Talen recognized the author’s name. “A mystery.”
She crouched down next to a box on the ground and thumbed through the books. With a grin, she held up a red volume with two Corravian males embracing a female. Neither man had a shirt and the female was clearly enjoying her predicament. “This one’s a romance,” she said. She glanced at the cover again, “Actually, I think I’d like to read this.”
He found the perfect book and held up the faded clothbound volume in triumph. “Persistence and the Secret of the Shadowed Hill. It is written in Tal. Now we need something in Corravian.”
Georgia took the book and flipped through the pages. “This is a children’s book.”
“Not just any book. My favorite,” he said.
“Your favorite kid’s book.”
“My favorite book,” he repeated. He took the volume from her hand and flipped until he found a favorite passage. “It is about a young kit who suspects that the adults are keeping secrets, which they are. She and her friends investigate and solve the mystery. It is very exciting.”
She gave him a dubious look. “A kid sleuth? That was your favorite?”
“You will read this.” He handed the book and the next in the series to the bookseller. He read and re-read the series until his well-loved copy of the first book fell apart. Digital books were acceptable, but nothing captured the pure joy of reading under the covers of his bed, unable to sleep while the mystery remained unsolved. “The story is engaging, and the language is not too challenging.”
“I’m not judging you,” she said.
She was absolutely judging him.
“What was your favorite book as a kit?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, orphan boy goes to magic school. Shenanigans ensue. I think every kid loves those books. It’s like Earth law.”
He scoffed. “Orphans. All Earth stories are about orphans. Can humans write about anything else?”
“It’s a time-honored literary convention,” she said.
“It is improbable. There is no family? No one to care for a kit?” How could an entire family abandon a kit? His own family was small, but he would never willingly leave any of them. As much as they tried his patience, they carried his heart and would until the light left him.
Georgia grew silent, walking to another table. Her posture changed. Human body language was so difficult to read without a tail or ears, but she seemed rigid, defensive. From what was she defending herself?
Talen looked around the market. They were ignored in a crowd of people. The only answer was him. She needed to defend herself from him.
“Georgia? My mate?” He approached cautiously, ears flat and tail tucked tight to his body. He’d crawl to her on his hands and knees if need be.
“I’m not your mate.” She swiped at her eyes. “Dammit. I’m not crying.”
“You are distressed.”
“No shit.” Another swipe, this time with the cuff of her sweater. “I’m an orphan. I mean, my mom died when I was sixteen, so it’s not like I was a little kid.”
“You were a kit.” She had told him this once before, at the bookseller’s stall in the market.
“Legally, but I was very much on my own. As for my father, I haven’t seen him for thirteen years, so he might as well be dead.”
“Is he imprisoned? Why was he prevented from coming to you at the death of your mother?”
A smile born of pure anguish crawled across her face. “He might be in prison, I don’t know. He left us. He didn’t want anything to do with his sick wife or his kid. I can’t believe I’m all teary-eyed about that bastard. It’s not like, you know, things were great when he was around. He made Mom so sad. We were better off without him.” She took a shaky breath. “I haven’t thought about him in years.” She sniffed, her nose pink but not entirely from the cold. “Ignore me. It’s the solar radiation levels or something. Too much oxygen in the atmosphere.”
Talen stood next to her. If she were Tal, he would curl his tail around hers in a sign of comfort. “How do humans give comfort?”
“You mean a hug?”
“Yes. I want to hug you,” he said. “May I?”
“Knock yourself out, fuzzy britches.”
He folded her into an embrace. Initially, she stood stiffly, as if enduring his touch, and then she slumped and melted into him. “I am an orphan, too,” he confided. “My parents died when I was eight.”
“That sucks,” she said, voice muffled by his coat.
“It is hard for me to remember them now. Quil remembers them better than I. My father was a scholar. I believe I have my love of books from him,” he said, not entirely understanding why he felt the need to share such personal information. Best not to think too hard on it.
She stirred, pulling away. The dullness in her green eyes alarmed him, like he was witnessing the light leave her and he desperately needed to bring that light back. Instinct told him to kiss her, to claim her mouth and pour his light into her. He did not care if he dimmed as he needed her to shine.
The civilized part of his brain cautioned that she might not appreciate all the things his body wanted to do to hers, not yet. Instead, he reached for a tool he suspected she would appreciate.
“Fuzzy britches? Really? My posterior is not fuzzy,” he said.
She laughed, the sound delighting his soul.
* * *
Georgia
* * *
Some truths are universal. Pests are one such truth, as unfortunate as that may be.
-Guidebook to Life on an Alien Planet
* * *
The pounce of little feet on the bed jolted her awake. The cat-peacock creature, either the same one that curled up on her bed to sleep or another, had a wiggling, squeaking rodent in its mouth.
The cat-peacock looked at Georgia, fanned its tail in a brilliant display of colors, and dropped the rodent.
On her bed.
The mouse scurried up the blanket and over her legs.
Georgia thrashed and screamed, jumping out of bed and pulling all the blankets with her. She landed hard on the floor, fully awake and certain that the mouse was in her hair. In a panic, she batted at her hair.
Someone pounded on the door.
The cat-peacock gave a malicious murder cry and pounced. She woke in a nightmare of claws and feathers and squeaks and screams.
The door smashed open.
“What has happened? Are you injured?” Talen stood in the doorway, wearing only boxer briefs. His chest heaved, the striation pattern across his chest and shoulders moving with each breath.
“The thing has a thing!” She pointed at the cat-peacock, currently batting at the rodent.
The small creature gave a squeak and dashed under the bed. With a blood-curdling yell, Georgia scrambled back into the bed, clutching the blankets to her.
“Humility brought you a present.” He sounded pleased.
Pleased.
“That thing dumped a mouse on me when I was asleep,” Georgia said.
“That thing is a wuap and you’ll hurt Humility’s feelings.” He crouched down and peered under the bed. “Who’s a good hunter? You. Yes, you are,” he crooned.
“Don’t encourage it. Just get rid of it.”
“You’ll give Humility a complex. Wuaps are very sensitive to the emotions of their people and she’s our best hunter. We don’t want her to feel unappreciated.”
Humility hissed and the mouse squeaked. Something thumped under the bed. Georgia stuffed her fist in her mouth to preserve what little dignity she had. Mice didn’t normally freak her out, but this was an alien mouse, it could be venomous for all she knew, and she did wake to see it dangling out of the jaws of Humility, feet scrabbling at the air, squeaking and twitching.
“This is a nightmare. I’m still asleep,” she said.
Humility bolted out from the bed, tumbling across the floor with the said rodent in her mouth. Then, pretty as you please, the wuap jumped back into the bed, tail feathers fanned
, and swallowed the mouse whole.
Georgia jumped off the bed and wrapped her arms around Talen. Slowly, he brought his arms around her in reassurance.
“She won’t hurt you,” he said.
“That’s the most barbaric thing I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“Looked plenty bad to me,” she said. “It toyed with it. That’s cruel.”
“You should see footage of wild wuaps hunting. They toy with their prey, too.”
She knew that Earth cats toyed with their prey before the kill, too. It was one thing to know that intellectually, it was another to hear the frightened little squeaks of a mouse having a mousy heart attack.
“Wild wuaps?” she asked.
“About this big.” He gestured to his knees.
“You know what? I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me.” The domesticated version of the wuap was the size of a large housecat. She didn’t need to picture a feathery murder machine the size of a pony.
Humility sat on the bed, cleaning her paws.
“Can we trade beds tonight?” she asked. Not a drop of blood had been spilled on the bed, but she couldn’t stomach crawling back under the blankets. At least, not until the bed had been stripped and everything washed on hot.
“You can sleep with me,” he said, not teasing her for being squeamish.
Chapter 8
Georgia
Freema,
It’s only the one tattoo, but it’s military, so that’s worth three at least.
-G
* * *
Days blended into weeks and Georgia learned the rhythm of the house. A woman came in from town three times a week to clean. Bright served as housekeeper and cook, managing two meals a day. They were on their own for lunch. Talen and Charl handled general maintenance and repairs. Construction on the house would go faster if they hired laborers but after Talen’s frank discussion about their finances, she understood the slower pace to be a frugal decision. Quil concentrated on his plants, which meant he mostly left her alone, only occasionally wandering through the house with a bag of potting soil and a trowel. She had no idea what Fiona did and preferred to keep it that way.
The house had six wuaps, the species of the cat-peacock creature that feasted on a mouse in Georgia’s bed. Each had their own personality. Justice insisted on sleeping in Georgia’s bed each night. A cushion by the fire was insufficient, nor was an appropriately sized pet bed. Humility brought in a steady supply of dead rodents, leaving the offerings at the foot of the main staircase. Patience prowled the outdoors and only came in when the weather turned wet. Kindness was nothing but a bunch of lazy bones loosely held together by feathers and spent all her time napping in the sun. Fortitude followed Georgia with curiosity but scurried away when she tried to pet him. She had yet to see the mysterious sixth wuap, Prudence, who was reported to be shy.
Georgia never thought of herself as a cat person—or a cat-peacock person—but she liked it when Justice jumped up on her lap when reading or curled up on the bed each night. She didn’t care for it so much when she found a partially eaten mouse in her slippers.
She worried about the spring. At the current pace of construction, they wouldn’t be ready. They only had three rooms ready for guests and three, even if they were occupied every day, would not pay the bills.
Spring also brought other considerations, such as groundskeeping. The grounds were extensive and overgrown. Quil would need at least another person to help him tame the gardens, lawn, and environs.
If guest occupancy increased, then they needed to hire additional housekeeping, and possibly a kitchen assistant. Bright never complained, but Georgia saw how stiffly she moved and climbed the stairs. No doubt Bright would blame the cold rather than age if anyone ever fussed about her. Georgia kept her mouth shut and added a note about hiring assistants for Bright.
The first task on her list was to sort out the broken windows. The house needed to make a good first impression, not scare away guests with the promise of drafty rooms. A conversation with the contractor revealed they were waiting on the windows to be delivered before they could install them. With another call, she discovered the windows would not be delivered until the invoice was paid.
Georgia shifted through a pile of invoices, bills, bank statements, and other paperwork, before she found overdue notices, and not just for the windows. Talen had admitted that he loathed the bookkeeping side of managing the house and had asked Fiona to take on that responsibility. All evidence pointed to no one paying any bills for months, thankfully due to neglect and not lack of funds.
Georgia took three days to sort through the mess and paid the most pressing accounts. She set up a desk in the study but Quil also had a desk there. On an average day, she didn’t see him, which suited her just fine.
They played a cat-and-mouse game of exiting a room when the other entered. If he prowled into the study and propped his feet up on his desk, she had a dozen other irons in the fire that needed attention. There was always something going on and some days she walked miles in the house.
Avoidance was a normal, healthy way to deal with unpleasantness. Lots of people said so. Probably.
Okay, she was being a coward, but she had nothing more to say to the man who left her at the altar. They would never be friends, so she bit her tongue and kept quiet. The last thing she needed was for the Achaval brothers to realize they didn’t need a sarcastic, cranky woman hanging around their house, making snide comments and eating their food. Better to keep to herself and avoid trouble.
Trouble, however, liked to fuck on her desk, she learned one afternoon.
Run off her feet dealing with the damn windows again, she ducked into the study to grab her tablet. There she saw Fiona bent over her desk—not Quil’s—being pounded merrily by the man who had his own perfectly good desk.
No amount of soap and furniture polish would make that desk clean.
Ever.
So that was how she came to share the old housekeeper’s office in the basement with Bright.
Under the kitchen was a labyrinth of disused servant quarters, storage, scullery, laundry, and even a wine cellar. The room was dark, despite the narrow windows near the ceiling, but it was quiet. Bright rarely ventured in except to drop off receipts for food deliveries or cleaning supplies, and to bring her a cup of tea. It was the perfect work environment.
Freema continued to write, encouraging her to be spontaneous and do “something stupid” and wanting pics of Talen’s tattoo. The girl had no boundaries.
Other than the eyeful she got her first day on the job, he kept his distance and kept his clothes on.
If she kept her head down, she’d be on a ship, heading off-planet in no time. That was the plan. Every night when she crawled into her gigantic, empty bed, she reminded herself that even if the plan bored her to tears, it was the smart thing to do. She didn’t need spontaneity. She tried spontaneous once, and it didn’t work out.
A knock at the office door yanked her out of her ruminations.
“So, this is your subterranean lair,” Talen said, his amber gaze taking in the simple room. The wall could use a fresh coat of paint, but she wasn’t staying, so it seemed like a waste of time and paint. A rug on the floor and more lighting would make the room cozy, but, again, she wasn’t staying.
“It’s tolerable.”
“Tolerable. High praise indeed.” He poked at the window frame of the lone window, high in the wall. “It’s drafty and cold. This is unacceptable.”
“I have a space heater and it’s quiet.” No one ever ventured down the stairs except Bright, and Georgia had her self-heating blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl. She loved that thing.
“We’re playing cards and need a fourth,” Talen said.
“I don’t play cards.”
“I’ll teach you.”
The moment stretched out between them. She couldn't help but think that he was sort of perfect, exactly the type of guy she
hoped to find waiting for her when she got off that ship, but she shouldn't get involved. That wouldn’t be fair to either of them. She wasn’t staying. Five more months and she’d be on a ship, headed toward a colony.
“I’m tired and we’ve got the window installation to deal with tomorrow,” she said. One hundred and twelve windows in total and a crew of four. The work would take at least three days if the weather cooperated. If the winter storm came through as predicted, the work would be delayed. All guest bookings had been canceled until the work was finished. “I think I’m just going to finish this and go to bed.”
“If you change your mind, we’re playing for bragging rights. Someone is too full of himself and needs to have his ego deflated.”
“Maybe next time,” she lied.
“Next time,” he said, tossing a warm smile.
Gah, she was such a weenie. The hot, friendly guy she secretly thought was perfect wanted to spend time with her, and she hid underground like a troll because she was a coward.
This was fine. This was the plan.
She certainly didn’t feel pangs of envy when laughter drifted down the kitchen stairs into her subterranean lair.
Her plan sucked balls.
* * *
Talen
* * *
Talent,
I am alarmed at the flirtatious nature of your relationship with Georgia. I did not bring the female to Corra or this house, to have you drooling after her like a kit who just discovered what his cock is for. It’s deeply embarrassing to witness your amateurish moves. Sometimes it is like you have never spoken to a female before.
I understand that this may not be entirely your fault, as military service kept you in the company of females of an equally blunt and boorish nature.
I am available to provide tutelage. I do so only out of a sense of familial obligation and a desire to shield the family name from dishonor.
Pulled by the Tail: Celestial Mates Page 11