Is this a good sign or a bad one?
I weave through the crowd with Noah on my heels, literally. She grabs onto the back of my shirt, holding it with a tight fist, and I consider the consequences of never washing this shirt again. Any time someone tries to approach us, I give a general brush-off like, “We’ll be right back. I just promised to show Noah something” or “Sorry, taking Noah on a quick tour before dinner starts.”
I offer her my hand as we go down the deck steps toward the lake, but she doesn’t take it, instead skipping down the steps herself, as lithe and spry as a fairy. Trying not to read into her refusal, I show her the wide path that meanders through the Arcans’ land. We walk along it side by side in silence for a few minutes. The muffled sounds of conversations and my nieces and nephews—who have never spoken at a decibel that wasn’t a shout—reach us despite the distance.
Tree trunks fold in around us until we’re mixed into the forest, stirred with dull green light and engulfed in the clean scent of the surrounding pines.
Finally, Noah lets out a huge sigh of relief. “Thank you. I needed this.” She cringes at how those words come out. “They’re all nice, don’t get me wrong—well, except for your one brother. It’s just…intense.”
I laugh and tuck my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching for her. “I get it. My family is a lot to handle even for me,” I sympathize.
She glances up at me, curious. “So, what’s with the mucus-mouthed sleazeball?”
“Kyson?”
“That’s the name. I forgot it already.”
I press my lips together to smother a grin at the fact that she seems just about as enchanted by Kyson as I am. That squashes a bit of the worry that’s been eating at me, though there are still a thousand other reasons Noah might still make a run for it.
Reaching out to push aside a tree branch that’s grown low into the path, I seek the words to explain exactly what made my brother into the ass he is today. The problem is, I’m not entirely sure.
“He’s always been kind of a douche to me. We have the same biological father. I guess he liked being the center of his attention before I came and changed things. All of our dads were always involved though, so I don’t know what the issue really was. He and Charles used to pick on me a lot. Back then, I always thought it was stupid older brother shit. Charles grew out of it, but Kyson never has. His teenage years were the worst. He was friends with Ellery’s brother, Easton. After he died, Kyson got, like, a shithead hall pass. Everyone said it was grief, but really Kyson is just a dick. It’s probably the only thing he’s good at.”
My throat grows tight at the accidental slip about Easton. It’s not exactly my story to tell, but it’s so much a part of the issues with Kyson I didn’t even think to censor myself. Noah nods as a humorless smile tilts the corners of her mouth.
“I know the type,” she tells me, and I relax a little when she doesn’t dig into the part of the story that really belongs to Ellery. “I had a foster brother who had that dickish talent too. Used to constantly be in either the principal’s office or the back of a police car.”
“Yep, that sounds about right,” I agree. “Do you still keep in touch?”
“Hell no. I don’t have a clue what happened to him. And I have every intention of keeping it that way.”
I give an understanding chuckle. “I wish I had no clue what was going on in Kyson’s life most days. But in this town, there’s no running from it. I swear everyone in Howling Rapids knows the color of your underwear the minute you bend over too far.”
Her giggle is absolutely adorable. “You’re exaggerating.”
“I wish. Ellery’s staff are some of the worst. I went to see him one time. Apparently, I flashed a little too much of my orange boxer briefs and had everyone there calling me Orange Crush for about two years after.”
Her hand smacks over her mouth as she tries to hide a laugh, her gaze raking over me as though she can see the orange underwear beneath my clothes.
Damn, she’s gorgeous.
Her cheeks redden slightly before she looks away, gazing at the path in front of us as she asks, “You always wear boxer briefs?”
Immediately, I realize she’s recalling last night, when I stumbled downstairs half-asleep. Nearly naked. “Not always, but I could be persuaded to,” I quip and then immediately panic that I’ve let my mouth run away unsupervised again.
Fuck. Was that too much?
I glance down only to see a slightly embarrassed, but definitely heated, cockeyed grin on her face. She changes the subject but her tone stays light and her eyes keep a glimmer of that banked heat I just witnessed as she asks, “So, if you’re a restaurant owner and not a chef, what do you do with your days?”
“Paperwork. Endless damned paperwork,” I reply with a sigh, imagining how full my inbox is going to be when I finally do go back to the office. I took a week off the morning after we bit her, and it’s going to be insane when I return.
“You mean it’s not all glamorous taste-testings? You’re ruining my fantasy.” She has the world’s cutest pouty face, that lower lip jutting out temptingly.
I laugh. “Well, at the end of the day, even dream jobs are jobs, right?”
“So true. I thought when I started at a clinic, it would be me saving all the animals and having them follow me around with big doe eyes and loving me forever.”
“It’s not?”
Her lips press together into a wavering sort of frown. “There’s some of that, but there’s a heck of a lot more peopling than I ever realized. Animals, I’m good with; people…well, they’re trickier.”
“I get that. I imagine, in any kind of service industry, you go up against challenging personalities, whether that’s cooking a meal for someone or taking care of their pet.”
“Right you are, sir,” Noah agrees with a soft smile that fades too quickly. “The fussy pet parents aren’t the hardest part though,” she confesses as she plucks a few needles from a nearby pine and runs them through her fingers, her gaze pensive. “It’s the loss that surprised me. I never gave much thought to all the sorrow and anguish I’d be a part of with my job. Yeah, there’s the fun stuff, the puppies and kittens and other unusual animals. But more often than not, I have to deliver bad news. I have to help people say goodbye to the one precious soul in this world that they love above all others. And that’s…hard.”
“Brutal,” I agree.
I desperately want to eviscerate the heartache in her face when she glances up at me. I want to pull her into a hug. My shifter side wants to nuzzle her close and let her smell my scent to calm herself, but I don’t want to overstep here. I take a deep breath and try to pull together words to comfort her instead of touches.
“It’s a profound thing you do. You offer a sense of peace and respect when someone’s world is crashing down around them. Ending pain and suffering isn’t easy.”
She nods solemnly and I sigh.