucked meat into a roll and plopped coleslaw on top of it.
“I thought you were compelled to take care of me. From where I’m sitting, seems like you’re doing the opposite.”
She pulled her legs beneath her and reached for the remote control. “I’m giving you exactly what you need right now.”
“Sounds like something Hannah would say.” He turned his attention back to the phone. “Go on, sneaky goddess lady. Get it off your chest.”
“I appreciate the permission, but I don’t need it. Did you make that list?”
“What list?”
“When you were in New Mexico, I clearly instructed you to make a list to help you make sense of the things that scare you.”
“I’ve been a little busy.”
“Wallowing.”
“Working.”
“Well, this doesn’t work unless you want to try.”
“What exactly is it that I’m supposed to be achieving here?”
“The answer to that question probably overlaps quite tidily with the responses you’d give to the question what do you want? I think I know what you want.”
“I sure wish you’d tell me.” He reached forward to grab a hush puppy that had spilled out of the bag, but Belle knocked his hand away without even pulling her gaze from the television.
Damn it. “That’s not love, cupcake.”
“It’s tough love. Get past that, and maybe you’ll get to see the other kind.”
“All I want is a hush puppy.”
Belle cut him a withering side-eye that made him back the hell away from the food. He hadn’t been truthful. He wanted a hell of a lot more than a hush puppy, and they all knew it. He was just the coward who would neither admit it nor do what he had to do to get it.
“What do you want, Steven?” Lola asked.
“You’re gonna squeeze the words out of me, huh? Won’t let me keep anything to myself or to come around in my own time?”
“Lacking impetus, you won’t come around. I’d curse you, but you haven’t invited such action yet. This would be easier for me if you were one of my Cougars.”
“I’m not a Ken doll you get to put wherever you’d like and do whatever you want to.”
“No, but what you’re avoiding is something you’re capable of doing. You’re keeping yourself from getting something you want by refusing to explore what you are.”
“What exactly do you think I am?”
“I don’t know if there’s a word in any language for it, but there have always been people who act as beacons for the things most humans can’t see or even sense.”
He guffawed and sank lower in his seat, rubbing his eyes. “Come the hell on, now. You’re telling me that I’m a lighthouse for the dead.”
“Not just the dead.”
“Right, right. Demons and all sorts of random malevolent spirits, too. I got ya.”
“Do you? Because you’re hostile about it instead of seeing it as a gift.”
“I don’t see how anyone could call it a gift.”
“Because you could do good with it. They may bother you, Steven, but they can’t affect you. Not really. They can’t enter you. They can’t compel you to move or act. You can’t be possessed.”
“And that’s supposed to make it better? You say they can’t affect me, but they can. You weren’t there in that desert when one of them tried to choke the life out of me every night—when some thing I couldn’t even see tried to kill me.”
“I don’t believe that was its goal.”
“It doesn’t matter. Nobody in his right mind would voluntarily put himself in the midst of those kinds of things knowing they’re going to be hostile. I do crazy-ass shit sometimes and take a lot of risks to get the adrenaline highs sometimes, but this is taking it too far.”
“I volunteered for that,” Belle said quietly.
Steven pulled the phone away from his face. “And you shouldn’t have. You were the last person who should have.”
“I was the best person for it, so why would I leave the job to someone else?”
“You’re so sure about that.”
She let out a ragged breath and turned her sandwich around in her hands. “I’ve got to be sure about some things when so many others are up in the air.” She glanced up at him quickly and then away.
Him, she meant.
He didn’t want it to be like that. He wanted to be easy for her, but being easy meant he had to do some hard things that in thirty-one years of life, he simply wasn’t equipped to do. He’d been raised to fear the things he was supposed to be engaging with. They were horror movie stuff or things that the Bible warned that only the unrighteous fell prey to.
Lord knew there was nothing righteous about Steven Welch, but he was one of the good guys. He’d always tried to be.
Everyone he worked with thought he was so fucking rational, but where was logic when he needed it? When it came to Belle and what came with her, there was a mental hurdle he just couldn’t get over.
Maybe I need a hand.
He’d both needed them and given them when scaling obstacle course walls. Everyone got over them faster if the person who went ahead gave a hand to the one behind him, and the one behind a guy gave him a boost.
Belle was straddling the top of that wall holding out a hand, and Lola was pushing him up from the ground. He just needed to grab the top and climb over. He didn’t really need to know what was on the other side, because Belle could see it. She wasn’t afraid of it, and so he shouldn’t have been, either.
He rubbed his eyes with his free hand and scooted lower on the sofa. Into the phone, he said, “Okay. I’ll tell you what I want, Lola.”
“I’m listening.”
“I want all the puzzle pieces in my life to fit together, you hear me? I want to be able to get paid for a job I’m good at. I need to be near my sister so I can make up for all the crap my family put her through, because someone has to.”
Belle stared down at her sandwich and che
wed on the inside of her cheek.
“Oh, you’re next, honey,” he said. “But that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? To hear me say it? You know I want you. I think you’ve probably had your head dinged up or something for wanting me, but it’s okay if you’re a little daft. You’d have to be a little bit unhinged to survive living on that ranch.” Into the phone, he said, “The thing is, I can’t have those things unless I put myself face-to-face with things I don’t want to confront.”
“Logic,” Lola said. “Perhaps you need to be reminded of it when they’re near.”
“And who’s gonna be doing all that reminding?”
“I’m pretty sure I volunteered for that,” Belle said.
“When?”
“When I agreed to coordinate missions into the hellmouth. I can’t do the job without your help. At least, not well.”
“There’s no guarantee that I can do it, Belle.”
“There are no guarantees to anything in life, but think about this. We’re talking about things that can’t easily hurt you. You may not like it when they try, but it’s so much easier for a human with a gun to lay you out for good than for anything on the other side of a portal to harm you.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because I’m prepared for guys with guns. I’m trained to deal with them, and I’m not afraid of them because I’m good at my job.”
Belle entwined her fingers atop the coffee table and just stared at him, her amber gaze giving nothing away.
“What?”
“If it’s a lack of information that’s causing your fear, then maybe we should get you information.”
She said “we,” not “you.” Whether it was just a slip of the tongue or intentional, it meant something to Steven. It implied that they were a team. It implied that she knew exactly what the hell was wrong with him, and it didn’t put her off from wanting him anyway.
“Taking me as I am, huh?” he asked softly.
She raised one shoulder in a shrug and smiled bashfully. “You’re getting the worse end of the deal. Trust me.”
Doubt that.
He switched his phone to the other ear, and said to Lola, “You’re gonna help me understand this?”
“No. I’m going to put people around you who actually can. I’ll never posture myself as some being who knows all, and I can’t be everything to every person. I do my best to put people where they need to be and with whom they need to be, though the Fates and I don’t always agree. I don’t believe they’ll fight me on this, however.”
“You’re a goddess. You just admitted you don’t know everything.”
“Never trust any minor god or goddess who’d tell you otherwise.”
Damn.
There was something about unabashed honesty that made him want to give his all for folks, even if he hated having to do it. Lola could be trusted, and of course Hannah and the rest of the folks back at the ranch could be.
His gaze fell to Belle, who watched him intently.
She could be trusted. Maybe the cat inside her made her a little bit loony. The cat made her a little bolder than he was used to women being, but not untrustworthy.
“All right,” he said to both. “I can’t promise you anything. Just that I’ll listen and see what’s what.”
“It’s a good enough place to start.” Lola disconnected.
Steven tossed his phone onto the sofa cushion and leaned forward to pick up the sandwich Belle pressed toward him.
“I hope you’re not just doing it for the barbecue,” she said.
He put the sandwich back down. Food could wait. He was pretty sure he’d been starving her in ways that had nothing to do with her belly, and that wasn’t fair for either of them.
“I’m doing it for a lot of reasons, kitten. The pork is just one of many, and it’s not even the biggest reason.”
“What is, then?”
“You want to hear me tell it? Okay. I owe you that, don’t I?”
He slid to the floor onto his knees to see her at eye level. Resting his forearms along the edge of the coffee table, he watched her expression open up. She went from her wary Foye glower to wide-eyed terror, and it damn near broke his heart. Hell didn’t scare her, but he did.
“I’m not gonna say anything to upset you, Belle, I swear. At least I hope not.”
She looked down at her sandwich.
“You say I’m your mate and you want to give this thing a go. Maybe I don’t understand why it’d be me and not someone better, but damn, I don’t want to think about there being someone better. Maybe I’m selfish that way. I don’t know anyone else who can frustrate me the way you do and yet make me think it was a treat.”
“Maybe you’re just hard up for company.”
“You’re joking, but it’s true, in a way. Hadn’t wanted to be with anyone, really, because I didn’t want to open up to them. Didn’t trust them enough to share the history, but I had to with you. You understand?”
“Everyone should have someone they can tell things to.”
“I agree. I’m pretty sure I told you that once, didn’t I? Still, thank you for listening and for not throwing it back at me when you could have.”
She shrugged. “Not my style. Believe it or not, I don’t want to hurt you. Even if you weren’t my fated mate, I’d want to keep you.”
“Is that so?” He reached across the table and skimmed his thumb along the bottom of her lip. Touching for the sake of touching was nice, and they didn’t get to do nearly enough of it for his liking.
“I wasn’t kidding when I said finding a man who could keep up with me is hard. I haven’t made it easy.”
“Because you’re a Cougar and you’re not supposed to.”
“I guess not.” She kissed the back of his hand and then held it in both of hers. “So what now?”
“Well, you’ve gotta agree to keep me for good, because if I take off from the department again, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be out of a job on this end. I hope you’re not gonna change your mind when the going gets tough.”
She gnawed on her bottom lip for a moment and canted her head teasingly. “You could always be a cowboy. The pay sucks, but the food’s good.”
“You’re doing an excellent job of selling that gig, kitten. You should make a commercial.”
She grinned and turned to face the television.
Pathetic as it was, he’d probably take the job just so he could get near her. Men had done crazier shit under the banner of love.
Like volunteering to walk into a hellmouth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Steven dropped the check from the sale of Hannah’s condo onto her hand and pressed the sheath of papers itemizing the transaction to her.
“Thanks for being my proxy.” She tucked the envelope into the folder, tossed the folder onto the table near the front door of the house she shared with Sean, slung her free arm around Steven’s shoulder, and got him moving onto the porch and toward the ranch’s outbuildings.
She was probably trying to keep him distracted. Folks had been keeping him moving non-stop since he’d arrived in New Mexico after three days of solo driving. They probably thought he was going to chicken out and go home, but it was too late for that, really. He’d put in his two weeks at his job, and there was a renter due to move into his house on that very day. He could go back to Raleigh, but he wouldn’t have a place to live or income to afford another one.
“Never put me in that situation again,” Steven said. “I got a twenty-minute interrogation from Dad about why I was your proxy and not him.”
“He’s just got to have a finger in every pot, doesn’t he?”
“He’s nosy as hell. You still don’t have an address on record, and it drives him nuts that he doesn’t know precisely where you are. One of these days, you’re going to have to get a New Mexican driver’s license or change the plates on your SUV. Then he’ll be able to find you.”
“Where does he think you a
re?”
“I didn’t try to answer him.”
“What?”
“Unlike you, if I don’t want to answer a question, I don’t bother making up a story. I just ignore him. Drives him absolutely nuts.”
“I can picture his hairline going red and the spittle flying as he shouts at you.” Hannah laughed.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what the scene looked like. Mom just stood beside him shaking her head as if I were the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with the world and that she was going to wipe her hands completely clean of me to ensure her soul’s eternal salvation. Where are you taking me, by the way?”
“Oh.” She grinned in a way that was way more Foye than Welch, so Steven knew he probably had a headache coming. “I was given clear instructions by the ranch manager to put you to work the moment you got here.”
“The ranch manager, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Does she happen to have red hair and fangs?”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, boy.”
He hadn’t seen Belle in about ten days. She hadn’t wanted to leave him in Raleigh—that’d been clear—but she had commitments. Work to do. Alas, so did he. It was almost as if he were the Cougar, given the pining away he’d been doing. The last time he’d been so stuck on a girl, he’d had a lot less testosterone pumping through him and couldn’t even grow a decent beard.
“She’s out of heat, though. That’s good news.”
“It’s very good news. Not that I’d complain about a gorgeous woman having the hots for me, usually, but given the circumstances ...”
“Yeah, I get you.” Hannah led him to the four-wheeler parked near Woodworks and nodded at the passenger seat.
He sat.
“I think Sean’s nearly got your bike fixed.”
“Great. Maybe one day, I’ll have someplace to park it, too.”
“Shush.”
She drove them past the stables, where a couple of ranch hands leaning against the fence railing quickly straightened up and made themselves look busy. “Slackers,” she muttered.
They went farther down the path toward the old homestead, where a couple of Foye Woodworks pickups were parked and some familiar redheads loaded salvage wood into the beds.
